How big is the Green B-lobby? So big, whole research projects are devoted to better ways to push propaganda onto voters. In this case, it turns out that despite an international PR blitz to unscientifically link your car exhaust to extreme floods in Bangladesh (etc and so forth), 65% of the US public just aren’t buying it. Instead the study finds that people are actually not too bad at judging whether a season was warmer than usual. (Was anyone surprised at this after 500 million years of evolution?). Disappointingly, though, for those pushing the climate propaganda, the meme that man-made global warming is to blame for all heatwaves, snowfalls, floods, hurricanes, and reckless fish is not working.
“Only 35 percent of U.S. citizens believe global warming was the main cause of the abnormally high temperatures during the winter of 2012”
This is a cruel blow to climate change activists. They had pinned their hopes on generating fear among voters by trying to associate every storm and bad-hair day to man-made global warming. But two-thirds of the public are not fooled. Even when they “personally experience” abnormally warm winters, or even hear news of a whole series of severe events, 65% of people don’t believe it was man-made.
The abnormally warm winter was just one in an ongoing series of severe weather events — including the 2010 Russian heat wave, Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and the 2013 typhoon in the Philippines — that many believed would help start convincing global warming skeptics.
“There’s been a lot of talk among climate scientists, politicians and journalists that warmer winters like this would change people’s minds,” McCright said. “That the more people are exposed to climate change, the more they’ll be convinced. This study suggests this is not the case.”
Perhaps the population is growing more propaganda-weary?
This study further finds that state-level mean temperature anomalies do not influence whether or not people attribute warmer- than-normal local winter temperatures to global warming.
Naturally, when you struggle with cause-and-effect in the climate, you also struggle with cause-and-effect in psychology. Does political orientation influence climate belief, or does climate belief influence political orientation? That is not a question McCright asks.
Given the politicization of climate science and political polarization on climate change beliefs in the US, it is not surprising that attribution of warmer-than-usual winter temperatures to global warming is filtered through partisan and ideological lenses.
Or maybe people’s voting habits are filtered through logical-lenses and they turned away from parties which pushed stupid ideas? How about that hypothesis?
Global warming skeptics unmoved by extreme weather
What will it take to convince skeptics of global warming that the phenomenon is real? Surely, many scientists believe, enough droughts, floods and heat waves will begin to change minds.
But a new study led by a Michigan State University scholar throws cold water on that theory.
Only 35 percent of U.S. citizens believe global warming was the main cause of the abnormally high temperatures during the winter of 2012, Aaron M. McCright and colleagues report in a paper published online today in the journal Nature Climate Change.
“Many people already had their minds made up about global warming and this extreme weather was not going to change that,” said McCright, associate professor in MSU’s Lyman Briggs College and Department of Sociology.
Winter 2012 was the fourth warmest winter in the United States dating back to at least 1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Some 80 percent of U.S. citizens reported winter temperatures in their local area were warmer than usual.
The researchers analyzed March 2012 Gallup Poll data of more than 1,000 people and examined how individuals’ responses related to actual temperatures in their home states. Perceptions of warmer winter temperatures seemed to track with observed temperatures.
“Those results are promising because we do hope that people accurately perceive the reality that’s around them so they can adapt accordingly to the weather,” McCright said.
But when it came to attributing the abnormally warm weather to global warming, respondents largely held fast to their existing beliefs and were not influenced by actual temperatures.
As this study and McCright’s past research shows, political party identification plays a significant role in determining global warming beliefs. People who identify as Republican tend to doubt the existence of global warming, while Democrats generally believe in it.
The abnormally warm winter was just one in an ongoing series of severe weather events — including the 2010 Russian heat wave, Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and the 2013 typhoon in the Philippines — that many believed would help start convincing global warming skeptics.
“There’s been a lot of talk among climate scientists, politicians and journalists that warmer winters like this would change people’s minds,” McCright said. “That the more people are exposed to climate change, the more they’ll be convinced. This study suggests this is not the case.”
h/t to Robbo. Thanks.
REFERENCE
Aaron M. McCright, Riley E. Dunlap, Chenyang Xiao. The impacts of temperature anomalies and political orientation on perceived winter warming. Nature Climate Change, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2443
WUWT had a thread on this to which i replied:
the article says:
– But when it came to attributing the abnormally warm weather to global warming, respondents largely held fast to their existing beliefs and were not influenced by actual temperatures. –
Columbia University’s Center for Decision Sciences(?) posits the opposite (in the manner of all things CAGW) according to Cass Sunstein!
24 Nov: Bloomberg: Cass R. Sunstein: What Global Warming? Pass Me a Blanket
“Global warming strikes America! Brrrr!” So tweeted Missouri Representative Vicky Hartzler last week, as much of the U.S. experienced extreme cold. (In Buffalo, it was a full Snowpocalypse.) Do frigid temperatures give you doubts about global warming?
You wouldn’t be alone. When people think the day’s weather is exceptionally cold, research shows, they’re less likely to be concerned about global warming. And when the day seems unusually hot, concern jumps.
Notably, this effect can be found among Republicans and Democrats, men and women, young and old…
To study this phenomenon, Eric Johnson, Ye Li and Lisa Zaval of Columbia University’s Center for Decision Sciences, asked almost 600 Americans two questions…
And even when the researchers went out of their way to inform respondents that minor fluctuations in weather are to be expected during climate change, the day’s temperature affected their answers.
A follow-up study found that, on exceptionally warm days, people were also far more likely to donate money to a charity concerned about global warming, and they were likely to donate more money as well — 500 percent more than on cold days…
What’s going on here? The best explanation probably involves “attribute substitution,” a pervasive phenomenon described by Daniel Kahneman, a behavioral scientist who won the Nobel Prize in economics…
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-24/what-global-warming-pass-me-a-blanket
90
What abnormally warm weather? The headlines keep telling us of unusually cold weather, polar vortices and such.
I do recall that Los Angeles reported a phenomenal 119 degrees or thereabouts at about the time of the September equinox a year or two ago. So extraordinary as to warrant checking.
So I checked it. 1910 it was, and worth reporting. LA Times:
“The National Weather Service’s thermometer for downtown Los Angeles headed into uncharted territory at 12:15 p.m. Monday, reaching 113 degrees for the first time since records began being kept in 1877.
