Have We Won?

Posted on by Geoff ChambersIn Uncategorized7 Minutes Read

By that I mean, has climate hysteria finally been defeated, and will it be replaced by sensible, rational, evidence-based policies for dealing with changes in the climate, or any other natural process which may or may not be caused by human activity?

Richard’s article two weeks ago based on an article by Jason Bordoff, suggested a reason for optimism. Bordoff’s article represents the opinion of a climate believer who recognises that something bigger has come along. Like someone standing on the beach worrying about sea level rise suddenly spotting a Tsunami. In this article I’ll examine the question in more detail, and attempt to enlarge the field of discussion.

Of course, “we” science-respecting climate sceptics haven’t “won” anything. All that’s happened so far is that one mass hysteria has been displaced by another. Whereas climate hysteria was slow moving, hypothetical, and largely invisible in its effects, virus hysteria has a basis in reality that is obvious to all. But there are many other differences, and they need sorting out. Here are some:

1. The speed and urgency of the corona crisis has revealed a number of things:

1.1 Mathematical modelling is not an exact science. Even the Guardian has admitted as much. The era when climate modellers could announce projections for average global temperatures for the end of the century to a tenth of a degree (and be believed) are over.

1.2 It costs trillions to fix a global emergency, and trillions spent on fixing a crisis are trillions not spent on something more fun or life-enhancing. The days when climate worriers could announce that spending trillions plastering the countryside with solar panels would make us happier, create jobs and therefore be good for the economy are over (probably.)

1.3 Vast societal change (for good or ill) causes suffering.

1.31 The causal links between political action and political popularity (vital in a democracy in the medium term for continuity of action) are anything but clear. (See John’s article on causation and meditate deeply.)

2. There is massive disagreement between experts on the nature of the corona virus crisis, its seriousness, and the proper political, medical and social response. This can be oversimplified and described as a debate between, on the one hand, a scientific establishment, represented by chief scientific medical officers and scientific advisers advising massive lockdowns and a halt to normal economic activity while solutions are found via the established methods; and on the other hand a number (a very large number) of specialists (epidemiologists, statisticians, etc.) who appear as mavericks, proposing unorthodox treatments and/or the acceptance of the inevitability of large numbers of fatalities, in the greater interest of society as whole (avoiding economic collapse and the ensuing social disorder, poverty, suicides etc.) Orthodox economists and other non-medical experts (criminologists, sociologists) may find themselves supporting the unorthodox, maverick side, for obvious reasons.

2.1 The above very rough description of the “sides” in the debate reveals enormous differences between the corona virus debate and the climate one. There are large numbers of experts who reject utterly the current political and social response to the pandemic. See this site for a daily update on the counter-consensual views of numerous experts. I have no idea whether they are right or wrong. I simply record the fact that they exist.

The days when supporters of climate action could talk about a “scientific consensus” are over.

2.2 The “sceptics” in the case of this pandemic are disparate in their expertise, but united in their belief that governments must look beyond simply “saving the health service” and avoiding the terrible images of old people being left to die for lack of health care, and consider the bigger economic and social picture. Their criticisms converge around this single observation: concentrating on the one single aim of reducing the number of immediate deaths from the virus may provoke a worse problem arising from economic and eventually social collapse. They argue for looking at the big picture beyond the immediate crisis.

2.3 Climate sceptics, on the other hand, accuse the consensus of being obsessed by a “big picture” that exists only in the future, and possibly in their imaginations and models. They have many, many different objections, from criticism of the data collection, the quality of the science, the projections, the politicisation of science, the insistence on mitigation rather than adaptation, to the propaganda and censorship in the public presentation in academia and the media.

2.4 The “virus sceptics,” it seems to me, hold a position that is irreconcilable with the mainstream view. Anyone can have a differing opinion on this or that detail of the lockdown, but their position is strategically opposed to the current political consensus. The division is binary. We shall know within a matter of months or a year or two who is right and who is wrong.

Climate sceptics, on the other hand, as different as Lindzen, Lomborg, Pielke, Lawson, or you and me, hold positions that overlap largely with the consensus view. Of course greenhouse gasses may cause temperatures to rise, and of course that may be problematic here or there (and possibly beneficial elsewhere.) Of course we can and should do things to improve air quality etc. “Climate denial” is largely a propaganda myth invented by the consensus enforcers. And of course, we shall never be able to establish objectively who is right, because of the time scale involved, and because the dream of zero carbon and a peaceful reversion to living in a concrete-and-steel-less Rupert Bearland is an absurd fantasy.

3. The world has changed immeasurably in the 3-4 decades since Catastrophic Climate Change became a Thing. The political effects of this pandemic are utterly unknowable. And I don’t mean “this changes everything,” “things will never be the same”and similar banalities. We don’t know whether things will be the same, or not. Politicians from Trump to Macron have seen their popularity rise. That could be reversed tomorrow by one false move, one tragedy that tickles the media’s fancy.

3.1 Behind these surface ripples are the profound changes in the politics of the West that go by the name of “populism” and its largely unacknowledged prime cause, which is the massive growth of inequality in wealth and income over a half a century of relative peace and prosperity. (I hope to tackle this in a separate article.)

3.2 And that’s just the rich, democratic tenth of the world. Add in China, Russia, India, and Africa, where practically no-one in our dear academia has a clue what’s going on, and you have a subject that would keep our intelligentsia busy for decades, if they weren’t so occupied with climate, gender, and the iniquities of Trump.

3.3 Catastrophic Climate Belief is a movement that for thirty years has been feathering its niche in the world-up-to-now. It will do everything to preserve that niche as the world changes in unpredictable ways, and we sceptics are uniquely well-placed to stop them.

4. There has been no rush from the climate establishment to link the pandemic to climate change. There’s been the Pope of course, but how many General Circulation Models does he have? Otherwise, I have seen no attempt by climate zealots to jump the pangolin and make climate change responsible.

4.1 No-one has explained why COP26 can’t proceed by video conference, seeing that the world’s future hangs on their decisions. Maybe all those indigenous delegates dressed in feathers and the members of the International Potato Council in their skins don’t do Skype?

4.2 Climate Believers find themselves caught in a dilemma: on the one hand, their strategy in promoting the largely imaginary climate crisis has been to capture the levers of power via international organisations, politicians in search of a cost-free (to them) ideology, a lazy media and the nonsense of a scientific consensus. They have established an official dogma, and are committed to defending it On the other hand, there is no guarantee that the official position on reaction to the pandemic (it’s too soon to characterise it as a dogma) is the correct one. Politicians are in the main lucid enough to acknowledge the need to change their tactics if they prove to be mistaken, when the lives of their electors are clearly at stake. Will they also change their minds when climate change is no longer useful electorally?

4.3 With the virus there are real costs, real dangers, and real risks to politicians and others who take up entrenched positions, because the scientific consensus isn’t there, and any assertion of superior expertise is likely to be contradicted by events within weeks or even days. The same Guardian health editor who points out that mathematical models have hopelessly wide margins of error, in a separate article, faithfully reproduces the prediction from the same model that deaths in the UK will peak 2,932 on 17th of April. We shall know soon enough whether she’s right or whether she’s right.

4.4 Whatever policy is adopted, and whatever the results in terms of infections and mortality, there is likely to be massive social unrest, together with huge swings in public opinion, and climate zealots will no doubt be tempted to take advantage of this to further the radical changes they see as necessary to obtaining their ends. On the other hand, there is a huge risk in being seen to profit from a tragic situation. Hence the great reticence of the climate establishment to take up a position.

4.5 Mainstream media are only as strong as their advertising revenue, and green blogs and think tanks are only as strong as their funding from the EU NGO charity soup kitchen and private foundations. When the pandemic hits Africa, how much will the Lady Bountifuls have to spare for the men in suits in the think tanks and the activists blocking empty streets? The Guardian’s climate change is already running a questionnaire asking: Did you take part in Extinction Rebellion’s climate campaign? Get in touch as if saving the planet is already ancient history.

5. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from Andy West’s many forceful comments here, it is that this situation can’t last. Culture abhors a vacuum, and a movement as massive and motivated as the climate bandwagon is sure to come up with a cunning plan or three to demonstrate that climate action is more necessary than ever. How the public, the media and the politicians react when they do is anybody’s guess. I suggest we start guessing now.

This thread is for doing that guessing – and second guessing.

135 Comments

  1. There’s been the Pope of course, but how many General Circulation Models does he have?

    When you start to channel your inner Stalin, it may be rational for us all to be alarmed.

    Chapeau for this quip and for such a key framework article.

    More from me (and I hope a lot of others) anon, when I’ve thought it over.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. I would say that the climate hysteria has temporarily been replaced by COVID-19 hysteria.

    I don’t want to go into it in too much depth, but I’d recommend people look at Andrew Saul’s website, DoctorYourself.com where he talks about what individuals can to do boost their immune system (and he isn’t selling anything), and also what doctors can do by way of alternative ways of treating seriously affected patients (and what doctors in e.g. Shanghai and New York actually have been doing).

    I think the lock down was a big mistake on many levels, and should be ended as soon as possible.
    The situation could have been handled in different, and I think better, ways.

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  3. Brilliant work, Geoff.

    Quibble:

    > Climate sceptics, on the other hand, as different as Lindzen, Lomborg, Pielke, Lawson, or you and me, hold positions that overlap largely with the consensus view.

    That’s only true if by ‘the consensus view’ we mean the most trivial imaginable interpretation of Teh Science—the one Oreskes et al. watered down to homeopathic titres precisely in order to ensure it includes 97% of sane people, a well-known Magic Marketing Number… and to relegate the tiny population who disagrees to a near-strawman position.

    Orekses et al want you to acquiesce to that construct, and you have (at least for the purposes of that particular sentence you wrote). But as we all know, that doesn’t describe the real line of cleavage in the climate ‘debate,’ does it? We would be nearer the mark to say that this is an intellectual civil war between

    people who think the climate change issue is so important (slash lucrative), and honesty is so unimportant, that it’s OK to lie about climate change,

    and

    the rest of us.

    That’s pretty much the one test that reliably predicts a given person’s “side” in the climate wars, it seems to me. Amiwrong?

    (Am I? I’m not asking rhetorically. I came up with this formulation all of two minutes ago, so brutal feedback is welcome.)

    Liked by 4 people

  4. Another question is whether this is how we want to win.

    Not me. Allowing climatism to die a natural death due to societal reprioritization will do nothing to immunize the herd against the next pseudoscientific New World Order that comes along. Only a merciless reckoning, a science Nuremberg, will put the Oreskists and Oreskids where they need to be put in order to protect the public.

