Fatalism & Will of God
Sep 2nd, 2009, in Opinion, by Ross
Other worldly factors in climate change, are Indonesian students right?
GLOBAL WARMING – ‘GOD’S WILL?’
A report in the Jakarta Post, which said that a significant proportion of young Indonesians were content to regard the current climate change panic as
God’s Will
caught my attention, even before my agnostic and atheist friends exploded into mirthful indignation. (Why is it that so many non-believers here, who’d not think to blare out their scepticism back home, tend to take on a noisy resemblance to the long-dead League of Militant Godless – is it a reaction to the local fanatics?)
I’m certainly not an especially godly sort, but it seems to me that these young folks have a broader perspective than the panic-merchants. The more we read of the Gore Brigade, the more we find that their hysteria is manufactured. Gore’s own film was faulted by a British court of law, which decreed that, not least in view of the various lies/errors/inaccuracies it contained, showing it in schools had to be accompanied by a bias health warning.
If we think there’s a God up there, or even just Mother Nature, then it is patently His, or Her, doing that the climate is changing. Many scientists tell us exactly that, and get stridently abused and even persecuted for saying so. Others insist the climate is not significantly changing, or even going the other way from that which the panickers tell us.
A while ago we had a lengthy thread of argument on IM about climate (Saving the Planet?) and it became so self-absorbed that I gave up reading it. Since then I have paid sporadic attention to the issue, mainly due to my interest in free speech, and what I’ve learned from reading back and forth into the past decade has worried me about the character of the scientific establishment. A lot of these guys want and need government grants and are unlikely to upset their cosy apple-carts by challenging the in-crowd’s prejudices. Why should those people quoted in the Jakarta Post article be held up to scorn for preferring explanations that don’t depend on vested interests?
An article in the Wall Street Journal by a Mr. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, in April 2006, reported that
Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.
He also states that censorship is in vogue in the journalistic sphere.. ‘At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest.’ Not a very open dialogue, is it?
Lindzen’s own experience with a paper he worked on is also worrying.
‘…Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as “discredited.” Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming–not whether it would actually happen.’
God, Nature, man-made, inevitable…? We are not being given the whole story, for sure, and cui bono? In these circumstances, it makes more sense for Indonesians and the rest of us to seek answers from a level we trust, rather than bought-and-paid-for apparatchiks. What is really behind the panic? Is there a hidden agenda?
147 Comments on “Fatalism & Will of God”
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Ross says:
Polar bear expert barred from meeting over climate views
Last Updated: Monday, July 6, 2009 | 7:38 PM ET Comments162Recommend66CBC News
The view that climate change is mainly driven by natural cycles, not by human-caused pollution, does not help polar bear conservation efforts, according to Andrew Derocher, former chairman of the Polar Bear Specialist Group. (CBC)A polar bear biologist formerly from Nunavut was barred from an international scientific meeting because his beliefs on climate change and its effects on the species are inconsistent with the group’s opinion.Mitch Taylor, who was a polar bear biologist with the Nunavut government until last year, was not invited to the Polar Bear Specialist Group’s meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, this past weekend.
The group of scientists meets periodically to discuss the status of polar bear populations around the world. Taylor said he had been attending the group’s meetings since 1981.
Dissenting view ‘extremely unhelpful’
But in email correspondence obtained by CBC News, then-chairman Andrew Derocher told Taylor that his beliefs about climate change — that it is a natural cycle, not mainly driven by human-caused pollution — are not “helpful” to the group.“I do believe, as do many [Polar Bear Specialist Group] members, that for the sake of polar bear conservation, views that run counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful,” Derocher, a polar bear researcher at the University of Alberta, wrote in his email to Taylor.
“I, too, was not surprised by the members not endorsing an invitation. Nothing I heard had to do with your science on harvesting or your research on polar bears,” Derocher added in the message, dated June 15.
“It was the positions you’ve taken on global warming that brought opposition.”
======================You see, Arie, your side of the debate is simply intolerant. Get one of your shrinks to analyse that, since you evidently hold to the view that disagreement with the elite requires shrink attention.
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Just another extract to keep you busy on SUnday morning, a change from your usual breakfast reading, perhaps. (Marx must get boring after a while!)
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Another Perspective
The Real Climate Deniers
By Peter C. Glover & Michael Economides on 4.3.09 @ 6:07AMFor at least a decade, intimately connected with energy use, have been claims on climate change. Richard Lindzen, arguably the world’s most renowned climate scientist, describes our understanding of the science of climate as “primitive.” Yet many in the media persist in treating alarmist “climate experts” as “all-knowing.” But then the same media have a long history of taking up “end is nigh” scaremongering. It’s good for ratings. We have had a litany of warnings that “billions could die” when AIDS, Avian flu, SARS, Ebola, mad cow disease, the millennium bug — the list is endless — hit the headlines. When they didn’t of course, media alarmists shrugged, claimed they “simply report the facts” and moved on to warn about the next looming disaster.