Shortly after that banner moment, the temperature dipped back to 111, and then climbed back to 112. Then at 1 p.m., the thermometer stopped working.”
So, they may never know just what the record was. But note that this was not summer! 27th September!
Just when did the instrument fail? Who else recorded 113?
10
I’m confident I speak for most Americans when I report that we are working in the remaining 35%. But with the breakdown being naturalists, atheists, pagans, vegans, anarchists, socialists, communists, fanboys and girls, and California air heads, we are going to need a bigger stick.
——
( /sarc – Jo)
170
You forgot the world’s scientists, God save America!
10
CAGW in all-out propaganda mode, as ever:
24 Nov: WaPo: Tim Herrera: What people think about climate change around the world, in one map
This map, from Sophie Yeo at Responding to Climate Change, rounds up surveys and polls from around the world since 2009 that look at views on climate change from abroad…
For example, some 84 percent of people in Argentina think climate change is caused by humans, according to a poll from marketing research firm Ipsos MORI. In Bangladesh, that percentage drops to 31%, with 46% believing it’s caused by God or natural causes, according to The Asia Foundation’s 2012 Climate Change Perception Study.
In the U.S., 83% of citizens think the country should make efforts to reduce global warming, “even if it comes with economic costs,” according to the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication…
COMMENT: by georgewashington2: WaPo always cherry-picks its polling data. Per Reuters, 45% of American believe that climate change is largely anthropogenic, while 40% believe that it is largely natural…
http://polling.reuters.com/#!response/PV3/type/day/dates/20131113-20141113 …
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/24/what-people-think-about-climate-change-around-the-world-in-one-map/
24 Nov: Marketwatch: Paul B. Farrell: Opinion: Capitalists are destroying capitalism along with the planet
Are Big Oil, right wingers and science deniers on a suicide mission?
“Forget everything you think you know about global warming. The really inconvenient truth is that it’s not about carbon — it’s about capitalism,” warns Naomi Klein in “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate.”..
Capitalism is the problem. And unless we “embrace radical change ourselves … radical changes will be visited upon our physical world,” warns Klein, echoing this earlier warning from Pope Francis: “If we destroy Creation, Creation will destroy us!” …
What If we pass the point of no return?
So: What would it take to change the minds of those billionaires? A global catastrophe? Revolution? Wars over food, water and energy? Dust bowls? Pandemics? Maybe all of that?
In a World Wildlife Fund interview, anthropologist Jared Diamond, author of “The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal,” compared today’s capitalism-vs.-climate drama with the collapse of the Mayan civilization: “The elite made decisions that were good for themselves in the short run but ruined themselves and their societies in the long run.”
Capitalists today are optimistic, convinced that the environmentalists are alarmists, grossly exaggerating the consequences of global warming. Besides, they are absolutely convinced that if any problems do arise, capitalism is the solution. Moreover, God — alongside an infusion of capital and the promise of new technologies — will bail us out…
Both sides, in fact, are delusional. The wishful thinking of both capitalists and environmentalists is certain to fade as the world population explodes from 7 billion today to 10 billion in a single generation, on a limited planet that’s rapidly exhausting its nonrenewable natural resources, where experts agree we can’t feed 10 billion in 2050…
Diamond adds: “The kings had managed to insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions.” Yes, they saw forests being chopped down. But, writes Diamond, “the kings didn’t recognize that they were making a mess until it was too late, when the commoners rose in revolt…
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/capitalists-are-destroying-capitalism-along-with-the-planet-2014-11-24?siteid=rss
remember, Marketwatch is a subsidiary of Dow Jones, a property of News Corp. MarketWatch is part of Dow Jones’ Consumer Media Group, along with The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, the WSJ.com and affiliated internet properties. Through the Rupert Murdoch-controlled News Corp ownership, MarketWatch is also affiliated with, among many other global media properties, the New York Post, The Times of London and HarperCollins publishers (Wikipedia)
80
These figures would explain why the utterly over the top melodocumentary “The Years of Living Dangerously” is now screening. Just caught a few glimpses as I flicked channels through SBS. At first I thought it was some Gorefest nonsense dragged out from the archives for the non ratings period but now realise it is brand spanking new propadocodrivel featuring a whos who of hollywood airheads.
Methinks such twaddle going out telling us that the Syrian civil war is partly due to ‘climate change/global warming’ driven drought scarmongering complete with ‘rainfall anaomaly’ maps with extra red for where it is below the reference mean will bump that figure up to 75%.
ISIS are a manifestation of GLOBAL WARMING!!
Oh it just gets better and better. I love vaudeville.
170
I can see it now 100 green types in a room with 3 ISIS lads discussing climate change and globull warming,the question to ask is how many people will leave that room?
Answer – 3.
40
Allah be praised
20
I think?
30
Your average stupid bloke (of either gender) in the street isn’t that stupid at all.
It seems that those with overinflated egos, have been wrong about your average stupid bloke all along.
Your average stupid bloke sees right through the vaporous hand waving, and angst-laden cries of, “think of the children”. And they think to themselves: “Nice idea, reasonable story line, but the acting is atrocious”.
70
Rereke, not more than half the people are greater than average fools.
However 97% of the people depend on leadership. The vast majority don’t want to have to make hard decisions or face up to problems. They would rather let their “leaders” do that for them. And for a very large part of the population those leaders are their schoolteachers, who have been teaching what they were taught to teach, and the professors who taught the teachers and professionals.
So, thirty years ago we had pre schoolers crying when they saw a tree cut down on an Australian farm, because this would cause little children to starve in Africa. Today we see the prospect that in Victoria a party will be elected to government despite being closely associated with criminal activties and having been a year ago deemed hopeless economic managers. Because those pre schoolers of 30 years ago and since now make up half the electorate.
All because the people whose responsibility it was to defend truth didn’t bother to. They regarded the lies as beneath contempt, or lacked the stomach for an argument.
