Reposted from Climate Scepticism
Posted on 10 Apr 20 by Geoff Chambers
By that I mean, has climate hysteria finally been defeated, and will it be replaced by sensible, rational, evidence-based policies for dealing with changes in the climate, or any other natural process which may or may not be caused by human activity?
Richard’s article two weeks ago based on an article by Jason Bordoff, suggested a reason for optimism. Bordoff’s article represents the opinion of a climate believer who recognises that something bigger has come along. Like someone standing on the beach worrying about sea level rise suddenly spotting a Tsunami. In this article I’ll examine the question in more detail, and attempt to enlarge the field of discussion.
Of course, “we” science-respecting climate sceptics haven’t “won” anything. All that’s happened so far is that one mass hysteria has been displaced by another. Whereas climate hysteria was slow moving, hypothetical, and largely invisible in its effects, virus hysteria has a basis in reality that is obvious to all. But there are many other differences, and they need sorting out. Here are some:
1. The speed and urgency of the corona crisis has revealed a number of things:
1.1 Mathematical modelling is not an exact science. Even the Guardian has admitted as much. The era when climate modellers could announce projections for average global temperatures for the end of the century to a tenth of a degree (and be believed) are over.
1.2 It costs trillions to fix a global emergency, and trillions spent on fixing a crisis are trillions not spent on something more fun or life-enhancing. The days when climate worriers could announce that spending trillions plastering the countryside with solar panels would make us happier, create jobs and therefore be good for the economy are over (probably.)
1.3 Vast societal change (for good or ill) causes suffering.
1.31 The causal links between political action and political popularity (vital in a democracy in the medium term for continuity of action) are anything but clear. (See John’s article on causation and meditate deeply.)
2. There is massive disagreement between experts on the nature of the corona virus crisis, its seriousness, and the proper political, medical and social response. This can be oversimplified and described as a debate between, on the one hand, a scientific establishment, represented by chief scientific medical officers and scientific advisers advising massive lockdowns and a halt to normal economic activity while solutions are found via the established methods; and on the other hand a number (a very large number) of specialists (epidemiologists, statisticians, etc.) who appear as mavericks, proposing unorthodox treatments and/or the acceptance of the inevitability of large numbers of fatalities, in the greater interest of society as whole (avoiding economic collapse and the ensuing social disorder, poverty, suicides etc.) Orthodox economists and other non-medical experts (criminologists, sociologists) may find themselves supporting the unorthodox, maverick side, for obvious reasons.
2.1 The above very rough description of the “sides” in the debate reveals enormous differences between the corona virus debate and the climate one. There are large numbers of experts who reject utterly the current political and social response to the pandemic. See this site for a daily update on the counter-consensual views of numerous experts. I have no idea whether they are right or wrong. I simply record the fact that they exist.
The days when supporters of climate action could talk about a “scientific consensus” are over.
2.2 The “sceptics” in the case of this pandemic are disparate in their expertise, but united in their belief that governments must look beyond simply “saving the health service” and avoiding the terrible images of old people being left to die for lack of health care, and consider the bigger economic and social picture. Their criticisms converge around this single observation: concentrating on the one single aim of reducing the number of immediate deaths from the virus may provoke a worse problem arising from economic and eventually social collapse. They argue for looking at the big picture beyond the immediate crisis.
2.3 Climate sceptics, on the other hand, accuse the consensus of being obsessed by a “big picture” that exists only in the future, and possibly in their imaginations and models. They have many, many different objections, from criticism of the data collection, the quality of the science, the projections, the politicisation of science, the insistence on mitigation rather than adaptation, to the propaganda and censorship in the public presentation in academia and the media.
2.4 The “virus sceptics,” it seems to me, hold a position that is irreconcilable with the mainstream view. Anyone can have a differing opinion on this or that detail of the lockdown, but their position is strategically opposed to the current political consensus. The division is binary. We shall know within a matter of months or a year or two who is right and who is wrong.
Climate sceptics, on the other hand, as different as Lindzen, Lomborg, Pielke, Lawson, or you and me, hold positions that overlap largely with the consensus view. Of course greenhouse gasses may cause temperatures to rise, and of course that may be problematic here or there (and possibly beneficial elsewhere.) Of course we can and should do things to improve air quality etc. “Climate denial” is largely a propaganda myth invented by the consensus enforcers. And of course, we shall never be able to establish objectively who is right, because of the time scale involved, and because the dream of zero carbon and a peaceful reversion to living in a concrete-and-steel-less Rupert Bearland is an absurd fantasy.
3. The world has changed immeasurably in the 3-4 decades since Catastrophic Climate Change became a Thing. The political effects of this pandemic are utterly unknowable. And I don’t mean “this changes everything,” “things will never be the same”and similar banalities. We don’t know whether things will be the same, or not. Politicians from Trump to Macron have seen their popularity rise. That could be reversed tomorrow by one false move, one tragedy that tickles the media’s fancy.
3.1 Behind these surface ripples are the profound changes in the politics of the West that go by the name of “populism” and its largely unacknowledged prime cause, which is the massive growth of inequality in wealth and income over a half a century of relative peace and prosperity. (I hope to tackle this in a separate article.)
3.2 And that’s just the rich, democratic tenth of the world. Add in China, Russia, India, and Africa, where practically no-one in our dear academia has a clue what’s going on, and you have a subject that would keep our intelligentsia busy for decades, if they weren’t so occupied with climate, gender, and the iniquities of Trump.
3.3 Catastrophic Climate Belief is a movement that for thirty years has been feathering its niche in the world-up-to-now. It will do everything to preserve that niche as the world changes in unpredictable ways, and we sceptics are uniquely well-placed to stop them.
4. There has been no rush from the climate establishment to link the pandemic to climate change. There’s been the Pope of course, but how many General Circulation Models does he have? Otherwise, I have seen no attempt by climate zealots to jump the pangolin and make climate change responsible.
4.1 No-one has explained why COP26 can’t proceed by video conference, seeing that the world’s future hangs on their decisions. Maybe all those indigenous delegates dressed in feathers and the members of the International Potato Council in their skins don’t do Skype?
4.2 Climate Believers find themselves caught in a dilemma: on the one hand, their strategy in promoting the largely imaginary climate crisis has been to capture the levers of power via international organisations, politicians in search of a cost-free (to them) ideology, a lazy media and the nonsense of a scientific consensus. They have established an official dogma, and are committed to defending it On the other hand, there is no guarantee that the official position on reaction to the pandemic (it’s too soon to characterise it as a dogma) is the correct one. Politicians are in the main lucid enough to acknowledge the need to change their tactics if they prove to be mistaken, when the lives of their electors are clearly at stake. Will they also change their minds when climate change is no longer useful electorally?
4.3 With the virus there are real costs, real dangers, and real risks to politicians and others who take up entrenched positions, because the scientific consensus isn’t there, and any assertion of superior expertise is likely to be contradicted by events within weeks or even days. The same Guardian health editor who points out that mathematical models have hopelessly wide margins of error, in a separate article, faithfully reproduces the prediction from the same model that deaths in the UK will peak 2,932 on 17th of April. We shall know soon enough whether she’s right or whether she’s right.
4.4 Whatever policy is adopted, and whatever the results in terms of infections and mortality, there is likely to be massive social unrest, together with huge swings in public opinion, and climate zealots will no doubt be tempted to take advantage of this to further the radical changes they see as necessary to obtaining their ends. On the other hand, there is a huge risk in being seen to profit from a tragic situation. Hence the great reticence of the climate establishment to take up a position.
4.5 Mainstream media are only as strong as their advertising revenue, and green blogs and think tanks are only as strong as their funding from the EU NGO charity soup kitchen and private foundations. When the pandemic hits Africa, how much will the Lady Bountifuls have to spare for the men in suits in the think tanks and the activists blocking empty streets? The Guardian’s climate change is already running a questionnaire asking: Did you take part in Extinction Rebellion’s climate campaign? Get in touch as if saving the planet is already ancient history.
5. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from Andy West’s many forceful comments here, it is that this situation can’t last. Culture abhors a vacuum, and a movement as massive and motivated as the climate bandwagon is sure to come up with a cunning plan or three to demonstrate that climate action is more necessary than ever. How the public, the media and the politicians react when they do is anybody’s guess. I suggest we start guessing now.
This thread is for doing that guessing – and second guessing.
As long as geothermal denial and ideological mathematics is not addressed, the climate scam will keep coming back to haunt humanity over and over again.
http://phzoe.com/2020/03/04/dumbest-math-theory-ever/
Why are lukewarmers so afraid to tell the truth?
They will get ridiculed by worthless people?
Who cares?
“Mathematical modelling is not an exact science. ” That’s because it’s not a science at all. It’s a crude tool, a bludgeon really, of science.
um. No. All science is mathematical modelling. Or at least all physics is.
in this case what you and the author mean is more likely numrical modelling used to solve a set of interacting partial differential equations when you don’t know the exact equations, their level of interaction or the correct values to plug in to start the integration.
