The future of climate change politics: Part I, the children
[NOTE: This is a big topic, and so my plan is to tackle it in segments.]
There’s a great deal of fear going around about what is now known as climate change and what is more accurately described as anthropogenic global warming (AGW): the idea that we are in the throes of a potentially catastrophic warming of Earth’s climate caused by human activity.
Right now I’m not going to debate the science. I’m going to talk about the political phenomenon. Those who believe this is a real and imminent crisis facing us are understandably filled with a great sense of urgency, and in that urgency they are proposing many supposed solutions. As part of that drive, there has been a push to educate the young in the extreme danger that will soon be facing them.
We have this sort of thing from an adult, author Jonathan Franzen writing in The New Yorker. It indicates the scope of the fear that is being projected by adults and that children are picking up on:
The goal has been clear for thirty years, and despite earnest efforts we’ve made essentially no progress toward reaching it. Today, the scientific evidence verges on irrefutable. If you’re younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth—massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought. If you’re under thirty, you’re all but guaranteed to witness it.
So that sets the tone: it’s is virtually certain to happen and to happen pretty soon, and to be awful. Franzen doesn’t bother to get into the science of it, which is wise because neither he nor I nor 99.99+% of his readers can understand the science, so it must be taken on faith or rejected on faith, plus whatever scientific knowledge and understanding each person may have. (More about that later, in another part of this series).
Franzen is hardly alone in his desperation and despair about this. He doesn’t really think a solution will be forthcoming at this point. That’s one of the thrusts of his article, in which he also writes what he thinks it would actually take to tackle the problem effectively:
The first condition is that every one of the world’s major polluting countries institute draconian conservation measures, shut down much of its energy and transportation infrastructure, and completely retool its economy. According to a recent paper in Nature, the carbon emissions from existing global infrastructure, if operated through its normal lifetime, will exceed our entire emissions “allowance”—the further gigatons of carbon that can be released without crossing the threshold of catastrophe. (This estimate does not include the thousands of new energy and transportation projects already planned or under construction.) To stay within that allowance, a top-down intervention needs to happen not only in every country but throughout every country. ..
Finally, overwhelming numbers of human beings, including millions of government-hating Americans, need to accept high taxes and severe curtailment of their familiar life styles without revolting. They must accept the reality of climate change and have faith in the extreme measures taken to combat it. They can’t dismiss news they dislike as fake. They have to set aside nationalism and class and racial resentments. They have to make sacrifices for distant threatened nations and distant future generations. They have to be permanently terrified by hotter summers and more frequent natural disasters, rather than just getting used to them. Every day, instead of thinking about breakfast, they have to think about death.
Franzen ends up concluding—and I concur—that this will never happen. And I add that this is correct whether the actual science, and Franzen’s fears, are valid or not. He also ends up recommending halfway measures such as forest conservation and replenishment, which are things that both left and right can get behind (we discussed it previously in this thread).
What effect does a message like this have on children? In a recent poll among teens, 88% believed in AGW and 52% were angry about it and 57% afraid. I’m surprised, given that 88% figure, that the other figures weren’t higher, but the poll also says that 88% of teens believe that there is still time to stop the worst effects. 64% of teens think climate change will hurt them personally, and 76% feel it will hurt people in the US.
So whatever the truth will turn out to be, the AGW advocates have done an excellent job in getting the word out. But not enough of a job to cause the sort of widespread panic that someone like Franzen feels would be required to actually change anything.
That’s where 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg comes in. As Richard Fernandez writes:
Even as the era of “small wars” is seemingly on the wane, environmental concerns, especially among the elite, are rising to panic bordering on despair. Sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, speaking at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting at Davos, said without batting an eye that “adults keep saying we owe it to the young people, to give them hope, but I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day.”
With such a frightened younger generation, it can only benefit the left, because government is seen as the solution.
I think this just parallels the takeover of the educational system by the left. It’s not really surprising the kids think that way when also the majority of millennials also think socialism is cool. I’m also sure another poll would asy these kids think the US has endemic racism and they also have white privilege guilt.
I do take exception to your statement that ” Franzen doesn’t bother to get into the science of it, which is wise because neither he nor I nor 99.99+% of his readers can understand the science,”. The science isn’t that hard to understand especially for someone like you, Neo, who values evidence to support arguments. I can present several importance pieces of data that destroys the basic hypothesis of AGW and I don’t need to invoke solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations, etc. The science has been manipulated and distorted to suit a naked political purpose. One small example: anyone remember the prediction that the Arctic would be ice free by 2014?? Any of the MSM media reporting that? Any schools teaching that??
I’m also sure another poll would also show these kids think the US has endemic racism and they also have white privilege guilt. No edit function.
Physicsguy:
The predictions from the science are one thing and it’s fairly easy for a layperson to see whether they have come true or not so far. The scientific underpinnings are different. I have spent a tremendous number of hours reading both sides and it is very difficult to come to strong conclusions. I have decded, however, that Judith Curry is the most objecrive climate scientist around and I pay attention to her point of view especially.