Since man set foot on the earth, however, nothing has quite gripped the angst-ridden imagination like the weather gods visiting their fury at human behavior and life, so much connected with the use of fossil fuel energy. Media editors know this. Where once we banished such “end is nigh” eccentrics to the limits of society, today, they are fêted for spinning prediction as science and conducting publicly funded research to “save the planet.” Their messages are aided by apocalyptic video game scenarios passing for media news reports.
Nowhere has this been thrown into more graphic relief than in two international climate conferences held in March this year. The “expert” conclusions of each could not have been more starkly divergent. But it is in the aims, nature and public pronouncements of each conference that we discern where the real science of climate understanding lays, and thus who are the real “climate deniers.” All of which has profound implications for the future of energy, energy policy and energy investment.
The Alarmist Conference
The climate alarmist conference met in Copenhagen March 10-12 and was attended by over 2,000 activists, mostly non-scientists. It was billed as an “emergency summit” ahead of next December’s UN global climate summit to be held in the same city. Such is the panic among climate/political activists that world governments will use the economic crisis as an excuse to avoid committing to binding national carbon targets come December, it was felt vital to up the political ante. If you thought that would mean scientists pointing to the latest accruing scientific evidence of impending disaster, however, you would be wrong. Far from presenting any new (or old) actual evidence, the conference majored on politicians doling out the media’s headlines based on the latest apocalyptic computer-modeled predictions.
The conference duly warned of even higher sea levels and even higher global temperatures all presaging even greater catastrophes. Apparently warnings of temperature rises of 2 to 3 degrees C. clearly were not shocking us enough. Now they could be as high as 4 or 5 degrees C. The London Times reported the conference as claiming the “ice sheets are melting” and that increased global warming would lead to other “impacts,” including more hurricanes, floods, and starvation.And just to show how previous prevarication by world leaders has already cost us, we learned that “two years ago it was widely thought that holding temperature increases to a maximum of 2C was achievable if governments made the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050. It is now recognised that an 80 percent cut is needed.”
To sum up, the alarmist conference in Copenhagen was not about science, it was about politics and prophecy. For the actual science, including the latest scientific evidence and trends, observers in Copenhagen would have had to travel to New York.
The Non-Alarmist Conference
Seven hundred climate “skeptics,” many of them scientists, including Richard Lindzen of MIT, attended the Second International Conference on Climate Change, “Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?” The conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute, was held in New York on March 8-10. This was a wholly different kind of affair. It focused on the empirical science of climate, the latest scientific data and climate trends. As such, in dealing with the gritty reality of climate science, it duly got almost zero mass media coverage. Most journalists, it seems, do not like dealing with real science and allaying public scares is just bad for business.
In complete contrast to Copenhagen, the New York conference was addressed by a who’s who of distinguished climate scientists. As well as hearing from Professor Lindzen, the conference was addressed by Professor Syun-Ichi Akasofu, former director of the International Arctic Research Center, Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute, and Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, to name but a few. These eminent scientists are the very ones the media likes to smear as “crackpots” and “climate deniers.” What the conference received was the fruit of real research and study that showed sea levels, far from experiencing dramatic rise, are seeing the same level of rise they have been seeing for over 200 years. Professor S. Fred Singer, highlighting the claim of one alarmist who warned a rise of even 18 cm over a century would be “catastrophic,” pointed out that the gentleman concerned is “apparently unaware that 18cm a century is the ongoing rate of rise — which implies no additional rise in sea levels. In other words, the human influence is zero.”
Alarmist claims over the “melting of the Western Antarctic ice sheet” also got short shrift as it was revealed the long-term melting of the Western ice sheet has been known about for decades. Far more significant was the data that confirmed how the Antarctic is not melting at all except for one tiny corner, the Antarctic Peninsula. The lack of scientific evidence that global ice was in meltdown was tied in with the fact that key computer-modeled temperature predictions — upon which the whole alarmist edifice stands — assume a linear rise in temperatures as carbon emissions rise. But such computer predictions were shown to have proven consistently and hopelessly inept. Far from following the linear rise anticipated by the alarmists, the actual satellite-measured global temperature data reveals that global temperatures have flattened out in recent years and, more recently, dropped. On the plain scientific data, if the present trend continues, the world will in fact be 1.1 degree C. cooler by 2100. In short, the world’s ice is not in meltdown. Similarly, claims that hurricane activity was rising was refuted by the scientific data showing hurricane activity, currently, is at a 30-year low.
Much more could be said, but reading the New York presentations (linked below) one can only be impressed by the standard of empirical scientific study and debate and, in Copenhagen, the distinct lack of it. The juxtaposition of these two conferences is thus iconic of the entire climate debate — or rather the mass media’s collusive and shameful closing down of it. Unfortunately, many political leaders have simply bought the media-dominating alarmist line.
Vaclav Klaus, keynote speaker at the New York conference and current president of the European Union, lamented that, “the minds of world leaders are firmly shut to anything but the fantasies of the scaremongers.” Yet it’s those same leaders who are about to consider diverting vast economic and energy resources at the current G20 and at December’s “Kyoto II.” Frightening, when you consider they will do so based on an agenda propagated by a highly anti-intellectual, exclusively prophetic, anti-science ‘faith’ movement — the real climate deniers.
