Oh No – The Guardian is too Climate Alarmist even for Michael Mann

h/t Dr. Willie Soon; WUWT recently covered a Guardian claim that “total climate meltdown cannot be stopped“. It turns out this claim is too pessimistic, even for climate scientist Michael Mann.

Bill McGuire, the scientist quoted by the original Guardian article, seems to feel his words were misinterpreted.

The Guardian quoted McGuire as sayingI know a lot of people working in climate science who say one thing in public but a very different thing in private. In confidence, they are all much more scared about the future we face, but they won’t admit that in public. I call this climate appeasement and I believe it only makes things worse. The world needs to know how bad things are going to get before we can hope to start to tackle the crisis.“.

How does this reconcile with McGuire apparently accusing the Guardian headline writers of misinterpreting his words, with their headline Soon it will be unrecognisable’: total climate meltdown cannot be stopped, says expert ‘Soon the world will be unrecognisable’: is it still possible to prevent total climate meltdown?. <- Note The Guardian updated their headline, details below.

I invite readers to read the Guardian article which triggered this scramble, see if you can figure out what McGuire’s problem is. I thought the headline was a fair summary of the content – but make up your own minds.

As for Mann, he seems to have taken upon himself the role of Guardian of the Balance.

Keeping the climate alarm movement going appears to be a delicate balancing act between fear and despair. Michael Mann frequently warns activists about the dangers of “climate doomism”, pessimism so intense people lose the motivation to be activists. From what I have read, their ideal activist must be worried enough to be motivated, but must still believe their personal intervention can help avert the crisis.

Of course, not everyone who absorbs the message of climate crisis achieves the mental balance climate leaders encourage.

In 2019 leading drug rehabilitation specialist Dr. Alex Wodak provided an explanation for why drug addiction is soaring, when he testified to an Aussie state government ice inquiry that climate despair is one of the factors which leads young people to destroy their lives with hard drugs.

Update (EW): The Guardian has amended their headline, and provided the following explanation :- The headline of this article was amended on 2 August 2022 to more accurately reflect the concern expressed by Bill McGuire. As the article made clear, he believes climate breakdown is inevitable but that a total cataclysm can still be stopped.

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Clyde Spencer
August 2, 2022 7:51 am

… especially on the verge of breakthrough climate legislation that can limit planetary warming …

“I have been on the verge of being an angel all my life, but it’s never happened yet.” — Mark Twain

Dave Fair
Reply to  Clyde Spencer
August 2, 2022 9:15 am

Again, is he referring to climate legislation being considered in China and India?

MarkW
August 2, 2022 8:09 am

Mann may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even he can figure out that if it’s too late to do anything, most people will opt to stop spending so much money on the climate change industry.

He’s trying to tone down the paranoia in an effort to protect his own salary.

Reply to  MarkW
August 2, 2022 9:03 am

Lawsuits are expensive. He needs to keep the gravy train running.

Richard Page
Reply to  MarkW
August 2, 2022 9:09 am

Mann may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but he’s sharper than most activists, green politicians and supporters that give money. Tell me of another scam that could keep going for nearly 50 years with absolutely no change and nothing whatsoever to show for the $Bn’s spent?

Kemaris
Reply to  Richard Page
August 2, 2022 10:00 am

The Great Society in the USA.

MarkW
Reply to  Kemaris
August 2, 2022 11:16 am

It’s worse than that. It’s easy to document all the damage the Great Society has caused. Yet the only solution being offered is more of the same.

John the Econ
August 2, 2022 8:25 am

I stopped caring after the climate supposedly made me extinct over 20 years ago.

H.R.
Reply to  John the Econ
August 2, 2022 1:59 pm

I know what you mean, John. I find it hard to get up every morning knowing that I’m dead.

But then… coffee time! and I’m OK for the rest of the day.

Philip CM
August 2, 2022 8:47 am

Michael “my extremism isn’t that over the top” Mann, grasping at semantic strawmen hoping to be granted just a smidge of credibility.

Rod Evans
August 2, 2022 8:49 am

The gaslighting strategy of the Climate Alarmists has reached a new level of unbelievability when Mann says they have gone too far.
His concern is for the lost opportunity to draw down state funding for his pointless investigations into something that is as natural as nature gets.
The idea the Guardian/BBC push a story line that it is too late to alter the baked in destruction ahead means no one will bother to fund research.
The settled science of the BBC/Guardian has settled the debate. Why should we be asked to fund research into something that is, erm…’settled’
Poor Mickey, it must be very frustrating when your chief propaganda department don’t follow the rules of blackmail. The rules are, we are doomed, but you can save the world if you give us another few $billions to refine the science say the doom mongers..

ResourceGuy
August 2, 2022 9:34 am

When does next climate purge begin to clear out the less radical revolutionists?

ResourceGuy
August 2, 2022 10:07 am

Who knew that Happy Valley would become part of the climate gulag.

ResourceGuy
August 2, 2022 10:09 am

Why can’t wind farm lobbyists just make a legitimate business case….without subsidies. The same goes for the tree burner Drax.

