Maggie Thauersköld Crusell of Scandinavia's No. 1 climate science blog: http://www.theclimatescam.se
My blogroll has a number of non-English, foreign, skeptic blogsites.
I’ve put them there because I feel it’s important that the rest of the world knows that skepticism is not just a thing one finds in North America, UK and Australia, but all over the world.
One site that caught my eye is Maggie Thauersköld Crusell’s theclimatescam.se/; it’s the WUWT of Scandinavia.
Why do I say that? It’s because even though Sweden has a population of only 9.35 million (compared to USA’s 300 million) and her posts being written in Swedish, she often gets 50 – 100 comments per post, and more, from her readers. By comparison Anthony Watts would have to get 2000 – 3000 comments per post to match her per capita-wise!
A few days ago I got the idea to write a post about the WUWT of Sweden, and so I wrote Maggie to ask her if she’d mind, and included a few questions. She happily went along.
Here’s Maggie on what’s going on with climate science and politics in Sweden, and also a little bit about herself. Things are looking up in Scandinavia. Hope you enjoy this look at the climate situation in Sweden.
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The Climate Scam Website
by Maggie Thauersköld Crusell
The Climate Scam is by far the largest blog about climate issues, not only in Sweden, but also in Scandinavia.
I began blogging at the end of 2007, as a reaction to the “streamlined” reporting on climate issues in traditional media. Soon, the number of visitors doubled, tripled and quadrupled. Obviously, there was a need for an open forum where all views were allowed. The Climate Scam has never been moderated and still isn’t. As long as people refrain from ad hominem-attacks, everyone is free to express their opinion.
Public opinion on global warming is definitely changing in Sweden. After Copenhagen, and the oddly cold winter 2009/10, people are more or less sick of hearing about climate and becoming increasingly skeptical. The phrases “climate change” and “global warming” are used much less today, and mostly by leftish fringe organizations.
There was an election to the parliament earlier this autumn and climate was hardly ever mentioned in the political debates.
What’s bothersome though is that there seems to be a great preference for wind power among Swedish politicians and many dream of wind replacing nuclear and hydropower, which today provide more than 90 percent of Sweden’s energy.
Many people within the environmental movement seem to wish for our society to go back to where it was in 1850s, or even before that, disregarding the fact that technological advances have done so much to improve the state of the world. The hard core of the environmental movement is highly misanthropic and consider humans a plague on earth. Progress is seen as detrimental, consumption as a threat to the environment and population increase as a fast lane to total destruction.
I feel we need to spread a more optimistic view of the future. Today, pessimism is the politically correct attitude and those who are optimists are considered naive and stupid. I am currently writing a book about this very issue.
I follow a lot of blogs, both skeptical ones and more politically correct. Among my favorites are WUWT, Climate Audit and Roy Spencer’s blog. I also subscribe to climate news from all around the world and I receive daily tips from my readers. I have participated in three of Heartland Institute’s climate conferences and would like to recommend them to everyone who wishes to meet some of the most prominent skeptical scientists in the world. I assume there will be a new conference arranged in spring 2011.
One last thing I’d like to add is: treat everyone with respect, no matter what their opinions are. Far too many skeptics and warmists turn to foul play, calling their opponents names and making the debate personal. I prefer to believe that we all want to do good, to preserve our planet and to further evolve humanity. And I try to stay open for views that differ from my own. We can all learn something from each other.
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Readers can read more about Maggie’s website here: http://www.theclimatescam.se/about/. Drop by! I visit her site daily and use the translator at the top of her page to get the gist of what she’s writing about.
Best wishes for Maggie and her team at The Climate Scam site!
by the way, there are skeptics in france too (hard here, since ecoreligion replace catholicism and marxism to rest the brain, manage guiltness, and give hope or redemption)…
the main skeptics blogs/sites are:
http://www.pensee-unique.fr
http://www.skyfall.fr
there are also some stranger skeptics of the humanist/progress kind
http://www.electron-economy.org/
http://www.laterredufutur.com/
of course no teaparty extremist here on that subject… a proof that skepticism is not a politic position to the right.
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Reply: Alain, thanks for the links. I’ll try to post something about the French sites soon. -PG
The Eco Whackos have had their day……they just don’t realize it yet!………..
A sad “era” in the so called “age of enlightenment!”
Maggie,
It’s great to hear that Sweden in particular, and Scandinavia in general have a forum for their CAGW skeptical views.
My paternal grandfather moved to the US from Denmark and he was a blacksmith and settled in a tiny town in the American mid-west. He loved machinery, and was one tough, intelligent individual. He was noones fool. Were he alive today, I am sure he would believe in CAGW about as much as my father and I do; which is not at all.
So when I constantly hear how left-leaning Europeans are falling for the CAGW nonsense, things don’t always fall into place in my mind. My family are certainly not of this gullible sort and I think to myself there must be other Europeans capable of critical thought besides members of my family!
It’s great to know of your site – I will be visiting it. Also thank you for your kind words of moderation – after all we are all brothers and sisters – members of the same humanity and eventually I am confident all this climate catastrophe nonsense will clear up and we will have to forgive the fools and get on with life.
Great to know, like the name of the blog.
I especially liked reading the following:
“Public opinion on global warming is definitely changing in Sweden. After Copenhagen, and the oddly cold winter 2009/10, people are more or less sick of hearing about climate and becoming increasingly skeptical.”
And her call for more optimism.
Great to hear about Swedish skeptics. All the best, Maggie, from Braunschweig, Germany – my birthplace and home of the TU Braunschweig, where a certain Prof. Gerlich teaches…
Many thanks, everybody! I’ll try to post something in English soon, so come and visit! 🙂
Thanks Maggie,
We’re looking forward to it!
Just wondering if you know of any blogs/sites open to all views in Switzerland!
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Reply: Not off hand, but there are a few German and French ones – see my blogroll. -PG
“even though Sweden has a population of only 9.35 million (compared to USA’s 300 million) and her posts being written in Swedish, she often gets 50 – 100 comments per post, and more, from her readers. By comparison Anthony Watts would have to get 2000 – 3000 comments per post to match her per capita-wise!”
Just a niggle, but the internet is global.
WUWT and Bishop Hill get readers from everywhere not just the US and UK respectively. The limitation is language and access to the internet, not locality. There are 309-400m speakers of English as a first language + 1.4b more as a second language. Some people outside Sweden speak Swedish but as a ratio it doesn’t compare with second language English speakers.
Therefore the 100 comments is even more impressive.
TDK,
On the other hand we are boasting that The Climate Scam is biggest in SCANDINAVIA, which means that there are also a few Norwegians and Danish people following the blog. So that would add another 10 miljon (or so) able to understand swedish.
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