Essay by Eric Worrall
Apparently “… denialism is standing up for industrial capitalism. … poorly educated men (and to the regional communities built around them) …” are the drivers of modern climate denial.
Never mind the science, News Corp has strengthened its climate denialism machine
Climate crisis denial can come in many forms — and Murdoch’s empire has all bases covered.
CHRISTOPHER WARREN
APR 02, 2024The News Corp climate denial machine — all those cogs in its opinion pages finely tuned to reverse Aesop’s fable and repeatedly croak out: “No wolf here!” — has a problem. Extreme weather events have made it all but impossible to ignore the climate wolf threatening to blow our houses down.
…
They’ve reengineered the underlying denialism, too. Sure, they say now, the climate may be changing, but it’s not our fault. It’s not, as the cloistered academics would say, “anthropogenic”.
If global heating is not caused by humans burning fossil fuels, why would humans be able to do anything about it? (And, just in case, why not go, umm, nukular?)
…
“Attribution” has always been the weakest form of denialism, raising doubts rather than definitively rejecting. But as a recent US study found, its danger lies in being the gateway drug to a more full-blown repudiation of the science itself.
…
Why did climate denial suddenly become a touchstone for the global right? …
… It’s been tagged “the anti-reflexivity thesis“, which is the argument that denialism is standing up for industrial capitalism.
It appeals to a certain old-style machismo — the good ol’ days of physical, manual jobs that matter for poorly educated men (and to the regional communities built around them).
…
Read more: https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/04/02/news-corp-climate-change-denial-machine/
The person who wrote this vile outpouring of ignorance and contempt for rural people and people who work with their hands is a former president of the International Federation of Journalists – which in my opinion goes a long way towards explaining why large sectors of society don’t trust establishment media.
Climate attribution studies are far from beyond question. They purport to explain how much climate change contributes to weather, but doubts have been raised about the methodology, including concerns about serious mathematical biases in the method used to tease the alleged climate impact from the data.
Christopher Warren implies advocacy of nuclear energy is an expression of industrial capitalist supporter ignorance, but real ignorance is denying that nuclear energy is a serious option. Nuclear works in france, which still generates around 70% of their electricity from affordable zero carbon nuclear. Are the French much smarter than everyone else on the planet? Or is copying the French nuclear success something any advanced nation could reasonably attempt to do?
But the idea that climate denial is motivated by irrational support for industrial capitalism is the crowning absurdity of Christopher’s article. From a study referenced by the article;
Anti-Reflexivity and Climate Change Skepticism in the US General Public
Aaron M. McCright Lyman Briggs College and Department of Sociology Michigan State University, Michigan, United States
Abstract
The leading theoretical explanation for the mobilization of organized climate change denial is the Anti-Reflexivity Thesis, which characterizes the climate change denial countermovement as a collective force defending the industrial capitalist system. In this study, I demonstrate that the Anti-Reflexivity Thesis also provides theoretical purchase for explaining patterns of climate change skepticism among regular citizens. Analyzing nationally representative survey data from multiple waves of the University of Texas Energy Poll, I examine key predictors of climate change skepticism within the US general public. Identification with or trust in groups representing the industrial capitalist system increases the likelihood of climate change skepticism. Also, identification with or trust in groups representing forces of reflexivity (e.g., the environmental movement and scientific community) decreases the likelihood of such skepticism. Further, this study finds that climate change skeptics report policy preferences, voting intentions, and behavioral intentions generally supportive of the existing fossil fuels–based industrial capitalist system.
Read more: https://search.informit.org/doi/epdf/10.3316/informit.324791340628136
The study above defines anti-reflexivity as “… Reflexive Modernization Theory (e.g., Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990; see also Rosa, Renn, & McCright, 2014) characterizes the current era of late modernity as a distinct stage of advanced industrial society where institutions suffer from legitimacy crises brought on by their inability to effectively solve the ecological and technological problems of modernization. …”
The idea, the “anti-reflexity thesis“, that opposition to climate policies comes from people who miss “the good old days”, who have lost their jobs and way of life because of social and technological progress, this fiction runs deep in liberal circles. The idea has even made it into television series. The following is character Tom Kirkman from the series “Designated Survivor” explaining why industrial jobs are disappearing from the USA and will never return.
