Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach [note update at the end]
According to the UN’s MyWorld poll of seven million people in 194 countries, out of the sixteen possibilities climate action came out … wait for it … dead last.
In general, the only people who thought it was important were the perpetually offended white wokerati with pronouns …
Why is it that rational folks around the planet put the priority of climate action so low? Well, first off, there are serious issues out there that affect us today—affordable food, jobs, healthcare, reliable energy for farmers and householders, real stuff, not a bunch of climate blowhards screaming that the sky is falling.
And the second reason is, folks know in their heart of hearts that science is all about making falsifiable predictions … and in that regard, climate science is a dumpster fire.
So I thought I’d take a look at what climate scientists, and those who believe climate scientists, and governments, and the UN, have predicted about the future. We’ll start with this classic:
Yeah, right, that hasn’t aged well … here’s another classic from the UN. They predicted 50 million climate refugees by 2010 … and when the real number was, well, zero, they tried to cover it up.
So to cut to the chase, here without comment and in no particular order are predictions from various climatastrophists:
Shot from Al Gore, 2006:
Chaser from Al Gore, 2018:
And finally, my personal favorite because it’s so much more precise than the others … 7 years, 98 days, 15 hours to save the planet.
Given that, only someone with pronouns could continue to think that these folks are serious. So why do the scientists involved continue to flog this dead horse?
The answer was given by Upton Sinclair, who said:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!
Yep. The answer is money. And it’s not just the scientists, the UN, and the media who have been seduced by it. The cartoonist Josh has looked at the end series of UN “COP” get-togethers, with the upcoming one being COP26 … I figure COP stands for “Corrupt Oligarchs’ Party”, but hey, that’s just me. In any case, Josh has seen to the heart of the matter.
And those, dear friends, are among the many reasons that the world, or at least the sane portion thereof, puts climate action at the very bottom of their priority list.
My best to all, I’m gonna go outdoors and enjoy the climate on a lovely autumn day,
w.
PS—Please don’t bother pointing out that these are not all scientists. If influential lay people make colossal bogus scientific misstatements, it’s up to the scientists to not stay quiet. Silence in that case is not golden. It is support for scientific malfeasance.
UPDATE—A Looney Old Lady (her screen name) on Twitter pointed this out to me, too good to leave out:
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G’Day Willis,
“… and enjoy the climate on a lovely autumn day.”
Make the most of it mate, the Old Farmers Almanac is predicting a chilly winter for most of North America.
I dont know about anyone else, but from my perspective here in Australia, I have never seen so much attention focused around global climate alarmism…the business sections in the best paper in Australia are chock full of it as companies announce plans to mitigate carbon…the political stories are full of it and then you have the opinion writers who are also full of it ( in more ways than one)…abuse is rife in the comments sections if you don’t agree or point out scientific facts…the energy companies are full of renewable talk…..quite frankly… it is bloody depressing… I thought the truth would always win through ( eventually), but it appears not.
Perhaps it’s due to your corporate news being worthless.
Net-zero is manor from heaven for the Australian economy. A net-zero economy will be of the order of 200 times more material intensive than the current one. That is why it creates so many jobs.
Australia is at the forefront of the supply chain for all the commodities that will be converted to useless junk in the vain hope of extracting useful energy from the weather.
The Mining Council in Australia now employs professional greens to lobby for their cause. BHP tells us it takes 3 tonne of copper for every wind generator and far more steel and concrete. And it ALL does nothing when needed most. So all existing dispatchable plant has to be retained or replaced with newer versions but left idle more often.
ScoMo is under a lot of pressure from the business council to get on board this mammoth resource waster. Get in before the world wakes up that it is unsustainable.
COP26 could be the one where nuclear gets traction. That will be the lesser attractive option than random energy but still a resource hungry transition good for Australian commodities.
My wife and I were sitting on the front porch a couple of days ago enjoying a gorgeous sunny fall afternoon. The sky was blue, the grass was green, the trees were beginning to turn their fall colors. Then I had a horrible realization; Climate Change is causing beautiful weather! Oh No! We’re all gonna die! /sarc
Willis, you forgot Ted Danson’s 10 year doomsday clock from 1988 that Rush Limbaugh used to have fun updating and ridiculing, … until it ran out.
COP26 is going to be remembered as the moment the global warming scam fell apart.
