From Dr. Roy Spencer’s Global Warming Blog
:quality(70)/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/H2EEN5AA27KWT263WRDBEOZRLM.jpg?resize=751%2C891&ssl=1)
Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Dear Dr. Roy:
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Climate Crisis. My Papa says, “If you see it in Dr. Roy’s climate blog, it is so.”
“Please tell me the truth. Is there a Climate Crisis?“
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or women’s or children’s or ze’s or transgender’s, are little. In this great universe of ours humans are mere insects, ants, in their intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him/her/they/them, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Climate Crisis. It exists as certainly as taxation and death and congressional favors and subsidies exist, and you know that they abound and give to some people’s life its highest riches! Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Climate Crisis! It would be as dreary as if there were no poor people. There would be no special favors, no bird-chopping windmills, no Teslas to give wealthy people a reason to exist! We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which affluence fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in the Climate Crisis! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire persons to watch all the private jets on Earth Day to catch Al Gore, but even if they did not see Al Gore, what would that prove? Nobody sees Al Gore, but that is no sign that there is no Al Gore. The most real things in the world are those that neither conservatives nor Trumpers can see. Did you ever see Greta Thunberg dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that she was not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man/woman/person, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men/women/persons that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond mere reality!
Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Climate Crisis! Thank Gaia It lives and It lives forever! A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10 thousand years from now, It will continue to put fear into your heart!
Amen!
+10
Dr Roy! Beyond awesome! Skewering all the lame Left pieties in one fell swoop. Ze’s (isn’t it zir?) heads are exploding.
ROTFLMAO!!
“Nobody sees Al Gore, but that is no sign that there is no Al Gore.”
I think he’s in a mental hospital after his rant, “the oceans are boiling”. If not, he should be.
The satirical paraphrase here should really be “nobody sees corroboration that a CO2 rise is reliably followed by a temperature rise, but that is no sign that a cause and effect relationship does not exist”.
Now come on Joe, lunatic asylums have standards to maintain. They don’t accept just anyone…..
Gore is in the “raving lunatic” category. Him, and John Kerry.
I gotta learn to use ChatGPT. I’ll ask it to create an image of Gore in a lunatic asylum in a straight jacket foaming at the mouth, ranting- “the oceans are boiling”. Maybe somebody here can do it- and use it at the top of a new essay. 🙂
https://openai.com/dall-e-2
You might as well not believe in fairies!
or magical thinking – didn’t Tinker Bell enable the lost boys to fly with just a little pixie dust – case closed
Woke Disney will probably not remake Peter Pan. Captain Hook as a drag Queen doesn’t work. Lost trans boys doesn’t work. As their recent financial results show (and the remade Snow White without dwarfs isn’t even released yet) woke doesn’t work. Get woke, go broke—Bud Light being exhibit 1.
Oh jeez Rud, that sounds exactly like something Disney would put out. Don’t give them any ideas!
Have you seen the picture of White Ho and her seven customers?
At this point they are beyond a lost cause, and are doing actual harm to actual kids, and thus anything that causes them to evaporate into bankruptcy, or better yet outright dissolution, is well worth whatever effort it may take.
They do know how to check all the boxes, though, eh?
At some point, one might suppose that even those jackasses will eventually realize that someone has to get fired.
I think you’ll find that they prefer the term “clients”. But this raises all kinds of problems. There is only one dwarf, so this is not only extreme shortism but also cultural appropriation.
#DwarfLivesMatter.
Please! It’s Little People
Dunno if an 8 year old (if real) would understand the sarcasm here.
When my kids were 8ish, they mostly still believed in Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the tooth fairy. That is because Santa brought them Christmas presents under the tree they helped decorate (and ate the treat they left out for him by the living room fireplace), the Easter Bunny brought Easter eggs, and the tooth fairy always took their lost baby teeth from under their pillows and left a quarter for each.
Many adults pretend to believe the climate crisis is real. Al Gore, John Kerry, Michael Mann… Because that is how their bread is buttered.
And we have further evidence:
“When my kids were 8ish, they mostly still believed in Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the tooth fairy.”
And the 8-year-old minds of AGW cultists, still believe in the “Climate Crisis”
Did the Grimm Bros ever write something similar ?