But industrial employment didn’t disappear, it was lost to China.
If the reason for job losses in the USA was automation and technological progress, manufacturing would all still all be happening in the USA. The real reason lots of industrial activity moved to China and other parts of Asia, is because China prioritises affordable energy over green fantasies – even their solar panel manufacturing industry is powered by coal.
Green policies are the real job killers, not technology and progress – and people who are most affected by green policies, farmers and industry workers whose profitability utterly depends on affordable energy, are naturally opponents of policies which are wrecking their livelihoods.
Perhaps none of this matters to comfortable establishment media journalists who have no hesitation heaping contempt and scorn on anyone who gets their hands dirty, or anyone who objects to whatever latest green lunacy they champion. Because who cares what happens to farmers and factory workers right? Everyone knows food comes from supermarkets, and most of the stuff they care about is imported.
Questioning Climate “Anything” Studies is the gateway to enlightenment AND how actual science is performed via the scientific method
Questioning everything that has no, or not enough, evidence for it is a hallmark of a true scientist.
Bryan A,
No, that is wrong.
Geoff S
How so???
…
Actually questioning authority is Right
Blindly, unquestioningly following authority is
wrongLeftWow! I’m a drug addict, and I didn’t even know it. Looks like my Science degrees have led me astray, and those Loonies Newton, Einstein, and the modern version: WATTS, are to blame, not me.
You studied wrong majors. That makes you a poorly educated man. A well educated she/it/he/they has a communications degree from Harvard.
Don’t forget Gender Studies.
If you had studied under water basket weaving, at least you could have graduated with a marketable skill.
Is there really a course in “underwater” basket weaving? Probably studying in a rain forest.
They even altered the genders. This is a gateway drug to create a new type of degree of temperature that is calculated from CO2 concentration I the atmosphere.
Conversely, dismissing CAGW advocates as commie scum watermelon nihilists reflects actual knowledge of the movement.
While shutting down ‘capitalist’ enterprise certainly would appeal to self identified communists, it is not required that one be communist to be ignorant or (what’s a word for someone who prefers peer acceptance over independent thought?), or keen to sustain their income through riding the CAGW bandwagon. CAGW fear has brought about various government policies that amount to trillions of dollars in transfers through subsidies and rebates (a form of subsidy). One manifestation is the buying of solar panels from China while that country builds coal fired power plants at an astounding pace. It’s not hard to imagine China funding CAGW promotion in the US to sustain that income stream.
Then there is the rigged science paper publishing system where many have found that their careers are likely to be canceled unless they get on the CAGW bandwagon. Obtaining research grants is another area affected by this bias toward alarm.
“The Science” has been corrupted.
Indeed it has and we are now learning of the efforts of first Russia and now China to exploit that. At last though the UK Government (not yet the opposition) and Germany have begun to realise that Net Zero is a huge waste of time and money and a lunatic transfer of statehood to communist China.. These two countries have backed off and are now supporting more new gas based power generation.
Deviate from the party line- and you are branded a “denier”. Questioning the party line is verboten. Wow, the Middle Ages all over again.
The entire history of human societies from the smallest family tribe to the largest population country.
Isn’t burning at the stake a lost ‘art’.
Too much CO2 emissions. Best left to rot and decay in the ground. The CO2 seepage is slower.
The Inquisition cannot be far behind.
It’s already here. Firings for failing to follow the left wing agenda has become more and more prevalent.
It’s called psychological projection
nice! 🙂
SamGrove asserts “The Science” has been corrupted.
Sam, 9 months ago WUWT kindly published my article about wealth and power corrupting science, with Rockefeller Foundation as the example. In researching the article (catalysed by the lifetime study of Prof Ed Calabrese) I was struck by the tiny amount of reporting and research by others.