Needless to say the results won’t be as exact as calculating a satellite orbit.
um. No and No all science is Not mathematical modelling even in physics, in science models ONLY express a hypothesis (they are not experiments or any other aspect of science except an expression of a hypothesis).
Gravity is a mathematical model. Electricity is a mathematical model
All hypotheses that are expressed as formulae are mathematical models. E=mC^2 is a mathematical model
I am sorry, you just claiming that these are different is lazy prejudiced thinking. They are not in essence different except insofar as arriving at the correct parameters and starting values is hard, and they are non linear partials so integrating them requires quite fraught numerical techniques.
Take Newtonian gravity as a well known simple example.
The mathematical models is F=G * m1 * m2/ S^2…
We spent a long time finding out what G the gravitational constant is, but given – say – two planets, we can calculate orbits very nearly exactly and relatively simply using this formula, if we know exactly where the planets are to start with and how fast they are moving.
Put three planets in there instead of two and the thing falls apart. The model is correct. we may even know the starting conditions pretty exactly BUT the calculations are now deeply interactive and there is no simple way to perform the integration. And the resultant trajectories are chaotic. The only reason we have a big fat sun with smaller planets quite spaced out as a solar system is that this is the only reasonably stable configuration there is.
All the other configurations eventually either converge on big fat sun and smaller planets, or they fly apart in hyperbolic trajectories.
Climate modelling is rather like the n body problem. Except we don’t really know the starting conditions, we don’t know the climate constants and the whole thing is so complex only numerical integration can be used to solve it, and we have neither the computer power not the starting condition accuracy for it to work meaningfully, Oh and we are not sure we even have all the relevant equations.
What can be shown, but climate scientists don’t, is that it is a fully chaotic system. And that means that it is not possible to make precise predictions at all even if you have the right mathematical models.
It is an example of a mathematical model set that even if you got the physics right – and they almost certainly haven’t, is not useful, because the complexity renders it chaotic and the lack of accurate data renders any prediction relatively meaningless.
Pandemic modelling is somewhat in between, since the way in which a pandemic spreads and the S curve that results as everyone has either had it and died of it or had it and become immune, is really quite a simple equation. But like all such formulae there are constants in them representing how infectious it is, what its incubation period is, what the death rate from infection is and how the death rate varies as a function of viral load.
It will be quite easy once its all over to determine these but right now of course we don’t know so predictions vary widely.
However that is not actually necessary information : policy makers don’t actually care how bad it might get if they did nothing, because no one is doing nothing. They want to essentially do stuff and see if the S curve gets steeper and taller, or longer and flatter and whether the death rate goes down both in absolute terms but also in percentage terms as a result of their measures. Yes it is flying by the seat of the pants, but in the absence of the exact numbers, its the optimal approach.
Science itself is a crude bludgeon in its attempts to model reality, it’s just that, ugly as it is, it is the best thing we have.
Science is in the end the attempt to find time invariant differential equations – mathematical models – that allow the future to be predicted. If they get it wrong, they are no good as models, If they get it right within the limits of experimental error, we call them theories.
However a formula might be totally correct, and still be impossible to make predictions from. The laws of physics are well known and they govern the behaviour of what we call material objects. But they are useless to predict the exact behaviour of many physical phenomena. A flag flapping in the breeze. A lava lamp. A thunderstorm forming.
It’s all chaos out there in the real world. At best we can draw limits and say e.g. ‘well the flag will stay in this zone’
There’s far too much physics envy on this blog. Really even physics is a bit of an ugly mess. The perfection exists only in the mind. As the Aeternas Veritas of the philosophers. The vain hope that we can represent the phenomenal nature of the perceived world as a set of time invariant partial differential equations and thereby foretell the future. We really have done quite well with these assumptions, especially with computer power, but we are also running into the limits of that approach.
Prediction is hard, especially about the future….
Our human knowledge is entirely 100% models of the world. Science is precise falsifiable mathematical models of the world. Models may be falsifiable, and prove to be false, in which case they are thrown out of science, or they might be proved to be true but still for reasons of operational impossibility, useless to make predictions with . The n body gravitational problem is such a case.
We can’t ever prove or disprove that gravity applies to multiple bodies, because its virtually possible to set up a set of equations that will predict ahead in a way we can calculate accurately. Science has failed us. Science fails us with climate change too. It’s just too hard a system to model. Science fails with aerodynamics too – especially turbulent flow, which is why every racing team in a major championship doesn’t use a computer, but a wind tunnel. A wind tunnel is a sort of analogue computer that can solve approximately in seconds problems that would take years to model on a computer.
Pandemic modelling is in between, Much simpler, probably not chaotic, but still suffering from known unknowns. Whereas climate modelling has unknown unknowns and suffers from mathematical complexity.
The problem is that people are fundamentally not trained in real science and real philosophy of science and they just operate scientific models and churn out answers and trust them without really considering what science is, and the qualitative difference between the various mathematical models that comprise it.
Gravity and global warming and pandemic modelling are equivalent mathematical models, but they differ in terms of complexity. And that is where the issues lie. Saying one is a mathematical model and the other is science is lazy incorrect one dimensional non-thinking. The truth is more subtle.
Gravity – simple equation, easy to establish position velocity vectors and gravitational constant to give fairly accurate predictions in a two body model.
Pandemic modelling – reasonably simple equations, mostly all known unknowns though which limit its usefulness until it is tuned right, which may be too late. But still of some use.
Climate modelling. Horrendous complexity if you do it correctly, so no one does. Models are grossly simplified to enable them to be calculated at all, and probably contain many unknown unknowns. Almost certainly a complete waste of time with no real predictive power beyond a few days. Even if there were no unknowns at all, the chaotic naturer of the models means its wouldn’t work anyway.
The world is not right and wrong, it is not exactly predictable, and knowledge doesn’t have to be exact to be useful.
“All snakes are poisonous” is incorrect, but it is a useful rule of thumb for people who really don’t care about snakes beyond not dying of snakebite, to teach their kids.
The Devil is in te detail. Climate modelling is useless because the problem is just too complex to be solved that way. I wish certain regular posters would instead of trying to be better climate modellers do the abstract analysis that would prove that no climate model can ever produce useful output..
Pandemic modelling is useful, as, although exact answers will be impossible to arrive at, some general notions can be extracted such as ‘all other things being equal, limiting contact reduces both rate and intensity of infection and is to be preferred to going to the ball game or attending a gang bang’ and ‘washing your hands often and thoroughly is a Good Thing.’
What is less certain is where the cost-benefit optimal point lies between killing the population and killing the economy on which they depend. But we do know that such an optimum exists, because the shape of the curve is that way, even if we dint know how big it is or where the peak is exactly.
Which is way better than rushing off to a priest and getting absolved of your sins in the vain hope that ‘God Did it’ and might just spare you.
PLEASE don’t be naive about science and modelling. If you want to criticise do the hard work of understanding the principles, because THAT knowledge in the end is the sort of knowledge that enables people to take one look at climate modelling or renewable energy and say ‘pointless exercise’ .
The number of scientists and engineers who embark in good faith on courses to build models or even technology without ever asking themselves ‘is this actually even possible?’ is a huge waste. And even fewer ask the more socially relevant question ‘even if it is possible, is it worth doing?’
Leo: Good read, some comments:
Nature is a mother.
And analog.
I wish it were true that perfection exists only in the mind but I see no evidence of that in human society.
Leo, I could not have said it better myself. +42, my man.
Leo Smith – I don’t normally make comments on WUWT as the eggheads are a bit beyond me but I do think you put that incredibly well – congratulations.
Perhaps the world is starting to take notice of how flawed most models are. Below is a quote from an article on Fox News written by Andrew O’Reilly. He’s discussing a number of observations and statements made and written by a former NYT reporter named Alex Berenson. The quote discusses flawed Covid19 computer models- it could just as easily apply to flawed climate models.
“Now he’s turned to challenging the narratives on the response to the coronavirus. What Berenson is promoting isn’t coronavirus denialism, or conspiracy theories about plots to curb liberties. Instead what Berenson is claiming is simple: the models guiding the response were wrong and that it is becoming clearer by the day.”
Like leo smith said, there is no alternative to mathematical modeling, other than wishful thinking. Scientists have been doing it since Newton, and it has served us well. The problems with it for climate concern the data going in, and the multiple factors that have to be taken into account, some of which have uncertain effects.
Not only is “data going in” a concern (ie accuracy, selection bias, et al), but climate modeling makes almost no attempt to CHANGE THE MODEL TO FIT THE DATA.
Instead, politically motivated climate scientists change the data to fit the (obviously incorrect) model.
Zoe,
The internal heat from the Earth averages about 1 W/m^2 corresponding to about 65K, not 315 W/m^2 corresponding to 0C. If it was as your geothermal hypothesis requires, the surface temperature would never drop below freezing.
It’s not that there’s no GHG effect, the IPCC just claims it’s far more powerful than possible. Most of the emissions from excess warming are offset by cloud emissions sent to the surface. The remainder is offset by GHG’s emiting photons back to the surface. The foundational error is that the IPCC and its self serving consensus requires the next W/m^2 of solar input (forcing) to be far more powerful at warming the surface than the average W/m^2 of solar input in direct defiance of COE.