You did a wonderful job raising your children to the age of 8 and beyond for the older ones to not ruin it for the younger ones.
I would imagine they are still wonderful children.
Frankly, and I do not really want to rub anyone the wrong way, but if that happens, it is unavoidable as a result of speaking one’s mind, um, quite frankly…but I felt actual pity and shame for a school mate in the third grade (age 8 in the US), when the subject of Santa Claus came up and he insisted Santa Claus was real.
For one thing, it is not in the least bit necessary to think some fantasy character is real, to participate in the fun of the whole thing at the appropriate time.
8 is more than old enough to learn about the actual Saint Nicholas. 8 is not 5.
Adults should not be going out of their way to convince kids of such an age that tall tales are true, let alone prevent them from being disabused of outright lies.
What is the point, I ask again?
Are you going to choose a more appropriate age to tell them, and make a note to self to get back to them on it in a few years, when you then sit them down and explain how certain things they asked you about over the past couple of years, were lies, told for no particular reason?
Rud:
Nice post. And it reminded me of this quote [JH was endorsing nukes]:
“Can renewable energies provide all of society’s energy needs in the foreseeable future? It is conceivable in a few places, such as New Zealand and Norway. But suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” – James Hansen
“is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” – James Hansen”
James, should apply that thinking to Human-caused Global Warming/Climate Change, too. It too is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.
I was born 6th in my family, and so I knew there was no Santa Claus before I was 4.
I can remember scoffing at other kids my age at school who believed Santa Claus was real.
I am not sure my parents ever thought it was a good idea to teach kids to believe in fantasy people. There are other forms of innocence.
In fact, I do not think it sounds healthy for the mind of an 8 year old to believe in Santa Claus.
I agree. Lying to your kids is not a good way to inspire confidence in your word. Especially to train them to expect gifts coming from a fantasy person where nobody had to work to earn the money and they don’t even realize who deserves the gratitude. Training them to be entitled ingrates. It’s totally disordered, like trick or treat.
Yes, the lying to kids past an age where they need to be able to differentiate fantasy from reality, is bad. IMO.
But perhaps worse, is that most of the other kids their age know it is a made up thing for small children, and will not be kind to a kid who thinks Santa is real at that age.
I felt about the same way about a classmate as I would if I found out he was still breastfeeding, or wearing diapers. Almost. Luckily I never knew about anything like that at that age. Lucky for them.
I do not see the connection to Trick or Treat.
Can you explain?
Everyone knows the candy from treats comes from the store and someone had to go buy it.
Just like someone had to either make or buy a costume in order to be on the receiving end of this annual orgy of sugary largesse.
That is an exception to the usual rules, in which some giveth and some taketh away, that seems to have originally come into our culture as part of a social contract.
To wit, “We will not TP your trees iffen you lay us onto some yummy treats instead.”
Trick or treat teaches that you’re entitled to demand something from perfect strangers and make a threat to back it up. The connection I made was in the fostering of an attitude of entitlement which is corrosive to gratitude.
Well, TBH, I gave up Trick or Treating a few years ago, but I think it had more to do with the cost of dental work.
Where I grew up, it was a totally voluntary participation event.
If you felt like giving out candy to kids, you put a pumpkin or something on your step.
Only homes with kids typically did so, and some good natured old folk.
We never bothered to ring or knock on doors with no obvious Halloween decorations visible.
BTW, re that whole “entitled ingrates” thing…I am pretty sure that cage has been left open and the bird has long since flown.
We are well past the era of admiration for stoicism, character building as a top priority, and all that rot.
I mean, it is an actual crime to let a kid go outside to play, without a parent hovering within something like 24 inches of them at the farthest. They might skin their knee, and learn that falling down hurts.
“and he probably remembers Al Gore sharing the 2008 Nobel Peace prize for An Inconvenient Truth—which inconveniently turned out NOT true.”
Which was adjudged to be so in an English Court, in a case involving how this fiction was taught to minors, requiring certain changes to be made….sadly not enough.
Trying to sort out the true believers from the outright grifters is a tricky business. Obvious in some cases, but in others, not so much.