Understandably, corrupt people will hide their evils, making detection of corruption harder. But, that is a challenge that should be an incentive for those concerned about stamping out crime. Go for it.
Why not have a read of recent Rockefeller press releases? There you will find evidence for a source of organised, funded and corrupt woke ideas that the true scientist will find hard to combat because of lack of similar resources. But, combat on an outcry scale is needed. Geoff S
“Understandably, corrupt people will hide their evils”
Like Mann’s “CENSORED” folder.
Help! I’m being inundated in a sea (swell) of words that make very little sense. Chris J. Warren – a journalist – ought to be able to write an essay that does not sound like a combination of Elisabeth Warren, Sanders, and Biden.
Chris J. Warren – is not a journalist;
( If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough, )
like most in the media, he’s a copy & paste churnalist.
I thought “Copy and Paste” would make him a plagiarnalist
They are changing the language. Election denial literally means you deny that election(s) happen. What they actually mean is that you believe some (if not all) elections are invalid–not that they didn’t happen. To quote people like Greta: “How dare you!” The same is true with climate denial. No one is denying that there’s climate (which is what the term literally means). Instead, so-called “climate deniers” don’t think CO2 is the major driver of temperature. Again thanks to Greta: “How dare you!”
Actually, Climate Denier is one who denies the political response to climate alarmism is correct. Climate Alarmism Denier. It is abused, of course, and played in full force to silence opposing voices.
Since when were we to not question or doubt authoritarians in this supposedly free world?
The avalanche of nonsensical CO2 attribution studies since 2016 makes it abundantly clear that publishing these CO2 attribution papers is the actual, real-life gateway drug for the CO2 believers, along with the media attention they get for their regular alarmist pronouncements from on high.
Story Tip ====>https://dailycaller.com/2024/04/02/push-natural-gas-exports-ivy-league-cornell-howarth-biden/
“A questionable study by a Cornell University climate scientist gave climate activists and the media ammunition to wage a pressure campaign against the Biden administration to take action against liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.”
“Cornell’s Robert Howarth authored the October 2023 study, which purported to find that lifecycle emissions associated with LNG exports are far greater than those attributable to domestically-mined coal.”
Good find. I wonder if the Alarmists actually realize that the good professor’s conclusions support our use of ‘domestically-mined coal’.
Export versus domestic? Of course there are differences. Start with the ship.
Ok, what is the “Greenhouse Gas Footprint” of the wind towers off the east
coast on the Vineyard Wind 1 project?
Huge. Environmental impact? Huge.
I’m always keen to know what people like Christopher Warren know that I don’t when they chide me for my lack of science.
Once again, there is very little chance he knows more about it than Greta Thunberg (my gold-standard climate ignoramus). He has degrees in history, business admin, and creative writing.
Oh it’s:creative,” all right. He’s convincing gullible people that black is white and up is down.
It’s the moon, not the sun. (Except on April 8, when it is both.)
What ever happened to Greta? College? Feminist climate studies? One wonders what meds she must take to cope with it all.
Greta’s great granddad was Svente Arhennius; she has that going for her!
(Who needs high school? – speaking of uneducated advocates.)
Greta’s link to Svante Arrhenius is tenuous at best but she appears to be making a good living by compiling books of other people’s activism and getting herself arrested. Greta, like so many other greenies, is very happy to make money out of other people’s gullibility and ignorance.
Creative writing is an essential part of the climastrologists agenda.
Christopher is as clueless as all the other climate alarmists.
He has no idea what he is talking about. He doesn’t know the science, and he doesn’t know the psychology of skeptics.
I am proud to be a deplorable moron! Bring it on!
Proud to be an Okie from Muskogee
They don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee- but I did way back in ’76. Driving through the area in a cross country tour- had to do it. 🙂
JoeZ,
Can you write a piece about why you and I are different? I have never smoked pot, you have. I found it would offer more harm than good, so I rejected it as a concept, like I have rejected joining social media and AI art, for example, after short but adequate evaluation.
