Last week, amid the cacophony of reactions to Greta Thunberg’s appearance before the United Nations Climate Action Summit, a group of self-proclaimed “prominent scientists” sent a registered letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres. The letter, headed “There is no climate emergency”, urged Guterres to follow:
…a climate policy based on sound science, realistic economics and genuine concern for those harmed by costly but unnecessary attempts at mitigation.
The group, supported by 75 Australian business and industry figures, along with others around the world, obviously rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. But this missive displays remarkably different tactics to those previously used to stymie climate action.
The language of climate change denial and inaction has transformed. Outright science denial has been replaced by efforts to reframe climate change as natural, and climate action as unwarranted.
However, this is just another way of rejecting the facts, and their implications for us. Denial can take many forms.
Shades of denial
The twin phenomena of denial and inaction are related to one another, at least in the context of climate change. They are also complex, both in the general sense of “complicated and intricate”, and in the technical psychological sense of “a group of repressed feelings and anxieties which together result in abnormal behaviour”.
In his book States of Denial, the late psychoanalytic sociologist Stanley Cohen described three forms of denial. Although his framework was developed from analysing genocide and other atrocities, it applies just as well to our individual and collective inaction in the face of the overwhelming scientific evidence of human-induced climate change.
The first form of denial is literal denial. It is the simple, conscious, outright rejection that something happened or is happening – that is, lying. One Nation senators Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts, among others, have at one time or another maintained this position – outright denial that climate change is happening (though Senator Hanson now might accept climate change but denies any human contribution to it).
Interestingly, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday blamed “climate change deniers” in his own government for blocking any attempt to deal with climate change, resulting paradoxically in higher energy prices today.
It is tempting to attribute outright denial to individual malice or stupidity, and that may occasionally be the case. More worrying and more insidious, though, is the social organisation of literal denial of climate change. There is plenty of evidence of clandestine, orchestrated lying by vested interests in industry. If anyone is looking for a conspiracy in climate change, this is it – not a collusion of thousands of scientists and major science organisations.
The second form of denial is interpretive denial. Here, people do not contest the facts, but interpret them in ways that distort their meaning or importance. For example, one might say climate change is just a natural fluctuation or greenhouse gas accumulation is a consequence, not a cause, of rising temperatures. This is what we saw in last week’s letter to the UN.
The most insidious form of denial
The third and most insidious form is implicatory denial. The facts of climate change are not denied, nor are they interpreted to be something else. What is denied or minimised are the psychological, political, and moral implications of the facts for us. We fail to accept responsibility for responding; we fail to act when the information says we should.
Of course, some are unable to respond, financially or otherwise, but for many, implicatory denial is a kind of dissociation. Ignoring the moral imperative to act is as damning a form of denial as any other, and arguably is much worse.
The treatment of Thunberg, and the vigour with which people push away reminders of that which they would rather not deal with, illustrate implicatory denial. We are almost all guilty, to some extent, of engaging in implicatory denial. In the case of climate change, implicatory denial allows us to use a reusable coffee cup, recycle our plastic or sometimes catch a bus, and thus to pretend to ourselves that we are doing our bit.
Almost none of us individually, or we as a nation, has acted as we ought on the science of climate change. But that does not mean we can’t change how we act in the future. Indeed, there are some recent indications that, as with literal denial, implicatory denial is becoming an increasingly untenable psychological position.
While it is tempting, and even cathartic, to mock the shrill responses to Thunberg from literal and interpretive deniers, we would do well to ponder our own inherent biases and irrational responses to climate change.
For instance, we tend to think we are doing more for the planet than those around us (and we can’t all be right). We also tend to think literal deniers are much more common in our society than they in fact are.
These are just two examples of common strategies we use to deny our own responsibility and culpability. They make us feel better about what little we actually do, or congratulate us for accepting the science. But they are ultimately self-defeating delusions. Instead of congratulating ourselves on agreeing with the basic scientific facts of climate change, we need to push ourselves to action.
HT/Clyde Spencer
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” psychoanalytic sociologist”
Another pseudo science.
Endorsing the heading: “There is no Climate Emergency”
is a singularly efficient way of shooting ourselves in the foot.
Departing from the “Climate Change is not Caused by Humans” to say
“There is no Climate Emergency”
is, in the minds of people who read headlines fast and rarely get around to thinking about them, like saying:
“There is no Climate Change”.
Heating or rapid cooling, of course there’s a more or less of an urgent situation to adapt to depending on where we are on the globe.
But we fall into semantic traps when we depart from our true message: that climate change is not man-made;
and embrace a message that seems on the surface to be saying “there is no climate change”.
This perception management war is Semantic and we need to be extremely precise about exactly what we mean or we’ll continue to be dragged through the proverbial mud, discredited and misrepresented.
Let’s stop helping alarmists by misrepresenting ourselves!
ok ok… let me try that again:
“Let’s stop helping alarmists by NOT misrepresenting ourselves!”
(have to settle for better late than never I guess, sigh…)
Somehow on first reading I missed how arrogant and wrong this entire comment is.
Maybe you should speak for yourself, and by that I mean realize that you have not been appointed to speak for others.
You most certainly do not speak for me.
I can find reasons large and tiny to disagree with nearly every word.
Personally, I try to stick to my opinions, which I do my best to make clear are just that, and what I believe to be true, to which I try to attach some degree of certainty to and source for, my own observations, indicated as such, and passing along information from others, trying to keep attribution straight.
Let’s be clear:
-There is no climate emergency.
It is fake, made up crap.
If you know of one, point to it.
-Why on Earth do you think thoughtful people ought to give a single tiny rat’s tuchus about people who read headlines and rarely think about them any further?
-When you say of course there is an urgent situation to adapt to, you identify yourself as a jackass, IMO. A gullible naïf.
That you are a lefty at least seems to be one thing you got right, and this is revealed by your assertion that “we” have a single “one true message”.
I think you will find few who are of a conservative bent who will agree to go along with any sort of groupthink BS.
I think you will find few here who agree with your assertion of any “one true message”, let alone that it is as you say.
Once again, speak for yourself, and please do not speak for me.
You are not even good at summarizing what others, with whom you purport to agree, with might think.
If you can find a few who want you to speak for them, so be it.
