Get ready for the coming Global Environmental Health Crisis.
There's an axiom in political science associated with Mancur Olson that I remember quite vividly from my university days: When you're losing the debate, re-define the issue.
In the 1970s scientists warned us of a coming ice age, brought on by all the nasty, earth-unfriendly things man was doing. By the 1990s these same scientists had switched their alarm to imminent global warming, which again was said to be primarily caused by human activity.
By the 2000s a concern over imminent global cooling/warming had mutated into the all-encompassing hysteria over impending global climate "change." Hot-cold, wet-dry, oceans rising-oceans falling, it was all the result of man interfering with the "normal" cycles of nature.
This new, all-inclusive, damned-if-it-does, damned-if-it-doesn't, consensus-driven "settled' science was supposed to lead to humanity finally coming to terms with the one, single underlying Truth that ran through each of these crisis iterations: that man, and man alone, was primarily responsible for the terrible things that were about to befall us all.
And since man was the culprit, with his unhealthy reliance on Western-style technology fed by an insatiable appetite for noxious, offensive, fossil fuels, man was the solution. Alter the evil things humans do to feed themselves and their families, heat their homes, and get from point A to B, and Mother Earth is saved, glory be to Gore!
What fed this mantra was not some false, religious notion that led man astray by focusing on matters of faith instead of science, but a rational, objective, dispassionate examination of "the data" — which was comprehensive in nature, unbiasedly collected, and analyzed without the slightest hint of a political agenda. Anyone who objected to the scientific evidence was tantamount to a young-Earth Creationist who probably still thought the world was flat, believed in spontaneous generation, and rejected even the simplest, common sense notions about life that had been affirmed by science to better all our lives.
And then, one day in late 2009, the world came crashing down. As the flat-Earth, science-denying skeptics insisted (among whom an increasing number of honest scientists were represented), what was being fed to the public was a large spoonful of agenda-driven crap, instead of the benevolent fruits of an unbiased line of scientific inquiry.
Now, rather than continue to point out what is becoming more and more obvious every day — that key scientists and their political/media supporters manipulated and lied about the "consensus" data that man was responsible for Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change — I want to take a step back and talk instead about the ingredients that went into this deception.
In effect, let's have a look at the building blocks of this dishonest house of cards to understand how we got to the point we are at today, and just as important, what it really means for all of us going forward.
A little hint about the ultimate conclusion, though: don't expect any of the phony substance to change. Like all good marketers, these agenda-driven scientists and their fellow travelers will simply repackage their "consensus" into a slightly-revised conclusion, and proceed anew from there.
Eternal vigilance is not only the price of freedom, it is the necessary ingredient of reason. But to understand why this fight is far from over, you must first understand what the fight is really about. And, just as important, how the actual battle is being waged,
1. We begin at the beginning
To perpetuate a man-made global [fill in the blank] fraud, there had to be a certain evolutionary process in the histrionics of Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change.
The first issue arose with the timeframe of predictions. As we all learned from the noted Climatologist Ted Danson back in the 1970s, the oceans had only 10, maybe 15, possibly 20 years to go before they died. Well, here it is about 40 years into the future, with none of the draconian remedies in place that just had to be imposed to prevent this calamity, and Flipper is still alive and kicking somewhere in the Atlantic.
So, the first thing the Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change [GCWCC] Hysterics learned was, make sure your predictions have a long enough time frame (say, 75-100 years minimum), so two things will happen:
(a) No one who is alive when the original predictions were made will still be alive when the catastrophic date is finally reached and the original predictions fail to materialize, and/or
(b) Like the old 5-year plans of the Soviet Union, there will be enough changes and corresponding new prediction in the intervening years that when the original due-date arrives, no one will be focusing on those "old" forgotten original predictions anyway.
Thus, following this template, you can predict-away with impunity, because no one will ever hold you accountable for anything you say. Instead, the goodness of your intentions is all that will be remembered. That Al Gore. He may have been wrong about some of the details or something — I mean, it was such a long time ago, and who's perfect anyway? — but he sure cared enough about the planet to take a stand!
The only caveat to this is that people will remember what you said long into the future if your last name happens to be Nostradamus, who wrote his predictions in cryptic verses that can be interpreted in many different ways, thus keeping the predictions alive. Or, you were an ancient Mayan who foretold the end of the world in 2012, but couldn't see the end of your own civilization coming 500 years ago. In the latter case, as soon as January 2013 arrives we'll forget about the Mayans and concentrate on the movie 2012 instead as a valid warning of impending planet-wide doom that got it 100% right . . . except for the small detail of the actual date that Armageddon arrived, which means that it's 99.9% believable . . . which is still better than Rush Limbaugh's 99.3% accuracy rate.
