Most skeptics have had a discussion with an alarmist at one time or another and experienced the raw irrationality of their obsession that the end of the world is approaching.
I’m not speaking about luke-warmers here, or even warmists – I’m talking about the climate alarmists, the very people we sadly are forced to deal with in climate science, e.g. Hansen, the Hockey Team, PIK, to name a few.
To deal with them, it is helpful to explore the mind of the alarmist and understand the psychology of doomsday purveyors in general.
When in discussion with alarmists, I’m always baffled by their constant insistence that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, no matter what facts you present. The more you take their arguments apart, the more they stubbornly cling to their belief. Why is it they insist a doomsday is coming, and don’t want to hear anything else? Why do they crave a climate doomsday? Why do they react to good news as if it was the plague? Seems very irrational.
Unfortunately, what we find in the minds of alarmists and the purveyors of end-of-world scenarios is not a pretty sight, as you are about the see. We are dealing with irrationality here, and maybe worse.
A normal, rational person who is confronted by a life threatening possibility would welcome ANY evidence showing the situation is far less dangerous than first believed. But not the climate Armageddists. In fact, the doomsday not being true is their biggest nightmare. We’ve seen how alarmist climatologists and proponents have mobilized to prop up the doomsday scenario whenever it’s threatened. That’s what Climategate was all about – keeping the good news out and the doomsday scenario alive.
Being curious about the psychology of doomsday prophets, I came across a piece in Psychology Today by Howard Bloom written about a year ago called:
Why The World Will End In 2012 – Is Catastrophe In Your Brain?
It’s well worth the read (some may find Bloom controversial). I think there’s a lot behind what he says.
End-of-world predictions are as old as civilization
The main psychological undercurrent in the modern climate movement is the human fascination with (and wish for) a global apocalypse – a coming climate Armageddon. It’s what propels the movement. But this is not a new social phenomena. Such doomsday visions are as old as civilisation itself. The obsession with end-of-the-world visions is one of civilisation’s recurring psychological illnesses. Today’s global climate Armageddon obsession is just the latest bout.
Bloom provides a number of examples from history. The early Christians believed in the second coming of Jesus, and with him a cleansing of the earth to clear the way for a new order. So did the Mayans and the Aztecs. For the Aztecs it even became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Today, 85% of Muslim Shiites believe in the coming of the 12th Imam, which will cleanse the earth and lead to a world ruled by the laws of Islam. Frighteningly, Iran’s President Ahmad Ahmaddinejad is a believer, writes Bloom.
When doomsday predictions don’t come true
In recent times there have been many cults, sects, etc., and they all believed the end of the world was imminent. The 7th Day Adventists and Jehovah Witness, or Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo to name a few. They made end-of-the-world predictions which never came true. You’d think people would wake up and abandon these charlatans, but they don’t.
For example, 7th Day Adventist founder William Miller preached in the early 19th century that the world would end in 1843. The end never came. So his followers rescheduled it for a year later, 1844. That too never materialized. Did followers abandon the belief? Hardly. Today the 7th Day Adventists church has 16 million followers. Beliefs in Armageddons are not rational, and refuse to die.
Paul Ehrlich predicted also cataclysmic events back in the 1960s and 70s, claiming global starvation of unprecedented dimensions. Today we see just the opposite. The world’s population is far greater and better fed than ever. Have followers abandoned Ehrlich? Far from it. Followers base their loyalty on faith and emotion, and not rationale.
Why are many people hooked on doomsday prophesies?
A lot of people are simply malcontent with the world and the direction of the human race and society, and so it appeals to them that it could get wiped out, and thus clear the way for a fresh start – one that would reflect their own view of how the world ought to be. Many loathe today’s modern prosperity, and would like nothing more than to change it radically. So there is a deep and dark desire to rid the place of competitors. This deep passion to do so appears to be evolutionary and biological, Bloom calls it the passion for disaster:
Surely biology and evolution must have a greater reason for holding on to such a deep disaster passion.”
To illustrate the dynamics of this kind of thinking, Bloom describes a German experiment conducted in the late 1940s where 15 brown rats, all strangers to each other, were put inside a box. At first the rats cowered in corners, afraid of each other. But over time things changed. Two of the rats eventually paired up and soon eliminated the rest. Bloom writes:
The rats had cleared the new territory of competitors, transforming the cage into a spacious land of milk and honey for themselves. A new promised land. Now, they could found a tribe that might if left to its own devices thrive for generations to come. A tribe that would carry the parental line of genes.
How does this relate to the popularity of notions that the world is about to end? Think for a second. Every millennial end-of-the-world movement has a hitch. We’ll all be broiled, fried, or caught in the crossfire of apocalyptic battles and plague. WE’LL be wiped out. But not the true believers. They’ll be saved. And they’ll have a fresh new world, a world purged of us, a world they can turn into their own private paradise.
Apocalypse-beliefs, I suspect, are land-clearance and land-grab dreams in disguise-dreams left over from our time as beasts.”
The green movement promises paradise, where the climate is friendly and the land is abundant in fruit, and human misery is practically non-existent. It’s about shaping the world according to the view of one particular group, one that happens to be very malcontent, and about eliminating competitors.
Greenhouse gases deliver the hope of a new order
Bloom ties all this in with catastrophic climate change, which, as readers here can tell you, is the very much hoped for fantasy of the alarmists. No matter what data refuting the doomsday scenarios are presented, the radical warmists don’t want to see or hear any of it, as it could disrupt their cherished fantasy. Bloom writes:
One of the most popular apocalyptic belief systems of the last 30 years has been the idea that we humans are bringing the destruction of the planet. The greenhouse-gas scenario is partly a scientific hypothesis and partly a deeply appealing myth. Climate-change-beliefs are a secular expression of an antique pattern…perhaps an instinctual pattern. They are a new way of saying that the end is coming and that only the believers will be saved. Only those who’ve embraced the right god or the right philosophy will survive. Only they will know the truth behind the new world order. And they will do more than remain alive, they will come out on top. They will flourish and thrive.”
Frustration and the desire to see a whole new order – that’s what’s common to all doomsday prophets. They are all disenchanted with the society they find themselves in, and are angry that it does not conform to their view of the world. Either the world changes so that it complies with their view, or it deserves destruction. There’s anger and the desire to punish. Whether that is a healthy psychology to see among leaders, I’ll let the reader make the call.
Howard Bloom is author of: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism (see widgets in side bar, above right). In the coming days I will be posting the next essay on the psychology of the AGW movement.
Nice piece of work. Here the study of Norman Cohn should not be missed:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pursuit-Millennium-Revolutionary-Millenarians-Anarchists/dp/0712656642/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279265455&sr=8-1#reader_0712656642
As a personal note I may add that some people just like disasters. The phenomenon of disaster-tourism is well known. Or take that nice Solomon Judgment story from the Bible, in which a woman preferred that her child was killed in stead to be given to someone else. It has to do with envy, revenge, and suicidal phantasies.
Envy and revenge – yes. But not much to do with suicidal tendencies. More on this coming soon.
