Above Us the Waves
UPDATED: May 8, 12:38 BST
W Stephen Gilbert
The salient point about Cassandra the mythological princess, and Dr Stockmann in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, and Chief Brody in Peter Benchley’s Jaws is not that they predicted calamity or that they were proved right after several individuals (thousands in Cassandra’s case) had unnecessarily died. It was that they were ignored and even reviled. So it is with the most significant issue of the age, indeed the most significant event in the history of the world: climate change.
Predictably enough, the coverage of the on-going worldwide action by the groups acting under the umbrella Extinction Rebellion and the school strikes inspired by the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg has concentrated on their conduct rather than their aims. Sitting down, skipping school, sleeping over and supergluing are of more interest to the mainstream media than the survival of the planet. Politicians and media commentators prate about irresponsibility, civil disobedience, disruption and cost, unmindful that these are but a drop in the rising ocean.
Peter Harper, the pioneering prophet of alternative technologies, was telling our local Labour party the other week that the expert consensus now is that we have, at best, fifteen years before the whole of eastern England including London, along with Toronto, New York, Florida and the eastern seaboard of the United States, and the low countries and much else of western Europe, disappears under permanent flood water.**
The window of opportunity for pre-emptive action that will limit, let alone prevent, this outcome is fast closing. Some time in the next decade, the tipping point will come, the damage will be irreparable, irrevocable, irreversible.
My partner and I have no issue. We fear for the children and even more the grandchildren of our friends, but for ourselves we need not wonder what fate we bestowed on anyone we have brought into a doomed world. We have always assumed that our deaths would precede Armageddon. And long ago, we moved to the west country. But if we were ever tempted to feel smug about our relative age and our choice of base, we can no longer comfort ourselves. While the end of the world appeared to be a far-off fantasy, we could enjoy its fictional representations in the scenarios of disaster literature and movies. But gradually, alongside the possibility of nuclear catastrophe returning to consideration, especially in the hands of death-cult groups, the spread of uncontrollable bacteria or global epidemic became credible.
And now climate change has overtaken all other threats, not as something far off and largely imaginary but as terrifyingly imminent. My partner and I, hitherto immune to the danger because of human life expectancy, may well still be around in fifteen years, by which time the vulnerability of old age will be rather more apparent to us.
The prospect of huge numbers of English refugees fleeing west – by then perhaps as many as 30 million of them – fills one with dread. Look how unsympathetically the European nations have handled the comparatively small numbers of refugees seeking help from them over the last few years. So the breakdown of order is a given. What proportion of desperate people, many exhibiting the Londoner’s characteristic sense of entitlement, would be content to wait patiently for the provisions that the authorities have made for them? Indeed, in the nightmare scenario that Theresa May is still the prime minister in 2035, scant provision will have been made because parliament will have been wholly engaged in dispute about the precise depth to which the floodwater is predicted to rise, with the grande dame determined to push through her policy based on a flooding projection merely to the depth of a couple of centimeters.
Politicians, particularly in Britain, like to sit back and congratulate themselves on the pitiful restrictions they have enacted and the puny long-term goals they have set, promising to reduce vehicular emissions just a tad when what they face is the impossibility of travel by any means save boat and raft. We are all fetishising small, targeted causes and ignoring the scale of the overarching disaster. What is the good of saving the tiger or the honey bee, the rain forest or the coral reef when, in a foreseeable future, flora and fauna will be globally decimated, surviving only in random pockets until they too are hunted to extinction for food? As half of England disappears under water, how many creatures, save those that can fly distances, will perish as we struggle to save ourselves?
It’s not as if these warnings are new. In her seminal book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson identified the extensive use of pesticides as having a profoundly deleterious effect on the environment. That was in 1962, 57 years ago. Who listened?
The UN’s recent report on climate change anticipates a million extinctions of plants and animals unless action is taken, and taken now. Who can doubt that the extinction of the human race will follow, and sooner rather than later? We are the authors of our own fate. In his recent BBC programme on the subject, Climate Change – The Facts (still available on iPlayer), David Attenborough limned “our greatest threat in thousands of years”. Among the experts consulted, the Chief Executive of the Committee on Climate Change, Chris Stark, drily noted: “The costs of action are dwarfed by the costs of inaction”. Stark enough for you?
For the mainstream media, the UN report was a big story but played second to the obviously much more significant news of a royal birth. One wonders whether the Sussexes have pondered where they will flee to once the London palaces are flooded. Of the 25 current royal residences, only four may be expected to be untouched by the imminent inundation: Highgrove, Gatcombe, Llwynywermod in Carmarthenshire and possibly Barnwell Manor in Northants. The rest, even those in Scotland, are vulnerable because of successive royals favouring eastern counties. Perhaps the Duke of Cambridge could be persuaded to speak up louder about what we face. As monarch, he may be presiding over an unimaginable crisis.
Labour has urged the government to declare a climate emergency, a gesture that will be no more than that if not followed up. As Jeremy Corbyn put it, in proposing a number of large but unspecified measures, “it’s a chance that won’t be available to succeeding generations”. But we have to ensure that the ‘could’ in his hope that “we could set off a wave of action from parliaments and governments around the world” is in practice a ‘will’. The world is swinging hard to the right and governments of the hard right are not exercised by the global emergency; indeed, they doubt its very existence. Trump calls it a hoax. Brazil now has a president whose policy is to clear the Amazon basin for short-term profit, with no thought for the global implications. Why has not the International Court of Justice already sought pre-emptive measures to prevent his carrying through this policy? Why is Trump being permitted to reactive the American fossil fuel companies, purely to obtain the workers’ votes in 2020?
Despite Trump, New York City is enacting a $20 billion programme to combat the local effects of climate change, addressing such issues as coastal protection and drainage capacity. The coastline around Lower Manhattan is being raised twenty feet above the current sea level. Millions of additional trees have been planted across the city to help to control rising summer temperatures. All new builds have to meet stringent green requirements. New protections have been created to prevent the flooding of the subway system. “Managed retreat” plans have been enacted as a result of Hurricane Sandy more than six years ago. Congestion pricing will be introduced in the next two years and vehicle emissions are intended to be halved by 2025. Will that be sufficient? And how much is London investing in something similar?
Late last year, London mayor Sadiq Khan and civic leaders in other cities also declared “a climate emergency”. Khan’s plan is to make his city carbon neutral by 2050, but he does not explain how you achieve such a target in a metropolis that has by then been under water for fifteen years. The London Assembly wisely passed a motion to bring forward Khan’s target by twenty years. But is it realistic?
What seems clear is that politicians generally, ever mindful of this week’s measure of popularity, have no will to do more than nibble at the edges. They may have calculated that they’ll be dead by 2050 and so they won’t care. But if they are out by as many years as the scientists now fear, some at least of them will live to see their names reviled and perhaps find themselves hunted down by starving and vengeful refugees, many of those refugees being people who thought they were immune to tomorrow’s disaster. Then the politicians might learn too late something about irresponsibility, disruption and cost.
**UPDATE 12/05/19: Peter Harper points out that the timeframe sketched by him and mentioned in the article refers to the opportunity to put measures in place to prevent the seas rising by more than three feet by century’s end, rather than the time shortly after which a large landmass will be inundated. He says: “In my view the best avenue for the Labour Party would be a major infrastructural renewal programme that would bring millions of new jobs. They could forge rational alliances with appropriate businesses and redirect the universities to provide the necessary research and training. They should reorganise the tax system to be revenue-neutral but make carbon visible in prices”.
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http://www.drtimball.ca/2019/it-is-time-to-expose-the-sanctimonious-ben-santer-to-the-new-generation-of-skeptics/
Dr. Tim exposes the 1995 fraud committed in the UN IPCC report to fabricate “a discernable human influence”
John Doran.
If the link does not go directly to the article, scroll down a few articles on the right hand side
JD.
http://www.drtimball.ca/2019/it-is-time-to-expose-the-sanctimonious-ben-santer-to-the-new-generation-of-skeptics/
Toronto flooded by the rising sea ? Surely you jest. And while Toronto, as one the largest cities in North America encompasses a large area, it is nowhere near the sea, and in fact has a lowest altitude of 76.5 m. You must be thinking of Toyota, the largest city in Japan, which is right on the ocean.