40
“propadocodrivel featuring a whos who of hollywood airheads”
I like it … says it all really
70
just to reinforce the bizarre Murdoch Marketwatch piece featuring Klein and Diamond, Murdoch’s WSJ had a whole series of pretend debates on 23 Nov which, in fact, were all premised on a belief in CAGW:
two perspectives? not quite. both want to reduce CO2 emissions:
23 Nov: WSJ: Does ‘Clean Coal’ Technology Have a Future?
Howard Herzog Says Innovation Will Deliver; Richard Heinberg Says the Economics Won’t Work
http://online.wsj.com/articles/does-clean-coal-technology-have-a-future-1416779351
two perspectives? not quite. both want to reduce CO2 emissions:
23 Nov: WSJ: Should the U.S. Take Unilateral Action on Climate Policy?
Michael Levi on Potential Benefits and Andrew P. Morriss on Costs
http://online.wsj.com/articles/should-the-u-s-take-unilateral-action-on-climate-policy-1416779354
three perspectives? not quite. all three are pro-nuclear…to reduce CO2 emissions, naturally:
23 Nov: WSJ: Amy Harder: Can the U.S. Government Revive Nuclear Power?
Three Experts Debate What’s Holding It Back—and What the Feds Can Do to Turn It Around
MR. WEINSTEIN (associate director, Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University): The best thing the U.S. government could to do encourage a nuclear revival would be to count all current and future reactors under construction as helping meet national greenhouse-gas emission-reduction targets. Similarly, if the various states included nuclear power in their own renewable portfolio standards, additional investment in nuclear energy might be forthcoming…
http://online.wsj.com/articles/can-the-u-s-government-revive-nuclear-power-1416777789…
50
Roger Pielke, Jr. has a new book, “The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change.” He documents that weather extremes have generally not been increasing, either from natural or man-made global warming.
And this is from a Professor who believes the world ought to decarbonize!
80
My problem is I remember the 1960 Sydney heatwave; the 1956 NSW flood which created an inland sea the size of England and Wales to the west of Sydney; the Long Drought from 1958 till the late 60s; the big blaze of ’67 before everything started getting wetter for some reason; the storming 70s, Tracy and the global cooling scare.
I was too young to remember freaky 1950 but everything I’ve learnt about it convinces me that whatever we had before climate change looked a lot like, well, climate change. And that’s just in my lifetime. I could talk about 1791-2 in Sydney (while millions perished in India from the monsoon failures of the Doji Bara)- but we all know there wasn’t much climate or climate change before Cliff Richard’s middle period.
310
Tad further West, 1956 floods, 1970’s rain events and floods, Melbourne heatwaves in the early 1970’s.
If a proper ‘climate scientist’ were to arise in Australia they would go out and get the diaries of folk on the land and string it together in a comprehensible and sensible history of Australian weather patterns.
110
Robert
Me too – I arrived in Melbourne in 1958 and experienced all the same things you mentioned. But I also remember a heat-wave in the UK during my childhood in the mid 1950’s . I even got sun burnt in Manchester. Can’t remember exactly which year, I’d have been about 9 or 10. Then Christmas 1957 Manchester had severe snow storms. The climate ooops weather was certainly changing…..by natural forces.
Ron
R-COO- K+
110
A heatwave now consists one day,some will even extend to two days and if it should last for seven days well that’s just too terrible to imagine.
This has come about because too many people got a uni education and then thought that they were intelligent,secondly educated people think that educated people can do anything,like changing the weather,thirdly too many city people moved out into the country and found that it isn’t idyllic and once they found that out they wanted to change it just like they try and change the weather.
90
My little sister was born into the heatwave of Nov 1959. Quite a few babies had already died of heatstroke at the time and so she spent the first week or so of her life lying in a baby bath wrapped in wet towels to keep her from over-heating. For us in the Hunter Valley, 1967 was the year the 1965/66 drought broke in style. We had 13 floods of varying severity that year on the Paterson River. Up and down like a yo-yo. We kids grew up on tales of the 1893, 1949 and 1955 floods on the Hunter which had devastated our family financially. My extended family still owned 4 farms until the 1955 Maitland flood. The weather we see now is mild by historical standards.
60
Robert et al,
You have missed the point.
In those wicked, wicked days we were burning coal like it was going out of fashion!!!!!
And we received our just deserts!!!!!!!!
20
The fun part is that these Progressive control freaks in CAGW academia are “surprised” by this outcome. They have the active support of all the (predominately liberal) folks working as preschool teachers, public school boards, teachers and administrators, private school teachers and administrators, public and private university professors, teaching assistants, administrators and student “governments,” local, state and federal government’s agencies and bureaucrats along with over half of the politicians on the planet along with hundreds of industry’s professional organizations forced into submission by public pressure. They are supported by greater than 80 percent of newspaper and magazine reporters and editors, newspaper reporters and editors, and television reporters, anchors, producers and writers both locally and nationally. They have the full and unwavering support of the Hollywood machine that weaves the message into every TV show, movie, commercial, musical work and award show.
After all of that the public still doesn’t buy the “man caused” part of the argument because with all the spotlighting, screaming, crying, gnashing of teeth along with forcing 10’s of thousands of laws, rules, regulations upon them accompanied by hundreds wailing prophesies of doom… there is no valid scientific evidence or logical proof that man is changing the climate… none whatsoever and that is what they really don’t understand… the basic science.
330
How many know your data’s fake?
You homogenize and extrapolate,
to twist the facts for honest folk,
who’ve never heard of Climategate.
They just look out and see the snow
They work it out
and then they know.
170
Skeptics are also unmoved by the unusually high temperatures of 2014, including yesterday. In the meantime, some of the rest of the country is having record cold weather with up to 7 feet of snow in one day before Thanksgiving — also unusual but hardly alarming unless you’re personally affected by it and then the alarm is your immediate safety or inconvenience, not climate change.
It all may mean some local records have been set but there’s nothing more you can say about it because the overall effect is still not the steady warming predicted by theory as CO2 concentration steadily rises.
But let’s suppose it is man made climate change in action. What does anyone expect we could do about it? The Brits are ruining their whole economy over it and nothing is changing because of it. Australia can’t decide to get off the fence on one side or the other so nothing is being changed there either. China is laughing at the rest of us while Obama plays court jester on the world stage. And so-on and so-on…
Isn’t it about time to admit that we don’t know if CO2 in the atmosphere can even do what theory predicts and say to ourselves, “Learn to cope with what the weather throws at us”?