In my experience, those people are often unhappy of frustrated in some way. They are surely a good material for psychologists, even dare to say, psychiatrists.
If they really “cared for humanity”, they would greet any news that the climate catastrophe is not happening. Their problem is, they are interested in their agenda, hoping to realize it at any cost.
That’s precisely the point. There is plenty of compelling evidence out there that there is not going to be a disaster, yet it’s the last thing they want to hear. “they are interested in their agenda” – more on that – coming soon.
They need their doomsday scenario as a cover up for the biggest genocide in the history of human civilization. Nothing more nothing less.
http://green-agenda.com
Must read in this regard the latest article from Spengler:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MB10Ak02.html
Also have a look at this website from the FAO which carries a graph that shows exactly when the price hikes of basic foods began.
This starting point coincides with the start of the bio fuel scam.
http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/FoodPricesIndex/en/
Another huge factor has been the fall of the dollar currency.
Is this coincidence? No, this is a carefully coordinated policy.
Punishment is the main tool of social control and always has been. Climate alarmism is a new form of original sin, the punishment you can’t escape. Climate alarmists are no different to the Spanish Inquisition. As society controls itself through punishment, it is always best to point the finger before the finger is pointed at you. It’s a survival thing.
It may be vilely irrational and viciously spiteful, but until we gain some kind of control over our own psychology, it will continue.
Excellent discovery – many thanks for summarising it and bringing it to our attention.
The astonishing success of the climate alarmists, based on little more than speculative feedbacks added to grossly simplified computer models of the climate, is well worthy of study. Part of it is no doubt due to far-sighted subversives such as Maurice Strong spotting the potential, and helping ‘environmentalists’ get a mighty bandwagon underway, one that would attract many others who spotted advantage in it both political and financial. Yet somehow that does not seem an adequate explanation for this massive excursion of irrationality profitable only for those milking it for donations, investments, or political power. It has degraded our politics, our media, and our science, and it has led to foolish and harmful diversions of resources into such absurdities as windfarms, photovoltaic farms, bio-fuels, toxic & dim lightbulbs, and, perhaps most important of all, a hard-to-quantify damage to the mental wellbeing of young people being fed doomsday and anti-human propaganda in their classrooms. Out of this mess, we may be able to salvage something, some consolation, if we can get deep research into how come it happened at all.
Only slightly OT. News flash: Kieth Olberman is going to work for Al Gore, as Chief News Officer at Current TV. He will be an “unfettered voice”. They belong together.
Okay, guys, you obviously lack any capacity to see nuanced discussion.
Here are the two sides of the issue from my perspective.
Coolist side: “Ain’t no way it’s happening. This is idiocy. It’s wrong. They just don’t understand science.”
Warmist side: “There are a range of possible outcomes. There are those who say climate sensitivity might be relatively low but unlikely below 1.5C. Most agree that climate sensitivity is in the range of 3C and we should planning for what that means. But there are others also showing evidence that climate sensitivity may be above 4.5C or even greater.”
This is the nuanced, science based message that I read CONSTANTLY from the scientists involved in this issue. This is the IPCC’s position. This is what Stephen Schneider always talked about. Richard Alley states this repeatedly.
But somehow you guys only hear one thing, apparently, that warmists are saying the world is ending.
This entire post is just mind-bogglingly ironic. Psychological projection at its finest.
Rob, if you read the post carefully, you’ll realise that I’m writing about the alarmists and catastrophists, and not the rational warmists, as they are NOT advocating a radical attack on industry, civil disobedience, population control and alarmism (as is the case with Hansen, Holdren and the PIK) and are open to a public debate on the subject. Of course I can understand if some find this very uncomfortable to read, and so points might be missed.
The problem is that you lack the scientific knowledge to determine what’s alarming and what’s alarmism. As a result, you end up characterizing one of the world’s foremost climate scientists (Hansen) as an irrational alarmist/catastrophist.
Dana, I have only one comment Dr. Hansen: not one of his predictions has ever proven true. Please cite one to prove me wrong.
Ed… At the end of a period of cooling (1940-1970) was when Hansen was doing his early work on climate. At that point he was able to say clearly that his research showed that the planet was going to warm. He has been correct. The planet has warmed.
If you look at his early models, they are based on climate sensitivity of 4.2C. As a result those models predictions are high. If you adjust the models to 3C they almost perfectly predict the past 3 decades.
Rob,
I know you read CO is Cool, go back and read it again.
Please tell me you’re joking, Ed.
Try this one for size:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Hansen-1988-prediction-advanced.htm
As for “CO2 is Cool”, I commented on your major mistake of ignoring thermal inertia there. I did the calculation while accounting for all forcings and thermal inertia here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-case-study-of-a-climate-scientist-skeptic.html
OK, so Hansen was not grossly wrong on his temperature prediction, only slightly wrong. But he blames all the warming on CO2, ignoring natural cycles. He got lucky in 1988. Not too bad considering he had a 50/50 chance.
Ocean thermal inertia, interesting concept. The heat disappears somewhere in the ocean, where the ARGOS buoys can’t find it, or it somehow slips by them into the deep ocean. Then it will jump out and bite us later. Sounds too much like a fairy tale for my taste.
Let me review.
CO2 is heating the planet and is responsible for all the heating we have seen in the last 30 years. None of that heating is due to natural cycles, even though heating and cooling cycles have occurred throughout history. Any extra heating that CO2 is responsible for that is not appearing in the global records is disappearing into the ocean in some way that we cannot track, but natural ocean cycles are not responsible for ocean heating and cooling that we can measure.
And the sun has nothing to do with any of this.
I now have a headache.
Straw man, Ed. No one claims ALL the warming is due to CO2. All the models include a vast array of factors on the climate. Perhaps you remember that one of the big early events that helps scientist understand that the models were correct was the climate’s response to Pinatubo. The actual climate response to Pinatubo was reflected accurately in the climate models.
Rob,
Nope, wrong again.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/06/revisiting-the-pinatubo-eruption-as-a-test-of-climate-sensitivity/
Ed honestly, I find it hard to believe you have a physics background.
First you lie about Hansen, claiming he ignores natural effects. Or perhaps by “natural cycles” you mean oscillations like PDO and ENSO, which average out in the long-term, in which case it’s scientifically sound not to include them in a long-term projection.
Then you claim he was correct because he was “lucky”. A typical response when somebody makes a correct prediction that you don’t want to believe. That’s a hallmark of denial, Ed.
Then you claim he had a 50/50 chance. That’s just ignorant. Hansen didn’t just say “the planet will warm”, he said “the warming trend will be ‘x’ in ‘y’ scenario”, and he was almost spot-on.
Your claim about ocean heat ‘disappearing’ is again, wrong. In my article I linked to two papers quantifying the amount of heat going into the oceans.
I expect a lot more from somebody with a physics background.