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  5. A distinction btw modelling and the scientific method? Science, as per Feynman, ‘First you guess and then you test. Modelling, a persuasive tool, first you make some projection within a range ofperceived likelihoods, and then you adjust your model to comply to observation.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. On a good day, I am in agreement with you.
    On a day like today, however, I think of how more than 30 years of climate fanatics corrupting science, academia, media, government and industry is reducing us. We have reduced our ability as a species to critically analyze topics. We have reduced our ability to tolerate differences of opinion. We have reduced our ability to agree to disagree. Climate fanatics have hurt us in all these formerly valued areas of life by by lying and getting away with it. Now I the face of a deadly epidemic we are unable to talk honestly about where it came from, how to reduce it, or how to treat it.

    Liked by 4 people

  7. PS: Or, re the models, as per cli-sci, you may seek to adjust the observations, seek to git rid of Mediaval Warming Eras, alter temperature record data. ..

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  8. I think the big difference is that politicians will have to consider the costs of doing expensive things (renewable energy, recycling) in an era when money is going to be very tight.

    That won’t save us from climate hysteria, except that the fanatics will do the deed for us. They will refuse to enter into any cost-benefit argument, and continue to insist we must decarbonise immediately at whatever cost. Their refusal to budge will make it easier and easier to ignore them.

    Voters will prioritise jobs and the economy for the next while. Because while lots of people will tell you that money is not the most important thing, they are going to find out the hard way that money is very important to pretty much everyone. Anyone who gets in the way of that is likely to be very studiously ignored.

    And by the time we get back to having enough money, ten more years of dire warnings and no significant effects is unlikely to make climate hysteria more believable.

    Liked by 2 people

  9. The natural sceptic in me blinks real hard when reading

    “Mathematical modelling is not an exact science. Even the Guardian has admitted as much. The era when climate modellers could announce projections for average global temperatures for the end of the century to a tenth of a degree (and be believed) are over.”

    There will be a concerted effort to make a distinction between climate and medical modelling. After all the former is based upon PHYSICS.

    I think we should pay more attention to the White Queen, who in her youth could believe six impossible things before breakfast.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Pingback: Has Climate Hysteria Been Defeated For Good? - The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

  11. Great points from everyone. HUNTERSON7, I assume you’re disagreeing with me and agreeing with BRAD, so I can include you in the brutal feedback Brad wants.

    When I put forward the weak definition of the consensus view, and included most sceptics within it, I was only doing what we all have to do in rational discussion, which is accept something for the sake of argument. As when, if I’m criticising the view that temperatures are likely to rise 5°C by the end of the century, I will accept, for the sake of argument, that average global temperature measurements are reliable, which of course I don’t believe, but you’ve got to start the discussion somewhere.

    As Aristotle says, you can’t start every account of the Trojan War with a description of how Helen was born from a double-yoked egg. (Though it’s an interesting fact, too often overlooked. More interesting than anything I may say here, anyway.)

    And Lew will then accuse me of Alice in Wonderland logic, because I said something somewhere which can be interpreted as being in contradiction with something I said somewhere else. So my sweet reasonableness is a gift for Lew (and not a Gift, which I would gladly administer, if I knew how.)

    Reading Brad’s piece at WUWT I was thinking: how do we get this out to a wider public? If there were fifty Brads all putting out this stuff like this, we might get noticed. Perhaps sneak a link in on a comment thread at some obscure Anglo-German journal of classical philology? Some old scholar has a chuckle, shows it to a colleague.. No use showing it to Delingpole, he’d be jealous.

    So I shall continue (sometimes) bending over backwards to be magnanimous. It’s the standard technique of defence lawyers when they have right on their side, but are facing irrational prejudice coming from the other side – see the Pell or Salmond cases. They don’t accuse the accusers of being a bunch of lying scoundrels – not until the verdict’s in.

    These are questions of strategy, which I’m sorry to say never get discussed seriously. Brad’s article is probably defamatory. If it was being passed round enough senior common rooms or boardrooms or editors’ offices, someone would be obliged to react. This is a possible strategy, and I’ve been defamatory enough to join in with pleasure. But Nuremberg is just a pleasant fantasy to keep our spirits up. Let’s indulge it, by all means.

    Well, that wasn’t very brutal, was it? No brutality involved really. In fact I agree with Brad. Lew has a word for people like me.

    Liked by 3 people

  12. Perhaps in the Covid crisis we will have a unique opportunity to test one of the basic key assumptions of the ‘climate crisis’, i.e. that the majority of the linear increase in atmospheric CO2 recorded at Mauna Loa is due to the accumulation of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Carbon Brief is predicting the largest ever recorded drop in emissions in 2020 and says it could be as high as 10%. This should show up as a significant ‘blip’ in the Mauna Loa data – quite when I’m not sure, but it should feed through within months I imagine, not years.

    https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coronavirus-set-to-cause-largest-ever-annual-fall-in-co2-emissions

    Liked by 3 people

  13. I also thought that “we had won” in the times of Climategate, only to be so very wrong it still hurts. False dawns are so very, very common.

    We now have the voodoo science of attribution studies where we are able to say that a PAST weather disaster was so much more likely to have occurred (or caused x amount more damage) because of climate change), whilst still unable (or unwilling) to predict same into the FUTURE. I don’t believe there is much in climate science that will disappear as a result of the coronavirus epidemic, but we (or maybe you) will see.

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  14. To Jaime Jessop,
    I might say the ‘projections’ of the climate activists will inevitably show a massive reduction in worldwide CO2 emission levels.
    The actual measured unchanged worldwide CO2 levels will be kept out of the spotlight.

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  15. I don’t believe alarmists are lying any more than sceptics are, tho’ both may accuse the other of bad faith. Both groups are acting on imperfect understanding of incomplete knowledge. We sceptics think the judgement of an omniscient being would fall closer to our position, alarmists that they are closer to the truth.
    The climate change alarm is an existential crisis of leisure. It’s easily trumped if bombs are falling on our heads, or if the supermarkets have run out of loo roll. The MyWorld2015 polls ranked action on climate change dead last of people’s priorities – but it scored higher in wealthy western countries because we don’t have the problems that the people of poorer nations have to live with every day. They picked “a good education”, “access to healthcare”, “action on corruption” etc. Who in wealthy western countries is going to pick such matters as their priorities for the future when there is something nebulous, all-encompassing, that will not respect rich or poor, etc etc, blah blah, which is looming on the horizon and is definitely coming soon?
    When the Chinese virus goes away, the trash of climate change will creep back, slowly, slowly, like a snail emerging from its shell, ready to retract in an instant if the environment is still hostile. But when the larger problem, the real problem, is gone, the phantom menace can take control again.
    If we really do sink into a depression – the global economy I mean, not a universal black dog – the climate change malarkey will be held off. But, if times turn to good again, it will return, maybe redoubled in vigour, because it “knoweth that [it] hath but a short time” to make its changes irreversible.

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  16. Another fine piece of writing and analysis. But another false dawn? We have been here before, this stage of feeling we have won – or at least our sort of views are at last going to prevail. But the monstrous regimen of climateers still thrives. We have won on the penetrating humour front – Josh, Brad, and your stories Geoff, are enough to convince me of that. But those for whom ‘the issue is never the issue’ will sail on regardless, jumping on whatever new object emerging from the swirl has promise of being a stepping-stone for them. Being right or wrong does not matter – as I think Lenin or Stalin or suchlike said in some sinister but pithy way a hundred years or so ago. Their modern suchlikes will soldier on regardless, but what would be a real defeat would be if this CO2 kerfuffle just fizzles out, trillions flushed away. A big effort, across continents, across cultures, across disciplines (good soapbox stuff eh?) to disentangle what happened – how come a feeble hypothesis took off like a rocket, and wasted so much time and treasure and well-being for these past few decades? And a repeal of Climate Change legislation in the UK wouldn’t be amiss either.

    Liked by 1 person

  17. > I don’t believe alarmists are lying any more than sceptics are

    Seriously? What would it take, in your mind, to falsify this null hypothesis beyond 0.05 doubt? I’m genuinely curious.

    If the only thing I knew about the debate was that one side denied point-blank that there WAS a debate, that would be evidence enough for me. And I’ve known THAT for more than a decade.

    I guess we all have different thresholds.

    EDIT: I’m assuming you were talking about the respective opinion-leaderships. If you were merely comparing lay believers with lay infidels, please disregard my argumentative tone 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  18. Having tried to treat the question as logically as possible in the article, I find I’m thinking about it this morning purely in terms of images. Since it’s not about “facts” but about how facts are interpreted by what Andy West calls a “culture” – i.e. the great green greasy Climate Behemoth – that’s probably the right way to think about it.

    Thinking of Climate Crisis as a virus, how does it have to mutate to infect the healthy body of a real pandemic? What are the receptors? Where’s the handy pangolin that will facilitate the crossover? Climate change lacks that quality of contagion which characterises the real crisis. You can’t tell a melting glacier to self-isolate.

    What they have in common of course is a Bad Graph – a wicked graph, in fact, going up like an exponential rocket. How to flatten the curve, bend it to your will? Stop travelling, emitting CO2 – we’re doing all that, and we’re hating it. No wonder the climate alarmists are keeping quiet – for the moment. But sooner or later (following ANDY WEST’s persuasive reasoning) they will find a way of persuading us that all the nasty things we have to put up with to fight the pandemic have to be done to fight climate catastrophe too. They have to find a way of linking the two in order to survive, so surely they will.

    Liked by 1 person

  19. Jaime, Jamal Munshi’s demonstration that detrended correlation analysis finds no convincing link between fossil fuel emissions and the CET and also with ambient CO2 levels comes to mind (see: https://cliscep.com/2017/04/28/correlation-between-emissions-and-warming-in-the-central-england-temperature-series/, and for one of Munshi’s papers: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2997420). Now that second link ‘merely’ showed that other sources of variation in ambient CO2 are large enough to obscure the link to fossil fuel emissions (and such emissions must of course add something to the ambient CO2 levels). Maybe there will be a sufficiently large downturn in emissions to show up clearly in the CO2 record in due course (need to wait a while for atmospheric mixing to spread some northern hemisphere air into the south where Mauna Loa awaits it, but other stations in the north should be able to detect a signal earlier).

