Good grief, it seems as if one of the main doomongers in the MSM, George Monbiot – known in these irreverent blogging shores as George Moonbat – is feeling a bit angry and let down by the revelations of those emails connected to the University of East Anglia’s climate research unit. To give GM credit, he’s been more blunt about his anger than many of them might be, so fair play to him. But as Bishop Hill comments, Monbiot’s comments point to his gullibility.
As as been noted before, we free market types would be far kinder towards the Greenies if so much of their agenda was not intertwined with a desire both to load up more regulations and taxes on us. The antics of scientists allegedly trying to bury inconvenient evidence are not harmless: these people have consequences.
There is, in my view, a continued genuine core of necessary work that needs to be done in trying to map Man’s impact on the climate and figuring out what is the best way to cope with it. It is a mistake for free marketeers to take the lazy assumption that AGW is not something one needs to be concerned about. But there is no doubt – maybe it is just the recession – that some of the fizz, some of the moral superiority, of the AGW alarmist crowd has gone. AGW alarmists might be less quick to dub anyone who doubts their views as “deniers”. As far as the interests of genuine scientific understanding are concerned, that is a definite improvement on where things were a a few years ago.
This may be a good ‘teachable moment’ to examine what other misinformation the Greeens have inflicted on us. For example, I’ve always thought that the propaganda involving asbestos is wildly out of phase with the facts. (Fibrous asbestos -Bad – Powdered asbestos -not so bad)
There are lots of other examples.
Ladies and Gentlemen – Start your engines.
Once again, the ancient axiom is proven – it’s the cover-up that will get you. It’s always the cover-up.
These nimrods need to made to sit and read Professor Feynmann’s address on cargo cult-science for as long as it takes them to get it.
http://www.neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html
llater,
llamas
Moonbat is a very smart cookie. He knows that he is on this bandwagon riding in 1st class. If this wagon crashes, he needs to make sure he isn’t injured – so he is making his way to the doors while we speak…!
In the grand scheme of things, this episode is possibly the modern version of a picnic on the Austrian Hungarian border!
“It is a mistake for free marketeers to take the lazy assumption that AGW is not something one needs to be concerned about.”
Why?
Because, Some Dude, it’s always been “one must this” and “one must not that” in Britain (or rather London and Surrey, which, don’t you know, amounts to the same thing) – your values are not yours, but rather, “one’s” values. Doesn’t one feel just disgusted at the horrible use of that little three letter word?
For myself I don’t worry about AGW but I do worry about what other people’s belief in AGW will continue to do to me.
“There is, in my view, a continued genuine core of necessary work that needs to be done in trying to map Man’s impact on the climate and figuring out what is the best way to cope with it.”
I think that, for the value of freedom and the integrity of scientific inquiry to the value of truth, the first priority ought to be to figure out how to stop science being hijacked by politicos – which leads directly to the question of funding.
Mike, no need to be so thin-skinned.
I was making the point that just because
many of the arguments used by Greens
are wrong or their agendas are suspect,
it does not mean that people – “one” – should brush AGW aside, which is a mistake in my view.
I think the evidence strongly suggests that AGW (although I think ACC [climate change]) is real. But even if it wasn’t I think the case for moving away from a Hydrocarbon based society is massive in and off it’s own right, even if the potential effects of climate change weren’t so damn scary.
We need to stop being dependent on our Russia and Arab “friends” for energy. We need more renewable, we need a metric sh1tload more nuclear and we need to conserve hydrocarbon fuels for the stuff where they make the most sense in terms of energy efficiency, like, for example, aviation fuel where hydrogen doesn’t quite cut it yet.
Daveon — that is exactly the logic which has led to this sorry pass. The only scientific mechanism that has ever been proposed is anthropogenic CO2 leading to anthropogenic global warming. No one has ever proposed a scientific mechanism for non-warming “climate change”.
If you want to justify hair shirts & global poverty, feel free to get up on your soap-box any time. But don’t try to pass this social philosophy off as something with a scientific basis.