And no need to rush out and thank me. We all make mistakes. Heck even I’ve made one once in a while.
A scientific look at sea level rise over the last 20,000 years, since the depths of the last glacial period.
Bullet Points:
Sea level rise: 1.3mm/yr to 1.8mm/yr.
Coral grows ~ 2mm/yr. No coral islands lost.
No major sea rise ~6,000 yrs.
Good, easy to understand graphs. Clear easy to understand text.
[single para edited for content-free ad hom]
http://www.notrickszone.com/2011/02/16/a-level-look-at-sea-levels/
JD.
A sober scientific proof CO2 (plant food Carbon Dioxide) not Carbon pollution as lazy liars say, cannot control temperatures. An 11,000 year graph of our Holocene Warm Period.
For about the last 1,000,000 years our climate has run in cycles of about 100,000 years: about 10,000 years warm & about 90,000 years cold.
This present interglacial is no different:
http://www.wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/22/core-of-climate-science-is-in-the-real-world-data/
JD.
They must be rubbing their hands in glee at CiF these days. This site set up by those who had been pre-moderated, for talking unpalatable sense to the ruling class, now runs a serious, perfectly sensible article on Climate Change and the great majority of comments are variations of the message being promoted by the capitalists: ‘it is all a hoax’; those protesting against it are corrupted agents of the corporations and idiots who cannot see that to protest against the status quo is to help sustain it.
But then, Stephen Gilbert has ‘form’ : he confesses immediately that he attends Labour Party meetings. And we all know, from the comments, that the Labour Party, more than ever now with its dangerously deceptive shape shifting leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is a full partner in every cunning capitalist plan, such as this pretended opposition to so called ‘global warming’.
Such a critical asset of the intelligence community,is ‘Corbyn’, that it devotes much of its energy to pretending to fear and despise him. Only yesterday Pompeo, the Secretary of State who used to head the CIA and is notoriously a tool of the Koch petroleum empire, singled him out as an enemy of the United States-an infallible sign that he is nothing of the kind.
What we have seen since the days when CiF was in its prime is a revolution: it used to be that the reactionary, narrow minded nonsense appeared, at great expense to The Guardian, above the line. And the comments, below the line (begging to be censored) were sensible, evidence based arguments, truths being held up to the face of power.
Now the reverse is the case.
The Guardian is squarely behind the reality of manmade climate change, as is the BBC, and most liberal outlets. Unlike us, though, they would censor the ‘deniers.’
Admin, that really should be “reality” of manmade climate change, or fantasy?
JD.
But, three cheers to you for allowing opposing perspectives.
The sequence of XR Extinction Rebellion; Greta Thunberg and her Climate Strikers; Attenborough’s BBC climate change propagandic piece to camera Greta’s meeting with JC; JC’s ‘climate emergency’; the CCC report the very next day (outlining the ‘net zero’ neoliberal psyop); the IPBES landmark 15 year report the next week; today, the setting up of a geo-engineering feasibility project (to cool the poles) …is anything but an authentic grassroots protest. I do not believe in cornucopias of coincidence.
Not when you consider that Greta went off message in Katowice; and started blaming the 1% – which Avaaz censored. She has not gone off message since. You mention the Kochtopus: where are some of these ‘Unicorn’ startups get their capitalisation from? One of the main backers of Greta is ‘We Don’t Have Time’ – which is true, BTW. But they are set up to make money from carbon offsets – which aren’t even a thing – unless the course of action laid out in the CCC makes them a thing. Did you notice the short-term XR Business website – set up to do the same? Problem-crisis-solution?
The CCC was written by industry reps and Gummer. One of the lead authors is from Drax. One of the lead policies for negative carbon emissions is BECCS. Guess what Drax does?
So what is Corbyn’s part in this? And Pompeo is a puppet, as you pointed out. He said one set of things with Hunt, then a completely contradictory set of things later in the day – contradicting the supposed bonhomie with Hunt. Could it not be that you are taken in by the Kochtopus too?
So, there is a very real existential extinction level event slowly unfolding. It does not look much different day on day – but hidden variables, such as entropy are at work. We have one chance at mitigation and sustainability, and dark forces and dark money are weaponising our future against us for short term returns for them. And the loss of the future for us. And who made himself the political figurehead for this? I have no idea why, but Labour now represent a clear and present danger to all life on earth. And still you think Corbyn to be above such things? Maybe that is why he was chosen? Because the sequence of events look more like a fake-green astroturf campaign to socially engineer ‘catatonic capitalist consensus’ framing – which is what CCC should really be an acronym for.
If we are led, by the supporting of Labour, down this dead end alley there is no exit. I say that not lightly, but after studying both the major reports. If you want a technical discussion as to why, I’m open to that. Otherwise, you will have to take it from me that the major proposals are death-trap energy sinks.
I find, and have consistently found, the general level of discussion of this topic on OffG depressing (both above and below the line).
Take this recent article (below) by Clive Splash for example. An environmental economist who has studied what the elite financiers of the world plan to do about the fossil fuel problem(s), he also can see the XR, Greta phenomena for what they are : signal generators in a public relations drive to capitalise nature. Wholesale.
Medialens don’t get this because they’re smoked out on hopium.
Corbynistas don’t get this because they are planning their Green New Deal (read Grey Bad Deal).
OffG could have published Splash’s article which is far more interesting.
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/05/09/the-climate-movement-what-next/
What is happening right now appears to be a classic case of a passive revolution. When hegemonic power is threatened it captures the movement leaders and neutralises them by bringing them into the power circles and takes the initiative away from radical revolutionary change. In addition, the aim is to split movements and their demands by separating the pragmatic from the radical, forming new alliances with the pragmatic wings and thereby incorporating radical movement language with their own ‘pragmatic’ demands. The threatened elites create captured movements and leaders, adopting the language of the rebels and claiming to address their concerns. Those joining them can claim to be more ‘pragmatic’ because they are connected to the powerful and see how to save the system. None of this is any different from the decades of NGO capture and new environmental pragmatism, but the latest moves are more overt because the stakes are getting higher.
If this doesn’t happen I will eat my hat.
If it does, my hat might be all I have left to eat.
So much of this Global Warming BS is counter productive and a complete waste of time and resources that could be devoted to real problems.
In places like Norway, electric cars are heavily subsidised to the tune of about 850 million euros a year. No car tax, no import duty, no 25% VAT, no road tolls. Free parking and free electric charging, and you can use the bus lanes. Sounds great! But where does all this largesse come from? From the 6 billion euros in revenue from the oil/ gas industry. So a lot of Norwegians get an additional electric car. They still keep the gas guzzler 4x4s they need to take them and the skis to the mountain hut. You aren’t going to take the G Whiz which is liable to run out of volts and conk out without warning at any moment.
But people can smugly preen themselves and virtue signal to their heart’s content about how green they are. No need to worry about all the energy and materials that goes into producing all those extra cars which people wouldn’t bother getting otherwise.
When Livingstone was London Mayor, he had a wizard wheeze which fortunately never came off, to charge people like builders and tradesman with old vans a whopping daily fee of £200 for the privilege of driving in London. The idea was, they would all be forced to buy a brand new van every couple of years, or be forced off the road. Again, no consideration of the cost on businesses or the energy and materials required for a mass of new vans.
I remember various Liberal and Green wan*ers like Clegg and others spouting off and going through mental gymnastics about how huge subsidies for windmills and the like would actually lead to lower fuel bills for the Deplorables. Because – the cost of energy would rise so high that people wouldn’t be able to afford it, and so would actually end up spending less on fuel bills. See? Simples!
I really enjoyed this exercise in emotional anti-scientific incontinence: not a single reference to back up the longest list of scare-porn drivel I’ve seen in a long time.
I bust out laughing.
Sea levels are rising globally at about 1.8mm per year. Satellite data show this.