Maybe an accurate look at history can save us and our children’s mental health. Meteorologist Joe Bastardi has suggested for many years, that we look at the history of hurricanes to learn that they have not become more frequent or more violent.
“One small example: anyone remember the prediction that the Arctic would be ice free by 2014??” — physicsguy
There is a publication just put out by the Competitive Enterprise Institute called, “Wrong Again: 50 years of Eco-pocalyptic Predictions “ which contains documentation on the huge misses of the eco-fearmongers of the past, including physicsguy’s example.
I believe that CEI article barely scratches the surface.
Creating a perpetual state of gloom and doom, frightening impressionable youth, all to promote a green on the outside, red on the inside agenda. This scam is not about climate change, it is about totalitarianism. When the celebrities on this band wagon stop flying around the globe in their private jets and cooling their mansions with fossil fuels get back to me.
The ‘expert’ Swedish girl had quite a large carbon foot print on her journey back. She and the people who sailed the boat across the Atlantic flew back to Sweden.
Neo, the predictions are the essence of the science. It doesn’t really matter what the underpinnings are. If the “underpinnings” make a prediction that is then falsified, then the “underpinnings” are wrong. We can argue back and forth about feedback equations, etc. But if those equations make a prediction that turns out false, then the equation is nullified.
All of us “deniers” have never denied the earth is warming; as it has since the Little Ice Age. We have never denied that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. What we have denied is the outsized role that CO2 has been afforded, and the lack of evidence based on the predictions where CO2 is the primary driver of the climate. Denying that evidence of the non-support of the predictions is the political basis of CAGW.
As was usual for him, Feynman succinctly summarizes what I’m been trying to say:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY
I just finished reading The Founding Gardeners by Andrea Wulf. In the last part she talks about farmers leaving Virginia because the soil had been depleted. Madison was was of the first to address the problem, and studied crop rotation, adding manure, and plowing leaves and stalks back into the soil. He and the other founders also pushed for preserving forests, realizing that there was a sustainable ecosysten of plants and animals that needed to be preserved because destroying one part would wipe out the others. It’s an interesting book.
Re Thunberg: She is 16 and has Aspergers. She dresses like a 7 year old, and probably can’t read a graph. Why are people making her into a saint? All of her fellow schoolkids should be spending their Fridays in class learning some math and science. Has her family gone off the grid, or for that matter any of the Green New Dealers? Send them all to Sweden and pray for a cold winter.
I have a very hard time taking AGW seriously, since the recommended “fixes” from the experts don’t make a lot of sense. Build giant wind turbines that consume enormous quantities of concrete to erect and lots of petroleum products to produce many of the parts? Kill a lot of protected birds when they’re operating, then require large amounts of energy to decommission and dispose of?
Or build large energy farms of solar collectors? Requiring a lot of rare earth metals to store the electricity, or put it back into the grid so consumers who don’t need it at that moment are subsidizing it?
Or ignore nuclear energy because of a film scare?
None of this makes real economic sense. It makes sense if you’re more interested in virtue signaling, but that implies you’re not serious about the problem.
As Glenn Reynolds says, “I’ll believe it’s a problem when people who tell me it’s a problem start acting as if it is.”
You know what’s weird? Why has “climate change” become such a big thing on the Left but not Peak Oil? They’re both massive potential catastrophes that could justify even more massive government takeover of society, yet Peak Oil isn’t even a footnote in the current hysteria on the Left.
Mike
I don’t share the hysterical overreaction related to climate change because I’ve seen this rodeo before. I can’t be the only person who posts here who remembers the duck-and-cover school drills of the 1950s; the Life magazine articles on building your own fallout shelter; and the novels/films of that period based on the theme of catastrophe following nuclear war (examples: Nevil Shute’s 1957 On the Beach; Pat Frank’s 1959 Alas, Babylon; and the 1983 TV movie The Day After).
My two cents’ take as a historian (I’ll let physicsguy discuss the scientific principles involved) is that humans seem to have a tendency toward periodic bouts of group alarmism set off by anything from comet sightings (e.g., the comet of 1618 and the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War; also Hale-Bopp and the Heaven’s Gate cult in our own time) to natural disasters of various types. When I was in college, I read Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium, a now-classic study of a series of millenarian cult movements from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century. Most of these were localized episodes, however, because even the invention of the printing press did not enable the immediate spread of such cults over a large area.
What is different about climate alarmism is the speed and extent of its spread due to changes in communications technology. I think the double whammy of the Internet and social media is largely responsible for the intensity of fear exemplified in articles like Franzen’s. The other major change is the way in which kids– and she is a kid– like Greta Thunberg are elevated to the stature of prophets. In the 50s, kids might worry about nuclear war after seeing one of the Twilight Zone episodes that were based on it, but we generally assumed that the adults were in charge, for better or for worse.