    Liked by 3 people

  20. I fear that much of the Climate Change paraphernalia has become so embedded in the legal frameworks of so many countries (e.g. the Climate Change Committee of the UK) that, once the Covid-19 crisis is over, normal “greenie” business will be resumed unimpeded. After all, the rent-seeking networks within governments will still be in place and so what is to stop the “greenie” monolith from continuing as before? A little of its momentum may have been lost temporarily, but as a rent-seeking machine it is so massive and so effective that it will pick up speed again and continue to wreak havoc, especially in those countries (mostly in the West) which have been unable to inoculate themselves against it.

    I am afraid that I will remain very pessimistic on this matter until such time as a large political party (or parties) tackle the rent-seeking and associated political lobbying head on. And who amongst current political leaders has the spine for that?

    Regards,
    John Cullen.

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  21. Geoff,

    > Since it’s not about “facts”

    The only way we could know that would be to find two people who agree on the facts yet fail to come to the same conclusion on CAGW. But I’ve yet to meet a climate-concerned human being who’s aware of (let alone accepts) everything I’m aware of about the climate controversy, and until I do I think I’ll stick to the public-rationality presumption. I know it’s a fiction, a simplification, but since it “works” perfectly well for the purposes of explanation and prediction of every aspect of the demographics of climate attitudes (to my knowledge), it would be silly to switch to an electric shaver.

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  22. Unflinching introspection time: I guess the thing I find silly—no, more than that: offensive—about the needless, premature abandonment of rational accounts in favor of hand-waving about ‘cultural cognition’ and the like is that once you renounce your faith in other people’s fundamental logicalness, you render yourself powerless to reach any kind of reconciliation, or shared understanding, with them.

    We either imagine the people we’re reasoning with are as calm, objective and honest with themselves as we imagine ourselves to be… or we concede the utter futility of talking to them in the first place. I’ll do that the day I become hopelessly inept at arguing, and not a day before.

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  24. Also:

    if data points like Steve McIntyre and Freeman Dyson don’t falsify the Cultural Cognition account—and according to its defenders, they don’t—then nothing would, which renders the entire school of thought infra dig. Back to the drawing-board, Prof Kahan.

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  25. Hi Geoff,

    You say in section 4 that ” .. There has been no rush from the climate establishment to link the pandemic to climate change. There’s been the Pope of course, but how many General Circulation Models does he have? .. “.
    Don’t forget that he not only benefits from supernatural guidance but also has the back up of his expert advisers from the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Any esteemed climate scientists among its membership will have access to the best GCM’s currently available, allowing the Pope to confidently make his 2018 pronouncement of pending doom (see Footnote).

    I took a quick look at the list of members (http://www.academiadelasciencias.va/content/accademia/en/academicians/ordinary.html) but recognised only two current member (John Polanyi and Veerabhadran Ramanathan) who have demonstrated appropriate education, training and experience in relevant physical scientific disciplines. Are there any others?

    Hi Alan (Kendall),
    I’m inclined to agree with you. Time alone will tell

    Footnote:
    ” .. Climate change, energy, sustainability: The new science of climate extremes has made it possible to link many weather extremes to climate change. During the next 25 years, intensification of weather extremes due to climate change can expose .. 20% of the population .. to deadly heat stress and other attendant health risks. While the poorest among us .. are most vulnerable, climate change has now the potential to adversely impact the wealthy too in the form of intense fires, floods and droughts .. with 5-6°C higher temperatures and up to 60 m sea level rise .. ” (http://www.pas.va/content/accademia/en/events/2018/plenary2018/final_statement.html).

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  26. Isn’t it a breath of fresh air (apart from a few viruses) not to have to see the
    extinction mob our on the streets particullarilly this Good Friday.

    Liked by 2 people

  27. Hi Brad (Keyes),

    I find that some who persist with their unfounded beliefs can provide some enjoyable exchanges. I often have doorstep conversations with Jehova’s Witnesses. I try to encourage them to be sceptical of their faith while they try to convert me to accept it. Neither if us get anywhere but it can be fun.

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  29. Pete,

    I can identify with that recreation.

    However, wouldn’t you agree that such conversations only work so long as you each pretend/assume/imagine/act-as-if—”for the sake of argument,” as they say—the other is tractable to reason; in other words, that it’s about “facts” (whether or not it actually is) and that your interlocutor would change his mind if only he had access to the same facts that convinced you (whether or not he actually would).

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  30. One point that I’d rather like to think will become a new (or rekindled) consideration is the inappropriateness of using the definite article when referring to ‘the science’. The UK government has made a big thing of being ‘led by the science’ whenever it needed to smote the naysayers on governmental Covid-19 policy. The journalists, to their credit, are rightly puzzled how the UK government can claim there to be ‘the science’ when most other countries can be doing things quite differently whilst still being led by it. This discrepancy appears to call into question the very concept of a monolithic, univalent thing called ‘the science’. The point is, of course, that everyone can be following the scientific method and yet arrive at different conclusions, particularly when a science/policy interface is involved. Nevertheless, the definite article is still invoked, lest one gets into a ‘my god is bigger than your god’ type of argument.

    The relevant paradigm is not one of being led by the science, but making a decision under uncertainty. It would be nice to think that this message could be resurrected by the journalists for the next time they reflect upon ‘the climate science’.

    Liked by 3 people

  31. Hi Geoff

    On ‘Shibbolithic,’ you’re being as generous as usual. Many thanks.

    It’s not just probable, it’s indisputable that my post is defamatory. The real question is whether, to use a term of art, it’s ‘maliciously defamatory’ (and the answer is ‘no,’ unless I’m missing something….?). Or is it just ‘objectively defamatory,’ as intended? (After all, I defy anyone to string two sentences together about the classe climatique without mentioning facts that excite the disgust of any reasonable person.)

    I would love to get a jury’s thoughts on this, though, so if you have any ideas, no matter how wacky, about how to provoke such a scenario, please, please tell me.

    Liked by 3 people

  32. John

    well put. Putting a definite article in front of ‘science’ turns it into a corpus, a (dead and putrefying) body of results rather than the living process it used to be, when I were a wee bairn.

    I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that this misrepresentation happens to give the climate movement a propaganda advantage. Far be it from me to infer any kind of institutional mens rea.

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  34. @ Brad 10.05, what would be the point of lying to solve a problem you don’t believe in? Aligned aims, ulterior motives (ambition)? (Real question: this conspiracy theory needs a motive.) There are plenty of folks “making the most of” their positions in world religions, but it still seems impossible to me that a significant proportion of religious leaders are lying about their beliefs.
    There surely would have been at least one senior alarmist by now defecting to “our” side, and admitting to having lied about the “climate emergency,” if a sizeable proportion were in fact lying. Maybe an Oreskes would come out of the cupboard, or wardrobe, or wherever it is people come out from, and announce “yeah, I figured if I just lied about it, that would be good for my career, ya know, sell crap books and stuff, get a professorship or sommat. Of course, everyone knew it was all sh1te, but everyone agreed it was best to keep up the facade to keep the dosh flowing.”
    They believe it, I’m convince of that. And it means that they think we are acting in bad faith, or are incapable of tying our own shoelaces. In either case, that hurts.

    Liked by 1 person

  35. BTW complaints about that billboard were raised with the Advertising Commission, dismissed only after 2 years and much dithering and handwringing.

    Apropos of nothing, but somehow triggered by shutdowns and calls for zero carbon:

    At the Animal Farm, the chickens thought funds should be raised to fight cliimate change, suggesting a Ham and Eggs breakfast. The pigs demurred, telling the chickens: “That idea involves only a donation for you, but for us it’s a sacrifice.”

    The swine countered that the menu should also include a Mother and Child Reunion platter, at which point the project was abandoned.

    Liked by 1 person

  36. JOHN RIDGWAY
    No sensible person puts a “the” before “science” except ironically, do they? If, as you say, journalists have grasped this in the case of the virus, it suggests (to me) that we’re more than half way there. Models are modular. Science is proteiform. Climatism is in retreat – but where to?

    PETE RIDLEY 11 Apr 2020 11.30am
    On the Pope’s GCMs, I was simply misquoting Stalin, as Richard spotted. I wonder which of his scientific advisers advised that the Virus was a punishment? Will any of them resign? Can you resign from a pontifical academy, or is it like marriage and the priesthood, for life?
    BRAD 11 Apr 2020 12.33am
    My remark about overlap at 2.4 was a bit of a digression. Working late into the night, my mind is one big Venn diagram. I tried to put some order in my thoughts with my decimalising of paragraphs, and I should have numbered section 2.4 as 2.131 and 2.132 to show how subsidiary those 2 paragraphs are. So let’s agree that the world of rational debate is as you describe it, and that Naomi/Lew/Mann (homo latrinus Oreskes?) are what we know they are.

    I would disagree, if this were a peer reviewed paper and not just a discussion, about lying, because I think JIT at 9.52am has it right about the average believer, and even about the leaders, at least in their earlier manifestations.

    When Lew wrote his articles for the ABC journal in 2010 he thought he was on to a good thing, offering his psychological expertise to further a good cause. He didn’t have to lie, simply take for granted certain assumptions his readers would share. A few months later, when he launched the Moon Hoax survey, he wasn’t lying, since it’s obvious he had no idea what science is. He simply had an idea of what you can do with a survey. The true porkies he’s uttered, as far as I know, are small chipolatas, like not listing the sources of his survey responses correctly. His real crime against science is more devious. Conducting a ten year campaign to insult and denigrate people you disagree with, aided and abetted by respected journalists, scientific colleagues and journals, in order to marginalise them and stifle their opinions is worse than lying, but cleverer, because more difficult to define.

    On the usefulness of the frontal attack: I’ve done it, and no doubt will again, when I’m feeling bilious enough. But I’m conscious there is another way, e.g. the judicial review, as was used against An Inconvenient Truth. The judge demolished Al Gore’s masterpiece, but politely. Unfortunately the next day Al got the Nobel prize, and this victory was buried. Such is war.

    Liked by 2 people

  38. BRAD 12.55pm on Defamation:

    I would love to get a jury’s thoughts on this, though, so if you have any ideas, no matter how wacky, about how to provoke such a scenario, please, please tell me.

    I fantasise about the Marquess of Queensberry gambit: go up to Lew at an AGU Annual Conference, slap him round the face with your kid glove and call him an epistemological sodomite.

    He has his defence ready, of course, or rather, his case for not taking us to court, since he’s spent ten years and a lot of public money branding us as wackos who are beneath his notice. And so we are.

    So the question to ask is: whose notice are we not beneath? All those professors and mandarins on the boards of learned journals and publishing houses, or on committees which rely on peer-reviewed expertise for furthering obscure processes of political decision-making and who may be – quite unwittingly – promoting the noxious nonsense of a bunch of mendacious chancers. If you could get the information to them that some harmless paragraph they were responsible for contained a hidden package from Lew, Naomi or another member of the Scarabaeinae sub-family, you might at least create a ripple.