You have no idea what that ~1 W/m^2 represents.
It’s a DIFFERENTIAL measure that can’t be compared to absolute flux.
Please read:
http://phzoe.com/2019/12/04/the-case-of-two-different-fluxes/
http://phzoe.com/2020/02/20/two-theories-one-ideological-other-verified/
Zoe, saying Geothermal is negligible is hard for me to swallow…but quantifying human generated mass of CO2 in the atm or it’s affect on atm dT seems at best “a matter of opinion rather than fact”.
Recent eruption at Krakatoa leads me to suspect that there must be a little heat down there some where. I did read your concrete block page and understand conduction and black bodies sorta kinda. In a power plant we have to understand the nature of the insulation around the thermal conductor in order to estimate how much heat (money) is going to come out the end of interest. I will have to think about the concrete block.
That said your cited surface heat flux (91.6 mW/m²) is within 3 orders of magnitude to one I recently came up with using the stone age notion of q=m*c*dT. ..yes the math may be off but the idea is simple:
+0.03 deg F/yr atm dT for the last 150 yrs (NOAA NC data)
11,500,000,000,000,000,000 lbs atm
8.28E+16 btu gained per year
1314000 hrs = 150 yrs
63013698630 btu/hr atm gain
18274 MW
18273972603 W
5.101E+14 m^2, surface area of planet earth
3.58243E-05 W/m^2
Increased atm CO2 impedes the geo heat from radiating into space thus giving the alarmist a leg to stand on? But more geo heat flux evaporates more of the oceans thus warming simply a function of H2O in the atm?
18 GW/47 TW = 0.000382979 atm heat gain due to GHG insulating the planet?
Zoe,
The 1 W/m^2 is not a differential. If the Sun stopped shining, the internal heat from the Earth would result in a surface temperature closer to -200C than to 0C.
Since there’s no negative energy involved, the idea of a differential between geothermal entering the surface from below and solar energy arriving from above is non physical. Those two energy fluxes will add at the surface and not subtract. The direction that the energy is coming from is irrelevant. If the Earth’s surface was receiving as much geothermal energy from the Earth’s core as your hypothesis suggests, there would be no ice in the Antarctic, or in fact anywhere on the planet.
Uhm, of course it is a differential.
Have you noticed that the conductive heat flux has:
1/L
in the formula?
That’s a DIVISION by a vertical length!
Why don’t you subject insolation to the same treatment?
Divide the incoming flux by the height of our atmosphere!
Go ahead!
“If the Earth’s surface was receiving as much geothermal energy from the Earth’s core as your hypothesis suggests, there would be no ice in the Antarctic, or in fact anywhere on the planet.”
That’s a really dumb argument. My links show that geothermal provides 0-5C on AVERAGE!
Do you know what an average is?
It means there are values below freezing somewhere …
Did you even read my links?
Because it doesn’t look like you have. You will look foolish to those who have read it.
Zoe,
I did read your links and was only trying to help by pointing out an error. Another is that you’re conflating conduction with radiation. These two methods of heat transfer could not be any different.
You’re right that the consensus has it all wrong, but you’re wrong about why.
I’m done helping.
“Another is that you’re conflating conduction with radiation.”
No no! YOU are inappropriately comparing a conductive heat flux to a radiative heat flux !!!
And I AM helping you understand how to do it right.
Don’t waste your time , she is beyond help and not susceptible to logical argument. We been there done that, it was a monumental waste of effort.
She is just seeking attention and the more you give the more she will want.
There’s not much sense in allowing this silliness to hijack a totally unrelated thread. Please don’t feed it.
Greg,
I have empirical evidence, and you have false premises + logic = wrong conclusions.
Seriously, Greg, what is wrong with you?
If you can’t “logically” debunk the video evidence I present, you have NOTHING.
You have nothing, so quit fronting like you do.
It is not geothermal… and it is not CO2… and it is something.
We looked at two variables, atmospheric CO2 concentration and Temperature that suddenly changed in 1994.
Here are two other physical things, that on a planetary scale, also changed starting in 1994.
So what do you think the possibility is that these set of changes (temperature, CO2 concentration, earthquake frequency, and geomagnetic field changes) are all physically connected in some way?
Remember truth of about physical thing is not probilistic. It is or it is not.
The geomagnetic field also starting changing at the same time the mid-ocean ridge earthquake started to increase (1994).
And why is it, that the changes in earthquake frequency lead planetary temperature changes, by two years?
This is proof/support for the assertion:
…. that the change in earthquake frequency or what caused the change in earthquake frequency is the cause of sudden temperature changes.
There is correlation of magma release from the mid-ocean ridges and planetary temperature changes.
All over the planet starting in 1994, there was suddenly a 300% increase in the frequency of earthquakes of magnitude 4 to 6 all along the ridges where the sea floor is being pushed apart.
This increase in earthquakes is an increase in the force which move the tectonic plates.
Post 1994, suddenly there are very large changes in the frequency of earthquake all over the planet.
And these sudden changes in mid-ocean earthquake frequency, the graph of frequency of mid-ocean earthquakes all over the planet goes up and down) lead large planetary temperature changes by two years.
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/have-global-temperatures-reached-a-tipping-point-2573-458X-1000149.pdf
If not geothermal, then what caused lunar warming?
http://phzoe.com/2020/04/12/lunar-warming/
For the greenhouse effect to perform as advertised the surface of the earth must radiate as an ideal black body.
For the CoVid pandemic to perform as advertised it must spread in an exponential manner.
What do these two assumptions have in common?
They are both WRONG^3, not so, incorrect-o-mundo, booguuusss!
No, they are just crude and not especially accurate. But they are not wrong.
Nick,
The surface itself is so close to an ideal BB radiator, there’s no other way to describe it, moreover; there’s no other physics that can describe matter absorbing and emitting energy and the Earth’s surface is definitely comprised of matter. However; the planet is not a BB and and the atmosphere morphs a black body surface into a gray body planet whose temperature is that of the surface and whose emissions are that of the planet leading to an effective emissivity of 0.62. The data supporting this is unambiguously clear and undeniable.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/tp/fig1.png
The green line is the theoretical response of a gray body with an emissivity of 0.62 and the little red dots are monthly averages of the planets response plotted as the surface temperature (X) against the planets emissions (Y) for each 2.5 degree slice of latitude from pole to pole. Feel free to try and explain this data as conforming to any other laws of physics.
Note that the effective emissivity of 0.62 is independent of the surface temperature or the incident solar energy and leads to a deterministic, temperature dependent ECS of (4*0.62*o*T^3)^-1 = 0.3C per W/m^2 which is less than the IPCC’s presumed lower limit of 0.4C per W/m^2 (where T is the average surface temperature of about 288K and o is the SB constant of 5.67E-8 W/m^2 per K^4).
So many try to diffuse the alarmists arguments by claiming there’s no GHG effect. THIS IS DEMONSTRABLY WRONG AND IS WHAT INSPIRES THE DENIER EPITHET. DON”T FEED THE BEAST.
There certainly is a GHG effect, it’s just far smaller than the IPCC requires to support its existence, so they lie and misinform in an attempt to remain relevant. They’re not claiming an effect that doesn’t exist, but are claiming an impossible magnitude for that effect. There can be no doubt that the planet can be properly quantified as a BB surface with a GHG effect and clouds making it appear gray to space, but the IPCC has the size of the effect so wrong it’s embarrassing and it’s they who deny the gray body nature of the planet by asserting an ECS wholly inconsistent with the data supporting its immutable gray body nature.
You can’t change ‘belief’. If you believe something, no amount of evidence that what you believe is wrong will convince you to change your belief. So, climate believers will not stop being climate believers. That being that CO2 somehow is the control knob for climate.
“You” can’t change anther’s belief, but “they” can change their own belief. I have witnessed people becoming self-aware and challenging their own set of beliefs. It generally happens as they age and gain something called “wisdom”. So there is always hope for a few.
Robert of Texas,
To anyone with even just a high school level scientific understanding, the failures of the IPCC’s pseudo science becomes self evident once they internalize the unavoidable consequence of Conservation of Energy that no one Joule is any more powerful at warming the surface than any other. The mind block affecting their tacit belief that the next Joule is 2.75 times more powerful than the average Joule is that the political implications of this scientific truth are too much to accept. It’s hard to see how people with such beliefs can gain any wisdom.
High school science ain’t what it used to be. Everything is dumbed down and most students only hear the gloom and doom of climate change and not one dissenting opinion or scientific study.
If the insanity surrounding a virus is any indication, then no, we have won nothing. It will continue on until people actually refuse to do what any “authority” says.
> If you believe something, no amount of evidence that what you believe is wrong will convince you to change your belief.
No, that’s not how belief works, unless perhaps you mean something like faith.
The feat you describe as impossible is, in fact, the main function of the cerebral cortex. It’s often called ‘learning.’