I’m with physics guy cause i know physics very well and enough to make BX science… the whole thing was always a bucket of steam… always… the more details you know, whether its history of data, temperature collecting, corrections to data, ignoring basic science or applying it wrong, and on and on…
and with F in that… when i was young, science and engineering were the positive things of the future… now, every freaking documentary is about how the world will end, what is it like after it does, 7 scientists discuss the ending of civilization, etc..
but what F points out is that the solutions are things that would, if actually completed, force us to lose a war in a day… horribly wasteful, inefficient, etc…
the solutions are not solutions.. but are ways of down metering progress by down metering energy… where there is energy, there is growth… the more energy, the more progress, as energy = WORK
“As was usual for him, Feynman succinctly summarizes what I’m been trying to say:” physicsguy
Feynman asserts; “if it* disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong”
* hypothesis, theory, proposed ‘solution(s)’
“experiment” i.e. reality
If the results i.e. consequences are counter productive, then its wrong.
“By their ‘fruits’, shall ye know them”…
Neo,
Government has often been the solution to environmental protections. But that has been a good thing. The EPA regulations cleaned up water and air in ways no corporation would. But it makes sense because most corporations would normally not be compelled to since it could hurt profits. I don’t know if you remember how bad air quality was prior to the EPA [which was passed by Nixon – hardly a leftist] but air quality in the major cities is much better than it was 40 to 50 years ago.
Also, other environmental issues like creating National Parks for all to enjoy without developers ruining the view or putting neighborhoods behind gates has been very welcome by most Americans regardless of political leanings. In fact, most everyone likes clean air and water. So in my view the government can also help be a leader to help with the current situation. CA has done pretty well with car emission standards. I think it’s time for innovation to get us into more non fossil burning vehicles. I don’t think corporations can single-handily do this. But a combination of government initiative, goals and incentives along with the help of corporations can. Let’s work together.
And the left has a very long history of using children to deliver its message
and teaching children they know more than their parents
Stalin cultivated Friend of the Children
Lenin and the Jesuits: Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
Lenin: Destroy the family, you destroy the country.
the Kims of Korea have interesting posters of them with loads of children
even american politicians would kiss babies
but, recently, you even have political people having crowds of children or a few deliver their message… ya gonna kill that messenger?
https://yale.imodules.com/s/1667/GID2/18/interior.aspx?sid=1667&gid=6&pgid=1986
I was glad to see the Jonathan Franzen article. At last a climate fanatic honest enough to take the catastrophic predictions seriously and admit that we are not going to shut down civilization so que sera sera. It was refreshing.
The next step is to stop bleating about how we’ve only got X years left, make a lot of noise and ban plastic straws, then after X years is over, move the goalposts. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Here’s a new list of failed environmental predictions:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/failed-climate-change-predictions
I took all the 70s predictions seriously, which is part of how I ended up on communes back then. The failure of those predictions was the first crack in my progressive politics.
Duck and Cover go nothin’ on this!
If CAGW is as bad as the Left says, Power Line’s John Hinderaker has a sensible suggestion. Since the fate of Earth is at stake, we should bomb all of China’s and India’s coal plants.
I asked Gov. Jay Inslee about this idea and he agreed with the sentiment but not this exact idea.
These people are insane.
Art:
The Jesuits taught me how to think; not what to think.
Lots of good comments above, Montage mentions the EPA stuff that did help us clean up smog, some of the mpg requirements have pushed us to use less fuel in our cars and trucks. It is always good to try to do a better job of being stewards of finite resources and having said that, if I were about 25 years younger, about 50 I would have loved to be part of the crew that took the incredible racing sail boat across the ocean in 14 days making about 17 miles per hour.
That 60 foot long boat is a giant plastic shell made with incredible plastic polymers and equipped with fantastic carbon fiber spars and sails, it only took about $4.4 million to make that wonderful racing boat and what a kick that would be to ride in it. I wonder if the Royalty in Monaco get some sort of a Euro write off for using their boat to raise Climate Crisis awareness.
I have no idea how much all the carbon cost, whatever that is, was on the construction and equipping that beautiful racing boat and of course the travel cross the ocean of taking part of the crew back and replacing them but I would imagine it was more than a couple of econo-tickets for the kid and a parent.
The insane male Senator from HI said on the insane Chris Hayes show, “we just have to beat them in 2020.”
Agree. We must beat them. Once and for all.
Montage:
The basic problem with the EPA and the environmental regulations is that the cost and effort required to control/correct/mitigate the first 90% of any problem takes far less effort than the remaining 10%. Costs go way up and practicality goes way down as the standards get ever more stringent. Things are never clean enough. Regulators and green wackos don’t care, it’s someone else’s money.
Montage,
I think your heart is in the right place and I agree with you a little with you on automobile pollution, but disagree with most of the rest. Your economic argument is called “the externalities” of business, and the left loves the concept as it can be used as justification for all sorts of gov. interventions whether effective or not.
I believe it was Julian Simon who had some generic graph of pollution over the decades and it heads steadily downward for over a hundred years. In the middle he marked the creation of the EPA where nothing at all changes in the downward slope. Economic progress, wealth, and to some extent the media, and people’s dislike of pollution have had a much bigger impact than the EPA.