The farce is strong already with this one.
That was published 7 years ago. Be interesting to see what climate propaganda has achieved since then – if anything.
Willis,
We can thank the late British engineer John Bignell for numberwatch.co.uk and ‘The List’ which collects all the 700 plus catastrophic predictions about global warming (many conflicting) some of which are discussed here.
For further amusement see extinctionclock.com showing many failed predictions since 1970.
As far as I can see, out of the ten biblical plagues of Egypt inflicted on the Pharoah, only the Thames(insert your local river)turning red with blood and the Angel of the Lord slaying First Born male children are missing from present threats.
As Mark Twain remarked, “sometimes I wonder whether the world is run by smart people who are having us on or by imbeciles who really mean it”.
Willis,
I forgot to mention.The slogan for Glasgow is “One point five to stay alive”(!).
Nothing has changed since Mark Twain’s time.
well holdren n ehrlich ruined my teens and ongoing with iceage scares
then they magically swapped fears to heat
and Im over 60 and nothings changed much at all
I could cheerfully kick them all to hell
“50 Million Climate Refugees” … Is Political Climate caused by bombing the 3rd world countries is close enough?
Edit feature is a bit funky. Meant to delete, “countries is” To read, “… bombing the third world close enough?”
here’s another rant by Willy McKibben: “Why the World’s Rich Nations Must Pay for Climate Damage”
“Damage from increasingly extreme weather events is falling especially hard on developing countries, even though they have done the least to contribute to climate change. At the upcoming UN climate talks, rich nations must begin to compensate them for their mounting losses.”
https://e360.yale.edu/features/for-climate-equity-developing-nations-must-be-paid-for-damages
I used to comment on articles like this but I decided that there is no point anymore as the terminally stupid remain so. The climate will continue as it has for millions of years.
Willis,
not meaning to nitpick or fully contradict you.
But when it comes to false predictions as stated by you, the main clause of scientific falsification is not quite valid.
The main point or clauses of falsification stand in the proposition of a condition that supposes not to happen as per/within a given premise, but in contrary if it does, it renders the premise falsified.
The false predictions more to do with the Null hypothesis.
What supposedly has to happen, under a given premise.
The conditions of false predictions, Technically has more to do with reducing the value, or refusing to add value, to a given premise
(hypothesis, theory, theorem etc.).
🙂
cheers
Willis,
You ignoring, me, or you ignoring your main stand, as far as I can tell!
🙃
cheers
Whiten, I fear I couldn’t make sense of your comment, so I left it alone … for example:
I have no clue what that means.
w.
I will refer to a quote from one of our modern sages, Yogi Berra:
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
It is so comforting to see the scientific consensus in action.
Among those predictions there are some which have been proved wrong because the deadline has been passed and others where the deadline has yet to be reached. For example James Lovelock said that global warming would hit the fan in 2028. Well, he might be wrong but we have to wait another seven years to prove him wrong.
No further waiting is necessary. According to Joe Biden and his “climate czar” John Kerry,
global warmingclimate change has already “hit the fan” big time.Or, in the famous words of H.L. Mencken:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all to them imaginary.”
Alba,
not sure how this may help;
But Tropical warming, the Tropical hot spot, hit the fan more than two decades ago, and already perished by now.
🙂🤓
cheers
Someone pointed this one out to me on Twitter, so I’ve added it to the head post.
w.
Willis,
I bet that you do not actually know the very base premise of AGW, as per the scripture of anthropogenic climate.
The accelerative warming of cryosphere.
So, that is why so much push and shoveling towards ice melting and sea level rise… the last standing straw for the holding of anthropogenic climate hypothesis.
A clear signature of cooling of cryosphere will falsify the AGW.
simple as that… the main last fight to day…
The “base premise of AGW”?
The “last standing straw”?
I suppose you could be more cryptic. Just not sure how.
The Arctic ice melt is barely outside the post-1979 norm, and that was a cold time. It’s been much warmer in the past.
And that hasn’t changed the AGW hysteria at all. The Arctic could freeze solid, it wouldn’t make any difference.
You seem to think that the climate alarmism is all based on facts. It’s not. It’s based on a) money, b) politics, and c) feelz. None of which will be changed by anything the cryosphere does.
w.
I am talking about science, not feelings or presumptions of one or another.
