Reposted from The Fabius Maximus website
By Larry Kummer, Editor / 12 February 2020
Summary: The climate policy debate ran for 30 years but produced little action (it ranks #17 of the public’s top 18 concerns). Now it has died. The autopsy reveals not just who killed it but also disturbing insights about America. This is post #404 in a series about climate change that I began 12 years ago.
ID 27423027 © Tom Wang | Dreamstime.
Bottom line: the climate activists are decisively winning. The science no longer matters in the public policy debate. Activists have moved beyond it and the major science institutions no longer defend it against the activists’ exaggerations and misrepresentations. There are rumors are that the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report will break with the past and fully embrace the hysteria. Meanwhile, skeptics are talking to themselves, like characters in Alice in Wonderland – vocal but effectively locked out of the news media.
The climate wars are in the “pursuit” phase of battle, during which the victorious side runs down and destroys their broken foe. Understanding how we got here reveals much about America’s dysfunctionality (i.e., its broken OODA loop). But first, know that this was not inevitable. See this remarkable op-ed in the BBC: “Science must end climate confusion” by eminent climate scientist Richard Betts on 11 January 2010.
“Of course, we know that these things {extreme weather} happen anyway, even without climate change – they may happen more often under a warmer climate, but it is wrong to blame climate change for every single event. Climate scientists know this, but still there are people outside of climate science who will claim or imply such things if it helps make the news or generate support for their political or business agenda. …
“{D}o climate scientists do enough to counter this? Or are we guilty of turning a blind eye to these things because we think they are on ‘our side’ against the climate sceptics? …Climate scientists need to take more responsibility for the communication of their work to avoid this kind of thing. Even if scientists themselves are not blaming everything on climate change, it still reflects badly on us if others do this.”
But Betts, and his fellow peers who are dedicated to science, remained mostly silent in the public policy debate – other than the occasional quiet remark. Of course, they were smart to do so. This is a moral panic. Once the leaders of society embrace it (for their own purposes), it becomes a virulent epidemic. Like a zombie apocalypse, those scientists in its path had only three good options: flee, collaborate, or hide. The ugly consequences to those (e.g., Pielke Sr. and Jr., Judith Curry) who chose a fourth option – carefully and selectively fighting the panic – are described below.
I have personally seen this dynamic play out as I have documented this increasing dysfunctional debate since 2008. But few cared in 2008. In 2015 I wrote one of the early critiques of the RCP8.5 scenario (perhaps the first): Is our certain fate a coal-burning climate apocalypse? No! I followed with Manufacturing climate nightmares: misusing science to create horrific predictions. Afterwards, I tried to find a climate scientist to coauthor an article in EOS or WSJ op-ed about the misuse of RCP8.5 – when it might have had an impact. But the ones I contacted were too smart to do so.
Now even Nature and the hard-core alarmist BBC says this. But RCP8.5 – and more broadly, climate science – no longer matter. The debate has moved beyond science to the exaggerations of the Climate Emergency and the fictions of the Extinction Rebellion. It is all politics and mass hysteria.
The climate policy debate is interesting as an example of our society’s growing dysfunctionality. Larger political forces (e.g., who wins the presidency in 2020) will determine who wins the debate. On a longer time horizon, the weather will choose the winning side. Meanwhile, the American people watch their screens and chatter.
An example shows how we got here
“The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.”
— G.W.F. Hegel in the Preface to The Philosophy of Right(1820). See Wikipedia.
Roger Pielke Jr. has written an article adding to my favorite genre: forensic pathology, examing the climate policy debate’s corpse to determine the causes of its death. His article describes the creation of shock troops for climate activists, using the Skeptical Science website (SkS) as their base. These people attack the opponents of activists – using lies and smears to discredit these eminent scientists. These are people whom activist scientists can support without getting their own hands dirty by smearing their peers.
The troops at SkS have been immensely successful in a narrow sense, helping activists dominate the public spaces in America. But when you read this, remember the big truth which explains the gridlock in US climate policy.
This is not what scientists do when they have
decisive evidence of an imminent global threat.
This is how they act when they do not have decisive evidence,
but for professional or political reasons want the public to believe them anyway.
Many Americans understand that, at some level.
“A Climate Blacklist That Works:
‘It Should Make Her Unhirable In Academia’”
By Roger Pielke, Jr.
Pielke describes the dramatis personae of this sad story.