Maybe I have been content to enjoy what I have, while you have felt that you need to find more diversions to occupy your time and effort?
Geoff S
When I started college in ’67- not many at that time were smoking pot. Within a few years everyone did. It’s not harmful. Not to most people. Far less harmful that alcohol. There were no fist fights at Woodstock. Imagine a half million drunks out in a field? There are some benefits but I won’t go there- not on this site. You did ask. 🙂
This may be the best anthem for we “deniers” as Merle was being sarcastic in his song that he wrote after the drug scandal of civic leaders in Muskogee.
Denial?! Of WHAT?!
The weather is NOT getting worse.
So what, exactly, is the supposed ‘crisis?!’ Define it for me.
A warmer climate is BETTER. Only in their wet dream disaster movie fantasies is a warmer climate worse.
And climate change is driven by nature, not humanity’s pittance of CO2 emissions. Just like always.
But….But….Just look outside your window!!!! /sarc
Darn…… looks like rain again.. 🙁
I look out and see no emergency- but my state of Wokeachusetts tells me every day we’re having an emergency and we’re all experiencing weather extremes!
Don’t worry, just plan, for they have created an emergency that the NE will soon be without reliable power. Just like the breadbasket of Afrika went up in smoke when all the white and black farmers left or were killed in Zimbabwe. DEI at its best.
We just had “extreme weather” today- a nor’easter. Didn’t have a power outage but the internet went down. Yes, winter weather in early spring. Due to our carbon emissions, of course. /sarc
NGW = Natural Global Warming ie El Ninos, HT, solar, clouds etc.
ULW = Urban Local Warming. ie.. most surface weather sites.
“The weather is NOT getting worse.”
Well, it rained a lot here yesterday and the day before that with high winds.
Today it’s drizzling and the wind has died down.
I’d have to say my weather is getting better. 😎
raising doubts rather than definitively rejecting
There’s the problem – you can’t even question the premise because you just might start to doubt it.
I don’t remember if it was posted here, but several months ago I read an article saying that people shouldn’t do their own research, but should rather trust what the experts say, because if they did their own research they might reach the “wrong” conclusions.
No thinking for yourself, just believe what you’re told to believe.
I seem to remember something of that nature being reposted on WUWT last year – possibly an activist news-site article from somewhere or other.
I thought I had seen it here, Richard, and elsewhere, too. I recall that it was a reasonably “mainstream” source, not an activist one (although I’m not sure there’s a difference anymore)
Forbes – 2020 article. “You must not ‘do your own research’ when it comes to Science.” I think it was this one.
The rule of specialists of any kind is not democracy.
“Journalism” has to some degree become a concentration of people who don’t know how anything works and don’t want to know. The ignorant often revile what they do not understand and even fear it. They cluster together and reinforce each other’s certainty that they alone offer the “truth”. I would characterize it as cult behavior. It commonly engenders an “either-or” mentality. It never considers that most people fall between two extremes. For instance, I work with my hands and also have a biology degree. I can rebuild a small engine or coat a floor with epoxy and still have time to understand DNA replication and appreciate the complexities of climate.
I pity these poor, limited creatures that modern education so commonly produces. They don’t even know how to ask questions or look with wonder at the world. They huddle in their cave and shudder when it thunders.
Post says:”engenders”
Now I have to add another one to the list. Transgender, cisgender, engender.
They don’t know what it is that they don’t know.
And don’t want to.
They huddle with their smart phones (a misnomer if there ever was one) and tweet banalities to each other for hour on end.
Panem et circenses
“…poorly educated men..” Happer, Lindzen, Christie, Spenser, Pielke, et al…..
And don’t forget “poorly educated women” like Nova and Curry.
“Extreme weather events have made it all but impossible to ignore the climate wolf threatening to blow our houses down.”
Is he referring to the “extreme weather events” that have consistently occurred over recorded history? What data shows weather is more “extreme” over the last 50 years?!?
“the climate wolf “
Oh No.. the Big Bad Wolf !!
