Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to British academics, climate deniers have not gone away, they have just changed tactics.
Climate denial hasn’t gone away – here’s how to spot arguments for delaying climate action
July 30, 2020 7.10pm AEST
Stuart Capstick Research Fellow in Psychology, Cardiff University
Julia K. Steinberger Professor in Social Ecology and Ecological Economics, University of LeedsStop me if you’ve heard this one before.
The UK and many other rich countries have set ambitious targets for emissions cuts to tackle climate change, and have already made much headway in recent years. Further progress can be achieved while making sure that fossil fuels are used responsibly, and with promising new technology such as aircraft powered by batteries.
The UK should not do more though, while countries like China and the US continue to emit far more than we do. It’s hard to see why hard-working families should be denied simple pleasures either, like flying on foreign holidays.
In fact, why should we limit emissions at all, since the worst of climate change is already looking inevitable?
If these sorts of claims sound familiar – reasonable even – that’s because they are some of the most common ways of arguing for less ambition on tackling the climate crisis. Outright denial of climate change is becoming rarer, but is simply being replaced by more subtle ways of downplaying the need for urgent and far-reaching action.
In new research, we have identified what we call 12 “discourses of delay”. These are ways of speaking and writing about climate change that are commonly used by politicians, media commentators and industry spokespeople. Though they shy away from denying the reality of climate change, their effect on the collective effort to respond to it is no less corrosive.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/climate-denial-hasnt-gone-away-heres-how-to-spot-arguments-for-delaying-climate-action-141991
What must it be like trying to make a career in British academia these days?
What do Professors of Engineering do when climate activists demand they draw up plans for Britain’s conversion to renewables, on a timeframe and budget provided by the activists?
Any argument for delay or deviation from maximum climate effort, any questioning of methods or timescales could be taken as evidence you are a witch climate denier. The slightest hint of such heresy and you risk a demand from British academics that ye be silenced, lest your wrongthink spread amongst the common folk.
Wow, what a steaming pile these two quackademics (of the caeli clamitor stultus ideologus fictus academicus variety) have churned out. As usual for True Believers and Climate Liars, they employ a number of logical fallacies. Notice the pretense, by the mere wave of the hand, that Skeptics or Climate Realists no longer exist (Wishful Thinking fallacy), or are too few to matter (Argumentum ad populum). This is the tactic that St. Greta the Retard recently employed. The implication is that the “debate is over” (Wishful Thinking again), and that “the Science” (Argument from Authority and Consensus) is so unassailable that even “deniers” (Ad Hominem) have given up (again, WT). Of course, their entire thesis is based on the Strawman, which their ilk just love.
Indeed, the argument (if you can call it that) these two have brought forth is so wrought with logical fallacies and outright lies that only those who are already imbecilic True Believers could possibly be swayed by it.
Their bugs are features in my opinion
WTF? Social Ecology? These aren’t academics. They are from a clown school. Neither one of those idiots has taken a useful math or science course in their life. Who cares what they say?
The ecological system of the social studies field itself.
“Solutionism”? Another $5 college word you can use to entertain friends and family. 😉
I have gone nowhere and changed nothing, denial of their concocted bullshyte is easy and always will be. Publicly pointing out their political agenda is all it takes. If they actually want to convince people they will have to strip the leftist ideology out of their “science”. That will never happen, it is all they have.
“Research Fellow in Psychology… Professor in Social Ecology”
You get what you pay for.
Perfect example of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.
Imagine if they put all this time, thought and effort into figuring out why their computer models don’t work.
The oldest, best run, safest French nuclear plant closed by French President Micron.
Who is in “denial”?
Lleadership seems to be seriously lacking in too many nations.
As the old saying goes: “Without [good] leadership, the People perish.”
The policies they propose will fail and, in fact, are failing in the short term in ways that dramatically reduce the quality of life of those affected and which will bring carnage to the environment. I suspect many of the advocates know this and, therefore know that they can’t be sustained in a democratic political environment where voters can fire the idiots that take food off the table. So if they really think this will be successful in the long run then they are counting on neutralizing or suspending democracy. That may be the scariest part of all of this, and the fact that they have so many wealthy, powerful and influential supporters should wake us all up to the fact we are at war with forces intent on destroying modern society.
