Guest essay by Eric Worrall
With climate skepticism soaring, and what could be the opening moves of WW3 distracting public attention, climate worriers are in despair about how to regain public attention.
Climate change’s attention deficit disorder
By Joel Makower
March 7, 2022Remember climate change?
It’s not an entirely facetious question. With a brutal war and humanitarian crisis raging in Eastern Europe, a resulting global energy crisis, a quickly unfolding food crisis, a shaky global economy, raging inflation — oh, and a still-rampaging pandemic, with all its health and mental health impacts — it’s been not-so-easy to keep the climate crisis top of mind.
Did I mention that there’s increasing talk about World War III?
…
Folks are exhausted. I’m exhausted simply writing the previous three paragraphs.
…
But skepticism is growing, too, she said. “Twenty percent believe it’s just not real, not happening and not caused by man. We haven’t seen a 20 percent number since about 2008 or 2009. I mean, it’s just unbelievable.”
…
It’s not that Americans have turned away from environmental issues. According to Shelton, 90 percent believe plastic trash is contaminating waterways and oceans more than ever before, up from 77 percent in 2020. “We’re super worried about plastics in the ocean. We’re not so worried about climate change.“
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Read more: https://www.greenbiz.com/article/climate-changes-attention-deficit-disorder
Marc Morano predicted in 2010 that plastics could be the next fake crisis. Given plastic is in pretty much everything, a deluge of new over the top plastic regulations has every bit as much potential to mess up our quality of life as climate scare carbon pricing.
But it is good to see yet more evidence the fake climate scare seems to be on the way out.
I believe there will always be another hobgoblin, there is no standing still when it comes to debunking nonsense. Millions of years of being everyone’s lunch has geared our brains to assume the worst, made it way too easy for some people to believe the unbelievable. But evolution has also given us brains, logic, reason, and the internet – the tools we need to ridicule empty scare stories like the climate crisis or the plastic crisis, and hopefully keep purveyors of such myths from doing too much harm in the future.
Top points if anyone remembers who the person in the photo at the top of the page is.
When your poster child has high functioning autism, you have a problem with your judgement.
When your poster child has the science education of a high school drop-out, you have an even bigger problem!
Leave John Kerry out of this.
I wonder if autism is not sometimes an excuse by parents to cover for their failure to discipline their spoilt brats. This gives a bad name to real problems children may experience and hampers giving them appropriate help. It is misleadling to label behavioral problems as somehow being sick in the mind and believe the right medication can resolve this.
I am slightly wondering if autism et al is being selected by many of the victims themselves as not only a reason to be ‘different’ but also a proud badge that allows them excuses from normal life.
Let us be honest, we all want our place in the world and like to feel that we belong… but only as far as we belong in one of the more ‘interesting’ sub groups.
It is a bit like all the ‘Past Lives’ people, who always seem to be minor royalty and never a simple farmer who died at age 36 after the oxen kicked him.
I remember an online writer’s forum I used to be active on. The admins structured the ‘help forums’ so that people could declare if they were ‘experts’ on anything so that budding authors could message them directly if they had questions related to their current writing project.
I believe the intend was that the forum would be filled with scores of people who had engineering experience, tour guide operators in Alaska, medical professionals, ex military (cause people wanting to write action adventure stories tend to have no idea how guns work), people with pilot’s licenses and things like that.
Nope. Okay there were a handful to offered their professional life skills up, but the vast majority were people who were saying ‘Hi! I am mentally ill!!! Message me if you want to know what it is like to live with [insert name of some condition you have never heard of]’.
I don’t know, maybe the current treatment is to encourage people to talk about their condition, but it also might be that these people are openly proud of being different and wear it as a badge.
Personally I am phonetically deaf. It is a recognised learning disability where a lot of the subtle differences in speech – ph vs th vs f for example – are completely lost and the standard process of ‘sound the word out’ when spelling a new word simply doesn’t work.
I spell because I remember what words should look like on a page and I sometimes find when reading that I process collections of letters not as a sound that means a word, but as a concept and especially so if I have never heard the word spoken before.
Frankly it made my younger schooling years tear filled hell as I simply couldn’t pass spelling tests and is still very annoying in my day to day life. I am not ashamed about it, but I sure as drokk do not brag about it either.