But otherwise, I want you to stop “helping” skeptics by misrepresenting them.
If it offends you that I would purport to speak for others to say this, think on that.
Wow. Methinks you protest too much.
Lefty just pointed out a semantic trap (that I agree with, but that’s not relevant), and said “let’s…..” with a suggestion on how to avoid the trap described. “let us…” is a suggestion, not an order!
So lefty points out a significant problem, and suggests a way to avoid it, and you jump down lefty’s throat.
Chill!
He said much more than pointing out a semantic trap and make a suggestion.
First he said that endorsing the headline that there is no climate emergency is not just a mistake, but a singularly efficient way to defeat one’s own belief?
And on and on from there.
Yes, maybe I jumped down his throat a little, but I do not appreciate being told that everyone has to refrain from saying there is no climate emergency.
Or that everyone has to agree to groupthink in order that we somehow stay on message.
I do not spend my time trying to stay on message, but pushing back against what I regard as a very dangerous movement that has in mind some very bad outcomes.
What is the “problem” skeptics must avoid?
Skeptics are not the problem.
To me the problem is leftists trying to destroy civilization, and engineer a grab for world political and social domination…forever.
What really steamed me was starting at the first sentence he wrote, which when you look at it, is a very direct insult.
Did I need to say anything?
Maybe not.
I have no idea who he even is, but I am pretty sure he is nothing like of the same mind as the bulk of the people he is presuming to council.
Personally, I do not feel compelled to chill, but if you want to, that is fine with me.
I feel compelled to speak up.
Nicolas is providing a clear example of the way ANY attempt to constructively criticize the thoughts and actions of fellow CAGW skeptics is treated here in the comments sections of WUWT posts.
“Nicolas is providing a clear example of the way ANY attempt to constructively criticize the thoughts and actions of fellow CAGW skeptics is treated here in the comments sections of WUWT posts.”
I do not even read many of the articles here at times, and I sometimes going weeks in a row with no more than an occasional or even zero comments.
No one coordinates the participants here.
You have added nothing, have pointed out zero specific points of contention that you consider to be constructive criticism of “thoughts and actions”, and have not pointed to any specific thing I said that you are either pleased or offended by.
I have not provided an example of anything.
I made very specific points about one and then a few specific comments that were very critical and preachy.
Why do you not prove you are a troll by giving us some specifics?
What specific things were constructive?
I take it from your tone that you are unhappy with my comments, although you passively aggressively did not actually say that, instead trying to make it seem like one person who is a minor part time commenter replying to someone else in one specific instance is representative of the vast amount of material written here at this site every day.
Personally, I do not recall ever seeing your handle here, and wonder if you are a sock puppet for someone who comments under another name, or maybe you are someone from The Conversation or some other warmistas jackass site, or are one of the authors, or what?
In any case it is unwarranted aspersion of the site.
Are you too spineless for outright badmouthing, even under an anonymous handle?
I made comments to specific people in which I said specific things.
There was no chorus of people chiming in and slapping my back.
It is just me.
So step up, grow up, man up, grow a set…whatever you need to do.
Say what is on your mind, please.
Besides, takebackthegreen, for all else, I do not accept that people are who they say they are automatically, most especially not when they have little or no history to refer to and are not even using a real name.
Not a problem, I understand completely.
I did not use mine for years, but everyone oughta be able to understand that someone who says they are a “fellow CAGW skeptic”, but at the same time asserts belief in a climate crisis, or climate emergency, or thinks people fighting back against political power grabs by violent communist morons need to do so with great sensitivity and consideration for how their words will be perceived by low info headline readers…well, I was born during the day, but it was not yesterday.
You do not sound yourself like someone who is a “fellow” anything, but more like someone with a chip on shoulder, or a grudge, or something.
I am trying to think of any time I would or ever have read something being discussed by two people, and thought to myself,
“Self, I am going to make a comment in which I attribute something said by one person on one day to an entire news site for all of forever.
And I am not gonna be in any way specific.
And I am gonna do it because I like that site full of people just like me!
It just makes me mad when someone does not like it when they are told how they should talk, and what they should say, and so they object instead of clamming up and chillin’.
Nope, when people are told that disagreeing with people they strongly disagree with is the worst thing they could do, they need to say ‘OK Then!’, and then say stuff the way they are told.
All of ’em.
Pronto.
Cause I am a fellow skeptic!
Who hates it when other skeptics do not agree there is a climate crisis that needs urgent attention and that group think is the answer.
Yeah!”
No, I do not think that adds up.
So solly.
Sorry, that should be “…prove you are NOT a troll…”
Zig Zag and Takeback,
I appreciate your having afforded me the benefit of the doubt. This WUWT site and its commenters have been invaluable in helping me understand the various aspects of this most crucial issue.
“Skeptics” are faced with some really dirty business as Susan Crockford’s most appalling demotion attests to. The stakes are high and in this propaganda war every syllable counts.
Be well.
“Let’s be clear:
-There is no climate emergency.
It is fake, made up crap.
If you know of one, point to it.”
Love it! Short and to the point.
Yeah, if anyone knows of a climate emergency going on right now please speak up and point it out to those of us who don’t see it. Of course, noone will speak up because there is no climate emergency. Nothing to see here.
Meanwhile, delusional Western politicians declare a climate emergency based on nothing but rhetoric from self-serving interests.
Hey! Nicholas McGinley! Thanks for your heart-felt reply! I genuinely appreciate it! Thanks for speaking up! Probably many others were as indignant and irritated as you were. You’ve offered me a chance to clarify my own heart-felt cry above:
I have a friend and neighbor who’s a physicist who travels the world over working with researchers on climate. He’s fairly recently distinguished himself in the news for having written an algorithm designed to predict extreme weather events. Needless to say, he’s completely bewildered by my “skeptical” stance and recently berated me saying that if we don’t do something fast we’ll have the deaths of countless drowned and displaced Bangladeshis on our hands. So I conclude that the notion of “emergency” is somewhat subjective. Whether or not we can DO anything to save Bangladeshis from their terrible and longstanding flooding situation by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, however, is quite another story.
For my friend the emergency is there but so is the cure. As I understand it, it’s the proposed cure, reducing carbon dioxide emissions to reduce climate change that skeptics unanimously question.