Art
August 2, 2022 10:24 am

“Keeping the climate alarm movement going appears to be a delicate balancing act between fear and despair”
—————-
Exactly. Mind you, for decades Mann et al have been pronouncing deadlines beyond which it will be “too late to save humanity”. But when those deadlines pass with no catastrophe they NEVER say it’s too late, just make up new deadlines and pretend the old ones never existed. I guess they figure there’s a limit to what the gullible sheeple will accept.

August 2, 2022 10:56 am

Climate scientists: We’ve done some new calculations, and it appears that Global Warming will arrive two days before the day after tomorrow!

Randy Marsh: Oh my God, that’s today!

h/t South Park

Alexander Vissers
August 2, 2022 10:57 am

Why? We have to adapt to a changed and changing climate like humans have been doing for at least the past 150.000 years. Get over it.

MarkW
Reply to  Alexander Vissers
August 2, 2022 11:23 am

Short of asteroid strikes and mega-volcanoes, life adapts and muddles through.

MarkW
August 2, 2022 11:20 am

Slightly off topic, but relevant to the subject of society/government having gone completely bonkers.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/uk-police-british-army-veteran-arrested-anti-lgbtq-social-media-post-caused-anxiety-video

A man is arrested for sharing a post on social media, that combines the LGBTQ flag and the Nazi flag. According to the police, the man is being arrested because his post made someone anxious.

The saddest thing is that the police do not realize that they are actually proving the man’s point.

Reply to  MarkW
August 3, 2022 3:10 am

As Mark Steyn said recently, in Britain everything is policed except actual crime.

August 2, 2022 11:36 am

Yet again, wrong is heaped upon wrong..

Quote:”In 2019 leading drug rehabilitation specialist Dr. Alex Wodak provided an explanation for why drug addiction is soaring, when he testified to an Aussie state government ice inquiry that climate despair is one of the factors which leads young people to destroy their lives with hard drugs.

This Wodik character is a complete fraud – he hasn’t A Single Friggin Clue about on what he preaches. He is applying sticky plasters to people who have, damn nera cut their own throats. Then craics on that he’s An Expert. jeez

Y.
The Human Animal is NOT an intrinsically addictive or self-destructive thing.
It takes on such behavoiur in the face of 2 significant forces, forces which it tries despertaly to avoid at all costs.
When it cannot escape ‘conventionally’ – it resorts to chemical means of escape.
(There are other routes but many chemicals are cheap and readily available legally so why not)

Those triggers are:

  1. Stress
  2. Loneliness

If anybody in this hideous train-wreck recognises anything it is the guy first on the scene = one Michael Mann

Why?
Because he is the source of the (Climate) Stress – then myriad other stressors fall out of that, created by stressed individuals inside government bureaucracies trying to alleviate their own personal stress.
Many resort to Comfort Food and Booze – ain’t that a fact eh Boris?

I’ll say again: “The human animal cannot lie“, it is a very stressful thing to do.
Hence why M Mann is here immediatly on the scene – because he is attempting to defuse the stress within himself, brought on through decades of passing (hokey kokey stik) porkies.

wotta tangled web of wrongness we weave or what…….
(Haha – or Wong-ness as per that Jim Steele trainwreck just yesterday. There weren’t the words so I didn’t put any)

August 2, 2022 1:11 pm

They have keep the money coming. If they admit it’s hopeless, why spend any money to prevent what cannot be prevented?
So, it has to be bad enough to be a crisis, but not so bad it can’t be fixed with huge sums of money and giving them a lot of power.
I truly wonder how many people believe this stuff.

August 2, 2022 1:15 pm

Slightly OT, speaking of hopeless, here is a chart of the UK power grid showing solar and biomass (wood pellets) for the last five years.
Solar began with such enthusiasm but now is a backwater in the UK power grid.
They ran out of other people’s money.
Wood pellet burning though is still getting enough of other people’s money to expand.

UK biomass Solar.png
S.K.
August 2, 2022 2:39 pm

mann is no climate scientist.

Olen
August 2, 2022 6:26 pm

So effective activists have to be throttled so the right amount of fear is instilled but not so much they are drug addicted to the point of hospitalization or death. Who in good conscience would do that except a scoundrel.

August 3, 2022 2:53 am

The Guardian has amended their headline, and provided the following explanation :- The headline of this article was amended on 2 August 2022 to more accurately reflect the concern expressed by Bill McGuire. As the article made clear, he believes climate breakdown is inevitable but that a total cataclysm can still be stopped.

I fail to understand how something which is inevitable can be stopped. “Inevitable” literally means “cannot be avoided”.

Fred the Head
August 3, 2022 4:47 am

Climate change can mean anything and everything now. Welcome to climate change diversity. All fear mongers, liars, propagandists, nut cases, and pseudoscientists are welcome.

Geronimo
August 9, 2022 10:50 am

They have a problem. If they over hype the danger people will feel there’s nothing they can do to solve the problem. If they don’t overhype it people won’t want to do anything about it. What they don’t seem to have taken on board is that if they get the balance just iright there’s still nothing they can do, because nothing’s going to happen on a large scale to do anything about. Hance the goal of a perfect environmental lifestyle cannot be force on the hot polloi under any scenario.