Dana,
OK, he didn’t ignore the natural cycles. He (perhaps, I can’t read his mind) knew that the temperature was at the end of a cooling cycle, so saying it was going to warm was the safe thing to do. He overshot a bit. But the important thing was he said it would continue to warm past the end of the warm cycle. He will be increasingly wrong. But of course he runs GISS, so it will take a while for that to be revealed in full.
You make a good point. The ocean cycles average out over the long term. And they will continue, and are continuing. The problem is that the long term is about a human lifetime, about 70 years. And there could be longer term cycles we have not detected yet, simply because we have not been looking long enough.
The heat can’t go into the oceans without warming them. So far, ARGO is not finding the heat. Read up on thermodynamics.
Hansen has an agenda. He has a huge ego. Anyone in his position that would allow himself to be arrested at the White House (and other places) has a serious problem.
Ed… Sorry but Roy Spencer is just not the final say on every issue. Go look up all the papers on this topic. A quick google scholar search on Pinatubo climate sensitivity returns 4800 papers.
Ed, seriously. Physics is not a guess. Hansen was very explicit in quantifying exactly where his projected warming was to come from. I suggest you go back and actually read his paper.
Then you waive your hands around and say “maybe there’s some natural cycle we don’t know about”. Guess what? There’s a 1.7 W/m2 radiative forcing from CO2 that we do know about! Where’s that energy going, Ed?
This is physics. You’re supposed to understand physics, aren’t you?
As for ARGO, the system has only been in place for a few years and could very well still have kinks in it. Meanwhile, the long-term trend in ocean heat content is quite clear. The radiative forcing did not disappear, which means the oceans did not magically stop warming, either.
I find it interesting that these things are spoken of using religious language and terms, yet without any concept of God, or any higher being who might have something to say.
There are many different eschatological views held today, and many religious ideas and groups which ‘claim’ support from current events, and from their “just so” undeniable stories. For such a “believer”, any attempt to gently show them possible errors in their interpretation often results in emotional defensive explosive reactions. It doesn’t actually mean that their view is wrong but the threat of it implies the work of a deceiver, a devilish plot against their othodoxy.
From what I have seen in the blogs, it is mostly this irrational, defensive and explosive reaction that comes from warmists, not from coolists. At this level alone, the warmists appear to be following a biggoted religious pattern regardless of whether they are right or not. To a neutral casual observer, the coolist is cool.
The primary difference, BargHumer, is that religion asks you to believe is spite of a lack of evidence. We believe what we do about AGW *because* of the evidence.
Even the coolists believe that AGW is real…but to a lesser extent. We see no signs of the “coming catastrophe”. And many warmists are saying that it’s not cause for panic and alarm, and that adaptation is the strategy to use. Rob, are you open to the fact that they may be wrong about the coming catastrophe? Do you really believe the catastrophe is coming if we continue business-as-usual?
It’s interesting, Pierre. In comments like this I find you much more nuanced than in your articles.
Pierre… I’m also a very firm atheist. Like, Richard Dawkin’s level atheist. Very sure about that position. But even there I always hold out that I could be wrong. I find it extremely unlikely based on the evidence.
This is very much the same with climate change. As I read the evidence I am convinced that the scientists are doing their job well. Not perfectly. But they are putting out a very clear and consistent case. And what I read on the other side of the argument is far less compelling. Both in the arguments and the quality and consistency of science being presented.
Does that mean absolutely I believe Lindzen is wrong? No. I just find his case very weak compared to the larger body of evidence. And even that larger body of evidence provides for uncertainties within the science which I find much more compelling.
Rob – I see you didn’t answer the question,
Hi Rob,
interesting, I also see myself as a “Dawkins-grade” atheist, who, btw, is one of my “guru” scientists (of course, as an orthodox atheist I do not really believe in gurus. At all. No, really…)
Having said that, I come to the exact opposite conclusion regarding the evidence for AGW. I’m a Computer Scientist by training and have had some experience with simulation and computer modelling. To me, the idea that the effect of the change in a single parameter (CO2 concentration) onto a non-linear, multi-faceted, coupled and chaotic system such as earth’s atmos/bios/geosphere can be even just aproximated by the current crop of GCMs is, sorry for the arrogance, almost touchingly childish.
Back to the topic: Pierre, thanks for a great post! I’ve been wondering for some time about this strange human propensity for catastrophism. Howard Bloom suggests some possible evolutionary drivers for these proclivities in humans, which were new to me and which I find find very interesting indeed. Excellent food for thought.
Best regards,
Marcus
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PG: Thanks Marcus. Being at the top of the pecking order is the biologial drive in every beast. For some, the drive is uncontrollable. Civilisation is supposed to keep our primitive animal instincts under control. But as ethics and morality erode, we are slipping closer and closer to something ugly.
Marcus… Have you read the research? Not just skeptical reactions to the science, have you read the actual research?
I would suggest you spend some time at a site called Science of Doom. Don’t let the name put you off. The guy is a highly technical physicist and the site is very apolitical. You might gain some added insight into the issue.
Pierre… Do I think we face a catastrophe if we continue business-as-usual? Again, there are a range of possible outcomes.
I think Lindzen is very likely to be wrong saying that climate sensitivity is so low that there is no problem.
If sensitivity is on the low end of the IPCC estimations (1.5C), I think there will be problems but more for third world nations, less for the first world. We would be changing the climate but it’s probably manageable.
If sensitivity is at the consensus range of about 3C and we continue well past 2XCO2… Yes, I think there will be a lot of problems with extreme droughts and other extreme weather, but even those are likely to take quite a while to play out. On the scale of 100 to 200 years, and by that time we will run out of fossil fuels and the planet is just going to be stuck in a warmer mode for another million years while CO2 levels come back down. I think we would struggle to feed the world’s population adequately in this scenario, and in that, there is going to be a great deal of turmoil.
The concern that grips me most is that we can’t yet rule out higher climate sensitivity; the long tail of the distribution gets very very ugly. I think if climate sensitivity is out past 4.5C and we blow past 2XCO2, burning everything we can, headed toward two doublings… Yes, believe that is a catastrophic event. Probably a mass extinction event. But not for you or me. We’ll be dead and gone. That will be the world we bequeath to our grandchildren.
So, you see, this is all a big roll of the dice. We don’t know where the dice will land, but today we do have the opportunity to say where it won’t land.
In the meantime, I believe we can actually invigorate world economies and eliminate any potentially terrible scenarios by addressing the issue of our we create and use energy. In that we would bequeath to our grandchildren a better, cleaner, safer, wealthier world.
At least you’re not a believer in the Methane apocalypse meme.
Dirk… There are a lot of uncertainties about methane clathrate releases. That’s part of the long long tail of the distribution. Something that can’t be ruled out but very hard to quantify at this point in time.
Again, this all about what we do have the capacity to control in this roll of the dice.
I’m also an eternal optimist. I actually believe that in the next decade or so climate change is going to become quite obvious. And I think the nations of the world are going to pull together and address the issue in a sane and effective manner.
Human ingenuity, drive and spirit are amazing!
I have to disagree with Rob a bit here. The key here is that Pierre is talking about business as usual.