Moreover, “skeptics” are forever misrepresented in the media by such debate titles as “Is Climate Change Real?” implying that “skeptics” don’t believe climate change is real whereas, in reality, most have simply not seen compelling evidence to support the idea that Human-caused climate change is real or to any significant or perceptible extent. People are again and again and again led to believe that so-called “deniers” believe “There is no Climate Change”. I hear it all the time: “oh yea, you don’t believe in Climate Change”. and I can repeat it again and again and again “No I don’t believe Humans are primarily responsible”. It just doesn’t register. My attempts at clarification are no contest to the barrage of media “consensus” science people are awash with.
So I’m dismayed when I see a photo opportunity go to waste; Specifically that 500 brave scientists have risked putting their name and reputation to a document addressed to the UN whose title “There is no climate emergency” will be read and interpreted, conflated in an off-hand way by the busy, tired, harried populations as “There is no Climate Change” which is what “skeptics” are portrayed to believe, hammered into the subconcious minds of the masses by a bought and paid for media.
As for the “We and the “Ourselves” I was referring to in my comment above: this was meant to describe all those “skeptics” who don’t believe there’s evidence that man-made CO2 is driving climate change in any perceptible or meaningful way
and who want the people of the world to be exposed to this message because they believe the prescribed cure for purported man-made climate change, a drastic reduction in CO2 emissions, will itself be catastrophic or at the very least, uncomfortably unnecessary.
For years now I’ve been watching “skeptics” as they attempt to convince audiences of the untruths, manipulations, cover-ups and other inaccuracies promoted by the champions of catastrophic global warming/climate change/climate disruption due to humanity’s industrial CO2 emissions – using scientific facts – confident that the scientific Truth would prevail; these climate facts being as good as ancient Greek to most laymen and thus easily countered by sophisticated sophistry and fallacious arguments, not the least among them being appeals to emotion and guilt let alone outright manipulation and misrepresentation of the data. The “warmistas” as you call them are perfectly aware that the brain processes emotions many times faster than intellectual concepts, even easily understood concepts which unfortunately is not the case for much of the known science behind climate change, let alone all that remains to be proven and discovered.
So yes, I believe we are shooting ourselves in the foot by using what little mass media time we have under the banner “There is no climate emergency”, where emergency is subjective, rather than the objective fact that”We can not dial temperatures up or down or change the climate in any impactful way by dialing CO2 emissions up or down” and yes, from a purely marketing point of view, I believe we are, with this title: “There is no climate emergency”, exposing ourselves to the easy conflation and quick interpretation and reinforcement of the notion that “climate skeptics” believe “There is no climate change”.
But all those who’ve risked their reputations by “speaking up” all have my immense admiration and gratitude. Also, Walter Cunningham explained “our” communication predicament best towards the end of this video I’m sure many here have seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhW-B2udhQw
I am doing other things, but the first thing that really jumps out at me is this person who claims that “we” will have the deaths of Bangladeshis on our hands, if we do not step up.
This is just bewildering.
You should first understand that your friend is deluded.
The ocean (they are all connected) has risen by under a foot over the past hundred years, and there is no trace of any hint of any acceleration.
Despite warming oceans, melting glaciers and icecaps, and people saying it is so.
None, nada, zero, zilch.
It is not happening, plain and simple.
Bangladesh is a low lying country on a river delta with little elevation above sea level, and they are mostly poor, and it is in a tropical zone which gets occasional huge rains, like most places in the tropics, even ones without a monsoon season, and a large river and right on the ocean at the base of mountains.
Weather has killed appalling numbers of people in this and other regions with such conditions, forever.
But a look at history is clear: The numbers are way down.
So it is arrant nonsense or deliberate lies to say that there is a crisis.
Or that the fate of people in some far off land is in our hands and depends on to whom we accord political power.
Any clear eyed look at reality, besides for history, is equally clear on a few points: ——–Climate change caused SLR, if it ever raised oceans faster than now, occurs at a rate which would allow the slowest slug crawling across the ground to outrun even if it only had one day every ten years to do so.
-Storm surge or river flooding has always been among the disasters with the most ability to kill lots of people. Sea level changes of millimeters per year? Not so much.
– People that think natural disasters that have always occurred are gonna be from now on either their fault or your and my fault have something wrong with them.
Seriously wrong. If that was my friends, I would tell him that.
Send him here and I will tell him if you do not want to.
I know plenty of physics, but also a lot about Earth and human history, physical geography, meteorology, and climatology and hydrology, among other things.
I am not guessing, I know.
You spoke a lot about your observations over the years about how skeptics have conducted themselves and how they have tried to convince people of this or that.
I have too.
Nearly everyone here has.
IMO, too many skeptics have been too hesitant to be confrontational and forceful in denouncing the lies and the BS.
I have been having discussions/arguing with people preaching global warming malarkey since 1988.
One thing is clear: People whose job is in an industry which depends on promoting some point of view, will be among the least objective people to be found.
This is not about messaging.
It is not about the environment.
It is not about weather.
It is not about helping poor people.
It is not about energy, or even CO2.
And a more nuanced message is fine, if that is the approach you prefer.
But being blunt and direct is not a mistake.
And telling people who know what they are talking about, how they oughta speak and such…this is not a good way to influence people, and least not conservatives.
Warmistas use emotional arguments, which cannot be counteracted by boring facts.
But facts must be presented.
The whole thing is political, and is about power, and money, and control.
But just saying that over and over is not persuasive either.
If you have people with a giant megaphone screaming about a crisis or an emergency day after day, they might believe it even if they cannot see it, most especially if they never hear anyone say “Bullshit, that is not true”.
If every lie is met with a big fat truth bomb, then propaganda, which relies on lying and repetition, will not be as effective.
Mods, I seem to have a comment stuck in moderation.
Thanks!
ARML (Can I call you Arml?),
I just wanted to let you know that earlier I did post what started out as just a short reply to one part of this more recent comment (which I BTW appreciate and thank you for), but I must have used a bad word or two and it is in moderation until it is looked at and posted.
But now I have ore time and have read your whole comment more carefully.
I do not really like going line by line when responding to someone, but your comment is long and thoughtful and touches a lot of bases so I think that is what I should do.