(Go here for a list of links to the audio, video, power point and pdf presentations from the ICCC’s “Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?” — decide for yourself.)
Letter to the Editor
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Peter C. Glover is European associate editor for the independent online magazine Energy Tribune.Michael Economides is editor-in-chief of Energy Tribune.
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Arie Brand says:
About Taylor and the Polar Bears:
This story was originally published by Christopher Booker (see the Wiki on him) in the British Daily Telegraph, a favorite outlet for denialists, of 27th June 2009, about a week before CBS news came with it. It was immediately lapped up by the usual suspects.
The source seems to be Taylor himself who claims that he got an email along these lines which CBS news claims to have “obtained”.
Tim Lambert wrote:
It is hard to imagine more unreliable sourcing than a Christopher “white asbestos is harmless” Booker second-hand report of an email, but I thought I should check the story to be on the safe side, so I asked Derocher about Booker’s article:
“Dr. Taylor retired from the Nunavut government last year and was replaced on the Polar Bear Specialist Group by Dr. Lily Peacock. Further, Dr. Taylor was not re-appointed the to the PBSG by the Canadian government that decided to appoint 3 other people to the PBSG meeting here in Copenhagen. Involvement with the PBSG is restricted to those active in polar bear research and management and Dr. Taylor no longer fits within our guidelines of involvement. Dr. Taylor years ago was involved in drafting the rules that govern our Group – we are restricted to 20 members of which 15 are appointed by the 5 nations with polar bears in their range and 5 members are appointed by the Chair. I appointed 5 people that are active in polar bear issues on an ongoing basis.
It was an unfortunate article and it was grossly misleading. For example, I never was a student of Dr. Taylor’s and for him to suggest so is more than a little surprising to me. I have know Dr. Taylor for over 25 years but I can assure you that at no point did he ever supervise me in any capacity.
I am unsure what the intent of Dr. Taylor’s comments were but I can assure you that the PBSG has broad representation. Given the 20 members and my appointing of only 5, it is largely up to the 5 nations to construct the Group that I Chair. The Chair position rotates by nation – my term is up and it will be up to the next Chair to appoint 5 members because my term will end and my membership in the PBSG will end. I will also note that our former Chair, Scott Schliebe of the US Fish and Wildlife Service is not attending this meeting. He also retired in 2008 and is no longer active in the field.I hope this clarifies the situation some. This meeting is about coordinating ongoing and future research and management. Dr. Taylor is no longer in a position to assist with such issues. The PBSG has heard Dr. Taylor’s views on climate warming many times. I would note that Dr. Taylor is not a trained climatologist and his perspectives are not relevant to the discussions and intent of this meeting.”
So Taylor is no longer a member of the PBSG because he retired from his job working for the Nunavut government. Don’t expect to see a correction from Booker.
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You asked me what motivates me: I am as uncomfortable with public lies as you seem to be with the information that comes from an “elite”. I think that your beef is not with the information as such (you have shown little interest in it) but with the fact that there is no “royal road”‘ to this knowledge – that it can’t be obtained over a bar counter.
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On that so-called “Second International Conference on climate Change” organized by the Heartland Institute of pro tobacco campaigns fame see this lighthearted video :
and this sketch:
9 March 09
Heartland Conference Speakers and Attendees still fighting the Cold War
Attending panel discussions at the Heartland Climate Change Conference in New York has me looking over my shoulder checking for the next Red Army invasion.
While the context of the conference is climate change it seems that for many panel members and attendees this is less about science than it is about warding off the socialist plot that is supposedly closing in on America.I attended an afternoon session featuring evangelical think tanker Cal Beisner and the Monsanto/ExxonMobil sweetheart of the “civil rights” movement Roy Innis.
Before the panel presentation even began, the two guys sitting down from me were going on about the “Liberal media conspiracy” while a blogger bragged to the women next to me that he was quoted on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show today.
Beisner spent the majority of his talk stroking his own ego with the big close being a screed about the “eco imperialists” who are bent on condeming the poor of the world.The real show was Innis, who began with a strange argument that if you’ve never been to the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), why should you care if they drill in it for oil. His argument was that those against drilling in ANWR were innocent citizens who had been subjected to “heavy propaganda and conspiracy about the environment and the earth.”
And the source of this “heavy propoganda?” Innis paints a picture that America is running the risk of being overtaken by some kind of new world order of communists. As Innis explains, there is a “conspiracy against decency” of “radical environmentalists” of which oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is somehow involved. And this grand conspiracy is putting all of us under threat from “Soviet like thinking.” He ends with a warning to us all: “Let us not be tricked like Lenin did the Bolsheviks.”
The crowd giggled with glee and while I was too young to ever attend a Reagan rally, I bet this is probably what they were like. But this is not 1981, it’s 2009 and what in the heck does Communism have to do with climate change? Nothing of course, but Innis knows that this “socialist conspiracy theory” plays to a crowd that is looking for any reason they can to continue to ignore the realities of climate change.