There is no evidence of the world getting hotter or not because the measurements we make are very incomplete, distorted and unreliable.
If journalists were journalists they would be making something like this: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/gistemp/
There are four outcomes of any analysis – rejection of a false sample, acceptance of a true sample, rejection of a true sample, and acceptance of a false sample. Depending on ones fear of being right or wrong, and the severity of the outcomes of being wrong, dictates how radical or moderate they are going to be.
The “moderates” fall into two categories – willing to accept AGW until proven wrong, or reject until proven true. But if one is the former, they are more willing to accept government financed investigation into the matter (in the US – NASA, NOAA and their cross polination with NGO’s) , which is why we are in the situation we are in – the seed money from decades ago found enough “proof” to bring the hysteria to a head. Those who are willing to listen to sound reasoning but want proof before government action resist publicly financed investigations lest it turn into what it has. Basically if one leans to the side of acceptance it lends inertia to the cause. I prefer remaining inert and let private investigations carry the day. I don’t categorically reject AGW, but am rather agnostic on just how we are going to be able to prove it succinctly enough so that it doesn’t remain a matter of belief and superstition.
Alice is right on the money.
If someone is making the claim that we need to move away from fossil fuels, then we (=everybody else) should be shown that (a) it’s quantifiably bad for us (i.e. it can be measured) or (b) we’re going to run out of resources in X years.
I’ve had it up to here with everyone’s opinion being rammed down my throat because “the evidence strongly suggests”, specifically when “the evidence” can’t withstand the simplest levels of unbiased scrutiny.
–GJ–
What the e-mails (and the data sets as far as they have been read) tell us is something which was always blindingly obvious.
If someone produces a report- “scientific” or not- and fails to give or reference the data on which it is based, or the code showing the calculations made:- then that report must be ignored pending those omissions being made good.
Anyone who disagrees with me- I have some interesting reports I can make up proving that they need to give me all their money.
We didn’t need any hacking/whistleblowing to know that there were no data nor calculations- the void spoke for itself- and was emphasised by the reluctance of either Mr. Mann or Mr. Briffa to remedy the omissions even when asked.
Why is it getting notice now, rather than when Mr. Mann’s version of the hockey stick was proved fraudulent? Or even earlier?
Well when this started no-one took notice of the cost- it was too far in the future and anyway always underplayed. Now we’re skint, so everyone’s counting the pennies.
Global warming is old hat now, voters are turning away from it- politicians need a new “big idea” (well, they think they do), newspapers need new headlines (though I notice many are too shy at the moment to say they got it wrong for ten years)
The e-mails give everyone a handle to express their doubts.
And of course, the world has not been warming for ten years- contrary to predictions.
Of course these e-mails don’t prove that there is no global warming, nor do they prove that man doesn’t cause warming. They do prove that the prime advocates of the theory don’t really believe it.
By the way there’s as much reason- at least- to expect a little ice age as there is to support AGW theory there’s nothing to do but wait and react to events.
Pardon my ignorance, but has Monbiot been in politics before? Because if not, then he certainly should: his “I’m shocked!” act is a sign of a talent too good to go wasted.
Um, wrong thread, but close enough, I think…
He was a founding member of Respect, along with gorgeous George…
Er if that counts as politics.
I knew he was nasty, but not that nasty.
I am not thin-skinned Jonathan, and I knew exactly the point you were making all along. I was making a point of my own, which others might dismiss as trivial but which I do not, as well as showing up my disagreement with your point. The use of “one” in Estuary English can be a nefarious linguistic sleight of hand – think about it.
I always point to two simple facts on AGW: whilst CO2 emissions have more or less continually increased over recent years, the average global temperature has not followed suit. That’s it as far as I’m concerned – the theory is not supported by observation of reality. That is why I dismiss it as nonsense and challenge the true believers to account for these two simple facts. They can’t.
At least now we can all agree, on both sides of the Climate Change debate that Global Warming was caused by Mann.