In a business as usual scenario, the IPCC projects atmospheric CO2 at around 900 ppm in 2100. That’s 1.5 doublings from pre-industrial levels. Most likely in this business as usual scenario, we’re looking at around 4°C warming from 2000 to 2100. That would be catastrophic.
If we assume climate sensitivity is as low as it could possibly realistically be (1.5°C for 2xCO2), then you’re looking at around 2°C above pre-industrial by 2100, which probably wouldn’t be catastrophic. If I had to estimate the probability of catastrophic consequences in a business as usual scenario, I’d put it at 90%. Really the only question is how soon the catastrophic consequences would hit.
I can see Dana’s point. I think my optimism is probably getting the better of me. I’m thinking more about the mid-range IPCC projections and less about business-as-usual.
There’s another big wild card in the BAU scenario too. Peak oil. Did you see the WikiLeaks cable that just came out saying that the Saudis have about 40% less reserves than they’ve been stating?
I think the coming scarcity of oil, in particular, is going to make renewables much more attractive. And that’s going to play into how the BAU scenario plays out.
Or, Dana, is that actually accounted for in the IPCC business-as-usual scenarios?
At the same time, I read that using fracking technology, we’ll be able to reach previously unreachable oil reserves. And there’s lots of tar sands and oil shale, if we’re willing to completely screw up the environment.
I’m not sure how the IPCC scenarios treat peak oil.
So are you saying it’s: “Go green, or burn”? You’re not serious are you?
That’s a rather gross oversimplification of what I said.
If we continue in a business-as-usual scenario with strong reliance on fossil fuels, there will be catastrophic consequences this century. I’m serious because that’s what the scientific evidence indicates.
Evidence = results of imperfect climate model runs + GISTEMP.
Maybe we just have different ideas of what the word evidence means.
Dirk… Quite honestly, I believe you are exactly what you complain about.
Do you have anything better?
Oh, and yes and no. Yes, i am seeking my own advantage, just like the gravy-train riding climatologists. And no, i don’t think it will be to my advantage to de-industrialize the world and lower the standard of living of everyone. It will be to my advantage when everyone becomes more wealthy. I’m a cornucopian; the alarmists are Malthusians. Don’t know if you can understand that; Malthusians usually see the world in terms of resource distribution conflicts, a view that i don’t share or see as central.
Dirk… The problem with that statement is that NO one wants to deindustrialize. (Okay, a few extremist whack jobs. They are very few and I personally hate those guys.) No one whom I know, that you would label a warmist, wants to send society back to the stone age. We want to advance past where we are today into a brighter wealthier future for everyone on the planet.
I understand that you don’t *want* to de-industrialize the world; but it would be the result of a no-holds-barred “decarbonization” *now*. 15 years from now the situation might be different – because we will have better and cheaper technology, but how often have we heard that we can’t wait but must act *now*. Europe, of course, can’t wait, and forces all member states to install renewables as if they were rich. That’s why electricity is becoming a luxury item here. For an American, it must be jolly good fun to watch it.
Dirk… The point is, everyone knows that we can’t switch off carbon in one day. But we have all the technology to solve the problem. People are saying we need to start now and get serious about what we are doing to solve the problem.
========================
PG: Are you saying it’s “Go green…or burn!”?
What’s this “go green or burn” thing, Pierre? How can you twist every positive notion of creating clean energy as some kind of diabolical political conspiracy? Save it for the comic books!
“Prince Charles: Climate sceptics gamble with the future.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12403292
Yet another irrational pathelogical malcontent. He’s also not interested in any data that bears good news. Do you think he’d welcome any data showing warming is benign? Of course not. The man is unstable. It’s his cult religion.
O/T: Germany has quite a lot of wind turbines and solar panels now. It’s time to build some new transmission lines. It’ll only cost a cent or 2 per kWh to finance that. (For Non-Germans: we pay about 30 US cent or 23 Eurocent per kWh ATM)
Says European Energy Commissioner Oettinger (the German in the commission).
http://www.ftd.de/politik/europa/:kosten-fuer-neue-leitungen-oettinger-kuendigt-hoehere-strompreise-an/60009532.html
We had the last price hike by 1.5 Eurocent on Jan 01 2011; that was to pay the increasing costs of the feed-in tariffs for PV and wind.
We will end up awash in energy with no takers. 😉
This will also not spare one ton of CO2 emissions as the CO2 emissions are regulated via the trade of carbon permits; an entirely different mechanism. The number of permits defines the amount of emissions.
The First World Revolution
“Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced – a catastrophe of our own making.” – Al Gore, We must abandon the use of fossil fuels. “I don’t claim to have any special interest in natural history, but as a boy I was made aware of the annual fluctuations in the number of game animals and the need to adjust the cull to the size of the surplus population.” – Prince Philip, preface of Down to Earth
“A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 2 to 3 billion would be possible.”- United Nations, Global Biodiversity Assessment “Climate change should be seen as the greatest challenge to ever face mankind.”
– Prince Charles “If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the World Wildlife Fund
· We will live in a global subsistence economy based on local bartering
· Owning land will be forbidden
· Healthcare will be provided by shamans and natural healers
· We will be ruled by non-elected ‘wisdom professionals’
· Nation states will be replaced by ‘mandating regions’
· Our collective salvation depends on us returning to Gaia
· We need to stop using our brains
· We must ‘open up to the physics of the non-material world’
Any questions? http://green-agenda.com
Dirk H,
O/T: Germany has quite a lot of wind turbines and solar panels now.
Right, when I look outside my window I see dozens of them and you know what? An increasing number of these wind turbines has crashed.
First you see a thin black stripe of oil appear at the underside of the generator dome. As oil continues to leak from the gear box this thin stripe grows bigger and bigger until the wind turbine comes to a permanent standstill. The entire wind park here is only three years old.
It also happens that wind turbines fall into a continuous process of getting the blades turned into the wind to no avail. This must be a sensor failure.
Often it takes months for the repair crews to show up.
During the past cold wave there was no positive result.
High pressure and low winds resulted in a negative power harvesting during times we needed energy most. The wind turbines consumed more energy than was produced!
Since the wind farm is put on line the number of black outs in creased from 1 every 5 years to 5 every year, very inconvenient. Also the number of peak power events damaging electronics and electric equipment has increased.
I have counted the number of wind turbiness out of order today.
Over 25% is broken down.
But this part of Germany is advertised as the German Test Centre for wind energy.
So the real wind turbines are still in the pipeline?
Now all we need is the beautiful stable climate with constant breezes that bring Gaia and our technological society in eternal harmony with each other.
Freaking Idiots.
Wind power is no power at all.
real power is BASE LOAD POWER.
Wind and solar turn our grid into a patient with heart rhythm disturbances.
We can very well do without such a grid thank you very much.
And we are certainly not willing to pay the price for such a crock.
Thanks for the info, Ron. I’m a city dweller so i don’t experience the outages, the city grids are too big to be affected (yet). How long does an outage take on average?