I opt for coping with the weather and getting on with my life. Climate change is all political as far as I can see. Which makes it unworthy of serious consideration except in determining who I’ll vote for.
180
Make no mistake. Some things, like the current drought in California are very serious problems. But our necessity is to cope with them, not blame them on an unproven theory.
150
Let’s see what happens if atmospheric CO2 rises to 8,000 PPM, the upper limit allows on submerged submarines. That’s a concentration in the air we breathe of 0.08%. CO2 doesn’t even begin to become trouble until it’s about 3% of the air we breathe, almost 38 times more of it than 8,000 PPM. It takes about 5% to be definitely toxic.
At the present rate, how long will it take to reach even 8,000 PPM, much less 3%?
We are so far from any significant trouble that it’s a joke to keep worrying about it. If you sleep with your bedroom door closed at night you’ll wake up with so much CO2 in the room and never know it’s there that it makes no sense to worry about it. My house plants are flourishing with the elevated indoor CO2 level. I’m not having the slightest problem. The climate is not suffering either.
The boogeyman is exposed by simple facts. I refuse to worry about a non problem. Someone needs to tell the alarmists to get a real job — and mean it.
110
Roy:
3% is 30,000 ppm. 75 times the current atmospheric level.
8,000 ppm is 0.8%
Mammals evolved in the Jurassic period (at the latest) when the CO2 was over 2,000 ppm. The basic physiology would still apply, after all birds have the breathing structure developed by their ancestors way back in the Permian when oxygen was around 15% and efficient breathing helped survival.
100
You are right. Hit the wrong key on the calculator??? 🙁
70
Roy,
To alarmists – sceptics are the boogeyman.
You only need to read posts here to see how many enraged zealots emerge from the shadows to denounce any new research, data or theory that opposes the AGW meme.
Have a look at the people you know, of the sceptics – is the topic of climate change given any time above most normal conversations?
Of the alarmists – is normal conversation given any time above the topic of climate change?
It’s not the data, the facts or the theories alarmists fear the most, it’s the people that refuse to join the rest of the herd.
The telling feature of all this was the sceptic’s greatest weakness in the beginning, but is now the greates weapon.
Alarmists speak with only one voice – sceptics speak with many.
This is an ideological war of world wide proportions.
Climate change is just the latest excuse to justify a totalitarian regime.
Observe the true believers, zealotry, bigotry, discrimination, hate speach, deception, contamination, corruption…
Why?
To punish those that would question.
Why?
For fear their ideology is wrong.
The greater the zealot, the deeper the doubt.
200
Roy,
Here’s another ‘tell’ in the climate change regime.
It attempts to legitimise its missionaries:
Meaningless titles, deceptive acheivements, changes to curriculums, scaremongering to elicit donations, psychological manipulation to gain electoral preferences.
Bring back John Cook and his uniform.
Easier to recognise what they are.
100
Then there’s this I just ran into. My first question was what’s he selling? And it’s a book exposing the scam (what else?). The only hitch is he needs money to spread his book around. Oh?
I don’t think stuff like this helps our cause. What do you think? Right church but wrong pew if you know what I mean.
Leave it to NewsMax to make it sensational.
30
There is something very whiffy about that guy….
Everything I see looks just like the “make your own solar panels” scam and thousands of others like it….
30
I just love how if I pay $X to buy whatever they will out of the goodness of their hearts throw in “A” (a $Y value) and “B” (a $Z value) and…
So for only $X I get $X^n worth of stuff!
How I despise marketers.
40
Robert,
If you buy a goodie for $X, just remember there is a set of steak knives thrown in.
10
It’s not the steak knives that worry me. I worry about the big hook hidden inside the deal that I won’t be told about until after I’ve signed the paperwork.
At the least I start getting almost daily email and at the worst I’ve subscribed to something I wouldn’t even put on the floor for my dog to use (if I had a dog). And when it comes to solar, well, it can be anything. I’ve been looking around at solar deals being offered and what you get is always the sales pitch without any technical specs or details. Maybe I’m too skeptical or maybe I’ve learned from past experience. But I don’t like the sales pitch full of superlatives instead of useful info.
And these days a deal with the government is a deal with the devil.
20
They definitely know where the suckers live, don’t they?
And yet sometimes you find an honest sales pitch. I got a cold call once from a money management outfit, a small brokerage too, no big name. And on the basis of that call I put a significant sum of money with them. It’s turned out to have been an excellent move and we’ve had a 20 year relationship that has been quite profitable.
The guy didn’t try to sell me on his expertise or promise great returns. He identified himself and who he represented then asked me what I was looking for and I told him. He said he could provide what I wanted and I bought. I knew better than to put all my eggs in one basket but now I wish I had written a bigger check. I did do some due diligence but looking back on it, I could have been making a mistake. But the character the salesman displays is the big factor in getting started on any deal.
20
You found a needle in a haystack!
10
Here’s another California drought theory:
According to Dr Clifford Carnicom of the Carnicom Institute, when too many condensation nuclei are introduced into the atmosphere, in this case in the form of fine metal particulates, the moisture has too many places to collect and proper rain clouds cannot form.
http://www.intellihub.com/californias-engineered-drought/
50
Tim,
Many people say many things. But saying it doesn’t make it true. And chemtrails are bunk in every respect.
If heavy metal particles are being measured in air samples (???) by someone I’ll need a lot more information about it before I’ll believe it — information like, who is supposedly causing the phenomenon and how are they doing it?
Rainfall along the west coast of North America is influenced most by ocean currents and the jet stream, both of which are well known to change their course at their whim (whim at least as far as our understanding goes).
This endless escalation of theories is beginning to wear on my patience and my interest. Theories are published for a dime a dozen. It’s nuts! Let’s get on with dealing with what we have to deal with. If no water runs when I turn on the faucet I’m in deep trouble. There will be millions of refugees all trying to go east far enough to get water. The result will be tragic.
60
Thanks, Roy.
I just put it out there to get an opinion from someone more qualified than myself.
10
I’ll take that as a compliment, Tim. But I’m not sure I’m more qualified than you are. I am sure I’m sufficiently observant to recognize the difference between real information and hot air. I learned to be skeptical of anything presented without credible evidence or without all the background material it takes to make the source credible.