The continual re-framing of the Alarmist argument is one indication of many that we’re winning, and they know it. They are running scared.
They did not mention mine. I had to deliver 95% accuracy of timing and 100 % accuracy of what happens. When climate scientists can better that as they are so much more highly paid and respected than engineers I will take their pronouncements seriously but till then to me they are just a bunch of self opinionated anal orifices. As for putting time and effort into finding out why their computer models do not work independently all five of us took under quarter of an hour to spot the major defect that a weather network designed explicitly not to give general temperature information but designed to reproduce agricultural conditions is not going to be useful as input for a model requiring climate data. The input error and uncertainty is at least three times the supposed changes.
This nonsense from Capstick and Steinberger prompted three different thoughts.
The first was disbelief that academics were happy to waste their time constructing some rationale as to why politicians, media commentators and industry spokespeople should bother making excuses about delays in tackling climate change. Personally, I have no interest in what media commentators have to say about climate change. Politicians say far too much, without any clue about what they are talking about. Industry spokespeople covers such a wide range that I shall pass on that.
The second thought was that our authors also do not know what they are talking about. The phrase, “climate denial”, immediately signals their ignorance. They are not aware that science has progressed and that natural climate drivers are more important than previously estimated and much more important than greenhouse gas emissions. Solar irradiation of our planet is modulated by solar cycles and factors that influence cloud formation. Climate models, which cannot adequately deal with such effects, are not fit for purpose.
The third thought was that if the trio referred to by the academics had any intelligence, then they would try to distance themselves from the madness of tackling so called climate change. They would know that intermittent renewable energy sources are not an answer to anything. Electric vehicles require batteries that do not have the materials required and do not have the infrastructure to charge them or even the electricity to supply the infrastructure. Hydrogen fuel is an inefficient joke, carbon capture is a fantasy. In this respect, then the academics would be right.
But they would not be right for the right reasons. They would still not understand what they are talking about.
Let’s look at this the other way up. Haste in pursuing green solutions is economic and eco suicide. Consider the folly of early investment in wind and solar at eye-watering costs, or of pushing undesirable mercury containing CFL lighting instead of waiting for the development of LEDs (which still has further to go for high CRI, long life, reasonable output at reasonable cost). Making energy expensively green offshores manufacturing to China, killing jobs, increasing vulnerability – and worst of all results in higher emissions on a global basis.
There is a movement, slowly growing, in the UK that tertiary education has become a disaster. Universities were expanded in the 1980/90s and have sprung up like toadstools.
It is slowly dawning on politicians that departments with anything with “studies” in their names are a waste of space and that we should turn our “universities” back into technical colleges that do something useful. This is starting in Australia with substantially lower fees for STEM courses and may slowly spread to the UK (or even the US, hopefully).
I am gobsmacked that there are people who believe that airliners could ever be battery powered. It is physically impossible for a battery to store sufficient power while being small and light enough to replace kerosene in a plane. Batteries have 2 electrodes separated by an electrolyte. The electrolyte has to be sufficiently semi-conductive to prevent arcing. Lithium ion batteries are already pushing that boundary, yet even a tiny imperfection can see them burst into flame as internal arcing occurs. Electric planes may be possible, but the power supply will not be batteries. I see it as possibly a nuclear device because of the high energy density contained in uranium.
Have you noticed how many psychologists sound crazy ! Or else in total denial of the real world.
“According to British academics, climate deniers have not gone away, they have just changed tactics”.
Why don’t these so called British academic dipsticks produce the science that explains exactly how global warming due to CO2 actually works. I say old chaps, pip pip, get to it. The term hollow vessels looms large.
Why are so many academics foolish? Well, it’s because they’ve always been sheltered. In order to become a university professor, you have to have b een born with unusual advantages, like a monster IQ score, and a near-limitless capacity to please teachers and professors. You also have to have had parents or other benefactors with the money to pay for your education. Someone with those advantages really doesn’t know too much about enduring the real pain and fear of running a business, or reporting to work where you have to produce measurable results. One oilfield roughneck produces more real benefit for more real people in one year of his working life than a faculty lounge full of professors does in a decade, but the professors don’t know that, and can’t know it because they are certain they are producers of great value.