For one thing, at least by a certain age, serious minded people might begin to be concerned about how history will perceive them.
And the names of these people will certainly be filthier than Mudd.
“Trying to sort out the true believers from the outright grifters is a tricky business.”
This is true. It’s hard to read other people’s minds to see what motivates them.
I still haven’t figured out whether Joe Biden is a True Believer or is just taking advantage of the Human-caused Climate Change narrative as a vehicle to gaining more political power.
Either way, his actions on Human-caused Climate Change are extremely damaging to the U.S. economy, making every American poorer and less energy secure.
Greta would say how dare you….the earth is in the balance.,…we are hanging by a thread…hanging by our fingernails……I was just hit by a rain bomb…and flooding followed….how much more can we stand? They played on our fears! We gotta do something!
We don’t need to imagine it – just look at TFN’s whinges!
My childhood was stolen when I first saw this at the age of six:
For me I think it was learning about sexual reproduction. But I was relieved and my angst assuaged when I read about bees, that mate once and that the one mating suffices for the rest of the queen’s life.
That was also around age 8, IIRC, but it may have been 9.
Although by age 11, I was rounding the bases with the prettiest girls in Center City Philadelphia.
“They played on our fears!”
I recall Al Gore saying that during one of the presidential debates, I think. Al was really quite animated at the time. He reminded me of a “Fire and Brimstone” preacher, a True Believer haranguing the congregation about Human-caused Climate Change.
A True Believer that was completely wrong in his belief. He is still a True Believer, although he is not up on the science as much as he portrays himself to be. He said at one time that the center of the Earth had a temperature of “millions of degrees”, and said just recently that the oceans were “boiling”, so that’s got to put him in the True Believer category, it would seem to me.
I don’t see Al Gore because I don’t look for him. I don’t see a climate crisis because I don’t look for it. I put my trust in Occam’s Razor.
“I don’t see a climate crisis because I don’t look for it.”
I’ve been told it exists.
Had the idea rammed through by the MSM and governments.
But I still can’t find it anywhere…
… and nobody I’ve asked can point to anywhere it actually exists. !
Alright, I’ll say it…. sorry.
WHY:
Climate Crisis is the exact same belief process that says:
Nothing could be more wrong: Eating sugar is a death sentence via Obesity, Cancer, Diabetes, Cardio Vascular Disease and Dementia = all slow tortuous and horrible disorders no decent person would willingly or knowing inflict upon any other.
With soothing comforts like MS, Crohn’s, Psoriasis and Asthma thrown in along the way.
A routine and hideous torture for criminals/prisoners in olden times was to deprive them of Salt during their captivity – yet that is done nowadays in the guise of promoting low blood pressure thus= ‘Good Health & Longevity‘
Unbelievably junk science and crap medicine
The exact same junk thinking propagates the Ozone Hole and its supposed remedies.
Likewise, The Belief in A Climate Crisis will become a Self Fulfilling Prophecy. We will do and are doing, All The Wrong Things to try save ourselves and protect The Environment.
Within Climate Crisis, we are frightening ourselves to death and destroying this Earth.
Exactly the same as with Alzheimer’s disease and Amyloid Plaques being= The Cause.
No they are not. They are a symptom and are in fact, the body’s (brain’s) defence mechanism against attack. (from sugar)
No matter, we barge right in and devise medicines to get rid of the plaque.
Only ‘already demented minds‘ could be so dumb.
The same minds that created Covid vaccine, where the only active ingredient was/is a very toxic heavy metal.
So it is with rising CO₂ levels = A symptom and not a cause.
So: Biomass, Biofuel, NetZero and ‘preventative burnings’ are the very worst things anyone could do – they are accelerating an existing problem = one that has been happening for 10,000 years.
Those are the ‘anti-plaque medicine’ = something making the disease even worse and turning the (bad) dream into hideous reality.
Or Australia. Where Biomass Burnings and NetZero started 70,000 years ago – the task being completed around 30,000 years ago.
i.e. An entire continent became an inhospitable hell-hole inhabited only by ugly, inedible and toxic plants & animals with climate to match.
Or Land of Our Birth = Africa. Likewise completely trashed and now uninhabitable.