The second thing GCWCC Hysterics learned was to cherry-pick the starting point of their comparative analysis. By starting their measurements in the 1880s during a particularly cold period of time, everything following it was, by definition, "warmer." Never mind that 100, 500, even 1,000 years is the blink of an eye in geological terms, and that measuring accurate world-wide temperatures was impossible before the space age. A hundred years is a long time to most people who measure the world against their own frame of reference, so the 1880s would seem to be a pretty justifiable place to start the analysis.
Besides, lay people don't really understand science, anyway. Plain, ordinary, simple-minded folks like you and me would not understand the straightforward, logical process that re-works data until it "fits" a pre-conceived theory. We'd assign all sorts of nefarious motives to this, instead of understanding that this is part of a normal fine-tuning process that all Men of Knowledge undertake when their data doesn't exactly support their assumptions and conclusions. I'm reminded at this point of the Doonsbury cartoon during the Nixon Watergate Tapes scandal when Nixon was afraid that some of his words would be taken out of context. He played a section of the tape to illustrate his point. It went something like, "So John, how's the cover-up coming along?"
In addition to cherry-picking your starting point for your analysis, the GCWCC Hysterics quickly learned to choose the politically correct check-points after the 1880s to further "validate" their conclusions. If there's a couple of year period where temperatures go up noticeably in the natural ebb and flow of the planet, carve those out for added emphasis. And, for good effect, throw in some photos of polar bears on ice flows and insinuate they are drowning, or show the shoreline of Antarctica receding while ignoring that the interior ice is actually thickening, maintaining the same overall volume in a different footprint.
As a corollary to this, if there's an embarrassing multi-year period where it's actually getting colder like, er, it is at present, then acknowledge that we can't prove something scientifically with anecdotal observations — while massaging the data with enough "tricks" to make the cooling go away, or appear less significant than it is.
From these two foundations we get into a variety of additional tricks of the trade, among them:
(a) Pick out one or two trees with the "correct" patterns while ignoring the others around them that do not reinforce your theory;
(b) Make sure all "peer reviewed findings" arbitrarily reject out of hand any competing data and analysis, even punishing those who dare to question the preferred scientific "consensus"; and
(c) Blindly accept the "scientific pronouncements" of organizations that include non-scientists and individual scientists whose research funding depends on man being the cause of global warming (as well as there being global warming in the first place). After all, if man didn't cause it, then there's no need to fund efforts for man to analyze and correct it.
I can list more examples, as I had previously in 2006 when I first wrote about the Myth of Man-Made Global Warming. http://intellectualconservative.com/2006/07/31/an-even-more-inconvenient-truth-the-myth-of-man-made-global-warming/ But you get the point.
2. Garbage in, garbage out
All of the above is kid's stuff though, in the deliberate effort many GCWCC Hysterics have undertaken to perpetuate their fraud.
Rather than being chased into retreat as the great anthropogenic global warming hoax is exposed for what it is, the True Believers do not have to concede a single inch of ground. They can, instead, double down on the charade by taking a page from the Obama Administration playbook.
When confronted with diminishing public support for their efforts to nationalize the United States' private health care system, the proponents of "National Health Care Reform" transmigrated into proponents of "National Health Insurance Reform." Since by law no one is really "turned away" from a U.S. hospital, everyone receives health care. It may not be as good for the indigent migrant worker in an overcrowded emergency room as my private health care is for me, but it does exist. And it may be more expensive to treat many people through emergency rooms than through private physicians, which is yet another good reason to reform a broken system.
But "reform" is not a synonym for "replace," and if the real objective of National Health Care is to socialize medicine in the US, then fixing the problems with the current system does not help meet this goal. So, change the word "Care" to "Insurance Reform," and find something that everyone can agree on: we hate our insurance companies. (Well, not all of us do, and those that do don't always hate their companies for the same reason, but work with me on the concept here. There's a common thread in vilifying the insurance companies that many people can relate to — and therefore will be willing to accept major changes in the present system that junking your private doctor for Health "Care" Reform simply won't accomplish.)
Using this as the new template, when faced with a growing body of evidence that leading climatologists deliberately fudged their numbers to reach the agenda-driven conclusions they wanted, here's what these same Keepers of the Faith are presently doing to maintain their momentum:
A. Re-Define the Issue
In keeping with the words of Mancur Olson as put into practice recently by the apologists for ACORN, focus on the act that led to the hoax being revealed.
- Investigate the leak using internal resources only (making sure no outside individuals will play a significant role). And, when you do this, be sure to call for the person/persons responsible for the leak to be investigated by outside authorities, stressing that it's a crime punishable by imprisonment to violate someone's privacy.
- If you are in the media, condemn the leaker for violating a public or private trust; ignoring the praise you heaped on leaks about the stolen Pentagon Papers, or any number of Bush Administration or Iraq War issues, that played out prominently in the same press when the press' own agenda was not under attack.
