Credits
How shall we deal with egregious errors?
Monday 29 August 2011
Memorable lyric: 'people whom we should be ruling must fear global warming. '
I must apologise to any remaining readers for the dearth of posts. I have been a bit unwell for many weeks, but I seem to be back on the mend now and hope to be able to do more soon. In the meantime, here is a song well-worth listening to:
Wednesday 17 August 2011
A sensible perspective on climate just published: an essay accessible to teachers of all subjects
The torrent of alarmism about CO2 and climate variation has swept teachers, as well as politicians and many of the general public, into positions of de facto compliance and collaboration with a new dogma. Some (and may their numbers increase faster than the upturned blade of an ice-hockey stick) are of course questioning this force-fed diet and associated actions which they have been assured are urgent and essential to 'save the planet'.
Where might such a teacher go to formulate or deepen their own perspective on climate? Few would care to dive into the world of the complex computer programs at the heart of the alarmism. Few are in a position to dispute with those who assert a scientific consensus, or more specific appeals to authority. Yet they can all study expository, tutorial, and explanatory materials written by experts in relevant fields, and reflect on the credibility, consistency, coherence, verifiability and tone of them.
One such piece has been published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation:
'The Truth About Greenhouse Gases'
by William Happer, the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University.
The essay begins with a quote from the Madness of Crowds:
“The object of the Author in the following pages has been to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes,” wrote Charles Mackay in the preface to the first edition of his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. I want to discuss a contemporary moral epidemic: the notion that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, will have disastrous consequences for mankind and for the planet. This contemporary “climate crusade” has much in common with the medieval crusades Mackay describes, with true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types, and even children’s crusades.'
The whole essay can be downloaded as a pdf here: http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/happer-the_truth_about_greenhouse_gases.pdf
Note added 21 Sep 2011: Lubus Motl has fisked, and exposed as unimpressive, an attempt to discredit Happer's essay. Poor MacCracken - he may be a 'fat cat alarmist', but he is pretty thin when it comes to intellect and integrity.
Where might such a teacher go to formulate or deepen their own perspective on climate? Few would care to dive into the world of the complex computer programs at the heart of the alarmism. Few are in a position to dispute with those who assert a scientific consensus, or more specific appeals to authority. Yet they can all study expository, tutorial, and explanatory materials written by experts in relevant fields, and reflect on the credibility, consistency, coherence, verifiability and tone of them.
One such piece has been published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation:
'The Truth About Greenhouse Gases'
by William Happer, the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University.
The essay begins with a quote from the Madness of Crowds:
“The object of the Author in the following pages has been to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes,” wrote Charles Mackay in the preface to the first edition of his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. I want to discuss a contemporary moral epidemic: the notion that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, will have disastrous consequences for mankind and for the planet. This contemporary “climate crusade” has much in common with the medieval crusades Mackay describes, with true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types, and even children’s crusades.'
The whole essay can be downloaded as a pdf here: http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/happer-the_truth_about_greenhouse_gases.pdf
Note added 21 Sep 2011: Lubus Motl has fisked, and exposed as unimpressive, an attempt to discredit Happer's essay. Poor MacCracken - he may be a 'fat cat alarmist', but he is pretty thin when it comes to intellect and integrity.
Saturday 13 August 2011
The propaganda pantomime of climate alarmism in education has a cast list of many thousands, and it includes brainwashed journalists, activists of both the ruthless and the naïve varieties, wealthy aristocrats on a mission, and, last but not least, distinctly unimpressed schoolchildren on the receiving end of the nonsense.
The journalist who wrote this may well be an example of a decent person profoundly misled by the climate propaganda drive of the last 30 years of so:
‘An informal survey this spring of 800 members of the National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA) found that climate change was second only to evolution in triggering protests from parents and school administrators. Online message boards for science teachers tell similar tales. Unlike biology teachers defending the teaching of evolution, however, earth science teachers don't have the protection of the First Amendment's language about religion. But the teachers feel their arguments are equally compelling: Science courses should reflect the best scientific knowledge of the day, and offering opposing views amounts to teaching poor science. Most science teachers don't relish having to engage this latest threat to their profession and resent devoting precious classroom time to a discussion of an alleged "controversy." And they believe that politics has no place in a science classroom. Even so, some are being dragged against their will into a conflict they fear could turn ugly.’ (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6043/688.summary)
It is very encouraging to hear of opposition in the United States to the teaching of climate alarmism in schools – let us hope that opposition meets with success sooner rather than later – but the article itself provides, unintentionally, some clue as to why this alarmism has been so readily incorporated into school curricula.