The writers at Skeptical Science – A massive donation supported website. Like most good propaganda mills, it mixes useful information with misinformation. Very few of its authors are climate scientists.
Pielke describes its authors’ smearing of Roger Pielke Sr. and Judith Curry. See this debunking of the SkS page about Pielke. See his publications, also his positions held. His publications have an H-Index of 95. See Curry’s publications; they have an H-Index of 67. Compare that to media darlings James Hansen (96), Michael Mann (83), and Katharine Hayhoe (47). It is how science crashes during a moral panic.
Conclusions
“It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.”
— Voltaire in his The Age of Louis XIV.
Simple and sensible measures could have been taken long ago with broad public support to prepare for a better future and break the policy gridlock (perhaps gaining support for bigger bolder actions). But that requires our involvement to make it happen – since neither the leaders of climate science nor US elites have any interest in either. We do not appear to be up to this challenge.
For More Information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information see The keys to understanding climate change, all posts about the RCPs, and especially these …
- About the corruption of climate science.
- The noble corruption of climate science.
- Climate science has died. The effects will be big.
- After 30 years of failed climate politics, let’s try science! – A proposal to break the policy gridlock.
- The guilty ones preventing good policy about climate change.
- Toxic climate propaganda is poisoning US public policy.
- An obvious solution to the climate policy crisis.
- A demo showing our broken climate policy debate.
Activists don’t want you to read these
Some unexpected good news about polar bears: The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened
To learn more about the state of climate change see The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Describing the death of the climate policy debate – the short version.
For a decade one of their leaders was John Cook, riding the cause to academic degrees and honors – at least pretending to know climate science.
https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/portfolio-view/john-cook/
That was then. Now they give us Greta, who knows nothing but what she has been told.
That’s the move beyond science. Beyond rational debate.
Our ruling elites believe that we are sheep, deserving only to be treated contemptuously. Time will tell if they are correct.
Just looking at that photo of John Cook gives me the creeps.
The mantra of Skeptical Science is to be “skeptical of climate skeptics”. So, I posted a comment there that it might be useful to be skeptical of people who are skeptical of climate skeptics. I then got a warning that any more posts like that and I’d be locked out!
They are not very skeptic-friendly over there.
People who think they have it all figures out don’t like it when someone suggests they don’t. So rather than arguing their weak case, they run skeptics off so they don’t have to deal with them. It’s kind of pathetic, and it is really damaging to science. Censorship and real Science are not compatible.
Larry
I can’t help but wonder if Greta handles the finances for her family. If not, why not? After all, she behaves as if she understands economics well enough to advise for financial changes for the entire world.
So, how many of you attend the public meetings of the activists?
When Algore dispatched his trained volunteers to show his slide show, did you go to those presentations to confront the misinformation?
I do.
It is a lonely hobby, with no friends, to date. How do you think it was for the left when they started this.They had the media on their side, you say? Go back further.
If you want push back, you must get out and do it.
There is ugliness when facing the left, but occasionally others actually seeking to be informed.
There’s an interesting symbiosis in the activist community between climate activism and gender/identity activism. The whole gender/identity thing is a much more recent invention than climate change and it seems to have metastasized much more quickly. And we (climate realists?) may benefit from the way that gender/identity politics is polarizing society. The activists may have taken on a battle that they cannot win.
Gender/identity politics seems to have gained most traction in the UK, where ordinary people have lost their jobs and even get criminal prosecution for saying things that wouldn’t even have been controversial a decade or so ago.
The difference from the climate movement is that the 90 percent (at a minimum) of the population think the whole thing is absurd, and they tend to get angry when it starts to get forced on ordinary folk, just like them.
And this is leading to the very real possibility that the BBC, which is at the forefront of the gender/identity movement, may get defunded. BoJo has hinted that his government might cancel the TV licence fee. Without public funding, the BBC will either go down the tubes or become a very fringe player in the media world. And if the BBC goes down the tubes, the Guardian might well follow.
Which would all be good for us.
‘people have lost their jobs and even get criminal prosecution for saying things that wouldn’t even have been controversial a decade or so ago.’
They didn’t throw the Jews in the camps the first day. They spent about ten years justifying first.
Fascism works wherever it’s tried.