    On a slightly different tack, I’d like to think that – say – Lord Lawson knows that we have among us someone who can defend science while being disgustingly rude and funny in four or five languages, some of them dead. His Lordship moves in the kind of circles where that might count for something. Are there any lurkers here who can pass the word on?

    Liked by 3 people

  39. MAN IN A BARREL’s Twitter find above leads to Rupert Read’s 17 minute read here:
    View at Medium.com
    and it’s worth every second of your mayfly life. A sample:

    4) In the English-speaking world especially, our Governments have contributed to our vulnerability. … There has been a vast failure of Government, in countries like the USA, UK and Australia, in this outbreak. A failure to observe the Precautionary Principle, a failure to value citizens’ lives and health above crude ultra-short-term-ist economic imperatives, a failure to protect. This is a depressing fact, because the corona crisis should have been much easier to address than the climate crisis: because its imperatives are far shorter in time-scale, its damage far easier to see and to attribute. But even this failure has an upside. We are realising that it’s just us: our Governments are not going to save us, but we can move ahead of them to save ourselves, to save each other. And these Governments may (should) emerge from this crisis brittle and vulnerable. There is thus a greater possibility than there was in 2019 of moving decisively beyond them.

    5) The shared vulnerability we are experiencing could be reacted against by a retreat into nervous separate silos, a conceptual echo of our current physical distancing, or it could propel us into an emerging global consciousness. A consciousness that could bring us together in our vulnerability and that manifests a more beautiful world that just possibly is starting to become actual. The challenge is for us to be led by empathy.

    Oooh, how sweet. Now I see the hidden meaning of the lollypop in the flowerpot. Beneath the sugar, the hidden threat of what Rupert and his pals would like to do with this “brittle and vulnerable” government (which some people – not Rupert – voted in.)

    Liked by 2 people

  40. Hi Geoff (and JIT),

    “Protean” perhaps? Procrusteiform?

    > The judge demolished Al Gore’s masterpiece, but politely.

    Since when it’s been force-fed to tens of millions of schoolchildren in darkened rooms regardless. The news of the verdict wasn’t “buried” by the timing of the Nobel announcement, in my opinion—that’s not how the logic of media works, methinks. That’s not how stories get buried. They get buried by *unrelated* news, not by *conflicting* news. If anything, the emergence of two contradictory stories in as many days ought to have amplified the newsworthiness of both.

    > I think JIT at 9.52am has it right about the average believer

    Yes, of course—that’s what I was trying to stipulate (at 10:05am) by restricting my disagreement to the case of the leadership, not the rank and file. In fact I think it was in this very thread that I mentioned how in my observation there’s nothing morally defective about believers as compared to un-.

    Indeed the word “believer” itself tends, all things being equal, to oppose the imputation of lying.

    Which brings me to JIT’s question:

    > @ Brad 10.05, what would be the point of lying to solve a problem you don’t believe in?

    Well, what would be the metaphysics of lying to solve a problem you DO believe in?

    Secondly, the business model of the climate industry is NOT to solve a problem, but to keep the populace in an unremitting state of fear about the “problem” while AVOIDING anything but the most token exertions to “solve” it. Why decapitate the goose that lays the golden eggs at the prime of its ovulatory life?

    Thirdly, the point of overstating (as opposed to inventing from whole cloth) a problem you believe in is self-explanatory, and the climate industry has repeatedly confessed (or boasted) about its exaggerations. They’ve gone out of their way to admit this. If we’re determined to ignore their admissions, that’s on us, not them.

    Fourthly, the Climategate emails among copious other verbal and behavioural “tells” prove that high-ranking climate alarmists are not, themselves, alarmed about the climate. No, let me rephrase that: if they’re alarmed, they’re alarmed by the fact that it’s not changing very fast.

    JIT,

    > There surely would have been at least one senior alarmist by now defecting to “our” side,

    That happens all the time when they go emeritus, though it’s never accompanied by an acknowledgement of outright dishonesty, for fairly obvious reasons—see the next point….

    > and admitting to having lied about the “climate emergency,” if a sizeable proportion were in fact lying.

    Why? That strikes me about as realistic as expecting Wall Street fraudsters to spontaneously and publicly reimburse the pensioners, small investors and subprime mortgagees they spent years robbing.

    I mean, anything’s POSSIBLE unless it contravenes a law of physics, but a reasonable person doesn’t hold his or her breath waiting for humans to completely take leave of their own natures.

    > Aligned aims, ulterior motives (ambition)? (Real question: this conspiracy theory needs a motive.)

    Yes, aligned aims.

    And it’s not a conspiracy (though there have been innumerable micro-conspiracies in the history of the climate movement)—aligned aims may give the illusion of a conspiracy, but if you drop a hundred Euro note on the ground in a refugee camp, I’m fairly confident that you’ll see people converging towards it without holding a strategy meeting first.

    And no, just to be pedantic, criminal theories DON’T require motivational theories. I suspect that’s a myth perpetuated by forensic teledramas. If you have CC footage of someone shooting a stranger on a train, they’re going to prison whether or not you ever determine why they did it. Likewise, when I see Oreskes lying in her 2015 movie, she doesn’t get to wriggle out of it by saying “Ha! You’re not sure WHY I lied, ergo I didn’t.”

    Liked by 2 people

  42. But just when you think that peak bathos has been achieved, along comes Pope Francis (is it true that Baroness “fake law” Hales is in line for beatification?)

    Liked by 1 person

  43. Since I have no real feeling for how much Spanish others can read, here’s what His Holiness twoth:

    “This face disfigured by its wounds transmits a great peace. Its gaze does not seek out our eyes, but our heart. It is as though it said: have confidence, don’t lose hope; the power of the Lord’s love, the power of the Risen One, everything overcomes it [sic].”

    That last clause makes no sense to me. If I didn’t know he was infallible I might think Pope Francis had mixed up “you can’t beat the Riz” and “the Riz can’t beat you,” which—for those of you who don’t speak English—would be a bit like mixing up “Deutschland über alles” with “Alles über Deutschland.”

    Like

  44. Geoff,

    your Lawson Stratagem is touching and flattering to the unnamed CliScep member you laud so selflessly. Whoever he or she is, I’m sure he or she would be forever obliged to the friend who succeeded in delivering such intelligences to His Lordship. I’d volunteer myself as his or her champion if only I lived several thousand kilometres closer to Westminster, because I’m firmly of the view that we should and must help each other if skepticism is to survive.

    Anyway can we get back to my problem, please?

    Liked by 1 person

  45. MAN IN A BARREL
    I don’t find that bathetic. It’s the Turin Shroud, which an official Pontifical investigation found to be fake not so long ago. Which just goes to show that Religious Truth advances one papal election at a time.

    BRAD
    The “it” (masculine) to be overcome is clear in a longer version of the tweet which has a title about the pope praying “por el fin del coronavirus.” What was your problem?

    Like

  46. BRAD
    …OR, You could express your position forcefully, while demonstrating your principle of faith in the possibility of rational discussion with even the most benighted souls, in the form of an imaginary dialogue with those same souls on the subject of truth, justice and so on. You could call it Πολιτεία, or “Keep it Polite.”

    I’ll start you off:

    I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Geoff and Man in a Barrel, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess, and also because I wanted to see in what manner the new owners of the port would celebrate the Chinese New Year, which was a new thing. Cool.

    Like

  48. It’s an infelicitous word though, you must admit—in so far as protean things lack any characteristic form at all.

    Speaking of all things protein, what’s your favorite amino-acid-themed artwork? Anyone?

    Like

  49. Hi Geoff

    Thanks for drawing attention to the fact that the “lo” can’t possibly refer to la fuerza, an observation that only deepens the mystery of what in heck that sentence means. The title you mention doesn’t disambiguate it for me, I’m afraid. What’s a “longer version” of a tweet, anyway, and if I were a head of state would I be exempt from hoi polloi’s character limits?

    As you probably know, “lo” is both masculine (accusative) and neuter (accusative AND nominative), so “it” and “him” are equally possible translations.

    How are you suggesting we parse the sentence? Is it…

    everything overcomes the virus
    it all overcomes it
    everything overcomes Him (the Riz)
    it all overcomes the end of the virus

    …?

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  50. Geoff

    > What was your problem?

    How to offend a broader, higher-income readership. I’m all for helping promote the writings of the more erudite and polyglot skeptics, but I’ve also got to look out for myself. Mouths to feed and landlords to propitiate, and all that.

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  52. Geoff

    were you ever-so-politely rebuking me (at 7:20pm) for being impolite to somebunny or -bunnies in this thread? If so, it was unintentional. Nobody, and certainly not JIT or yourself, has deserved my wrath today!

    Like

  53. This event has shown thousands of people the Computer Modeled Predictions that are treated as gospel chiseled in stone, $billions spent on projections in these charts that seem obviously absurd and unbelievable, and then, cast aside like trash daily. Then a newer better chart comes along with reasons to spend money elsewhere. Look at the unused beds in the absolutely necessary hospitals the military had to provide on a moments notice.
    I speak with experience designing the computer model for a training simulator and to accurately provide training on actual accidents. I had 6 place data with accuracy to second point. It took over two years of trial and err, new code, etc. to get 1/10 of a percent accuracy. And I knew EVERY variable needed in the model. These models were predicting outcomes 60 times worse than actual – and they stuck with it for days,
    Hopefully the politicians have learned that computer models are about as good as throwing a dart unless carefully, accurately and thoroughly designed and tested verifying predictions.
    Climate models don’t even know what they don’t know and are not even looking for what they don’t know The Science is Settled!

    Like

  54. Have we won?
    In short, No! The CAGW alarmists have only temporary found something which they believe is more exciting (for the moment). Once this government-inspired dry-run for a future take over by a dictator (under the blessing & guidance of the UN) is found to be what it really is, the CAGW crew will simply move back to their beloved climate alarmism. Quickly, we will see a return to their continued and ongoing efforts to separate us from our freedom and what remains of our money and property…

    Like

  55. Here’s a little piece of what I consider good news:

    https://www.axios.com/civil-rights-leaders-natural-gas-d87e27de-b206-47bd-ac4e-d46e3da4f3b6.html

    I found this bit particularly interesting:

    The other side: Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, North America director for 350.org, one of the most influential climate activist organizations in the world, said 80% of the members of the group’s U.S. leadership are people of color. Choosing between energy poverty and opposing fossil fuels is a “false dichotomy,” she says.