See also this New York Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/science/earth/09climate.html?_r=1 -
I sniffed around the internet a bit to check up on the bona fides of Glover and Economides and their online journal Energy Tribune. Glover and Economides are, of course, the authors of the longish piece Ross posted above.
Energy Tribune seems to be mainly interested in boosting the oil industry and, in that context, attacking climate science. Its editorial office is appropriately found in Houston, where Economides is or was professor of petroleum engineering. I think that Glover mainly has to lend his writing skills, such as they are, to the undertaking.
What is clear is that neither of them has any qualifications in climate science. They compensate for their own lack of credibility in this field by inflating that of the few climatologists who are on their side. Those who participated in that dubious conference were all ’eminent scientists’ and Richard Lindzen is now called ‘arguably the world’s most renowned climate scientist.’
Let me comment on that by quoting a post by a blogger called David Matthews:
“These two shills for the oil industry are lying and slandering science in a manner which can only be successful when addressed to an audience of scientifically illiterate talk radio listening Idiot-Conservatives.
The Heartland Institute isn’t a scientific organization. The Heartland Instititute’s climate conference contained numerous explicit references to fundamentalist Christianity and conservative extremist capitalist ideology.
Any climate conference ending with that buffoon Christopher Monckton declaring that he is a “Christian man from a Christian nation” and giving a Christian blessing isn’t a science conference.
Conservatives have become politically irrelevant extremist losers for a reason/ If you people insist upon remaining scientifically illiterate fundamentalists you are going to remain irrelevant forever. ”
Oh and Ross, if you want to know my opinion of Marx (whose writings you suppose to be my bedside reading) you can find it in my book “The Force of Reason”. You can still get it second hand online.
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Arie Brand, you’re a woman? (Oriana Fallaci)
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No. I am her mother.
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So you’re a lady?!? My apologies, Arie, I wouldn’t have spoken or written so harshly had I known that. We conservatives try to be polite to ladies. Even those whose civility encompasses generalised abusive comments such as ‘scientifically illiterate talk radio listening Idiot-Conservatives.’ I know they’re not your own words, but you clearly agree with them.
Anyway, so you’re also an author…sorry…I was not aware of your distinction. I thought you were a sociologist, not a climate expert. Or perhaps you’re one of those prodigies skilled in every field of knowledge. They tend to hang about licensed premises so I’ve met a few.
Whatever, I am grateful to you for a holiday week of gadfly ponitification, much more fun than if I’d had to expend serious fun time on a proper debate.
Some of my old commie pals at uni had a taste for the good life (usually the CP lads) but too many (aka the Trots) were, paradoxically, Stalinoid ascetics, and given your censorious aspersion on those who like bars, I fear you may be one of the latter.Lighten up a little, skip the Senior Common Rooms and try a real people’s pub – you might enjoy it!
PS I’ ll try to find your book in Toko Cyntia on Jalan Jaksa. -
And since you must be aware of the Soviet use of mental health as an excuse for suppressing dissent, here’s one final quote before I go back to work,
“Man-Made Climate Change Deniers Have a Mental Illness
The idea that ‘climate change denial’ is a psychological disorder – the product of a spiteful, wilful or simply in-built neural inability to face up to the catastrophe of global warming – is becoming more and more popular amongst green-leaning activists and academics. And nothing better sums up the elitism and authoritarianism of the environmentalist lobby than its psychologisation of dissent. The labelling of any criticism of the politics of global warming, first as ‘denial’, and now as evidence of mass psychological instability, is an attempt to write off all critics and sceptics as deranged, and to lay the ground for inevitable authoritarian solutions to the problem of climate change. Historically, only the most illiberal and misanthropic regimes have treated disagreement and debate as signs of mental ill-health.” -
Ross, after your failed attempts to come up with some hard facts to buttress your thesis that those poor denialists are a hunted bunch of truth seekers, you now come up with a virtually fact free comment.
It originally came from Brendan O’Neil,l the editor of the online journal Spiked, and has since been endlessly repeated because originality is a rare commodity among that merry band of naysayers.
Now Spiked is an interesting source. It is the successor to the journal Living Marxism that had to close down after it lost a libel action brought against it by ITN journalists who had dared to report on a Serb-run concentration camp in Bosnia.
Living Marxism was the organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Trotskyist splinter group that had the Kent University sociology professor Frank Furedi as its main theorist.
Oh Ross. What company you have got into.
The people around that Revolutionary Communist Party have, in a weird way, moved to the extreme right (because once an extremist always an extremist – whether left or right).
The excellent Monbiot comments:
“Living Marxism (later called LM), celebrated power and demanded total market freedom. It campaigned against bans on tobacco advertising, child pornography and the ownership of handguns. It denied that genocide had taken place in Rwanda, or ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. It provided a platform for writers from the hard-right Institute for Economic Affairs and Centre for the Defence of Free Enterprise. Frank Furedi started writing for the Centre for Policy Studies, which was founded by Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher. He and the LM writer Tony Gilland wrote to the supermarket chains, offering – for £7,500 – to educate “consumers about complex scientific issues”.
yes and:
“O’Neill, who still describes himself as a Marxist and blogs for the Guardian, calls environmentalism a “death cult” run by “fear-mongering, snobbish, isolationist puritans”. The “anti-flying squad” is “illiberal, irrational, parochial, narrow-minded and backward”. Plane Stupid’s recent protest at Stansted, he says, was motivated by “unabashed, undiluted, unattractive class hatred”.”