Yes, Richard Nixon was a leftist to some extent. Donald Rumsfeld was tasked with implementing Nixon’s wage and price controls. (Mao would be proud.) Rumsfeld stated in later years that he was tremendously torn over whether to do a good job at his assigned task and wreck the US economy, or subvert the Pres. wishes, do a bad job, and save the economy.
I think even auto pollution would have eventually declined greatly without the EPA, but one of the problems was that the muscle/pony car thing was taking off at about the same time that air pollution got very bad in places. City air was largely cleaned up with an EPA requirement of 1.0 gm/mile for NOx emissions, although at some point in time the CARB tacked on a 0.5 gm/mile NOx requirement that was helpful.
In more recent decades the EPA and especially the CARB requirements have been terrible. The NOx standard has been brought down to somewhere around 0.03 gm/mile, but the price has been a dramatically lowered engine efficiency and fuel economy. This standard can only be achieved by lowering peak combustion temperatures which directly degrades efficiency. But the whole point is to demand super low emissions and high fuel economy so that gas and diesel engines can be forcibly eliminated. I think electric vehicle tech. is very cool, and would be helpful, if we got some brains like the French and converted most of our power grid to nuclear.
Then there was the whole MTBE gasoline additive debacle, required and abandoned by CARB. Also, there are specialized “boutique” gasoline formulations required by CARB, and used by no other states, that increase costs and do no good.
Montage,
“Government has often been the solution to environmental protections. But that has been a good thing.
Coercion is never a “good thing”.
“The EPA regulations cleaned up water and air in ways no corporation would. But it makes sense because most corporations would normally not be compelled to since it could hurt profits.”
Corporations were ‘compelled’ and the taxpayer paid for it. By instituting regulations that affected all corporations the cost of products and services went up. That cost affected the middle class most of all, so when you complain about the rising cost of living index… look in the mirror.
“Also, other environmental issues like creating National Parks for all to enjoy without developers ruining the view or putting neighborhoods behind gates has been very welcome by most Americans regardless of political leanings.”
News flash! The creation of the National Park system started with the ‘racist’, patriarchal, white Teddy Roosevelt administration. It was indeed a bi-partisan effort. Conservationism has been replaced by enviro-fascism.
“In fact, most everyone likes clean air and water.”
It’s not the goal, it’s how that objective is achieved.
“So in my view the government can also help be a leader to help with the current situation. CA has done pretty well with car emission standards.”
The website “Gas Buddy” reports that gas in Ca ranges from $3.385 to $3.783 a gallon. The nationwide average is $2.651. But what the hell, the middle class can afford it, right?
“I think it’s time for innovation to get us into more non fossil burning vehicles. I don’t think corporations can single-handily do this. But a combination of government initiative, goals and incentives along with the help of corporations can. Let’s work together.
Innovation isn’t there yet but so what? Let’s do it anyway and damn the human wreckage on the way to our glorious future!
BTW, for the left, “Let’s work together” translates as, “be reasonable, see it our way… or else.”
It’s not the goal of a clean environment you seek with which we disagree, it’s the way and how your side proposes to accomplish it that stinks.
When I was in college, I read “On the Beach” Neville Shute’s novel of the end of a nuclear war and the end of human life. I had read two other novels of his that were predictions. One, “Ordeal,” was about a Blitz written in 1938. The other was “No Highway” which predicted the Comet jet airliner crashes from metal fatigue.
I almost dropped out of college. I got over it and have not worried about these disaster scenarios since,
“I think it’s time for innovation to get us into more non fossil burning vehicles. I don’t think corporations can single-handily do this.
I assume you don’t mean the electric cars that are using coal fired power plants to generate the electricity that charges their environmental disaster batteries.
Just kidding. Of course you do.
> Sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg
For the past week my Bing homepage have been giving me updates on this girl. The two headlines went something like this – “teenage girl brings protests to White House” then “Greta testifies in Congress.” I’ve only read a paragraph about her and I already don’t like her. Supposedly she’s autistic and those on the ASD tend to have a fixation on certain things. Her own fixation is the climate.
Shut up kid.
Om, I see what you’re saying and somewhat agree. Once someone proposes regulations there’s always someone who comes along and wants to take regulation to it’s extreme. But that alone shouldn’t be a reason to forego regulation.
TommyJay, good argument.
Mike K, if electricity is now bad (is it really or is that a leftist argument?) then let’s find other solutions. Also, is 1950’s automobile technology the best we can do? Man I hope not. I like innovation.
Geoffrey, I’m not sure what you mean by sides? I’m not a leftist but I do like proposals from anyone who can and will follow through with plans to help with pollution people put into the air and water. Government of the people, by the people… Something like that. And, I don’t hate Teddy. Humans are complex!