If you can't just blame the messenger, then ignore the content of the charge of fraud, and focus instead on the illegal acts associated with its coverup.
- Focus on the fact that a Freedom of Information Act request was circumvented. Make no real effort to address the nature of the emails and related data that was destroyed or withheld. All we can know for certain is that the FOIA request may not have been fully complied with. This is a serious crime in its own right. Beyond that, it's all rank speculation. It's just as plausible that a FOIA request for Global Warming data led to the destruction of files about grandma's secret cranberry sauce recipe, as it is that scientific data was destroyed, or emails about a conspiracy to commit fraud were destroyed. The fact that such constraints did not apply to similar speculation about Bush's intentions regarding the Iraq War, his presumed knowledge that Weapons of Mass Destruction did not exist in Iraq, etc., has nothing to do with defending this principle.
B. Maintain that you were "right" all along.
When the fraud finally comes crashing down — and like Nixon with Watergate when even his diehard supporters could no longer maintain the fiction that there was no fire in that smoke — point to a phrase you uttered somewhere, sometime, like "Although the evidence as presented is pretty compelling that man is responsible, I'm still looking into the exact cause of global warming."
This (combined with the "legal defense" above), gives the GCWCC Hysterics the following "out" when their rank, agenda-driven biases and pseudo-scientific shenanigans are no longer even remotely defensible. They'll simply say something like this:
"I never said I believed the hoax that man was responsible for cooling/warming/climate change. I simply challenged you to prove your assertion that the scientific community was deliberately distorting the data. Until the 'smoking gun' appeared, you were just speculating. Even a broken clock has the correct time twice a day, so being 'right' isn't a defense. As a matter of principle, I do not believe that slandering someone's intentions without 'proof' is a correct way to behave. I stated previously that I had an open mind about this matter. I embrace the Truth as all good scientists do. When the evidence was there to support what I suspected all along — that man was not the culprit — I voiced my concern. This concern was driven by an unbiased, principled search for the Truth that avoids the kind of ad hoc, unsupported speculative slander you practiced. What I 'feel' is not proof, and it does an injustice to the search for Truth to voice my 'feelings' in a slanderous way. Instead, I used my mind, and the scientific method, to seek real answers, which have now finally come. I can therefore join the chorus that condemns this clear, unmitigated abuse of science — or any other discipline — to promote a personal agenda: a principle I have always held dear to my heart. Rather than being chastened, I am vindicated."
Sounds pretty great, doesn't it? The people who manned the barricades to protect the scientific community against the "flat Earth" deniers of global warming did so to protect a principle that one is innocent of the charge of fraud until proven guilty. When the evidence can no longer be denied, they simply go with the flow, accept what everyone except them has already understood years ago, and claim that they are the ones who acted on principle, not you.
The only flaw in this logic is that this isn't a jury trial. The scientific community has offered a theory and made a claim that man is responsible for global cooling/warming/climate change. It is their responsibility, not ours, to support and defend that position. Our questions aimed at challenging their assumptions and questioning their interpretation of data were not met with open arms, but stonewalled, ridiculed, demeaned, and at times illegally suppressed. Those interested in an open, honest, dispassionate search for the truth should have demanded these scientists and their fellow travelers fully cooperate to prove their theory, rather than hide behind the rubric of "consensus science" to silence their critics.
Just as you can't switch sides at the end of a war and claim you were always rooting for the side that won, you can't just "raise questions" about the people who "raise questions" about the people who make fraudulent claims. Show me a history of challenging these AGW proponents to stop hiding all the raw data and assumptions they used to arrive at their "consensus"-driven, Man-Made Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change "settled science," and I'll agree that they were acting on principle. If not, they're just self-serving political hacks hell bent on silencing legitimate criticism who finally got caught, and are now trying to re-write history to remove the stench from their own actions.
4. So what happens now?
Leaving aside the recent converts to the cause who will come to recognize the GCWCC fraud for what it is, what happens to the momentum that was building for "world wide action" to stem this growing crisis?
Well, nothing. It will continue to build, just be repackaged slightly. Instead of Climate Change in all its iterations, a new mantra will emerge: we need to address the impending Global Environmental Health Crisis!
Any effort to fundamentally transform a society must involve the entire planet, so calling the crisis "Global" is a given. The real interesting sleight of hand will be the next word in this phrase, "Environmental."
The foundation for this has already been laid. When the earth actually started to cool these last 10 years or so — and the dire predictions of global climate catastrophe didn't appear even though the essential fixes to correct the problems were not put into practice — the GCWCC Hysterics began to subtly mix their metaphors. We began to hear about "pollution" in association with climate change. Cap and Trade would help clean up the planet. Driving smaller cars not only meant less harmful exhaust polluting the atmosphere, but you needed to be smaller to fit into these new vehicles comfortably. Regulating transfats, taxing soft drinks, and promoting a healthier lifestyle were all part of the magic to save the planet.