Because you see what those wicked climate scientists are trying to do is to prevent the working classes from having fun.
It must be an exhausting stance to be, at one and the same time, on the left and the right. One can’t blame the man for losing all balance. It also leads to painful encounters because his fellow travellers on the denialist side are not always delighted to find a self confessed Marxist on their perch. One of them, a blogger who calls himself ‘the skepticlawyer’, wrote full of disgust:
“He also (quote unquote) ‘loves Lenin’, and spent half a pint’s talk time attempting to disassociate Lenin from Stalin and all his works and all his ways. He also tried to make an argument for the necessity of authoritarian rule immediately after a revolution, including a weird justification for The Terror.”
So let us go back to censorship and some real facts:
“The Union of Concerned Scientists found that 58% of the 279 climate scientists working at federal agencies in the US who responded to its survey reported that they had experienced one of the following constraints. 1. “Pressure to eliminate the words ‘climate change,’ ‘global warming’, or other similar terms” from their communications. 2. Editing of scientific reports by their superiors which “changed the meaning of scientific findings”. 3. Statements by officials at their agencies which misrepresented their findings. 4. “The disappearance or unusual delay of websites, reports, or other science-based materials relating to climate”. 5. “New or unusual administrative requirements that impair climate-related work”. 6. “Situations in which scientists have actively objected to, resigned from, or removed themselves from a project because of pressure to change scientific findings.” They reported 435 incidents of political interference over the past five years(9).”
See for the rest the excellent Monbiot:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/04/10/the-real-climate-censorship/
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So you don’t reckon you’re an extremist?
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Weak.
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Anyone familiar with Steve Mcintyre? A serious scientific sceptic’s site, I think, it all looks greek to me.
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Yes Steve McIntyre and Ross McKritick run (ran?) Climate Audit. They made a lot of waves about the so-called ‘hockey stick”, the curve that Michael Mann and others had construed to indicate temperatures over the last 1000 years or so.
Two Senate instigated inquiries were launched about this: one by the National Academy of Sciences and one by a statistical subcommittee of that Academy. Though major newspapers (the NYT and the Boston Globe) reported the result of the major inquiry by the Academy as a vindication of Mann, an opinion shared by a man between the camps such as Roger Pielke Jr., the ClimateAudit crowd insisted on seeing it as a defeat. This is still echoed on many denialist sites.
McIntyre also crowed a lot about his discovery that 1934 was just a wee bit warmer than 1998, though the decade following 1998 still remains the warmest on record. What people often forget to add is that that 1934 record only holds for the US, basically a tiny part of the globe.
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Oigal says:
A writer?? No I think not, a poster of references by volume and low level insults perhaps. Yet the unwarranted admiration and defence of the far green left’s chief Moonbat is interesting, perverse perhaps but interesting considering the self promoting moonbat’s history of failed economic and social predictions over the the years he has been inflicted up us. Yet the Moonbat is touted by the new green social engineers (and himself) as an expert by the arrogant smug minority who take great pains on pointing out what dolts the majority of humanity are.
The continued reference to any who dare question the “facts” (or more correctly “the faith”) delivered as the new gospel as denialists or denialist sites (aka with the obvious but repugnant likening to holocaust deniers) aptly demonstrates the pasity of agruement rather than a definative, defendable position.
Surely more neutral and fairly presented term “sceptic” would demonstrate a willingness to engage reasonable people with reasonable concerns. More and more people are growing tired of being told by self appointed guardians of mother nature that their questions and doubts are a new age heresy and they should fall to their knees in perpetual guilt.
Unfortunately, the moonbats have once again underestimated the ability of people to see the difference between caring for the environment and yet another misguided attempt in leftist social engineering dressed up as a “green issue”. Any doubt on the far left’s hi-jacking of the debate (?) is revealed by a role call of the most strident, invairably the most strident and vicious are born again discredited radical leftists from bygone decades. Ari’s Moonbat is a prime example, should you have a few hours to waste on the inane then “Google” the Moonbat and trawl it’s radical rantings before (and after) he found his new calling as a “qualified” speaker on Climate and science.
It is immensely amusing how the Cultists of Climate accuse any sceptics as unqualified dolts unable to grasp the complexity and science of the new faith. This of course is merely a new variation on the traditional defence by Imams and Bishops that only we have the right to deliver and understand God’s word. One can hardly wait for the defence that “Climate moves in mysterious ways” which can only be just around the corner.
The truely sad part is the very much needed environmental lobby has been totally compromised by the Anti-West far left who have been searching for a cause after decades of embarrassing setbacks in the vision of Utopia for the chosen few.
