Guest drive-by twofer by David Middleton
1. Global Warming —> Climate Change: Bush’s Fault
Our planet is in crisis. But until we call it a crisis, no one will listen
We study disaster preparedness, and ‘climate change’ is far too mild to describe the existential threat we faceCaleb Redlener, Charlotte Jenkins and Irwin Redlener
Wed 31 Jul 2019When Senator Kamala Harris was asked about climate change during the Democratic debate in June, she did not mince words. “I don’t even call it climate change,” she said. “It’s a climate crisis.”
She’s right – and we, at Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, wish more people would call this crisis what it is.
[…]
In the early years of George W Bush’s first term as presidency, scientists were actually making serious progress in establishing overwhelming evidence that we were, in fact, facing a global crisis. Public opinion on climate change was shifting; Americans were curious about how worried they should be by the damage being done to our atmosphere.
Enter Frank Luntz, a renowned Republican pollster and strategist. Luntz was concerned that the Republican party was losing the communications battle. He advised Republicans to cast doubt on scientific consensus on the dangers of greenhouse gases and to publicly hammer home a message of uncertainty.
In 2002, Luntz wrote a memo to Bush urging him and the rest of his party to use the term “climate change” instead of “global warming”. Climate change sounded “less frightening”, he pointed out, “like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale”.
[…]
Caleb Redlener is an undergraduate studying public policy and communications at the Ohio State University and a summer intern at Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness
Charlotte Jenkins is a master’s of public health candidate at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia and a graduate research assistant at Columbia’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness
Irwin Redlener directs Columbia’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness and is a professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia
The Grauniad
As the crisis escalates… [The Grauniad needs your money]
“first term as presidency”
WTF?
Did they really write that?
I just love it when a bunch of Liberal Arts idiots write write something so stupid, that the SkepSci kids can shoot it down…
Both Terms Have Long Been Used
The argument “they changed the name” suggests that the term ‘global warming’ was previously the norm, and the widespread use of the term ‘climate change’ is now. However, this is simply untrue. For example, a seminal climate science work is Gilbert Plass’ 1956 study ‘The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change‘ (which coincidentally estimated the climate sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide at 3.6°C, not far off from today’s widely accepted most likely value of 3°C). Barrett and Gast published a letter in Science in 1971 entitled simply ‘Climate Change’. The journal ‘Climatic Change’was created in 1977 (and is still published today). The IPCC was formed in 1988, and of course the ‘CC’ is ‘climate change’, not ‘global warming’. There are many, many other examples of the use of the term ‘climate change’ many decades ago. There is nothing new whatsoever about the usage of the term.In fact, according to Google Books, the usage of both terms in books published in the United States has increased at similar rates over the past 40 years:
SkepSci
Apart from being totally wrong about almost everything… SkepSci wasn’t even stupid enough to blame the name game on Republicans.
2: WTF Did Beto Say?
Robinson Meyer, a 20-something year old music major, is The Atlantic’s resident climate scientist. His expertise rivals that of shark expert Rob Riggle… (Eat, Prey, Chum is hilarious!)
SCIENCE
Climate Change Can’t Be Left to the Scientists
Steve Bullock just wasn’t right.
ROBINSON MEYER
JUL 31, 2019Amid the fireworks of Tuesday night’s Democratic primary debate, there was a moderately interesting exchange about the inherently political task of dealing with climate change. It happened among the not-so-killer B’s: the moderates Steve Bullock, Beto O’Rourke, and Pete Buttigieg.
Bullock, the governor of Montana, began by addressing Senator Bernie Sanders, asking, “Are we going to actually address climate change? … Or are we going to give people a better shot at a better life?” Bullock then added: “You can do both.” (This insight did not come as a surprise to Sanders, no matter what you think of his politics. The Vermont senator has endorsed the Green New Deal, which deliberately ties climate policy to several allegedly life-bettering policies, including universal health care and a job guarantee.)
Then Bullock attempted to depoliticize climate change: to make it a purely technical issue best left to professionals. “Let’s actually have the scientists drive this,” he said. “Let’s not just talk about plans that are written for press releases that will go nowhere else if we can’t even get a Republican to acknowledge that the climate is changing.”
[…]
The moderators then called on O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman, who replied to this point in a somewhat garbled way.
“I listen to scientists on this, and they are very clear. We don’t have more than 10 years to get this right,” he said, before pivoting: “And we won’t meet that challenge with half steps or half measures or only half the country. We’ve got to bring everyone in.” Then he listed a number of archetypes of Americans—Texans and residents of Flint, Michigan, and college students in New Mexico—who needed to be brought into the climate solution.
Maybe this wasn’t his point—and it wasn’t much of a point in the first place—but Beto seemed to suggest that the scientists can tell us only the scale of the climate problem. They can’t actually marshal resources to address it.[…]
Then Buttigieg, who so often cites his young age (and exposure to climate risk) as a major reason for his candidacy, started talking about Trump’s alleged bone spurs. For all the lip service that some politicians pay to climate change, lots of them just don’t know that much about it.
The Atlantic
So… If the politicians are too stupid and the scientists too impotent… Just who in the Hell can climate change be left to? At least Robbie didn’t call it a “climate crisis.”
Postscript
I just realized I didn’t use any geological puns… Even though both articles were nothing but horst schist… 😉
Awards
The Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness crew earns a triple Billy Madison…
Robbie Meyer earns a Wile E. Coyote bidirectional non sequitur trophy…
Dang, I can’t believe I just watched all 10 of those Looney Toons cartoons….lol…..Well, at least the physics portrayed were about equal to the physics of the “Climate Crisis” idiocy ! …..meep meep ! : )
RE: “WTF Did Beto Say?”