Many people say many things, sometimes conflicting things. But it’s what YOU can verify that you should believe.
The source of the current drought isn’t so important. What we need to do about it is really critical at this point.
20
California drought? We had one in Australia recently which was very similar. Climate Change of course. All droughts are.
There was a documentary on analysis of lines in the ice in the high Andes. You could tell drought from the sand deposited by winds, marking the years of drought. It appears firstly that the weather on the East Coast of South America and the West coast of the Pacific rim were reversed. Drought in one was rain in the other. The other interesting discovery was of a 60 year drought maybe 600AD which destroyed one entire civilization. All the evidence was there including the human sacrifice but a huge city was abandoned.
So real climate historian or scientist would not be surprised that SE North America has a drought. These things happen and their occurrence in archeological history is well recorded. Must be Man made Climate Change, as we no longer have Gods. At least that cuts out the human sacrifice and with the historic shortage of virgins, a good thing. Punitive taxes to appease the UN Gods are another matter.
80
TdeF
That’s interesting. There have been a couple of doco’s attributing the demise of the Incas and Egyptian empires to long droughts.
I read recently, might have been one of Plimer’s books (but don’t quote me on that), that when it’s unusually cold in the northern hemisphere it can be unusually warm in the southern.
Ron
R-COO- K+
60
Crap. The Incas were wiped out by the Spanish.
Perhaps you are thinking of the Moche?
10
Perhaps that is the problem? Climate change is caused by a shortage of virgins.
There is definitely a correlation, between the start of global warming, and the introduction of the contraceptive pill. So all we need to do, is find the causation mechanism.
Do you think I could get a huge grant to undertake a more intimate study, on this question?
50
No, it does not.
40
In 1973 Cadillac Wheels made the first urethane skateboard wheel.
In 1976 California was in a drought in which swimming pools, irrigation canals, and drainage systems were empty and dry.
Pool riding and vertical skating was the result with names like Tony Alva, Tommy Simms, Stacey Peralta, Shogo Kubo, Bob Biniak, Jim Muir, etc. setting the foundation for what skating has become today.
This is hardly the first drought California has been through. At least in the 70’s the skaters found a way to enjoy it rather than lament it as a sign of the end of the world as today’s youth seem to have been programmed to do.
60
Remember in the 1970’s when on a bad smog day in LA, your eyes burned like hell. That was sulphur dioxide (and it’s derivatives).
Fortunately we no longer burn Bunker C’s little brother in cars – BUT they still puff out carbon dioxide.
BUT, how in the hell can you go to a fair dinkum protest or greenie conference without burning a little gasoline?????
20
But I would wipe out the Delta Smelt and build some more dams before declaring California in drought.
70
All you need to do is get one federal judge out of the way — and then keep him out of your way, which may be harder than getting him out of the way in the first place.
40
You make him sound like a Zombie …
20
He has a rule he can follow (the demands of the Endangered Species Act) so far up his backside that the can see it plastered on the inside of his eyelids. And while he follows that rule he’s safe from credible criticism. Isn’t that exactly the way it works? And if that makes him a zombie then it does. But to me it makes him a man afraid to weight all the aspects of his decision and judge accordingly. After all, this is civil law, not criminal.
But in truth, he is within the demands of the law.
10
And what judge is eager to set a precedent by ruling against any law on the books? 🙁 Only those with huge popular support for a decision against the applicable law.
10
I still keenly await for any warmist to show me the “signature” for CO2 in the temperature record.
80
Isn’t the evidence that CO2 has very little if indeed any effect on temperature?
R-COO+ K+
50
Yes it is, which is why I challenge warmists to show from the record it’s “signature”. It does not exist.
As Jo said recently, if it does have an effect, it’s not enough for us to be able to measure it.
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Record High Temps in 2014? What planet are you on?
Oh wait, I remember. California (or Caulifornia as your ex-gov says). 😉
Yea, it was a bit warm there. But for the rest of us, once we got out of the vortex, it was very mild. Unfortunately, as you might have read, the dreaded vortex is back. Snow tomorrow! At least not 7 feet (poor buffalo).
As for the survey. It is true. Most do not believe 2012 was due to AGW, nor that 2013-14 is either. For those of old enough to remember, we remember winters like this (both of them) back in the 60s and 70s.
So what the survey is saying is that the US has about 100 million Chicken littles. That sounds about right. Those are the ones that will vote for Obama for a 3rd term. Or his distaff version, Hillary.
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“Only 35 percent of U.S. citizens believe global warming was the main cause of the abnormally high temperatures during the winter of 2012, Aaron M. McCright and colleagues report in a paper published online today in the journal Nature Climate Change.
“Many people already had their minds made up about global warming and this extreme weather was not going to change that,” said McCright, associate professor in MSU’s Lyman Briggs College and Department of Sociology.”
Sociology? Someone believes a sociologist about numbers? Snrk.
Speaking solely for myself, 2012 was a “normally cold” winter here in the upper midwest, and last year 2013 was seemingly endless cold and nasty. Shocking that 65% of the surveyed was THAT LOW.
When I was little snowfalls where I grew up actually went down for about 15 years but recently went back up, culminating in a few years ago when there were still significant ice on the upper ( southern) St Lawrence river and serious snow banks onthe sides of roads in April.
All I can say is “weather varies, sometimes in cycles” (and you can read about in Thoreau in Massachusets by his pond, and the longer period fluctuation is mentioned in almost every early account of the early French traders and Indians in New France (Quebec & Great Lakes), and the British colonies, and when I hear about global warming my reaction is some where between “bring it on” and “prove it, you ******s.”
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2012 warm??? You have to be kidding
01/31/2012
Coldest January on record for parts of Alaska
2/02/2012
The Black Sea Got Frozen!
December 21 2012
This is from February 26, 2013
This is the second winter these people in Tibet and Mongolia were hit. I doubt that those who have managed to survive believe in CAGW.
February 10, 2010
10
The public aren’t quite as stupid as politicians and climate scientists like to believe, although they themselves are often more stupid than they begin to understand.
After being told every day for approaching 19 years that global warming is real and is happening but it simply does not happen why should any normal, sane person believe them ?