That’s about 40 years to overflow a single course of bricks, at 3 inches, 75mm.
Dr. Nils Axel Morner is a world authority: any youtube, essay or paper by him is worth reading.
In some areas, coastland is falling, in others, raising still after the retreat of the last Ice Sheets, 20,000 to 15,000 years ago.
The fat fraudstar & profiteer Al Gore predicted 20 ft sea level rises then bought a seaside property.
Is there a clue there, do you think? Gore has become a multi-millionaire on this fraud, scaring the wits out of kids, their ill-informed teachers & parents. Gore runs a mile to avoid debating Lord Christopher Monckton, who showed up 9 of the 35 lies in his “Inconvenient Truth”, in a Brit court of law.
Is there a clue there, do you think? The judge very politely termed them “errors of fact”.
For beginners to the warming/climate fraud I recommend this book:
Human Caused Global Warming The Biggest Deception In History (2016)
by climatologist Dr. Tim Ball.
Only 121 pages, in laymans’ terms. A must read.
The science & scandals, the politics & profiteers. No better place to start.
He names the bent politicians & bent “scientists”.
He bravely names the Bankster Rockefellers & George Soros as among the main funders & others.
He names their motives: Depopulation, de-industrialisation & a totalitarian world govt.
He names the dumb duo who concocted the 97% consensus lies: Naomi Klein, science “historian” & John Cook of skepticalscience. This great little handbook contains a list of further reading.
Dr. Tim has won his first court case against Canadian “Green” politician, Andrew Weaver.
He is well on his way to winning his second against Michael Mann who tried to wipe out 900 years of history, The Medieval Warm Period & the Little Ice Age, with his pathetic Hockey Stick Graph.
Mann has failed to show agreed papers to the court & can now be called a fraud openly & without fear of legal reprisal.
John Doran.
Talking of “emotional anti-scientific incontinence” – as linked to the other day – is that creationist Tim-nice-but-dim Ball who has less than zero credibility as a clown ‘climatologist’. The retired geographer who admitted in court that he invented his climatology credentials: and abandoned a libel case against because he did not have a credible career or reputation that could be libeled.
Similarly, the Weaver case he ‘won’ was on the basis that his attack on Weaver was such “emotional anti-scientific incontinence” that it could not be taken as anything other than satirical comedy.
The judge said it lacked “a sufficient air of credibility to make them believable and therefore potentially defamatory.”
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/judge-finds-written-attack-on-climate-scientist-too-ludicrous-to-be-libel/
Ball, Monckton …all you are missing is Corbyn and Lawson for a who’s who of idiots pretending to be idiots.
Can we suggest both sides here discuss the evidence and leave aside the alleged credibility of this or that person. It’s just not helpful, or interesting, and can easily seem like mere ad hom.
Admin, I appreciate your desire to keep this “debate” above the ad hom level. I really do.
However,
the whole CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic (man-made) Global Warming ) fraud is built upon the destruction of persons because it does not stand forensic examination of facts in court cases or factual debates.
For example, the fraud was rebranded from global warming after 1998 to climate change because Earth has seen no statistically significant warming since 1998.
That’s 21 full years.
All of a sudden man-made CO2 is causing climate change? PUHLEEEASE.
The climate’s been changing “for about 4.5 billion years”, as Buzz Aldrin said, correctly.
Back in the 1970s the big scare was “Ice Age Coming”, when I had just left school.
Then, it was man-made industrial particulates in the air, blocking the Sun.
Then it was man-made industrial CO2 causing global warming.
Then it was man-made industrial CO2 causing climate change.
Versatile stuff, plant food, isn’t it?
Carbon Dioxide, CO2, is in fact the tiniest fraction of the Greenhouse Effect, at best.
Water, H2O, invisible as vapour or visible as clouds is 95% plus of the Greenhouse Effect
Talk of “tipping points” or “runaway” greenhouse warming is sheer ascientific nonsense
You will never hear these facts from our corrupted MSM, govts or govt agencies.
The reason the Trolls are so frantic to destroy the reputation of Dr. Tim Ball is that he is an excellent communicator as well as a top climatologist: he taught, for over 20 years, a science course to non-science students. This is why the Trolls are so keen to portray him as incoherent. Read any of his essays on his website: http://www.drtimball.ca
Read his books.
Because the facts really should be sacred.
Best,
JD.
If what you say is true then you’re making my point for me. The best rebuttal of ad hom is to ignore it and insist the focus remains on the data, not to resort to ad hom in return.
Maybe BigB can explain what is faulty in Tim Ball’s science, and you can present the counter case. Point by point. That would be interesting and illuminating. This isn’t.
I’m game.
Funny enough I just posted above 10.02 am a sober scientific article, proof
CO2 does not control temperatures or therefore climate.
Let’s see how the BigB does sticking to science.
I’m game.
Congratulations, Admin, for getting the wrong end of the stick. And moderating the guy doing empirical, science based research. If you go to the “Send Labour a Message” forum: you will see I posted a lot of factual analysis. As I have been doing for what, two years? You will also see I explained my analysis to Maggie, who had previously ad homed me several times (not moderated though), as I have down at least three times before.
Underneath my analysis you will see that it was dismissed/ad homed with “your oil addiction” is a fake boogeyman: fossil fuels are greening the planet.” Which was a total negation and deflection from the well argued case I had made – from science. Into a baseless anti-scientific, anti-realist provocation that has been debunked a thousand times before. Even though I couldn’t really be bothered, I did try and show that greening (CO2 fertilisation) is a basic misunderstanding of ecology. If you increase CO2 uptake, you increase mineral uptake, and the limiting factors become subject to the law of the minimum. Water and nitrogen limit growth. This is well established and scientific fact. I even posted a paper.
So if we are going to do science fact and not science fiction analysis: can either of you produce a single scrap of evidence that refutes entropy. If you cannot refute the laws of thermodynamics, you cannot refute EROI either – which is a derived second law statement. Instead, you want to divert broad analysis of the Human Impact crisis into the corporate narrative trap of reframing it as a climate crisis – so that they can capitalise the mitigation. You have to ask, who is trolling – the guy who frames a broad church analysis on sound science – or the guy who denies entropy to obfuscate the severity of the crisis of civilisation facing humanity?
You do both admit that there is a Human Impact crisis? Because the implicit suggestion in the greening statement is that burning hydrocarbons is good for the planet. Which is an anti-realist, anti-science insanity.
As I have said to John numerous times before: reality is not a suite of options you get to pick and choose from. If entropy is not part of the analysis, it is not analysis …and barely qualifies as credible opinion. But well done for enabling anti-analysis.
Compared to the future of humanity – which is under threat by the profligate lives we lead, whether either of you care to admit it or not – Tim Ball is an absolute non-entity. As I have said repeatedly now: the climate cannot be isolated out from our total activity. It is anti-science to even suggest so. Everithing is linked – even debt and the environmental degradation and violence we are doing to ourselves and the planet. If either of you have any real questions – not deflections into neoliberal anti-framing and obfuscation – about any the points I make, ask. If you want to do science: start by including entropy. It might help make your analysis reality based.
@BigB,
ok, what’s this entropy you keep banging on about, endlessly?
Is that when the Sun burns out in about 7 billion years?
John Doran.
Tim Ball’s lack of credibility is legend, and extremely pertinent …especially when someone is trying to pass him off as an ‘authority’. The fact that he has been laughed out of court more than once, citing that his amateurish ‘evidence’ was childish drivel, not worthy of being credibly defamatory, which no one could take as a serious libel …again, becomes extremely pertinent when someone claims he ‘won’ the case. Which, technically he did – but that is being misrepresented here to make it look as the retired geographer has any credibility whatsoever. Which he does not. So there is no evidence to discuss, not from Ball. He deliberately misrepresents the evidence. A fact that has not stood up in court.