In WUWT beginnings the “let’s kill this debate with science” crowd was prevalent. Most of the threads were highly technical but productive only to the technoids (not demeaning them). Slowly the realization formed that politics was the driving factor and here we are today. I miss all the in depth technical discussions because I learned a lot (not that they disappeared). But you can’t fight fire with fire if you don’t have any and the media controls the narrative. The only remaining weapon against AGW hysteria is the vote and seeing what has happened with carbon tax in France and America I say the skeptics are winning. Everyone wants to save the world until it affects them directly and only then do they start asking the relevant questions and making a stand for their rights. GND? It’s like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and the people know it. Have faith in the people but remain vigilant. I say skeptics are slowly winning despite the lack of media support because people are smart, not stupid.
The rabid Marxist Media is on the ropes! One more Trump election will seal their fate!
They have been hemorrhaging viewers for quite some time!
I Had a Nightmare Last Night About Canada
By Steve Heins
I woke up and remembered that Climate Change rhetoric has already created a large new genre for funding bias;
It has funded 1,000s and 1,000s of politicized climate reports; It funds over 5,000 active environmental lawsuits in US and Canada;
It has created and funded enough environmental attorneys to strain the entire US and Canadian legal system;
It provides billions of dollars in donations and government grants annually; It allows climate activists to be scofflaws and lawbreakers with impunity, think Canadian blockades;
It allows climate activists to use the “necessary defense” to justify their actions;
It has provided the justification for the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, Waters of the US, IPCC and EU Emission Trading Scheme (with emphasis on Scheme);
It provides a “moral code” for many groups of environmentally activists throughout the world, think European Union and Canadian pipeline schizophrenia;
It has helped justify the poorly written and executed Emission Trading Scheme by EU in 2005, which doesn’t include energy efficiency, but does allow wood chips;
It continues to doom the poorest 1/6 of the world to destitution and energy poverty and brutishly short lives they are enduring right now;
And finally, it may allow environmental zealots to overthrow democracies without a shot being fired.
Then, I awoke just in time to watch the country-wide anarchy and uncivil protests at construction sites and railroads in Canada.
####
“I have seen the future and it’s murder,” sayeth the bleak Canadian poet Leonard Cohen.
The darkest hours is just before the dawn..
The “debate” never occurred, so there can’t be a corpse.
In a free society, the truth eventually comes out. Looking back at the past, there have been numerous movements that promoted a pseudo-scientific “truth” and eventually collapsed. This particular one just happens to be very political and about power (and of course money) which keeps the promoters interested.
The belief that trace amounts of CO2 control the global temperature is akin to the belief in UFOs. People want to believe…it’s scary…it fits into our need to believe in supernatural causes. And after 80 or 90 years, there are still people convinced that UFOs are real and aliens are kidnapping us.
(Real) Scientists believed in the Ether for a long time because they had no other way to explain wave behavior (of light) in a vacuum. Now they believe in Dark Energy (again because they have no other way to explain observations). The lack of an explanation is a powerful force in believing weird things. We can’t explain natural warming.
Eventually, when the world doesn’t end, most people will simply move on from climate science. They will likely find some other ridiculous belief to focus on.
I don’t “believe” but I do try to understand things like UFOs, Yeti, etc. It is fun. That said there is more evidence for bigfoot than for CO2 controlling the climate. Just saying 🙂
“The belief that trace amounts of CO2 control the global temperature is akin to the belief in UFOs. People want to believe…it’s scary…it fits into our need to believe in supernatural causes. And after 80 or 90 years, there are still people convinced that UFOs are real and aliens are kidnapping us.”
After thousands of years people are still convinced that gods are real and that there is some overarching plan for all of us. Lack of evidence be damned.
In a free society, the truth eventually comes out.
Are we a free society ?
“(it ranks #17 of the public’s top 18 concerns)”
If the “public” made their own list of “top concerns,” “climate change” wouldn’t even be on the list of the “public.”
“Bottom line: the climate activists are decisively winning.”
No they’re not – they’re losing. Because they’ve been crying wolf for 3 decades, and not a single one of their “scary” predictions has come to pass. The hysteria you’re seeing (and will see in AR6) is their desperation, not some victorious “mop up.”
“The climate wars are in the “pursuit” phase of battle, during which the victorious side runs down and destroys their broken foe.” – Uh do you remember the Mongol Horde tactics?
Appear to be losing, ride like crazy to escape with your enemy in pursuit and then when you get to the point where the horses are exhausted ….
The horde would have fresh rested horses waiting. Dismount the tired, mount the fresh, turn 180 degrees and it didn’t end well for the pursuers with their tired horses.
Just keep demanding predictions for 2020 to 2040. If they don’t make predictions they can’t call it science. Constantly point out all the failed predictions and what that means to a scientific idea/theory.