Hi all, My self, i am agnostic, but the doomsayers get my goat. Has the planet warmed yes, not enough to worry about, will it cool again, IMO, yes, the earths climate flucuates, look in the recorded and geologic history its all there. I believe we will be on the lower scale of temp. rise. The world can adapt to that and the mid-range scale Dana talks of with no problem, as long as goverments do not get to invovled in as invention and inovation will do a better job. Do we need renewable energy, hell yes, as the energy being used today will not last forever. Can wind and solar become viable alternatives, yes with new innovations and investors willing to put up the money for R&D. The rush for it all now has shown it to be a disaster and subsidising it with tax money, even oil and coal and NG, IMO, needs to stop. The world has been R&D ing wind and solar for a long time, 50 to 100 yrs., But new innovations are coming and we must wait for the testing to prove out its real capabilites for applications with out the disasters we have seen in Europes economys and what is trying to be done here in the states with them.
Grayman… But do you understand that that mid-range, for one, is only one potential outcome. For another, what is “not a problem” for us in the developed world could likely be a disaster of biblical proportions for the developing world.
There is also potential that this has been significantly underestimated. No one knows for sure. The worst case can’t be disregarded.
As for your position that the world warms and cools and it’s now going to start cooling, the vast body of research just does not support that position. Not even close.
Grayman, the mid range in a business as usual scenario is catastrophe. It’s more than 4°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. There’s no way we adapt to that without millions of people dying.
Rob, i find it highly unlikelythat the 3rd world countrys cannot adapt even to the high range, at 5c GLOBALLY, the key word there considering that the eqautor would on average a 2-3 c rise would still not be much of a problem considering they are already in the hotzone of the world. When as a kid in the 60s i lived in the Sahara desert, with temps during the day in summer 130f, the shade was 120, and people still went about thier daily lives, in the winter 75 was cold and i mean put on a jacket cold. The body adapts better than most people think, you climatize to your surroundings.
Dana,the only way a 4c rise could happen in 100 yrs would be the planet lose all cloud cover completely and permanatly. The fact is the globe temp has risen, what, .8c in 100 yrs at best. The climate is to chaotic of a beast to do that. Considering that the cold kills more people world wide than the heat, this world can adapt.
Grayman…. You’ve got to be kidding. Yes, they will adapt. They will adapt through starvation and migration creating millions of refugees.
What you guys seem to fail to understand is 3, 4 or 5C is a global average. A global rise of 5C send average temperatures means more than 20C in high latitudes. A global rise of 5C sends extreme heat events in low latitude areas into ranges that are not survivable by humans. If you are third world and live in a thatch hut, that doesn’t work. Your entire village, and all the neighboring villages, just died of heat stroke when the mid day temp reached 68C+. (Remember, last summer there were isolated highs that reached 59C… and that was only with global average temperature rising 0.8C.)
If you live in a third world nation you have no choice but to migrate. What western nation wants to take on 10 million refugees when the economics of caring for your own people are already stretched to the limits?
grayman, you’re incorrect on a couple of comments here.
1) Poorer nations near the equator will get hit the *hardest* by climate change. The reason being that first, poorer nations don’t have the funds to easily adapt to climate change, and second, the areas near the equator will become extremely dry, and agriculture will become very unproductive. They’re facing famines.
2) You seem to be arguing that global warming can’t accelerate even if CO2 emissions accelerate. That is physically wrong. See here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/monckton-myth-3-linear-warming.html
Rob adaption can happen with out millions dying, migration might have to happen. Even at the mid-range it is happening so slowly that adaption will not cost as much as proposed. I still do not believe we have that much of a problem.
Dana i read the link, interesting, but it is still projections, as might happen, IMO, you are a more learned man than me in this but i am getting there. But i still beleive that the sun does more to our climate than most climate science gives it credit for, not all mind you. There is so much caos in the weather of this planet that can not be modeled, but the science “seems” to believe the models are infallible in this respect, again IMO, hence the ultra alarmism.
“Dirk… The problem with that statement is that NO one wants to deindustrialize. (Okay, a few extremist whack jobs. They are very few and I personally hate those guys.) No one whom I know, that you would label a warmist, wants to send society back to the stone age. We want to advance past where we are today into a brighter wealthier future for everyone on the planet.”
That sounds like “Workers of the World Unite!”
“We want”. You have yet to say what exactly it is you “want”, and who is “we”? What I’ve seen proposed is a centralized command-and-control planned economy, like every statist promotes, which only brings misery and poverty. That will not bring wealth to anyone except the planners and their cronies. Only in a free capitalist economy can and will new and innovative technology in a free market thrive. I suspect your solution, whether intentional or not, involves massive government bureaucracies rationing out energy and food, dictating what type and size of homes we can build, the type of lights we use (CFL SUCK), the cars we must drive and how much, etc. etc. etc. Is that your idea of a “brighter and wealthier” future? You’re going to tell me what what my future will be?
Since you folks are constantly telling us we must “change” and stop using fossil fuels. Ok, what else is available to replace oil and coal? Other than nuclear for electricity, NOTHING! Is there a secret new replacement just waiting for the right Progressive to take over the economy and implement it? WHAT IS THE REPLACEMENT FOR OIL AND COAL?
If driving up energy prices artificially is part of the solution, explain to me how people are supposed to heat their homes in winter. Are they going to move into centrally heated communes in large cities (hmm, seems like that’s been tried)? Ah yes, those rural hicks who waste all that fuel driving to work every day; that must be stopped, for the good of everyone of course. Public transportation should be mandatory, or electric cars maybe? Again, how do you expect people to drive electric cars in cold climates considering batteries do not survive in cold weather? Oh yes, I forgot, winters will be a thing of the past.
What about the trucking industry? Will they be replaced as well? Powered by what, aether? Al Gore’s bad breath? Where will the energy come from to haul freight when fuel is made very expensive?
We have a geothermal system in our home, and paid a handsome price for it, but the ROI is inside 6 years, probably less now. However, we have been blessed with the financial means to purchase this system. Since geothermal is the most sensible (IMO) alternative for heating and cooling, what would you propose, hand out coupons to everyone who can’t afford it? Print more monopoly money? Guarantee loans to all? Oh wait, that was already done with the housing market and it crashed.
Tell me how bankrupting coal companies will benefit my family. Tell me how making gasoline and electricity unaffordable results a prosperous economy. Tell me one thing you want to do will promote prosperity.
Wind and solar? Really? Does anyone understand just how much energy is required to ensure a “brighter and wealthier” future? The number is staggering. Expensive and unreliable energy is going to produce prosperity? Is there a person on the left alive in this country (heck, on the planet) that understands even grade school level economics and engineering?
Well guess what Rob and Dana. At least in America there are still enough of us to stop your utopian “plan” for the rest of us. It’s called the ballot box. We still have enough freedom left in this country to govern ourselves, and I for one will do everything possible to prevent statists from regulating and stealing my kid’s freedom and future.