With: Contiguous USA coming up fast in the outside lane – neck & neck with Western Europe.
We’ve so far made 2 entire continents into images of ourselves.
The entire planet is next – and ‘some people‘ think it’s ‘not real and ‘funny’
wrap up warm
and that’s yet another lie you’ve been told and Just How Many actually beleive = the one concerning ‘A Hot Place‘
It isn’t at all ‘hot’ – quite the contrary
I am not sure you understand the meaning of the phrase, “Exactly the same as” in the same way I do.
When I say that, or read it for that matter, I take it literally, and thus am 100% sure it is a misusage of the term.
I do not think any of those things you said are the same as each other, are actually the same as each other.
When people think that way, or write that way, the next thing you know, they start to believe evidence for one of the things is evidence for the other.
Where do exaggeration and false equivalence rank, as compared to, say… oh I don’t know…sarcasm, for example, on the list of things that are forms of wit, or on the list of things that educated and intelligent people would say or think?
I struggle to find anything to agree with there. I’d make a sarcastic comment but it won’t cheer you up apparently.
https://youtu.be/bBnDxMpP38A?t=301
But the clip skips the part where Monk actually does knock out Santa!
What gives?
https://youtu.be/bBnDxMpP38A?t=227
“In this great universe of ours humans are mere insects, ants, in their intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him/her/they/them…”
An awful sentiment.
We humans are the thinking organ of the universe. Its consciousness. Its conscience. We are the universe regarding itself.
Without us (or our like), the universe is a meaningless swirl of dust and gas. With us, the universe has grandeur, beauty, compassion, ethics, value, joy, babies, lovers, optimism, and offers a potential for transcendence.
Roy looks to sacrifice all that on an altar to the ineffable, to tedious speculations about the inherently unknowable.
You needed to tell Francis Church that in 1897 🙂
Thank you for the reference.
I had to look up who Francis Church was, and of course immediately found the whole thing about the letter from 8-year-old Virginia Hanlon.
The phrase, “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” immediately sounded kind of familiar, but I had no awareness when I read the headline post.
Apparently, I am not the only one here who did not grok the reference to a famous letter published back in 1897. I was wondering why that photo looked so darned old.
It is actually very high quality considering it was taken in 1897.
8 years old is way too old to believe in frickin Santa Claus.
I mean, if a kid that age believes that crap, and an adult goes out of their way to convince the kid that he IS real, when are you going to tell her the truth?
What exactly is the point? Presumably around the time she has her own kids, someone will clue her in, or she might just not bother with any Christmas presents for her kids, figuring Santa will handle it, of course.
It is not good for adults to tell people at the age of awareness things that are complete bullshit, let alone go out of their way to prevent them from getting the truth when they start asking.
It wouldn’t do to make it *too* easy 🙂
Mr Church’s editorial was quite a well done way of saying that the concept of Santa Claus is the spirit of Christmas, without actually saying that the really isn’t a jolly elf who simultaneously delivers presents|lumps of coal|bundles of twigs to all the world’s children.
Adults (and people were working in their early teens back then) would get it, and younger children would take the surface message of the headline.
Correction taken, thank-you, and personal apologies to Roy.
Humans as ants and insects in the universe remains an awful sentiment, though.
I don’t know if the writer was deeply religious, but the intent appears to be that we are but mere insects compared to The Glory of God.
Richard o’Brien reprised this far less reverently at the end of “The Rocky Horror Show”
Whatever happened to “image and likeness”?
And despite any intent to compare us with divinity, humans as ants and insects remains an awful sentiment.
I’m sorry, Pat.
It’s somewhat too late to take it up with Mr Church. I suspect that comparison was of its time, ala the Huxley vs Wilberforce debate.
Frank:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_Virginia,_there_is_a_Santa_Claus
“Without us (or our like), the universe is a meaningless swirl of dust and gas. With us, the universe has grandeur, beauty, compassion, ethics, value, joy, babies, lovers, optimism, and offers a potential for transcendence.”
Well put.
I honestly hope that Roy did not send this letter to a little girl.
All of this would go right over the heads of many adults, and in fact I am 100% turned off by it.