Is that too complex for them to understand? Is that why they try and portray it as some kind of psychological disorder (Lewandowski etc); is that why they try and put a political slant to it ?
Perhaps they should stop wasting their time and public money and simply look in the mirror to see themselves as others see them.
Alternatively they could sit down and study ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ and learn something from that.
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“they could sit down and study ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ and learn something from that.”
They would probably turn it around and say that the story proved that the wolf did actually exist !!!
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The boy would be out convincing the town elders that too many sheep were causing the wolf problem and the only way to combat it would be to force the shepherds to kill most of their sheep. Butchers would not be allowed to sell them and would be instead forced to “sequester” the remains underground in abandoned, fractured mines so that the massed armies of wolves couldn’t find them and would be kept at bay. Weavers and tailors would not be allowed to spin or weave wool as the mere presence of the sheep’s hair creates wolf-like symptoms in dogs and, according to a recent parchment penned by the local alchemist, may also make cats and cows act like wolves.
The town elders, after taxing lamb, mutton, wool and lanolin soap, would have their criers present a system to buy and sell “sheepdits” to offset their “necessary” uses. So while the townsfolk froze, having only only lightweight linen coats the elders, criers and the boy who cried (along with his agent, co-criers and crying directors) would have access warm wool coats and cauldrons of hot mutton stew so that they could keep their strength up so they could run out into the winter winds to warn of impending wolf attacks…
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The thing with wolves is that they are not too fussy with what they eat,no sheep then people are just as tasty plus they run slower.
If I was a wolf I would convince the people that it would be better to sacrifice themselves to wolves.
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Imagine not that the wolf needs to convince a man to sacrifice himself, rather one must know that there is no
spoonwolf… and no sacrifice is necessary.10
It always amuses me the number of people who cynically say something like, “See, it’s that global warming again,” whenever the weather is wetter, drier, cloudier, sunnier, windier, hotter or colder than usual.
The lesson is simple, the more the alarmists cry, “Unicorn! Unicorn! Unicorn!!!!!”, the less people will believe them.
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Barry whats-his-name on the ABC’s “insiders” commented on Queensland’s recent hot weather by saying “Climate change is with us”.
I felt like throwing a shoe at him.
Ron
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Oh Stupid me, That should read Paul Barry.
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Not quite 😉 – Barry Cassidy is on “Insiders” and Paul Barry is on “media watch”. Both have with similar views. My Mother always said “if you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say it” so I will leave it there 😉
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The correct response would be to say, “May the farce also be with you”.
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You referring to “old leather face”?
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Once more, an unusually warm winter (2012) is “proof” of AGW/ACC/call it what you will, and the academics are amazed the proles cannot see that, yet the exceptionally cold (and long) winter of 2013 is dismissed as “weather” – though, this time, they twisted it to “weather caused by…” well, guess what? The lies are starting to catch up with them; where will they go, next?
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Too right, RR.
~ ~ ~
Here is the latest example:
March 4, 2013, “The Angry Summer”:
“A few years ago, talking about weather and climate change in the same breath was a cardinal sin for scientists.
Now it has become impossible to have a conversation about the weather without discussing wider climate trends, according to researchers who prepared the Australian Climate Commission’s latest report.
Previously, ”weather is not climate” was the mantra, but now the additional boost from greenhouse gases was influencing every event.
It might even be the case that the mantra chanted after every catastrophic weather event – that it can’t be said to be caused by climate change, but it shows what climate change will do – has become a thing of the past, said Will Steffen, the report’s lead author and director of the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute.”
http://www.theage.com.au/national/climate-change-a-key-factor-in-extreme-weather-experts-say-20130303-2fefv.html
November 20, 2014
Blistering heat across Australia but frigid conditions across much of the continental US – what’s going on?
“The challenge, says Matt England, a leading climate scientist at the University of NSW, is to avoid confusing day-to-day weather events with the longer-term climate trends under way.
Professor England and other scientists point to larger, longer-term trends that are more significant than unusual weather-scale events.”
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/sydney-heatwave-and-new-york-snowstorm-how-to-read-the-worlds-weird-weather-20141120-11qtjx.html
. . .
Vale the scientific method.
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“November 20, 2014
Blistering heat across Australia but frigid conditions across much of the continental US – what’s going on?”
Not unusual – see my post at 10.1.2.2.1 above
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If political orientation is an important driver of belief, there should be 65% republicans in office versus 35% democrats. Seems like something is wrong here. Maybe the low rating of climate change as a major issue overrides this analysis?
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After the 2014 elections Republicans (the evil party that wants proof of CAGW) have around 56% in the House and will be 54% in the Senate (once Landrieu goes down in flames in Louisiana.) The closer metric to the people’s will would be State governments with governors at 62% Rep and State legislatures where 46% are completely controlled by Republicans vs. 26% for the Democrats, so the States are far more Conservative than our national government. One also needs to take into account losses due to fraud in the single party controlled urban areas. Those are exclusively Democrat where, IMO, over 50 to almost 100 years they’ve been systemically corrupted at the most basic levels and no longer act according to the law or the needs of their populations. See Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia and the other Progressive paradises.
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It always fascinates me that warmists always view skeptics as the weirdos who have a strange view on climate when it is in fact the it is the warmists who dispute the natural order of things and create a fantasy world to live in. It is in fact the warmists who are the true skeptics. The main reason that the skeptic cause is growing is that the warmists can’t even be trusted to present facts accurately and try to alter them to fit the meme. When claims are made that this was the hottest day/week/month/year ever people’s instincts and memories tend to think otherwise. Once caught in a lie warmists are not trusted again. Unfortunately the huge ( mainly government) funds that have been available to perpetuate these lies has meant that the global warming/ climate change scam has continued well past it’s use by date. Hopefully Paris next year marks the final breakdown where countries will follow the Chiina lead and make firm commitments to continue to grow emissions for 16 years.
Then maybe this warmist nightmare will be over.
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Of course they are. It is counter-intuitive to think anything else given the statistically insignificant measure of global warming where ‘there is now a trendless interval of 19 years duration at the end of the HadCRUT4 surface temperature series, and of 16 – 26 years in the lower troposphere’, that was unpredicted by the models and by the IPCC.