There’s nothing (inherently) irrational about belief, nor does the word ‘belief’ have any connotation of being immune to evidence. On the contrary, knowledge itself can be (and has been for millennia) understood as meaning justified true belief.
If anyone has ever corrected a misconception you held, then you yourself are a counterexample that disproves your comment.
To put it another way: unless you were born from an egg on a mountain top, like Monkey, fully-formed and already equipped with all the knowledge you possess today, then you must be perfectly aware how easy it is to change a belief in response to information, having done so yourself many thousands of times since you were a kid.
For example, I bet you used to believe there were nine planets in the—
You know what?
Forget it. Nothing I say is going to change your mind, is it? 🙂
No. We will never win because there will always be movements out there that want to take over our lives for their own glory and profit.
I am not sure if “win-lose” is the way to appraise this serious issue. It’s not a game.
You can, however, win or lose a war.
“In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.” Neville Chamberlain
An alternate belief. That quote has always p!$$ed me off.
It’s not an argument which can be won. But someone said years ago it would just fade away as more important issues came along.
I had doubted this was turning out to be correct since it did seem to be dragging on eternally.
Clearly now we have found the “other problems” we needed to bring us back from a mythical future world inside a defective climate model to present.
It is an ill wind that bloweth no man no good.
This is a time of great change, we must ensure that change is for the better. There are dark forces who would profit from this upheaval.
> It’s not an argument which can be won.
All evidence says otherwise (unless I misunderstand your point, which is possible).
On more than one occasion, I’ve ‘converted’ someone from the assumption that the IPCC’s narrative was essentially trustworthy to a climate cynicism deep enough to rival my own.
The argument against eugenics was won. Of course, that wasn’t thanks to the futilitarians, the people who thought it’s not an argument they could win, but to the optimists.
Life is a game. We all lose it. Eventually.
It seems that there will always be a fake (even sometimes real) problem where the answer is “stop burning fossil fuels, we need more socialism”
So, no. We have not taken the Left’s default, all-purpose, one-size-fits-all solution off the table. Maybe they will need to apply it to a real problem for awhile (covid instead of the fantasy climate emergency), but they’re not going away.
Conservative governments in many countries realise that burning fossil fuel is causing irrepairable climate disruption, are taking the threat seriously and taking the advice of their climate scientists.
“Loydo April 14, 2020 at 1:24 am
Conservative governments in many countries realise that burning fossil fuel is causing irrepairable climate disruption…”
Proof please!
No Loydo, craven governments led by cowardly followers of mistaken popular opinion have felt it necessary to hypocritically bow to the green religion and/or see opportunity for personal financial gain in managing access to huge streams of public spending for any putative purpose. They will be just as happy to skim off the covid trillions as the green new deal trillions as the hypocritical “christian” kings and their cronies were prepared to lead crusades and build grand cathedrals.
Loydo
What irreparable damage has been done to the planet over the last 40 years of claims of climate catastrophe?
HotScot: a good question – I was born and have always lived in the UK, I’m 71 years old, and no-one is going to kid me that the climate here has changed in that time. It remains as varied and unpredictable as ever.
Here’s an excellent Met Office link which I think you’ll enjoy exploring, if you haven’t already done so. Perhaps Loydo would care to point out where in these graphs we see any evidence whatsoever of ‘climate change’?
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-temperature-rainfall-and-sunshine-time-series
Your graphs are only for the UK so not exactly global but they do show the mean temperature has risen about 1.5C. What would you say constitutes evidence of climate change?
Lloydo: we do not have historical climate data of this quality globally. As you see, the Met Office graphs show the annual variation in temperature, rainfall or sunshine from 1884 for temperature, 1862 for rainfall and 1929 for sunshine.
Lutgens and Tarbuck, in their excellent book ‘The Atmosphere – an Introduction to Meteorology’ state that climate is more than the ‘average state of the atmosphere’. They point out that a complete description should also include variations and extremes to portray the total character of an area. Major climate controls include latitude, land/water influences, geographic position, prevailing winds, mountains and highlands, ocean currents, and pressure and wind systems.
The British Isles lie off the northwest coast of Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland along with smaller surrounding ones. Their position allows dry continental air from Eurasia to meet wetter air from the Atlantic Ocean, which causes the weather to be highly variable, often changing many times during the day.
The Köppen climate classification divides climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on seasonal precipitation and temperature patterns. The British Isles are classified as type Cfb, or temperate oceanic, with the coldest month averaging above 0 °C, all months with average temperatures below 22 °C, and at least four months averaging above 10 °C, with no significant precipitation difference between seasons.
Given all of this and the data from the Met Office, the conclusion is that the climate of the British Isles has not changed. It remains type Cfb.
You say that the graphs show the mean temperature has risen about 1.5°C . To which months do you refer, and to which region of the British Isles? Such average figures obscure important details. As an example, the Met Office gives the January 1982 average over central England as 2.3°C, yet Robin Stirling in his book ‘The Weather of Britain’ points out that such statistics hide information, because there were several nights in succession with night tempeartures below minus 20°C.
The max, min, and mean temperature for the enitre UK all clearly show about the same increase – around 1.5C over the measurement period, >0.1C/decade. The entire globe is showing something very similar. How is that anything but abrupt climate change?
0.018F per annum is anything but abrupt.
Rounds to that number defined by Brahmagupta in 628.
10 GW in terms of the atm.
Zero in terms of the ball field you are playing on.
Loydo: you say that the max, min, and mean temperature for the enitre UK all clearly show about the same increase – around 1.5C over the measurement period. No, they don’t. Have you even bothered looking closely at any of these graphs. or the CET figures?
You also state that ‘the entire globe is showing something very similar. How is that anything but abrupt climate change?’ You are confusing small temperature variations with climate. These do not define climate. Despite my efforts in presenting you with some real observations of the British climate, its regional variations and weather from various sources, you seem not to have taken any notice of these either, instead preferring to once again regurgitate the same old all-encompassing hackneyed mantra so beloved of the climate change doom-mongers. Why did I bother, I ask myself?
The skeptics can’t win until the IPCC/UNFCCC and its self serving consensus disappears, yet they will not disappear until the alarmists loose.
WHO support for re-opening China wet markets has hit a real nerve in Australia with the PM even calling it out as ridiculous. So everytime China manages to create a new virus in these sites are they going to pay us for the damage?
It’s pretty easy to stop the threat keep the markets permanently closed like they have been for 5 months.
Coupled with their otherwise inexplicable restrictions on researching the origins of the virus, allowing wet markets makes it easy to conclude that they need the wet markets as cover for releasing their lab-designed weapons.
I’m not prepared to go that far. I suspect it’s part of their propaganda that the virus was created by the US army and released in Wuhan. The logic of the propaganda narrative would be that if it was a foreign attack using the wet markets as victims, then it would be wrong to punish the wet markets. Also, and this is probably the best explanation, to admit that wet markets need to be closed would be to admit culpability for all the damages caused around the world.
Obviously the WHO is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CCP. No surprise that they approve of everything done in China.
I totally agree. At the absolutely logically least, until this origin question is answered.
China needs to explain why all air traffic out of the affected province to Chinese destinations was stopped ….
… while travel to foreign countries was allowed to continue. Why China successfully lobbied the WHO not to stop air flights out of China?
Why China did not allow the US CDC access to the site? Why was there a delay, of weeks, in sending the virus code to the US?
And why did the Chinese spread the fib that this virus could only be spread from animal to human was also spread?
… way past the period when the Chinese knew this was a deadly, contagious virus.
The China is incompetence, the China communist party is confused, China is just a clown excuse is dead.
China is not some a third world country. China is the largest, tightest, controlled country in the world….
Scary if you get on the wrong side of big brother.
… and the questions do not end there.
The pandemic brought home what a real risk looks like.
Before skeptics go off too far on their opinions, we should take the time to see how fast the economy recovers. We are still missing some very big pieces of the equation and that is the true cost of the lock-down and just how many eventually die from this disease. It should not be hard to estimate how many could of died had the disease spread faster. Then all that’s left is just how effective were the various lock-downs.
The experiment has already begun – we are going to pay whatever cost it requires. All we can hope to do at this point is learn valuable lessons. I for one still think given the lack of good data, the lock-down was the only valid option for big cities. I remain on the sideline that it helped everywhere.
Meanwhile, the climate-is-going-to-kill-us-all crowd will be back – they will get bored once this crisis is over and go back to their invented one. I just hope some people wake up and realize it (climate change) isn’t a real disaster.
Tax money, free money diverted to good friends, grateful friends.
For those in the trade, any scare will do as long as it can create blackholes for public money.
Whichever amendment it takes, politics should be barred from referencing future catastrophic events.
And carbon di-taxable will be the most attractive target for the deficit-addicted for the foreseeable future.
No. That answer is no, and will continue to be no for at least thirty years, because climate change catastrophe relies on unfalsifiable predictions of future events. David Foster-Wells presumes to be able to predict the Earth’s climate in 2100. People capable of believing him on that point have no difficulty whatsoever believing any old thing he wants to make up.