Proving yet again that it is all just PURE FANTASY !!
“What data shows weather is more “extreme” over the last 50 years?!?”
The actual data shows there is no unprecedented extreme weather today.
Attribution “science” is pure speculation. it’s not science.
Why did climate denial suddenly become a touchstone for the global right?
Because we’re rational and not morons or on drugs-
‘It’s rank incompetence’: Lionel Shriver on the real cost of going electric | SpectatorTV – YouTube
But for those who have been duped by leftists turning their red coats inside out to parade green linings and you ‘feel’ it’s really all about changing the weather and doing good you need to understand you’re dealing with emotional crazies and control freaks-
Climate activists protest electric cars at New York motor show (msn.com)
You’ll never ‘outfeel’ them so screw your head on and see them for what they really are.
I thought the left was blue.
60 years ago, you heard the endless mantra: “Question authority!” I would add: “By all means, question authority, but do it smartly. Be prepared for the possibility that authority is correct.” Today, I find myself saying the same thing, in some cases to the same people, except saying “…authority is wrong.”
60 years ago, you heard the endless mantra: “Question authority!”
Tody’s mantra appears to be “how dare you question authority”
Having read this, I shall have a loud conversation with Michigan State University and my alumnus donations.
I have seen a lot, but this tripe reeks.
I just told my university to take me off the donators list. They called and I asked if they practice DEI or have a department and they didn’t deny it.
A fairly good summary of “The (Climate) Science” can be found in the IPCC’s WG-I assessment report, “The Physical Science Basis” … after you’ve got past the SPM … which includes several open discussions of “likelihoods” and “uncertainties”
Section 1.5.4, “Modelling techniques, comparisons and performance assessments”, on page 221 :
Section 1.6.1.4, “The likelihood of reference scenarios, scenario uncertainty and storylines”, page 239 :
NB : The “old (CMIP5)” RCP8.5 emissions pathway is neatly bracketed between the “new (CMIP6)” SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5 ones. If SSP3-7.0 is above the “counterfactual” threshold then so is RCP8.5.
This means that “The (Climate) Science” says that all future “projections” based on RCP8.5 are “counterfactual”.
_ _ _ _ _ _
From the IPCC’s Working Group Two (WG-II) report, FAQ1.5, “What is new in this 6th IPCC report on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability?”, on page 180 :
It is the IPCC’s WG-II (and WG-III) teams that have “repudiated The Science”, as correctly summarised in their own WG-I report, treating it as a “historic” approach to be replaced with “different forms of knowledge” that has been produced by (carefully selected) “associated scholars”;
“ says that all future “projections” based on
RCP8.5ANY climate model are “counterfactual”.”Thought I better fix that for you… Make it more factual. 🙂
so, why do witches float?
Because they’re ducks?
The water rejects them. Or that was the theory.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/buttigieg-rejects-critics-ev-future-people-2000s-saying-we-could-have-landlines-forever
Transportation Secretary compares people who don’t want to switch to EVs, to people who wanted to stay with landlines.
story tip
Hmm. I live in a century home with thick walls, plaster with metal lath – practically a faraday cage. Add to that the fact that the hill that I live on has poor reception to begin with, and you want me to give up my landline?
If it works for you, then go ahead, give up your landline. If it doesn’t, the old ways work better.
Similar for EVs, though personally I think they improve on pretty much nothing.
I still have a landline- and for a “mobile”, I have an old flip phone. But I bet I know more about the ecology of this planet than 99% of renewable energy whack jobs. I have a 20 year old Toyota Tacoma pick up. It runs fine. Maybe if I had a million bucks I’d buy an EV as a toy- but otherwise, not interested.
I wasn’t given a choice or even a notification – one day last year my landline just stopped working and that was that. Now, instead of paying a small fee for line rental and for phone usage I would have to take an internet, phone and tv package costing over £120 each month that I simply cannot afford. The Transportation Secretary, like my internet provider, is full of $h!t.
And
ifwhen power goes out, you have nothing.“But the idea that climate denial is motivated by irrational support for industrial capitalism is the crowning absurdity of Christopher’s article.”