First let me say though, that I do not comment just to vent (very often) or to hear myself talk, but instead try my best to do so in a way that says what I am thinking and feeling. So if something someone says rubs me the wrong way or contains what I consider to be incorrect info, I say so. I try to be clear and concise, which in person sounds different that in written form.
I do not know how often or for how long you read what is written here, did not know (but now do) where you live, and have only your words to use to determine what it is you believe.
It would take a comment three meters long to explain why I push back hard against some assertions, for example the suggestion that there is a crisis or emergency, and everything else that goes into my reasons for what I think and how I feel on each and every thing I say and respond to what others say.
One thing I have found out over time is that there is a slow creep of language and underlying sentiment and such, which over time tends to get overlooked and leads to what some call hypnosis. Ideas get planted. We use the language of those who have obfuscated various aspects and issues. We succumb to gaslighting. We lose track of some basic things that the long term conversation has moved past long since.
Examples of these are such things as going along with the idea that warming is bad and dangerous, that the Earth is having the hottest years ever, that droughts and floods and storms and all manner of bad weather events are increasing, that we have only a short time left to “tackle climate” as if we are in any way in control of weather(planted ideas); the phrase “climate change” instead of “global warming” which then morphs into “climate crisis”(language creep); that the various graphs and charts presented today represent real trends, when what they are is actually fraudulently altered and made up (gaslighting); the notion that 1.5 or 2.0° of warming is anything more than a randomly selected number with no actual reason to believe it, that CO2 levels regulate the temp of the planet and this is known to be factual, that prior centuries and millennia in the Holocene epoch were static and stable (past arguments forgotten), to name a very few such examples.
There has been a thirty year blizzard of bullshit which has accumulated on a Gordian knot of lies and false premises.
Earth history tells us that a world with more CO2 in it is normal, and the amount we have today is frighteningly low.
It tells us that a warmer world is a wetter world, and a more stable world climatologically and regarding extremes of weather.
Earth history tells us that the Earth has no tipping points for heating to dangerous levels, but most assuredly does have one for tipping into dramatic and planet altering cold, dry weather with miles of accumulating ice that take hundreds of thousands of years to resolved once it commences.
Biology tells us that a warm wet world with higher CO2 is hugely and uncompromisingly better for life.
Biology tells us that life is not fragile and existing on a knifes edge of extinction, but is instead incredibly resilient and adaptable…except when it is very cold and ice covers the land in perpetual accumulations.
Biology and chemistry tell us that the ocean will not and never has and in fact cannot become acidic, and nor does higher CO2 make ocean life decline.
It tells us that CO2 makes plants able to grow in dryer places and thus deserts and marginal lands shrink and the whole biosphere is more robust.
The Oceans are way too cold, not way too hot.
More CO2 is good, not bad.
Recent warming, to the extent is has occurred at all, has been almost exclusively less cold nights, winters, and polar regions, and not hotter summer, daytimes, and places where it is already hot. IOW, the Earth is becoming more mild, less extreme, and nothing is burning up.
The actual hypothesis that alarmism is based on is CO2 caused global warming.
Climate change was a crafty rebranding which allows any sort of change, or even purported but not in fact real change, to fall under the same all encompassing catchphrase.
Climate crisis is an extension of what was already a meme more than an observed condition.
People all over the world are more prosperous than ever. Prior to 20 years ago, huge famines occurred in one place or another nearly every year, and that simply does not happen anymore.
People are living longer than ever, food production on every continent sets records nearly every single year and does so by every metric: More food in total tonnage, more food grown per acre, and more food for each human on the planet, by far, than ever in human history. And the trends are not slowing in the slightest, despite more people than ever. The primary food caused problem in the world is obesity, and that is true these days even in many poor and formerly poverty mired regions and countries.
Pacific islands that have been being forecast to disappear beneath the waves are instead found to be larger than they were in past decades.
There is no increase in droughts, floods, storms, heat waves, or any other adverse weather events, beyond what has been the observed historical norms of variation.
There is absolutely and categorically no crisis occurring that can be attributed to anything unprecedented with the weather or climate regimes of the planet.
Glaciers and icecaps are frozen wastelands, not critical habitats. Glaciers do not provide water, they lock it away in a destructive and useless form, when they are growing. Only when they are melting do they give back this water stolen from use by past cold periods.
The whole planet is greener by over 17% as seen from space than even a few decades ago, not a single natural resource has been depleted, but rather most if not all are in greater supply than ever, in terms of production and in terms of in place reserves to be mined as needed.
Sea level rise debunked:
https://twitter.com/NickMcGinley1/status/1167552581511434241?s=20
CO2 and temp for the past 140 years with no exaggerated scaling and truncation:
https://twitter.com/NickMcGinley1/status/1150593858725695488?s=20
Hottest place on Earth is has the greenest lushest golf course you ever saw.
Death Valley:
https://twitter.com/NickMcGinley1/status/1149874541965074433?s=20
Warm is bad, debunked:
https://twitter.com/NickMcGinley1/status/1148799952707084289?s=20
Ocean acidification, debunked:
https://twitter.com/NickMcGinley1/status/1147178867905499137?s=20
Global food production graphs:
https://twitter.com/NickMcGinley1/status/1184960844721000452?s=20
Aus Food production and exports graph and a link to crop report. It does not look too bad.
“In 2019–20 the volume of farm production and agricultural exports are expected to fall below long term averages, mainly due to ongoing drought in large areas of south-eastern Australia. However, the extent of this fall is likely to be limited by above average crop production in Victoria—where seasonal conditions have been favourable—and close to average crop production in Western Australia and South Australia—where conditions have been mixed.”
http://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/research-topics/agricultural-commodities/sep-2019/agriculture-overview
https://twitter.com/NickMcGinley1/status/1184960697102413826?s=20
Mods, apparently my subsequent comment has also gone to moderation…too many links I think.
Thanks.
“As Fat Walker, the late great third-base coach of the Pittsburgh Pirates, used to say, ‘Call me anything you want, but don’t call me late for dinner.’
“…telling people who know what they are talking about, how they oughta speak and such…this is not a good way to influence people, and least not conservatives…”‘
Probably depends on which conservatives.
But I was trying to speak to scientists and other climate skeptics who might also be frustrated that their message is quite apparently not being received.