The state of Climate alarm is U S.:. Tom Steyer is running for President on a platform of Climate Hysteria . . . . count the votes in Iowa and NH.
‘Nuff said.
The 30 year run of the alarmists isn’t going to turn around overnight.
I agree with your characterization of the media penetration, but this same media (and technocrat oligarchy) clearly no longer represents an acquiescent overall population.
So I think it is more than a little premature to declare a loss.
Winning Larry?
Play stupid games win stupid prizes.
How does amping up the Hysteria and Lies become winning?
Becoming ever more shrill convinces whom?
Making even more idiotic end of the world proclamations is real effective,really convinces people.
Gang Green is a gift,inherent in their Cult Like Movement is the collapse of government institutions.
This blatant propaganda and open attack on the norms of our society,by government agencies seals their fate.
Appeals to authority,using false flags and unsupported beliefs, end in the destruction of that authority.
Human nature has not changed.
Once the Gullible hold power,they destroy the things that make our technological civilization work.
Grinding civilization to a standstill really focuses the citizens attention.
Politicians and Parasite really should learn from history.
The last thing they want,is the citizens undivided attention.
Government control of electric Utilities is already resulting in Black Outs and system failures..all in the name of Gang Green “Sustainability”
And grid electric supply kW/hr rate costing more than a personal generation plant.
Which is rapidly destroying the rational for having State Controlled Utilities.
All our institutions,brought into being to prevent misinformation and public fads wasting taxpayers time and money,have been hijacked to promote the Cataclysmic Climate Meme.
Demonstrating the abject failure of government and the myth of competency in bureaucracy.
So if the “Concerned Ones” are winning, why are they so hysterical?
Whether climate skeptics have lost the debate is itself up for debate. True, we have major media outlets celebrating ignorami like Greta Thunberg as Person of the Year, but when she shouts “How Dare You [continue to use fossil fuels]”, the adults in the room pay her lip service but don’t agree to DO anything except vote for non-binding resolutions that don’t require the big emitters (China and India) to do anything.
Even if they voted for a “binding” resolution, everybody knows (including the alarmists, except Greta) that China and India will just ignore it. How do you force a nation with over a billion inhabitants and nuclear weapons to do something which they know is not in their national interest? Tell them to cut their CO2 emissions or else they get a slap on the wrist with a piece of paper?
Right now, while they ride private jets with impunity, it’s easy for someone like Bernie Sanders or AOC to say that they want to impose a Green New Deal that would cost trillions of dollars a year and tank our economy in the name of “saving the planet” from some calamity predicted for the next century. But if any of them really took power, trying to pass the Green New Deal through Congress would be nearly impossible, since people like their cars, and keeping their homes warm in the winter, and electric power to run their washers and dryers and microwaves and computers, and don’t want their taxes doubled to live like the Amish in the 19th century.
If a state government (California being the most likely) tried to impose draconian restrictions on fossil fuels, people would “vote with their feet” and move to more energy-tolerant states. If a national government tried this, there would likely be a massive popular revolt, and the opposing political party would take over the government after the next election.
In the meantime, nothing is being done, the CO2 concentration keeps rising, but average temperatures (seasonally adjusted) are going sideways, and the average voter is wondering why should we spend trillions of dollars solving a non-problem.
SKS is an instrument of propaganda for profiteers of doom. Its mission is to mis-inform, defame, and intimidate dissent from the party line. This outfit is not science; it’s anti-science.
Its operator, John Cook, is eminently qualified to comment on climate or any physical science – After all, he holds a degree in.. psychology. But then that degree is from western Australia. And here’s the best part: Although he disavows public support, in truth, Cook is now being funded by the US National *Science* Foundation, through the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.
https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/portfolio-view/john-cook/
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1713450
https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/us-senate-launches-probe-of-nsf-climate-grants
Corruption of science and public policy – by the Deep State, for the Deep State – all at public expense.
Your tax dollars hard at work!
Larry
one too many “are”….
“There are rumors
arethat the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report will break with the past and fully embrace the hysteria.”Yeah Yeah. The public faithfully parrots Climate Change propaganda. But skeptics still have the last laugh. No matter how brainwashed the public might be, the vast majority of Americans (app. 65%) still refuse to pay carbon taxes or green new deal boondoggles.
Drump will ride to re-election by rejecting carbon taxes and energy boondoggles proposed by his opponents… and the majority of Americans will agree with Drump.
