Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Because “Older people can be wealthy”.
Why the climate movement must do more to mobilise older people
June 3, 2021 2.34am AEST
Aled Jones Professor & Director, Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University
Bradley Hiller Visiting Fellow, Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin UniversitySome say age is only a number. Others associate age with wisdom. Or perhaps it is a state of mind. Whatever it is, age is a factor in climate progress, and 2021’s renewed climate momentum must mobilise the oft-overlooked elderly demographic.
To date, the global climate movement has engaged young people en masse. Pre-COVID, the world witnessed a swathe of student-led climate protests, leading to broader public debate and increased youth representation in key international forums.
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Elderly people are relatively invisible in climate discussions compared to the youth demographic, yet are arguably the most critical for broader climate action. Here are five reasons to broaden the youthful momentum to engage and empower the elderly:
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5. Older people can be wealthy
The elderly collectively control an increasing share of global wealth, spending and assets. For example, the 55-and-over population in the US already spends twice as much as the much-targeted millennial market. By 2030, it is estimated that just 11% of investable assets in the US will be held by people younger than 45. Yet despite holding most shareholder voting rights, older investors tend to consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors less strongly than younger investors.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/why-the-climate-movement-must-do-more-to-mobilise-older-people-161732
Top marks for honesty, at least about wanting old people to contribute more towards the cause.
So why are old people so disengaged? Plenty of old folk have children and grandchildren they love, so the suggestion I have seen that old people simply don’t care doesn’t wash. Old people are usually (though not always) very well informed, so it is unlikely they are unfamiliar with climate crisis claims.
One possible explanation, is age gives old people the experience and perspective to realise the climate crisis narrative is a pile of bull pucky.
Everyone over 50 remembers the Global Cooling crisis, because we all watched the wildly popular “In Search of” documentary on the coming ice age.
I remember watching “In Search Of … The Coming Ice Age” as a kid. Everyone believed the documentary, because the presenter was actor Leonard Nimoy, who played Dr. Spock in the original Star Trek series. The ice age documentary also featured an impressive lineup of scientists, including Chester Langway, James Hayes, Gifford Miller (who described how the descent into the next ice age started 3000 years ago), and Stephen Schneider, who speculated about using nuclear energy to melt the ice caps, to halt the big freeze.
Stephen Schneider hilariously backflipped a few years after the documentary, and started pushing global warming theories with as much sincerity as he previously pushed the global cooling scare.
My point is, at the time we all believed Nimoy’s flick, just like young people today believe all the global warming nonsense they have been force fed, because young people just aren’t old enough yet to have personally witnessed a major settled science backflip. After you see a few abrupt shifts in direction (fat good? fat bad? Pritikin diet? Atkins Diet?), often with the same people pushing the new line with just as much sincerity as they previously pushed the opposite position, you would have to be stupid not to wonder at least a bit whether the so called experts were making it up as they go.
But it seems most people have to witness this kind of shameless scientific backflip for themselves, to lose their automatic faith in authority.
Thankfully we have had a recent series of in my opinion shameless public scientific backflips, which with any luck will do lasting damage to the climate crisis narrative.
Dr. Fauci’s public backflips on Covid (lab leak? natural? kids need masks? kids don’t need masks?) may have done more long term damage to young people’s willingness to accept scientific authority at face value, than anything I have ever written.
Some folk equate age with wisdom; others with stupidity. The same applies to education.
The ones who equate age with stupidity aren’t old enough to have the wisdom to see the truth.
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” — Mark Twain
One of my favourite quotes to my grandchildren who get indoctrinated on a daily basis
Kids have no experience, how could they ?
They still know everything though.
…… except how to clean up their rooms.
To the current generation that thinks they are smarter than old people, let me remind you that 50 years ago the manual for an automobile had steps for adjusting the engines valves. Now, the manual for an automobile warns the owner to not drink the battery acid. The current generation is a pandemic of the Dunning-Kruger syndrome: they are too stupid to evaluate their own competence.
Sad confirmation of James B’s reminder: working as an automotive tech, semi retired highly skilled at many things, including gear head – I was rebuilding a 4 banger Honda engine due to head gasket failure. We sent the head to a professional head rebuilder – it came back and I did the tedious process of installing it with the new gasket, etc, carefully torquing all the bolts… after installing the cams and rockers, then I went to lash the valves and I could not get them into spec. I checked the valve stem lengths and lo and behold, some young kid at the rebuild place had mixed up the intake vs exhaust valves! (normally this is impossible as exhaust valves are way larger, but this stupid Honda had them almost the same diameter, but different stem lengths).