Artfldger: “I’m with physics guy cause i know physics very well and enough to make BX science… ”
Well, I’m a lawyer with an engineering background who did not make Bronx Science, and even I know that either (or both) of the following is (are) true: (i) AGW is a crock, and (ii) the solution to the problem supposedly perceived by the leftists/climatistas is, according to them, actually thinning out the human population in pretty much the same way that Pol Pot did in Cambodia.
The biggest tell on the lack of seriousness by climate change alarmists, even more than their personal hypocrisies in leading carbon-lavish lives, is the refusal to consider nuclear power as a solution.
If the world is destined to go down in the flames of fossil fuel warming, any substantial action to reduce carbon emissions ought to be on the table. But not nuclear.
Ten years or so ago I read a Scientific American article presenting a highway to fixing climate change and it wouldn’t consider nuclear as a solution. Instead SciAm went big on the millions and millions of windmills and solar panels necessary that would have to be produced in mind-boggling numbers each month to make some number in 2050. We were already behind the day the issue came out.
SciAm died as a responsible journal twenty years ago, probably more. I miss it.
RIP.
I do find it a horror the way leftists are abusing children these days: indoctrinating them from kindergarten to graduate school, scaring the wits out of them with apocalyptic scenarios and now encouraging them, not only to question their sexuality, but even to start dangerous “transitioning” medical treatments before they have matured, physically and mentally.
__________________________________________
It would be better for such a person to be thrown into the sea with a millstone round the neck than to be the downfall of a single one of these little ones.
https://www.bibliacatolica.com.br/new-jerusalem-bible/luke/17/
As Glenn Reynolds says, “I’ll believe it’s a problem when people who tell me it’s a problem start acting as if it is.”As Glenn Reynolds says, “I’ll believe it’s a problem when people who tell me it’s a problem start acting as if it is.”
VDH agrees:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/democratic-party-debate-cowardice-hypocrisy-nuttiness/
We could spend two days fisking Franzen’s post (obviously, The New Yorker is vying with Vox and the NYT for the Bee’s “most misleading parody of journalism” award.
However, having just linked a Kyle Smith post on the Kavanaugh thread (see below), this jumped out at me.
“Some of the denial, however, is more willful. The evil of the Republican Party’s position on climate science is well known, but denial is entrenched in progressive politics, too, or at least in its rhetoric.”
You can’t even talk to people who believe that, much less find common ground to do anything effective about a problem.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/brett-kavanaugh-hearings-fight-recalls-jokers-two-boats/
The Battle of Brett Kavanaugh and the Joker’s Two Boats
By KYLE SMITH
October 4, 2018 6:30 AM
AesopFan: I do give Andrew Yang credit for backing new generation nukes. I’m not sure if thorium is necessarily the ticket, but if one is serious about climate change and not letting several billion people die off from lack of energy, nuclear is the way to go in the 21st century.
“Andrew Yang Wants Thorium Nuclear Power. Here’s What That Means.”
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a28820813/andrew-yang-nuclear-power/
I would like to know why are not backing the hell out of new nuclear designs.
Some people want to use children as props in the Climate Wars.
https://nypost.com/2019/09/17/the-climate-strike-is-a-crock-that-exploits-kids/
Some people want to eliminate children altogether.
You might call it a modest proposal.
https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/the-day-the-21st-century-started/
TommyJay on September 18, 2019 at 5:26 pm said:
…
There is a publication just put out by the Competitive Enterprise Institute called, “Wrong Again: 50 years of Eco-pocalyptic Predictions “ which contains documentation on the huge misses of the eco-fearmongers of the past, including physicsguy’s example.
I believe that CEI article barely scratches the surface.
* * *
Given the propensity of the leftist minions running the internet today to memory-hole inconvenient truths, I copied that post into a document and saved it.
Seems to me that Franzen has more than a little problem with cognitive dissonance, not to mention a radical disagreement with conservatives.
Franzen:
National Review:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/california-auto-waiver-trump-right-to-revoke/
As Camus pointed out, there is little defense in purely secular thought against “rational terror” against murder in a good cause.
AesopFan: To anyone so inclined, I recommend Camus. Yes, he was a gorgeous French Existentialist and a lady-killer. Yes, he rowed his boat substantially to the left. But as Wretchard noted, Camus parted ways with his leftist colleagues and communists when it came to “murder in a good cause.” He lost a goodly portion of the left over such moral squeamishness. He opposed capital punishment to the end of days.
During WWII many talked resistance, but Camus was in the Resistance. He was an authentic person. I was intrigued when I read “The Stranger” in high school. I have followed him some since. I have a terrible sense his memory is being lost, but it shouldn’t.
Lots of good comments and links.
I agree with physics guy. We must show that their hypothesis about CO2 being the primary driver of warming is wrong. Otherwise, they just call you a denier and that’s that. No one knows exactly what drives the cyclical patterns of warming and cooling that have occurred with some regularity, but the geologic history shows that these cycles have occurred with different values for CO2, which puts it in question as the main driver.
There is so much we don’t know about climate and weather. With satellites we now can see the weather as it moves around the globe and our forecasts have gotten better (but still not perfect). We observe the La Nina, El Nino patterns, but still don’t know exactly why they happen. If we understood the drivers of those shifts, we might have a greater understanding of our weather/climate cycles.