As I said in my main comment: you cannot frame the Human Impact crisis on the climate. Not least, because that is a) the vector neoliberalism is setting; b) it is the vector contrarians can latch on to to try and discredit the seriousness of our impact on all the planets systems. John refutes entropy and hydrocarbon depletion: and hangs it on Ball and Monckton. How on earth can I discuss the issues with someone who denies entropy? Check the comments, I’ve even tried to explain that in a rational manner – only to be dismissed. If rational dialogic communication is dismissed, what means of communication can we engage in? Entropy exists; no it doesn’t; oh yes it does; oh no it doesn’t… it’s a circus, but not one I created.
I’m sure you’re well aware that generalised personal attacks such as “he’s an idiot”, “he was laughed out of court”, “he has no credibility” are routinely used as a means of diverting the argument away from the data and toward the person presenting it. For this reason they should never be used by those who have real valid fact-based arguments to deploy.
No, they are NOT pertinent, because they are subjective and impossible to verify. “No credibility”, with whom? According to what source? How much “credibility” does the person claiming “no credibility” have? It’s the kind of foggy, fact-free nonsense dismissal employed by the mainstream media, designed to play to a person’s preconceptions and prejudices. We don’t want to see it here.
http://www.principia-scientific.org/breaking-climatologist-dr-tim-ball-wins-epic-libel-court-battle/
Weaver sat in court for three weeks, silent. He offered not a word of evidence.
His & his attack dog lawyer’s sole intent was to bankrupt Dr. Ball. They failed.
They failed.
Friends & crowdfunding ensured that free speech & truth had their day in court.
Dr. Tim’s next court case is 75% won.
The outrageous fraud Michael Mann tried to wipe out 900 years of history:
The Medieval Warm Period & The Little Ice Age, in order to make the 20th century warming look exceptional. He failed.
He failed.
He failed to provide agreed documents to the court & can now be openly called a fraud without fear of legal reprisal. I hope his fraud bankrupts him. His Hockey Stick Graph fraud has made him, very briefly, the darling of the fraud factory UN IPCC, but everlastingly a “Disgrace To The Profession”, as the book by journalist Mark Steyn correctly calls him.
Mann is, in effect, a “useful idiot” footsoldier for “the cause”.
JD.
Stick around. Plenty more left in Pandora’s box yet.
Ten years ago, this is precisely what I believed too. But I have to admit that, more and more, I consider myself a global-warming skeptic.
Why did I refuse to question the media consensus (not scientific consensus!) on this issue for so long? Well, for openers, I have no real background in climatology, so how was I supposed to make any sense out of a bunch of footnoted white-papers on the subject? But more to the point: I have always considered myself an environmentalist, so I thought it was my duty to ‘stick up for the planet,’ as it were.
But one thing that made me suspicious of the climate-change hoopla was the fact that, as time went on, it seemed to crowd out more and more of the other important environmental topics, such as pollution and resource conservation. Moreover, after thirty years or so of proclaiming imminent catastrophe, I kept wondering when we were finally going to lose New York, Amsterdam or Bangladesh. In fact–as far as I’m aware–we still haven’t lost so much as one single Pacific atoll! Those would have been long gone by now, had AGW been for real.
So color me skeptical here.
I feel the same. I also took it for granted that the global warming narrative was right, having dutifully watched Al Gore’s movie on that when it came out. What gave me pause in my acceptance of this idea actually came from an unlikely source: Alexander Cockburn from my my favorite news site, at the time (no longer!!!), Counterpunch. He got in a lot of trouble with his co-editor, St. Claire, for his heresy, actually. He had a fascinating run-in with George Monbiot over this issue which was hilarious to read. You may be able to find his posts on the archives, even though they were basically shunned by St. Claire, but he can’t delete posts of the co-founder of that site, much as I am sure he would like to.
Subsequently, the solar influence explanation frankly makes more sense. For one thing, using sunspots as a way of detecting solar activity give one plausible explanation for the Little Ice Age whereas AGW cannot be attributed as a reason for that very long period of global cooling not so long ago.
This a link where this is explained at climate conference not so long ago by Professor Valentina Zharkova: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_yqIj38UmY
“In fact–as far as I’m aware–we still haven’t lost so much as one single Pacific atoll!”
Colour you ‘thick’?
I have a friend who’d like to meet you. His monocle is so powerful that whenevet he strains on the khazi his other eye is looking right up his passed-due date.
The scare headline is, as per usual with the Graun, not fully borne out by the text. There’s ambiguity – to say the least – whether the loss of land is due to rising sea levels or land erosion. Is there anything to clarify this?
I think you’re spot on right here Seamus Padraig.
Valentina Zharkova is doing fascinating work with the heartbeat of the Sun.
Her prediction of a mini ice age 2020 to 2050 ish with 97% claims of accuracy is phenomenal.
And will very soon be proven or disproven. That’s science.
I got an invite to this GWPF presentation, but couldn’t attend.
Her work, plus Svensmark’s work on clouds are probably the best advances in climate science in the last 40 years.
John Doran.
“Predictably enough, the coverage of the on-going worldwide action by the groups acting under the umbrella Extinction Rebellion and the school strikes inspired by the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg has concentrated on their conduct rather than their aims. Sitting down, skipping school, sleeping over and supergluing are of more interest to the mainstream media than the survival of the planet. Politicians and media commentators prate about irresponsibility, civil disobedience, disruption and cost, unmindful that these are but a drop in the rising ocean.”
Intentionally or otherwise, our friend is making a “Look! Over there!” move. Greta Thunberg, it really does appear, is being used. Hopefully she won’t be ruined, the way they (her parents included!) proceeded to ruin Bana Alabed (the possible consequence of using her for propaganda purposes). Protecting the natural world ‘is’ more than ever needed. Unfortunately, the despoilers who don’t have principles also know that and don’t intend to pass up a good propaganda opportunity, as Cory Morningstar reveals (perhaps not terribly eloquently, but thoroughly). Thanks go to 21st Century Wire for putting me onto this.
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/17/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/
“The Ruination Of Bana Alabed” – https://arrby.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/the-ruination-of-bana-alabed/
There’s this little nugget waiting to resurface when the coast is clear too…
https://xrbusiness.org/
“This website is unavailable at present” And on and on…
Stephen Glibert: May I introduce you to Ralph Nader?: “An Open Letter to the Environmental Community” – https://nader.org/2019/05/03/an-open-letter-to-the-environmental-community/
An excerpt from Nader’s very welcome article follows:
I don’t know if this utter garbage is intended as a spoof, but I’m assuming it’s not.
We have all the usual bald assertions unsupported by a shred of evidence, “In 15/12/11/4 years (pick whatever figure suits you) we’ll all be under water…..London and New York submerged……30 million refugees………” etc.etc.etc. Just make something up. “We have exactly 8 months, 11 days, 14 hours and 12 minutes left to save the planet.”
I’m old enough to remember “all the scientists” telling us all in similar hushed, apocalyptic tones that we were facing an imminent new Ice Age, and you’d have to fight off marauding polar bears every time you went out to post a letter. And ten years ago, “the scientists” warning us that children would never see snow again.
As Corporal Jones would say, “Don’t panic!” There is NO global warming. At most there is a fluctuation of about a third of a degree Fahrenheit. There is NO rise in sea levels. CO2 is NOT a problem. CO2 is vital for life. You could double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and it wouldn’t make any difference. The ice caps and the polar bears are doing just fine. Temperatures change on the neighbouring planets for the same reason temperatures have changed on this planet historically – the Sun is knocking out a bit more or less heat than before. The Vikings called Greenland green because it was. It had a much milder climate than today. In the 1300s we had the Little Ice Age. The Thames regularly froze over and markets and fairs were routinely held on it year after year.
Anyone with half a brain cell can see that “the scientists” don’t know what they’re talking about. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, the best thing you can do is say so and leave things well alone. “The scientists” previously told us we needed to cover the ice caps with soot to warm them up a bit and prevent the new Ice Age. Then they said we needed to put giant mirrors in space to cool them down a bit to stop the dreaded Global Warming.
This is the biggest hoax since Skripal and Russiagate. On the basis of this utter garbage, we are expected to dismantle the whole of our economy and way of life.