So I wasted a couple days to remove the head again and sending it back to the rebuilder. Note the kid making the mistake was fired and we got the rebuilder to do the whole job for free….
Another quick one – we had an 1957 Crown Vic, and needed to replace the choke cable. So I went to an auto parts store to try to find one, say for a lawnmower or the like which would work. The kid working there replied to my asking “do you have any choke cables?” – he said with a blank stare “what’s a choke?”
One more – a middle aged lady brought her car in saying a headlight was not working. I asked her whether it was low or high beam… she said “what’s a high beam?” She was astonished when I showed her how to actuate high vs low beam. (I said to self “how the frack can you obtain a driver’s license and not know what high beam headlamps are?)
This kind of thing is evident everywhere these days – and it’s both sad and alarming. We are going to revert to hunter-gatherers if we continue to loose skill, knowledge and wisdom at the rates that are occurring with our so called educational system!
“We are going to revert to hunter-gatherers…”
Given the competence on display, they’ll end up starving.
Not quite. Todays cars have so much computer stuff, the kids feel right at home. Even their Androids can scan any car. A BMW can have more than 19 computer units. Engine timing today is beautifully explained.
For the kids it is a computer game, that is until they will not start with empty tank.
Maybe there is room in the market for a first-person mechanic, instead of shooter?
Tesla’s have so much electric energy stored, there are warnings not to tamper, it has become too dangerous, not to mention the autonomous drive units.
bonbon: I disagree. Yes modern cars have multiple computer modules that talk to each other over a common buss, but kids or young adults haven’t a clue how a really complex “system” works. Our shop services foreign cars almost exclusively, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, VW, Bentley, Maserati, etc. Also Toyota, Lexus, and Honda. Yes the German cars have one or two dozen computer modules – but the talking apes screw that up wildly too…
One customer carried open 5 gallon water containers in the back of a Mercedes SUV, and they spilled – and duh, all the computer modules are under the carpet – that stupid attempt to save some money buying water cost $3500 ’cause 4 modules got shorted and fried!
Then you have the idiots who think they are computer smart – and obtain the “trouble codes” from the OBD port. They think they know what is wrong when they get a misfire on cylinder 3, and a low reading on O2 sensor on bank 1 position 2. The problem is they know computers but have no clue what makes an engine work – and a group of trouble codes can have a dozen causes which you need to understand to diagnose a problem.
So is it a bad spark plug, or a failed ignition coil, or a dirty fuel injector, or is the misfire because you have a leaking valve cover gasket and the spark plug/coil connection is oil fouled, or is it a vacuum leak after the mass air flow sensor, causing a lean mixture, etc, etc, etc. Or is is the variable valve timing system – which could be a mechanical, hydraulic or electronic issue? Is it just water accumulated in the fuel? Just because some computer nerd can read trouble codes, doesn’t mean they understand how modern engines work – there’s no simple mechanics anymore, it is more like a systems engineer.
I can’t tell you how many times some smart a** comes in and tells us what’s wrong because they have obtain the “trouble codes” and looked it up on Google – if he/she is an arrogant idiot and refuses to let us properly diagnose – we gladly take their money and replace what they think is wrong. Which ends up costing them more when we do find the real problem…
No this information/computer age is like my previous post elsewhere – it’s like giving a troupe of baboons a case of loaded and cocked AK-47’s.
Electrics and hybrids – are a nightmare of stupid engineering too. Actually stupid engineering is evident even in the highly reputable ICE makers – far too many examples of really dumb asked engineering – from my perspective are because they take kids out of school (university) who sit at a CAD station and say – oh that would be cool, and do it without understanding how everything interacts. We are loosing the humongous knowledge base that was handed down via a more “apprenticeship” basis. it used to be you did not get to design cars or their systems unless you had actually worked on the factory or shop floor in addition to your schooling.
Some BMW’s are superb, and other models are a nightmare and failure prone. You often say to yourself ” is this designed by the same car maker” – some are really fine, others are obviously designed by committee. You know what you get when you design a horse by committee? A camel!
