Welcome to “science journalism” at The New York Times where climate forces are not so much about sunlight and cloud cover, but about “deniers”, “doubters”, and “disinformers”. While our climate is supposedly the crisis the world must face, the NY Times solution is not to investigate and debate the leading ideas, but to ask what names we toss at Nobel Prize winners who don’t endorse the approved establishment line. Pravda would be proud.
Most surveys and polls show 50% of the population are skeptical. A real newspaper that was leading and shaping the public debate would find the most informed views from both sides and put them forward, shaping and hammering out the public debate. Instead, the NY Times discusses petitions pushing namecalling.
Justin Gillis asks: What to Call a Doubter of Climate Change? What indeed, I wonder? Does any single real person doubt that the climate can change? I have not met such a person (though many believers of the dominant government-endorsed paradigm seem to think the climate was stable and perfect before emissions of man-made CO2). The UN redefined the boringly obvious term “climate change” to be a coded shorthand for “man-made global warming”. Justin Gillis has fallen for that cheap rhetorical trick (as the UN knew many gullible “reporters” would). Who needs a dictionary when you can just blindly repeat agitprop?
If Gillis used accurate English, he might wonder what to call people people who were unconvinced of the hypothesis that humans control the climate. The only term is “skeptical”. Those who support the theory can be called “scientists” if they provide empirical evidence — how about some observations of strong positive water vapor feedback for starters? Alas, there are no “scientists” who can provide this evidence. Even the IPCC admits there is “high confidence” that most models overestimate this largest feedback factor, and explains the gap between observations and predictions as an “elusive” bias.
Until a scientist names observations to back their theory, skeptical scientists remain skeptical, and the scientists with broken models, faith, and hope should be called “unskeptical scientists” (as I’ve been saying for five years). Hey, it’s accurate English, if you care about that sort of thing.
…
History will show that the “deniers” are those who deny results from 28 million weather balloons, and who pretend the climate was stable and ideal before we invented cars.
Maybe “opponents of climate science” are those who call people names instead of discussing the evidence? Just a thought.
Gillis ought to learn how to Google
“The scientific dissenters object to that word [denier], claiming it is a deliberate attempt to link them to Holocaust denial. Some academics sharply dispute having any such intention, but others have started using the slightly softer word “denialist” to make the same point without stirring complaints about evoking the Holocaust.”
Some skeptics do object to the Holocaust allusion (which is exactly how some name-callers use it), but this skeptic just objects to the abuse of English (Defining “denier”. Is it English or Newspeak?). In this science debate, a denier ought to deny something — I’ve been asking for evidence for five years. What observation do “deniers” deny? Be my guest Justin, lay it right out. You can have a guest post on my blog. Please.
Gillis refers to those who ask questions about government publications as “opponents of climate science“, as if climate science itself is defined by government press releases rather than logic and evidence. But the opponents of climate science are those who want to stifle real debate by declaring the debate over before it starts. The only point of promoting the activist’s namecalling petition is to stop debate by denigrating alternate opinions. It’s a cheap smear article designed to let readers know they are not permitted to ask questions, lest they be seen as a brainless crank, right wing ideologue, or reprehensible “denialist” (aka rock-for-brains or a fan of Hitler).
Those without evidence preemptively call themselves the winners, and toss childish names at their opponents. Real science is about observations and logic, not ad hominem attacks. Obviously, if Gillis could find the scientific observations to back up his devotional faith, and win a real debate, he wouldn’t namecall to denigrate opponents.
An enlightened discussion of the petition could discuss the scientific method instead. But Gillis just uses it as a mindless label:
“The petition asking the news media to drop the “climate skeptic” label began with Mark B. Boslough, a physicist in New Mexico who grew increasingly annoyed by the term over several years. The phrase is wrong, he said, because “these people do not embrace the scientific method.”
Since the scientific method works by discussing observations rather than discussing names, it’s Mark Boslough who doesn’t embrace it. It is the exact opposite of the scientific method to accept a hypothesis on the authority of an opinion poll of experts and Bill Nye the Science Guy.
Gillis — bringing you the news ten years after it happened (the “olds”?)
“It is perhaps no surprise that many environmentalists have started to call them deniers.”
Started? Environmentalists have been calling anyone who disagrees with their religion a denier for more than a decade. Perhaps he’s heard of George Monbiot, who was tossing out the term in the media in 2005? Desmog blog started in 2006 and hasn’ t missed a day of denier namecalling since.
Readers, help me, when did the denier term start? Is Gillis ten years late, or twenty?
Evidence doesn’t matter anymore?
But hey, there are some partial truths in the article:
“To groups holding such views, “evidence just doesn’t matter anymore,” said Riley E. Dunlap, a sociologist at Oklahoma State University. “It becomes possible to create an alternate reality.”
Dunlap is right, evidence doesn’t matter anymore in the mainstream press, and Justin Gillis lives that dream. It doesn’t matter what evidence skeptical scientists raise, “it’s possible to create an alternate reality” using climate models instead of observations. Absolutely. Gillis thinks “climate change” is synonymous with man-made global warming; he presumes there are observations to back up the models because lots of people with appointments and grants that have “climate” in the job description say it’s true. It’s not like we’d expect a science journalist at the NY Times to check that sort of detail or ask those hard questions, is it?
Mixing up cause and effect, Gillis?
Here’s a claim Gillis repeats without any research.
“As a first step, it helps to understand why they [skeptics] so vigorously denounce the science. The opposition is coming from a certain faction of the political right.”
If Gillis bothered to read the top ranking skeptical blogs, or the surveys, he’d see that the opposition is coming from hard scientists, PhD’s, and especially graduates of engineering and geology. (See the qualifications of hundreds of the readers of this blog here.) He’d know that leading skeptics came from the political left as well as the right. He’d know that the discussion points are about science first, then politics.
New York Times What to Call a Doubter of Climate Change?
h/t Pat and Handjive
The Word is the father of the deed.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/a-climate-of-hate-and-a-license-to-kill/
Pointman
250
Is it the thought that counts or the deed that costs ?
40
The Bard nails it in Henry IV Act IV Scene 5 after the Prince presumed his fathers death;
Prince Henry: I never thought to hear you speak again.
Henry IV: Thy wish, Harry, was father to that thought.
The weakness in the strategy of “demonization” of opponents is that if just one iota of doubt slips though, or if just one small image reflects back upon its creator then trust is gone and with it the whole position. Once you can conceive that the “establishment” is dishonest and corrupt, lord knows – not hard, the scales fall from your eyes and you learn not to fear. Abuse then strengthens you as it confirms your perception. People tire of repetition, the truth is, the catastrophists have had nothing new to say for 25 years I new
paradigm of failure and corruption could sweep the board.
140
This post and the many similar posts which outline the false trail laid by “Climate Scientists” TM (as some would have it) is so common now as to be begging the next step.
Now that real science understands and can counter the claims of Global Warming by human origin CO2, there is a need to move to the next stage; the engagement of public awareness that they have been scammed and ripped off through their tax payments to deal with a non existent problem: Man Made Global Warming.
Without doubt, there has been criminal fraud and redistribution of massive amounts of tax payer cash into situations associated with CAGW.
Without doubt, some people at the higher levels of education knew that fraud was being perpetrated and assisted in the cover up of that scam.
Without doubt real science can assess the so called climate science and see basic “errors” everywhere. The basic CO2 absorption mechanism does exist but the CONDITIONS attached to that existence make it absolutely impossible for man made CO2 to be involved in global warming.
Basic, standard scientific analysis DISPUTES CAGW on many obvious issues but for some reason we are not able to get these truths across to the voting public
WHY?
Just how are the taxpayers who are funding this stupid scam and the power users who are subsidising “roof top solar” to be brought to understand the reality of the situation?
The question lies in the realm of Politics and definitely not that of science.
How is the truth to be made known?
The Elephant in the room of course, is that ALL governments , regardless of predisposition to align with “Global Warmism” , have used the confusion associated with CAGW to “put off or leave to the next government” the construction of new power plants so that world wide there is a backlog of power plant construction of enormous proportions.
Who’d a thought it that in 2015 even in Australia we have POWER RATIONING because new plants have been “delayed”?
KK
430
This should help in getting to that next step. http://www.greattransition.org/publication/uniting-nations-the-un-at-a-crossroads
Fits perfectly with that Ban Ki-Moon statement from December 2014 about how all these machinations are really about a shift to a life of Dignity for All by 2030 with the the UN System and politicians at all levels of government globally in charge.
130
Funny, that word, dignity. They don’t appear to know what it means. It’s most common usage (full definition 2) means a class distinction between one person or group and another — hardly what the left envisions for everyone to be equal, except of course, those who rule will be as Orwell put it, “…more equal…”.
I was just in a hospital for minor surgery. And they have the motto (or maybe logo), “Dignity Health.” Anyone who’s ever been a patient in a hospital knows there’s no such thing as dignity (in any sense) in a hospital, only the necessities of being able to care for you under any and all possible circumstances. You wear a flimsy gown designed to expose you, not cover you and you’re subjected to being poked, prodded and connected to every conceivable wire and hose. Dignity is a joke if you stop to think about it.
I’d rather have my self respect and sense of humor than anyone’s concept of dignity.
170
Please don’t believe I’m saying I’ve been mistreated in hospitals. I haven’t. It’s just that reality and dignity seldom coincide.
100
“Dignity” implies a sense of right and wrong, what is good, what is bad.
So “Dignity” is really an attempt to go the soft route at naming and shaming sceptics. The left uses these weasle words to shape the twisted meaning they want to create. Witness the hijacking of our language “fat” = “weight challanged”, every sexual perversion becomes “alternative” ( implying no moral weighting to this ) etc etc.
“DIgnity” is also something to promote the 3rd world at the expense of the first world living conditions.
Its code for wealth re-distribution.
Anyone who has children who are say 15 or older, need to sit them down and teach them how the Left twists words to make the indefensible, look normal. Unfortuantely, like in WWII when Hitler got going, kids had to grow up fast becasue their lives depended on it.
In many ways, as we now have a world-wide Stalinist state forming, understanding & being able to translate the agitprop sludge that the Left pumps out is key to avoiding becoming political road kill.
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You have it nailed to the barn door for all to see. 🙂
20
Was Ban Ki-Moon is giving away free Samsung TVs?