However it is the weekend and we all need a laugh so here’s another classic quote on how Cricket is bad for the environment from the “Excellent Moonbat”:
Perhaps we should recognise that some sports are simply too wasteful to be sustained. It is, after all, just entertainment. Can we really live with the idea that we might destroy the planet for fun?
For years a group of us struggled to find a sport that everyone could play. The young men were happy with football, but women, children and older people got hurt in collisions. We tried hockey, with disastrous results. Cricket and rounders lacked excitement. Then someone suggested ultimate frisbee and we have never looked back …Frisbee…..Laugh need we say more…
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I’d have thought ‘debating with Arie’ is even more delightful than ‘ultimate frisbee.’ It has passed a week for me, no real energy required, just post a few quotes from other folks and watch Arie froth with indignation that anyone might dare to contradict her putative ruling class of ‘experts.’
Her ideas are truly odd, but her lack of humour is what fascinates me most.
I hate to say it, but even Achmad was more stimulating. -
Even weaker.
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Oigal wrote in the most pompous style he could muster:
“The continued reference to any who dare question the “facts” (or more correctly “the faith”) delivered as the new gospel as denialists or denialist sites (aka with the obvious but repugnant likening to holocaust deniers) aptly demonstrates the pasity (sic) of agruement (sic) rather than a definative (sic), defendable position.”
What about looking at the IPCC reports?
And, yes, I am waiting for your “definitive, defendable position” (but please learn to spell first – and no further fibs please).
As to the excellent Monbiot – here is a kindred soul: “the flannelled fool at the wicket, the muddied oaf at the goal” (Kipling).
Frisbee anyone?
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Ooh Ari, very narky! Seems Ross is right, your sense of humour is somewhat retarded or to use the greenology… stunted.
Thank you for pointing out my spelling errors. Far be it for me to suggest that the trouble with the left/green extreme pseudo intellectuals is that they think they are smarter than the rest of us. Oh oops I already did that… bugger!
the new green social engineers (and himself) as an expert by the arrogant smug minority who take great pains on pointing out what dolts the majority of humanity are.
but thanks for emphasising my point :-). Did it make you feel all warm n fuzzy inside?
I guess it also proves that other old adage “education does not necessarily equal wisdom”
Trouble is with being so self absorbed that you cannot see the wood for the trees .I have watched with interest your liberal sprinkling of references and quotes like a demented minister from the Pulpit of Righteous Rage and watched our dear resident right winger Ross respond in kind. So I don’t see any point in playing “my reference beats your reference” Just for fun, as Al Gore predicted we would see Island Nations under water by now, can you name any?
The real question is who does the job of Village idiot when the Moonbat is writing for that notoriously unbiased publication and Fox News of the left more commonly known as The Guardian.
Fibs? Really what fibs would they be?? I cannot really remember making any bold assertions except to quote your beloved Moonbat from his own site (Thanks for the link, it’s very funny). The anti-climate change position, I will leave to Ross as he seems to be doing fine on his own. I just enjoy tousling with the santimonious and the self absorbed.
The Moonbat to Kipling? You really have it bad don’t you. Not somewhere you want to go considering Kipling’s view of intolerant I would have thought. Then again you shown an infinite capacity for blundering over your own references haven’t you.
However, never let it be said I take offence at a someone inferring that my lack of mastery of letters is the same as being as dumb as dogsh*t . In good grace I offer yet another of the great Moonbat’s ponderings for prosperity.
At Kitty Hawk, George Bush will deliver a eulogy to aviation, while a number of men with more money than sense will seek to recreate the Wrights’ first flight. Well, they can keep their anniversary. Tomorrow should be a day of international mourning. December 17 2003 is the centenary of the world’s most effective killing machine.
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Seems poor Arie has only just begun to twig that I’ve merely been toying with her disaffections for the last ten days or so.
Now she reacts in true feminist fashion, ‘like woman wailing for her demon lover’ (aka Monbiot?) Coleridge, right?
I’m interrupting this post to check her out on the search engine. I’m sure she is an author, but what has she written about? (Cue for anguished Arie to post a lengthy list of ‘deep’ literature from her own fair hand.) -
Seems Arie has been telling a porky or two herself. It’s HIMself, according to this blurb from Amazon:-
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The work of Jurgen Habermas occupies a commanding position within contemporary social theory. His two-volume opus, “The Theory of Communicative Action”, is the key text for an understanding of his contribution to current theoretical debates. However, as Arie Brand writes, the central importance of this massive and audacious work is not matched by its accessibility. “The Force of Reason” attempts to deal with this problem; it is written for students who want some preparation before undertaking the study of Habermas’ main work, and for their teachers. By first tracing the main outlines of Habermas’ theory, “The Force of Reason” provides an intellectual map which introduces key features of the theory of communicative action. Then, in a final chapter, the main arguments and critiques which have developed in the international discussion of Habermas’ most important work are summarized. Arie Brand teaches sociology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He has taught at the University of Aberdeen and at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. This book is intended for students and researchers in social and political theory.
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So she is a he after all. I withdraw my apologies.