“Elderly people are relatively invisible in climate discussions compared to the youth demographic..” The other way around in this blog. The youngsters wouldn’t be able to keep up with the quick elderly wits present here.
It would seem to me that…
Given that 97% of climate scientists agree (they constantly say so)
And that the majority of people believe it is so (again they constantly say so)
“They” (true believers) must number in the Billions…
All they need to do is to Stop using fossil sourced energy and Petrochemical derived products.
Like…
Products made from petrochemicals include such items as plastics, soaps and detergents, solvents, drugs, fertilizers, pesticides, explosives, synthetic fibres and rubbers, paints, epoxy resins, and flooring and insulating materials. Petrochemicals are found in products as diverse as aspirin, luggage, boats, automobiles, aircraft, polyester clothes, and recording discs and tapes.
Surely this would drive down the price of Oil and Coal to the point exploration is unprofitable.
All they must do is Give Up their hypocrisy and take the lead in personal decarbonization.
No legislation needed.
Unless of course they fear there aren’t Billions who believe as they do.
/sarc
Aside from a personal disinterest in what the post-2100 earth will be like, we elders are not in any way dependent on “settled science” grants nor “cancel culture” approval for our livelihood.
Maybe its because when we were young we were taught critical thinking?
I recall a bumper sticker in the 1970s that said “Question Authority.” Now it is “Follow the Science” – whatever that means.
I blame the school system. They are indoctrinating the children with Leftwing insanity, not teaching them anything useful.
Old folk haven’t been subjected to post 1990 public school indoctrination and college Social Justice recruitment. Bottom line old f@rts are capable of reasoning and rational thought without getting their feelings hurt and have decades more experience which fine tunes their BS detectors.
The worldwide bureaucracy has elevated this Post-Modern insanity to an art form where white is black, boys are girls and the world will end in 3,2,1…wait don’t forget to add 12 to 100 years, whichever comes last. todays public school graduates are sorely tested on this simple problem. But rest assured that if they live longer than 100 years past today that the authorities will extend the end of days accordingly.
Bottom line… we can tell when something isn’t true
Boys are girls and the gender fluidity thing? Well not quite as I passed the local private school last week at lunchtime. I’m held up by senior boys with the lollipop signs to allow some stragglers to cross the crossing from the school proper to the copious well manicured oval grounds opposite. Now bear in mind this was a private boys school since inception and amalgamated with the girls of the same religion recently.
The upshot of all this blended continuum of alphabet soup as I cast an eye on the oval? There were all the girls seated in various size circles on the lawn at one end of the oval gasbagging intently while the boys were all standing horsing around in groups or running around kicking the footy or playing soccer etc and taking up the other 3/4 of the grounds. Lefty educators have a bit more work on their hands it seems.
I should add this was now the Senior coed HS with Years 10-12 apparently after blending.
‘Follow the science’ means ‘believe the green fairytales’.
Yes, we cannot discount the diverse green links. However, the first-order order forcing of [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] political, social, and economic climate change is clearly secular, perhaps religious (i.e. behavioral), not limited to green[backs] (e.g. redistributive change) and control (e.g. retributive change). That said, think green, emit.
Cargo cult or intuitive science.
Indulgences for sale to the good grannies. Redistributive, per chance retributive, change for those who deny the consensus. Take a knee, beg, good girl, boy, whatever.
Of course Socrates also said “question authority” and look where that got him!
If I got a bumper sticker that said “Don’t question authority” and drove around the Berkeley campus, I don’t think they would get it.
I think the problem might have occurred because teachers wanted to suppress nationalism and promote globalism. The problem is, globalism is not very appealing unless you embrace a whole baggage train of positions, nationalism is much easier to explain and relate to. And some of the arguments for globalism don’t make a lot of sense. So in order to push more people towards a globalist perspective, teachers stopped encouraging questions on some topics.
Climate alarmist just do not understand history — it appears too complicated and stressful for them to read a history book: Without a willingness to learn they are unemployable and a liability to the nation.
Our schoolteacher often said “You can only educate a willing mind — you can never teach a fool”.
At the ripe young age of 70, I find increasing resistance to being mobilized. Funny thing, that, having an increasingly sensitive BS meter, and far less patience for stupidity, opportunities abound to unleash scathing torrents on arrogant ‘higher purpose’ would be manipulators. ‘Mobilized’, indeed!