So what if reducing our dependence on fossil fuels doesn't really impact the climate the way we originally thought? It makes the air cleaner. And besides, going green is the more responsible way to act anyway. Is a Western lifestyle with its reliance on big houses, big cars, fast food, and red meat good for us anyway? Wouldn't we all be better off if we changed our ways? Okay, sure, maybe the sun and the natural cycles of the Earth have more to do with the planet's climate than SUVs and factories, but being overweight can kill you. You need to change for the sake of the planet, and your own good.
Which brings us to "Health." As the Obamatrons have already pointed the way, your slovenly, unhealthful ways are impacting the public good. We wouldn't need to euthanize grandma if you were a size 32 waist instead of a 42, and you would be too if you adopted a vegan lifestyle instead of killing helpless little animals to eat. You'd exercise more if gas cost $10.00 a gallon and you couldn't afford a SUV, so banning these monstrosities is still a good idea. And we've got to do all of this now, before it's too late, because there's only so much abuse Mother Earth can take before she drops another hurricane on New Orleans when the Republicans get back in power.
All of which leads to the final word: "Crisis." Don't stop and think — act! Do it now, right away, or bad things will happen someday and it will be your fault. Besides, if the bad things happening still happen, doing something now means it will be less-bad than if we did nothing at all, which would make the same event more bad than it otherwise would have been. It's the logic of economic stimulus, which has worked so well in keeping 8% maximum unemployment just over 10% instead of at a higher level, which it would have been if we didn't act immediately.
I'm not sure that the Global Environmental Health Crisis will be the next great calamity to befall our planet unless we heed the unbiased, non-agenda-driven warnings of the same folks who've brought us every other crisis that never materialized (how's that swine flu pandemic progressing?). But, it does hit all 4 hot buttons that are important to a willing press and ignorant public who can be easily led by an agenda-driven political class that funds its agenda-driven scientific supporters to give its private agenda the illusion of public respectability.
Besides, there's just too much invested in keeping the Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change scam going to let reality get in the way.
The science must stand on its own.
In science the burden of proof is on the theory.
The theory must provide the proof.
If the theory makes a prediction, which it must to not simply be a hypothesis, and the prediction is wrong then the theory is discarded.
That is part of the scientific method.
The AGW theory predicts that CO2 causes global warming.
CO2 is higher now then it was in 1998.
Average global temperature has been declining since 1998
The prediction made by the theory is wrong therefore the AGW theory must be discarded.
QED.
It is called the scientific method. It only takes one wrong result to discard a theory.
‘No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.’ Albert Einstein
Please see also:
scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/climategate.html
For a satirical look at the climategate computer programming:
Anthropogenic Global Warming Virus Alert.
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i64103
Phil:
Re: “In the 1970s scientists warned us of a coming ice age, brought on by all the nasty, earth-unfriendly things man was doing. By the 1990s these same scientists had switched their alarm to imminent global warming, which again was said to be primarily caused by human activity.”
G. K. Chesterton once pointed out that truth is consistent.
Phil
Your prediction regarding the next Big Hustle carries more scientific weight than the best efforts of science, if Climategate is any indication of science’s predictive accuracy. Like most businessmen, I believe the “follow the money” rule is a consistent indicator as to what’s really going on, once the “fog of war” is eliminated. And the useful legacy of Climategate may be the data and financial revelations leaking out of the blogging community as to who will profit from Global Warming.
For example, one of the stars of Climategate, Phil Jones, hustled $19 million in research grants between 2000 and 2006, according to a piece in today’s American Spectator. And, AS goes on to say, that same $19 million was 6 times the amount Scientist Jones received in the previous decade – sounds more like venture capital activity than altruistic science. The blogs are chortling that Jones had to step down from his current post after the scandal broke – but nobody is asking what happened to all the money previously obtained.
Unlike an older religion, Science has no Pope, no one in ultimate authority who decides what is absolutely true and what is absolutely false – just an army of priests, monsignors, bishops and even a few archbishops – constantly at theological odds over what is “settled science”. Amusingly, like Galileo’s censure at the hands of the Church, Big Science’s bishops attempted to censure dissenting scientists who spoke out against global warming. Mankind, unlike our weather, remains unchanged over the centuries, the same tactics work regardless of which religious leaders are punishing the apostates.
But the public is slowly learning to “follow the money” when it comes to science’s latest crisis – which could be good or bad depending on what us “laypeople” take away from the lesson. Up to now, Big Science has preached: “Give us the money, we’ll make you a miracle”. We’ve gradually learned to buy technological indulgences which will no doubt save us from disease and manmade disasters in this life rather than the next – but how long before some modern day Martin Luther nails a long list of indictments to the front door of the National Academy of Sciences?