God help the poor students who have to read this kind of stuff, prime example of what I mentioned earlier about pinkos creating a ‘science’ that self-perpetuates their own job prospects, because normal folk dismiss it as pretentious flim-flam and each new generation of undergrads requires a fresh intake of pinko lecturers to ‘interpret’ its mysteries.
However, Netherlands Arie is not without virtue, She/he has signs of consience about Holland’s betrayal of the Papuans, who relished their colonial status and were sold out by the ghastly Kennedys. He/she also signed a petition in NZ concerning a uni problem which included an assertion in favour of academic freedom. -
I try to quote from Ari’e petition, …she/he can correct me if I’m wrong.. that it was ‘antithetical to the purpose of a university for students to be told what conclusion to be reached in a particular area of research.’
Fair enough, it is obviously sensible for students (and academics) to reach their own conclusions, instead of having big government and its lackeys in the IPCC define the limits of debate.
Even worse if we have some Sociology Department ex-prof telling us what to think about a scientific issue totally outwith his /her field of expertise!
(Arie’s time at Aberdeen means she / he will know that ‘outwith’ is Scots for ‘outside.’) -
I have debated this issue up and down the internet but never with so little profit.It is obvious that these two guys know nothing about the matter but since their ignorance is only surpassed by their arrogance and mendacity (how is this for the Pompous One still maintaining that he didn’t lie about the source of his first Monbiot quote) they are not deterred by any argument.
Neither was there any pleasure to be had from their linguistic dexterity. To give one example : the Pompous One, apparently under the delusion that he was making a crushing point, wrote: “Not somewhere you want to go considering Kipling’s view of intolerant I would have thought. Then again you shown…” Somehow this gibberish is supposed to be English.
And as for the Pompous One to come up with some “definitive defendable position”, something he required of his opponent, forget it. All he could do was to use the old punching bag Al Gore again.
My main protagonist has been grabbing points, such as they were, from any denialist website he could find and after having them all rebutted he played his last card accusing his opponent of a lack of humour. This should suggest that he wasn’t really ignorant, you see, he only took the matter lightheartedly, something his opponent regrettably failed to do. What a cheap trick. That he somehow took his own clumsy insults for a form of wit makes the whole thing even more deplorable.
So I will bid goodbye to these fellows. I was not pleased to meet them.
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Goodnight, Sweet Prince…or is it Princess?
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Thanks for coming Ari, don’t let the door hit you on the arse on the way out.
I do apologise for my poor english and grammar at times, guess that happens when you leave home at 14 to learn a trade rather than accept a life of government handouts. Then again having a company that provides a living for 120 families and turns over 30 mill a year ain’t a complete failure at making the world a slightly better place for some.
What difference to you make talking at and down to people…
It has been a thread that highlights the very problems with the Climate Change Lobby, they are very quickly getting the very people they need to implent changes offside by talking down to them and treating people like morons.
A classic example of this was a sticker in Perth last month by the “Green Party” which read “NO JOBS ON A DEAD PLANET” which to the bloke with the three kids and a house to pay for reads “Screw you and your family, your living is not important in the big picture”
The basic premise might be true but live the villagers cutting down trees to survive,
On a side note, interestingly I have always been able to read very well and enjoy it yet spelling has always been an issue for myself (ah gotta love spell check). One would think that being able reader would enable a better level of spelling, yet that is not so. Perhaps one of the wiser ones out there could enlighten me why (no that’s not you Ari).
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You know, Oigal, Arie being the sort of dour, self-righteous sort that we have discovreed he is, I reckon he’s still watching this thread to see what we’re up to. And by juicy coincidence, I spotted this today, so am presenting it to him as a farewell gift.
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Climate Science: Funding HypocrisyBy Dr. Tim Ball Monday, September 28, 2009
“Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing” Edmund BurkeI experienced two apparently disparate events recently. Both speak to the magnificent hypocrisy Burke identifies. They also illustrate Burke is wrong when he said it costs nothing. We’re all paying and will continue to pay for hypocrisies in climate science and research funding.
The first event involved a stay in an upscale hotel. I’ve learned to ignore moral lectures in the bathroom – reuse the towels and save the planet – because I know the real beneficiary is hotel profit. Now it’s gone further. This time there was a “green” card I could hang on my door to stop the room being serviced at all. I didn’t use it because of the profit issue, but it would also put hotel support staff jobs in jeopardy. I have no problem with profit, free enterprise and capitalism; however, the hypocrisy of corporations exploiting the environment and people’s guilt purely for profit is obscene.
Guess Who is Funding Them Now.
The second event was participation on a radio program about a report by researchers at Simon Fraser University (SFU) predicting increased disasters from severe weather because of global warming.One of the authors was a former Assistant Deputy Minister (ADM) at Environment Canada but this wasn’t in the press release. He also chaired the meeting at Villach in 1985 that led to the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. Now a retired bureaucrat he fosters claims of an increase in catastrophic events identified by IPCC Working Groups II and III. Like them the paper accepted without question claims of Working Group I (the Science Report) that human CO2 is causing warming. Both ignore the fact their theory would result in less severe weather. It claims polar air will warm more than tropical air, which would reduce temperature contrast, thus reducing the potential for severe weather. But science and facts have nothing to do with the hypocritical scientific, political and economic exploitation of climate.