The global warming crowd had better be a bit careful trying mobilise older people. Most don’t like bullsh1t, having seen too much in their long years. They can be slow to anger, but once roused it is likely to be greater & more sustained than that of kids.
“Okay, Boomer”.
Otay, Zoomer.
I think Bruce forgot the sarcasm sign.
LOL! Nice sarcasm.
My response (choose any you like)
OK mental illness; I mean millennial.
That’s impressive coming from the generation that eats Tide Pods and can’t do taxes.
I’m booming in the bank; how about you?
I thought you were supposed to be the tolerant generation.
The jerk store called. They’re all out of you.
I stole those responses from here:
15 of the Best Comebacks when Someone Says “Ok Boomer” – Tosaylib
Ok DOOMER
From the article: “Stephen Schneider hilariously backflipped a few years after the documentary, and started pushing global warming theories with as much sincerity as he previously pushed the global cooling scare.”
He was just following the temperature trend. Before long, he may be getting back onboard that Global Cooling train.
Maybe green and trapped in a circulation model with inadequate design and insufficient leverage. Maybe Green with “benefits” (e.g. secular lucre including
green[backs]).
Schneider died in 2010.
That was a bullet that missed us, but Ehrlich’s still going strong, and still teaching fantasy extinction sh!te.
If only the use of baseball bats was legal. Problem solved.
Tenure.
All this tells me is older people are more likely to see through the global cooling (oops, I mean) global warming (oops, make that) climate change scam. When “the science” changes the name every time reality departs from its computer modeling, and when “the science” uses propaganda and intimidation tactics against detractors, it’s definitely time not to blindly follow “the science.”
What’s that you say – you don’t believe in science ? Why every good citizen must – except apparently that thing about x and y chromosomes.
It seems that Twitter censored the leader of Nigeria for something he said, and the Nigerian leader turned around and banned Twiitter from the whole country.
Now, Twitter came out yesterday and said freedom of speech was a human right!, complaining that Nigeria should not have cut them off.
Oh, the irony!
Nigeria is a private country. If Twitter doesn’t like Nigeria’s rules, they can create their own Nigeria.
I’m sure the Twits at Twitter don’t even realize how stupid they look.
Yes, that’s clear evidence that you may be in a cargo cult, a cult with secular “benefits”, occupation, and threat of cancellation.
Look, guys. At 72 I know a lot of stupid old folks. If you have ever spent any time around old U.S. Veterans, you know what I mean (I volunteered at the local VA hospital). Spend a little time around an old folk’s (females) home and old vets and you will appreciate what I am trying to get across … cognitive decline is real among the surviving females and the old vets are mostly deranged and full of B.S.
BTW, I still have an IQ above 150. It comes from reading alot and knowing the definition of alot of words. But I can’t remember what my wife said 5 minutes ago. Selective intelligence?
Frequent mistake: The character in Star Trek is Mister Spock, the famous paediatrician is Dr. Spock.
What? They’re not the same guy ?!?
No wonder my kids turned out like they did .
. . .
With big ears !
you got the point
Dang, that ageing memory… 🙂
I am 73 years old, and have enough wisdom not to taste the BS that Alarmists (Warmunists?) are passing around….
I’ve been listening to these unsubstantiated human-caused climate change claims since the 1970’s. None of their predictions, whether on the Global Cooling side, or the Global Warming side, have come to pass, so I am even more inclined to scoff at their claims now than when I was younger, since I have long experience with their failed claims.
People who accumulate wealth generally do so because they make good choices. Supporting fraudulent propaganda is not a good choice.
Age correlates well with wealth and intelligence.
Well, we made bad choices too.
But we’ve had enough years to make a few more good choices to offset the bad choices.
And how do we know what good or bad choices look like?
EXPERIENCE.
Plenty of wealthy crony capitalists are making money off of climate change. Unfortunately it’s a less than zero sum game.