For one thing, one must consider that for some people, maybe a lot of people, everything after the first sentence of the answer is ignored or unread.
Besides for that, why on earth would he want to bring up that made-up pronoun garbage, and transgenderism, to a kid that may have been lucky enough to have avoided the people who shove that crap into highly impressionable juvenile minds?
Does Roy actually agree with the people that think such subjects have to be inserted in every conversation and every lesson about every subject under the Sun?
I hate every part of this response, if it real.
It is way beyond pointless if it is a joke for us only, and even worse if it is a real response to a real letter.
By the time I was 8, I had read most of the How and Why Wonder Books, and so already knew then more than most adults know today about things like Nuclear Energy, Chemistry, and Astronomy.
And I understood it all perfectly, because it was factual scientific information written so an 8-year-old could understand it.
A scientist, or any adult, ought to answer as if she is an intelligent young person, with a serious mind, and wrote the letter because she is wanting to be given factual information about the world she lives in.
If she did not know what to believe when she wrote it, I doubt this helped.
I am 62 and have a keen sense of humor, use sarcasm all the time and have since I was a kid, do not think there is anything wrong about sarcasm…but this is not funny, not smart, not clever, not a good idea, and actually sickening.
Just in case Roy reads this and welcomes honest opinions.
Nicholas, you’ve got to be kidding. More obvious sarcasm would be difficult to concoct.
Here’s a clue, if the unnecessary use (and repetition) of “real” didn’t register the point that it was NOT real, the supposed “real girl” photo is obviously extremely old and could not depict a currently living 8-year old.
What can I say, it was very late and I was tired.
I was certainly hoping it was not real.
I had already read the other comments when I wrote this, but I had not yet looked up the reference to Francis Church.
Honestly though, I do not see the point.
Maybe I am just a cynical old coot in my dotage, but IDK.
It puts a wholly different slant on the post, to know from whence it originated of course.
But on the other hand, it only reinforces my made-several-times point about age 8 being too old to believe in Santa Claus, and so I am left wondering what Francis was trying to say?
I understand it is some kind of allegory or whatever, but presumably it was intended to make it’s way into the hands of kids who would read it, or have it read to them.
If an 8 year old still believes because they just never gave it any serious thought in light of newfound awareness of things like the relative size of people and chimneys, or that the North Pole is a frozen (sometimes) ocean, or the improbability of flying reindeer, or one guy making his way around the entire world in a few hours, or how all them presents fit in that one little sack…
All of that.
So if a kid that old never thought about it much, that is one thing. But for an adult to go out of their way to try to convince a kid at that age? That is outside of my experience.
And…I did not look at the picture until after, I confess.
And why does that picture look like it is from the 1930s?
Looks like Dr. Spencer knows full well how this works .
Idiotic parents nudge a kid into writing a letter.
Dr. Spencer replies to the idiotic parents that the kid will give his letter to.
Now imagine the idiotic parents explaining their Tesla.
I hope the idiotic parents read the reply out loud . LOL!
Would love to see that reading session….
One challenge with parody is that if the audience isn’t familiar with the reference, the whole thing falls apart.
I imagine that many people outside of the US would not be familiar with the phrase “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”
Here is the reference:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_Virginia,_there_is_a_Santa_Claus
My mistake was reading the comments before I read the actual post.
And I missed the clues from other commenters that it was a parody of a famous letter about Santa Claus from two centuries ago.
So, yes, it was/is confusing to say the least.
Obvious sarcasm, but easy to miss the fact that there is no little girl and there is no letter.
Or at least, possible to do so.
I did. It was niggling in my brain that it was some kind of joke, but it did not gel sufficiently to keep me from commenting with my thoughts in the case that it was a real letter and response.
For one thing, it is straight out of the blue.
We do not see this kind of thing here very often, nor often from serious people.
I have to say, I am lately really in quite a foul mood about the news of late, and I think I must be predisposed to react with anger to things that I would ordinarily just scratch my head at.
In light of Poe’s Law, maybe the post should be labeled “Humor” in a prominent position.
Ahhh! But I bet they can construct a model that will show all these people do exist even though we can’t see them.