And Dana, for you to say “There’s no way we adapt to that without millions of people dying”, is completely speculative and IMO a bit paranoid. You have zero evidence to support any such statement. All you have are failed climate models and lots of rhetoric from people calling themselves scientists who every week it seems are moving the goalposts and rewriting the rule book, but that’s the beauty of a hypothesis that can’t be falsified; it’s junk science.
I’ve yet to see anything logical come from you folks. It’s the same cliched mantra: “we must take action now”. No common sense. Nothing thought through, just “take action”. What action? So far the only action I’ve seen is telling us to send in our money and hand over our freedom.
“WHAT IS THE REPLACEMENT FOR OIL AND COAL?”
There are many alternative energy sources which combined can replace coal. Onshore and offshore wind, concentrated solar thermal (which can provide baseload), solar PV, geothermal (baseload), tidal, natural gas (baseload), and so forth. Electric cars will replace oil.
“how do you expect people to drive electric cars in cold climates considering batteries do not survive in cold weather?”
Lithium ion batteries do fine in cold weather.
“And Dana, for you to say “There’s no way we adapt to that without millions of people dying”, is completely speculative and IMO a bit paranoid.”
No actually it’s based on solid scientific evidence. And did you really call me paranoid immediately after saying “I for one will do everything possible to prevent statists from regulating and stealing my kid’s freedom and future”? Wow.
“What action?”
First step – implement climate legislation. The Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House before Republican senators filibustered it would have cost the average American 75 cents per week (less for lower income households). It would have provided funding for alternative energy research and implementation. Its benefits would have far outweighed its meager costs. That would have been a good first step in terms of taking action.
Lithium ion batteries do fine in cold weather.
They cannot be charged above 0 deg.C.
Its benefits would have far outweighed its meager costs.
The costs of that monstrosity would obliterate the US economy. There is nothing to prevent resale of carbon permits at unaffordable pricing. Such scenarios led to California blackouts five years ago (instigated by Enron), imagine this happening nationwide.
I have worked in the “renewable energy” field at the Federal level for 25 years, Dana, and in the private sector ten years before that. I have seen what is and what is not possible, and the “what is possible” is not ready for “prime time” by a long shot.
Your enthusiasm, Dana, is not matched by your judgment or your knowledge. The good news is, your understanding might improve with age.
I mean, they can’t be charged below 0 deg.C
Simply wrong. Chevy has tested the Volt in below zero temperatures without significant performance loss.
http://gm-volt.com/2010/02/23/chevy-volt-cold-weather-testing-update/
“A liquid thermal cooling and heating system keeps the battery at a comfortable temperature as it’s being charged and discharged”
http://www.chevrolet.com/volt/
In the mean time, another adjustment of the Cycle 24 sun spot number by NASA.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/ssn_predict_l1.gif
===================
PG: Hi Ron. I noticed yesterday that activity had trailed off some and asked what NASA would do. They got this cycle completely wrong.
Peak Oil, Anthropogenic Climate Chance A.K.A Antropogenic Global Warming, Population boom, lack of resources, all birds of the same feather.
As long as we have plate tectonics and quakes this planet will never be out of resources.
We have more oil than ever before in history.
We have more Natural gas than ever before in history
We have gigantic shale gas reserves and even more gigantic Methane Clathrates reserves and since a few months the technology to exploit them.
As long as we have rock on the planet we will have power.
Our only real existential threat is our current political establishment that has set out a redevelopment track for the West.
This has cost us jobs, economic productivity, alternative energy that drains our budgets without profit, the conversion of food crops into bio fuels and a monetary policy that severely reduced the value of the US dollar sending commodity prices sky high. The result is a total collapse of buying power for the poorest of the poor.
If there is any threat to developing nations from Egypt to Africa, from China to Indonesia it is famine, not climate change.
It would be nice to see rational people like Bob and Dana focus on the real issues instead of the fantasy land scary bits.
While we speak the four Horsemen have saddled up.
And while Obama is preaching democracy and free elections for Egypt, half of it’s population, 40 million people, living from 2 US dollar a day have arrived on the brink of a starvation event. Tourism has collapsed, the demonstrations block production and distribution, sending the fragile economy over the edge. This is a population that has nine out of ten of it’s women mutilated and has an illiteracy score of over 40%.
Who is going to feed this people, hence who is going to pay for it, correction who is going to be able to pay for it. Not the Egyptian Government. At least, not anymore.
Of course Obama knows this.
In China, the poor are now served plastic rice because it is cheaper than real rice and because the country is corrupt. This is nothing new, it happened before but this time the scale of plastic rice distribution is worrying. How long do you think people will survive eating plastic rice?
So while we discuss the long predicted onset of highly dangerous and irriversible effects of Anthropogenic Climate Change that could kill millions of people the real onslaught caused by the policies to fight this non existing threat has started and it takes place right in our faces.
The disconnect between policy and effect, action and reaction could not have been any bigger. Even when the current global temperature anomaly map shows negatives, we continue to hear the empty yapping of Rob and Dana recycling their alarmist mantra’s over and over again.
Green is good, wind power is fine, peak oil is real, Co2 is bad, electric cars and planes are good. warming is bad.
I would like to congratulate they guy who performed your lobotomy.
He did a fine job.
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/extreme/gfs/current/raw_temp.html#picture
DirkH
10. Februar 2011 at 00:25 | Permalink | Reply
“Thanks for the info, Ron. I’m a city dweller so i don’t experience the outages, the city grids are too big to be affected (yet). How long does an outage take on average?”
They go from a few minutes to several hours.
Just wait what happens to the city grids when Merkel hooks up her 1 million electric cars sucking the grid to recharge their batteries.
P.s the rumor goes that Eon has taken entire wind farms from the grid in order to restore grid stability. All they harvest now is subsidies.
This probably makes economic sense as black outs (claims from corporate customers) cost them more than putting the wind farms on idle.
In the mean time they are screaming for additional funding for smart grid applications.
R. de Haan
10. Februar 2011 at 11:37 | Permalink | Reply
In the mean time, another adjustment of the Cycle 24 sun spot number by NASA.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/ssn_predict_l1.gif
===================
PG: Hi Ron. I noticed yesterday that activity had trailed off some and asked what NASA would do. They got this cycle completely wrong.
Yes but at least they adjust their views to the reality of the day.
Our alarmist friends could learn from this attitude.
Rob Honeycutt
9. Februar 2011 at 19:52 | Permalink | Reply
“It’s interesting, Pierre. In comments like this I find you much more nuanced than in your articles”.
The truth can hit you like a brick, doesn’t it.
Finally snow has arrived in Beijing.
This is a very good development because big parts of China have been subject to a long period of drought jeopardizing the wheat crops.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8438871.stm
Hopefully the drought stricken provinces that hold one of the biggest wheat belts in the world now get some relief.
China is a self supporting wheat producer for several decades now but when the country is forced to buy wheat on the international markets a further price hike is inevitable.
Such a price hike will further escalate famine and unrest in Africa, the Middle East and S.E Asia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/business/global/09food.html
“In the coming days I will be posting the next essay on the psychology of the AGW movement.”