More woolly UK academic ‘thinking’. US older folks were taught critical thinking. We also have more time to study ‘ESG’ issues and learn the facts, rather than follow the crowd’s ‘popular delusions’. If we have more wealth, it is because we earned it—and don’t want it frittered away on ‘ESG’
Old folks like me (84+++) have also lived through
severalnumerous predictions of doom and “Chicken Liken the sky is falling” moments foreseen by prominent “scientists” and politicians (e.g. Algore) every few years. We’re going to starve to death; drown (sea level rise or floods); freeze; die from the heat; or all die from heat-caused diseases, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Then there have been the “fringe” scientists predicting CO2 will cause more volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, and kill all the ocean life. (Just like it did in the Cambrian period, I suppose.)Back in the day when I was gainfully employed, one of my responsibilities was generating five-year budget forecasts for the nuclear power department. After a year or two of doing this, I purchased a crystal ball for my desk so visitors could see how I developed my forecasts. The climate emergency (or whatever it’s called this week) scientists and politicians like AOC have just as much forecast credibility as I did with my budget crystal ball.
Been there, done that.
Seen on a T-shirt: “We do precision guess work based on unreliable data provided by those with questionable knowledge.”
I do like the choice of the word “precision” since precision means getting the same result and doesn’t mean accurate or close to the actual value.
Certainly : Age (I am 86) gives the experience and perspective to realise that the “climate crisis narrative is a pile of bull pucky” . It also brings an accepting, philosophical attitude to life, death and danger which simply makes it impossible to ever panic about “cities flooding”, or “terrible droughts” (or for that matter dying from an ordinary, flu-like illness).
I, too, as I approach the end of my life (go for 100!) realize that most of man’s obsessions are transitory.
Older people will not climb on the Climate Emergency Bandwagon — they have seen far too many wagons pass by only to be abandon down the block when a “new, improved, more exciting” wagon comes along.
We older folks (at least those of us still in possession of our memories) are not so easily fooled.
An important caveat.
Older people are often wiser and more likely to be able to think for themselves, especially those who have had a career in engineering and/or science. Just to be clear, engineering is applied science. while pure science doesn’t necessarily include the need to understand how to apply it.
“Just to be clear, engineering is applied science.” That reminds me that an architect friend told me that often in the ancient world- when an arch was being constructed and it was time to install the lintel at the top/middle- the architect who designed it was required to stand under it- if it was poorly designed, he’d be the first to know. I suspect engineers are also under pressure to get it right, whatever they’re working on – unlike “scientists” like Mickey Mann. He won’t suffer any consequences when his prophecies are proven wrong by thermometers – by then he’ll be enjoying his lucrative pension.
Science is not useful until you can apply it to something!
Maybe not useful, but often interesting– which is why I enjoy the frequent WUWT articles on astrophysics.
engineering is not applied science, science is explanations for engineering. We were
rubbing sticks together to make fire long before a scholar dreamed up a plausible explanation for why it worked
Leo,
The science and math describing whatever it is you’re engineering must always come first. Without this understanding, you waste time engineering garbage like perpetual motion machines called climate models. The science related to rubbing two stick together was the observation that friction causes heat and that was plausible enough.
Why are climate models perpetual motion machines you ask? It’s simple. For climate models to produce enough warming, they need to create energy out of thin air in order to replace the increased emissions from the exaggerated surface temperature increase. The requirement that all Joules from increased surface emissions recirculate indefinitely between the atmosphere and surface is the very definition of perpetual motion since the only identifiable origin of the work (Joules) required to recirculate all of this extra energy is the assumed power supply in the feedback model that doesn’t actually exist.
I am searching for a successful society governed by a council of youngers, ever, anywhere.
Any suggestions?
cheers
Mike
This is an outreach for redistributive change to viable (i.e. living) grannies, survivors of the progressive planned parent/hood pandemic fiasco (e.g. delayed/denied treatments, equitable and inclusive integration of active cases, social contagion).
I’m 73. My generation were able to go through education without being submitted to climate alarmism propaganda. On the other hand one of my grandsons is getting that right now. Incidentally I was a teacher and taught critical thinking. I don’t know I’d be allowed to now. Not on certain issues, anyway.
I’m old. I want to be warm.
Pragmatism trumps ideology.
Oh give me a break! I didn’t believe the Climate Catastrophe Religion back 20 years ago (when I was middle-aged) either. When my daughter came home from school with science graphs that “proved” torrid warming, I had a look and said “They erased the Medieval Warm Period. If so-called experts have to lie to scare you, they don’t have a case. Life lesson.” I’ve yet to see actual evidence backing up climate doom, but I’ve seen plenty to back the theory that totalitarianism, abject poverty, and depopulation is the actual goal here.
I was talking about my circle :-). The global cooling scare made a lot more sense than the global warming scare, and Nimoy or his producers did a good job of lining up scientists willing to go on air to add authenticity to the concerns. It’s a good documentary, well worth watching.