I’m amazed by the number of people who equate “consensus” with “science”. My consensus is that AGW will only adversely effect liberals. The seas will rise, but only metrosexuals will drown. Temperatures will rise, giving Republicans a longer golf season, but liberals will fry on the sidewalk like worms. AND best of all—Women and Minorities will be hardest hit !!! BRING-IT-ON !
God, OOPS, make that Goodness.
You have expressed this issue cogently, persuasively, & exhaustively.
Thank you.
If I might, I would emphasize:
(1) Follow the money
‘Climategate’ professor Phil Jones awarded £13 million ($19 million) in research grants
http://climatechangefraud.com/the-money-trail/5770-climategate-professor-phil-jones-awarded-p13-million-19-million-in-research-grants
(2) Cost/balance
Even if AGW was 2X as “real” & these frauds claim, what about cost/balancing? I mean must we bankrupt ourselves, go back to a 7th Century standard of living?
(3) Playing The Morality card
Must we be hectored that resistance is futile & practiced only by deniers?
(4) Waste Not
Must my family & I wait ‘til someone has had a solid bowel movement before the toilet may be flushed?
Oh wait, someone’s trying to flush 75% of our GDP down the toilet!
P
Actually, you don’t seem to understand. Let the MSM educate you!
As somebody has pointed about before on other issues, if something is discovered which might be favorable to a Conservative position/harmful to a Liberal position ration, the whole thing goes thru the MSM 12-stage debunking process. This debunking is then adopted by their robotic faithful readers/listeners who pride themselves on not reading/listening to anything else. Here’s my version of the 12-stage MSM debunking process as applied to this e-mail, er, issue:
(1) It’s a big fat lie.
(2) It was obtained by theft & it was a crime to publish it.
(3) It doesn’t really say what its thieving presenters allege it says.
(4) It doesn’t mean anything.
(5) Neither the NYT nor the WaPo reported on it.
(6) It’s garbage put out by Fox News, talk radio, & rightwing nut blogs.
(7) It must be considered in context; it just represents infighting among the good guys as to how best to educate the public on this vital issue & nothing more.
(8) It doesn’t contradict the main issue – & let us remind you of what that is: the need to proceed to fight the war on AGW which is settled science.
(9) We could’ve eradicated the AGW threat in this country with what we’ve spent on these illegal Middle Eastern wars.
(10) The timing of this announcement is too coincidental to be anything but a political hit job; it was meant to block needed legislation in this vital area, like Cap ‘n Trade.
(11) For eight years, Bush 43 urged voluntary action as the primary response to AGW — and for eight years, aggregate greenhouse gas emissions remained unchanged.
(12) It’s old news, that. Nothing here; let’s move on.
An excellent, intelligent essay. It’s so good that I took the trouble in registering to make this comment, which I don’t normally do. One of my favorite views of the subject is an essay written by Michael Crichton. It was included in his novel State of Fear. Parts of that novel seem like they are coming true with this email fiasco. It’s a shame the man is not alive to witness this. What a field day he would have.
Along with Eugenics, other scientific consensus’s include Y2K and Phrenology.
http://www.crichton-official.com/essay-stateoffear-whypoliticizedscienceisdangerous.html
1) Any action has a consequence even just waiting, it might not be what you expect/predict/want but something will happen. If this does not help, you can read on.
—-
Global warming is only requires a logical proof to make sense.
Take any finite system. Convert one component of it into another and continue to do so without end and steadily increase your conversion rate by a measurable amount. Given enough time, something will happen.
Examples of this include fishing (fishery collapses in the past), ocean toxin levels (still rising), ozone depletion by CFCs (being fixed by our action), oxygen catastrophe (reverse of global warming where bacteria didn’t even realize what they were doing and keep going till even they mostly died off), this goes on and on (try dumping all our trash into the ocean and see what happens (Think vortex of garbage in the middle of the ocean)
It does not really matter if there are some bad scientists because there always will be and if it really did affect science that much we would not have anything new forever.
In addition, it just does not make any sense to say that we can just do whatever and earth will handle it. Of course the universe will handle it because it doesn’t care but humanity doesn’t exactly want change (Fisheries now have tons of jellyfish in replacement of the fish)
=Beyond this is a rant,
Isn’t the whole point about humanities development is to improve and control our surroundings so that we don’t all die off what harm would it be if you could have a better environment to live in does it really matter if it turns out that it was a waste of money. Think about the alternative, if we ignore a potentially deadly process, it will be hell to fix it in time.
It is as if many people in the world just want to stick their heads into the sand and do not care about innovating and developing. I would like to have distributed power grids for enhanced monitoring and security even if there was no global warming. I would not mind using the massive energy output of our planet or sun instead of the slowly replenishing derivative reserves of said energy. This block really is just a rant but it just does not make any sense.