All of which drives the High Priests of Climate Change absolutely bonkers. This recent cover article in the WAPO shows how desperately inconsolable the hysterics are.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/11/27/americans-like-green-new-deals-goals-they-reject-paying-trillions-reach-them/
There is a lot of truth in this article by Larry Kummer but it makes the mistake of hearing the loud minority drowning out the silent and disgruntled majority. The Chicken Little Sky is Falling Theme has been blaring out for thirty years. However, whenever the public is asked to pay, the public loses interest rapidly. The election of Trump, Morrison, and Brexit was a sign of this. There is constant whining from the Warmistas that we all need to do something big and nobody is doing anything except listening. The Warmistas may have succeeded in getting people to believe that CO2 has a severe impact on the climate but when people are asked to pay they lose interest rapidly if not instantly.
You might consider this counterpoint from Mark Twain, a noted anti-imperialist:
“The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously protest at first …. The great mass of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out why there should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly: “It is unjust and dishonourable and there is no need for war.”
“Then the few will shout even louder … Before long you will see a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it ….
“Next, the statesmen will invent cheap lies … and each man will be glad of these lies and will study them because they soothe his conscience; and thus he will, bye-and-bye, convince himself that the war is just and he will thank God for a better sleep he enjoys by his self-deception.”
Now, this was about war, but it could easily refer to any popular, emotive issue — and I think we may agree that Climate Change is popular and carries a lot of emotional baggage (and precious little science).
In any case, I think that Mr Kummer is fundamentally correct in his depressing “bottom line” and that the only thing likely to save the sceptical position is fairly sudden, undeniable global cooling. Until that blessed(?) event occurs, the sceptics will be condemned to perpetual rearguard actions. Interestingly, it will then turn out that very few people actually ‘believed in Climate Change’. Aren’t people funny?
Here in the UK, Larry is right. New diesel, petrol and hybrid cars will not be sold after 2035 and possibly not after 2032. I think that’s a clear win for alarmism. [no discussion at all about how the electricity to charge them will be provided]
Even the Financial Times is alarmist without qualification.
Most people in the UK regard Trump as beyond the pale [usually in terms that are not printable on WUWT] and he only serves to reinforce alarmism here.
The car policy was announced by Boris Johnson our Prime Minister, who is regarded as a mini Trump by many here. Yet he sat by Attenborough and announced this crazy decision.
Now that the UK has [or is in the process of] leaving the EU, this country is increasingly irrelevant, so perhaps what is happening here doesn’t matter much.
What I am not seeing on any sceptical site is practical ideas to push back against alarmism. We preach to each other but do not reach the uncommitted.
I send letters to my local paper and they print them. I try to be sarcastic, humorous, or informative, not didactic. The paper is paywalled for non-subscribers, so I also post some of my letters to my blog: https://verdeviews.wordpress.com.
A recent visitor ‘like’d 2 recent posts, one of which exposes Tom Steyer’s local game, the other a commentary on flooding in Venice. The posts are anti-alarmist, but the ‘like’s link to an alarmist blog, the managers of which must have found my blog with a robot. I can’t figure out if they are trying to convert me or are misreading my intentions.
So, the science cannot reach a [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] climate cooling… warming… change conclusion, forced by [anthropogenic] CO2; but, sociopolitical scientists, with backing from interested and kneeling industries, special and peculiar interests, have reached a consensus, and we have passed the point of no return. What we are confronting is, in fact, a veritable zombie apocalypse, which remains viable despite rational and reasonable mediation.
The warmists are not warmists they are communists masquerading as warmists. They are not coming after climate change they are coming after YOU. You are their target. If the Warmest communists ever do gain ascendancy you will never be able to get rid of them. This is the nature of communism. You will become their slaves for life and your children’s lives and your grandchildren’s lives. Their aim is a One World communist government.
In 50 years, possibly sooner than that, the world will look back at this time frame and the topic of the fake climate crisis with the same impression we do today at the medical procedure called “blood letting” by physicians hundreds of years ago.
Medical ignorance/a lack of understanding what causes illness’s as well as appreciating the profound value/benefits of what blood supplies to our bodies were a couple of reasons for this.
In this age, we have understood the benefits of increasing CO2 and global warming for over a century. We are measuring a massively greening planet with most life doing well from the best weather/climate in the last 1,000 years(the last time that it was this warm).