Please include the Club of Rome and the UN into your next posting.
http://green-agenda.com provides you all the info and the more interesting, all the links to the numerous foundations and institutions involved in the biggest con of human civilization of our times.
The objectives are 100% anti human and that alone makes it necessary
to fight this doctrine. The big problem we face today is that all the proponents that work together to achieve the downfall of the West are in power now. This means that we have to confront an enemy from within.
That’s very difficult because they control the law and the armed forces.
In regard of the UN have a close look at Agenda 21 because i.m.o this Agenda is even more devastating than any CO2 reduction scheme.
It will prevent us from accessing our natural reserves.
Really, these people are out to kill at least 4/5 of the world population.
Something no natural disaster or any war has ever managed to achieve.
Obama must go
David Solway tells it as it is.
The worst possible president at the worst possible time.
“Ascribing blame is generally an unproductive habit and merely adds to the heat of public rancor. Nevertheless, responsibility for a clearly deteriorating situation must sometimes be assigned and there can be little doubt that the attempt to impose an unpopular leftist program of Robin Hood economics, environmental thuggery, and transnational accommodation upon what is historically a free-market constitutional republic must release the demons of social dissension and cultural rupture. When the misconceived policy of “Islamic outreach” is added to the farrago of mischiefs, the recipe for disaster is pretty well complete. The problem for the left in this latter regard, as Jonathan Spyer points out with respect to the Israeli left in The Transforming Fire, “is that they don’t find leftists on the other side.” Though, obviously, this has not stopped the sinister cohort from blundering on. For all these costly aberrations, the left is undeniably accountable and Barack Obama, as its most conspicuous standard bearer, is the visible manifestation of a disintegrating nation. Inevitably, there will be casualties”.
Some things are so clear you wonder how so many are so clouded in their vision.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-must-go/
Rob Honeycutt
9. Februar 2011 at 23:57 | Permalink
Dirk… The point is, everyone knows that we can’t switch off carbon in one day. But we have all the technology to solve the problem. People are saying we need to start now and get serious about what we are doing to solve the problem.
========================
PG: Are you saying it’s “Go green…or burn!”?
“But we have all the technology to solve the problem”.
What problem Bob?
Bashing Richard Lindzen is no basis to build an argument. It will bring you nowhere because the man is simply right.
I.M.O. the technical solutions practiced today (with other people’s money) are no solutions at all and CO2 is not a problem.
So what’s you point?
I am sure totally new technologies will provide us with all the power we need in the future.
In fact we have a new technology just around the corner that allows us to manipulate matter on a molecular level.
This technology will allow us to produce any material in any quantity and the good news for you is that the waste product of this process consists of virtual unlimited quantities of energy, clean heat so to say.
So you tell me why we now jeopardize our entire economic basis all based on this blatant hoax, this incredible scam called AGW/Climate Change that already has set our development back for decades and completely stalled the development of those in the Third World who need development, electricity and education most.
How is it possible that an educated person as yourself simply accepts the excessive effects of this doctrine that pushes electricity bills out of reach of our pensioners and jobless families, why do you accept a doctrine that distributes whiplashes to mothers in the Sudan as a punishment for collecting and burning camel shit to boil their water because the UN told this corrupt regime that CO2 emissions cause droughts?
I simply can’t deal with the absolute lack of logic and common sense you present with your arguments as you persist on ventilating worn out mantra’s, even when the bear naked facts of all the hard arguments and debunked science stare you right in the eye.
It really makes me sick.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/02/other-peoples-money.html
Rob Honeycutt
9. Februar 2011 at 18:39 | Permalink | Reply
“The primary difference, BargHumer, is that religion asks you to believe is spite of a lack of evidence. We believe what we do about AGW *because* of the evidence”.
If you have evidence Bob, you don’t have to believe, you will know. So please Bob, show me the evidence, show me the imminent excessive sea level rise announced in 1986 that was going to flood the Dome of Cologne, show me the boiling oceans and the scorched lands, show me the climate refugees and show me one single meteorological event that didn’t happen in the past when CO2 was at a lower level.
Here you stand Rob, empty handed, bud naked with nothing to show for than the false statements of an evil doctrine funded with billions of tax payer dollars.
You are on the wrong track Bob.
Many have come to this point in the recent past and “believes” was all they had to show for. That’s why we call this a religion.
Yes indeed, where is all the evidence of horrific warming? Here’s something interesting I just stumbled upon:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/10/wsj-no-weather-weirding-worries/#more-33708
“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome.
The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
– Club of Rome,
“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts…
Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
– Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.” – Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” – Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations
on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
– Prof. Chris Folland,
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
“I believe it is appropriate to have an ‘over-representation’ of the facts
on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience.”
– Al Gore, Climate Change activist
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”- Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace
You see Bob, you have been conned by your own hero’s.
http://green-agenda.com
Life is politics, and versa vicea too. Social psychology should be having a field day and making a tremendious leap forward for all mankind with the issue of AGW/ClimateChange/IPCC/Copenhagen/etc. But, alas, it lacks sufficient National and International funding. Wonder why? I guess we’re back to the Ye Ol’ Rennasiance tactic of having to go out and find a rich patron. Think the Queen or the Pope might be good for a few billion?
I love these two quotes:
“In Nature organic growth proceeds according
to a Master Plan, a Blueprint. Such a ‘master plan’ is
missing from the process of growth and development of
the world system. Now is the time to draw up a master plan for
sustainable growth and world development based on global
allocation of all resources and a new global economic system.
Ten or twenty years form today it will probably be too late.”
– Club of Rome,
Mankind at the Turning Point
“We need a new paradigm of development in
which the environment will be a priority.
World civilization as we know it will soon end.
We have very little time and we must act.
If we can address the environmental problem,
it will have to be done within a new system, a
new paradigm. We have to change our mindset,
the way humankind views the world.”
– Mikhail Gorbachev,
I love the first one because it was written in 1974 and the entire opposite of their predictions happened.
I love the second because it’s from Gorbatchev who just lost his Communist Empire and clearly makes an effort to make a better and bigger empire on a Global Scale.
Once a Commie always a Commie and these people Rob, these are the people you are supporting.
The land of failed hopes and failed predictions.
Common Sense from Joe Bastardi
http://www.accuweather.com/video/782928447001/why-we-need-all-energy-sources.asp?channel=vbbastaj
World Bank concludes Stern report is climate rubbish:
‘The hypothesized damages quoted by Lord Stern are completely inconsistent with empirical evidence’
Two new World bank papers on climate
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/02/two-new-world-bank-papers-on-climate.html
It is quite illegal to sound false alarms that have the potential to cause harm by the ensuing panic, and the same principle ought to apply here.
Sorry alarmists, but you’ve had a free ride above the law for too long. Time to crack down, I say.
Hilarious
Climate scientists 250 years behind the curve.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/climate-scientists-about-250-years-behind-the-curve/
Just for the record again from Joe Bastardi’s Blog
LONDON NOT AS COLD AS LAST WINTER!