Thanks, Eric, but I don’t watch old (much less new) propaganda.
I actually still agree with a lot of what Nimoy’s documentary said, so it’s not a total piece of crud like “An Inconvenient Truth”. Nimoy got the timeframe wrong, that’s the biggest issue.
Leonard Nimoy was sort of the Bill Nye of the Boomer era without the bow tie and propaganda.
My youngest daughter is much smarter than I (IQ > 150) and she saw through the propaganda as early as grade school. You can’t imagine the times my wife and I were compelled to come into the administrative offices to ultimately learn “yeah, that teacher is pretty stupid.” When a 12 year old knows more about celestial dynamics than the science teacher, the U.S. is in deep dodo.
I would suggest pushing the liberal, progressive parties everywhere to advocate for surcharges on pensions, social security, and health insurance so we can all watch during elections. Don’t forget the burial taxes and impact fees. Go for it scumbags.
You’ll like the purple Kool aid also.
Preach the sermon on overpopulation to them first. That way they’ll know who they’re dealing with.
Yep.
(above) “5. Older people can be wealthy”
Aha! There’s the motivation; $$$$$$$$$$. It’s always been about the money. They didn’t even bother trying to hide it.
.
.
Can’t get any money out of the kids living in their parent’s basement. Fact is, you have to pay them to go protest, or at least hold out the possibility that they might get laid.
That kept me going in my teens.
Mobilise white old man ???
Worth to reflect about 😀
I’m so old – I remember the ‘population bomb’.
Now we have an existential societal crisis over failing global birth rates…
I helped make the ‘population bomb
Happy to assist in reversing the falling global birth rates (& without any blue pills), but I don’t do back seat of cars any more !!!
Thank you for your service! 😜
She and I were alone in the car at the drive-in theatre. We were getting on so well that I suggested, “Time to get into the back seat now?” Crestfallen look said “But Geoff, I want to stay in the front seat with you.”
Back seats these days are a lot more cramped than they used to be.
You missed one. Oldsters have grown children and grandchildren, whom they dearly want to succeed. They dislike watching them engaged in foolish and fruitless programs promoted by others in their own (old) age group. They want them to have health and a reasonable amount of wealth, and be free of oppression by those who would seek to control their every thought, word, and deed.
I remember in a 1970 physics class being told that at that time they weren’t sure if the earth would be warming or cooling as they weren’t sure if the earth was moving closer or farther away from the sun.
With age comes wisdom. The older people have been around and they aren’t stupid and naive like the brainwashed youth. They won’t be swayed by lies and half-truths.
Don’t f..k up with old people, your parasitic scoundrels!
These a-holes spend all their time denigrating and blaming old people for everything, climate, Trump, Brexit, war you name it, and Oh! now you want some money?
Go phuck yourselves!
Now that’s just wrong ……..
Except that it’s right. Go fcuk yourselves. Send your 52-week Paid Time Of request to AOC, c/o thetalkingchipmunk.com
I remember a time in 1970 when I was in grade 7 or 8 when the teachers herded all of us kids into the school gym to watch a movie that proclaimed: within 15 years the air would be too polluted to breathe and the water would be too polluted to drink. So, yeah, we oldsters have seen this “movie” before and we know how it ends.
I was about to say, we’ve heard it for 50 years and none of their dire predictions have come true yet. It’s become clear to us that they mean to dismantle Western Civilization by beating it with their hammers and sickles without considering that changes like that mean no more Internet, no more cellphones, and no more Frappuccinos.
If I can still have my avocado toast, I’ll come through it all just fine.
(Oh….. OK………. 😜)
“Dr. Fauci’s public backflips”
Well, that, and having paid the Chinese to invent the virus.
Shhhh. Don’t ever suggest that gain of function research is far more dangerous to the future of mankind than the earth’s ever changing temperatures.
Scientists. Some of them are the dumbest people in the room. And definitely the most dangerous.
ifly,
Do please make that specific to climate research.Good science was used to let you fly safely. Geoff S
I’m 86 and have lived here on and off for 50 years and damme if the vegetation has gotten lusher into that time and it ain’t just a wet spring.
“scientific authority” – a helpful rephrase for me in discussions with family or friends on the left..