Kinky Keith put it perfectly, the political discussion is the one the data-adept are least ready or willing nor wanting to engage in. And the ones who are itching to play word games and commit to mortal combat between competing contrived fictions are the least interested in data. While the press just wants to sell tawdry click-bate and warping nonsense that does not address anything and just damages everything.
The public buy into it at that level because they are not really interested, mostly not very switched on, and the simpler the message and ‘answers’ the more they can grapple with it, as then they can form an opinion and feel sufficiently knowledgeable.
That’s got all that sorted.
So when you ask me about climate change I’ll be able to give you an informed opinion, and I may not be an expert but I know I don’t want it to get hotter, and its been a bit hot lately, so I think I’ll vote green and then at least I’ll be doing something about it all.
141
Never attempt to convert an extreme Greens cultist to reality.
100
Robin,
Why wait until 2030. You can give dignity to all by simply taking all the money spent on maintaining the UN beaurocratic juggernaut and use it to provide electricity and clean water to those ~2billion ppl who don’t currently enjoy such “luxuries”.
Abe
210
Works for me Just-a-guy.
I keep wanting to hit something and scream “it’s not a pie that can be sliced as desired. Less to the North. More to the South.”
Just learn to “trust” governments. Why would we trust a parasite that is a repeated liar and does not even recognize they are a parasite?
And the current UN idea that the mayors will all simply adopt their agenda while the municipalities all sell bonds to finance the social impact is ludicrous.
Going to be a bumpy next few years as the UN and the foundations and K-12 education globally really is determined to create the “cognitive capacity” that believes this nonsense and accepts collectivism. Not even exaggerating a little. Hence all the references to “high quality learning” throughout the UN system and K-12 required competencies.
150
Robin,
I could’t agree with you more. The strugle against the UN agenda to re-socialize the free-world democracies needs to be focused more, much more, on their efforts to undermine the education of our children and young adults.
I cincerely believe that even if we win against the CAGW pseudo-science propaganda, we will ultimately lose it all if they succeed in usurping education.
Abe
130
The CAGW ruse is exactly that, the term Red Herring is believed to be derived from the use of dried Herring to lure or bait prey during types of hunting, the CAGW Herring has been an excellent method of diverting and draining skeptical/dissident resources whilst being dragged globally at striking distance with and exceptionally alluring stench.
One thing has always been clear this reconstruction scheme wasn’t hatched over a few steins in a beer hall, it was created over a lust for power in the minds of people who have the resolve to completely justify any sacrifices made to reach the objective, that objective is now being spelt out to an engineered society who have developed an unhealthy appetite for tainted Herring.
100
As time goes on, the more we teach our kids to :
(a) Question everything – the Left encourages mindless-ness and blind following of its nonsense. REason is power.
(b) Think logically without emotion – reason implies use of data.
(c) Hold leaders accountable – no blind following
(d) Understand politics and methods of operation – especially left wing politics, its key words, its meansing, its modus operandii, its key books like Alynskis “Rules for radiacals”.
(e) Understand people play dirty, but that we must always maintain the high moral gorund. This is actually very important.
90
You may be teaching YOUR kids that. Western schools are happily doing the opposite while mouthing the words to make you believe otherwise.
41
OS/Spetzer,
Socialist/lefty/green bedwetting agenda is heavily entrenched in our western education system.
That would be okay except that this culture is exploited by non-western educated people who are only too happy to take full advantage of the indoctrinated victim mentality.
30
Just-A-Guy,
That’s the sort of penetrating comment that will get people’s attention.
70
KinkyKeith,
Thany you, but it’s not originally my thought. I was just building on a comment made by Bobl yesterday on Jo’s Australian Academy of Science article. Bobl’s main points were:
Always give credit where credit’s due.
Abe
30
Climate may be described as the variance, but never the average, in weather at any location over time! Ask any Realtor! Therefore: Climate never changes! 😉
21
Not at all hard to imagine, KK. My monthly power bill tells me which rotating outage group I’m in so I’ll know the pain is being spread around when summer heat has the capacity so stressed that whole districts of Southern California need to be shut down for an hour to save the system from collapse. Each group in turn gets an hour of blackout until the “crisis” is over.
Fortunately we have never been blacked out up to now. But it’s surely coming.
I almost hope that they screw it up and the grid gets so destroyed that they can’t get it back up for weeks or months because I would enjoy watching the public rage against Sacramento. But the damage would literally be life threatening. It’s scary to say the least.
Their other measures against the capacity problem include offering a discount on your rate if you’ll allow them to install a device on your air conditioner that permits them to remotely shut it off at their discretion. And I’m left wondering when Sacramento will legislate this for everyone without our consent. And of course there are rebates for installing double pane windows and doors, changing your A/C system to one more efficient — any ruse at all to pay lip service to the problem instead of dealing with it honestly.
130
I forgot to mention that the rate/kWh goes up as your usage goes up. Another lip service measure designed by government to coerce compliance.
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A couple of years ago, Roy, we had rolling blackouts in Newcastle for “load shedding”.
Pity the people caught in lifts.
More recently the new “smart meters” allow power companies to shed your dedicated air conditioning circuit.
Very modern, especially when you have to rest at the fuse box.
KK
70
that should read: “reset at the fuse”
50
I’ve yet to see buildings with separate air conditioning circuits except large commercial and industrial installations. Homes aren’t done that way that I know of. It would take a separate drop and meter to do it I would think. And that would be fairly obvious.
But the ultimate intent of smart meters is obviously to be able to cut you off by remote control as well as read your meter more easily. And of course, the ultimate insult, charge you more for usage during peak hours when you need A/C the most.
80
Yes Roy, there is a possibility that this problem is with the A/C unit
20
Roy
you will turn it off yourself when the meter tells your phone that it is costing you $10 per hour.
20
Long before it costs me $10/hour I’ll be in Sacramento pounding on the statehouse door with a pick or a sledge hammer. And believe me, I won’t be alone in that endeavour. I’ll have plenty of company.
Not even the dyed in the wool lefties who vote for these morons who run California are going to go for that.
20
Hi Roy
Anthony Watts pays around $1 /kwhr at peak time, midday. A large window aircon would cost him around $2.50 /hr. A whole house unit would be $5 to $8 /hr. Now.
Better sharpen your pickaxe.
Incidentally, individual appliance control is available now via controllers inserted between the plug and the power point, communicating with the meter. No re-wiring necessary.
20
ghl,
Sorry for the late reply. I just saw your comment. My rate right now runs in the $0.19 range per kWh. I don’t know how anyone would put up with $1 per without protest. When I started to pay my own way in life a kWh was about 3 or 4 cents. Inflation is inevitable but this man made shortage is not. It’s to the credit of the good judgement of California for so long that the rate isn’t higher. But they surely want it to go up until we can’t run our homes anymore and give in to renewables. I’m thinking there’ll be a collapse before then.
Just a comment about individual appliance control. They will need access to my house to do that and I do not have to let them in unless they’re law enforcement with a badge and probable cause or a warrant signed by a judge. No one else has legal authority to enter without my consent. The people have considerable ability to fight if they only knew it. It can be messy, even expensive but if enough people would do it they’d be overwhelmed and we’d win.
10
“But the ultimate intent of smart meters is obviously to be able to cut you off by remote control as well as read your meter more easily. And of course, the ultimate insult, charge you more for usage during peak hours when you need A/C the most.”
Only if the government has the remote control! The power company always wishes to sell you more! Only if load leveling is out of bureaucratic government control, can efficiency prevail!
11
You obviously don’t know California. There’s this thing called the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) which the state put in place long ago to regulate public utilities like gas, water, telephone and electricity providers. It was done because it’s a real mess to try to have more than one such provider of those things so they are de facto monopolies and the CPUC was supposed to keep them from abuse. You might think that such an organization as the CPUC would be either in the pocket of the utilities or the ratepayers after many years of existence. But no, they’re in neither pocket but instead have launched off into the wild wild left’s agenda of endeavoring to bring about what is euphemistically called Social Justice. You should read all the garbage for which I pay the phone company and the power company — those two bills in particular are a nightmare of socialism gone amok.
The Power companies want to be seen as socially responsible in this BS environment. They want to stay in business. And so would you in their shoes. So guess what? They go along with the systematic stripping of Californians of the electricity that a growing population needs if it wants to keep going. And they have no legal choice in any case. So they go along instead of putting up the fight they should be doing on behalf of their customers — you know, the ones who keep Edison’s bills paid by paying their Edison bills.
Los Angeles is a metropolitan area stretching from the coast inland nearly 100 miles and from north to south for more than 100 miles as an identifiable entity — wall to wall city. There may be many different cities and at least 5 counties involved but it’s one giant city that can’t hope to feed itself for more than a few days without adequate electrical power. And it’s being squeezed slowly in a vice by fools who can’t see the dependency they have on what they’re trying to replace with windmills and solar panels. I won’t even mention the need for importation of tons of food daily which depends on fossil fuels. Let’s not even consider what happens when hospitals can’t keep the machinery going.
This is the reality of any big city. It can’t function without adequate electricity and without fossil fuels for more than a few days. And there’s no hope for individuals to store up enough food and water for more than a couple of weeks. Sanitation becomes a problem in just days if sewer and water services break down, much of which depends on electricity. I’ll leave it to your imagination what will happen when people start getting desperate and a hungry crowd realizes you still have food. Can you hope to arm yourself well enough to fend off a determined, desperate mob, possibly indefinitely?
Even small cities and ultimately rural areas are in this same situation if they lose what they depend on.
This isn’t hysteria or imagination. It’s where modern society will go without the energy supplies it needs for basic food and adequate health and safety requirements to work. And the squeeze is on.
60
A few years back, I was in Honduras, including three nights on the island of Roatan. When we got there, everything was a bit dark, on account of an unscheduled power-cut. The next morning, the electricity supply, having eventually been restored, suddenly went off again. That turned out to be an expected power-cut, according to the country-wide rota of outages. The power stayed off all day. The day after that, it wasn’t Roatan’s turn to be without power, but the power went off at least twice, anyway.
At the time, I thought the failures were insane, if vaguely understandable in a desperately poor country with lots of other problems (e.g. Honduras currently has the world’s highest murder rate). I didn’t realise that governments and power companies in affluent western countries would look at Honduras and see a blueprint.
90
Its worth installing solar, so it matters little if they want to play with the power grid.