    “False dichotomy” (as if it doesn’t affect a larger polychotomy) is something that could probably be added to Geoff’s list of things we’re not likely to hear much more about. A double negative needs to be employed to refer to it as a false false dichotomy, rather than a dichotomy, to point out where the falsity is. The Green New Deal (or the derision of it or something) has got to be the world’s largest false false dichotomy.

    Liked by 1 person

  56. I apologise for setting people down along the path of wondering what Pope Frankie actually means when he declares something. Perhaps it would be better if he just spoke to empty squares in order not to mislead anyone. However, part of the “peak bathos”, (another aspect is preaching to the city and world to an empty square where no one is listening), is the lack of meaning in both alluding to a fake relic and speaking in a way that makes meaning elusive at best. I suspect, but what a cunning Jesuit is he, that he is saying in a street way “the strength of God’s love and of he who died for us conquers everything”. Even a Pope can be pardoned for dropping an antecedent

    Liked by 1 person

  58. @ Brad

    Them emeriti, emerituses, don’t suddenly stop lying tho’ do they? They stop biting their tongues. They have nowt to lose, hence speak up upon their penultimate ecdysis. If they had lied, then – why not admit it? They’ve more or less admitted to cowardice, & who would prefer to be a coward over a liar?

    Sailing back to WUWT to follow your link to Merchants of Doubt, it does seem to be a bit of a slam dunker. I haven’t seen MoD, nor AIT, so dunno how blatant this all was. And I can actually see a motivation here: to keep the story simple for those at the level of poached eggs, those who think the coronavirus has infested the 5G network to use radio waves to zero in on its targets, or sommat. Why muddy the waters by showing that 40% or who knows how many actually had nothing to say either way about the topic? You’ve got me there, but I still think the politicians believe, and that Oreskes believes, even if you caught her engaging in a tad or three of exaggeration.

    Liked by 1 person

  60. Geoff,
    Actually I do agree with you. It has just been a tough week.
    Nothing was intended brutally towards you or your writing. The brutality is for hose pathological twits who have hurt our culture.

    Liked by 1 person

  61. JIT,

    > Them emeriti, emerituses, don’t suddenly stop lying tho’ do they?

    No, they were the Good Germans whose only crime—which isn’t a crime, though perhaps it should be—was to do nothing while bad men gassed and incinerated every value they purportedly stood for.

    > They’ve more or less admitted to cowardice, & who would prefer to be [considered] a coward over a liar?

    Anyone who’d rather not have their research legacy retracted and shredded, and themselves potentially charged with fraud, or at least with embezzling their salary while practicing pseudoscience.

    In a word, anyone.

    > and that Oreskes believes, even if you caught her engaging in a tad or three of exaggeration.

    Sure, she’s certainly scientifically-illiterate enough to Believe the narrative in all innocence (as are most politicians, BTW). On the other hand she herself is the author of so many of the lies foundational to that narrative that she long ago forfeited the option of pleading ignorance. Russell Cook (no relation) can list no end of her lies if you ask him, and I can rattle off a non-overlapping list of them.

    By misrepresenting the one numerical finding to which she owes her entire worthless career (switching from ‘very few papers’ to 921/921 to whatever she needs it to be for the fallacy she’s attempting at any given moment), she’s not exaggerating. She’s lying through her dentate flange.

    (Sincere thanks for challenging me at every stage, by the way, JIT.)

    Liked by 3 people

  62. Geoff:

    Sorry, distracted for a day or so…

    “If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from Andy West’s many forceful comments here, it is that this situation can’t last. Culture abhors a vacuum, and a movement as massive and motivated as the climate bandwagon is sure to come up with a cunning plan or three to demonstrate that climate action is more necessary than ever. How the public, the media and the politicians react when they do is anybody’s guess. I suggest we start guessing now.”

    Thanks for the mention, Geoff, and I couldn’t agree more. Likewise your 11th April 10:08. The monster is even as we speak trialling thousands of pathways a day to evolve its way through this. It can’t not find some.

    Liked by 3 people

  63. Geoff – have to agree with “Alan Kendall 11 Apr 20 at 9:41 am
    “I also thought that “we had won” in the times of Climategate, only to be so very wrong it still hurts. False dawns are so very, very common.”

    if anything they will come back stronger with “experts say x will be worse than y & millions will die unless we act now”

    hope i’m wrong!!!

    Liked by 1 person

  64. Andy

    good to see you’re active!

    > The monster is even as we speak trialling thousands of pathways a day to evolve its way through this. It can’t not find some.

    I just dread the moment when COVID-19 figures out how to open doors.

    “While scientists stress that there’s no way of proving beyond reasonable doubt that climate change CAUSED the virus’ latest evolutionary leap, they all agree that it made it MORE LIKELY by ‘loading the dice’ with ‘steroids,’ explains Naomi Oreskes, who studies scientific unanimity”

    Liked by 2 people

  65. On another topic of possible interest to Geoff in particular,

    Here’s an argument (not proof!) to the effect that far from being a recent convert to the Sith, Lewandowsky may have been a wanker all his life.

    We know his mother tongue was German. Yet he not only enrolled in German classes at university, he accepted at least one prize for mastery of the subject, beating out Anglophone students who had to learn it from scratch.

    I can’t speak for American colleges, but at my alma mater you had to promise you were NOT a native speaker before they’d let you take a foreign language class.

    So that student newspaper from Lew’s college days which did the rounds a while ago seems to bespeak a lifelong facility for gaming systems to his own advantage, not to mention a certain intellectual laziness.

    Liked by 1 person

  66. JOHN SHADE 11 Apr 2020 10.04am
    ALAN KENDALL 11 Apr 20 at 9:41 am

    Sorry to have missed your comments as Brad & I set off on one of our mutual preening Feste. Forgive us. I agree entirely that false dawns are very common. The idea here was to issue a shepherd’s warning and prepare for what’s coming, including false dawns.

    It didn’t take long, (see Rupert Read of Extinction Rebellion upthread, spotted by Man in a Barrel.) It’s all going to centre round “This changes everything,” to which one possible response is: “Yes, but not the way you think, ducky.” The Gretas and Ruperts have got the world’s attention, the respect and obeisance of politicians and the media, and trillions of dollars, and they’re saying: “Maybe this disaster will enable us to get what we really want.” Chilling.

    As a failed parliamentary candidate, Rupert might reasonably hope that his party might score more than 3% at the next election. Funnily enough, that’s not on his wish list.

    I see the Seattle Institute that last week predicted that deaths would peak in the UK on April 17th at 2,932 are now predicting a peak of 1,674, and the Guardian is asking: “Can a greener, fairer fashion industry emerge from crisis?” Can a movement as powerful as environmentalism simply die of irrelevance?

    Liked by 2 people

  68. The point of my 10.30am comment on 11th April (which may still be in moderation?) is that now is probably a good time to turn to political action by starting a new grassroots political party which would challenge the cosy consensus. There are huge dragons to slay in the media and many political opponents, but the potential prizes are huge – better democratic processes with policies that are more sensibly arrived at, less secretive lobbying and hence reduced pork-barrel politics. In short, saving many countries in the West from themselves.

    However, could we agree on a political programme? My professional experience suggests that the engineer’s mantra of “Keep it simple, stupid” would be a good place to start; we would not want to repeat the UK Labour Party’s error at the recent general election of having 101 policies i.e. we should concentrate on energy policies since almost everybody (except the rent-seekers and their many allies) is suffering from the current settlement!

    So my first question would be, “Which policies should be promoted?”. We could use the current lock-down to decide that question.

    Regards,
    John.

    Liked by 1 person

  69. Thank you Geoff. Actually I thought my earlier contribution (11 Apr 20 at 7:05 am) was the more important – that just because the coronavirus epidemic should dispel unquestioned belief in mathematical modelling or consensii, doesn’t mean such beliefs will be questioned by CAGW advocates in the future. The White Queen syndrome is rife within science.

    Like

  70. Geoff,

    Be aware that there are plenty who seek to establish a direct link between climate change and coronavirus. Take, for example, the following comment posted over at ATTP (not knowingly short of its fair share of armchair experts):

    “Interestingly, regions of high air pollution have higher mortality rates from COVID-19. This study shows that small (1 mg/m3) increases in long-term PM 2.5 air pollution are associated with a 15% increase in coronavirus deaths. This links coronavirus, air pollution, and climate change in a very unflattering light.
    https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/covid-pm”

    I suppose it would be asking too much for the individual who posted the above to take a look at what I have said here on CliScep on the subject of association, causality, confounders and structural causal models. With the right model, I’m sure I could link this individual to the relevant understanding in a very unflattering light – interestingly.

    Like

  71. Hi Geoff,
    Ref. Rupert/Greta/ExtinctionRebellion/RisingUp!/CompassionateRevolutionLtd

    ” .. Extinction Rebellion isn’t about the climate .. never say we’re a climate movement .. we’re not.
     We’re a Rebellion .. coming together through .. mass political action that breaks the law. It’s the most effective way .. to actually create a crisis in society .. Through mass civil resistance, we’re going to create a new global regime .. we are creating a separate, true, fundamental democracy .. Extinction Rebellion is .. just about democracy .. we are calling for a fundamental change of the political and economic system .. We believe .. that confrontation through mass civil disobedience is necessary .. ” (http://globalpoliticalshenanigans.blogspot.com/2019/04/spotlighton-extinction-rebellion.html).

    It appears that XR’s leading members are prepared to use any destructive event (weather, pandemic, or whatever) occurring anywhere in the world in order to support their real objective.

    As I conclude in my article’s sub-section ” .. 3.1.52 Rupert Read .. Once again we have someone with apparently inadequate education, training and experience in any of the hard scientific disciplines .. necessary for any kind of understanding of the processes and drivers of the different global climates pontificating on the CACC issue. This is archetypal of Extinction Rebellion members and its supporters .. “.

    Liked by 3 people

  73. Geoff:
    4.1 “No-one has explained why COP26 can’t proceed by video conference, seeing that the world’s future hangs on their decisions”.

    Ah, but they have. Long time activist and former Greenpeace International Political Director, Bill Hare, has done just that, together with a colleague of his from Potsdam and his Climate Analytics company, Joeri Rogelj, now at Imperial Grantham Institute:

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2020/04/08/climate-change-experts-heres-why-a-virtual-cop26-wont-work/#382512694ec5

    You can find out more about Bill Hare here: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/tony-thomas/2019/04/doctor-hares-nasty-green-prescriptions/

    The climate story will continue, because it has never really been about climate, it is about transforming the world, via the UN and global governance, with just the sort of top-down economy overturning measures that we are now experiencing. When governments can create the sort of money from nowhere that is currently happening, then global corporations, international financiers, consultants etc, all want a piece of the action.