Yes, I do support “industrial capitalism” and deny CO2 is causing climate change or a climate catastrophe, but I’m a 1950s electrical engineering graduate who actually learned some “old time” physics and science and who worked 33y with electrical utilities generating power with nuclear and fossil fuel plants. My denialism is not irrational. Even it CO2 were a problem, wind + solar + batteries are not going to save the world, no matter how much the “smart” people “adjust” the raw data to produce their phony catastrophe curves.
Amen
Christopher Warren should be a professor of “Advocacy Journalism” which is antithesis of what journalism shoud be – neutural and objective. Today it is hard to tell news reports from op-eds.
Sorry to break it to you but neutral and objective journalism was abandoned in 1963 when schools of journalism (propaganda) changed their curriculum from just the facts ma’am to the requirement that journalist interpret the facts so the readers arrive at the “correct” conclusion.
Actually, it was in 1933 in Germany.
It’s OK to offer opinions in editorials but not in news.
It
’swas OK to offer opinions in editorials but not in news.Fixed it for you, although I vehemently agree with your original wording.
No one want to be an objective journalist in present time. They all want to pursue advocacy journalism, aka opinions as factual news.
I would say that leftwing, advocacy journalism began in ernest around 1967, during the Vietnam war.
The journalists started out advocating against the Vietnam war effort, and after it was over, they continued their advocacy journalism for everything leftwing. To this day. it has escalated to where today we have a blizzard of leftwing propaganda hitting us every day.
They are not journalists, they are now propagandists. You can’t believe a thing they say because they have an agenda.
I thought that began with Watergate and the perpetual pursuit of Pulitzer.
Journalism majors in college were the lowest of the low in terms of intelligence and academic rigor. It’s sad that in our society, as usual, the stupidest have the loudest voices.
Hard to say which was the easier degree. Journalism or education.
warrenwôr′ən, wŏr′-
noun
😉
Warren Buffet
Noun
…The area where Rabbits eat dinner in burrows
…A Rabbit Colony “All you can eat” dining hall
Attribution has always been the weakest form of science.
In fact, in climate science, it is more just a series of really bad computer games…
… nothing to do with science.
>> Questioning Attribution StudiesIn Ross McKitrick´s paper https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-021-05913-7
he identifies ” 6 conditions needing to be shown for the AT99 method to be valid.”
That is the state of science, attribution of climate models is flawed and so far there is no debate about this in scientific literature, just some people who deny this scientific fact.
I indirectly referenced another McKitrick paper. If I’ve understood correctly, the process by which attribution studies have been developed seems utterly absurd. In my opinion it appears as if the scientists looking for the CO2 effect switched statistical methods until they got hit using a method based on dubious assumptions which is known to generate false positives.
They tell us that they are many and we are few and yet they seem to fear us because we have questions based on knowledge not blind acceptance of the settled science. Curious.
crikey, activist agitprop left latte n chardy cognoscenti anything there should be avoided like the steaming pile it is. abc luvvies love em
hmm didnt usa and other offshore for cheap labour BUT what started it was? the early greenies and pollution of usa sites and waterways so corps moved it all to gain brownie cleanup points at home..the hippies were happy and as daft and ignorant as they are today
That was part of it.
Labor costs on the rise cemented it.
Now consider, California bumped up minimum wage 25% and some of those fast food places riffed workers and other raised prices and a few closed their doors.
“Claim: Questioning Attribution Studies is the “Gateway Drug” to Climate Denial”
This guy sounds like an advertiser’s dream customer!
“Clinical studies have shown that 4 out of 5 dentists prefer Lysol for back pain.”
Only 1 of 100 climatologists prefer CO2 as plant food.
Well, this poorly educated ex-naval officer says it’s all BS, but what do I know.
Well, this poorly educated ex-naval officer says it’s all BS, but what do I know.
More than those that can only contemplate their navel through a tree ring labeled Yamal 06.