As per standing of climate science there is two falsification clauses, conditions that supposed not to happen, as else the anthropogenic climate science stands falsified;
1- The main one- Departure-decoupling of CO2 concentration trend from the temperature trend or the warming trend.- (the falsification). (the falsification for CC hypothesis)
2- Clear signature or clear signal of cryosphere cooling.
(the falsification of AGW hypothesis).
Yes, true, no body is listening yet, as still hanging on/at the point that AGW hypothesis is not falsified yet.
(Regardless/ignoring the fact, that falsification of CC actually stands as falsification of the whole)
The main point of argument I was having.
As per IPCC AR4.
(The part of the anthropogenic climate science scripture, defining the hypothesis and the corresponding clauses of falsification.)
cheers
whiten,
The cryosphere is, by definition, the part of the earth’s surface characterized by the presence of frozen water.
Most people know that when ice (“frozen water”) melts, or changes from solid ice to liquid water, it does so at a constant temperature of 0 °C (32 °F) even as it absorbs a significant amount of thermal energy.
Therefore, your phrase “accelerative warming of cryosphere” makes absolutely no sense when used in conjunction with ice melting and sea level rise.
“Please don’t bother pointing out that these are not all scientists. ”
None is a direct quote from a scientist, these are more like examples of the sub-editors art. In fact the number of predictions here from the IPCC or the literature is zero. Take the Hansen quote: President ‘has four years to save Earth’. It is not actually a quote as we normally understand the term. If you click through and read the full interview Hansen never uses those words, the closest he comes is:
We cannot now afford to put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead.
If the point of the piece is the poor state of science journalism – well, no argument here. But if it is an attempt to prove climate science as a discipline is alarmist.
Fail.
John, AS I SAID, AFAIK not one scientist has spoken out against what you call the “poor state of climate journalism”.
To use your example, if James Hansen thought he was misquoted, he has an obligation to set the record straight.
But he didn’t. He said nothing even remotely resembling that.
Nor did any of the other climate scientists that you are now claiming were somehow misquoted by the baaad media. They didn’t say one word to counter the media alarmism.
Which indeed does prove that climate science as a discipline is alarmist.
The only “fail” here is your abject failure to hold scientists accountable for allowing the alarmism to go on in their names.
w.
That’s precise, not accurate.
True. Fixed.
w.
Humans need a cause to fight over
The suffragettes had a valid cause for women voting
The anti nuclear people also had valid cause to limit Nuclear weapons but not nuclear power
now the current generation who have everything so they want to rebel against the world but unfortunately they don’t understand we are living in the best time of human history
If they get their way we will see mass human extinction due to starvation and death from cold not heat
I hope that the idiots learn while we have time to turn back to a sensible energy system
Don’t forget the warnings of Dr. James Hansen!
Not long after this prediction, at the 10 year anniversary when it was obvious the water wasn’t rising, alarmists put on a full court press where they claimed Hansen was really predicting out 30 years, not 20 years.
At the 20 year anniversary, they again insisted Hansen was really predicting much further into the future. They even got the author of the magazine article to state that Hansen was really answering about 30 years into the future.
That 30th year anniversary passed in 1988.
Hansen in his paper, “Global climate changes as forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies three-dimensional model; ‘J. Hansen,I. Fung,A. Lacis,D. Rind,S. Lebedeff,R. Ruedy,G. Russell,P. Stone‘
Where Hansen made much of 95°F degree days. Another doom prediction that utterly failed.
Washington DC is supposed to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 25.5 95°F days per year.
Hasn’t happened. We were quite skint of 95°F days this year. Nor were they all that abundant over the last decade.
£1000000 each for the five winning projects to save the Earth https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58948339
I believe this to be true, but I have a “but”. Looking at the My World chart, I see that just about everything above the “Action taken on climate change” line is available to most people in the first world. With notable exceptions, education, jobs, healthcare, clean water, internet access, etc. are not in short supply. Whether you’re a tenured bureaucrat or a skilled tradesman, life is looking OK. Everyone else has higher priorities.
World to Climate Scientists: F-U
I’m confused.
So many deadlines dead in the water.
When can we start to “Eat, Drink and be Merry for tomorrow we die”?
Climate catastrophe and fusion energy: they’ve been 20 years away for the last 4 decades