People believe in climate catastrophe because they enjoy believing in it. The Earth and all its inhabitants are doomed (long after we’re all dead, fortunately) and they, the good and decent and wise, are here to warn you about it. Meanwhile, they still get to enjoy the benefits of fossil fuels just as much as climate pagans like Anthony Watts. It is cost-free moral superiority, and who among us can resist that?
It cannot be said enough, again and repeated again, and was missed here by this author:
The single most damning piece of evidence of why the Climate Change advocacy is scam at best and political power grab to socialism at worst, and thus a foundational threat to individual liberties in the West is the Climate-Environmental movement’s complete rejection of nuclear power as the only long term answer to going carbon free energy.
That rejection of nuclear power is the “tell” why climate change is simply scam on the ignorance of the masses. Climate Change alarmism is a Trojan Horse for socialism and elitism simply hiding inside the claim of climate catastrophe when the real intent from the billionaire elitist class is clearer than ever.
Uh huh, over and over and over….like a broken lunar libertarian record.
No the “tell” is your conflating socialists and elitist billionaires as if they could possibly have some shared goal or that billionaire elitists (how is that not tautological?) are paving the road to socialism and presumable would have to share their wealth with the undeserving and the indolent- because thats what socialists do right, even elite, billionaire socialists? You’ve been watching too many James Bond movies.
At least there is fact in JB movies. CliSci, not so much!
As a devoted socialist, Loydo, you don’t want to accept that your leaders have never been true believers. They have always been in it for the power and wealth, bled from the masses like you. You are the horse in Animal Farm. Wake up mate, you’ll end up at the knackers.
Socialist states have very little to distinguish them from large multinational corporations. Maduro, that paragon of socialist effectiveness is a billionaire, and not just him, but his daughter! When will they get around to redistributing that wealth? You can live an incredible life of luxury beyond the wildest dreams of a capitalist if you can own nothing and control the wealth of a nation.
Forward thinking billionaires understand this and also understand that helping to build socialism and becoming a champion of the revolution is a prudent hedge against a revolution that might hang billionaires.
You nailed it. Every socialist country that has ever existed have had millionaires or billionaires running the government, even Stalin and Khrushchev. Khrushchev was worth around $50M when he died.
Rich, I don’t even know what a socialist is.
Whose payroll you on, “Loydo?” 350.org, Open Society, or Media Matters? Are you paid by the post, or the number of blogs you troll?
Fergawdsake the rest of you, stop FEEDING the sock puppet!
Hey Loydo! Tell us about the daughter of your hero the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela!
She lives in Miami with a fortune of around $4 billion. Yes, that’s billion with a B, all looted from the people of Venezuela.
Joel it is very strange their aversion to nuclear. Very strange indeed.
An argument I persistently make as well, Joel. So why are you and I (and relatively speaking a handful of others) the only ones trying to hammer home this point?
Above all, why are the suppliers of electricity to the masses not hammering home this point? Why are our power companies happy to accept the unnecessary kicking they get from governments who lumber them with the additional, totally needless costs — financial and otherwise — of factoring in expensively subsidised, unreliable power generation and then complain about the charge to the consumer?
The only way in which the world can operate a “low carbon” economy — assuming such a thing is necessary — is by continuing to use crude oil until a practical alternative exists and concentrate on nuclear power for electricity generation.
The pseudo-environmentalist (aka watermelon) arguments betray their true agenda as soon as they decry nuclear — the one reliable CO2-free method of electricity generation.
Note well that Loydo has no comment.
Let’s see, what would I say if I were a socialist moonbat challenged on this point? Oh that’s the ticket, nuclear is dangerous. Billions of Americans died from the Three Mile Island disaster. Trillions died from Chernobyl and we’ve all been dead these ten years since Fukushima. Look at the vast wasteland that used to be France before they ran their economy on nuclear power! Radioactivity is not natural, the waste will be radioactive for billions and trillions of years. Or something. And it’s not organic even if it’s gluten-free.
Joel O’Bryan April 13, 2020 at 7:40 pm
Climate-Environmental movement’s complete rejection of nuclear power
———————-
New nuclear in uk was not going to happen unless the government stepped in.
According to December 2017 estimates, £20.3bn by 2025, to be paid over a 35 year period…
In September 2019, further costs were identified that bring the estimated total to £22.9bn
…
initially estimated that electricity could be produced at the competitive price of £24 per MWh
EDF has negotiated a guaranteed fixed price – a “strike price”– for electricity from Hinkley Point C of £92.50/MWh (in 2012 prices),[26][79] which will be adjusted (linked to inflation)
…
A 2014 Agora Energiewende study found that new wind and solar generation is up to 50% cheaper than new nuclear, based on what they described as a conservative comparison of current feed-in tariffs in Germany with the agreed strike price for Hinkley
New nuclear would not happen without massive subsidies. Hinkley C is going to cost the uk user a lot!
However I think you will find that some environmentalists think that nuclear will play a part in reducing CO2 emissions. They all realise that a base load that works through clouds and lack of wind will be required.
Although battery storage may change that:
“the total pipeline of battery storage projects in the UK has now reached over 13.5GW and is made up of a diverse range of projects, including co-location with renewables, stand-alone and behind-the-meter.”
https://www.energy-storage.news/news/uk-roundup-market-reaches-1gw-redt-avalon-merger-completes-flexibility-cont
It may be cheaper or maybe not. Renewables are subsidized while nuclear has regulations.
What are these batteries from the renewable website you posted?
see
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/96456/download
new renewables are cheaper than new nuclear?#
Only when you ignore the MASSIVE externalities of renewable energy and fail to do a proper levelised holistic lifetime cost analysis.
The truth is on everyone’s electricity bills.
I agree Leo. Added to that the whole wind and solar renewables push is based on the premise of reducing CO2. When ever they discuss the audit of CO2 in the lifetime of this industry they always seem to leave out mining. Maby they avoid that because it is at odds with the ‘clean’ image they are trying to portray, that and the fact the hypocrites say that all coal mines should be shut down. The ‘clean’ energy needs more additional mining, much of it creating toxic byproducts and it in reality cannot do without coal mines.
Obviously there would be CO2 created by transport trucks and other mining equipment, not to mention the fact that the necessary equipment itself was built using FF and thereby creating more CO2. I’m sure that they take none of this into account. If they ever get full recycling going then that too will create CO2.
They also inflate how long this infrastructure lasts, in Australia almost all of our solar panels come from China, they do not last 25 to 30 years, even if the fires and hailstorms don’t get to them first. They also quote the ‘nameplate’ capacity in cloudless conditions over that 25 to 30 years which obviously is impossible to achieve.
There is absolutely nothing good to be said for this technology. It is damaging the ecology like no other source of power and the trillions of dollars that has been spent so far could have gone into improving the power sources we have or replacing them with nuclear. That’s what we should have been doing all along, not wasting all that money on a technology that hadn’t even been thought through.
Do you think that the damage done to the economies globally due to the coronavirus will slow down the wind and solar installations? Surely they would have to go on the backburner, the subsidies for this infrastructure can’t come out of thin air.
Subtract the deaths in NY and NJ from the national total, what are left with? Half of a typical flu season, in round numbers (I left myself an out, there, flamethrowers.)
I wonder how many of those NJ and NY deaths are are Medicaid patients?
I wonder typically how many deaths are Medicaid patients.
I just love seeing AOC and the race pimps on CNN and MSDNC wail about how the poor have no health care. I thought the Democrat institution of Medicaid was supposed to fix that! Are they saying that Medicaid doesn’t work? If so then why do we spend so much tax money on it?
They get DOUBLE payment from Medicaid for anyone who dies of “COVID-19” vs. ordinary causes. Test not required now! They get $39,000.00 for anyone intubated, so you can bet they ram that tube down for anyone who “codes” for anything, including Fentanyl overdoses or gunshot wounds.
Remember, anything you incentivize you’ll get a lot more of.
Ah, once again common sense trying to make sense. The CC issue won’t change until something drastic changes peoples minds….. like a mini ice age….. or people tire of the CC dogma and listen to science.
Or if ‘consensus science’ is finally seen for the BS it is and we can once again see ‘real science’ being practiced!
Well, I sell variable frequency drives here in Alberta, technology primarily meant to control the speed of an AC motor to control process speed, optimization that leads increased efficiency and reduced wear of the equipment, but what falls out of it is large electrical energy savings
So while everyone here knows what I think of the “climate emergency” (twice as bad here in canada don’t you know!!!) I also take advantage of the fact Trudeau imposed a carbon tax which I use in my spiel.
Energy industry is energy intensive, energy savings mean you pay less carbon tax.
Circle of life
If Suzuki and Gore can get rich on this, I want my piece too
I prefer to find win-win strategies than any other kind. In relation to “climate change” this means on steering towards issues on which everyone can agree. So find common ground. In political terms look for the non partisian issues. They are there.
Very few people are truly left or right wing. The vast majority of us believe in some things on the left, some on the right, but mostly from the centre. Only political operatives try to push to the extremes. On climate change, as with our reaction to COVID-19, or the next scare, we each need to due our own due diligence in ascertaining the facts, and then consider rational action based on the facts as we see them. Unfortunately we are prone to the madness of crowds and trample each other on the way to the exits, that being human nature.