Sarcastically one can argue the SFU paper had credibility because the major sponsor was not an oil company. Instead, support came from the government of British Columbia and the corporate insurance giant Zurich. The latter’s web page notes; Our Climate Initiative takes a market-based approach to addressing the risks that we and our customers face from climate change.
Hypocritically funding from these sources somehow does not influence or bias like money from other corporations or agencies. I’ve made this point on several occasions by answering the question, “Who is funding you?” with “Greenpeace”. There’s always a stunned silence apparently confirming this as an acceptable source. It isn’t true as I explain, but neither is the charge I am paid by the oil companies. If insurance companies need to know what impacts climate change will have, isn’t the same true for energy and other companies?
Increased Profit is Not a Solution For Climate Change
Insurance company involvement in climate research is not new. Swiss Re one of the largest insurance companies in the world has long sponsored climate research as their web page proclaims, “As a leading global reinsurer we actively research, model and reinsure natural catastrophe risks from floods through winter-storms to hurricanes. We have therefore followed the development of climate change for over 20 years and participated in, or sponsored, 100’s (sic) of events and projects ranging from research and awareness building to product development and managing our own carbon footprint.”They were a founding sponsor of Climate Week NYC this year attended by those great climate experts former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.
Their presence and the error-filled address by President Obama reflect the concern that the public is not buying their climate story and Copenhagen will fail. Swiss Re’s comment that “Climate Week NY°C is an important step for us on the “Road to Copenhagen” where policy makers will make important decisions on reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation funding including the use of risk- transfer mechanisms” takes lobbying to a new level.
Swiss Re increased activity in climate research after hurricane Andrew.
A major misdirection was created when increased cost for hurricane insurance claims was incorrectly used to say hurricane frequency had increased. Zurich and Swiss Re both promote the false science of the IPCC without questioning its validity because it benefits them. Is it good business? Yes. Is it moral, scientifically accurate and good for society? No. It is pure, unadulterated, hypocritical, exploitation. Would they sponsor research that showed climate variations were quite normal and risk levels were not elevated? Of course not, any more than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change entertains climate skeptics.
Most IPCC members are bureaucrats chosen by their governments and whose jobs depend on adhering to the political line. The others are researchers also funded by governments.
Source:
The Assistant Deputy Minister of Environment Canada apparently was involved in who would represent Canada on the IPCC. Wikipedia lists him as a Canadian climatologist. He is not. His degrees are in physics and oceanography.
He is also listed as chair of the board of trustees of the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS), which is “Canada’s main funding body for university-based research on climate, atmospheric and related ocean work.”
This means almost total government control, as they are the main source of climate research, a pattern repeated in most countries. The graph shows the increase in US government funding and illustrates the problem as the total now exceeds $70 billion a year.
Source:
Climate Money, a study by Joanne Nova found, “that the federal Government has a near-monopsony on climate science funding. This distorts the science towards self-serving alarmism.” (Monopsony – a market situation in which there is only one buyer).
Combine this with funding from corporations also exploiting the climate change issue and balanced science has no chance.
Another measure of hypocrisy occurs because environmental groups, such as the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF), promote the false climate change story, while receiving funds from oil and other energy companies as well as government funding and/or tax benefits. Apparently money from regular energy companies does not sully their hands, as it does those who disagree with them. A member of the DSF and chairman of the Board for years was James Hoggan whose public relations firm includes several alternative energy companies as clients. Hypocritically money from alternative energy companies who benefit from reductions in CO2 is not directing and influencing.There is Money in Hypocrisy
Apparently if you promote a solution then any vested interest is acceptable even if the problem doesn’t exist or is based on false information. But how is charging more for insurance promoting a solution? How is exaggerating risk using false and bad science creating solutions? Hypocrisy abounds with those providing and those receiving the funding. They protect their vested interest by perpetuating false information and blocking any attempt to determine the truth. They have assured that in the kingdom of the blind the blind man is king. As Frederick W. Robertson said, “There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.” We have all three in abundance in climate science. Hypocrisy in claiming some funding is untainted and supporting research that increases profit; fraud by using false information – a practice that would bring criminal charges in most other areas of business; and tyranny by bullying and suppressing those who seek balance and all the facts. But the ultimate hypocrisy is that the practitioners of all three claim to be our saviors. Save us from them.© 2009 CFP
“Dr. Tim Ball is a renowned environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. Dr. Ball employs his extensive background in climatology and other fields as an advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition, Friends of Science and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.” -
ET says:
With staggering astonishment I have been following this debate – or should I say squabble – between Arie Brand and Ross.
Why?
Not because I have come nearer to a conclusion whether climate change is primarily induced by human activity or by natural causes, but because I have come to learn that science has a colour and that scientists, whose vocation I thought was to serve the truth, must provide lipservice to the political and economical interests that pay for the research.
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Nice to see you are still following, ET. I’m about to move on. Good luck in your search for truth!
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PS Note I spelt harbour properly -can’t be a Yank!