The whole load shedding is conditioning people to go wiothout, to live as 3rd world, becasue CAGW teaches we have to wreck our civilisation so we can be “at one with our down trodden brothers”
It sounds awfully like “Up the workers” Soviet russia, to me.
40
That makes me laugh. The implied double meaning, that can only mean stuff up the workers.
10
‘…for some reason we are not able to get these truths across to the voting public. WHY?’
Good question Keith and the answer is … they have been brainwashed. There is no other explanation, we find highly successful intelligent professionals who have swallowed the whole thing, they trust the scientists.
Essentially we need the ABC to stop pushing propaganda and Greg Hunt should be replaced by someone with an open mind.
100
I recently read a comment from a grandmother who was very worried about the political left beliefs of her teenage grandchildren and their friends. The public education system, Teachers Union members and social media are brain washing units and generally people accept what they are fed and do not have the ability to question.
90
All the teachers I know believe fervently and emotionally in AGW, its going to take an intellectual revolution to make them see reality.
http://www.theshovel.com.au/2014/01/22/climate-change-no-longer-a-threat-reader-poll-confirms/
110
OK, so the Aus Libs repealed the carbon tax. Other than that, they are running dead. Now is the time to ask Parliamentary Questions to establish various truths.
“Did the B.O.M. adjust the record, if so by how much and why?”
And lots and lots of niggles about the accuracy of various figures.
“Was 2014 the hottest…?”
Query to the appropriate Chancellor via the Minister for Education “Will Gergis et al re-issue their paper (currently on hold) after review by an independent statistician?”
etc..etc..etc.
Lord Lawson had to ask 8 times to force an answer from the UK BOM.
70
‘Now is the time to ask Parliamentary Questions to establish various truths.’
Unfortunately the Opposition is in the AGW camp, so it would require an independent charismatic personality in the lower house to ask questions, directed at Greg Hunt. The Minister needs to be humiliated on the floor of the house, attracting large headlines.
40
Or Dorothy Dixers.
00
When I read that article a few days ago all I could think about was how far journalism has drifted from news to narrative. Environmental journalist I’ve seen seem to put their environmental training ahead of reporting the news objectively. It’s no wonder this class of journalists are the first to lose their jobs when the newsroom has to reduced head count over the last few years. At least they can say they’ve worked in public relations when apply for a job at a green NGO.
140
Journalism and media businesses (add ABC) have become unreliable, they spread propaganda for the left and truth/facts are ignored.
90
I would hazard that Justin Gillis of the NYT’s with his quite marked bigotry against those who do not believe as he believes, a characteristic of the most hard line cultists, fits quite comfortably into the following category.
Eco-fascist
Definitions;
What is the origin of prefix “eco”?
Answer:
It derives from the Greek “οικος” (oikos) which refers to a “house” or “household” and from the Late Latin “oeco-“.
The use of “eco” as a modifier to denote an environmental context started from the late 1960s but had been used as early as 1949.
_______________
Fascism;
Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one
national or ethnicgroup, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach._______________
demagogoic / Demagogue
A
politicalleader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument:_________________
All of the above appears to be a part of the dictatorial charade that Justin Gillis, an apparently very bigoted pro-warmist member of the mainstream media,[ as a member of the MSM it would be unusual if he was otherwise ] is heavily promoting by his denigration of skeptics and those who do not believe as he in his total ignorance apparently believes.
190
The earliest reference I can find to the word “skeptic” as used in climate matters that I can find within the last half hour or so can be found in this article from
Nature
Vol; 381; 13th June 1996;
[ It is a report and comment by Natures editor arising from the information in the previous days WSJ on the 1995 Madrid Conference where Ben Santer unilaterally altered the agreed position of the assembly in the following report by rewriting a key phrase of the report , a phrase that altered the entire context of the Madrid conference scientific agreements by hardening the science claims to a strong human fingerprint on the climate, a stance that had not been agreed to by the Conference participants who only found out about the changes when they read the report later ]
[ quoted ]
Nature’s editorial response to the Chapter 8 scandal appeared in the 13 June 1996 edition, the day after Seitz’s Wall Street Journal op-ed launched news of the changes beyond the scientific community. (Nature; vol 381, # 6583, p539)
******************
[ As copying of this Nature article is barred quoted here are the key words and note the use of the word “skeptic” [ 1996 ]
Climate debate must not overheat, Nature 13 June 1996
Despite growing dissent from a dwindling band of skeptics there is growing support within the scientific community for the view —-“[ the key phrase as altered by Ben Santer ] “that the balance of evidence suggests a discernible influence human influence on the global climate”
___________________
Source for this information is; Madrid 1995: Was this the Tipping Point in the Corruption of Climate Science?
Quoted below are the key paras of the Madrid conference ;
[ quoted ]
Alas, by the early autumn of 1995 the signs were not good. Although a draft leaked in September managed to say that the warming is unlikely to be entirely due to natural causes, this was hardly in dispute, and this was not exactly announcing imminent catastrophe.
Moreover, there remained extraordinary strong caveats, especially in Chapter 8, to every positive conclusion.
The draft that was circulated to the participants at the Madrid conference, and the only one available when the Report was finally ‘accepted’ by the meeting (see explanation in a following post), also stated in its introduction that results of recent studies point towards a human influence.
This was the strongest statement yet, but the body of the document and the concluding summary were not so confident.
Some of the boldest retractions were as follows:
Of Studies of Changes in Global Mean Variables (8.4.1): ‘While none of these studies has specifically considered the attribution issue, they often draw some attribution conclusions, for which there is little justification.’
Of the greenhouse signal in studies of modelled and observed spatial and temporal patterns of change (8.4.2.1): ‘none of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.’
Of pattern studies ‘fingerprinting’ the global warming (see discussion in later post): While some of the pattern-base studies discussed have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed] to [anthropogenic ] causes. Nor has any study quantified the magnitude of a greenhouse gas effect or aerosol effect in the observed data—an issue of primary relevance to policy makers.
Of the overall level of uncertainty:
Any claims of positive detection and attribution of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.
Of the question:
When will an anthropogenic effect on climate be identified? (8.6):
It is not surprising that the best answer to this question is, `We do not know.’
[A copy of the 9Oct95 draft of Ch 8 has not been obtained. UPDATE 29June12: 9Oct draft obtained and changes have been verified]
As the Global Climate Coalition pointed out when they broke the scandal, these statements were removed from the final draft of the Working Group 1
Assessment that appear in May 1996 (and that, despite their protests, was subsequently published in June).
Moreover, these inconclusive conclusions were not inserted elsewhere, while more positive statements were substituted, strengthened or added.
Nature’s first editorial response to the scandal was all about not disrupting the political message before the US election.
Yet it conceded that the complaints about the changes to Chapter 8 ‘are not entirely groundless.’
______________________
Madrid 1995 and The Quest for the Mirror in the Sky (Part II)
Indeed, Santer did not conspire, and we have no reason to doubt his claim during the heat of the controversy that it was he who fought so hard in Asheville to retain the declarations of uncertainty. But in the end he did play the role of Sciences’ collective-ego captivated by its own image reflected in a pretence to political authority. At Madrid it was Santer who played Narcissus, but it was science that fell into its own image and drowned.
– BernieL
80
Maybe the problem lies with the environmentalists as described here :-
.. “The [environmental] institutions of climate change were established outside of the usual processes which steer the construction of public bodies — their rectitude given from the outset, as planet-savers, no need for debate, no need to test their legitimacy or purpose, no need for meaningful oversight. The institutions of environmentalism, in other words, have developed outside of any real culture of debate. So when confronted with criticism, those who either are not acquainted with debate, or otherwise feel entitled to be protected from it, can only escalate criticism to hostility.” … http://www.climate-resistance.org/2015/02/about-denying-deniers-denial-and-denialism.html (about 7 paragraphs from the end)
150
Roy Spencer has already responded to this silly article by Gillis, with “What to call a NYT reporter of climate science?”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/02/what-to-call-a-nyt-reporter-of-climate-science/
making similar points about childish namecalling, bias, and avoiding the real issues.
What struck me was that when writing about the petition, Gillis claims that “Climate scientists are among the most vocal critics of using the term “climate skeptic” to describe people who flatly reject their findings”. He then goes on to mention Mark Boslough, Bill Nye, Lawrence Krauss, none of whom are climate scientists, and a rather extreme activist organisation calling itself forecastthefacts.
There’s a stream of false and unsupported claims in the article, such as “researchers are virtually unanimous in warning that society is running extraordinary risks” and of course the political smear that you report here.
182
Sorry unintended red thumb…touch screen clumsiness on my part.
20
Is Justin Gillis related to Dobie Gillis, circa late 50’s/early 60’s? – maybe but his persona is more akin to Dobie’s mate, yes the unforgettable beatnik Maynard G. Krebbs, who’s reaction to “work” was so so negative and I suspect his reaction to “Climate Skeptics” would be? – yes ditto – just like Justin – feeble minds from different eras.
80
King Geo,
Pretty sure Dobie never had kids, he spent most of his time running from Zelda and keeping Maynard out of trouble.
00
Hmm! Off topic I know, but this can’t be all that good ….. for me anyway.
Meet Tropical Cyclone Marcia. I will be, at around 10AM on Friday Morning. According to the map linked to below, I’ll be sitting right under it.
This will be my second. The first was TC Selma (link for that map here) for the first few days in December of 1974, three weeks before TC Tracy.
Link to Cyclone Map for TC Marcia
Tony.
70
Hi Tony…
These guys predict Marcia-15 will never get past tropical storm status. http://www.gdacs.org/Cyclones/report.aspx?eventid=1000145&episodeid=2&eventtype=TC
Also on Nullschool, at 5.00am today is only showing a tropical storm…. http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=143.66,-20.38,1821
I call BoM global warming activism, not weather reporting.
71
I agree, but also feel guilty when we refer to BOM or CSIRO without identifying their climate change department personnel as the culprits.
61
US and European descriptions differ from Australia. TC1 and 2 are Tropical Storms over there; TC 3 is Hurricane. So a Tropical Storm can be a Tropical Cyclone. 120 kmh gusts are not to be sneezed at, and could be up to 150 kmh gusts near the centre. Looks like it will cross near Stanage Bay but we’ll still get a pretty good blow Friday morning here in Rocky, and lots of rain.