    Global governance doesn’t mean a global government, it means controlling the world via myriad treaties and protocols, covering every aspect of our daily lives. They wish to control the seas, the forests, the countryside, where you live, what transport you use, where you work, what work you do, what you think, how many children you can have, how you live. Much is already in place, it is EU writ large.

    It’s ironic that one of the vehicles they have sought to fill the feeding trough has been emissions trading, the UN CDM scheme. Now that emissions are falling, so is the price, therefore a zero emissions strategy means the CDM money tree is self cancelling. The public purse must be accessed in different ways and there will be continuing pressure for more subsidies for wind and solar. Now would be an ideal time to dump Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act, but he is back in action as Shadow Environment Secretary and I don’t see enough back-bench Tories willing to put their heads above the parapet.

    The whole agenda is long running, the first Earth Summit was in 1972, when UNEP was born. Then we had global cooling, later global warming, now climate justice.

    Gro Harlem Brundtland address to XIX Congress of the Socialist International “Social Democracy in a Changing World” 15 -17 September 1992. (The Brundtland Report of 1987 became Agenda 21, we now have Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. Climate is Goal 13). https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

    Brundtland:
    “At the Rio Conference on Environment and Development (1992) it was made clear that we are heading towards a crisis of uncontrollable dimensions unless we change course. Today we are faced with global challenges that can be addressed only through international cooperation. Securing peace, sustainable development and democracy requires that nations, in their common interest, establish an effective system of global governance and security.

    In an increasingly interdependent world, we must find new ways to live – both within our own countries and on a global level – that are socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable. What we need is a new social contract. Monetary stability will not suffice. And just as democracy originated in Europe some 2500 years ago, just as social democracy developed in Europe over the past 100 years, so must we again take the lead.

    We must curb population growth and reinforce the links between population, poverty-alleviation and the rights of women. A new social contract must be based on our overriding principles – freedom, solidarity and justice.

    To pursue social justice, freedom and democracy will require that we pool our collective experiences and national sovereignties. There is no alternative to obligatory coordination of financial and monetary policies.

    Ban Ki Moon UN Secretary-General, 14 February 2012, Remarks to KPMG Summit:
    “Business Perspective for Sustainable Growth”

    Most of the world’s ecosystems are in decline. We are nearing the point of no return on climate change. You all understand the high stakes — for jobs, for social justice, for the Millennium Development Goals, for the health of the planet.

    Only with your strong support and leadership we can change and shape the world we want and we can make this world better for all.

    You business CEOs, when you decide something today, it can be carried out tomorrow. That is why I am asking you to help the U.N. to help us protect planet earth and help lift millions of people from poverty and disease.

    Sustainable development is the top priority of the United Nations and for my second term as Secretary-General. I have been urging leaders of the world not to be prisoners of their constituencies. When they have a vision and commitment they have to carry them out.

    Former UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Christiana Figueres was influential in Theresa May’s Net Zero Carbon epiphany: https://twitter.com/theresa_may/status/1141348219315785729?lang=en

    Tony Thomas wrote about her recently: https://cliscep.com/2020/03/14/tinkerbell-wins-gold-at-the-sydney-peace-prize-but-ive-nominated-donald-trump-to-take-home-the-big-one/

    ‘This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.’

    No, we haven’t won, the battle is on-going, they never give up, hysteria is part of their armoury. There will, at an appropriate time, sans Corona virus, be a further report from IPCC, “Son of SR15” and there will only be 10 years to save the planet… again.

    Liked by 1 person

  74. @John Ridgway: Jem Bendell, the University of Cumbria’s globetrotting Professor of Sustainability Leadership, is another example.

    https://jembendell.com/2020/03/23/the-climate-for-corona-our-warming-world-is-more-vulnerable-to-pandemic/

    That effort and coverage of it at Bloomberg got slapped down by Jonathan Foley, a prominent environmental scientist and eco-activist. Prof Bendell was mystified. ‘I wonder why some environmentalists are missing this open goal,’ he tweeted, as though there must be some answer other than there being, as Foley put it, ‘zero evidence that climate change had anything to do with this virus’.

    Some questions:

    1) What was the goal that Bendell reckoned was open?

    2) How was it open?

    3) Was it on an adjoining pitch?

    4) Where can I buy a PhD in Eschatonanism? (Other than Cumbria Uni. I want one from somewhere with a better rep.)

    Like

  76. Extinction Rebellion’s rabble rousing leaders have used the CACC bandwagon to achieving their anarchistic objective. They now have now jumped onto what they appear to see as a new bandwagon, the Covid196 pandemic Their “Alone Together – Regenerative resources in a time of Coronavirus” web-page claims ” .. This is a world-changing moment. As coronavirus takes hold of our day to day lives, the way we organise and support each other will change .. This calls for an evolution .. of our rebellion. … as part of the response to coronavirus, Extinction Rebellion UK is offering AloneTogether, a Regenerative Rebellion .. We are living through an emergency response that shows us things can be done differently .. to make the necessary and urgent changes to respond to the intersecting global crises – financial, health, climate and ecological – creating a world where life can thrive.
    We can be part of this emergency response, holding to our goals, demands and strategy… ” (https://rebellion.earth/alone-together/).

    All very emotive and no doubt appealing to the gullible – but a warning. it is prudent to be sceptical of ANYTHING that comes out of the XR stable (especially if it relates to the CACC issue).

    XR’s page footer on “Copyright Info” includes the declaration that ” .. We do not endorse or create any merchandise and we will pursue and prosecute anyone who does .. “. On the other hand it has created an anarchy handbook “This is not a Drill” that is merchandised through Amazon and others for several pounds stirling (e.g. see https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Not-Drill-Extinction-Rebellion/dp/0141991445/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8). Then, of course, there is that XRbusiness division that founding member Gail Bradbrook denied was part of XR after the announcement of its formation upset so many XR members (see Footnote).

    The word “hypocrisy” springs to mind.

    Footnote:
    More about XR Business is available at http://globalpoliticalshenanigans.blogspot.com/2019/04/spotlighton-extinction-rebellion.html using the “find on page” tool in the drip-down menu under the three vertical dots in page top right corner”

    Like

  79. Before asking ‘have we won’ it’s worth taking a look at what the other side are saying.

    There are at least three articles at the Con saying that the action taken on coronavirus shows that the necessary action on climate change could be achieved as well. Governments could order people to do what is necessary and the people would comply:

    Coronavirus should give us hope that we are able to tackle the climate crisis

    A self-declared “expert in behavioural science” tries to explain the “surprising” difference in the responses to the two crises.

    Coronavirus response proves the world can act on climate change

    Again, an expert psychologist thinks his expertise is needed to explain the different responses.

    Coronavirus: world’s response has slashed CO₂ emissions – here’s how to keep them down

    “The urgent question now is how to maintain the environmental benefits once the COVID-19 epidemic wanes, and how to learn from one crisis response in the pursuit of another.”

    Apologies: to John Cullen, Dale, and Ian Miller, whose comments on this thread got stuck in our moderation system, but are now visible above. Also Richard, 11Apr 8.46pm.

    Like

  80. @ Paul without wanting to darken the Conversation’s door, I can guess that the difference between obeying the coronavirus restrictions and climate restrictions is that the one is temporary, the other permanent. I wish them luck in persuading us to live like this indefinitely.

    Like

  81. Hi Jit,

    I opine that the difference between imposing restrictions to mitigate agaibst coronavirusr and any attempt to impose equivalent restrictions to tackle the imaginary climate crisis is that the first is essential and temporary, the second unwarranted but intended to be permanent. I wish us all luck in mitigating against Covid19 and adapting to whatever changes in the differnt global climates nature decides to throw at us.

    Like

  82. Geoff:

    “Thinking of Climate Crisis as a virus, how does it have to mutate to infect the healthy body of a real pandemic? What are the receptors? Where’s the handy pangolin that will facilitate the crossover? Climate change lacks that quality of contagion which characterises the real crisis. You can’t tell a melting glacier to self-isolate.”

    I think this is a very insightful way of looking at the issue. The climate crisis as a (cultural) virus is I believe a co-evolving coalition of very simple memetic blocks that fit together kind of like Lego to make up the monster, higher-level narratives layered nearer the top. Many of the blocks have been circulating for millennia or much longer, and constantly turn up in new coalitions with a new lick of paint. Each represents a weakness in our psyche that can be exploited, much like a real virus uses biological portals (with an arms race between portal defence and viral attack). Note: The analogy with biology only goes so far however, because the cultural system evolved as an overall (group) advantage.

    A long while back I was playing around with what some of these may be, trying to get to the lowest resolution blocks. Extremely provisional and not backed up by any data:

    Our Times are Special (OtSpec) Ego, sense of order (history can only culminate in now)
    The Past is Always Better (Past) Nostalgia, comfort, appeal to psychological sense of security
    ‘Natural Order’ Brings Good (Noder) Hope, sense of order, appeal to psychological sense of security
    We are Special (WeSpec) Group identity, ego, pride, social reward
    Deterioration happening (Detrn) Anxiety, insecurity
    Fight Deterioration (FightD) Group identity, altruism, release of emotions by action
    The Future is Grim (FGrim) Anxiety, fear
    Disaster is Imminent (Disast) Fear, urgency (-ve)
    Disaster is Avoidable (Avoid) Hope, urgency (+ve)
    Technology is Unnatural (TekUN) Anxiety, offence to Natural Order
    We are Unnatural (WeUN) Insecurity, self-deprecation, guilt, anxiety, offence to Natural Order
    ‘Unnatural’ Brings Bad (UNbad) Anxiety, fear
    The future is Bright (FBrite) Hope, inspiration
    Back to Nature! (Back!) Appeal to psychological sense of security
    Sacrifice Erases Bad (Sacref) Sense of justice, hope, altruism
    Erasing Bad Brings Salvation (Salvat) Hope, joy
    Save the Children(StChild) Altruism, primary biological drive
    Give More for Common/Future Good (Give) Altruism, group identity
    Malthusian Memes (MalthM) Anxiety, fear, self-deprecation (projected onto population)

    Some of these are in direct contradiction but that’s usual for cultural narratives (even, necessary to purpose I think).
    They *might* all fit together something like this:
    https://wearemyth.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/the-emotive-untruths-short.docx
    …but I was really just doodling so don’t take tis as having any weight. The first 3 in the list appear to be ‘root nodes’, they don’t appear to come from anything else, so presumably are the deepest buried in our history.