McKitrick, R.R. (2014) HAC-Robust Measurement of the Duration of a Trendless Subsample in a Global Climate Time Series. Open Journal of Statistics, 4, 527-535. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojs.2014.47050.
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The problem the alarmist truly are running up against is “experience.” If you are over 40, the chances are excellent that not only have you actually experienced as warmer or warmer a winter, but you have also experienced as cold a summer or watched as big a hurricane lash some country or seen as large an outbreak of tornadoes and the list goes on. You can “tell” me that the winter was warmer, but if I can remember wearing t-shirts in January in the past, the chances are you are wasting your time – even after you “adjusted the temperatures” from years gone by to help your claim.
If you’re under 40 you may not have experienced it, but I like the statement that if you are graduating from high school this year, you have never experienced global warming. I find that one the coolest of all. And that isn’t propaganda, that’s merely fact if you go by the instrument record and not the massage parlor record.
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That’s a keeper 😛
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Off topic, I suppose, but by the way David, how is that new climate model coming along? Is it getting closer to reality than the carbon based models? I know it looked promising when presented a while back.
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And yet the greatest urgers tell us we could reduce all human co2 emissions today and not get a reduction in co2 emissions or temps for thousands of years.
Yet we still have pollies telling us we must take action on CAGW and we should spend tens of billions overseas to purchase fraudulent HOT AIR certificates so we can restore the temp and co2 levels to what existed in 1800.
IOW they want to return us to the climate of the LIA.Does anyone believe ANY of their BS at all?
The mitigation of their CAGW is the greatest con and fraud in history.
https://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/question-20/
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Funny, I thought you guys didn’t believe in consensus science?
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What “consensus” might that be Fininigan?
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Hey Fininigan…. would you be so kind as to demonstrate for me the signature of CO2 forcing in temperature record?
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I don’t but I’ve lived long enough to know it has all happened before and I’m sick of having AGW /CC/Whatever the panic nom du journal is continually rammed down my throat by economists/railway engineers/sociologists/non science politicians.
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nom du jour …darned predictive text!
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Annie,
LOL
That’s why I do a preview before I post BUT doesn’t always work.
😉
Ron
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Hey, it worked for me … I thought it was quite droll, actually.
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NO Mr FIN,
you have it wrong. What we don’t believe in is the, provable, false 97% consensus of umm ‘climate scientists’. Far more important are the number of real scientist who dispute CO2’s effect on the weather.
The so called 97% consensus came from unscientific surveys of peer reviewed papers based on key words searches and not relevant GW content. John Cook (not related) et al are the perpetrators of this unscientific nonsense.
Ron
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59 out of 11,944 papers just can’t be wrong… but no matter how I do the math it just don’t add up to 97%?
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You are using the wrong math. Try using a Klingon sub-etheral conjunctive function.
Works for me every time. I always get the right answer.
Mind you, sometimes I find I have answered the wrong question.
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Ron Cook,
you are forgetting the original 97% “survey”. After getting over 3,000 responses to an on-line appeal, this was edited to 79 to answer two questions. (I can’t quote the exact words but the following is not misleading).
Q1: Has the Earth warmed up since 1850?
Q2. Was this mostly due to human actions?
75 out of the 79 responded YES to both questions.
So that was the answer they wanted. A small group of insiders parroting the message.
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There is a consensus.. that there IS NO CONSENSUS !!
Consensus is irrelevant to science in any way, shape or form.
No real scientist would ever use it as proof of anything.
I do understand that YOU have to use the pseudo-consensus, though..
.. being as you have zero science to actually back up the CO2-demonisation scare.
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FIN it’s not what we believe, it’s what YOU believe. This consensus has far more significance!
At least until you Green Leftists make freedom illegal.
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Consensus has no place in science.
If however we are talking about opinion and the consensus was that you are an immature, arrogant twit then I doubt anyone here would dispute that.
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Consensus science,that sort of defeats the purpose of science, isn’t science supposed to be Observation study and Experiment ?
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You think a poll is science?
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(Somewhat) Off Topic I know, but this story from only yesterday is interesting.
Remember at the end of the last (Northern Hemisphere) Winter how the Great Lakes iced over.
Well, it’s begun to happen already at the start of this Winter in the North.
Decent records only started to be collected as recently as 1973, and this current beginning of the Icing event is the earliest since those good records began. See the article at the following link.
Great Lakes ice cover developing; Earliest in over 40 years
At an unrelated site I also read some informed opinion that Great Lakes ice coverage has more of an effect on U.S. Winter weather than was previously thought.
Tony.
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Obviously due to CATASTROPHIC ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING Tony, doncha know?
/sarc.
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Tony,
I wonder if there is any historical information even if it’s only anecdotal or news paper articles. There must be some evidence of this happening before 1973.
I have a photo of my father in Winnipeg circa 1943/44 but not sure what time of year and it certainly looks cold enough to have frozen the lakes.
Ron
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Ron,
sorry mate, no idea here, but I once heard a rumour that some guy called Edmund Fitgerald might still have them.
I think he lives somewhere out near Gitche Gumee!!
Tony.
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Oh yeh… that’s out on over past Weelabarrabac.
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Luckily, I think I’ve found the address.
Go to Sault Sainte Marie in Michigan, and at the start of Whitefish Bay, head NW around 15 nautical miles. ‘She’ resides at the 83 Fathom mark.
Tony.
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Indeed she does. Back when I used to have cable, back when the History Channel actually was a history channel rather than Ice Road Truckers and the like, they had a very good documentary investigating what happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald.
She went down in a November storm in 1975, one of the “worst storms ever” per other lake captains at the time.
Of course since most of the current alarmist trolls weren’t born then those extreme weather events don’t count, it is only the ones that have happened in their lifetime which are so much worse and more frequent than anything we’ve seen or heard of.
They need to tell that to the families of the crews that have died on the lakes over the centuries due to the extreme weather that has always been a part of that area.
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There is a book out there called: “Six Fitzgerald Brothers – Lake Captains All”
By Elizabeth F. Cutler and Walter M. Hirthe
Published in 1983 by the Wisconsin Historical Society.
You’d probably enjoy the history
Elizabeth is the daughter of Edmund Fitzgerald Edmund was the grandson of one of the six titled.