I’m with Bjorn Lomborg. We must adjust to whatever climate change (And it could be to cooler temps.) comes. Adjusting would be much more difficult without fossil fuels, nuclear power, and hydro-electric.
Watch his latest video here: https://www.lomborg.com/news/climate-alarmism-isnt-rational
“Finally, overwhelming numbers of human beings, including millions of government-hating Americans, need to accept high taxes and severe curtailment of their familiar life styles without revolting.”
Without revolting is the key.
We must be sheep, being quiet and sheepish as we are led to our slaughter by the proud, the few, the always-wise elites whom we are blessed to have look after us.
Us Deplorables ain’t sheep. We are armed.
It appears that the cautionary tale of ‘Chicken Little’ was in vain. Humans seem to prefer panic to reason.
“Finally, overwhelming numbers of human beings, including millions of government-hating Americans, need to accept high taxes and severe curtailment of their familiar life styles without revolting.”
That is not the means to achieve the goal. That IS the goal.
It appears that the cautionary tale of ‘Chicken Little’ was in vain. Humans seem to prefer panic to reason
Roy Nathanson: I wonder if “Chicken Little” is taught anymore. It cuts across the grain of progressive apocalypticism.
Seriously. I would like to know.
In sixth grade I remember learning an old American song, “Little Liza Jane,” which wiki informs me goes back before the Civil War. It’s a cinch no one is teaching “Little Liza Jane” in public school anymore. Which I regret, but it’s not exactly a terrible loss.
But has the latest Greta Thunberg video displaced “Chicken Little” in school? It’s quite possible.
So much of Western culture is being lost, intentionally.
George Packer. Jonathan Franzen.
When is Anna Quindlen going to weigh in ?
I am not a climate scientist, but I this is not an impediment for me to understand the issue, rather just the opposite: I understand instead the basic physics and math behind it, while most so-called climate scientists are absolutely ignorant about these matters. So they take at face value “predictions” from numerical models, when no prediction for the type of equations on which these model based are really possible. Their consensus is not scientific, it more like the consensus of theologians about some article of faith, achieved on emotional driven belief about some general features of Universe. And these beliefs of natural scientists are explicitly godless and pagan.
Related:
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14900/vaclav-havel-tribute
In March NPR’s Science Friday had a glowing report on #FridaysForFuture, the “global youth climate strike” that Greta started. The children interviewed want the Green New Deal to “rapidly overhaul every part of our economy and society.” Words matter—that’s what they said they want. The host, Ira Flatow, asked if they would be satisfied if congress passed the GND. Their answer?absolutely not! These totalitarians should be taken seriously.
What’s with Scandinavia? Big in the forefront of environmental bunkum, we have that Thunberg retard and this Norway ecoporn fantasy, with menacing Russians, sell out EU, Jewish character as betrayer/sellout/rat, and the ever-so-noble Somali as the patriot? Dang. I wish Putin would have a look at it and follow through! https://slate.com/technology/2016/02/occupied-a-political-thriller-on-climate-change-now-on-netflix-reviewed.html
There should absolutely be pushback against each and every advocate of Global Warming Alarmism on nuclear power — “you say it’s a crisis, so you support more nuclear power?”
If they don’t, it’s NOT really a crisis.
If CO2 based warming is happening, but so slowly it takes 200 years instead of 100 years (or is that 100-18 since the UN’s alarmism?), does that mean it’s not a crisis?
In all cases, the US coasts need to increase their protection against hurricanes and storms. Throughout the country, folk need to be protected from storms & floods, and droughts and fires.
The fires in CA were hugely exacerbated by Gov. Brown’s refusal to clear out undergrowth, due to (stupid? ignorant?) bad “environmental” policies against human action. Floods near the Missouri river were worsened by the Army Corps of Engineers reducing their priority on flood control, and increasing their desire to be more natural.
Droughts and floods can both be mitigated against by technological fixes — such fixes should be in progress. Whether there is certain or uncertain Climate Change.
Here’s a site when you can stay up-to-date on eco-doomsayer talking points and obsessions-of-the-week. https://www.nytimes.com/section/climate
For example: “Meat is Murder. But you knew that.”
Also, is 1950’s automobile technology the best we can do? Man I hope not. I like innovation.
I assume you mean internal combustion which is 19th century technology. I would suggest reading Henry Ford’s autobiography for the facts,
What do you suggest ? I have no problem with electricity but the people who are advocating it in cars oppose nuclear power. Where are you going to get it ? Solar ? Wind?
Ask the south Australians how they liked last summer’s brownouts when the temp was 38C.
Many good points have been made. I doubt that many or perhaps any of them will make much impact on people with the will to believe.