The coldest places, at the coldest times of year are warming the most………..similar to the Holocene Climate OPTIMUM from 9,000 to 5,000 years ago.
Temperatures in the Arctic during that time frame were several degrees warmer than they are now and there was less ice than what is there currently.
If we went back to 60 years ago, when all of science knew those warmer conditions were optimal for life and asked scientists then, if our planet’s ideal temperature should be warmer or colder than the temperature in 1960, probably 97% would have said with confidence WARMER!
That’s why they called it the “Holocene Climate OPTIMUM” not the Holocene Climate CRISIS” or the “Holocene Climate EMERGENCY”.
So climate science had already advanced enough, many decades ago to know that we are currently on the cusp of enjoying another climate OPTIMUM for life on this greening planet.
So, in 50 years when they look back at this age, people will not think “oh, climate science had not advanced far enough for them to understand important things, which caused them to call a climate optimum a climate emergency.
Authentic climate science had already advanced far enough to know this more than 60 years ago and in fact, for hundreds of years prior to that!
What they will be amazed at is how climate science was hijacked for a political agenda………on a global scale. With world governments, many scientists, the media and others playing a key role as gatekeepers of information to sell a model manufactured climate science projection based on a speculative theory but sold as “settled science” as in almost as sure as gravity.
A time when empirical data/observations and anything that contradicts model projections gets rejected.
A time when top scientists who questioned the theory were condemned and labelled as deniers.
When the MSM made an intentional effort to use many extreme weather events(that have always happened in the past) as examples of the fake climate crisis.
When we were told that the increase in beneficial CO2 and warming was going to destroy the greening planet in 12 years.
When they used an anti science spewing 16 year old high priestess, saying insane, easy to verify as false statements to recruit young people into the climate crisis religious cult……………by using very scary words, expressed convincingly with her unique charismatic style.
Education about authentic climate science went backwards. Climate change and human caused climate change were synonymous. Used and even taught interchangeably because the natural cycles of authentic climate science got in the way of the agenda.
This is what they will attribute it to:
1. A push for Global socialism.
2. Huge funding for scientists.
3. Massive funding for green projects.
4. Massive revenue for governments via carbon tax schemes and
5. Via lobby money to politicians for green projects.
6. Increased ratings by sensationalizing the weather for the media as well as imposing the progressive activists (dominating journalism) belief system on to millions that watch/read the stories.
7. Reigning in the over consumption of natural resources of developed countries with the “sustainable consumption” model for our future world based on the United Nations goals.
All that, counted much more than telling the world the truth about the weather/climate/science/biology/agronomy and widespread benefits of CO2 to life.
“illness’s”
I think that word needs a good bloodletting.
Larry,
“The debate has moved beyond science to the exaggerations of the Climate Emergency and the fictions of the Extinction Rebellion.”
Dr. Myles Allen Lead Author of the UN IPCC is worried by the fact that orthodox climate scientists and the climate change movement has lost control of reality which has moved into Post-Normal Science.
Greater publicity should be given to Allen’s article in the Conversation (republished in The Guardian) of 19 April, 2019 entitled “Why protestors should be wary of ‘12 years to climate breakdown’ rhetoric”.
According to Dr. Allen there will be no climate catastrophe by 2030 nor thereafter.
While he expresses concern at every half degree of warming, he calls out the extreme alarmists.
This should be headlined as often as possible to embarrass Greta and Extinction Rebellion who know as much about climate science as a kindergarten child knows of nuclear physics.
I don’t believe the alarmists have won; I think they are losing.
Yes, governments pay lip service to straw bans and carbon footprints for everyone but them. But celebrities are the butt of jokes, and like the poll says, people rank the “climate crisis” as dead last of things that bother them.
The Dems touting the Green New Deal may as well wish for unicorns farting rainbows; their projects can’t be done, even with all the money in the world, and any government trying to actually raise taxes high enough would be out on its ear.
The alarmists real problem is that they are all lying. They are like socialists who destroy prices and then flounder around trying to allocate resources and wonder why factories produce screws too big to be useful and wondering why people won’t buy the crap that is available. They shout and shout and no one believes them (dead last in the polls, remember?) The recent coral news is typical: instead of trying to reconcile theory which says they should all be dead, and reality which says they have been surviving for hundreds of millions of years, they start with the all-too-common scientific expert attitude that if something isn’t proven or known, then it must be impossible.
The alarmists will gradually fade away. They will make a mess in the meantime (Solyndra), but they have no more chance of winning than the Soviet Union did.