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1973 was the year in which the current system of measuring ice coverage of the Great Lakes was introduced. The lakes certainly froze before that, probably so regularly that no one bothered to measure it. Possibly 1848, 1911 or 1912, 1932, 1936 and 1949 as they were cold years.
1848, 1883, 1890, 1904, 1909, 1936 and 1947 were years when the water flow over American Falls was totally blocked by ice and ceased to fall. My father came back in 1955 with postcards of Niagara falls frozen but date and extent not known.
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In late April 1985 I saw large blocks of ice in the St. Lawrence and going over the falls
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You mean like the last round of glaciers that created the Great Lakes to begin with?
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I find it interesting that we are always framing this AGW scam as the work of the Greenies, Lefties, watermelons and working hard to align it with a particular political ideology despite the ‘fact’ that we have ostensibly Conservative governments around the world also buying into the scam. We also tend to showcase the good works and sensibility of countries like China who make progress without totally buying into AGW scam. Surely China represents the ultimate ‘Big Government’ that Jo and most of us here rally against, the biggest collection of ‘Lefties’, ‘commies’ and ‘watermelons’ that we like to rubbish? Statistically, would it be correct then to say that the most sceptics in the world are ‘lefties’? As Jo said in one of her articles on the RET, (and I paraphrase from memory)’this was never about saving the planet, it was about jobs for certain industries’, which seems to suggest to me that the AGW scam is not about a ‘green’ or ‘lefty’ ideology but more about Green Inc. or Left Inc. ie Big Business aka ‘Free Market’ conveniently hijacking the causes / ideology. Are we missing the true driving forces behind this AGW agenda and simply falling for the ‘blame the barefooted lefty tree hugger watermelons’ meme?
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Way OT,
Just watching Question Time – Abbott has finally taken off the gloves – about time!
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I’m at work can’t watch it.
What did he say/do?
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Ron,
just fed it to the opposition about their fiscal incompetence, about the ABC being no different to any public service for efficiency cuts, Bill Shorten about his duplicitous and deceptive behaviour and following questions from Shorten to the PM about what barnacles he will scrape – Abbott landed him a straight right, he laughed and labelled him ‘Barnacle Bill’ and fed it back to the opposotion their blocking the policies that would help this country repair the record deficit that the opposition created when in government.
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Yay! as you said “about time”
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Ron,
Abbott just chopped em about the CFMEU corruption and criminality and the CFMEU puppet put up as the proposed next Premier for Victoria – highlighted direct criminal connections and the many criminal convistions of the CFMEU hierarchy supporting the Vistorian Labor opposition.
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Only hope the Victorian public voting on Sat are taking heed of this. At least the Herald Sun is running stories on Danny’s CFMEU connection.
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Good.
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One word, said (well, typed), with obvious feeling.
I am with you bro.
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Cherry picking. Oops, sorry, warmistas are allowed to cherry pick, and Sceptics can’t …
… the 2010 Russian heatwave, right. How many died from the heat? No mention of the 2009 and 2010 winters with temperatures below -50degrees (celcius, not Fahrenheit) with hundreds of deaths from the cold …
… Tropical Storm Sandy (it wasn’t a hurricane when it made landfall) in 2012. No mention of 2013’s North Atlantic hurricane season with zero, zip, zilch nada land falling hurricanes. 2014 is also well below average.
Because those who have lived more than a few decades have seen more and worse weather than has been the case recently. For ten year olds, it may have seemed extreme.
The 2013 `abnormally warm winter’ (ConUS is not the world) is one of those winters you get. The 2014 winter for the US is already not looking to be so kind. What goes around, comes around.
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They have had 30 years of pushing this nonsense. At least 20 years of that was unchallenged
before the internet and skeptic science websites got going, If that didn’t convince the general public then nothing ever will.
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Dear Friends;
Governments do not solve problems.
A Problem is an excuse for more government.
A solved problem is an excuse for less (a theory, never sited in the wild).
CAGW is a perfect problem for government.
Since it is not a real problem, there is no real solution.
A problem without a solution is perfect for more government.
It has the additional advantage of the time horizon for even measuring progress being beyond any election.
So statists of all stripes glom on to the gravy train. “Conservative Statists” who should know better cite “the precautionary principle” or
“financially responsible environmentalism”.
We need a “Gruber” from the temperature adjusters to call fraud — CAGW will dissolve as quickly as ObamaCare (leaving behind, unfortunately an even larger residue of bad legislation and rulemaking).
And we’ll be on the the next fallicy supporting a bigger, more expensive state.
With a few plaintive voices saying, Please, sir, can’t we just be left alone?.
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Forget AGW the magnetic reversal approaches.
http://www.iflscience.com/environment/earth-s-magnetic-field-about-flip
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Exactly! A decade ago I was a politically disinterested and slightly right from the center (in Finnish scale, which is about 90 points left of the US democrats). Within a few years I became a libertarian because I saw how stupid the people who were supposed to be leading us were. The less they have power, the less damage they can cause to the rest of us.
Their critique-less embrace of the climate change hysteria (and even lying about it) was a big part of this. Being a non-libertarian requires a person to believe that those in charge are at least somewhat competent and not intentionally lying about issues that impact us all.
The libertariation of the population might be the one good this that is resulting from this hysteria. Once you see that the authorities are lying about one thing (climate change), you are much more easily persuaded that they might be lying about something else (for example healthy diet consisting of mostly carbs).
And healthy skepticism is something the people in charge are always afraid of, since they get their true power from all those “surely they have our best interest at heart” -people.
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It’s all about the money, honey, and nothing else. It’s amazing so many people have been fooled and will one day be looking for someone (read left wing political parties and their media supporters) to blame for the hundreds of billions handed to these craven fraudulent crooks and their crystal ball computer models.
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[…] så trodde 69% inte på ”man made global warming”, en bedövande skepsis med andra ord. Hon rapporterar också att en undersökning som gjorts av Michigan State University visar att endast 35% av […]
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With the most minimal amount of effort and study one can find that the Earth was subject to floods, drought and other extremes of weather for billions of years before man’s existence, how does one explain that ? The condition referred to as snowball Earth is a prime example, we have no idea the that situation came about or why it ended, but rest assured that AGW had nothing to do with it.
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