So we disagree on the efficacy of the banner “There is no Climate Emergency”. Tant pis.
Thanks for the handy-dandy twitter “graph shots” debunking various climate change myths. Could prove useful.
And now that you know where I live, I have a confession to make:
I really am left-handed, unlike all those sharks raised in a warmed up tank.
In the minds of many individuals, climate change is now synonymous with bad weather, and adverse events in general, even many having nothing to do with weather and changes in temp and wind and such, and even has begun to be synonymous with any sort of environmental issues at all.
Pollution and general environmental degradation now fall under the same heading, in the minds and words and writing of an increasing number of groups and individuals.
This is partly attributable, no doubt, to increasingly loose usage of language and deliberate alterations and broadening of definitions of words and phrases.
But it is also partly the result of a general decline in the ability to think properly, which is an inevitable result of any sort of psychosis or mental pathology.
People are deluded, and are also being subjected to intentional psychological manipulation.
There you go telling people how think properly.
I think and know the entire climate circus is revealed when you look at the real clowns, Mark Carney of the Bank of England for example. His GFI, green finance credit, out of any hands of any elected government. There it is all revealed what this is about and it certainly is not about climate, weather, not even finance directly. It is about attempted genocide on a mass scale to make Goebbels blush.
If these bankers succeed in this insane scam, coal, fossil fuels will never be allowed where they are most needed, and no nuclear either. Genocide is the planned result, get it?
So put on your thinking cap, you actually have skin in the game!
It is impossible to tell people how to think properly, obviously.
The best anyone can hope to do is pass along info, try to be persuasive, point out when you think someone has something wrong, or is misinforming others, etc.
As for Carney and the undeveloped countries, I doubt I can do much except what I have been doing.
No place has ever prospered except by the combined effort of the people in that place.
Please tell me WHERE there is an “urgent situation to adapt to” wrt climate.
Standard question when someone says there has been a climate change: where, and what has changed?
I have never gotten a response. Never. Why don’t you be the first?
The climate is always changing. Ignoring that and refusing to adapt to any potential changes is not sensible.
If rainfall increases, I would advocate building more drains, as a trivial example.
I’m seeing a lot of what appears to me to be knee-jerk reactions against fairly reasonable opinions. That is a trait of the alarmists that anyone would do well to avoid. It may be triggered by the commenter’s “lefty” tag, of course.
And as for “urgent”, I’d say the current drought in much of Australia is urgent. We need to change how we manage this. It occurs in cycles that we can’t predict very well, and as we require more food for our growing population, we urgently need to do something about it so that our agricultural industry is not mostly destroyed during each dry period (ie change in climate).
No mention of dreadful CO2 is required to define this urgent problem.
A drought is not a climate crisis that the world needs to adapt to, it is a local adverse weather event.
There is zero reason to think that a drought in Australia is a caused by, or can be solved by, anything people do.
You are ready to sign onto a portion of alarmist mentality and gaslighting because of a drought in some certain location.
I am sure that it is a big problem.
I am also sure that any “solution” to it is a local one.
Nothing anyone in the world does with regard to energy usage or lifestyle change is gonna end that drought or help people there cope with it in any way.
Here in the US when droughts occur, people drill wells.
BTW…if you think each dry period in Australia is a change in climate, I suggest you rid yourself of this false belief through further education on the topic.
Getting someone who is in a prominent position in government or academia to declare the drought permanent and a new normal has worked wonders in the past, and not just in Australia.
I truly cannot imagine how any rational person can believe that the rest of the world changing how they live will end a drought, or cycles thereof, in some particular place.
It will not, and cannot.
Ever.
Not even possible.
Droughts are normal in arid locations (no to mention, also in moist climate regions)
There are wet years and dry years.
And that will never change.
What about happy non-deniers, people who welcome the 1degC warming since Wyatt Earp was sheriff of Dodge City? Hey, the Thames doesn’t freeze over any more and plants are loving the extra food supply.
By that definition, we are all non-deniers. But wait, that would mean that the term itself “deniers” is a total lie, just like all of their other lies!
It is amazing but not unexpected to see the amount of verbiage they will devote to ‘denial’ rather than actually addressing the perfectly legitimate objections to their claims of what ‘science’ consists of.
1) The fact that the variations observed are well within the envelope of natural variation
2) it has already been hotter than the doom temps they predict, for longer, in the current interglacial and this in and of itself is proof their predictions of disaster for species and ecosystems is flat out wrong (since they all survived, as did humans)
3) the fact that untestable, hand tuned models are not evidence
4) the fact that systems with this much positive feedback are not stable and as such, any earlier perturbations would have already ‘railed’ the system hot or cold long ago
Since they cannot address actual science using standard method without evasions and while using continual logical fallacies by the bushel, it is they who are the deniers..of actual science and valid method
I really don’t understand the Natural Climate Change deniers. The earths multitude of regional and micro climates have always temporally changed… and always will. The plants and animals present today reflect the genetic adaptations and resilience of their ancestors to accommodating those changes. Why deny well established science? Why pretend it is otherwise?
One year in Wisconsin, I experienced 104F peak summer temps at the end of July followed by -34F temps in late December. There was no ‘climate catastrophe’ associated with the 138F delta T that occurred in that 1 year. It was all natural. All of the plants and animals are naturally adapted to that climate, as are the resident millions of people. Yet the Natural Climate Change deniers insist that a predicted 3-4F temperature change over 100 years is going to cause a ‘catastrophic climate change’, perhaps even an extinction event for mankind! ReGretably, even more strident assertions of “only 12 years to impending doom” are arrogantly claimed by ignorant individuals of low science education and experience.
The argument pressed by the Natural Climate Change deniers defies credulity. The only reasonable response I can think of at the moment is “How Dare You (!) try to foist that absurd nonscience on me!”
— The most insidious form of denial
The third and most insidious form is implicatory denial. The facts of climate change are not denied, nor are they interpreted to be something else.
What is denied or minimised are the psychological, political, and moral implications of the facts for us. We fail to accept responsibility for responding;
we fail to act when the information says we should. —
The human species is mutating. And has been mutating for thousands of years. And it’s possible {and likely} that in last few centuries the human species has been mutating faster per century than it has in last few thousand years.