This effect can be seen with the great disinterest in basic science, sure it doesn’t cure cancer, it doesn’t save lives, it doesn’t technically do anything, but it is these same basic sciences that give us everything we have today if no one ever figured out physics, chemistry, etc there would be no worries about global warming or anything to that matter.
Note, I welcome the trolls and who knows maybe it is all a supertroll now you are confused. You’ll never know. (It is funny watching the internet writhe in its disjointed discourse)
Oh and to drive this in the oposite direction of physcological manipulation techniques, I dont give a damn about either side becuase I cant vote in America nor do I think global warming is going to destroy the world (Maybe it will but I dont know) Have fun, go crazy in the end you will believe what you want to believe becuase I believe that you can believe whatever you believe in. (Hurrah for run on sentences and botch grammer) Its like this is all just someones random thoughs or are they maybe I dont care and wont look back.
It’s All Bunk!
I too, remember being warned about Global Cooling in the 70′s, Global Warming in the late 80′s, and now being counseled by my ‘betters’ regarding climate change. All these dire predictions were being touted from the same data set.
My largest objection to this whole subject is the data set itself. How can one carve a 150 year data set out of a planet’s 4.5 billion year history, and from that miniscule amount of information, reasonably expect to predict anything?
All along, activists have ‘demanded’ change. However; the only change they can agree on is whatever our best technologists can suggest as a replacement power source isn’t good enough. Oil is bad, coal is worse, and so is natural gas. Hydroelectric power disrupts fish migratory patterns and wind power disrupts bird migratory patterns. The horrors of nuclear energy cannot even be part of the discussion.
Most environmentalists share an aversion to American Exceptionalism with other progressives. This is probably a good time for the United States to take a back seat. Allow all other countries to adjust their behavior first. Once the Chinese have cut their CO2 levels to those of twenty years ago, we will agree to do the same.
Arguably, a case may be made for the earth falling into a lengthy cooling cycle. For all we know, we should be pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere than less. I believe that all this has a lot more to do with global control than it does with global climate change.
Phil
An excellent and witty article as usual. I usually jump into these climate discussions from time to time. For those not in the know, I am a weather forecaster for the Canadian Government. Like I have said before, I believe that GW is occurring, but I dispute man’s role in this process. Like others have said before, consensus science is a disgrace to my beloved profession. Shouting down the non-believers is not science, it is an autocracy. Science will only progress with an open mind. Without it we would all still be in the dark ages.
As I have said in previous articles, anthropogenic pollutants released into the atmosphere can have drastic effects in the short term. Ozone, which is formed at the surface primarily as the result of a series of reactions involving nitrous oxides and volatile organic compounds in the presence of sunlight, has been know to have acute respiratory affects in humans. Acid rain (sulfuric acid in aqueous solution) changes the pH of water bodies and kills fish as well as vegetation. Contaminated ground water as a result of poorly or under regulated industry can have any number of health effects in humans, animals and plant life. These processes are well understood and not nearly as controversial. These are the issues that need to be addressed. If we deal with these issues, we will notice the results in our lifetimes. As you can see, I have my own agendas, but I feel these are much more reasonable and somewhat less politicized than GW.
Tomleema,
Many of the catastrophes you describe have been shown to be purely man made. Ozone depletion by CFCs (which, by the way, is a far more serious greenhouse gas than CO2) could only be anthropogenic in nature because CFCs do not occur naturally. If there are few/no changes in ocean currents, dwindling fish stocks, particularly in coastal areas really can only be the result of overfishing. The problem with CO2 emissions is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to separate the anthropogenic sources/emissions/amounts from the background/natural sources/emissions/amounts. Just so you know, I am not a Palin-loving conservative. I am a liberal in most senses of the word, but that doesn’t mean I unquestionably ingest every liberal idea that is (force)fed to me.
Phil,
You’d be surprised by the spaciousness of Smart Cars. I was driven home in one after a night shift. The driver was 300lbs and I am 6’5″ and 235lbs. I especially enjoyed the headroom. As far as safety is concerned, watch some of the crash test videos on YouTube. Of course, we won’t get into that argument now will we?
P.S. I await the Raymondmeister ;-)
Regards,
Paul: Always great to hear from you. It’s an affirmation that not every scientist is in the tank for Algore, or has sold his soul for government funding.
My wife drives a VW Beetle, which is a larger version of the Smart Car. I’m a big guy too — 6’4 and fatter than I’d like to admit. I can fit in the car comfortably, but I wouldn’t want to drive it cross country like I do my SUV from time to time. It’s 750 miles across Texas alone, then through Arizona and New Mexico if you want to drive to LA as I’ve done frequently. What makes sense for Manhattan traffic isn’t always the best option for the rest of the country.