It does seem to me that there is a sub class of people actively trying to find a justification for their lack of success in life and then proudly using it to avoid responsibility.
Strange times.
Thick Middle-class kids are classed as autistic. Thick Working-class kids are merely thick.
Craig
Thanks for sharing your insights. As a language teacher I found there are surprisingly simple ways to help pupils compensate and overcome difficulties but teachers often seem unaware of these. Some specialist is needed who ends up giving very little or no help. It just makes politicians glad that they can boast about pouring in resources for these specialists.
It seems that autism, ADD and hyperactivity are modern “diseases” that appeared in the late 20th century. I cannot recall them being around in the fifties and sixties. How on earth did children survive school? Today all these disparate problems are lumped together under the designation “mental health.” A young teen in one of my classes had a dreadful stutter. I got him to scan ahead, group words and phrases, then read slowly. He became a good reader.
A final comment about this that is relevant to the climate alarm issue. Patterns play a key role in undertanding our world. They do in Math, in Science, in Language and more. From our earliest years we subconsiously make connections and draw conclusions. Sometimes they are correct but if not we learn. When a child and even adult does not make this connection subconsiously that person can be helped to do so consciously. Over time it may become as subconscious as driving a car. Recognizing patterns in nature and in weather undermines alarmist climate conclusions.
Just to make an implication explicit and a spelling correction:
From our earliest years we subconsciously make connections (between patterns and meaning) and draw conclusions.
Michael, well done. In my career I taught adults how to do many things both technical and mechanical and lately children in a sport and adults in dancing. Many teachers dont teach today but simply recite a preset program. No person learns the same as another and until that gets understood (again; we used to know this ) our children will continue to be less than they can be. Yes, Patterns; I intuitively understood this, but did not realize the concept till now.
Regards, Doug
I don’t know if it is still the case, but at one time schools were given extra funds to take care of kids who had certain diagnosis. Autism being one of them. The schools had a lot of incentive to send kids to doctors who would classify everyone sent to them as having one of those conditions.
Dumburgh I think.
“Top points if anyone remembers who the person in the photo at the top of the page is.”
The Red Queen?
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head!*
*but only with sustainably grown foods harvested in a purely organic, non-CO2 producing manner.
I was thinking maybe an adolescent Nancy Pelosi.
Weather potato.
Not sure.. but the photo looks like her finger went through the toilet paper
Laughing Out Loud!
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The Manchurian Candidate’s wife…
Not sure but there seems to be something wrong with her right eye in the picture.
Maybe that’s why she can’t focus on reality?
(Or maybe that’s the special one that lets her “see” CO2?)
Yes, she’s right. The climate crisis is unbelievable.
Truly incredible.
“ I mean, it’s just unbelievable.”
She’s right it is unbelievable.
Please re-phrase;-
“It’s right, she is unbelievable!”.
Isn’t brain-washing a child with a learning difficulty with left-wing mantra & propaganda, considered to be child-abuse???
Didn’t she play the character of ‘Tiffany’ in “Bride of Chucky?”
Isn’t that the girl who had her hair sniffed by Biden?
That doesn’t narrow it down much.
A young Jen Psaki?
Nawww… Our Greta is a lot smarter than ‘Circle Back Psaki.’
OTOH, there are snails that have a better chance of qualifying for Mensa than either of those two,
Creepy or what???
20% what a great piece of news in these troubled times. I must have missed the poll. No doubt it was quickly hidden away by our great conveyor of climate fiction the MSM.
“Climate Change” may have moved down the World Series Project Fear League, but the league overall is thriving. As George Orwell wrote in “1984”, we have always been at war with …, and the telescreens on every wall are now pumping out a continuous diet of propaganda.
In the original Matrix movie, Agent Smith tells Neo about the first iteration of the Matrix. “It was so perfect, people rejected the Matrix” (paraphrased).
I think this just describes people so well. We evolved to look over our shoulders for danger. The instinct is there, but for most people, the danger is not. Some people just have to invent danger instead of being happy. I think that’s what’s going on with so many people today.
Some people also need to be part of a “great struggle” to give meaning to their lives, but that’s a different post.
Very astute, jeffery p.
I’d not run across that viewpoint before, but it clearly fits a lot of people.