But by the term, “mutating” I am not suggesting large or dangerous changes, rather, the human species a life form – and all life forms mutate and always do so.
And as far as I am aware, such mutation which has been occurring {for thousands of years} and probably occurring more recently, faster, and probably and even at a faster rate in the future, should not be a matter of politic policy- other than mutation is probably generally speaking, “a good thing”.
And should be regarded as “good” until there is some evidence of it being “bad” and a problem which can fixed to make it somehow “better”.
If we ever get to point of ever determining future mutation should be “fixed”, at minimal, there has to be hellva good reason for governments to take any action, and the public needs to involved in the decision process {OR alternatively, we quickly execute all the government officials who are so arrogant to abuse the public trust}.
It’s not like any of our representatives are particularly bright {evidence suggests they are corrupt, overly
self-interested, and roughly as dumb as bricks- and therefore they *need* be aware of serious consequences of any public betrayal- to hinder the constantly demonstrated “stupid” from going too far in terms acting very excessively, stupid}.
Or briefly speaking, all governments have been evil and probably will continue their tendency to engage in warfare and oppose their own people {as the Chinese government is currently doing in Hong Hong- which is obvious example and not in way implying that only the despotic Chinese government routinely engages in evil/stupid and “self-destructive” behavior}.
Or any war is massive failure of political leadership, which also applies to public demonstrations or riots.
{One might need to use governmental force, but one should also realize, this was only needed due to past and present failure of political leadership. Too always oppose war is assuming governing can be perfect- which is very unrealistic. But one could expect that any government should be able to end wars {or riots}.
So perhaps the most insidious form of denial, is refusing to see the evil nature of all known governments from the beginning of time {with the “famous” despotic governments only being the most blatantly evil] and at minim having the knowledge that all governments, need to be restrained by the public they serve.
Or anyone who is an adult who imagine “the only problem” is that governments don’t have enough power, are massively uneducated and hopelessly delusional.
Or they are like Greta Thunberg who has the slight excuse of being a child who has known “mental problems”-
NOT to be stupidly confused with “mental magical abilities” or unusual saint like qualities.
Am I the only one now hoping for a large and even harmful level of cooling just to shut these people up, once and for all?
Their trite sophistry and smarmy smugness is way beyond galling.
But being galled is a personal thing, and this is not about any one person’s or group of people’s feelings or sensibilities, obviously.
Since coming to the realization, over the past several years, that the entire lives of uncountable numbers of children are being severely impacted, including God only knows how many addictions, overdoses, and suicides but also a general feeling of despair, I am more sure than ever that this is not a disagreement or a discussion, it is in fact a war, and ideological war.
It has got very little to do with science, although science and the education of entire generations of children are among the early victims.
It has nothing to do with the environment, although actual stewardship of our planet is being severely and negatively impacted by a senseless and enduring focus on a fake issue which sucks away nearly every bit of attention, funding, and effort, from actual and addressable environmental issues, including ones that have severe and immediate negative impacts on huge numbers of people every single day.
This infection has now come to a head, and the only questions in my mind regarding that aspect is, when will the boil be lanced, the corruption drained away, and properly disposed of? Will there be the will to endure the pain of making sure every trace of the foul putrescence is squeezed out? And will steps be made to prevent reinfection at some other place and some other time, at the very least by making sure that the ones responsible for this instance cannot do it again?
–Nicholas McGinley October 16, 2019 at 1:55 pm
Am I the only one now hoping for a large and even harmful level of cooling just to shut these people up, once and for all?–
It will not shut them up.
They are insane, they think global warming includes global cooling. Nor do give a whit about global average temperatures. Plus they might dust off idea that increasing CO2 levels “actually” cause cooling.
Anyhow, we are in an Ice Age, and any cooling is bad.
And warming of past century has been a benefit. Warming periods in past have always been regarded a “better times”.
And we recovering from the Little Ice Age, it will stop quickly from this warming trend. Or if want it to get as cold as the Little Ice Age it “requires” at least a century, and that is pretty long time to wait.
But if you mean “returning to the Pause”, that going to happen fairly soon. And doesn’t require prayers to make that happen. And by phrase “Pause” it means over period of say 2 decades there not a significant amount or measurable amount of warming.
Or alarmist imagine there is “accelerated” warming. There has not been any “accelerated” warming, but
not being able to even measure accurately the amount warming, is not warming and is definitely not accelerated warming which can related or connected to elevated CO2 levels.
So you have already had your wish, but you should also get wish again, soon.
{Or it has to be much sooner than any wish of cooling.}.
A sustained period of cooling on anything like the scale of the last multidecade cooling period would make much of what we are hearing from alarmists very difficult for any serious person to be on board with.
It will falsify the models and the hypothesis behind that.
So I think it is possible for the actual scientific question to be resolved beyond any reasonable doubt…at the very least to the extent that CO2 effect on global T is small compared to natural variability.
At the very least, a prolonged cooling event will lead to the masses giving the political elite a choice: either stop with the nonsense of depriving us cheap, fossil-fuel energy, or we will get warm by burning down government buildings.
No nobody, can notice the effects of global warming- the recovery from the Little Ice Age.
Or one gets long growing seasons on average, so if farmer/gardener one could notice it over years if noted starting grow seasons or simply remembered the dates, but otherwise you not going noticed such small changes because there just too much variability in daily temperatures.
Plus you have stay in one location for many years- or simply moving across town could have a greater difference.
But if just want cold weather, you probably get unusually cold weather this winter. Or that something people will feel and cause them problems {lots of snow and or frost- stuff we are not suppose not get because of “global warming”}.
Or global warming has nothing to do with being warmer or colder- except the “state propaganda” claims it does.
But most of propaganda about global warming is about “distant lands” and says things like the polar bears are dying- and they aren’t, etc.
But what going to change people views, is all the craziness to do with electrical production which will quite predictably, result in lots of people being in the dark.
A long pause didn’t put a dent in the alarmist narrative, they just spent years denying it was happening while simultaneously coming up with multiple excuses for why it happened. Should a period of cooling arise, expect more of the same.
Not as many people were paying attention then, and alarmism was far less shrill.
And a pause is not the same as a prolonged drop below the long term averages.