We continue to fade as London for the winter is 2.3 below normal while last year at this time it was 3.6 degree below normal. Given the extreme December cold, the reversal has been almost dramatic and driving home the point about the worst of winter being up front. I do think a return lurks in March for a time, but by that time the kind of extremes that would have caused a problem had they returned in mid winter would have been a threat that was merely a ghost.
But it is official… last winter was colder than this one.
ciao for now ***
WEDNESDAY
WINTER SENDS WICKED SHOT INTO THE HEART OF THE RUSSIAN HEAT WAVE ZONE FROM SUMMER.
Remember the brutal heat wave in summer in Russia. The core of some of the nastiest cold of the winter is on its way into that area. This is a heads-up from Germany to Turkey and northeast, and especially centered where the heat was worst in the summer, that this is the most brutal part of winter coming up.
In the meantime, winter can’t get back into the northwest…for a while. There is an old adage among weather people from the generation before me that here in the states.. what happens in December, the winter will remember. I have never tested that in northwest Europe, but now that my point has been made about the fact that this was not going to be the most brutal WINTER in 100 years, that we would be much less cold in January and February, let me say that there is pretty good chance we will have a colder than normal March in the northwest. I will have more on that later…for now the brutality of this winter is about to punish eastern Europe. Look for it, given the big warm-up coming to the United States, to grab weather headlines worldwide.
ciao for now ****
The NOAA amongst others (correctly) ascribed Asian heat waves over the Northern Hemisphere summer 2010 to high-altitude jet stream stalling, resulting in high pressure fronts that persisted for too long and causing heat waves.
At some point, I thought, the resulting pressure imbalance between the North Pole and the Equator will rebalanced, causing continued Arctic air movements until the pressure differences at high altitudes between Arctic and Equator fell within their normal ranges.
Meaning Northern Hemisphere winter weather would be bad if this happened over the winter, and sure enough.
Bastardi has related the Northern winter mostly, to the PDO.
Global warming. Big problem. Sorry, I remain utterly unconvinced that Global Warming is anything but a fascinating social construct.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/hansen-produces-warming-in-january/
So let’s see, it doesn’t seem to be getting too much hotter from Man-Made-Global Warming. Maybe all that CO2 make tropical storms worse over time. Let’s check that out:
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/blog.html
Nope. Tropical storms down.
Well, sea-level rise was also predicted. Is that a problem?
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2011/02/determining-the-true-acceleration-of-sea-level-rise/
Nope.
Holy crap you guys link to so many garbage websites. WUWT? Goddard, the WUWT reject? Inconvenient skeptic?
Geez, did you ever think about getting some scientific information from outside the denial echo chamber? This is like listening to Glenn Beck, then turning on Sean Hannity, then tuning to Rush Limbaugh, then flipping over to Fox and Friends.
Since when is Goddard a WUWT reject? Just because he opens his own site doesn’t mean he’s a reject. Steve does a lot of posting. That would not be possible at WUWT. So, the logical step is to start your own blog.
To me a garbage website is one where opposing views are censored – like at RC. That’s okay, though. Because it has backfired and exposed the weakness of the AGW science and RC itself. It confirms what they are all about.
Yes… they certainly need doomsday scenarios. They’ve had Al Gore doing a great job leading the pack … winning an OSCAR for “An Inconvenient Truth” … a Nobel Prize for his work on promoting the the doomsday scenarios … heck, Gore has achieved so much credibility from the warmists that it seems, no matter what he says, it has to be right… I say this because none of the warmists ever publicly correct Gore on his stupidity!
When it comes to Al Gore, about the only thing that surprises me is that the National Academy of Sciences (another warmist joke) has not yet awarded him with its most prestigious award, the Public Welfare Medal, for “his outstanding scientific achievements”, to compliment his OSCAR and Nobel Prize!
Dana,
Thank you for taking the bait.
It is quite funny to me to see your response to these simple reproductions of objective data from national and international scientific sources with an ineffective ad hominum attack on the websites they were posted on.
What do you have to say about the actual data on GATA rise, global cyclone frequency, and sea-level rise and the link to man-made CO2. Empirical evidence please.
Why is there such a vast gulf between warmists and skeptics, why so much emotion?
Assuming that Dana and Rob are genuine concerned climate scientists, this barrage of downright aggressive opposition must be incomprehensible – work of stupid rednecks, denying what is obvious to anyone who works in climate.
Dana and Rob see a GHG feedback theory which appears to fit in with observed global warming in models, they know of no other such a neat explanation, it could be catastrophic and efforts to prevent it happen to also green the environment – there seem no downsides here..
But some climatologists and other scientists and professionals, wherever they look closer in their area of expertise, they find the process of the science deficient. What’s worse when they inquire further they hit defensiveness and evasion and hubris. Each instance may be small and may seem ‘cherry picked’, but the sum can no longer be ingoned. Missing or denied raw records, misuse of statistics in Hockey Stick, Climategate, temperature adjustments, UHI, NZ Temp record abandonment by NIWA when challenged in court, confirmation bias in looking for the hot spot, arrogance of IPCC and Glaciergate, 30% grey literature in AR4, and now Steig’s Antarctic peninsular warming hubris. And always errors are self-serving and always the wagons are circled by the climate establishment.
Dana – you’ve gotta admit – it looks poor. You may point to the “vast body of evidence” remainig unimpeached, but I believe only precious little evidence relates directly to H2O feedback and most seem to be modelling studies without a single prospective validation between them. For example, in AR4 WG1, the CO2 step response time critical to GCM’s is based on little more than the Bern model – with no experimental data – models upon models.
If wherever you happen to pick you get a cherry, than it’s not cherry picking.
If the climatologits turn out to be right and we are all undone by their sloppiness and arrogance, that will be sad, but it would be their fault, just like it is the fault of police, if they free a murderer by being caught exaggerating evidence to convict him.
But Dana, perhaps you fail to appreciate the circus outside of your ivory tower. AGW is the new unfalsifiable justification for every green and political/socialist zealot. It is a river of public money for every opportunist and every thief and the cost and disruption to our society is unprecedented – out of proportion to the uncertainties and in the evidence and processes. Finally, there are the high priests of doom like Gore, Hansen and Cameron who you would probably agree talk rubbish, and put off any intelligent observer. These don’t disprove the AGW theory, but the public has a right to resist being railroaded into every scam in the name of ‘saving the children’.
No, I believe AGW remains a worrying theory deserving of more study, no more.
Thanks for the comment. My view is that there is so much polarisation because we have a small but very active and influential group who insist the planet is on the road to catastrophe, and is headed there faster than they feared. These are hysterical catastrophists, who base their science on tailored up models and a deep desire to change the world. Without these fanatic preachers of doom, the discussion would return to sanity. But as you know yourself, it is impossible to reason with hysterical minds that are convinced, no matter what the data says, that the end of the earth is coming fast. That’s why the discussion appears overly heated at times. Read here on the mind of a catastrophist:
https://notrickszone.com/2011/02/09/alarmist-psychology-why-they-need-doomsday-scenarios/