PS Refresh after you make a comment to see if it “went through” before repeating it. 😎
Unfortunately, the global warming wackadoodles, through their continual,
echolalic repetition of their two locked-in narratives: (1)(false) CO2 in the
atmosphere warms the Earth through the “greenhouse effect” and: (2)(true) man
emits CO2 into the atmosphere through the combustion of fossil fuels so that
its rising presence there is anthropogenic — and through brainwashing,
through psychological stampeding, through fear of being ostracized (or worse)
by others, and, perhaps, through bribery, have managed to equate, in a lot of
people’s minds, the very concept of “anthropogenic” with “human CO2
emitting”.
But these concepts are not the same. Anthropogenic means “caused by
man”. Man is capable of causing many large-scale things to occur on this
Earth. The word “anthropogenic”, therefore, refers to far more than just
harvesting fossil fuels from under the Earth and then burning them, thus
emitting CO2 into our atmosphere. But if people get whipped up enough
into a tulipmania frenzy, they can be made to forget this obvious truism and,
indeed, so much more. And then they can be further brought to the fairly
certainly not true proposition that the Earth’s present warming is not
anthropogenic, more than anything as an act of over-broad spite directed
against the global warming wackadoodles and their favorite equivocation.
This is not “Gatewayism” — it is anger against babbling idiot nutcases
interfering with rational thought. Remember: “Arguing with an idiot too long
makes you become one.”
That the Earth’s present warming IS, with what I believe to be about 99%
probability, anthropogenic can be seen by taking note of a vast array of
facts all leading, really through overwhelming circumstantial evidence, to
this conclusion. Take, for instance, the lack of any proposed mechanism of
Nature which could be causing this warming, such as our Sun suddenly
delivering more energy to the Earth or increases in our planet’s atmospheric
pressure (holding its surface heat in longer), or a sudden drop in the
amount of upper atmospheric suspended particulates (this ties in with
an increasing solar wind diminishing cosmic rays causing less upper
atmospheric particulates to form), or a sudden outpouring of Earth’s deep
internal heat through some recently opened channel to its surface. Actually,
there are, potentially, more natural (and anthropogenic!) mechanisms that
could also have conceivably caused the cooling of the Earth
in the past 200 years, like the mini ice ages. And let’s not forget the warming
that usually comes directly after them. But nothing like any of these things
has caused our present warming. Take the fact that the measured warming is
predominantly in the Northern Hemisphere, precisely where the concentration
of human industrial activity has been, and is, located. Look at the stepwise
nature of the temperature increases we are experiencing suggesting an
unnatural mechanism. And look at the warming’s correlation over the last
200 years with various major anthropogenic effects on our environment,
such as, to be more specific (not the only example possible), the vast
pollution of our oceans caused by man which is not being
self-corrected by Nature (or man) at anywhere near the rate that human
activities are aggravating it. Look at the vast amount of inexplicable extra
heat energy we are measuring that is going into our oceans at an
ever-accelerating rate, again, without natural explanation. Most likely, it
is this increasing oceanic heat increment that is the proximate cause of our
present-day global surface warming (land and sea), alleged by the
wackadoodles to eventually (indeed — that’s why they’re wackadoodles —
right now) have significant net negative consequences for human life on
Earth. How is that being caused by Nature?
By switching the argument from CO2’s non-existent effect on weather on
the surface of the Earth and on the heating of our oceans to who’s to blame
for an admittedly warming climate (that is what is meant here by
“attribution” by this “Media Correspondent”, Christopher Warren), the
advocates of global warming hysteria want to really make everyone just assume
that the non-demonization of CO2 argument is dead and buried to further
discussion. Using, instead, this form of attribution as their central point,
they can piggyback a good case for human involvement in climate change on a
monumentally fragile case for a ridiculously tenuous gas in our atmosphere
somehow creating and then downwelling to the surface of the Earth a
cornucopia of heat energy from nothing, literally from thin air (except it’s
NOT thin air — it’s many thousands of times more acausal of heating anything
than thin air!).
David Solan