Who cares what Beto said???
ALRIGHT! Now We Are Talking.
Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, Outstanding.
David Middleton, you surpass yourself.
“..Our planet is in crisis. But until we call it a crisis, no one will listen..”.
July UAH satellite temp record shows +0.38 deg C anomaly, which is down from June. Dr. Spencer says July was NOT the hottest on record. Warming rate remains unchanged at +0.13 C./decade. I am not a scientist, but I presume that +0.13 C/decade is within the the range of natural variability.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
When you keep crying that there is a wolf at the door and no one ever sees one there, people will eventually stop listening to you. Climate alarmists still seem unable to understand that.
There is a “NEW” LOONEY TUNES on one of the cartoon channels, same old characters with (some) new technology. They probably will get around to it.
The GOP could fully enact the new green deal and the environmentalists will still not vote for them.
It looks to me like they’re starting to understand that the scientific truth can’t support the alarmist position so they reinforce the emotional arguments instead. Next, we can look forward to the last resort of the political left where they’ll be calling skeptics racists …
I know someone who is very-left-leaning and at least somewhat PC, who criticised me for saying “global warming”. That person told me that I’m supposed to call it “climate change”. This was in early 2016. When I told that person that the Union of Concerned Scientists was still at least sometimes calling it “global warming”, and I asked that person why I can’t call it “global warming” while the Union of Concerned Scientists can, that person then just started mumbling.
I have noticed the mainstream media saying “climate change” instead of “global warming” shortly after they started saying “African American” instead of “black”.
There is no scientific consensus. Scientists have never registered and voted on the validity of the AGW conjecture. But even if they had it would have no significance because science is not a democracy.
Climategate email 4141.txt
Climate change skeptics are those who would read Gina McCarthy’s educational backround for being Obama’s second administrator at EPA and not not at least snort. If Social Anthropology and a masters in Environmental Health Engineering have any actual subject matter, at least it looks better than Women’s Studies.
George Bush, in fact, was the President who really got the bioethanol industry going. While not popular on here, this industry has removed and continues to remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than any democrat or useless EU administration will ever do.
The hypocrisy of the left is evident as he slate of Democratic Presidential candidates has no qualms about using the d-word to refer to skeptics which is as evil as the use of the n-word. In both cases, the purpose is to deprecate the recipient with prejudice.
Guys, what I would like to have a look at is the various captured emails where they are shown lying is at their very core….”What do you think will happen if it is all shown to be natural variation?” “I guess we will all be hung.”
I would like to put that in a folder and bring it out once in a while to give some warmist believer something to consider.
“In the early years of George W Bush’s first term as presidency, scientists were actually making serious progress in establishing overwhelming evidence that we were, in fact, facing a global crisis.”
Golly gee, that is one actually, seriously, overwhelmingly poorly constructed sentence, in fact. For sure!
We might not be able to prosecute warmest’s for perpetrating the biggest scam ever on the people of the world, but perhaps we can lock them up for torturing the English language with an excessive use and abuse of adverbs…already! The language of climate change propaganda is worse than we thought!
This is an old demand. In the early 1990s the IPCC came close to abolition because politicians felt scientists weren’t delivering the goods. Hansen told politicians we were destroying the climate. Yet early IPCC reports delivered equivocation and uncertainty. Bernie Lewin details the history in “Searching for the Catastrophe Signal: The Origins of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change“, 2017. Everyone should read it. Then you’d understand that today’s activist scientists are demanded by politicians; giving them what is the best way to promote one’s career. Now it seems even activist science is too scientific for the Guardian! They want certain evidence, or 100% consensus. To convince us to change everything about the world.
David, You are far better explaining geology, better stay away from political topics.
this is my Favorite roadrunner/coyote
I don’t know if “climate crisis” has the impact it once did. It is rather old, and outdated. I’m sure if we put our heads together we can come up with a phrase that gives people the full horrifying sense of our situation. Here are a few to get us started:
Climate Defcon 1
Climate Holocaust
Planetary Incineration
Catastrophic Climate Anihilation
… we at Toilet Duck recommend …. Toilet Duck.
Climate Change — Global Warming/Global Cooling
Global Warming — Temperatures Going Up
Global Cooling — Temperatures Going Down
It would seem the media and many scientists are still advocating Global Warming.
FYI:
“I just love it when a bunch of Liberal Arts idiots write write something so stupid, that the SkepSci kids can shoot it down…”
From the article: “In the early years of George W Bush’s first term as presidency, scientists were actually making serious progress in establishing overwhelming evidence that we were, in fact, facing a global crisis.”
I don’t know how much “serious progress” they were making seeing as how to date it has never been established that there is any evidence human-derived CO2 is causing any changes in the Earth’s weather or climate, much less overwhelming evidence.
I don’t think evidence means what the author thinks it means. I think they are confusing speculation and computer models for evidence.
I wouldn’t be very popular at a climate conference, because all I would be doing is saying, “Where’s your evidence for that?” And since the targets of my question don’t have any evidence, they would not be happy with me pointing that out.
They could silence me with some evidence, but they don’t have any to use. I guess it’s a good thing I won’t be attending any of those climate conferences. No point in upsetting religious fanatics. Besides, I don’t have a personal jet to use. You have to have a personal jet to be a mover and shaker at the climate conferences.
She’s a certificate?