Stay safe, enjoy the current inter-glacial.
Respectly, your socialist, right wing, academic with PhD.
Ron, there was a time when you didn’t need to think about left or right in general conversation with people, a respect and acceptance of people’s differences protected friendships and other relationships. You are correct too that in reality most people are more from the centre.
Sadly the left decided to label us, even calling us ‘extreme’ right, and further segregating us into categories. This action has without a doubt created hate and division. Devide and conquer. Respect has all but gone.
Meh.The alarmed ones are gullible.
Very Gullible.
So the Doom by Climatism will be replaced by the next great Doom.
Their current difficulty is simple for it is”Kind of hard to sell Doom by Climatism,when one of the traditional Horsemen of Doom is doing a ride by.”
The other part of the Cult of Calamitous Climate’s fade from public interest is the length of time they have been hanging around and banging on about it.
People are just sick and tired of these freeloaders.
We have all noticed that their concern stops right at their own wallets.
And now that the supply chains are being threatened by pandemic,some people are waking up to the obvious..Gang Green wants those supply chains permanently gone.
Brave New World indeed.
How much public funds were spent on “Clime Change” abatement that would only reduce the temperature at 2100 by less than 0.1 degree THAT should have gone into the Federal, State and County Public Health emergency stock pile. Was the money that NY spend on Wind/Solar actually needed to replace the missing ventilators and N95 masks?
Was the money that NY spent on wind, spent to actually harm rural residents and force them to relocate to ‘human settlements”?
Take a look at what cardiologist, Dr. Ben Johnson said recently about industrial scale wind turbines sited in proximity to peoples’ homes.
https://www.kcci.com/article/the-silence-is-gone-iowans-search-for-solution-regarding-noise-from-wind-turbines/30719453#
(Tinfoil Hat Engaged)
Wuhan Virus was deliberately engineered by Big Energy to ‘end’ the Climate Crisis.
Also the world is flat, the Moon Landings were faked, Atlantis never sank, it is a hidden island where only the rich are allowed to visit, Ryan Johnson and JJ Adams are good friends and the Easter Bunny isn’t real.
(tinfoil off)
Next you’ll be telling us the nineteen hijackers on September 11 knew each other and coordinated their attacks in advance, or that Julius Caesar was the victim of some kind of sinister plot, not just an unlucky guy who lost his balance while attending a knife show.
Sorry, but that’s just conspiracy thinking, or as Lewandowsky calls it because using wurdz properly is too hard for him, conspiratorial ideation.
Talking to our son the other day to wish him a happy Easter, told him the Easter bunny didn’t come to our house. He said “That’s what you get for moving to the country, rabbits are a pest out there!”
Guessing? I guess that the money has dried up and blown away on the overheated wind.
The alarm will continue and the evidence of an argument lost will dominate. All they can hope for is some paid mitigation with a few sinecures for the “elect”.
From the article: “Vast societal change (for good or ill) causes suffering.”
I think this will be the big takeaway with regard to the Wuhan virus verses Human-caused Climate Change. The Alarmists are not going to be able to talk the people into what would amount to another shutdown of society to fix CAGW, especially when there is no evidence that CAGW is real.
We’re not going to do this again over a science fiction tale like Human-caused climate change.
Spectacularly stupid and wrong in the same spirit as the global warming models themselves. The entire media complex whines about “inequality” constantly, so it’s hardly unacknowledged even though it’s “growth” is fictitious just as its effects are.
Now if you want to talk about corruption in government and unequal application of the law (cf. #RUSSIA, #KAVANAUGH, #UKRAINE, #HUNTERBIDEN, #HILLARYEMAILS), then you have a point, but that’s not the kind of inequality you’re talking about.
One sure marker as to why we haven’t won anything is that this is yet another article in WUWT referencing ‘climate change’ as the issue. Please stop.
‘Climate change’ is how THEY frame the debate, whereas ‘global warming’ is the actual ISSUE. When warmists talk about climate change they actually mean global warming, of course, but they deliberately use the wider context, partly to impart a more portentous ‘scientificy’ feeling of all-embracing disaster but mainly to avoid the hugely embarrassing truth that the world is not warming to any large degree.
When we were fighting the UK’s corner in getting out of the abysmal EU, the anti-sovereignty pro-EU lobby almost immediately framed the debate as the UK deciding whether or not ‘to leave Europe’. This deliberately caused confusion among many people and an irrational fear that the UK was turning its back on the wonderful people and cultures of France, Spain, Italy etc. – as opposed to turning our back on a money-draining, stultifying, anti-democratic, incompetent, socialist bureaucracy. This tactic almost defeated us and it was a very close-run thing in the end.
This is the equivalent of a military commander trying to get the battle fought over the terrain that best suits his forces.
When I discuss these matters with my friends – an intelligent lot but forcefed a steady stream of warmist propaganda by the BBC and the rest of the MSM – I always use the term ‘global warming’. As it is cold, and often freezing, for large parts of the year in the UK, this is particularly effective.
Don’t fight this war on their terms. It’s always ‘global warming’, never ‘climate change’.
++1
+2
“Of course greenhouse gasses may cause temperatures to rise, and of course that may be problematic here or there (and possibly beneficial elsewhere).
Good comment. See quote above.
WHAT temperatures are supposed to rise? The *AVERAGE* temperature? What in Pete’s name does that mean? Does it mean maximum temps are going to rise? That minimum temps are going to rise? Or does it mean a little of both?
The average temp is meaningless except for trying to fool the rubes!
The rubes are innumerate, and they know that very well. But well versed in race and gender-based grievance, you understand.
The biggest backlash the CAGW zealots will face is funding.
The US just passed a $6 trillion Wuhan flu relief bill (the most expensive bill in human history) to address the pandemics’ health costs, and to compensate individuals and companies who have been mandated by the government to stop working.
Prior to the Wuhan flu, the US already had $22 trillion in national debt (which will never be paid off) plus $100+ trillion in unfunded liabilities (which also will never be paid off).
Overnight, the national debt was increased by $6 trillion, with talk about another $2 trillion be added to national debt this year, and nobody knows when the economy will be reopened…
The Federal Reserves’ balance sheet is now a toxic waste dump, and money printing has exploded. All the new and prior liabilities will never be unwound from their ledger until until 10’s of $trillions of liabilities are defaulted on, which will likely lead to one of the worst global economic collapses in history.
Hopefully, this Wuhan flu crisis will prove once and for all that fiat currencies never work and that no country can print their way out of a financial crisis because it eventually leads to hyperinflation and economic collapse as history clearly shows.
Under a gold standard, people either agree to immediateLy pay 50~60% in income and corporate taxes to finance expensive government crisis spending, or alternative less expensive policies are devised to address crisises.
if Leftists push for an additional $96 trillion to be added to the national debt over the next 10 years to address the CAGW scam, Americans will laugh at them and vote them out of office…
America is already bankrupt from Leftist profligate spending policies and Americans will soon face the dire economic consequences of these failed Leftist ideologies..
CAGW is dead.
“… the massive growth of inequality in wealth and income over a half a century of relative peace …”.
As far as the US is concerned over the past 60 years that inequality doesn’t seem to be due to an increasing underclass percentage-wise, but more the increase in wealth and income at the top.
https://www.chartbookofeconomicinequality.com/inequality-by-country/usa/
I realize there are many ways to present comparable data to get virtually any desired result for political purposes.
I dont mind Bill Gates being immensely rich as long as I am warm, fed, and sheltered.
Socialism as equal poverty and misery helps no one.
Third world people understand that not every child can get an education, but conversely their duty is to use that education to better others as well as themselves.
In the West people cover their selfishness and entitlement with’woke’ virtue signalling and faux social progress.
Often a growth in inequality of wealth and income is viewed as the economy being a zero-sum game i.e. ‘whatever is gained by one side is lost by the other’ rather than the economy as an engine for the creation of wealth and income as illustrated above.
Granted the economy is not a zero sum game, but the growth in inequality is real, and can’t be written off as “presenting data any way you want for political purposes.” Nor is it true that socialism is necessarily “equal poverty and misery” as Leo Smith states. Democrats in the USA and socialist parties in Europe exist to tackle inequality by making sure that working people get a reasonable share of the wealth they help to create. Instead of which, they’ve gone off on their absurd campaigns on climate, gender etc. Economics is hard, and most of the people who understand it are using their talent to get rich themselves. Even some billionaire hedge fund managers understand that this can’t go on for ever. See
“Granted the economy is not a zero sum game, but the growth in inequality is real,”
The implication of this is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But the reality today is the rich get richer and the poor get richer, so even if there is an inequity between the two groups, that doesn’t necessarily mean the poorer folks are suffering more because the rich are getting richer.
The rising tide of the U.S. economy is lifting all boats, rich and poor.