Amazing what happens when an imaginary climate crisis where nothing predicted happened for 30 years meets real crises of Ukraine invasion, resulting wheat scarcity, fuel and food inflation, and the realization that GND renewables are just ruinables. Gonna be a lot of cognitive dissonance.
The other thing that hasn’t happened in 30 years is the IPCC arriving at a useful metric for their much-vaunted ECS.
I mean, 1.5C to 4.5C?
How “sciency”.
In a year or two Kerry will claim those leaving Ukraine are “Climate Refuges”.
This just in — Biden announces ban on US imports of Russian oil, warns gas prices will ‘go up further’
It’s a step in the right direction, at least morally. Ok, it’s a political move motivated by polling. Still, the right thing to do, no matter the reason.
But what comes next? Keep pushing “green” as the solution or face reality and take the boot off the next of the American energy industry? I think it’s still a climate fantasy vs climate reality fight ahead. The issue may not be addressed until after the midterm elections this fall and it won’t be settled without veto-proof majorities in both houses.
I still say step one is to increase the drawdawn of the SPR to 100Mbbls. Why else have it? The purpose is to help make up for the Russian oil no longer being imported. It isn’t a long-term solution for the anti-fossil fuel policies of the Biden administration, nor is it meant to be.
It is deemed the STRATEGIC Petroleum Reserve. To me, that means vital, large-scale military action. However, war by other means (crippling economic sanctions) could be acceptable usage?
Crude oil prices actually went UP while the Biden administration announced and then distributed the first 50 million bbl release. (Granted there are always a multitude of geopolitical events effecting the price of oil.)
I think the oil price “influencing” value of the SPR is like the Sword of Damocles. It is only dangerous while it is still dangling above you. If the U.S. released all of the crude oil, I think long term crude prices WOULD GO UP!
drawing down the spr with out a means to replenish is suicidal.
Would putting a temporary ban on oil exports be a short-term fix? Or is it the wrong type of oil?
Capitalist free market oil is always bad
Socialist oil has no emissions
Hence the diplomatic opening to Venezuela
When or if will it actually happen?
Is she Karen?
She is the mother of all CAGW Karens!
(Which is actually an impressive feat for a teenager. What kind of movement takes a “know nothing” as their leader?)
A “Do nothing” organization?
The toilet has to be flushed twice due to the low flow water toilets. The price of the ride to work has doubled due to the under production of oil induced by the ESG enviro crowds and virtue signallers. The plastic spoons and cups, all ending up in a local landfill which will be made into a mini ski hill when full, have disappeared at work because of these losers. who want to “change the world”. These same people can’t manage their own cheque books. Now maybe these empty souls can volunteer front line combat in the Ukraine. That would really change the world to the better.
As a taxpayer had to remind our local municipal city council about their “climate crisis / zero emissions” declarations –
In the City of Eugene Oregon, they purchased an electric street sweeper ($570,000).
One story is here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/city-of-eugene-buys-570k-electric-street-sweeper/ar-AARmlzu
Another story is quoted as:
“Eugene’s Public Works Department previously used 7 diesel-powered street sweepers to sweep more than 40,000 curb miles of streets each year.
Johnson continued, “When one of the diesel sweepers requires repairs, it may be out-of-commission because of emission system malfunctions. This downtime can range from one day to a month depending on the issue and need to receive the new parts. The all-electric sweeper is expected to have a substantially smaller repair time.”
They run (ran) the sweeper in the hills (to impress the rich/dems and because it is quieter). One of the hills was too steep for the power of the sweeper (or maybe the batteries failed); the operator decided to back down the hill; backing an over sized heavy, under-powered, under-braked, electric vehicle down the steep street was a bad idea. He lost it, hit the curb at a bad angle, went over sideways, bonked his head and was knocked out. An uphill neighbor ran to help as his wife called for help; neighbor couldn’t get him out & couldn’t break the windows (he did not recognize the sweeper as electric & was trying to get him out before a potential fire). The fire department did show, and pulled off the windshield, and got him out. The fire department did recognize the sweeper as being electric. I wish I could have been around to see the tow truck & removal of the sweeper.
Story about the mishap is here:
(media in Eugene, and elsewhere, is pretty on-sided).
I haven’t checked further to see what the actual failure was.