    However, regarding the infection or hi-jack of human response to a real pandemic, one could perhaps expect starting points or commonalities from any of these fundamental building blocks that can get a purchase on the response. Looking at the titles in Paul’s post above, it looks like mainly positive emotions are being stressed, so (using the code-words): ‘Avoid’ (both disasters are avoidable), ‘WeSpec / OtSpec’ (two catastrophes at once! – our times are special and we are special enough to rise to beating them both), ‘FBrite’ (disasters bring opportunities to shine still more), ‘Sacref’ (sacrificing for the good to beat one disaster, shows that sacrificing for the good to beat the other will work), Give (we’re all in this together and must give for both issues to save the community). There’s also been more than a hint of ‘Past’ (diseases like this didn’t happen before, so it’s all our fault and partly via CC), but most of these purchase points are emphasising hope and altruism and communality, plus a bright future and a special generation of people.

    It’s all tosh, of course, all these memes hit arbitrary emotive portals; they’re nothing to do with whatever truths or realities happen to exist. And the future is not likely to be very bright with near NetZero either, whether or not justification links are forged to Covid.

    Like

  84. That’s a useful collection of RU!/CR/XR stuff you’ve got there, Pete Ridley.

    In the Bendell section, you wonder why he has embraced the climate apocalypse so enthusiastically and suggest that he might be in it for the money. Money is in there somewhere (he’s a cryptopreneur, ferks) but I think it has more to do with rebuilding his ego, which he says was shattered by a week he spent in bed with the flu reading blogs and watching videos about Arctic methane shortly after delivering his inaugural lecture as a prof at the University of Cumbria. This was the era of Wadhams, Shakhova and AMEG and what they told him left him not only with a sense that climate-driven near-term human extinction is possible but also (for reasons I don’t really understand) with a total loss of feelings of self-worth.

    Cod psychology fodder:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20180802173420/https://jembendell.wordpress.com/

    I’ve read very little of it but my impression is that he’s yet another disappointed narcissist, an unhappy man who, alas, has somehow managed to make many other people share his unhappiness. Get him out academia and into a funny farm pronto – or into another faux-Buddhist retreat/resort in Bali or the Aegean.

    Liked by 1 person

  85. Apologies to John Cullen and others whose comments got caught in WordPress’s anti-spam system (not moderation, we don’t do moderation.) His idea of a political party/movement is well worth discussing, and we’ll put a separate thread up to discuss it soon.

    Thanks to Peter Ridley, Dennis Ambler, Paul and others for useful links. I don’t expect to see the beginnings of an answer to the question I posed for months yet, but it helps to get a wide range of opinions.

    Paul’s three Conversation articles are interesting as the first skirmishes in the phoney war. The authors, professors of earth sciences, psychology, and “in the dept of” anthropology and an MsC in behavioural science, are minnows on the lower rungs of the green hierarchy, which needs them like a fish needs a stepladder. One article, dating from early March, attracted five comments, of which two were critical from Robin Guenier, and two were replies to Robin. Another has 33 comments, half of which are a debate between Robin Guenier and the author. Robin is not a climate sceptic, but he sets out clearly and persistently the reasons why climate mitigation is never going to happen. Of the Conversation’s 10 million+ monthly readers, only about a half a dozen seem interested in the link between Corona virus and the Climate.

    Like

  86. Geoff,

    > we don’t do moderation.

    Ha! Speak for yourself!. Moderation is my middle name—especially when it comes to filtering blog comments, a weakness I permit myself once a decade (if that), and not without a certain shame.

    Speaking of moral victoriana, Stephen Fry did a great routine when he was at Cambridge about a journey to Transylvania.

    “Prudence demanded that I travel alone, so I fondly gave her a farewell kiss and a fondly embrace and boarded the steamer for Calais. It was a miserable and nauseous crossing. After what seemed a cliché, I set foot on the Continent at last…”

    Liked by 1 person

  88. Geoff

    > No sensible person puts a “the” before “science” except ironically, do they?

    Muh-oh? I guess?

    But tiny datasets don’t prove much, do they? 🙂

    Like

  91. @Alan Kendall 11 Apr 20 at 7:05 am

    thanks for your comment “white queen”, lead me to – https://www.theodysseyonline.com/psychology-within-alice-wonderland

    partial quote – “Perfectionism is defined as a disorder in which the person’s “striving for flawlessness and setting excessively high performance standards, accompanied by overly critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others’ evaluations”

    rings a bell with me!!!

    Like

  94. Barry’s link is a 28 min radio show starting with an interview with Tamsin Edwards. If she really thinks a few percent cut in CO2 emissions for a month or two is going to alter the global temperature maybe she should go back to primary school and learn to do sums.

    Like

  95. ‘Class War’ is back:

    https://freedomnews.org.uk/class-war-is-back-and-you-will-love-it/

    Back in 1919, our ancestors came home from spilling their blood in the wars of empires to lay [sic] dying of “Spanish Flu” in some workhouse or other. Jump forward a century and we see those who’ve suffered a decade of the Tories’ war on the poor are once again sent off to the front.

    Stirring stuff.

    And it’s been puffed by Ian Bone, so is the real ‘Class War’ deal, not some stupid fake designed to make ‘Class War’ look stupid.

    Latest issue:

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MajCTpgtzIpnn_5TlZUbirSu3QEnqsf9/view

    That’s mostly quite sensible, actually. Oh well. There’s always tomorrow’s edition.

    Liked by 1 person

  96. Hi Geoff,

    CCAC evangelist Dr. Tamsin Edwards has no problem with doing sums. After all, she did study particle physics under Manchester’s world-renowned climate change expert, staunch CACC suppirter and heart throb Prof. Brian Cox. (Remember how Brian demolished pseudo-climate expert and one-time Senator Makcolm Roberts in that televised debate on 15th August 2016 (https://m.youtube.com/watch?).v=LxEGHW6Lbu8).

    I opine that the prime motivation for Tamsin (like most CACC-supporting “climate experts”?) is simply job security. I can’t see any reason why her specialist knowledge of how Antarctic ice sheets calve would be of interest to many others if it wasn’t for the CACC scare..

    Tamsin’s estimates of the impact of atmospheric CO2 on the different global climates are probably as accurate as are her estimates of positive feedbacks.

    Like

  99. Hi Geoff, was there some issue with my comment about Tamsin Edwards, Brian Cox and Malcolm Roberts???

    Like

  100. Geoff, Paul, John, any Admins. The first post of my series of 3 on Climate Cultural beliefs and Religiosity, is up at Climate Etc. just now. If you think it’s important enough and want a Cli-Scep side-stream, I’m happy to answer any questions on a separate thread here if you can make one. Otherwise, I think Geoff you’d be very interested to read it anyhow, the data from those surveys we discussed is featured over the series 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  103. It seems a number of EU countries want to hitch the climate anchor to the coronavirus recovery horse.

    “Paris and Berlin have added their names to a growing list of EU capitals asking for the European Green Deal to be placed at the heart of the EU’s post-pandemic recovery plan.” – Euractiv

    One of two comments under that article was this extraordinary rant by one Vlad Berendt:

    The death of freedom to wreak havoc on earth–indeed.
    So long neoliberal wizards! Your open society has been shown to be a fake. Your free markets nothing but an evil trick. Who are you to play around with our future? Try your deluded experiments elsewhere. Begone! The legacy of laisez-faire and mont pelerin will meet with oblivion; their remnants with the wrath of Shiva. Nature has spoken and does not like to repeat itself. Green corporations will help our transition but that doesn’t mean they will be off the leash to do as they please. None of that anymore! Present dragons you are next on the list. Your empires of dust are being exposed. Whoever doesn’t conform to the will of the people will be wiped out. Eventually governments will have to bow down to the universal mind. The new paradigm will be born at the local level and extend to cover all corners of the globe. The empire of the future will be build on universal values (that don’t include ‘capital’) and its colour will be green.

    Like

  104. JiT, I’m glad you enjoyed that rant. How long before certain phonetic coincidences are remarked upon between Vlad Berendt’s name (Vlad Berendt) and yours truly’s (not yours, I mean mine)?

    Liked by 1 person

  107. Pete, I honestly don’t know why your comments (and Russell Cook’s) went into auto-moderation but I’m going to go out on a limb and liberate them now with apologies on CliScep’s behalf! I’m pretty confident Geoff won’t mind!

    Liked by 1 person

  108. I apologize for getting Russell Cook started on Oreskes, though in fairness to me, he only asked me not to get him started after he’d already started getting started. As an unintended consequence of harsh new quarantine laws, his and Pete Ridley‘s comments have now materialized out of their proper temporal sequence, so please, reader, do yourself a favor and look for their contributions upthread.

    Liked by 1 person

  109. Ah, perfectionism: the high-functioning face of Dunning Kruger Syndrome.

    I can’t count the times some climate believalist has diagnosed me with DKS. Funny, funny stuff. One gets the feeling [Dunning & Kruger 1999] is the only scientific paper many of them have read.

    I always thank them for complimenting my competence and promise not to be so hard on myself in future, knowing in the back of my mind that I’m just going to relapse into overly critical self-evaluations 5 minutes later. (I’d ask them how they dealt with their DKS diagnosis, except in their case it must come as more of a blessing than a curse.)

    Liked by 1 person

  110. Pete,

    sorry to be a Greek Nazi, but a bearer of shitty (if made-up) news is a cacangelist, just as the opposite of euphony is cacophony.

    So the phrase you’re after is ‘CACC cacangelist’ or—in our attention-deficient, syllable-poor times—simply cagwangelist.

    Like

  111. Geoff

    George Monbiot dreams of aurochsen, does he? The last middle-aged man who reported that symptom had a thing for 14-year-old girls. See Nabokov (1955). What’s George trying to get off his conscience?

    Damn you for linking us to my latest time-sucking addiction. That’s one page down, 92 to go. I’d better ration myself.

    Like

  112. I once bumped into Dunning and Kruger standing in a queue at Heathrow, and I couldn’t help overhearing a bit of their conversation:

    – “Have you got the boarding passes?”
    – “I thought you had them”
    – “No. I said, before we left…”

    I left them to it. I notice they haven’t published anything together since 1999.

    Liked by 1 person

  113. Hi Brad,

    I find CACC crusader more appealing, so will try to remember to use that in future.