I would dispute that the growth in inequality is real at all. For one thing, the term “inequality” is misleading, because there is relative wealth inequality and absolute wealth inequality. Real wealth is the raw goods and services people have access to. In that sense, in First World countries, the level of wealth inequality is actually at the lowest level it has ever been in human history. Never before has the average person had such a high standard of living, and the gap between the rich and the poor been so reduced.
Now relative inequality has waxed and waned, but that is really irrelevant. Same with so-called “income inequality.” It’s a nonsense statistic. If everyone is getting richer and some are just more rich than others, it’s a non-issue.
Democrats and socialist parties in Europe exist, as far as wealth is concerned, to rob those with wealth that have it, not to make sure working people get a reasonable share of the wealth they help to create. The latter is the argument they use, but it falls apart upon close inspection. It is grounded in the old socialist canard that the workers are who create the wealth and that they thus can demand some of it from the owner. But in a free-enterprise system, that is not how it works. The only wealth the worker is entitled to from their employer in a free-enterprise system is what the market prices their labor at. That’s it. The rest belongs to, and is created by, their employer. To do something like form a union (i.e. a worker cartel) to steal profits from the employer, or to demand the government come in and tax the employer so as to “redistribute” the wealth to the workers, is robbery.
Also, define “reasonable.” The workers are paid what the market prices their labor at while engaging in voluntary enterprise with the owner. Only if there is a monopoly and/or if the employer is providing things like unsafe working conditions, can the workers demand action be taken.
And such redistributionist socialist policies also create equal poverty and misery. That is why the United States has such a high level of relative wealth inequality but a very low level of absolute wealth inequality and great prosperity, while countries that follow much more redistributionist policies, like France or Britain pre-Thatcher, have much higher levels of absolute inequality but lower levels of relative inequality. That is why you get the labor riots and so forth occurring in those countries that do not occur here, the country that is supposedly so unequal.
The reality is workers do not create the wealth, they play a role in creating it, and are paid for that, but the rest is created by the owner or owners of the company.
The central aim of the “climate change” industry has always been political rather than scientific.
And that political aim was de-industrialisation of Western nations in preparation for them to be merged into the new Global one-world UN government.
Now that a virus via the shutdown has effectively done what twenty years of fake science couldn’t do, the aim of the whole process has arrived.
What will happen now is that Western nations who have shut down their economies to fight the virus will be reluctant to resuscitate businesses and industries that threaten to raise “emissions” back to their old “planet-killing” levels.
Thus governments, after pursuing the UN goals political for so long, will be reluctant to “spoil” their new clean economies by re-starting “dirty” fossil-fuelled industries. “We are clean now, so don’t let us spoil it by going backwards” will be the mantra.
The climate scam is still alive and well and ready for its end game – world communism.
Aren’t we lucky we have so many experts to chose from?
Reason is unlikely to shake a belief, true.
A traumatic event has a higher chance of success, I would say.
The Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic is a society-wide traumatic event.
> Reason is unlikely to shake a belief, true.
Do you still believe in all the misconceptions you had, about the natural and cultural worlds, when you were a kid?
Because what you’re suggesting is that the human brain probably can’t learn things.
Have you communicated this revolutionary hypothesis to Norman Doidge MD, the neuropsychiatrist who wrote The Brain That Changes Itself?
No, wait, silly me. Sorry. Of course you haven’t, have you? That would be a complete waste of energy. There’s no reasoning with people
like that.In fact it is the case that reason is built upon belief.
Reason is the logic that allows us to extrapolate beliefs into a comprehensive world view.
Let’s pick a nasty shocking example. The holocaust.
The holocaust was a perfectly rational and reasonable way to behave.
IF you started from the premise – the belief – that there was a race called Aryans who were simply superior to ‘untermenschen’ who had about as much social usefulness as rats in a grain store.
You see similar beliefs espoused today amongst those who would lay the blame for their condition with ‘bankers’ or ‘capitalists’ or ‘big oil’.
Reason makes a world view internally consistent, but the fundamental basis of a world view is always metaphysical. It cannot be proved or disproved. It is just arbitrary lines drawn in the sand of an endless desert, and a post driven in to say ‘this is the centre of everything’. If we survive, we take our world views with us and pass them along to our children.
Take science. It relies on the belief that the world is a external system to our rational thought that in some monumental doublethink, we are both distinct and separate enough from the world to cast objective judgement upon it yet at the same time completely part of it, and the same minds that conceive of it are in fact an emergent property of it? Preposterous!
Science also relies on the metaphysical belief that the phenomenal world is the unfolding in real time of the solution to partial differential equations – ‘Natural Laws’ that govern and control the world in a totally deterministic manner. Nothing ‘happens’ without something else ‘causing’ it, right back to a Prime Cause.
None of this is amenable to proof. It all however works, just as a rather unpleasant ideology worked for Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s. An ideology that modern Germans owe their prosperity to, which is a source of repressed guilt.
Beliefs don’t have to be right to be useful, and they don’t have to be pretty to be beneficial, as any psychopath will tell you.
Socialised religion is a massive example of a metaphysical system that is massively socially useful without any need for there to be any truth content in it whatsoever. Who cares whether Gods exist? The important point is to act as though they do, or if you are a bit less sophisticated, act as though they do because you believe genuinely that they do.
The primitive mind believes that his beliefs are solid, real true and founded on reason.
The sophisticated mind understands that his beliefs are arbitrary, pro tem, and impossible to ascribe truth content to, and are the foundation upon which he constructs his view of the world using reason as a guiding principle.
The primitive mind craves certainty. One Belief because it’s True.
The sophisticated mind craves utility. As many beliefs as possible as long as they are useful.
Leo, nobody wants to have a single belief—that’s the job of a handful of neurons, perhaps, but we need our other neurons too, because even a troglodytic lifestyle depends on knowing many, many things—from the names of your neighbors to the floorplan of your cave and location of the emergency exits.
And to know something you first have to think it, or in other words *believe* it. You don’t know anything you don’t believe.
“A Single Belief System” might be nearer the mark.
Thought-provoking (belief-provoking?) comment, though. Thanks.
The climate change movement only exists as long as the easy gravy train keeps running; COVIC-19 could well be the tree across the line event for it. The economic shadow being cast across the globe will likely put those whose job it is to worry themselves blind about climate change on the dole in quick order, especially when real problems need to be solved with real solutions. Dreaming on others dimes about far future climate problems will be seen for the expensive pointless indulgence it really is.
As a prisoner of California all that’s changed is San Francisco reversing their mandate to use only reusable shopping bags to the equally insane mandate to use only single use bags. Tennessee has no oil and gas is a buck. California gas refineries and produces oil yet gas costs $2.50/ gal. And like all socialist systems what arrived with a vote can only be dislodged with a gun. We’ve lost and there is no path to winning. Rob_Dawg
They let convicts access dangerous sites like this? 🙂 Prisoners sure have got it made. We law abiding folk have to actually pay for our bandwidth!
A century from now people will look back and put the 21st century man-made climate change fable in the same list as the 19th century frenolgy delusion or the 20th century lysenko nonsense, not to speak of astrology, the philosophers stone, phlogeston and eugenics.
But a century is a long time and there is still a lot of struggle ahead.
The Global Warming scare, like Political Correctness and “Wokeness”, is luxury politics for financially secure upper middle-class Westerners. With the recession caused by the Wuhan Virus this is about to change drastically, and such people will jettison their adherence to CAGW the moment they have to worry about paying their rent or mortgage, or even putting food on the table.
A model is just a set of assumptions. The output of the model is the data produced by those set of assumptions.
If the output doesn’t match experimental data the model is wrong.
But, but, but the data must be adjusted to match the model……..
If the Virus Hadn’t Caused the Crash, Something Else Would Have
The pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities of a structurally unsound financial and economic system.
By Satyajit Das
The novel coronavirus has already had a significant impact on the global economy, which will worsen if the outbreak and the shutdowns designed to contain it continue for very long. But it’s only an accelerant: If not Covid-19, as the disease caused by the virus is known, something else would have started the conflagration. Shortfalls in revenue and cash flows, caused by the shutdowns, have simply exposed the vulnerabilities of a structurally unsound economic and financial system.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-01/coronavirus-alone-didn-t-cause-the-market-crash
My problem with this is that the current generation has been indoctrinated with this AGW stuff from before the age of critical thinking – exactly the way religious indoctrination works. A lot of them will find it difficult to shake off in later life.
Combine this with Quantitative Easing 4 Ever and this nonsense could perpetuate for a lot longer than we’d hope. Things that cannot go on forever can go on much longer that you’d imagine.
I hope I’m wrong and a new Enlightenment is the result. But hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first…
The only way the problems of the United States can be addressed properly is to give Republicans control of the presidency, and control of the House and Senate.
I think there is a very good chance of this happening.
Nancy Pelosi is currently holding the American people hostage by trying to blackmail Republicans into putting her socialist agenda into the Wuhan virus relief bills.
If you have any complaints about how long it takes to get your money, send them to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats. They have already held up your payments for over a week, and now Pelosi says she is not going to call the House back into session until May 4, even though the program needed to support small businesses and their employees, is running low on money and just needs a straight up vote to increase the amount in the previously passed bill, but Nancy doesn’t want to do that, she wants to hold the money hostage so she can force her socialist agenda into the bill.