By the 1970s, several decades of cooling has real world impacts that were not just a matter of some cold weather here and there.
Arctic ice, for one thing, grew to such an extent it decreased for several decades and still covers the Arctic ocean for most of the year.
Alarmism in it’s present form will not survive even a single decade of cooling, if it happens soon.
The other part of the mental calculus is that people will disregard anyone who is a demonstrable liar.
Try it at a poker game some time: Bluff on every hand, and see how long you can get away with it. In fact you will at that point have a hard time ever successfully bluffing anyone again.
We see this in politics as well.
Chicken Little and The Boy Who Cried Wolf are stories that have endured the test of time, precisely for this very reason.
Trust, or the benefit of the doubt, once squandered, is unlikely to ever be regained.
One would certainly hope, yet the demonstrable liars have been and continue to “get away with it” because they have a compliant (and often demonstrably lying) media on their side that refuses to call them out on it. And that doesn’t appear likely to change any time soon regardless of what the weather and/or climate actually does.
In 2008, the entire thing had nearly evaporated.
But when Obama was elected, he dusted it off and began larding out money and loading up bureaucracies with compliant ideologues, and issued directives that every single agency and every single fiscal allocation have global warming/climate change worked into the appropriations bills and the mission statements, etc etc.
He mandated it, at the same time that fiscal stimulus had green lights to the horizon and the money spigot was larger and pumping harder than ever in history.
Other places around the world either stepped up or began to do likewise.
Governments, or more precisely the people that live off them and profit from them, love things like money and power and control.
Opening a buffet and getting people to line up to pig out, is easier than shoving them all out the door and ending the party.
I am not a denier but rather a scientist. Based on their publications, the IPCC does not really know what the climate sensitivity of CO2 really is. All they have provided is a range of guesses. If the IPCC really knew how the climate system worked they would be supporting only one climate model but instead they support a plethora of climate models which provide guesses as to our future climate. Based on science, I have found that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero and that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. AGW is just a conjecture and it is full of holes. The AGW conjecture depends upon the existence of a radiant greenhouse effect caused by trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere with LWIR absorption bands. Such a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, in the Earth’s atmosphere, or on any planet in the solar system with a thick atmosphere. The radiant greenhouse effect is nothing but science fiction so hence the AGW conjecture is science fiction as well. This is all a mater of science.
How dare you suggest that climate change is natural and something “over which mankind has no control.” 🙂
I remember learning in the fifties about dykes in the Netherlands and how effectively engineers have used them to keep the sea out and prevented flooding – the last devastating flood was in January 1953. How have all our efforts to play God and engineer climate turned out over the past thirty years? However, our efforts to adapt to our circumstances like in the case of the Netherlands has paid off handsomely. If I were a betting man I would put my money on the horse called “adaption” and not on the AGW donkey called “climate alarm.”
Someone ought to inform the physicists of the existence of ‘the conversation’. It lives ckearly in a parallel topsy-turvy universe where everything is the opposite of what it is in ours. They surely must have access to a portal somewhere.
The Upside Down!
“Outright science denial has been replaced by efforts to reframe climate change as natural…”
The stupidity of this claim is breathtaking.
Oh dear! Now ‘they’ are using SCIENCE in a scientific debate! The absolute horror.
What next?
I am not 100% sure who the “they” is, that you are referring to.
But it sounds like you are mocking someone, Photios, who made a reasonable observation, Jaap.
If you are not, disregard the following.
It only applies if you think the authors of the headline post are using SCIENCE, as you so loudly put it.
For one thing, the authors reject the notion there is anything to debate.
And they never once made any mention of anything akin to science, let alone mere evidence.
You think it is scientific to assert that natural climate change is a non-thing, and anyone invoking it is “reframing” climate change?
You have it exactly backwards.
When continents move (and they do) climate changes.
When ice ages come and go (and they do) climate changes.
‘Efforts to reframe [this] as natural’ would be just plain daft.
Why? It is natural already.
What really needs to be discovered is “who, or what group of people, above the crowd we hear from constantly”, is driving this lie of tipping points and destruction of Earth unless the proles give up everything humans have ever achieved through creativity, energy and determination in the last few years.
Who are they? What will they gain? Where are they? Will they even survive?
Who literally trained “Greta”?
Well someone has a few Kangaroos loose in the top paddock
Could be worse. Could have a few Rudds loose in the Party Room.
Craig from Oz
I think that the real problem is that there are croc’s in the swimming hole. They think that they are smarter than everyone else.
They are certainly sneakier than everyone else.
There is a fourth. I deny warming is caused by CO2 because it is true.
Truth is always a valid defense.
Socialists are famous for using psychiatry as an excuse to lock up those who have the courage to disagree with them.
I love this bit.
“We are almost all guilty, to some extent, of engaging in implicatory denial. In the case of climate change, implicatory denial allows us to use a reusable coffee cup, recycle our plastic or sometimes catch a bus, and thus to pretend to ourselves that we are doing our bit.”
I use a reusable porcelain cup and plate and bowl, many times a day. I use reusable steel knives, forks and spoons several times a day. Each time I do so I am engaging in implicatory denial.
I AM A IMPLICATORY DENIER
What then is the mental condition of a person who is convinced by the climate emergency but then willingly and voluntarily boards an aircraft, or uses a disposable coffee cup?
Someone might have a better word than HYPOCRITE but it will do for now.
So says the implicatory denier reaching for his resuable coffee cup.
Obviously the mental illness manifested by these authors is of the multivariate form.
Vile and totally sick propaganda! Dr. Goebbels would be so proud of them.
Come to think of it, there are at least three types of Space Alien Change deniers. The language of space alien change denial and inaction has transformed. Outright science denial has been replaced by efforts to reframe space alien change as natural, and space alien action as unwarranted.
However, this is just another way of rejecting the facts, and their implications for us. Denial can take many forms.
The first form of denial is literal denial that space alien change is happening.
The second form of denial is interpretive denial. This is where people don’t deny that space alien change is happening but try to pass it off as “oh, there have always been space aliens around, it’s completely natural” or “if they wanted to do something, they would have by now”, or even, “increased UFO sightings are a consequence, not a cause of increased visitations of space aliens”.