The question in my mind is, “Why do they have the will to believe? And why now?” I am following the line of inquiry of people like anthropologist Marvin Harris, who argued that people (in groups) adopt ideas or practices when said ideas and practices promise a tangible benefit. He used the same approach in examining religious beliefs. For example, “Why are cows sacred in Hinduism?” So whether we look at the question in terms of the sociology of science, a new religious mania, or a political program, we can use the same methodology.
This line of inquiry leads back to the social, political, and psychological effects of increasing inequality. The hypothesis is that climate change programs and agitation rise as a response to the anxieties caused by inequality. And there are anxieties for rich and poor alike; the anxieties may affect the rich more than the poor.
The correlations in time and place are clear enough, for those of us old enough to remember. It is not an accident that it is an urban phenomenon, that it appeals to the socialist end of the political spectrum, or that the white urban rich embrace it so enthusiastically. The emergence of people like Tom Steyer is over-determined.
I would welcome ideas for experiments to prove or disprove this hypothesis.
I am also happy to suggest the benefits if those aren’t clear enough to everyone here.
Huxely,
I looked up Chicken Little. Apparently, there was a movie made of it in 2005, so it isn’t completly forgotten. Of course, in the movie, the fox doesn’t eat everyone, and the original tale is only the prelude to the main story.
Obama just bought a nice $14.85-million house in Martha’s Vineyard right on the ocean.
https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/190822-barack-michelle-obama-marthas-vineyard-50.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1286
Obviously he has confidence that Trump will address the rising sea levels or he wouldn’t have bought it. So why worry?!
aside, no place to put it
MSN reports on the Trump scandal 10023…
a wistleblower and others are concerned that the president doesnt serve others but is a leaderr…
the LAST PARAGRAPH of a msn article
It was unclear whether the whistleblower witnessed Trump’s communication with the foreign leader or learned of it through other means. Summaries of such conversations are often distributed among White House staff, although the administration imposed new limits on this practice after Trump’s disclosures to Russian officials were revealed.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trumps-communications-with-foreign-leader-are-part-of-whistleblower-complaint-that-spurred-standoff-between-spy-chief-and-congress-former-officials-say/
If it were crisis, Coastal cities, especially New York and Miami would be sending teams of engineers and construction experts over to learn from the Netherlands. Dikes and pumping stations would have already been started. Critical infrastructure would be moved up several stories and hardened. And I guess we don’t care about Riker’s island inmates? North Carolina would prohibit any further building on the outer banks, or at least require such buildings to withstand a Cat 5 hurricane. Houston has done all this and more in response to hurricane damage.
But instead, Al Gore buys a mansion on Malibu beach; former President Obama buys a mansion only 6ft above water level.
Environmentalism long ago became an apocalyptic doomsday cult. When I was in college Rachael Carson published her book “Silent Spring” and claimed that pesticides were going to kill all the birds and give all of us cancer. The book is full of lies. The EPA has a Rachael Carson room honoring her. Evidently the EPA likes liars.
Franzen is well-known for his fiction.
Obama’s reported Vineyard house is not actually oceanfront. It is near waterfront, with an ocean view away across Edgartown Great Pond and the barrier beach. This location would be considered relatively protected from storm damage (lots of land to the Northeast, i.e. in a protected lee), but obviously not from catastrophic rises in sea level.
Rachel Carson has almost as many lives on her conscience (if she had one) as Mao and Stalin. Millions have died of malaria after the DDT ban.
This entire climate change debate over the last 20+ years has established beyond doubt that Scott Adams is 97% right with his over-generalized point the “facts don’t matter”.
The vast majority of people make up their minds based on emotion and tribal loyalty and wanting to fit in and look good with the people they admire, and then they go cherry-pick the “facts” that fit their world view later.
I had a lot of trouble coming around on this, because I’m one of those people who will go where the facts lead me (and that is not always an easy thing to do), but I have to admit he’s right: it’s confirmation bias all the way down. Which is why media disinformation is SO damaging.
Oblio on September 19, 2019 at 10:08 am said:
Many good points have been made. I doubt that many or perhaps any of them will make much impact on people with the will to believe.
The question in my mind is, “Why do they have the will to believe? And why now?”
* * *
Excellent points made.
huxley & Roy: yes, the old fables are being refashioned for new generations, in such a way as to totally undercut the original messages. I think I first started easing away from the liberal-left when it became popular to redo “The Ant and the Grasshopper” into a tale of free-loading socialism masquerading as generosity & diversity.
“The Little Red Hen” fought back, in the days when people still knew what was more likely to happen.
Here is the entire classic tale, followed by a cautionary socialist revision.
http://www.willedwinson.com/the-little-red-hen/#.XYO98ihKhPY
Here is a straight-out socialist version, always looking on the bright side of communitarian team-work without any coercion (contra Hayek and all of history, as it can’t be scaled up past small groups), but skewering the Capitalist Pig just to make the point clear.
https://hitrecord.org/records/1886115
I am not going to go into the science of this but rather the history and politics. Progressivism has always latched on to science to support its grab for power. In the early twentieth century the progressives embraced eugenics. The belief was that this new knowledge would allow us to create a genetic master race. No more physical or mental sickness. Hitler was a true believer. His reverent belief led him to channeling money and resources for the war effort into the final solution. In an odd way, this misapplication of funds helped him lose the war. The current day progressives are now using climate change in the same manner. What is scary about this is that there is no attempt this time to his the “cost” in terms of human suffering. History appears to be repeating itself like a slow moving train wreck.