Design!
I once told a co-worker: “One of Darryel’s tech guys is coming in this week sometime, and Daryl (contracted IT guy) wants you to put up a reminder sticky on the side of your screen letting him know that you have a ‘potential I.D. 10T operator issue’ on your computer.”
IDI0t operator
problem on
this computer.
The note was scrawled and stuck to the monitor … it stayed there for the week.
There is always the possibility of operator error.
Back when I was a roving IT guy there was many a job sheet I’d fill out by scrawling PICNIC over the fault description area.
Problem In Chair Not In Computer.
Happy daze!
The actual failure was caused by having only a one Unicorn-power motor.
(That or reality trumps Green dreams.)
Referring to Petey B?
Pot holes in South Bend were a challenge.
Well, if no one can afford to drive their cars because the (policy-induced artificially) high cost of gas, then no one will notice the pot holes!
(That was “Green-Think”. Now I have a headache.)
The cause de your and the Big Worry is: will there be a MLB season this year?? ⚾️🥶
Here’s the false usage of climate change polling data: asking if climate change is real is one topic, asking if the change is Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is something else. I don’t know anybody that doesn’t think the climate changes, little alone any scientist that agrees with that. The pollsters conflate the question and leave out the “Catastrophic Anthropogenic” part, which is push-polling for a predetermined result. The person is the Doom Princess, send me my points, please.
Winner, winner!
As a contest winner, Anthony will extend your WUWT platinum membership for one additional year of free access to the informative and educational WUWT website!
All push polling
Any idiot except Griff knows you can form any question to get the answer you want
Same as a statistician can prove anything you want from the numbers
Damned lies etc
30 days of crisis in and around Ukraine is turning 30 years of the catastrophic climate change into biggest science fiasco since primates started talking. .
Only some. The intelligent primates gave it up as a bad job and went back into the trees.
The idiot primates are still throwing their feces and buying into every CAGW premise with no proof required.
Does IPCC stand for Idiot Primate Caca Chuckers?
Only 20% aligned with climate reality? We have a lot of work to do. Anyone still shrieking about the fake climate scare while Ukraine is vandalized and the cost of energy skyrockets is actively participating in the destabilization of modern society, the victimization of the most vulnerable and the destruction of the natural environment. There is no excuse. We must remember all who took us to this cliff and make sure we are not taken in again, assuming we can find our way back to reality.
don’t count on it
She has Vladimir Putin’s eyes. Early signs of a manipulative psycho. Maybe hios daughter
“It’s not an entirely facetious question.”
Made me smile though – considering current circumstances.
‘With climate skepticism soaring..’
Really it isn’t. Every European country is doubling down on renewables, temporary measures are just that.
And low information gits like you feel that killing pensioners is a good thing to ‘save the planet’. You’re a bad joke.
U.S. wheat futures hit $12 on Friday.
Actual poor people are going to starve and die due to “advanced” countries doubling down on renewables, rather than ensuring stable supplies of critical fossil fuels.
Yes the poor of the world are about to see life get a lot harder. There will be unprecedented calls for foreign aide and less likelyhood that developed nations will rise to meet the challenge.
And the new renewables will be manufactured as soon as there is an adequate supply of fossil fuels to run the factories.
Hi Griffo
Second golden age for North Sea oil cometh !What do you suggest we could do with all those soon obsolite offshore ‘birds shredders‘ ?
Vuk, wish that were true. Alas, the North Sea basin conventional oil was about 70% depleted back in 2010. I published that data in the oil chapter of Gaia’s Limits back in 2012. And the hyperbolic creaming curve for the basin agreed then that less than 10% more will ever be discovered there. The creaming curve for North Sea is explained and provided later in the same chapter. (Book took almost 3 years to research and write. Hardest and most complicated was the food chapter. Water chapter was the easiest once I understood the UN deception about ‘available water’ agricultural impact.)
Good to get a laugh from you again Griff. i thought you may have gone to fight for Ukraine or got Covid!
Read between the lines Griff, they are saying they are temporary measures. Nd full speed on renewables but what else would they say.
Got to let the brainwashed down easily.
That’s you, in case you are curious?