I get frustrated when I hear someone say “I believe in science” or as Fauci said this week “...they are attacking science“.
I will try to make the point that what they are really saying is “I believe in scientific authority” or “they are attacking scientific authority (in this instance meaning attacking me, Dr. Fauci)”.
Making “authority” the subject may be more meaningful or fruitful.
(Attempting to argue that “science” in that context is a meaningless abstraction usually does not connect with a Progressive.)
The climate scam is of course socialism’s Trojan Horse poison pill for Western Democracies.
Socialism basically destroys every traditional institution it touches. Most long lasting institutions, like family, church, community, are bottom-up organized. Bottom-up organization makes them anti-fragile, to use Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s descriptor from his book by the same name. Socialism, like all forms of authoritarian state directed political systems, is a top-down directed political system of State directed economic activity over individual. They are poison to bottom up organized social structures.
As such socialism has infected and destroyed the professional science academies, in the US a process started by VP Al Gore in 1993, and continued by Obama’s anti-science Science Advisor John Holdren 2009-2016. Now Dementia Joe’s handlers have put Gavin Schmidt in charge of continuing the climate corruption of science. It will take a concerted, grass roots uprising among you get, disaffected scientists to perform an exorcism on the socialist science-body snatchers. The older scientists now are the Mannian corrupted generation rotten to the roots.
Does this include getting coerced climate statements from people on their deathbed? I would not put it past them.
If you make the wrong statement and you are really old, it’s because you are senile. That’s what they said about Maggie Thatcher when she changed her mind about global warming.
Trust.
Our level of trust in people changes as we get older.
Everyone one is different as they are shaped with different experiences, but in general, as a child our default is to trust someone and as an adult our default is to mistrust someone.
This explains part of the problem
https://youtu.be/qkXZ3_ZmKzw
This is plagiarism! I have written the exact same comments more than a few times on various websites, including posting the Youtube In Search Of clip.
In my youth, I completely bought into a coming ice age. And I remember just how freaking cold the 60s and 70s were. Over the years, I’ve observed the raw data (before it was butchered by multiple ‘adjustments’ done by bureaucrats who altered the data to fit global warming hypothesis) and determined that the earth warms and cools in multi decade cycles. It has been that way for a very, very long time. Unfortunately, those bureaucrats have successfully ‘smoothed out’ the earth’s cooling cycle that happened from the 1940s to the 1980s.
And there is the big lie that there was no scientific agreement about a coming ice age. They’ve rewritten history by sweeping those forecasts under the rug along with corrupting the raw data to fit their global warming thesis.
While I do not look forward to the natural variation of global cooling to take hold (we are in the best days of my life in terms of the earth’s weather), I do look forward to the feeling of schadenfreude I will experience when the warmunists run out of reasons why the earth has gone into a multidecade cooling cycle.
Maybe we all figured it out the same way 😉
Well, it is pretty obvious that we’re dealing with natural variations in weather and that man’s impact on weather is de minimis.
Sorry, that original post was meant to be humorous; a fail on my part.
Some say age is only a number. Others associate age with wisdom.
Nailed in 1
Alarmist don’t like historical facts or historical records
I have zero confidence in the predictions of severe climate change.
I like to flatter myself that I am the eldest oyster in the Walrus and the Carpenter: “”0 Oysters, come and walk with us!”
The Walrus did beseech. ….
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head—
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed. ” etc
We who are older do not engage in what we realise is a movement driven by fear mongering mumbo jumbo. We who are older recognise how the young are burdened by the propaganda that fills their lives. We who are older will resist the lies and deceits and hope our example will inspire those who are younger to think for themselves.
No, this is wrong. Leonard Nimoy played Mr Spock, not Dr Spock. (Dr Spock was actually a real person).
Because we are old and free of the traps of teenage cults we can not only recognise BS when it is fed us, but we can recognise a cult too, and Climate Changism has the hallmark of one.
Fat good? Fat bad? The native residents of Tierra del Fuego were so acclimated to what we mere mortals would consider foul, bad, cold weather that they sometimes slept outside buck nekkid. I was surprised when I read that. They were, in fact, carrying a layer of body fat that the rest of us do not have, which allowed them to survive quite well in an extremely harsh environment, a feature of their physiology that none of the rest of us have, except maybe Eskimos and other northern inhabitants like the reindeer herders of Yakutia. I was very surprised about this inherited trait that they had, but it made sense. Unfortunately, the last native Fuegian, a woman, died some time ago.