But ……..what about “the scientists”? There are literally tens of thousands of scientists who have put their heads above the parapet to challenge this POLITICAL (not scientific) orthodoxy. Many of them risking their livelihoods, tenure and funding to do so. Politicians like Margaret Beckett wanted to make it a criminal offence to question the validity of alarmist global warming claims. Most of the so called “evidence” to support these claims is simply fabricated, like the University of East Anglia. The rest is simply dodgy. Monitoring stations (basically just wooden boxes containing a couple of thermometers) have been placed totally inappropriately near sources of artificial heat, like aircraft jet exhausts on airport runways, near diesel generators and concrete buildings that absorb heat.
Extinction Rebellion is a prime example of Astro Turfing, lavishly funded by Monsanto, Soros, and all the usual suspects. Thunberg is a media construct in the style of Baana and Dusty Boy. A huge, sophisticated PR machine with hundreds of global branches cranks into gear overnight. Chiildren are weaponised yet again. Can you imagine what would happen if children played wag to demand a halt to immigration or an immediate Brexit? Straight off to the Deputy Head for six of the best.
So whose interests does this garbage serve? The City and Wall Street are quite happy to charge us all billions for trading literally in hot air, just as they have derivatives and similar financial scams. Roll up, roll up, get your Global Warming Certificates/ Green Certificates here! You can buy these from Goldman Sachs like a Papal Indulgence. On a vastly greater scale than Al Gore, who trousered a cool $500 million from the short lived “Chicago Climate Exchange” before it collapsed. And all the Di Caprios and Emma Thompsons can jet set around the world virtue signalling and giving each other global warming awards. And politicians like Macron can extract more “green” taxes from the long suffering Deplorables.
Not to deny that there are valid grounds for concern. Global population has quadrupled in a lifetime and living standards, even in poor countries, have risen beyond recognition, with that much more pressure on resources like land and water. A lot of bees, insects and birds have disappeared because of changes in farming methods. This may well need urgent action, but The Big Global Warming Hoax is just a distraction from more worthwhile causes for concern.
Quite right. “Planet poisoning” is more accurate than “climate change”. We are poisoning Earth and oursleves with synthetic, toxic, man-made shite and the whole system is based around greed and exploitation regardless of any human or environmental consequences.
For example……”The production of our electronic technologies has fueled war, murder, rape, and child labor in the Congo. Here’s how”……..
https://whatis5g.info/conflict-minerals/
Utter garbage is about right, Mark.
John Doran.
If memory serves me correctly, in Gulliver’s travels the issue of climate change is ridiculed by Swift. And if not, it is a great topic for satire.
As regards to the existence of climate change, I am agnostic. It is a topic, to paraphrase Protagoras, that I cannot know either if it does exist or if it does not exist, for there is much to prevent one’s knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of man’s life.
That does not mean that I am pro-fossil fuel industry: one day we may run out of it making winter extremely cold (no gas) and summer very hot (no air conditioning). I am also much in favour for alternative energy that is assesible for everybody, as that will end a lot of endless wars in oil rich countries.
Dear W. Stephen Gilbert,
(” As half of England disappears under water”)
When, I was a kid 55 years ago, although we were skint, we did spend a couple of weeks on the Norfolk Broads, and managed to get through Potter Heigham Bridge. We have achieved this numerous times since, including quite recently, years since the time of “hide the decline”
Coincidentally, though I have never lived in Norfolk, though I love the place, I have known a few people, for an exceedingly long time, who work, professionally at The University of East Anglia in Norwich
“Can you still get your boat through Potter Heigham Bridge mate?”
“No problem most of the time”
“Have you actually recorded any significant change, with regards to clearances, I know it has always been very tight? It is tidal.”
“So where is the actual evidence of an significant sea level rise or decline, in England, or anywhere else for that matter?”
https://www.norfolkbroadsboathire.biz/Navigating-bridges.asp
Tony
I always left Potter Heigham bridge to the pilot. Well worth a couple of quid beer money for him.
mark, Us too, but Wroxham Bridge is still dead easy, despite the bend, and you can’t see what’s coming, from the other side.
I was around there just a while back. Looked just the same as before to me, maybe a bit more built up. Some of the locals say it has gone down a lot over the years in terms of wildlife, but it’s not obvious or noticeable.
The Roys are still ruling the roost round there, though I think one of them died recently.
The problem with framing the Human Impact crisis on the climate: is that all the climate contrarians come out to play. As if it makes any difference to the overall synopsis. The climate is only part of the overall Earth System: which is not isolatable from the overall human interaction with the environment. The lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere all interact – probably in ways we do not yet understand – and we are having a major impact – from source to sink – on all of them.
Such is the case, you really have to stick your head in a dark place not to notice. On top of the environmental desecration: there is the economic desecration of 6.2% of humanity (mostly the 2,208 billionaires) hoovering up 85% of the wealth.[Credit Suisse annual report]. And these are the super-emitters of GHGs. If the top 10% of overconsumers curtailed their profligate lifestyle choices – there would be an immediate 33% reduction in GHG emissions – more than any fake-climate emergency.
The climate emergency is only false because of its neoliberal extractivist and climate colonialist framing. There is an emergency: only it is much broader than the climate. Economic debt and environmental entropy are two more salient factors: as is the habitat loss, land usage change, and rape of biodiversity – detailed in the IPBES report. You really have to be living in a locked closet, not to notice the impact we are having – especially now the levels of propaganda have been ramped up.
The XR Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg’s Climate Strikers, Corbyn’s climate emergency, the CCC policy guidance, and IPBES landmark report …looks like someone planned that sequence to me. I do not believe in cornucopias of coincidence.
The overall media and industry reaction has been: carry on consuming, we’ve got it covered. Carry on driving, flying, getting prawns from Indonesia, and spending – just cycle a bit more and eat less meat – it will all be fine. Vote for us, and we will make the air, water, and rewilded countryside pure – reaching ‘net-zero’ emissions by 2050. For a mere 1-2% GDP – money saved on building gas energy plant without CCS, for instance. And we all switch to H2 FCEVs and EVs by 2035. We can have HS2 and a third runway for Heathrow. Sorted.
In the real world: away from the neoliberal negentropic imaginal – where ‘CCC’ would be a better acronym for ‘catatonic capitalist complacency’ …or ‘catatonic capitalist consensus’ framing – the Human Impact convergence crisis is not so much of a dying – as a killing …particularly for the 2,000 – but including all the climate bourgeois and petty-bourgeoisie. That’s us. Modernity is murdering the biosphere – including its own life support systems – and plundering the earths resources at a hyper-unsustainable rate. An exponentially increasing rate: particularly if we invest in neoliberal energy-sink pseudo-solutions. This is the most important emergency of all time: how we respond will decide not just our fate …but a great many in our extended interspecies communities.
To which the greater human response is carry on shopping: complacency 1 …or ‘see no evil; hear no evil;’ frame it all on climate-denial: complacency 2. Perhaps the correct response should be an awakening of consciousness to our interconnectedness: recognising that our global capitalist economic system is socio-pathological and omnicidal; and resisting the neoliberal Nomenklatura’s attempts to frame a real emergency as a neoliberal business opportunity to privatise nature – to save the children, biodiversity, and enrich humanity. Dream on.
If we do nothing, because we think that climate change is not real, that is exactly what they will do …own you and own nature. And who’s fault will that be?
BigB, My wife particularly is an enthusiastic participant, of our local ecolgical community, mainly through active participation, including doing a lot of digging and planting, and distributing the food, and love, entirely for free. I sometimes turn up at larger meetings. Even the pubs are free to get in, but you have to pay for the beer.
I have always wanted an electric car, mainly for performance reasons, though I accept, the technology, currently, is grossly inefficient, if you consider the real total cost of ownership.
I accept that to continue to burn oil, coal, wood, peat and animal shit, so that all the fumes go into the atmosphere, is exceedingly unhealthy and undesirable.
Have you noticed any rise or fall in the level of oil, or gas for that matter?