First where are they going to fit all these extra bird choppers 🙂
Second we warned you about energy security and you thought it was a joke but you are looking pretty stupid about now. All the money spent on HVDC interconnectors which was your great plan is about as washed up as the gas pipelines from Russia.
The problem with you greentards is you think the world is a nice happy place and everyone will sit around and sing Kumbaya together on some universal human rights manifesto …. lessons are given out the hard way at the end of weapons.
Griff is starting to sound desperate…
The Germans have just halted the demolition of the Vattenfal Moorland power station in Hamburg, a 1600MW coal fired plant. It turns out to be urgently needed to keep the lights on.
But if your “renewables” are so marvellous, surely we don’t need any gas?
Oh, hang on…
griff:
I ask again (for the third time):
I look forward to your response.
All plastics are non toxic. You can eat them and absolutely nothing happens. That’s why food is packaged in plastic and your toothbrush is 100% plastic.
But never fear. Japanese scientists have found bacteria that digests plastic. So it’s really just another food source for the biosphere.
Another non problem brought to you by those who profit by promoting hysteria.
What happens if the bacteria escapes the lab and get out into the wild. Can we expect all of our machines to suddenly collapse into a pile of bacteria excrement like the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay?
They are in the wild already, where do you think they evolved? All of the oil seeps in the ocean are an all-you-can-eat-buffet for these bacteria who also digest plastic. Fish chew up the big plastic chunks into small chunks and then the bacteria break those small chunks down and eat them – it’s a pretty efficient system really.
Sounds like the end of The Andromeda Strain
She uses the word “we” a lot, as in “”I don’t think you’re ever going to get the American public to believe it’s urgent and to do something different. We’re going to have to change the system for them.”
We are not amused.
Greta will be performing at the Kennedy Center while Ukrainians run from artillery barrages.
Reading some of the linked articles at Greenbiz in this post, the author Joel Makower pursues the ideal of “changing systems, not climate”. (as Greta demands).
He also openly expresses his lack of understanding of how business systems work.
(This despite his career in advising businesses about “sustainability” for the last 30 years).
I could explain it to Joel in very basic concepts –
Makes you wonder if the whole Ukraine war was designed at least in part to make fossil fuels expensive and limit their supply to accomplish what taxes and regulations would do without politicians having to pass them and bear the political costs.
“The whole Ukraine war was designed at least in part to make fossil fuels expensive and limit their supply”
I’m sure this is exactly what Putin had in mind when he invaded Crimea in 2014. /sarc
But if so, it’s backfired, as it’s now politically correct to say we need to increase the US production of FF as a national security matter. Lots of people have thought that all along,but couldn’t say it for fear of the cancel culture. Now I’m hearing it over and over.
It has to be much higher than 20%. If 80% of people believed we were on the verge of catastrophe, don’t you think far more people would be seriously changing their lifestyles to reduce their personal carbon footprint? I just don’t see it happening. All the alarmists I work with have massive carbon footprints. If they truly thought it was existential, you would think they’d act accordingly. My thought is “alarmism” is just their “MAGA” hat. That or they’re waiting for someone else to go first or for government mandates. But why wait if it truly is existential?
Every Green that I know personally has an enormous carbon footprint. They think that any restrictions which are required to cut the world’s carbon dioxide emissions don’t apply to them. They are the chosen few who will tell everybody else what they can do.
I believe that’s Queen Victoria!
That’s Greta Garbo there, right?
A scared population is a controlled population.
Jane Fonda?
I am going to guess the picture is of the Canadian Prime Minister and was taken at one of his numerous wacky crazy fancy dress parties on the rare occasion he couldn’t find any face paint.
–
–
–
I give up. I’m drawing a blank. Lead singer in a girl band?
The pic is of the delinquent teenager who was mistaken for the world’s top climate expert.
“evolution has also given us brains, logic, reason, and the internet”
Wow! I don’t think that even Darwin could have envisaged evolution giving us all those things. But, if we are just a mass of cells which have evolved over time, where does the logic and reason come into it? And if we are just a mass of cells, how do we know that the conclusions we reach are reasonable and logical? If our thought processes are just the result of the activity of brain cells, how can we tell if what the brain tells us is logical or reasonable?
Its the Scandinavian goblin of doom!!
James Delingpole calls her the Doom Pixie.
The person in that photo is Great Thor, god of little raffia work things.