    Like

  114. Thanks to Brad a second time for liberating my 17 Apr 20 at 3:54 pm comment from the place where all the lost socks go. Brad additionally asks me to basically return the favor by deailing a bit of the direction I was sending readers in my prior comment. It burns down to a question many might have overlooked in the political side of AGW:

    Why is Naomi Oreskes involved in the issue in the first place? All I knew in 2009 is that she was like other accusers, repeating a particular [allegedly] Western Fuels Association (WFA) leaked memo to indict skeptic climate scientists of corrupt industry-paid treachery. Problem is, I could not initially find those memos anywhere in their full context, unlike the tobacco industry’s “Doubt is our product” memos which I found inside of a 15 second internet search. When I did find the (as it turns out) non-WFA memos in hidden Greenpeace archives, they looked incomplete, nothing like the sinister disinformation campaign they were portrayed to be. So, my search continued to see if a complete set existed. Oreskes’ big mouth yielded a clue when she said in a chapter contribution to the 2010 “How Well Do Facts Travel?” book that the memos could be viewed at the American Meteorological Society’s D.C. archives (as it turns out, AMS archivist said they were NEVER there), and that she was alerted to them by Anthony Socci, a U.S. Senate staffer with direct ties to Al Gore when he was a Senator. Why would Socci do that, when Oreskes sole claim to fame was a study about a 928-to-0 100% scientific consensus on AGW?

    The key to unraveling Oreskes larger, apparently actual role is asking why her own narratives about her entry into the issue never line up right. Her oft-cited 2008 Powerpoint presentation cited AGW alarmist book author Ross Gelbspan for the leaked non-WFA memos, but her 2010 book chapter contradicted that, and she said at her 2012 La Jolla workshop that SHE herself possessed material directly related to the memos. She unequivocally claimed multiple times that her “Merchants of Doubt” co-author Eric Conway alerted her during a conference Q&A session to who the prominent critic of her just-published Dec 2004 Science paper was, Dr S Fred Singer. However, the conference she speaks of took place in July 2004 – both her CV and Conway’s irrefutably proves that.

    Why would she feel compelled to concoct that latter story? Keep in mind how Al Gore used her 928-to-0 study as a segue in his 2006 move to repeat a particular line straight out of those non-WFA memos, which he credited Ross Gelbspan with discovering, despite quoting from those same non-WFA memos in “Earth in the Balance,” years before Gelbspan first mentioned them. My growing impression is that Oreskes made up her story because she couldn’t say outright that Al Gore and/or his mob tasked her with creating a study about AGW science consensus that was guaranteed to be published in Science magazine …. since the editor of Science himself had already declared there was no doubt about the scientific consensus in 2003. Guess what? Ross Gelbspan’s story of when he first began investigating scientists like Dr Singer appears to be a total fabrication as well.

    Sorry to send everyone into extended reading on all that, but read the rest at my GelbspanFiles.com blog. Or see if you can independently get Gelbspan’s / Oreskes’ Gore’s stories to line up right. If we had a responsible mainstream media who would have responsibly looked into this political angle more than a decade ago, I posit that we would not even be discussing this issue today.

    Like

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  119. Thank you for your support. If I accomplish any one thing, I hope to prompt more people to question the mechanics behind how the global warming issue stays alive in news reporting. It’s why I say this issue is far larger than just the science. Al Gore and countless others praised Ross Gelbspan as a Pulitzer-winning reporter who exposed the industry-paid corruption of skeptic climate scientists via devastating leaked industry memos he uncovered, which supposedly had the strategy goal to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.” In other words, implying industry execs KNEW man-caused global warming was settled science but PAID shill experts to lie about it still being only theory. But Gelbspan never won a Pulitzer (the top U.S. award for journalism excellence), he wasn’t employed as a reporter when he magically ‘obtained’ the memos, he never showed the memos to anyone in public, and never disclosed that the memos were a rejected unused proposal that practically nobody ever saw. Oreskes doesn’t merely repeat talking points about the memos, she’s one of the very few that saw them in person, but has also never shared the full set in public. It’s all a tangled web of details that never line up right.

    Reporters let assertions about industry executives conspiring with skeptic scientists slide right by without question. U.S. journalists will never win a Pulitzer for repeating talking points about crooked skeptics, but they could win that award by turning the tables against Oreskes and the mob surrounding her, because her big mouth sends this whole accusation straight back to Al Gore when he was Vice President of the U.S. and also when he was a U.S. Senator. Reporters don’t need to trust me for this opportunity, they could find it for themselves if they put out an honest, objective effort to see if the accusation actually holds water. When they discover it doesn’t, they need to then ask why and how people like Oreskes and Gelbspan latched onto the accusation.

    Liked by 3 people

  120. Speaking of Oreskes, how ’bout a sleuthing exercise for you at CliScep who might be aficionados (ha!) of her work? In my 2nd and 3rd paragraph here http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=4166 , I note how she claims her infamous Dec 2004 Science paper was an outgrowth of a presentation she gave earlier that year at a George Sarton Memorial Lecture series event, but that I have not yet located a transcript from that presentation. It hasn’t been for a lack of trying on my part, either. Have any of you spotted that presentation anywhere? She says during the 4:30 to 5:00 point of this interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suz_13pXgEw&t=270 that her SINGLE slide on AGW consensus in her 2004 lecture to 600 people was such a big hit that spurred her on to write a full blown paper on that angle. Question is, is any of that narrative actually true?

    Like

  121. Paul Matthews above:

    Before asking ‘have we won’ it’s worth taking a look at what the other side are saying.

    Grab your beta blockers and dramamine for this echofest, which includes Gavin Schmidt and Katherine Hayhoe:

    At 33 minutes in,note the forced concern and jokes about totalitarians taking over. A little later, their myopia about the poor, is on display.

    Liked by 1 person

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  125. Anthony Watts is excited enough for me to add this to the “We’ve Won” pile right away:

    A MUST READ! Wow, the renewable light bulb of “great idea” over Michael Moore’s head just burned out. He’s trashing renewables in this new film Planet of the Humans.

    On the 50th anniversary of EarthDay, the irony meter is pegged. It’s an epic take-down of the left’s love-affair with renewables by one of the left’s most known public figures. Full video follows. h/t to Dennis Wingo.

    Here it is. I’ll watch it too, some time very soon!

    Like

  126. I agree with Anthony. Wow. It’s 4am but I had to get to the end of it. All I’ll say in criticism is that it needed a dose of “Our World in Data” to relieve the gloom towards the end. But it’s utterly brilliant and to my mind completely changes the conversation. As if Covid wasn’t enough. I’ve commented on YouTube for the first time for years. The young and other-aged people trying to make sense of it there are shell-shocked. Here’s what I said to one guy who was pointing people in a better direction:

    @Phil Ord I agree with you about nuclear being a far better option than ‘renewables’. And on not rejecting all of capitalism. I’m not sure we need a ‘price on carbon’ though. The presentation of all these options has been incredibly unbalanced, because of big money that wants an easy buck through government grants. Crony capitalism in other words. This film hits many parts of that brilliantly. Some other things that are normally left out of the conversation but shouldn’t be are here: https://cliscep.com/2019/05/03/climate-change-the-missing-facts/

    I cried at the end of this film. I almost felt like joining XR. I may have to sleep on it!

    Like

  127. Hi Richard,
    Thanks for linking to that excellent youtube exposee. I’ll be referencing it when discussing the CACC hypothesis with its supporters among my family and friends. I particularly like from 1hr. 10 mins. into the show – the profit motive behind the scam.

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  128. Pete: It’s terrific isn’t it? Everyone from Gore to McKibben to Grantham to Goldman Sachs completely eviscerated. When that beautiful Indian environmentalist spoke out unequivocally against burning trees to make electricity as totally anti-green – the only one Jeff Gibbs could find to do so – it was a lovely thing. (The reason I almost wanted to join XR was that a protest by them, shown momentarily, seemed to be on the right side of this issue.) I had no idea that by now 70% of ‘green’ energy was coming from biomass. And, as you say, he exposes the ‘profit motive behing the scam’ forensically and ruthlessly. As Clive James also said, in poetic form, to explain the mass delusion that has allowed the scammers to get away with it, it’s all about our fear of dying. So much to chew on. I’ll watch it again this week.

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  129. Pingback: Hat es etwas Gutes, dass die Klima-Hysterie geschlagen ist? – EIKE – Europäisches Institut für Klima & Energie

  131. Meanwhile, “Coronavirus recovery plan ‘must tackle climate change'” according to Roger Harrabin. Hope or desperation?

    Liked by 1 person

  133. JIT,

    > “Coronavirus recovery plan ‘must tackle climate change’”

    Harrabin’s mistake is that he commits the Fallacy of Stupidity.

    It’s that old saying: “a little intellect is a dangerous thing, and very, very little intellect is even more so.”

    The fact is, global warming tackles the coronavirus. The higher the ambient temperature, the less stable the capsid of the virion is, and the less stable it is, the sooner it makes the undead -> dead transition when left to its own devices.

    That’s not me speaking (I don’t believe that crap for a second), it’s the opinion of science itself, which is why I trust it and you can too, trust me.

    Of course there are also countless other ways of looking at the issue. (That’s merely the correct one.)

    For instance, as a WUWT visitor wrote:
    __________

    Bill Bryan of the DHS last night publicly confirmed fears that rises in environmental (“indoor and outdoor”) temperatures violate the virus’ right to a stable climate—a right it enjoys as a living, reproducing thing under international treaty. The disturbing graphic Bryan put up is sure to be a game-changer in our understanding of the urgent need for downwards global temperature corrections.

    Sure, COVID-19 isn’t the most charismatic mascot for the war to save biodiversity. But science is about looking beyond the capsid-deep. We have encroached on the virus’ habitat; we have sickened and slaughtered it with the smallpox-tainted blankets of our destructive genius; but it’s not too late to undo the carnage.

    It just takes a slight leftward adjustment of the global thermostat.

    Or do you want to explain to YOUR grandkids why they were born into a world without COVID-19?

    Liked by 2 people

  134. The pandemic is helping our beautiful planet. Much less pollution for a start. Lockdown means the Western population is doing more walking , appreciating their local space and having more time to think instead of driving cars,going on cruises in obscene floating cities, attending meetings globally instead of using Skype and so on

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  135. found this worth a look – “The BBC is panicking at the public’s rejection of its arrogant Left-liberal worldview”
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/25/bbc-panicking-publics-rejection-arrogant-left-liberal-worldview/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw

    partial quote – “Even if you accept that climate change is a fact, you might want to see less shrill alarmism and more attention paid to possible solutions that do not involve pauperising the developing world. (The BBC recently put Sir David Attenborough’s announcement of imminent climate crisis at the top of its main news bulletins. With great respect to the saintly Sir David, something that he says is not the most important news story of any day.”

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