This will be the furtherest south a cyclone has crossed since 1992, but still not south of the Tropic of Capricorn.
50
I hope you’ll all be alright Tony and that the forecast is an exaggeration.
40
Tony.
Obviously you have not built enough wind farms, or installed enough solar panels, paid enough carbon(sic) tax, or taken any ‘direct action’ recently around your way.
Gaia is angry, and keeps a tight ledger on who’s been naughty, who’s been nice, and their recent donations to the UN-IPCC.
Pay up, or expect another cyclone in the future.
10
Yikes!
It’s now Cat 4 and intensifying and may be Cat 5 at landfall, around 7AM Friday morning, tomorrow. Landfall North of here luckily.
Prepared here, as best as we can.
If power stays on, I’m going to attempt to get a screen print of the radar image at landfall.
Link to current Map image as of 7PM
Tony.
10
Say, maybe you may wish to keep an eye on it for yourselves.
Go to the BOM site weather radar at the link below, and this is centred around the Mackay Radar. You can set the image using the two menu bars directly above the radar image.
It’s predicted to make landfall at around 7AM near St Lawrence.
Currently, with the radar image at 256Km, and on loop, you can see the well defined eye already formed.
Perhaps someone might like to take a screen print image at landfall in case the power is out here already. I’d like a copy of that if we can arrange emails later.
Think of me and Ken Stewart, people. We’ll be back to you as soon as we can.
Link to BOM Weather Radar Mackay 256 Km
Tony.
00
Wikipedia is still shameful distributor of heavily partisan politics masquerading as objective information. Uncritical reference to a LewPaper is astonishing.
Wikipedia is doomed as long as “contributors” are able to change content without any responsibility for their actions.
Jimmy Wales keeps pleading for financial contributions but ultimately, that’s only going to be coming from those who are in receipt of money taken by threat of force from the productive. There will be nothing left after the golden goose is out of the oven, and served at the feast celebrating “victory”.
71
Bernd,
“Jimmy Wales keeps pleading for financial contributions but ultimately, that’s only going to be coming from those who are in receipt of money taken by threat of force from the productive.”
One good thing then, warmists don’t put up their own money for global warming so they wont donate to wikipedia.
60
The warmists will do anything to maintain their self-image of being worthy and righteous.
They will spend every dollar that they can get from the gullible and those who are forced to contribute.
Their own selfish view also includes that their own time is precious and that that of others is free and must be given generously to realise the vision.
60
I have an alternate reality too. Mine is one in which liars, cheaters, scoundrels and thugs of all sorts are hunted down and punished for their antisocial behavior. My reality looks at evidence and has the ability to evaluate the trade offs among risks, costs and benefits. Stupid of me I know. But somehow I can’t help myself.
And I have about as much chance of getting that as I have of flying under my own power with feathers placed at appropriate points around my body.
And there’re those ding donged sociologists again. My little finger knows more about science than Riley E. Dunlap.
80
I hope I don’t need to say that Riley Dunlap has no evidence to look at.
60
The alarmists keep telling us their concern about global warming is all about man’s stewardship of the environment. But we know that’s not true. A United Nations official has now confirmed this.
At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”
The only economic model in the last 150 years that has ever worked at all is capitalism. The evidence is prima facie: From a feudal order that lasted a thousand years, produced zero growth and kept workdays long and lifespans short, the countries that have embraced free-market capitalism have enjoyed a system in which output has increased 70-fold, work days have been halved and lifespans doubled.
Figueres is perhaps the perfect person for the job of transforming “the economic development model” because she’s really never seen it work. “If you look at Ms. Figueres’ Wikipedia page,” notes Cato economist Dan Mitchell: Making the world look at their right hand while they choke developed economies with their left.
Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/021015-738779-climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism.htm#ixzz3S2lUUcHT
Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook
31
The NYT’s objects of namecalling would have to include Bosse and Vahrenholt, since they understand ocean and solar cycles have something to do with climate.
http://notrickszone.com/2015/02/17/fluctuating-atlantic-german-experts-say-things-could-become-very-bitter-for-the-ipcc-forecast-models/#sthash.8E8d1egl.dpbs
40
In one 4-letter word, wise.
But wisdom escapes the present generation. They know nothing about it.
150
What to call a “doubter” asks Justin Gillis.
You call them by their name. If they have a title, Dr., professor, etc., you use that too. In the world of adults, we engage with each other through the use of language that expresses common courtesy. Children call each other names.
Is it too much to ask that Justin Gillis just grow up?
Abe
170
Peeking behind the ‘green’ curtain
A crystalline account of the stench of green corruption, manipulation and political orchestration in the US.
It becomes easier day by day to see why the only response to “climate” disagreement can only vitriol. Green crimes are in being conducted in full view. Calling them out is stating the obvious. There is nowhere to go save the lingua franca of the ad hominem.
60
A couple of years ago former Australian Treasurer Peter Costello visited Germany and when he returned to Australia he was interviewed about his trip and The Weekend Australian reported that he mentioned meeting a former German Minister for Foreign Affairs who was a Green. Costello would not repeat all details of their conversation but he did mention that the German Green viewed the Australian Greens as being way out to the far left of international greenism.
60
Green is a four-letter word to anyone with an ounce of good sense left in his head.
10
That they have to name us, that they have to other us, exposes the true nature of the movement. The term Denier is a form of pejorative hate used to marginalize anyone who jeopardizes the current power structure. It is used for the same reasons by the same type of scared ignorant bigots who called my mother a ni**er and my father a ni**er lovin’ sp*c. They didn’t want my parents to be part of the conversation so they othered them. Named them. Sneared at them. They do this openly so that otherwise decent ordinary people will not want to be associated with the othered. It is time to stop them. From now on this word must be put its proper category of hate along with all the other vile marginalizing wretchedness of the world. It is infinitely disgusting that anyone else using hate this would way, would be dragged into the sunlight to whither from exposure but these people get to hide behind a thin veil of academic virtue.
150
Hitler used to de-humanize and demonize the jews to convince the germans that the jews were worthy of eradication.
Do we see a pattern here?
40
It’s another appeal to authority piece, with lies and projection. What I find troubling is that their side now wants to take the word skeptic. It’s a very far left thing to do.
They’ve proven again and again that they are not skeptics with their use of 97%, the science is settled, there is no debate nonsense, and the peer review argument is a joke. They keep moving goal posts, keep changing the meme (CAGW, AGW, Global Warming, Climate Change, Climate Weirding), keep changing definitions of words,… it’s psychological warfare.
Combined with some of the things I’ve read and heard about Common Core I’m afraid the US as we know it will cease to exist.
90
Wasn’t the science settled back in 1975?
20
But I will give them the word septic, as in Gang Green.
10
When people try to tell you what’s ‘it’s about’ ‘ what it’s really about’ they are usually trying to avoid some reality and it’s often a good sign avoid them , as what follows is so often BS.
10
Back in my hockey playing days, one trick we used to use on even the biggest and fastest opponent was running backwards as they charged down the field all the while just making little jabs at the ball with your hockey stick.
The result was fairly predictable – they would get flustered and eventually they would mess up and you’d grab the ball.
In the same vein, when warmists start thundering about “the science is settled” – our jabbing comments like “but the weather balloons dont show that” and “what about the decline” etc etc will make anyone thin twice about thumping the table in true Soviet style.
Its too big a machine to take on head-on – we have to play fair but unrelentingly with truthful facts and reality. Most people arent dumb – they eventually will see that what we’re saying is correct.
At the same time, we need to relentlessly educate the Gen Ys and Zs about the Left and its mode of operation and its long term plan for western civilisation. One issue is that Gen Ys and Zs dont know much about th ecvold war and the societs and how western society is being white-anted by the Left. We ened to put it into context for them and let them know the heavy Left presence in education is not normal and doenst represent normality at all. We need to be able to craete comparisons in their minds so they can siee how far the Left has corroded thinsg, how PC is rubbish and how the Left desires slavery for all. A few references to Pol Pot, Moa, Stalin, & Hitler wont hurt.
10
“History will show that the “deniers” are those who deny results from 28 million weather balloons, and who pretend the climate was stable and ideal before we invented cars.” Perhaps these pretenders could be classed as ‘Changing Climate Deniers’. It’s much easier to say than ‘a Disciple of the Catastropharian Church of Climatology’.
50
They always ignore the fact that poolution came before cars.
30
I think the term “Credulist” is polite response to the Denier epithet.
70
I have seen nothing new of any substance come out of the pro climate change scientific community for years. If the science is settled, why are we still spending billions on research? Perhaps those billions are being spend on finding new ways to insult skeptics.
70
We do not deny; we refute,
Being far more informed and astute,
Than those journalist guys,
Who write columns of lies,
Or some editor climate galoot.
240
10
Ruairi,
You seem to have left Peter speechless.
They are good limericks though.
And, they are much more family safe, than my own.
70
Sorry, put in some “smileys” but the did not download. I loved it!
60
I think we should all be proud to be called deniers by card carrying, grant addicted, ecoloons and dim but nice journalists.
My few discussions with ecoloons, oops climate change advocates, is that their knowledge about the facts of supposed climate change is limited to the empty mantra and slogans of the Green Blob.
100
?
When I was younger I used to watch Dobie Gillis on TV. Now we have Dopey Gillis.
60
Hi Jo. I see the ABC are excitedly reporting on the opening of a wave generated power station in Western Australia. Power for 300 homes and some desalinated water for a naval base. Cost to the taxpayers, 30 million dollars. Predictably the operators want a massive expansion of this technology, no doubt with more taxpayers money to fund it all and higher electricity prices to make it economical.
In other news, 34,000 households had their power supplies disconnected due to being unable to pay their rapidly and ever increasing electricity bills.
To my mind these 2 stories indicate the outrageous extent to which the green scam is now punishing the poorest people in our community. To the ABC’s mind however the stories are unrelated, one being about happy happy green tech and the other about evil power companies cutting off poor peoples electricity. What a sick joke! They supposedly can not see that one is the direct result of the other. 300 houses can have massively subsidised green electricity while 34,000 can have no conventionally produced electricity.
I also noticed that representatives of our pseudo-conservative WA and Federal government were very keen to be seen at the opening of this micro power plant. They will be going to visit some of those people who had their electricity cut off won’t they? Not likely. Where is all the leftist outrage at this scandalous miss use of government money that could have been used to keep 34,000 of the poorest connected to the power grid?