Sorry, it should be “hide” not “his”.
J.J.
“There is so much we don’t know about climate and weather”
Back in the early ’50s our 9th grade Science teacher told us that the Sun is responsible for weather and climate. Since then I haven’t read any research that’s proven her wrong.
1967: ‘Dire famine by 1975’
1969: ‘Everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam by 1989’
1970: Ice age by 2000
1970: ‘America subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980’
1971: ‘New Ice Age Coming’
1972: New ice age by 2070
1974: ‘New Ice Age Coming Fast’
1974: ‘Another Ice Age?’
1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life’
1976: ‘The Cooling’
1980: ‘Acid Rain Kills Life in Lakes’
1978: ‘No End in Sight’ to 30-Year Cooling Trend
1988: James Hansen forecasts increase regional drought in 1990s
1988: Washington DC days over 90F to from 35 to 85
1988: Maldives completely under water in 30 years
1989: Rising seas to ‘obliterate’ nations by 2000
1989: New York City’s West Side Highway underwater by 2019
1995 to Present: Climate Model Failure
2000: ‘Children won’t know what snow is’
2002: Famine in 10 years
2004: Britain to have Siberian climate by 2020
2008: Arctic will be ice-free by 2018
2008: Al Gore warns of ice-free Arctic by 2013
2009: Prince Charles says only 8 years to save the planet
2009: UK prime minister says 50 days to ‘save the planet from catastrophe’
2013: Arctic ice-free by 2015
2013: Arctic ice-free by 2016
2014: Only 500 days before ‘climate chaos’
Artfldgr,
Bravo!
We must be all very lucky. We keep dodging all these bullets.
Last chance to buy at these prices!!
Not sold in stores!!!
This offer will not be repeated!!!!
paracelsus: “Back in the early ’50s our 9th grade Science teacher told us that the Sun is responsible for weather and climate. Since then I haven’t read any research that’s proven her wrong.”
An excellent point. You might be interested in this website:
https://suspicious0bservers.org/
They have done a lot of work on the connection between the sun and weather/climate. I don’t know enough about Cosmology to quarrel with their hypotheses. Check out their video on climate. They could be correct.
The problem is that the trends play out over such a long time scale and are definitely not straight line or easily recognized when you are talking a degree or two over 200 years. Even measuring the Earth’s average temperature is fraught with land mines. The satellites seem more reliable than land weather stations and scant temperature sensors over the oceans. But of course, the Warmistas beg to differ.
Anyway, for me, there are more questions than definitive answers. Your mileage may vary.
Climate denier joke.
What’s the difference between a fortune teller and a climate modeler? The fortune teller is sometimes right.
Related thoughts on how “climate panic will subvert democracy” here:
https://www.mercatornet.com/mobile/view/climate-panic-will-subvert-democracy
“Panic and democracy are incompatible. Democracies which panic commit atrocities to protect themselves.”
Here is the CEI link:
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions
As I have commented here before, Congress has a history of bringing in idiots to testify about subjects they really know nothing about.
There was the actor, Vince Edwards, who I believe confessed that he had had no actual medical education, but who played Dr. Ben Casey on a popular TV show, who was brought in to testify about medical issues.
Then, they brought in Sally Field, who as far as I know had no actual experience of living and working on a farm, because she played a farm wife in a movie–to testify about farming issues.
So bringing in stuffed to the gills with environmental doomsday propaganda, sock puppet Thunberg, with her Asperger’s laser–like focus on one subject, is following in that tradition.
Who the hell takes the word, analysis, and supposed “wisdom” of some punk kid who, as yet, has had no real life experience about anything, and is getting all of her ideas fed to her, second hand?
P.S.–I guess we’re also supposed to ignore the rather large “Carbon Footprint” she and the crew of her boat generated when they all flew back to Sweden, rather than sailing back, right?
Snow, you have to get over the idea that Congressional hearings are about acquiring knowledge or discerning truth.
They are theater.
Aesop,
If I mistake not, you must be a Fan of some dead white dude name of Aesop. Clue: You refer to “The Ant and the Grasshopper.” 😀
“I did not care,” she said with a disapproving sniff, “for the Communist version of ‘The Little Red Hen.'”
. . .
TommyJay and Geoffrey, points highly pertinent and exceptionally well-laid-out, presented in response to Montage.
But, gad, there’s so much good stuff here. Artfl, thanks for the List of Apocalypses Past. I am distressed to learn from Prince Charles that two years ago !!! we passed the deadline for saving our planet. 😥 I thought AOC told us a year ago that we had another 12 years to go, although I understand some others say she overestimated by two years.
So many exceptionally interesting, informative comments and links here. Thank you all. :>))