Did you do physics?
http://www.gasresources.net/thrmccnstrnts.htm
Tony
No, but I did logic and systems theory. Everything is interactive with everything else. If we have a repleting hydrocarbons source (which we don’t) we deplete other resources even faster and precipitate either a resources collapse or a metabolic collapse. And precipitate the further loss of biodiversity in a rapidly changing world. Probably not too much we can do, given the advanced state of our depletion and pollution. Let’s be honest: no one really wants the change – especially the real change it would require to actually mitigate our impact on life. Let’s just say my eyes have been opened to how self-absorbed people really are. I personally had assumed that no personal or social sacrifice was too great to ameliorate global poverty, end climate colonialism, lift the resource curse on the global poor, regenerate the soil, agriculture, fisheries, afforestation, avoid hybrid-proxy wars …and perhaps the real thing, and end our devastating rape of biodiversity. It’s all lip-service. Do you know what a “biodiversity offset” is? Neither did I ’till I read the IPBES smallprint. Those orang-outan mothers that get in the way of the afforestation and palm oil cycle can be “offset” if they get in the way of progress. I mean, the orphans are probably better off as pets, or in a zoo …so we can burn more abiotic hydrocarbons, and eat more take-aways and snacks, right?
BigB,
I am not denying that the climate is changing. It always as has, and it always will. I lived through the winter of 1963, in Oldham. I was 10 years old, and built an igloo in my back garden with my older brother Patrick. We got an oblong box, and used pure ice for windows. The coalman, used to turn up on a horse and cart, and deliver these enormous bags of coal that went into our coalshed. When I got home from school, I was too cold to pee. So I used to get the coal fire going, before my Mum and Dad, and all my brothers and sisters turned up, with their boyfriends and girlfriends.
Now, my next door neighbour is growing hops, and our other next door neighbour is growing grapes.
Yes, It has got warmer, but us mere humans are not in control of anything much.
We are just one of the current life forms on the face of the earth, and I really like us.
We can’t compete with The Sun.
If it gets incredibly cold, in the winter or 2019 – 2020, we are going to be in really big trouble in The UK
Our Government, has seriously pissed off The Russians, The Americans, and The EU.
We are going to have to look after ourselves.
That is what Independence is all about.
We will survive. We will be O.K. We will help each other, when it all goes wrong, and nothing works. The banks don’t work. Money doesn’t work. All the evidence suggests, that where this has happenned, people do their best to help each other., and carry on doing their essential jobs, even if they are not being immediately paid.
We like each other, and will keep each other alive.
Tony
my reply came out above.
Yes, Tony, we probably will. Some of us. I do not know what the outcome will be, no one does. What I lament is we could all survive, comfortably, with a lot less. And a lot more fulfilled, spiritually. Capitalism alienates humanity from humanity. Therein lies the whole problem. A self-alienated humanity cannot envisage what it has lost, once it has become accustomed to its alienation. It is always fashionable to blame someone, and the elite possessing classes do have asymmetrically more vested interest. But those interests are mirrored by the majority, in the OECD developed countries at least. Everyone wants their technocratic share. That the cobalt and coltan is mined by children is well known, poisoning the Congo river and paying for a war that has killed maybe 10 million unpeople. Or the child miners inside Cerro Rico, scraping for tin, lead, and zinc. These are just two examples of the climate colonialism the UK is responsible for. This is not done by American imperialist conquest. These are examples of free, fair and open exchange on the worlds commodity markets. Commodity exchange we benefit from. It is done for us.
I’m a bit younger than you. I lived most of my adult life without devices. I used to read books and write on paper. I read the other day that a return to early 1960s standard of living would mean an 80% reduction in emissions. If we dump the military boondoggle and City (the finance curse of which has cost the country £4.5 tn); plus tax justice and returning our energy production and food production to self-sovereignty …we’d be most of the way there. Not everyone needs a car, and properly insulated houses (superinsulation – something I have been advocating for 40 years – it only makes sense at the build stage – retrofitting is not nearly as effective) hardly need any heating at all. If you put the oven on, you have to open all the windows.
But instead of sensible options, that could have been in place for decades, we want more. Not you and me personally, but the majority want an ever increasing standard of living. And they do not care how it is afforded …child labour or no child labour. And this ever increasing drain on resources will mean that no one will have any standard of living. We had a sufficient standard of living long ago. The pursuit of happiness has led to decrease, not an increase, in living standards. The further pursuit of happiness seriously risks collapse. Which is kind of crazy, that so few can step back and realise that we risk it all, for less and less quality of life. It is not just the elites, who cream off the lion’s share. All of environmentalism is the axiom: you can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet. The rest is just whistles and bells. That this cannot be understood and accommodated for is a mystery to me. Instead of more, we will end up with less. A lot less. Particularly if resources become military hardware. I do wish the people had realised when enough was enough. Progress has made manifest a very uncertain future. And still we hold out for more?
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2019/05/america-you-are-fired.html
Extract
“Dmitry Orlov said…
Bridgeofsighs –
Three Mile Island was sabotaged (and boy did it take some work!) in order to justify a massive federal power grab over the nuclear industry. Nobody was hurt. It was, in a sense, necessary, because in the US tight government control of anything is hard to justify, but in the case of nuclear it is absolutely necessary.
Chernobyl was blown up on purpose (hurting thousands of people) in order to bankrupt the USSR. The cost of the damage and the clean-up was on the scale of the GDP of the entire country. The institutional/reputation damage was just as bad. It was sabotage, from the highest levels (traitors were within the Politburo) and Gorbachev admitted as much, though not in public.
Fukushima was caused by a small nuclear charge dropped from a US Navy ship on top of a geological fault some 100km offshore, triggering the tsunami. The seismographs of the earthquake that triggered the tsunami show a superimposition of two signatures: nuclear charge explosion and seismic event, with the nuclear explosion as the obvious trigger for the seismic event. Satellites picked up the radioactive plume from the upwelled gas a 100km offshore of Fukushima. A bunch of US sailors got irradiated. The Fukushima site was specifically staged and rigged to cause a sequence of three meltdowns, roughly one a day, for maximum effect: it was virtually designed to melt down. The rationale for the sabotage was a shortage of enriched uranium that would have caused the East Coast of the US to go dark unless Japan’s nukes were taken off-line. Japan has the spare fossil fuel generation capacity to compensate, the US does not, so it got thrown under the bus. The shortage was caused by the termination of the “kilotons to killowats” program, by which Russia supplied nuclear fuel to the US by grinding up some number of its nuclear weapons. The Fukushima event shocked Russia into agreeing to extend the program. In return Russia got the Uranium One deal and is now very well supplied with uranium ore from around the world. This has allowed it to become the main purveyor of nuclear fuel in the world.
Disposing of nuclear waste safely is a thorny problem, and virtually impossible for post-industrial economies. The only idea that comes to mind is paying the Russians whatever it takes to just take care of it. High-level nuclear waste can be loaded into Russian BN-series reactors, where it can generate a bit of additional energy while decaying a whole lot faster than it otherwise would, becoming safe to bury in just 300 years instead of the usual thousands to millions of years. The holy grail is the closed nuclear cycle, where cheap and plentiful uranium 238 goes in and low-level radioactive waste comes out. The Russians aren’t quite there yet, but they are getting close, and they are damned determined to get there.
Tuesday, May 7, 2019 at 4:00:00 PM EDT
Kathy, Thanks for posting this. It is Brilliant. Within the last few weeks, I have become well aware of the dangers of 5G, almost nothing of which is published in the mainstream media. I have been retired for 15 years, and am not up to speed with the latest technology. However, I did use to work in the industry, at such a level, that I insisted, we got positive acknowledgements, at the lowest machine code level, and the higher level, before we considered, the message had been received.
The last thing I want is 5G to be deployed, except maybe in New York, Wall Street and Washington DC.
On an associated level, woth regards to the nuclear industry, I would suggest anyone interested to read Dmitry Orlov’s latest post, especially his comments. Even I was shocked. This is one of the cleverest guys I have ever come across, and whilst I don’t always agree with him, I have never known him make anything up.
Tony
tonyopmoc.
Thanks for the feed back.