As you indicated, one thing is becoming apparent, the man made climate change issue is not essentially about political left or right but more about those who can think critically and those who are slaves to ideology. At some point unfortunately the slaves revolted and are now running the show.
110
That’s funny, I thought it was a new artificial reef 🙂
20
Not doubting you Don, but have you a source for those disconnected?
Thanks
00
Belfast,
Try this google search:
34,000 households power supplies disconnected unable to pay their rapidly and ever increasing electricity bills.
Enjoy…
Abe
00
Talking about “words” and their meaning, we drove 2 hours into Sydney last night to hear addresses from Professors Bob Carter and Stewart Franks, hosted by the IPA. They were both entertaining and humerous (Stewart claimed he was just the warm up act for Bob!) but both were also right on the ball and covered the sociological and political implications of the global warming movement. However, it was Bob Carter who left us with this message. “Stop calling it a PAUSE”, he said, “a pause indicates that the person saying that word believes that the warming will recommence soon. NOBODY KNOWS what will happen next – temperatures may go up, may go down or may stay the same for a while longer. Nobody knows! Instead you should refer to the fact that temperatures have STOPPED RISING. That is an indisputable fact that puts no time limit on the claim”. The word “pause” is no longer in my vocabulary!
80
In very late December 2012 the British Met Office cunningly put of a media release admitting that global warming had “stalled” since 1998.
40
I too have been somewhat “manic” in the defence of the language. I worked hard to learn it.
30
You may be interested in the term I offered The Land, a weekly newspaper here in NSW. I sent the following to them two weeks ago, hoping for publication last week or today. That didn’t happen.
“To: The Land
Subject: The warming that ended the LIA has plateaued
Since the LIA – Little Ice Age – ended, the world been slowly (and naturally) warming. Until we got to the “hottest years on record”, all of which have happened in the last 15 years we are told. Their “record” starts somewhere between about 1890 and 1910, a bit later than mine. But the BOM and WMO aren’t too sure which is actually the hottest as it’s too close to call. So I will. I’ll call it the “Post-LIA-Warmish Plateau” (PLIAWP, pronounced Ply-orp).
After the plateau do we go up the hill or down into the valley? I don’t know, but I doubt very much we’ll stay on the level for very long. And all without any help or hindrance from carbon dioxide.
David Beach
Cooyal”
I’ll try again, but I had hoped to be able to build on this one.
50
‘I’ll try again…’
If its a Fairfax rag you won’t get a run.
To the Land
Subject: Climate Change
As mentioned in my previous letter to the editor, the plateau in temperatures cannot last forever and its fairly obvious you are not taking climate change seriously.
What’s happening in Boston is a regional cooling signal, produced by a wayward jet stream, its only a matter of time before our Modern Climate Optimum slides into a trench.
Kind regards…
30
I rarely read or hear comments resgarding the foundation of the United Nations in the early 1950s with a clear agenda that was directed at assisting the millions of homeless people in Europe after WW2 and assisting governments with reconstruction works. What few seem to know is that the leftists identified an opportunity to infiltrate the UN and to use it as their headquarters to push their one world government agenda. Unfortunately the conservative politicians were too naive to work the plot out and were, like many non-politicians, taken in by feel good mission statements engineered to enable expansion of the UN until it became almost a world government.
When the UN started an Australian Labor Attorney General, Clive “Doc” Evatt, a lawyer, produced a plan that was adopted by UN officials, the plan was to convince the governments of member nations to sign as many treaties as could be created to cover numerous situations that at a future date could be used to get around the sovereign laws of nations. As former prime minister once remarked when a journalist asked him if international laws applied in Australia, only if the government of the day accepts international jurisdiction. Research the early history of the European Economic Union (now EU) and the nations in which voters opposed joining the EEU but their socialist governments went ahead regardless.
Many times in decades past, ever since I listened to an ABC radio series on a New World Order, and purchased the transcript in the 1970s, I have spoken to people including politicians who either did not want to know and/or told me that it was nonsense. Yet just before he retired the Australian Greens leader Senator Bob Brown addressed a National Press Club luncheon and included in his speech was a mention of his dream, a “world parliament” and no sovereign borders.
Watching the behaviour of politicians from the left side of politics in recent years and the push for UN Agenda 21 objectives, in Australia the carbon tax and renewable energy surcharge and, before Labor left office (and recently confirmed by Bill Shorten on ABC 7.30 to still be Labor policy) the plan to convert their carbon tax into an ETS merged into the EU ETS, astute observers would be very concerned about where we are being pushed to. Add to this the wealth seekers who can be from either side of politics who are apparently blinded by greed, in my opinion we should be very worried.
60
Sorry to be a nitpicker,Clive Evatt was a criminal barrister in Sydney NSW,Dr H V Evatt was Australia’s External Affairs Minister who was involved in early years of the UN experiment and an unsuccessful career as a leader of the Australian Labor Party Opposition from 1949.
10
He was also a highly sought after QC. He led in the Communist Party case.
10
The debate is not between the scientist and those that disagree, call them skeptics or whatever. The disagreement is really between the climate models and climate data. In the first sentence, the debate is between people. In the second sentence, the emphasis is on the climate models and the climate data, both which involve human involvement, but the climate models are 100% fabricated, while the data should be more credible.
40
Paul Matthews says –
– Roy Spencer has already responded to this silly article by Gillis, with “What to call a NYT reporter of climate science?” –
which begins with: The title of Justin Gillis’ recent NYT article is an excellent tip-off of how bad environmental reporting has gotten: “What to Call a Doubter of Climate Change?”
that was indeed the headline when i copied excerpts on 13 Feb. the url is still the same,(17 Feb was in the original url too) but we now have at NYT…
12 Feb: NYT: Justin Gillis: Verbal Warming: Labels in the Climate Debate
A version of this article appears in print on February 17, 2015, on page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Verbal Warming: Labels in the Climate Debate
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/science/earth/in-climate-change-whats-in-a-name.html?ref=topics&_r=0
the original headline was noted elsewhere:
SkS simply linked to it on this page:
2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7B – Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=2861
…What to call a doubter of climate change?
18h 18 hours ago – Twitter
https://twitter.com/tonybarboza/status/566319483560550400
5 days ago – What to call a doubter of climate change?
(from Tony Barbazo twitter profile) Los Angeles Times reporter covering the environment. Interested in air pollution, climate change and oceans
Reddit: What to Call a Doubter of Climate Change? The petition asks the news media to abandon the most frequently used term for people who question climate science, “skeptic,” and call them “climate deniers” instead. (nytimes.com)
submitted 5 days ago by pnewell NGO|Climate Science
104 comments
http://www.reddit.com/r/EverythingScience/comments/2vrp4j/what_to_call_a_doubter_of_climate_change_the/
btw Roy Spencer has almost 200 comments.
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Sorry Pat, and you deserve a h/t. Which I’ll add now (and a h/t for Handjive too). Thank you for all your comments. – Jo
60
Now how does someone deny being a denier? You would have to laugh if they were not so serious.
It is such a silly semantic trap, like most leftist constructions. Global Warming is so outrageously a political issue, not a science one.
To demean their opposition, Marxist Greenies label their opposition an ‘ist but they have resorted to using extreme images from WWII to describe people who dare disagree with the unproven hypothesis of man made Global Warming. So they need exactly what they hand out. Being called a denier by a warmist is absurd as it is the warmists who are in total denial. Nothing they have said has come true. Nothing.
Then you cannot deny something which is only an hypothesis, not fact. You can reject. We reject that the world is warming at all. We reject that CO2 and CO2 alone rapidly heats the atmosphere. You can even even reject the assumption that steadily rising CO2 levels are man made. Now try and turn that into a noun or adjective.
So warmists deliberately conflate Climate Change with global warming. Whenever you read about Climate Change, the words are about global warming, about steadily rising world temperatures. How can you have man made Climate Change when you cannot get man made Global Warming? Climates change. Global Warming is not true.
A serious problem is that warmists have even failed to show that the 50% increase in CO2 over the 20th century was man made. It is a crucial and unjustified and incorrect assumption.
CO2 levels in the atmosphere are determined entirely by ocean temperature. Physical equilibrium says you cannot dump CO2 into the atmosphere and expect it to stay there forever when 98% of CO2 is dissolved in the ocean. Even the IPCC recognize this. However the IPCC claim the half life for CO2 in the atmosphere is 80+ years when you can easily show it is 12.5 years from C14 measurements. You can radiocarbon date the air itself. The IPCC has to claim 80 years or their entire logic collapses.
At 12.5 years CO2 output 100 years ago is 98.5% gone. Even CO2 output from 1950 is 97% gone. If the steady CO2 increase produces warming, we did not do it. So we can reject the core assumption of large man made increases in CO2. Finally we will soon run out of Carbon fuels before we can begin to see warming. The discovery of fracking is the only thing holding back world shortages and rocketing petrol prices.
So reject man made Global warming as there is no warming. Reject the implicit assumption that the steady increase in CO2 is even man made. Reject man made Climate Change as it has no cause. Reject that Climate Change and Global Warming are interchangeable terms.
There is no need for an IPCC who clearly want to control the world economies. Disband it. We could get rid of the absurd UN Human Rights commission too. These people only attack censure Western democracies. They never attack communist countries and military dictatorships. I wonder why?
90
A rejectophile? I think that Robyn Williams might have tried that one.
40
Robyn Williams is a stereotypical example of why ordinary curious mildly-analytical persons rapidly loose interest in media-based science ‘information’ reporting. It’s either smarmy “I know better than you ever will” stuffed-shirt snobbery, or the insufferable tangential raw trivia quips (and really, nothing else) pretending to be ‘science’ from the ‘Dr Karl’ type. Even marginally aware people are going to turn that off.
Hence, rejectophiles … doh!
50
Time to go on the offensive, I think …
I do not deny that climate obviously changes, but I do reject the fantasy that climate change is anthropogenic. Anybody who thinks that climate change is entirely man-made, is simply a delusional fantasist, and needs to seek professional help.
60
97% of all ‘professionals’ say it’s true. 😀
20
As said before, the absurd 97% figure is so high you have to think 3% of people made a mistake. You cannot get 100% of people to do anything right, like tick a box. So only 97% of people who agree with man made global warming actually agree with man made global warming?