If it really goes blistering cold, most of us will be doomed unless we can find a way to acclimate ourselves to it. I have two good pairs of waterproof, insulated winter boots, plus plenty of thermal clothing, so I think I’m good to go, even if my ski jacket makes me look like a pink snowperson.
I’ll be 61 later this year and have 3 kids, and 2 grandkids (so far) and none of us spend any time worrying about the changing climate. The focus has always been, and will continue to be adaptation – on whatever curveballs are thrown our way. Obviously life is full of them.
Glass is always half full with me and my clan.
You can’t get much older than me, 75. I will say this and I believe it to be true, my high school education in the 60’s was just as good as the average college education is today. My nephew who just graduated from college knows nothing about geography, history, english, literature and even simple math escapes him without a calculator. He has no practical experience with auto mechanics, carpentry, plumbing or electricity. I know all of those things and more. I’ve had time to sift through the ideas that don’t work and stay with those that do.
I will admit that at this age I have lots of time to read and learn about how the world is going today and I don’t like it. People hating others because they don’t support the same guy for President? Check. People fearing for their lives from some pathetic disease? Check. People putting a guy in the White House who has dementia and has caused my life to be harder? Check. Web sites shutting down ideas they don’t like? Check. All the science-fiction novels I read as a kid are coming true, at least the ones that predicted fascistic states. And the US isn’t as bad as Canada where if you leave the country you must then quarantine for two weeks upon return.
And since I read the articles on Watts Up With That every day it is going to be very hard to convince me the world is burning up. I also remember the 70’s when they told us we must sprinkle coal dust on the north and south poles to melt the ice faster due to the coming ice age. But at least back then nobody believed them. Today they do. Actually I don’t know many people who think about this much, way to many other things more pressing.
That’s my thought for the day. I want to follow the science but when it has shown to be just another bunch of money-grubbing hucksters it is very hard.
So why are old people so disengaged?
You pretty well summed it up. We’ve seen enough to know there’s really nothing new going on, and the screaming hysterics about “worst storm season ever” and the like is just that: hysterics.
An education while giving more to work with does not necessarily guarantee good judgement. And age does not guarantee good judgement if they have learned nothing along the way.
Older people, at least some, have invested a lot into retirement and do not want to see that destroyed since there is little opportunity to recover.
Endless promises and predictions mean little when it does not happen or is damaging contributes to a conservative view in older people. That can happen to younger people it their interests are at risk.
‘Whatever it is, age is a factor in climate progress, and 2021’s renewed climate momentum must mobilise the oft-overlooked elderly demographic.”
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In the linked website below, there is a rather lengthy list of characteristics to look for when determining whether a given organization or group can be classified as a cult.
http://cultresearch.org/help/characteristics-associated-with-cults
One of the characteristics in the list that seems to apply to the subject of this WUWT posting is the following….
‘The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.”
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Whether mobilizing new members is a “preoccupation” in the climatic alarmist movement is probably debatable, but it is probably safe to say that it is at least a concern or issue among the believers. Let’s say that it applies on a modest scale or level.
In my lifetime, I’ve seen three cults come and go: Jonestown, the Branch Davidians of Waco and Heaven’s Gate in the San Diego area. All three end in the deaths of the entire cult (save for those who left before the end). Watching everything that happens in life as you live your life is one of the ways in which wisdom comes with age. You learn from the ignorance of others.
I have also learned from my own stupid mistakes over time (yes, I readily admit to it).
Older people aren’t particularly engaged with any of the climate hysteria theories because they’ve heard variations of this brand of BS for typically a half-century or longer, and they know that subscribing to them will inevitability lead to higher taxes and more restrictions. Then they’ll find that in the end they’ve made no difference, so they’re happy to let the naive and over-idealistic younger population embrace the hogwash.
As an older person who has modelled complex systems, I’m calling total BS on the climate change movement.
Eric, it’s maybe clever from the guardian to concentrate on seniors; After all, many of the young generations are already registered by the police for identification purposes and no longer welcomed outside the terminals and frolicking onto the streets. Kinda Xtinctioned.
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Compare Kamala Harris https://www.google.com/search?q=Kamela+Harris+unaccompanied+minors&oq=Kamela+Harris+unaccompanied+minors+&aqs=chrome.