I think this is quite an interesting film about 5g
Here is another must watch 5G vid, only short at 10 mins but he lays it out brilliantly and looks at the exact effects of this type of radiation on our bodies.
Thanks for that. This is the very antithesis of a grass roots movement, supported by all the usual suspects, Soros, Monsanto, Silicon Valley, Big Telecoms, Big Finance, Government, the bogus NGOs. It is reminiscent of the Colour Revolutions, the White Helmets, and much else in a similar vein. Astro Turfing writ large. Manufacturing Consent a la Bernays.
The tragedy of it is that most of the kids and foot soldiers genuinely believe in what they’re doing and don’t realise they’re being used and manipulated to serve the corporate interests who are pulling their strings.
The science behind AGW remains ambiguous. The claims of ‘scientific consensus’, ‘97%’, etc are simply propaganda.
More important is the failure of large sections of the Left, an even the alt media to recognize this propaganda and to question why it’s being imposed.
Why are outlets such as Media Lens content to go along with known liars such as the BBC and the Guardian on this one issue?
(I don’t include OffG here, since they very commendably present both sides of this debate and resist the demands for censorship of opinion)
I have observed many online climate change debates and you can tell a sizeable number
on both sides are not approaching the subject objectively and a lot of vested interested tied up in this. Those who are trying to understand the arguments by asking either side to back up their claims or even explain their viewpoint are attacked. I have experienced this many times and the conclusion I reach is, those for can’t properly explain the science and the complex data they use to justify their claims. And those on the other side, seem to simply say, the onus is not on them to disprove climate change. It’s a bit like the religion/atheists debates you see.
Initially, I thought this article may have been written in the style of CJ Hopkins, and it was merely satire. I am now reasonably convinced, that it is the direct result, of intense, serial propaganda, and find it very sad, that both the author, and vast numbers of young people, actually believe its contents. This is Malthusian religion. It is not science. Unfortunately, politicians, and the powers that be, believe this nonsense too, and will make completely the wrong decisions, attempting to fix non-problems, whilst oblivious to the real problems out children and grand children will face.
Tony
Global Warming is like some weird cult, like Scientology or the Moonies, that is being used to brainwash children and the simple minded, such as politicians. So we now have the hysteria from children to politicians, “I’ve got no future left now because of you”, “You have ruined my life.” And Jezza obligingly jumps up in the House of Commons like a Jack In The Box to declare a Global Warming Energency. Cue the synthetic, sanctimonious moral outrage and the declaration that we’ve only got 15/12/11/10/4 years/ 10 minutes left to “save the planet.” There are a lot of things to lie awake at night worrrying about, but this is not one of them.
some perspective:
Proven already,
More fires, more floods, more droughts, more dust storms, more temperate records broken, more coral bleaching (and more spin from the fossil fuel oligarchs).
And that’s just in Australia.
All recorded by that bastion of left wing troublemakers, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
Correlation of these extreme weather patterns is less than obvious, the causality is at best dubious…_
Methane.
Coming to a sky near you.
‘More’ than – when?
Caused by – what?
We all recognize the Holocene has been an unusually quiet and calm period for the climate, and this may well change. But if it does that would arguably be simply a return to a prevailingly extreme and sometimes violent climate pattern that has been the norm – so far as we can tell – for much of pre-history and beyond.
And we have yet to establish there is anything unusual even for the quiet Holocene!
It is also very hard to quantify the impact of geo-engineering and no doubt countless covert weather influencing projects we do not know about, being undertaken by the usual suspects.
CHEMTRAILS / GEOENGINEERING DOCUMENTARY FRANKENSKIES
This piece has no references to any research which prove the authors assertions. That is not unusual for such propaganda pieces that pass for proof of an upcoming disaster for life on the planet.
As frustrating as these drama queen pieces are, I fully realise that they will be disregarded only when the facts are examined and the truth dawns that the conclusions are just wrong. That will involve looking at the facts and subjecting them to the scientific method of analysis.
Some readers here will have done their own research of the facts presented by those who predict climactic armageddon, but most of you should at least be honest with yourselves and admit you just go with the mob.
The science associated with studies of anthropogenic climate change is an industry full of those who dispute a consensus…_
My comments appear to be posted until I refresh the page. So this comment is both a test and a polite request to ask if something’s up with my re-re-posted comment from around 07:30 (once) and 08:30 (twice) this morning. The comment had a couple of links and block quotes. Perhaps that’s why?
It was being dropped in the spam folder by our software. I rescued it.
All those things may be true but Extinction Rebellion may be a scam to monetise environmental issues along the lines of carbon trading.
much like the “other side” there seems to be some discussion going on as to the veracity of ER’s genesis and aims with regard to big bizness. This is good. The science is not “settled” and there are far too many “experts” on both sides in the sway of 3rd parties.
https://winteroak.org.uk/2019/04/23/rebellion-extinction-a-capitalist-scam-to-hijack-our-resistance/
Here’s another DuckDuckGo search on climate scientists who dissent from the “settled” science (i.e they are real scientists who understand how science works with respect to peer review and EVIDENCE):
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=climate+scientists+against+global+warming&t=ffsb&atb=v133-1&ia=web
I am not an expert, so am not at all qualified to judge the data and main controversies around climate change. I listen to both sides to the extent I am able and have concluded that I cannot know what the truth is. That doubt, however, is only part of the story. There is also ecosystem degradation, the emptiness of consumerism, the rank stupidity of perpetual-growth economics, the shallowness of our childish and narcissistic ‘western’ culture, and probably a few other things. All those things considered means I have changed and continue to change my life dramatically in case anthropocentric global warming is a real and present threat.
But, if the above, alarming claim is true, then I cannot believe 15 years is enough to accomplish anything. So I want to understand the data and science behind that claim. I started googling just now and found this article. Here’s its opening para:
Then there’s the exposure of the cynical manipulation of Greta Thunberg in an an online article by Cory Morningstar, which also looks at the troubling way Extinction Rebellion is supported by global corporate interests that are not really interested in ecosystem or planetary health beyond what that might mean for their bottom lines.
As I said, I’m already doing everything I can to minimise my impact on the environment. It’s just that there appears to be good grounds for suspecting that there is an orchestrated attempt underway to frighten people into accepting a “New Green Deal” that is green on the surface, but all about the mighty dollar underneath.
Any pointers to any material that might shed more light on the veracity of the alarming 15-year claim would be greatly appreciated.
[I’m re-posting this comment as it disappeared.]
the IPCC is a political body. It has no scientists on it. Scientists report to it, and it collates and filters their findings and pronounces to governments what they should be doing. It is compromised, and has been for years. See its response to the UEA climategate email scandal: we need to keep this data away from people.
Toby
The 15 years is a psyop. The transmitted idea that we can carry on for another 15 minutes is a falsified sense of security. But if we raise the alarm to ‘Defcon 1’ – fear-first responses kick in and heels get entrenched. The human asymmetry of hope and fear is our Achilles Heal.
We cannot turn back time (though we like to believe in the illusion we can – and maintain growth and falsely afforded levels of prosperity) …but it is worth noting – from E F Schumacher and Herman Daly – we should perhaps of been forty years into a sensible managed transition to a post-carbon society. During which time our loose, immoral economic policies have made a plutonomy of the millionaire and billionaire class – who are obviously resistant to real change. But sense a last $100tn in the simulacra of change.
Peak-oil came and went: we perhaps then had a forty year period to transition – in what many have though to be a seventy year transition to zero-carbon – not the carbo neutral ‘net-zero’ psyop that has manifest. As you must know, those behind Greta intend to make a lot of money trading carbon offsets …and “biodiversity offsets”.
The CCC – that’s ‘catatonic capitalist complacency’ – plan on the table, is to burn, baby, burn, for fifteen years – then hoover up all the excess GHG and sequester it underground. The fact that these are not mature technologies, need hidden subsidy development …and are energy sinks from start to finish, seems to bother no one. I have yet to see, even among sensible critique by the likes of Kevin Anderson – a single person mention the fact. Well, I dropped it into a few conversations – on, but mainly, offline.