30
Bjorn Lomborg who’s opinion is “Global warming is real – it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world.” was called a denier and compared to a holocaust denier.
In Nature 414 , 8 November 2001. I don’t have an account to verify the comment.
80
Well done RB. That’s the oldest ref to date. How sad that it was Nature and Scientific American “leading the way”.
My sense is that “denier” started in the mid-late 1990s, but I have been unable to dig up any references. Google hunting in time periods is no use as the refs that turn up are false leads — news alerts from 2015 in sidebars.
70
Lots of false-positives pre-2000.
Not all of them boring: Denier van der Gon is a name that crops up. David Evans may have encountered it during his work for the government on carbon bistromathics.
20
Thanks, Jo. I remembered this one because I found the vitriol strange when Lomborg is a lukewarmer with a fever.
20
When I thought it was only about the science I used to think it was strange too , once You realise that CAGW is the religion of choice for many zealots it makes sense . There’s nothing the true believer hates with more intensity than the heretic .
20
what’s in a headline? from the url, which includes “in-climate-change-whats-in-a-name”, i realised the Gillis piece had yet another headline. talk about verbal warming!
Forecast the Facts
forecastthefacts.org/
In Climate Change, What’s in a Name? A climate advocacy organization, Forecast the Facts, picked up on the letter and turned it into a petition.
NYT Science on Twitter: “In climate change, what’s in a name …
5 days ago
NYT Science on Twitter: “In climate change, what’s in a name…
5 days ago
New York Academy of Sciences: . …(from cached version) Science news – the new york times, In climate change, what’s in a name? by justin gillis
for those opposing the science surrounding the issue, are they “climate deniers” or merely “skeptics”?.
By Degrees: In Climate Change, What’s in a Name? – NYT …
esciencenews.com/sources/…
6 days ago
did NYT, Gillis, or someone else think the headline might have been too close to this piece of CAGW mind manipulation?
May 2014: Yale Project on CC Communication: What’s In A Name? Global Warming vs Climate Change
Download pdf – 32 pages
The research was funded by the Energy Foundation, the 11th Hour Project, the Grantham Foundation, and the V.K. Rasmussen Foundation…
The survey instruments were designed by Anthony Leiserowitz, Geoff Feinberg, and Seth Rosenthal, of Yale University, and Edward Maibach and Connie Roser-Renouf of George Mason University.
http://environment.yale.edu/climate-communication/article/global-warming-vs-climate-change/
20
Was looking for the ref. (which follows) for “denier” in an old blog I used to follow. Did find this though from his blog circa 2004:
“I knew that
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Wacko-environmentalists are religious freaks, every bit as obsessed and misguided as Islamic extremists. Those people give me the creeps.
Environmental alarmism/hysteria is a fascinating psychological phenomenon. It bears many traces of ancient myth and similarities to religious mania. It also has close ties with that most powerful, and delusive, of all political religions: socialism.
Close ties to socialism? I would call it more than that. Environmentalism is anti-individual, anti-private property, anti-capitalist and anti-progress. Environmentalists don’t care how many people die because of their idiotic cause. In fact, they would be the first ones to throw virgins into a volcano to please the appetite of Gaia. They are that goddam superstitious and that goddam crazy.
They won’t be happy until we all freeze to death in the dark.”
Ref: http://www.gutrumbles.com/archives2/000050.php#000050
I used to follow Rob’s blog when he was alive – I still refer to it…Phil
60
I’m a CAD – a climate apocalypse denier.
60
I gather that you sir, have always been a cad.
30
The term was going strong by early 1990. There was an article published in the April 1990 edition of New Internationalist Magazine by then editor Anuradha Vittachi titled “The Denial Syndrome”:
– See URL: http://newint.org/features/1990/04/05/denial/
60
Leo, excellent. Thank you. That’s just what I’ve been looking for. They’ve been name-calling since the very beginning. If anyone has a scientific american or new scientist subscription I’d like to know when it moved over from socialist rags to “popular science” publications.
91
Funny, but sad, that many here do not take scepticism seriously. Opinion pieces from the IPA, Heartland Institute, Galileo Movement, SPPI, GWPF, NIPCC and other scientific fluff sites are accepted without equivocation and taken as gospel by their fraternity in a tawdry congregation of occult science. They pal review their own opinions and hardly ever put their arguments to the test of scientific rigour (notably because they can’t scientifically justify these arguments).
That’s not scepticism and never will be! Whatever they are, they are not sceptics: their campaign of misinformation, disinformation and dodgy statistical machinations is nothing more than unscientific propaganda. Whatever derogatory label is applied to them is justifiable.
319
You poor thing. Such projection of your own flaws. Your idea of scientific rigor is “Pal-Review”. Your team are so scared of real scientific rigor they won’t debate skeptics, and stoop to namecalling “because they can’t scientifically justify these arguments”.
The campaign of misinformation is the one from people who hide the decline, the MWP, the holocene, the rest of history, the uncertainty bars, the lost data, and the major adjustments which transform long term trends.
It will kill you when you find out the real scientists are the skeptics.
192
No, just a reflection on the attitude of this site to scientific fact.
You link the inanities of people like Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi as fact, when proper sceptics like Roy Spencer refute his nonsense outright. You link to Richard Lindzen and his absolutely ridiculous assertions on tropical temperatures. Assertions so invalid that two of the US’s most preeminent scientific organisations, GRL and USNAS, rejected him outright. You ignore the actuality of global warming and then claim it’s the sun without any scientific rationale or evidence. The only reason you claim peer review is flawed is so that you don’t have to subject the fallacies of you and your cadre of recalitrants to true scientific rigour.
So don’t babble on about my flaws when you propagate a flawed and perverse idealogy on a daily basis.
217
Ooh. Getting a bit angry when your religion is threatened?
As usual your scientific “evidence” is to quote opinions. And apparently getting a paper rejected once now refutes an entire life’s work. The anon-silly-filly guide to logic and reason won’t be remember 2000 years from now. I’ll stick with Aristotle.
The other stuff like saying I “ignore the actuality of global warming” and then “claim it’s the sun without any scientific rationale or evidence” is pure denial of what I have written.
You have to mentally black out most of my posts. Must be tough.
181
Funny coming from someone who denies most of scientific evidence. Must stick in your craw that someone can refute your scientific nonsense so easily. Plimer and volcanos, Carter and ENSO, Monckton and sensitivity, Paltridge and clouds, Salby and CO2 origins, Watts and the instrumental record come to mind . As I said, a true sceptic is sceptical of all, that test you fail miserably.
010
Oh yes, golly, I’m quaking. The sillyfilly commenter declares I’m unskeptical!
He/she is so confident of their opinion they won’t even put their name to their comments. Too afraid of looking the fool?
I’ve published 1700 articles, and The “SF” can find some incidental, irrelevant issues that he/she disagrees with? None are reasons why I’m a skeptic. We can debate each one, but why bother? “SF” denies 28 million radiosondes, historical records, raw data, and 30 years of satellites. Some things matter. SF is in denial of those.
130
I’ve yet to read anything that you have written that could possibly be an example of a scientific refutation.
You’re cutting and pasting arguments from sceptics and others almost randomly. Its obvious and its making you look silly. Unless that is your intention, please refrain from accusing me of the same at a later date.
40
Ok then.If you claim that Jo
maybe you could provide links to each and every piece of evidence that Jo “denies”. Or are you spouting crap again,with no intention to back up your claim with hard evidence? I’m getting tired of this crap,as in my book,it borders on trying to defame Jo,based on 0% actual proof to back it up.
10
stop you are at risk of taking off.
00
Sillyfilly, I too believe that the sun heats our planet, as it is the only heater we have. I also believe that the suns machinations and moods change our climate, thus I would like to hear your scientific treatise on why we have L.I.A,s and warm periods. Major ice ages and little warm periods.
31
SF,
Have a look at what the famed warmist, Dylan Evans, now thinks about: global warming, alternative energy, limiting fossil fuels, living in a commune.
You are starting to become a little manic, must be the self doubt creeping back in, the faux-outrage may fool your comrades, but it is starting to ring as little hollow, and you are beginning to repeat the mantra a little too often tryong to convince yourself that you are right.
As I wrote you earlier, if it it offensive to you don’t let the door hit you on the ar$e on the way out.
81
sillyfilly is a typical fantasist. He/she/it probably thinks that the James Cameron film, Avatar, is a documentary.
81
Not on the auspices again?
10
There is an interesting pattern here.
Sillyfilly makes one of her … rather odd … comments, which garners the expected responses. Then sillyfilly goes down the list of respondents, and down-thumbs all those who answer right away. After a while he/she gets bored and goes away, so the later respondents do not get the down-tick.
Perhaps sillyfilly has some form of compulsive mental disorder? In which case, the best answer might be to not respond at all.
70
Very limited attention span.
20
This is an avian behaviour lesson. In many bird species, two birds confronting each other for some reason (territory, food, sex) flap their wings to increase their apparent size and demonstrate their vigor. The correct response to such flapping by a bird being flapped at is to attempt to flap more often with the occupation of a bigger visual field. In the end the signal is equivocal as often the flapping might have an effect on the other bird even if the “winner” is actually not the biggest or most vigorous.
Keep flapping.
PS I have references if you need them.
32
pps this was a reply to #33 and 33.1
12
No need to flap.
10
I take nearly every poster on Jo’s blog at face value.
Silly Filly is becoming the exception as I am beginning to get very amused at the tantrums when “it” doesn’t get its own way.
We are always asking just what drives the fanaticism of the cult like warmistas, Silly Filly being a prime specimen in this.
So “it” ie SF is turning into a quite interesting specimen of a fanatical warmista, one that regularly appears here and therefore one we can all closely study and analysis “it” while getting considerable amusement from it all while doing so.
As long as Silly Filly keeps hanging around we can do a regular study of “it’s” moods, motives, beliefs, psychology and intellect or lack of and the underlying apparently fear driven psychology that underpins Silly Filly’s entire performances on this blog and therefore get a snapshot of the drivers of the fanaticism of the warmista’s cult like beliefs.
“Fear” or at least a pseudo “Fear”, a hyped up “Fear” that doesn’t actually exist but is trotted out on demand for effect and to get their adrenaline running so as to raise their voices to screech levels for what they assume is maximum impact on the public, a public which is now becoming thoroughly shat off with the whole constantly ” fear this” , “fear that”, “be frightened” , “be afraid,”” be very afraid” sort of thing.