To describe discussion about climate theories as being about an ‘alleged controversy’ is surely symptomatic of deep brainwashing. The case for alarm over CO2 has never been convincing, and the models used to support it have failed in substantial ways whenever they can be compared with the real atmosphere – so much so that even their creators regard them as unfit for forecasting. The climate variations we have seen over the past 30 years of this deliberate propagandising are consistent with ‘business as usual’ in the climate system and have shown no indication at all of anything extraordinary happening other than the annual increases in ambient CO2 measured at Mona Loa. Calmer minds, and ones well-qualified in the relevant sciences, have noted that a further doubling of CO2 levels such as we might see over the next 100 years, is likely to contribute an overall temperature increase in the vicinity of 1C, an amount that will be hard to distinguish from the other sources of variation in the system which have brought about, for example, the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and the approx. 1C per century warming since the end of it. Furthermore, we might well hope that such warming will continue, since warmer periods have been overwhelmingly beneficial to humanity, while the cold ones have been harder on us.
Joseph Bast of the Heartland Institute has made a more detailed critique of the article in Science here: http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2011/08/10/heartland-replies-science
His Fisking identifies 3 substantial reasons why Sara Reardon, the author of the piece, ought to be ashamed of her shoddy journalism, and goes on to conclude:
‘The reason the teaching of climate change is so controversial is because environmental advocates, many of them coming from the liberal end of the political spectrum, are using the subject to advance their political agendas. The goal should be to get politics out of the classroom, not protect it by banning debate and censoring objective sources of research.’
Meanwhile, the millions continue to pour into the coffers of those who are making the most of the climate opportunity to advance their cause. This particular grant is intended to: '... help governments understand the fundamental social, cultural and institutional prerequisites that have to be in place to develop effective responses to dangerous environmental change.'
Here is a description of what Martin Durkin calls ‘posh-anti-capitalism’ - it seems to have affected so many wealthy aristocrats, and others, and which seems to be so widespread in the climate movement::
‘The next time you’re forced to attend a dinner party, keep an eye out for the global warmer. Then ask him what he thinks about supermarkets (wicked), ‘consumer society’ (soulless), world trade (cruel) and government regulation (more needed). Global warmers are, in short, anti-capitalist. But – and here’s the really important thing to understand – it’s a very specific form of anti-capitalism. We might call it posh anti-capitalism.
In the old days, when there was less swearing on TV and kids were scared of policemen, anti-capitalism was coloured Red. The Reds complained that capitalism would cause the ‘immiseration’ of the workers, and they dreamed of giant socialist factories, out-producing the West.
The tragedy (for the Reds) was that capitalism didn’t play ball. Instead of getting poorer, ordinary folk got richer – much, much richer. For the simple reason that capitalist mass production must necessarily go hand in hand with mass consumption. What the new-leftists call ‘consumer society’. But these days, anti-capitalists are coloured Green. They campaign not in the name of the working class, but of ‘Earth’. Instead of giant factories, they dream of little handicraft workshops and organic peasant farms. They complain not that capitalism will impoverish the workers, but, on the contrary, that capitalism has made them too rich. It is the very success of capitalism that seems to upset them.’
Here is another example of left-wing exploitation of the young for political ends, a video showing the finished products, or are they? I suspect they might well suspect they are being misused, and if not now, then they surely will when they look back on it as adults:
But to end on a more cheerful note, here is a recent anecdote from Damian Thompson in the Telegraph Blogs suggesting that the propaganda drive has been overdone:
But parents shouldn’t worry that their girls will turn into eco-loons. “Honestly,” says my informant, “we’re all, like, sooo bored with climate change. I can’t wait to leave school to escape.”’