Leaving aside the fact that I’d rather be in my SUV than a Smart Car in any wreck, a family with a couple of kids and a dog or two needs more than a lawnmower on wheels if they’re going to do anything other than drive around the block. Saving the environment is great as long as you don’t have any kids, things to transport, distance to travel, and nationalized health care to euthanize you instead of cure you after that head-on crash.
Take care,
Phil
Phil,
You’re far too cynical in your old age;-). Our next car, by the way, will be a Ford Escape. A smart car, although cool, won’t fit our future kids and present dog. This debate is going to get boring if some AGW cheerleaders don’t step into the ring soon!
Regards,
First time poster.
First off let me say that I’m really looking forward to the pasting that the left is going to get in ’10. To use an old time phrase, “Jail to the Chief.”
Next, on top of exposing this GC/W/CC fraud would somebody please write a piece on alternate power generation technologies other than those idiot windmills.
For starters there’s the pebble bed technology. The technology was developed in America, where else, and the pilot plant is being built in South Africa. An air cooloed, runaway proof fission reactor technology. I think that we can do better but this will work for now.
Then there’s the ITER/Z-Axis Accelerator, technology developed in the US and the pilot plant is being built in France. Best as I can tell after following this issue over the years after ten years thanks in large part to the usual inter-governmental Global fraud, corruption and pocket stuffing that we’ve come to expect from our “leadership” they’ve finally managed to get their site cleared.
Global warming “science” is a fraud as has been plainly demonstrated despite what the “Green is the New Red” folks down to the UN/IPCC and the “Lame Stream Media” want to admit. (Not to mention the Obamabots.) Bottom line is that we have the technology to move the ball on the issue of power generation and maintaining national sovereignity and cultural identity.
Paul: The insane debate was covered pretty thoroughly in my last article http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2009/11/25/the-day-science-died/ In fact, I drew some of my current observations from it.
FTM: All you need to do is get Algore to invest in this new technology, and suddenly it will move to the top of the line. If there’s no profit in it for Al, there’s no impetus to move away from the “alternative” Gore-approved energy sources that he will personally benefit from.
Paul_Bovis:
It seems to me that if global warming were true, there would be a change in the standard temperature and pressure. Can you enlighten? Thx.
P
Seems to me, a non-scientist but not a scientific illiterate, that the current Copenhagen Conference is easy to understand, both for intelligent non-scientists as well as for not-really-interested dummkopfs: it’s all governance, all the time. It don’t need no stinkin’ scientists. And the scientists who are there just need to know how to shut off mikes & call the gendarmes when inconvenient truths are brought up by “skeptics” who must be personally destroyed in the harshest terms possible.
It’s the politics, stupid, the economic politics, that is, which is being urged by economic illiterates who call their critics scientific illiterates: government control, confiscatory taxes, punishing regs, & government redistribution of the “ill-begotten wealth of the Western World” (a) to the rest of the world who are poor because we are rich & (b) to Western World charlatans for their allegedly green businesses.
Newsflash to scientists & those of a scientific bent: politics & critical thinking about science are not always reconcilable.
Newsflash to economically-illiterate scientists: Google “cost-benefit analysis”.
BTW, a rather fair & balanced (to coin a phrase) analysis in the NYT Opinionator Blog, yes the NYT:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/global-warmings-cold-shoulder/
“…AP…assigned eleven fact-checkers to Sarah Palin’s book as against five to the Climategate emails and documents… the … word count differential [is} somewhere between ...a thousand to one...in favor of the Climategate material[nevermind]the “degree of difficulty” differential…another indication that conventional mainstream media fact-checking is fake and insufficient… On scientific and technical matters, especially, the “wisdom of crowds” is vastly preferable. The number of blogosphere readers with the expertise to understand and parse the Climategate papers dwarfs the staff that even the AP can provide. And, as the brilliant – and now indispensable – climate blog Wattsupwiththat points out, the AP’s science reporter Seth Borenstein is far too cozy with his sources.”
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2009/12/14/the-wisdom-of-crowds-sarah-palin-and-climategate/
FTM:
Re: “For starters there’s the pebble bed technology. … Then there’s the ITER/Z-Axis Accelerator…”
For centuries, the Arabs were smack in the middle of the trade routes between East and West and extracted a toll for permission to cross their lands. Columbus sought a Westward route to bypass this toll. As a result, Arabs were cut out of the West’s economic progress until the oil age. We know the rest of that story.
Regardless of any new technology, it seems that if history is any guide, God will make sure the Arabs will be a key player in it to demand their “fair” share. Perhaps the pebbles will be of the sort found only in the Middle East.