It’s a pseudo Fear because the warmistas carry on in their everyday lives as though whatever they apparently “Fear” they act as though it won’t actually affect them in any way, something that seems very much a characteristic of Silly Fllly’s outbursts here and a characteristic of Silly Filly’s warmista cultist fraternity.
And we can watch Silly Filly’s reactions as all the flow of history steadily accelerates against the anthropogenic created climate catastrophe as predicted by the climate models but for which no firm evidence, in fact no evidence at all except in the fevered imaginations of some funding lite climate alarmist scientists and their useful idiots, has yet emerged to support the climate model based predictions.
Those climate model predictions which are the entire basis for Silly Filly’s and “it’s” like mentality’s pathological fixations are of such a quality that they can’t even predict the most climate affecting phenomena on this planet, the ENSO phase or it’s strength and that for only half a year ahead before the ENSO phase, which ever it might be gets under way .
Thanks Silly Filly.
All your posturing here is a bit like a bikini on a very fat frau.
You might think you look good but for the rest of us, well we can only gawk in amazement at all the all the useless ugly mind warping stupidity of the gross over exposure of your very unattractive [ mental ] bits.
41
It takes two to flap properly. But then the avian studies find it hard to evaluate the opinions of the observers
01
It takes two to flap properly. But then the avian studies find it hard to evaluate the opinions of the observers
01
I found this earlier today, apparently a submission to a Bond University competition on politics;
“Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered
by a delusional, illogical minority, and
promoted by mainstream media,
which holds forth the
proposition that it is entirely
possible to pick up a
turd by the
clean end.”
90
So what does one call a complacent journalist who laps up ever tidbit from authority, understands neither maths or the scientific method, yet has the confidence in their own “learned wisdom” to attempt to justify insulting and denigrating any who doubt their shallow delusions?
I like presstitute, but liberal arts graduate seems to fit.
Educated beyond ones competence is the modern way, as seen in the products of these diploma mills that style themselves as centres of higher learning.
Funny thing two generations past, a child who could read,write and do arithemic, was now ready to go on to begin to learn, in the university of hard knocks AKA life, while supporting themselves and very likely a family.
50
Carbon Brief profile: Leo Hickman is our Director and Editor. He previously worked for 16 years as a journalist, editor and author at the Guardian newspaper. Before joining Carbon Brief, he was WWF-UK’s chief advisor on climate change
18 Feb: The Carbon Brief Interview: Lord Deben, part 1
by Leo Hickman
Lord Deben, or the Rt Hon John Selwyn Gummer, is the current chair of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). He is also chair of the sustainability consultancy Sancroft International, honorary president of the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International) and a non-executive director of the Catholic Herald newspaper. Gummer was a Conservative MP from 1970-1974 and from 1979-2010. From 1993-1997, he served as the Secretary of State for the Environment.
In Part 1, Lord Deben discusses the Conservative party’s attitude to climate change, the forthcoming UK general election, “green crap”, the fifth carbon budget and fracking…
CB: As a Conservative peer and former minister, please can you explain the various dynamics and tensions at play within your own party when it comes to tackling climate change? You have the Lawsons and the Ridleys on the one side, and the Barkers and Rudds on the other. Why has it become such a problematic issue for certain sections of your party?
LD: I’m not sure that it has really in that sort of way. I mean, the truth is that the problem with climate change is that it demands a long-term solution, which is also a consistent solution. We’re talking about cutting our emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. Now, for those for whom planning is a dangerous word because you want the market to work effectively and that what planning often does is to second guess the market and then find itself wrong. This concept of having to deal in the long term is simply very difficult to grasp and, of course, the considerable efforts of those who don’t believe in climate change and to try to undermine the basic science has had its effect. It’s becoming less and less, but it isn’t instinctively something which people on the very extreme right find easy to accept. For most of us, though – for most of the party – it is very clear that we are a party that’s got a name, called the Conservatives. It’s about conserving. It’s about passing onto the next generation something better than we received. And if you are threatened with this existential threat, not one that we’ve ever really seen before, and you know what is happening, and you do have to take the measures…
CB: How do you think climate change will be an issue at the general election? For example, UKIP are calling for the Climate Change Act to be scrapped. So, how do you respond to this, and more widely how do you feel climate change will be part of the general election?
LD: Well, I think first of all, we’re very unlikely to have a situation where any of the three main parties suggest anything other than a continuation of the present system. It is interesting: it is seven years since we passed the Climate Change Act and for the most part the consensus has continued very strongly indeed…
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/02/the-carbon-brief-interview-lord-deben-part-one/
18 Feb: The Carbon Brief Interview: Lord Deben, part 2
by Leo Hickman
CB: What’s your view about the Pope issuing an encyclical on climate change later this year?
LD: Well, I think it’s one of the most exciting and really important things that has happened, because the churches are the largest group, certainly in the western world, of concerned and committed individuals…
They want to change the world, they want to affect the world, they care about it. They are in the proper sense the yeast, and you know, the salt has not lost its savour…
Thirdly, they are universal. The Catholic church – ours [Church of England] is a much smaller denomination – but the Catholic church which 1.2 billion or whatever it is people, is all over the world. It isn’t the symbol of Western Imperialism, it isn’t North or South, it’s about the Philippines and Canada, it’s about Argentina and the Ukraine…
***This is not something to be left to politicians, or the like. And it will mean that those who don’t want to have now got to face it. Mr [Tony] Abbott is going to have to say to himself in Australia, ‘I am a Catholic and the Pope has made this very clear. What am I, how am I going to argue, therefore, the policy that I’ve been doing now?’ It’s a very important thing because it will really affect the consciences and the personal decisions of very large numbers of people…
I mean we’ll be listening to the Cardinal from Korea, we’ll be looking at what the American church will do in the context of Republican denial…
CB: OK, last question. We can’t really end without talking about your use of Twitter. Your interactions with the, as you describe them, “climate dismissers” can be robust and combative. What is your wider view about taking on the more influential climate sceptic voices?LD: Well, all I’m trying to do on Twitter is to keep the discussion in the bounds of sense. Sometimes one has to be a bit – one only has 140 characters so it doesn’t allow you to be, in any way enigmatic – you have to be very direct as to what you want to say. And I really do think that you have to bring home to people that they are suggesting – the dismissers and the deniers, and the lukewarmers – they are suggesting that they know better than the whole of the scientific community. That is what they are suggesting. Now I find that fundamentally unlikely. That’s the first thing. The second thing is that if they are wrong and we follow them, we will have faced disaster. If they are right we will have done rather more, rather more quickly, than we will have had to do anyway…
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/02/The-Carbon-Brief-Interview-Lord-Deben-Part-Two/
10
more on the charming Lord Deben:
Feb 2014: AustralianClimateMadness: simon: ACM’s sharp words for Lord Deben: sling your hook, mate
Anyway, along with all the other climate zealots, Gummer likes to lecture others on the folly of their ways, and disparage those who disagree with him – even elected Prime Ministers of other countries – as reported in the (Financial Times’) article ‘Lord Deben’s sharp words for Australia’s approach to climate change’:
– Lord Deben said he had discussed climate change at length with Mr Abbott before last year’s Australian election, “and I got five different views during that period of time”. – …READ ALL
http://australianclimatemadness.com/2014/02/27/acms-sharp-words-for-lord-deben-sling-your-hook-mate/
June 2013: Daily Mail: David Rose: MP paid £400,000 by green firms slams climate change peer… for hypocrisy exposed by the Mail
Tim Yeo has complained about Lord Deben’s undisclosed green interests
Mr Yeo has been paid more than £400,000 by three green companies
Lord Deben is chairman of firm which connects windfarms to National Grid
A Tory MP has complained about a government global-warming adviser’s undisclosed green interests – despite the fact he himself is paid a fortune by eco-energy and transport firms…
Tim Yeo, chairman of the Energy and Climate Change select committee, has protested about Lord Deben remaining chairman of Veolia Water UK while also chairing the Committee on Climate Change, an independent body that advises the Government on the impact of climate change…
Lord Deben, John Selwyn Gummer – who as Agriculture Minister in 1990 tried to persuade his daughter Cordelia to eat a hamburger during the BSE crisis – was required to undergo a ‘confirmation hearing’ before Yeo’s committee last September after being appointed chair of the Climate Change Committee…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2338255/Tim-Yeo-MP-paid-400-000-green-firms-slams-climate-change-peer.html
10
March 2014: Bishop Hill: The works of Lord Deben
This is a guest post by Matt Ridley
Under Deben’s chairmanship since 2012 its pronouncements have become increasingly one-sided. Deben himself is frequently highly critical of any sceptics, often mischaracterizing them as “deniers” or “dismissers”, but has never to my knowledge been heard to criticize anybody for exaggerating climate alarm and the harm it can do to disadvantaged people. These are not the actions of an impartial chairman…
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2014/3/12/the-works-of-lord-deben.html
10
19 Feb: Age: Mark Kenny: Dumping Tony Abbott has fringe benefit of ending unpopular policies
Leadership chatter has not stopped. It may all come to a head sooner than you think.
Escape might provide other rewards, too, such as the first green shoots of voter trust and the hope, albeit faint, of bipartisanship over some longer-term budgetary challenges…
Chatter in the government shows no signs of abating and could yet manifest itself in a sudden move to replace Abbott with Malcolm Turnbull as early as the first full sitting week beginning March 2…
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/dumping-tony-abbott-has-fringe-benefit-of-ending-unpopular-policies-20150219-13imix.html
19 Feb: Australian Financial Review: Phillip Coorey: Liberals ‘blown apart’ by spill push in swing voters’ eyes
Focus group research conducted by seasoned pollster Tony Mitchelmore, a veteran of nine state and federal election campaigns, finds swing voters now have a low regard for both major parties and are overwhelmingly disillusioned with the state of politics.
The polling also found Mr Abbott remains deeply unpopular, Julie Bishop is held in high regard, Malcolm Turnbull is seen as a strong leader of the future while Labor leader Bill Shorten remains largely unknown and “has yet to prove himself with swinging voters”…
The research canvassed the views of voters in western Sydney marginal seats, all of whom had voted for Labor in the 2010 election but switched to the Coalition in 2013.
“These are the critical voters both sides of politics will be focusing on,” Mr Mitchelmore said.