So what are the chances of a real climate emergency? One in which we stop driving, give up flying, and have to live neo-self-sufficiently as close to home as possible …starting now? Rapid and immediate de-globalisation and re-localisation of energy and food sovereignty. land reform, massive wealth redistribution, resource egality. Surprise, surprise …no takers.
So, I’ve let go my anger and frustration …Mr Corbyn has made my unique skillset (in timber frame building design and eco-building) eminently employable. Absent the GFC2.0 – which, unfortunately may not be absent for long – or the big bunfight at the Armageddon corral (ditto) …we’ve got 15 years to enjoy, and perhaps make a few quid? The big carbon drawdown that won’t be won’t kill us straight away …I’ll be 87 in 2050 – I might just see it out.
When pressed – no one gives a flying fuck. We do, and a good many others …but sadly not enough. I’m not really giving up completely, there is still hope. But it will take a massive tectonic shift in consciousness. All the time, materials are depleting fast – some, such as the lithium for batteries could be drawn down in months – if we upscale usage.
I kinda hoped that a real XR would catalyse a consciousness shift – not be used against us. No amount of scientific or technological knowledge will extricate people from the negentropic techno-theological imaginal. If you can’t beat em, might as well join em for 15 years, eh?
You gotta
fightsubmitFor your rightTo your needTo paaaaaaaartaaaaay!
Yeah. I think – like you do – that the techno-corporatists believe ardently in human inventiveness, but as filtered and framed by their even more ardent belief in the greenness of money, profit, ‘free-market’ ‘capitalism’, and all that mantra-dogma that does so soothe the aching and infinite emptiness of narcissism.
Good to see a smidgen of hope back in your oh-so-complex mix! And also nice to hear that your business, a noble one, is booming. More to you and yours.
Inventiveness is entropic too – limited by thermodynamics. As pointed out by Tainter, Diamond et al. Inventing the wheel is relatively easy; early production is inefficient and so relatively easy to improve on. When a certain efficiency is reached: any further improvements become resource and energy hungry (computerised monitoring and on-board adjustment of ICEs, for instance) – subject to the law of diminishing return. Maximum performance is an entropic energy sink. Ergo; innovation is not endless, it is quite finite.
And diminishing resources is a limitation too. I already mentioned lithium: no giant Tesla super-batteries. Resources are not limited by overall abundance: but by the law of the minimum. There are dozens of rare earth minerals in a computer chip: all with specific qualities. If one runs out, it cannot be substituted – no more computer chips; no more advanced cancer or orthopaedic treatments. No more advanced electronics for EVs and FCEVs (H2 fuel cell electric vehicles) too.
These are factors in infrastructure design no one thinks of. We are planning new nuclear and large scale infrastructure projects on the basis of negentropic projections. Concrete, in hi-tech infrastructure (large hydro, for instance) – will last far less than a hundred years. What will be the future consequences of maintenance if the resources are limited, or computer systems fail?
To prevent this, all remaining entropic resources will go into maintenance – and not be available for society at large. Those that are not squandered on military boondoggles we can no longer afford (Trident, F35s; etc). We have one roll of the dice to prepare for a post-carbon future. Oil is already a huge global energy sink. Oil rigs are being abandoned. Capex (debt-funding) is rife.
Knowing all this is disadvantageous, not advantageous. I can’t explain the laws of physics in every conversation. And earth systems theory is equally disadvantageous. The ‘climate’ does not exist separately from human civilisation, and cannot be exempted from the impact we are having. The links between climate change and debt might not be readily apparent: but it is all part of the same dynamic. Collapse of the financial system will hopefully curtail the worst of AGW – but even that is hopeful as we do not know the effects of all the extra energy sequestered in the oceans – as they turn from sink to source.
And the response on this page alone is indicative of a broad range of society. It’s a hoax and it is not happening. It is, but I am powerless to stop it. I’m just filling my forms for an elective humanity bypass …if you can’t beat ’em…
I know, there’s so much to unravel and unlearn, so much that is The Way Things Work and thus very rarely subjected to critical thought and skepticism. Sadly, it’s only new material that is critically, suspiciously viewed, not orthodoxy and dogma.
You mention the money system and debt. Compound interest is the very mathematics of exponential growth, but people get nervous/defensive when the money system is discussed as a man-made, amendable thing. On the whole, The Powers That Be have done an excellent job at deeply addicting us to creature comforts and dumb acceptance. But there we are. This is the unvarnished nature of the task.
I’m homeschooling my younger daughter at the moment for various reasons, but what is blindingly apparent is how much of the material is dogma around business, growth, listening to authority unquestioningly, and humanty’s ‘ascent’ to ever brighter technological futures. Get ’em while they’re young!
That said, inventiveness is a pivotal quality of nature. I like to think of evolution as a partly technical process, in that it iterates on itself experimentally, improving over time in terms of efficiency, sensible redundancy, resilience and diversity. If we were, as a species, able to demote ourselves into a post-anthropocentric paradigm, our inventiveness might become unclouded and unsullied by our culturally inculcated greed, restlessness and impatience. The potential is there, at least.
There is a whole bunch of stuff that could be developed if we gave up on materialism. Designing neo-negentropic circular economies, with carbon cascades; regenerative agroecology with biochar; developing appropriate technology; etc …but none of it can be capitalised. It could be neo-MMT sovereign credit issuance like we discussed before. We are not short on solutions, inventiveness or innovation – we are short on will.
All of these innovations are mature technologies, some centuries old …but we have never developed them because there is no profit in designed resilience …only designed obsolescence.
They are all cheaper than the neoliberal energy-sink alternatives – that will actually produce energy (exergy) – and natural capital prosperity – for humanity …only not enough for industrialised civilisation. A civilisation that contains fatal contradictions that will lead to crisis after crisis and engenders potential collapse. There is no inventiveness that can save industrial civilisation, due to the scale of expansion needed …that fact that it must be exponentially elastic. But there is inventiveness and innovation that can function as appropriate technology at human scales. Which just about sums up everything I’ve been trying to say.
Anyway, your daughter is lucky to have such a fine teacher. I’m sure she will get an exemplary natural education and solid grounding in real life. Perhaps she and her peers will grow up and capture the Zeitgeist, leading us belatedly into the 21st century? If you feel it appropriate: get her a copy of E F Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful”. All I have ever thought or said came from that little, dare I say, sacred text.
“The typical problems of life are insoluble on the level of being on which we normally find ourselves. How can one reconcile the demands of freedom and discipline in education? Countless
mothersfathers and teachers, in fact, do it, but no one can write down a solution. They do it by bringing into the situation a force that belongs to a higher level where opposites are transcended—the power of love. “The greatest resource is education.
That’s a lovely response, quite moving. Thank you.
One last thing: to learn to want the vector you sketch out and the sensible technologies you mention, the key concepts that need redefining at the deep cultural level are “profit” and “value”. The more we can have nuance, subjectivity and quality inform how we understand and respond to these pivotal terms, the more likely we are to want what we now so sorely need.
“For the expert consensus now is that we have, at best, fifteen years before the whole of eastern England including London, along with New York, Florida and the eastern seaboard of the United States and much of western Europe, disappears under permanent flood water. ”
and 15 years ago Al Gore was telling us we had 15 years to save the planet. and 15 years before that someone else said it. and 5 years ago we had 300 days until climate catastrophe or somesuch nonsense. this kind of apocalyptic reporting just turns people with memories off. when i was at school we were going back to a new ice age. some, basing their observations on real solar science, still agree.
https://realclimatescience.com/ or https://principia-scientific.org/ and if you tell me “the science is settled” you’re a believer in witchcraft
oh, and about that 98% balls:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=98%25+of+climate+scientists+agree&t=h_&ia=videos
pollution, pollution, pollution…why we hear so little about that? it isn’t just plastic. the great poison (NOT CO2!) air and sea pollution cover-up is a far more pressing and easier fixed issue. corporations don’t want the blame. far easier to blame us for our “carbon footprint” and tax us to the hilt
With the worldwide chaos may come a shift in consciousness Stephen.
The only glimmer of hope in dark, dark future.