What’s going on? CRU takes down Briffa Tree Ring Data and more
Odd things are going on at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
Widely available data, existing in the public view for years, is now disappearing from public view.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/14/whats-going-on-cru-takes-down-briffa-tree-ring-data-and-more/
“So John, how’s the cover-up coming along?”
—President Nixon
any leftist who can prove to me there was such a context in which Nixon was not actually inquiring about an ongoing cover up, I will send to that leftist a money order of
$ 10,000 within 24 hours
Same offer for proving to me how ” Hide the decline” can be put in a context where it means ” let’s NOT hide the decline” (in temperature )
any leftist who can prove to me that climate scientists do not mean hide the decline ( in temperature )when they say in multiple emails ” hide the decline” (in temperature) while they are working on temperature data which thay have either doctored or destroyed because it does not show a rise in temperature will aslo receive a money order of $10,000 from me within 24 hours.
If you want to practice you ” out of context skills” here are a few other quotes which you can try and put in a context that reverses the meaning of what is being said, or that means something else than what is being said,
“Canada is spelled C a n a d a”
” 3 leftists riding in a Prius is one less leftist than 2 leftists riding in Prius”
” a square has 4 sides but a cube has six sides ”
Go ahead!!!
put those in a context where they mean something else!!!
or where they mean the OPPOSITE of the quote!!!
common!! do it!!!
I can’t wait to send you my hard earned cash !!!
Have a nice hide-the-decline-in-temperature day!
It’s amazing how most of the press has just completely disregarded the scandal… move along nothing to see here.
Somehow the excuses of the men accused in the scandal, “prove” that its much ado about nothing. It’s like asking Bernie Madoff, “Bernie are you operating a Ponzie scheme”, “no, everything has been taken out of context” And then they say, “ok guess there’s no problem here.” The amazing thing is the press will actually cite Mann, and RealClimate (run by Mann and friends) to show that there’s nothing amiss.
The blatant whitewash is certainly the second scandal.
Part of me thinks that even some of the Liberals believe the jig is up. Perhaps they are just being much more quiet about it, so as not to provoke the ire of some of the truly crazed green constituency. Even the NY Times discusses how the ‘climate deal’ was perhaps just lip-service.
Imagine if you will the case that Obama and friends think its a scam just like we do. That’d be a tricky situation for them wouldn’t it, especially with such a large supporting group still insisting on it. Perhaps they consider it a better political and economic move to let the climate fever die down gradually and then pull support for it once popularity really crashes.
I’ve become a speechwriter for the Obama Administration.
From Obama’ State of the Union address last night: “Even if you doubt the evidence [about “Climate Change”], providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future,”
From my essay above:
[W]hat happens to the momentum that was building for “world wide action” to stem this growing [Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change] GCWCC crisis [when this fraud is finally exposed]?
Well, nothing. It will continue to build, just be repackaged slightly. Instead of Climate Change in all its iterations, a new mantra will emerge: we need to address the impending Global Environmental Health Crisis!
Any effort to fundamentally transform a society must involve the entire planet, so calling the crisis “Global” is a given. The real interesting sleight of hand will be the next word in this phrase, “Environmental.”
The foundation for this has already been laid. When the earth actually started to cool these last 10 years or so — and the dire predictions of global climate catastrophe didn’t appear even though the essential fixes to correct the problems were not put into practice — the GCWCC Hysterics began to subtly mix their metaphors. We began to hear about “pollution” in association with climate change. Cap and Trade would help clean up the planet. Driving smaller cars not only meant less harmful exhaust polluting the atmosphere, but you needed to be smaller to fit into these new vehicles comfortably. Regulating transfats, taxing soft drinks, and promoting a healthier lifestyle were all part of the magic to save the planet.
So what if reducing our dependence on fossil fuels doesn’t really impact the climate the way we originally thought? It makes the air cleaner. And besides, going green is the more responsible way to act anyway. Is a Western lifestyle with its reliance on big houses, big cars, fast food, and red meat good for us anyway? Wouldn’t we all be better off if we changed our ways? Okay, sure, maybe the sun and the natural cycles of the Earth have more to do with the planet’s climate than SUVs and factories, but being overweight can kill you. You need to change for the sake of the planet, and your own good. …
Phil:
Re: “It will continue to build, just be repackaged slightly.”
Some readers here might be familiar with the program “Abundant Life” on the Catholic channel, EWTN. Last week the hostess did a two-part series called “Selling the Culture”. Part 1 was how the use of Marketing Techniques is being used to get Americans to accept Leftist ideas; Part 2 was about the use of Semantic Gymnastics to avoid peoples’ negative beliefs about those ideas. She made a most profound statement in Part 2: “Man was made in the image and likeness of God; God likes to create, so man likes to create. How does God create? Through His word. Man likewise has the power to create through his word, but what does he do? Through the distortion of words, he creates Evil.”
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