“They are the voters Tony Abbott and the Liberals have to keep to hold power and who Labor need to win back to regain it.”…
Responses regarding Ms Bishop included “straightforward”, “someone you can trust”, and “dignified” while Mr Turnbull was regarded variously as intelligent, visionary, respected, experienced and articulate’…
http://www.afr.com/p/national/politics/liberals_blown_apart_by_spill_push_nmwBkVXRDxvU6U0NC8ASxH
10
19 Feb: Australian Financial Review: Matthew Cranston: Malcolm Turnbull is investor in biggest commercial property deal of the year
Australia’s second-richest parliamentarian, Malcolm Turnbull, has a direct financial interest in what could be the biggest property deal of the year.
Mr Turnbull, who last made it on the BRW Rich List in 2010 with a fortune of $186 million, is the most prominent Australian investor in the Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund VI, which on Wednesday said it wanted to sell its $8.9 billion Investa Office business in Australia.
At least a dozen global fund managers are interested in the assets, which include well-known buildings such as Deutsche Bank Place overlooking Sydney Harbour and 120 Collins Street in Melbourne, which is home to some of the city’s business leaders, including the executives who run the Future Fund.
Mr Turnbull, who ranks behind federal MP Clive Palmer, whose wealth is estimated at $1.22 billion byBRW Rich List, has kept an interest in the Morgan Stanley property fund through a holding company. He also has a separate personal interest in Goldman Sachs’ Stone Street Real Estate Fund, but how successful these investments have been is unknown.
Mr Turnbull declined to comment on any aspect of his interest in the Morgan Stanley fund, which suffered one of the biggest losses in the history of private equity real estate investing after buying in at the top of the market in 2007.
It lost billions of dollars of investor money when the global financial crisis caused property values to plummet around the world…
http://www.afr.com/p/business/property/malcolm_turnbull_the_investor_year_TwKhm0zdnpqy11FoFtttYK
10
Godwin’s Law, 1990. It entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2012. Usually related to politics or religion, whoever mentions uses the Nazis or Hitler first in an argument loses. Denier is such a word.
20
Godwin’s “Law” is a meaningless statement.
00
Clever and funny and famous. Otherwise meaningless.
10
To be strictly correct, the meaning is in the Oxford dictionary. That is what dictionaries do.
10
A ‘Law’ in the sense of a behavioral observation perhaps and a handy, if not so engaging retort to unsuspecting users of the ‘D’ word.
10
Gullible Gillis.
10
One of the early and intentional uses of Holocaust with respect to skeptics was by Ellen Goodman in the Boston newspaper during 2007.
“Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, …”
The Paper is paywalled but a copy is here:
http://www.classicalliberal.org/No_change_in_political_climate_GOODMAN_2_2007.doc
10
The Australian has a shorter version of this story:
19 Feb: Northern Star: Renewable Energy Party holds Inaugural Meeting in Lismore
A GROUP of north coast citizens have formed a new political party at a meeting at Lismore Workers Club: The Renewable Energy Party of Australia…
The fledgling political party is currently engaged in a social media campaign to sign-up the 500 members required to obtain federal registration, campaign manager Jim Moylan said.
“Membership is not likely to be a problem,” Mr Moylan said.
“Aussies are really passionate about climate change.”
“Our Facebook page has gone-off like a skyrocket. All we did was set up a news-feed to climate change news – and a big audience appeared.”
The secretary of the new party, lawyer and former NSW parliamentarian, Peter Breen, was also upbeat about the party’s prospects.
“Of course they will take us seriously. We are well funded, well organised and mainstream,” Mr Breen said.
“We have advertising people, political insiders, fund-raisers, social media specialists and other professionals. The Renewable Energy Party wants science and the public interest to dictate the terms of the climate debate – not coal, gas and oil companies.
“Following the meeting a spokesperson for the party said renewable energy needed “grass roots representation.”…
“The Renewable Energy Party will speak on behalf of the many Australians who believe that climate change is simply the most important issue we face.”
“We support the 97 per cent of climate scientists who say man-made climate change is real and we need to do something serious about the predicted global temperature rise.”…
http://www.northernstar.com.au/news/renewable-energy-party-holds-inaugural-meeting-lis/2549383/
Wikipedia: Peter Breen
He was originally a member of the Liberal Party, serving as President of the Campbelltown Young Liberals 1971-1972. From 1995-1998 he was Secretary of the Australian Bill of Rights Group, and in 1998 joined Reform the Legal System. In the 1999 New South Wales election he was elected to the Legislative Council…
Breen joined the Australian Labor Party on 5 May 2006, but resigned on 18 July to form the Human Rights Party…
In 2014 Breen became an adviser to Senator Ricky Muir of the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party but was sacked on 5 August 2014…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Breen_(politician)
00
This about sums up the warmist argument.
“we need to do something serious about the predicted global temperature rise”.
No actual Global warming mind you, but if everything goes to plan, we will have something to worry about very soon if the Chinese don’t stop increasing their CO2 yearly by our entire output. They have agreed in writing to look at the predicted problem again in 2030.
Why wait for the Chinese or a lousy 20% RET when we can cancel out one entire year of their growth by stopping all our cars, planes, heating, cooling, computers, transport, farming and manufacturing. We will live in abject poverty, freeze, boil and starve while they boom. That should teach them who is morally superior! Sure by 2030 they should be outputting a further 8×15 or 140x our current total CO2 on top of the 50% of world CO2 they currently contribute. They will feel really bad about that. Lead by example. Impoverish yourselves.
20
Sorry, 120x roughly. 1/2*15*15 or 112. Triangles!
00
Professor Richard Lindzen from MIT says he prefers the term denier to skeptic. “I actually like ‘denier.’ That’s closer than skeptic.”
I’m with Lindzen on this, the word ‘denier’ is neutral and preferable to just being sceptical. But the meaning became muddied when the PLS (pseudo leftist scum) began to attach the holocaust, tobacco and evolution, in an attempt to make us look like idiots without a scientific clue.
This war against ignorance won’t be won overnight, so when any leftard asks I tell them I’m a card carrying member of the Denialati on active duty.
10
Like!!
I “deny” that there is any science whatsoever on either side of CAGW! Please demonstrate any use of the scientific method. Why not accept that this world and its atmosphere was specifically designed to be unintelligible to whatever is the current top predator. Most Raccoons have already noticed “He don got no stick” before you will ever see such Raccoon! 🙂
02
Came across this quote from Bertrand Russell the other day….
‘The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatsoever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible’
40
Speaking of name calling , I,m not entirely sure why I was most recently banned by the Grauniad , but perhaps the term I used “Alarmista Jihadis” was considered too outre for the delicate ears of the CAWG Jihadis?
Of course it must be terrible to be interrupted from your normal yoghurt knitting,tree hugging ,champagne socialism by anybody pointing out a salient fact, but it is ironic that the Guardian , the iconic rag of of the aforementioned knitters of yogurt etc claims for itself, the ultimate bastionship of free speech.
They are so far gone down the Agitprop road they can no longer recognise free speech.
ISIL
Ignorant Stupid Inflamed Lefties ??
30
The simple proof that CO2 change does not cause climate change has been hiding in plain sight.
CO2 has been considered to be a forcing with units Joules/sec. Energy change, which is revealed by temperature change, has units Joules. Average forcing times duration produces energy change. Equivalently, a scale factor times the time-integral of the CO2 level produces the temperature change.
During previous glaciations and interglacials (as so dramatically displayed in An Inconvenient Truth) CO2 and temperature went up and down nearly together. This is impossible if CO2 is a significant forcing (scale factor not zero) so this actually proves CO2 CHANGE DOES NOT CAUSE SIGNIFICANT AVERAGE GLOBAL TEMPERATURE CHANGE.
Application of this analysis methodology to CO2 levels for the entire Phanerozoic eon (about 542 million years) (Berner, 2001) proves that CO2 levels up to at least 6 times the present will have no significant effect on average global temperature.
See more on this and discover the two factors that do cause climate change (95% correlation since before 1900) in a peer reviewed paper published in Energy and Environment, vol. 25, No. 8, 1455-1471 or search “agwunveiled”.
10
Totalitarianism is making a comeback through UN “Climate Science”.
20
And censorship by the MSM
“Q: When I post a comment, it says that my comments are being pre-moderated – what does that mean? Does that apply to everyone in the conversation?
A: There is a further exception to the overall reactive-moderation approach adopted by the Guardian website: in isolated situations, a particular user may be identified as a risk, based on a pattern of behaviour (e.g. spam, trolling, repeated/frequent borderline abuse), so a temporary filter can be applied to anything they post, which means that their comments will need to be pre-moderated before appearing on the site.
This is a temporary measure applied by moderators to a very small handful of people based entirely on patterns of actual behaviour, and should result relatively quickly in either their posting ability being suspended completely if no improvement is shown, or the filter being removed. The decision to do either of these things would, again, be based on that user’s behaviour and activity during the pre-moderation period.
10
The Griss would last about 30 seconds with this lot!
20
Nice bit of satire.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/20/friday-funny-well-if-i-was-a-denier-i-guess-id-be-on-notice-by-barack-obama/
00
This is fairly dry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EZMkNSWdxo
00
The words “denier” and “denialist” do have an implicit meaning. They mean that the fact being denied is true, and that the person denying it is aware of it.
Implying that the fact being denied is definitely true is a misunderstanding of the scientific method, to put in mildly. Science doesn’t prove anything, it just finds more economical explanations of data.
Implying that the accused “denier” knows it is worse – it is a lie, pure and simple. You can’t read other people’s minds.
The allegations “holocaust denier”, “global warming denier”, “climate change denier” are all in the same category. They should all be rejected out of hand as anti-scientific and dishonest.
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The pyscho-technical term for AGW Catastrophists is “Anosognoscenti”, from Dunning-Kruger Syndrome (1914) meaning “dullards too foolish to know they’re idiots”, ie. “mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself.”
DKS aside, a better –and more pejorative– label for AGW’s fatuous oafs is “deviant”, with all that that implies. After all, where a graph’s origin A = +1, baseline = 0, and terminus B = -1, anyone who pretends that the time-series A-to-B is positive has serious cognitive debilities.
Given Deviants’ extreme dissembling, mercenary, anti-objective/rational proclivities, disingenuous misrepresentation is the least of it.
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