But the worst, and by far the most morally wrong form is, in the face of imminent destruction by space aliens acknowledged by the consensus, that of the refusal to act on that knowledge. And we are all, in one way or another complicit in at least that one insidious form of denial. How dare we.
Instead of congratulating ourselves on agreeing with the basic scientific facts of space alien change, we need to push ourselves to action. It’s time to roll up our sleeves, and get to work! Together, we can defeat space alien change!
From the article: “The language of climate change denial and inaction has transformed. Outright science denial has been replaced by efforts to reframe climate change as natural, and climate action as unwarranted.”
Climate change *is* natural, until proven otherwise. There is no evidence humans are causing the Earth’s climate to change. There are no unprecedented weather events. There are no unprecedented high temperatures, other than the ones shown in the fraudulent Hockey Stick charts.
Anything going on climate-wise today, was going on in the past before CO2 was a possible factor. The global temperatures were just as warm in the 1930’s as they are today, and CO2 was not a factor in the 1930’s.
So if the 1930’s got just as warm as today without the benefit of CO2, and Mother Nature was in control, then why should we assume that the current warmth, of the same magnitude, is due to CO2 and not Mother Nature? Answer: We should assume it is Mother Nature until proven otherwise, and it hasn’t been proven otherwise as of today.
From the article: “In his book States of Denial, the late psychoanalytic sociologist Stanley Cohen described three forms of denial. Although his framework was developed from analysing genocide and other atrocities, it applies just as well to our individual and collective inaction in the face of the overwhelming scientific evidence of human-induced climate change.”
There is no scientific evidence for human-caused climate change, much less overwhelming evidence. The authors are assuming something not in evidence.
I think the human-caused climate change speculation is showing that too many humans have an ability for fooling themselves. These authors think they know the facts and obviously nothing could be further from the truth. They have fooled themselves into believing something that isn’t established. Unless they are outright liars, but I doubt that is the case. Most of these people are just True Believers who never looked at the details of human-caused climate change, they just accept it on faith. There are true climate science liars but I think they are the minority. The rest are just clueless and afraid, because they are clueless.
What’s interesting to note about this screed, written by self-proclaimed scientists, is that they neglect one of the most items in a theory: the null hypothesis. How would knowledgeable people act if, in fact, there were no Anthropogenic Climate Change? It is the height of arrogance that they assume that a certain reaction must be due to malevolence and not to simply being correct.
I’m type four. I wish mankind had the capability to increase CO2 to 800-1200 ppm; and hope that the ECS is such that temperatures rise at least three degrees.
I’m disappointed that all the money we’ve spent on climatology models seems to have been wasted.
Science denial is a form of mental illness that has been an ugly thorn on the side of the science revolution and the rise of our science based civilization.
There was the ether theory and ether theory denial and the expanding earth theory and expanding earth theory denial and the race theory of humans and race theory denial and eugenics theory and eugenics theory denial and the population bomb theory and the population bomb theory denial and the limits-to-growth theory and its denial and end oil theory and end oil theory denial and on and on.
And still by some miracle we are still here. And yet we could have been far more advanced if it weren’t for science deniers. Human civilization needs a cure for science denial.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/10/14/racism/
OK, I carefully read the entire thing. At no point does he explain what people are denying. Without that statement up front, the whole article is just an exercise in psychological warfare.
Tragic really. They have all these important university trained researchers and they can’t even get their own claims – as misguided as they are – correct.
Where for example is the Spiteful Faux-Denier? The person who actually accepts the science, but hides the fact in order to deliberately heckle the IPCC Cultists.
Or the Sexist Children Haters? Who hear the truth of that weird Nordic kids, and then push back because of misogyny, toxic masculinity and deliberately motived cruelty towards mental disorders.
Sorry, Conversation, but pretty lame effort there.
The other point of interest is the following extract;
“Interestingly, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday blamed “climate change deniers” in his own government for blocking any attempt to deal with climate change, resulting paradoxically in higher energy prices today.”
Firstly, Malcolm Turnbull is not remotely interesting. He is a grumpy career loser openly despised by the DelCon movement, championed as their own Useful Idiot by the MSM and those in the left who were never going to vote for him, and liked by no one. When he was PM people listened to him in the same way prisoners listen to the latest findings of the parole board. That was then. Now he is just a grumpy loser still despised by the DelCons and now discarded by the MSM in the same way as Rudd, Gillard, Rudd, and Shorten has just another failed Labor leader who is no longer cool. Long Live Saint Albo!
The rest of the paragraph is shameful projecting. For a start Turnbull is claiming his own party blocked his dream. So… the party he was LEADER over, blocked him. Yes… He does know what leadership involves I take it?
Then the article claims that ‘paradoxically’ power is now more expensive because those nasty people FAILED to act.
Wow.
Shameless.
Don’t these people even talk to their fellow tyrants? The hymn sheet is that power NEEDS to be made more expensive to encourage people to use less of it. This was the ENTIRE point of a sodding Carbon(sic) Tax. Force the polluters(sic) to pay more in order to encourage via the profit sheet a transfer to a green economy.
This was their openly declared intention, yet, during a column about denial, they blame the lack of action on climate being the reason power is now so expensive.
Wow.
As has been pointed out elsewhere in these comments, a signature of a Leftie is the shameless ability to project.
“Of course, some are unable to respond, financially or otherwise, but for many, implicatory denial is a kind of dissociation. Ignoring the moral imperative to act is as damning a form of denial as any other, and arguably is much worse.
The treatment of Thunberg, and the vigour with which people push away reminders of that which they would rather not deal with, illustrate implicatory denial. We are almost all guilty, to some extent, of engaging in implicatory denial. In the case of climate change, implicatory denial allows us to use a reusable coffee cup, recycle our plastic or sometimes catch a bus, and thus to pretend to ourselves that we are doing our bit.”
I don’t suppose going to confession to Al Gore and saying three Hail Mary’s, three Our Father’s and three Glory be’s for our penance for our grave sins against the Holy Climate is going to cut it for these new Faith Leaders, is it? OK, what about sack cloth, ashes and self-flagellation? Nah?
OK, I think I’ve got it! Indulgences! If we give them all of our money I bet our climate sins will be forgiven, right? It works for De Caprio, Al Gore and too many others to mention. Whew!