So, if you have any complaints, send them to Nancy. She is your problem.
Nancy may be looking for a new job come Nov. 3. She should be, if Americans have any sense, and I think most Americans have a lot of sense. We shall see.
I am far from convinced that the Global Warming/Climate Change fraternity has been defeated even though many people are currently more concerned by the Covid-19 virus and, in the longer term, are very worried about energy costs both for their domestic heating/cooking and for their transport. My pessimism stems from the fact that many of the warmists’ desires have been written into legislation in the West. Thus, once the Covid scare has diminished, the warmists’ legislation will still be there to (mis)direct energy policy and damage people’s lives.
Since so very many political parties and the mainstream media in the West have adopted the warmists’ agenda unquestioningly I cannot see an easy way out of this impasse. The pain will continue until new political parties are formed that tackle head on the cosy consensus and the rent-seekers with their post-normal science. The new parties will need to address both energy policies and the secretive lobbying that allows rent-seeking to flourish.
There are many dragons to slay both in the mainstream media and amongst the policies of the warmists’ political allies; so expect the battle to be long and hard. However, the political gains for almost everybody in the West (apart from the rent-seekers and their friends) are considerable: better, more open democracy (largely freed from secretive lobbying), better policies arrived at through more scientific (as opposed to post-scientific) reasoning and, equally important, a more confident West that can distinguish real threats from paper tigers.
Regards,
John.
the covid hysteria makes the climate hysteria look reasonable.
14 Apr: Reuters: European politicians, CEOs, lawmakers urge green coronavirus recovery
by Gabriela Baczynska, Kate Abnett
BRUSSELS – European politicians, companies, lawmakers and activists called on Tuesday for green investment to restart growth after the coronavirus pandemic, saying fighting climate change and promoting biodiversity would rebuild stronger economies…
With EU leaders due to meet next week to discuss the recovery plan, a group of 180 political decision-makers, business leaders, trade unions, campaign groups and think tanks urged the bloc to adopt green stimulus measures…
Signatories included ministers from 10 countries from Italy to Luxembourg, 79 EU lawmakers, and chief executives from L’Oreal’s (OREP.PA) Jean-Paul Agon to IKEA’s Jesper Brodin and Danone’s (DANO.PA) Emmanuel Faber…
Ten EU countries, joined by Germany, France and Greece over the weekend, have signed a separate open letter urging the EU to ensure its rescue package supports the Green Deal…
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-climatechange-reco/european-politicians-ceos-lawmakers-urge-green-coronavirus-recovery-idUSKCN21W0F2
The history lesson from the Left in it’s many manifestations is simple: “Never give up”.
Pick any “issue” pushed by them and it simply never, ever, goes away. Sort of like termites that can live in sunlight, they just gnaw away regardless of opinion. They simply use any defeat as a minor setback, regroup, develop new plans, test revised narratives and then seize any event to restart their push. Even if it takes decades. The Long March, to them, was just a short little hike.
It’s almost admirable, were it not so misguided.
I am far from convinced that we have beaten the Global Warming/Climate Change fraternity, even though most people are currently more concerned by the Covid-19 virus and, in the longer term, by the rising cost of energy both for their domestic heating/cooking needs and for their transport. My pessimism arises from the fact that much of the warmists’ agenda has been written, directly or indirectly, into legislation in many Western countries. Hence, once the Covid-19 emergency has faded, the legislation will remain to (mis)direct energy policy and damage people’s lives.
Given that much of the mainstream media and most political parties in the West seem to have unquestioningly adopted the warmists’ agenda I cannot see an easy end to the impasse above. Unless, that is, there is a grassroots reaction to the warmists’ agenda and new political parties are created to address that agenda head on.
The new parties will have to defeat the secretive lobbying and the consequent rent-seeking that has given rise to the current, damaging energy policies. And there will be many dragons to slay in the media and amongst the policies of the warmists’ many political allies. Thus, expect the battle to be long and hard. However, when we win, the rewards for the West will be considerable: better democratic processes, an end to rent-seeking and the pork-barrel politics that attends it, better policy which has been arrived at through decision making unencumbered by post-normal science, and (by no means least) a more confident West that has once again learnt to distinguish between real, near-term threats and distant paper tigers.
Regards,
John.
Jon Cullen, you said that, “The new parties will have to defeat the secretive lobbying and the consequent rent-seeking that has given rise to the current, damaging energy policies.”
If citizen journalists act now to expose the secretive lobbying and consequent rent seekers……naming names…this battle might not last much longer.
Dear John,
Do you have any comments on the financial system supporting the “climate change” agenda?
In particular, it has been revealed that Blackrock financial, a “shadow bank”, was used by Canada Pension Fund (CPP) to purchase Industrial Wind Turbines in Ontario, Canada.
https://blackrocktransparencyproject.org/2018/08/27/how-canadas-infrastructure-bank-was-created-by-and-set-up-to-benefit-blackrock/
It seems likely that “shadow banks” are a new way to steal pension fund money. The question is can we get it back.
Blackrock is also purchasing US debt. Is it possible that Blackrock is using carbon credits as collateral/security for these purchases?
I have been listening to X22Report.com. The host there suggests that the debts of the Fed may come under scrutiny in the Trump administration.
Perhaps the “bad debts’, due to climate change and other schemes, can be written off. Let us hope so.
12 Apr: BBC: Coronavirus: UK confirms plan for its own contact tracing app
By Leo Kelion
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52263244
14 Apr: ABC Australia: Coronavirus lockdowns could end in months if Australians are willing to have their movements monitored
By political editor Andrew Probyn
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-14/coronavirus-app-government-wants-australians-to-download/12148210
Australia has about 61 deaths, with 1 or 2 new deaths per day.
Won?
Now there is an interesting proposition. Won what exactly? Won the fact that people are waking up to models that are wildly inaccurate? I sincerely hope so. I really do. Because modeling while it is useful in appropriate use is not the be all end all and perhaps this pandemic will finally shed light on a simple fact: garbage in, garbage out.
What I hope has really been “won” is a move to seek out sustainable energy resources. And I don’t mean “green” sustainable, I mean self sustainable….i.e. fusion. There was a remarkable breakthrough right before the lockdown of using refrigerator magnets–those large sheet magnets, coined fridge magnets and how those could be utilized for fusion as they are flexible and just powerful enough to sustain the reaction. Now that would be amazing. Think about it, what if energy becomes truly free…without expensive solar panels that have environmental costs, or wind turbines turning lakes into sludge for mining the minerals. What if it eventually becomes free, self sustaining energy. Pipe dream? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe this losing focus on Mann-made global warming could have a silver lining—the idea of free energy. Warmth for the whole world.
If not, then lets round up all those that want to save the ice and forcibly move them to Antarctica with a few solar panels and see how they survive the winter.
So maybe the idea of self sustaining energy and the movement towards it is the silver lining in all of this. I certainly hope so. I’m really tired of paying an energy bill…..(sarc).
No, climate realists are not winning. The alarmists are making gains everywhere, even in the US: Cities, counties, states, are implementing measures to fight man-made global warming, despite the country’s impending exit from the Paris Accord… Which is not done yet, as it will only come into effect after the next election.
In other countries, there is no stopping the warmist juggernaut. The vast majority of mainstream media will not even discuss that there is something else than the Truth Of Man-Made Climate Change.
Climate realists are ignored and left alone to play in their sandbox.
Have we won? No.
There are many battles to fight. This fight will go on for some time. The general public are unconcerned about climate change because the other issues are more important, but the scammers, the hustlers, the 3rd-government climate prostitutes are so far in they won’t walk away without a fight.
The Germans and Japanese kept fighting after it was obvious they could not win. Some kept fighting after the war was over. If we continue the WW2 analogy, it’s 1944 and the Axis are losing on every front.
I’ll add that after the US goes off lockdown and the true depths of the economic damage is discovered. people will be less likely to accept policies that will cripple the economy further.
“You can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
As long as there is money in Climate Change or Global Warming or hemorrhoids, there will be people trying to extract it.
Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. This year it looks like hurricane season will be a whopper and climate change hysteria will be shoved in our faces the whole time.
Oh? what evidence is there for that?
COP26 can’t go via video-conferencing because the COPs are marketing events, designed to maintain the flow of funding, publicity and prestige. Hence the tens of thousands of hangers-on (masquerading as civil society), aimed at indoctrination of youth. You can’t do that by video conference.
Just Jenn:
“Think about it, what if energy becomes truly free…without expensive solar panels that have environmental costs, or wind turbines turning lakes into sludge for mining the minerals. What if it eventually becomes free, self sustaining energy. Pipe dream?”
Even if fusion energy is made to work it will NOT BE FREE. You will have to have some containment vessels to hold, people to manage it and people to deal with all of the government regulations. It may be a long term solution to much of our energy needs. It will NEVER be FREE.
No, you don’t get something for nothing
You can’t have freedom for free
You won’t get wise
With the sleep still in your eyes
No matter what your dream might be