–GJ–
What gets lost all too often in these conversations about AGW, or climate change in general, is that there is much more going on than just a claim that the earth is warming, or that it is influenced by human activity.
There are several proposals that require significant increases in state power over every aspect of personal and social life, and would be extremely costly in economic and social terms, leading to a much lower standard of living, and serious restrictions on everyday personal economic decisions.
Now, personally, I accept that the earth is warming. It has been since the end of the Little Ice Age around 1800, and has warmed and cooled in fairly regular patterns for millions of years.
It is the claim that human activity is the primary driver of this particular phase of climate variation that is called into serious question by these collusive communications between the scientists advancing the AGW scenario, as well as their refusal to allow peer examination of basic data and modelling information.
And, finally, there is a serious and legitimate objection to the regimentation of the private and public activities of our entire society from those for whom individual rights and liberties are the fundamental principles upon which our world view rests.
The repeated assertion that the science was all settled, and that there could be no legitimate debate regarding the massively statist proposals regularly put forward as critically necessary by AGW advocates was a loud and persistent alarm bell to anyone who suspects the motives of political animals in general, and the motives of the international class of elite tranzis, who were near hysteria regarding this issue, in particular.
The issue now is crystal clear, and must not be hazed over by careless or deliberate obfuscation from either side—If the science is inconclusive or fraudulent, or both, then these draconian proposals to curtail and control the lives and economic activities of the citizens of the west are unjustified and fraudulent as well.
Estuary English? WTF are you on about?
Like I said, I was not trying to claim that “we” or “one” must all agree that “something should be done”, only that AGW skeptics cannot make the mistake of ruling out the risk that that might be necessary.
I guess what I was trying to do was to not dismiss the AGW issue out of hand. A lot of free marketeers do precisely that: they seem to be so understandably hostile to much of the agenda of the Greens that they forget that there might be a core of truth in the AGW position.
To take another example: after 9/11, a lot of civil liberties people were so determined to resist assaults on certain freedoms that they tried to dismiss the threats of terrorism. Well it is not an idle threat.
I’m with mike. I’m not dismissing it out of hand, I’m dismissing it because they’re making extraordinary claims without the extraordinary evidence.
I didn’t want to have to explain it, but since you ask Jonathan…
The appearance of “one” as a pronoun within an imperative sentence is something I just really dislike (occasionally bordering on hate, depending on circumstances). The reason I dislike it is philosophical: it rarefies the act of valuation into something apparently distinct from the individual performing the act. Compare:
a) One ought not to be concerned.
b) I say you/he/she/they ought not to be concerned.
The first sentence rarifies the act of valuation since it is unclear whether the pronoun “one” refers to first, second or third person speakers and it is also unclear with respect to subject and object. The second sentence achieves absolute clarity with respect to both who is performing the act of valuation (“I”) and to whom this act is directed (“you/he/she/they”). There can be no question of the source of the valuation and thus with whom responsibility for it lies.
In practical application, the use of “one” as a pronoun can often be a very effective linguistic sleight of hand in, for example, arguments from authority. But my dislike for it has more to do with what it does to a person’s thinking since it obscures the nature and source of values – it is possibly the ultimate linguistic tool of collectivist thought in the English language.
Alice: Globally the climate is changing, that we’re pretty sure of – glacial dispersion change, ice sheet changes, seasonal onset changes, changes in animal and parasite migration habits, etc….
As for explanations, it might be CO2 and CH4 (frankly scarier if sea and land locked methane deposits are released), it could be part of a natural cycle, it could be solar, it could lots of things. I think the evidence whether you like it or not does point to anthropogenic causes.
I just happen to think it’s a happy co-incidence that if it is human Carbon emissions, the cure is something we need to do sooner rather than later for very sound economic and political grounds.
Daveon wrote:
Sure. If.
We should also make sure that we understand the real Global Climate Change and if it has a negative impact on us in the future.
We’ve just been handed a pile of evidence that those who were supposed to track this, and who have been running with the agenda, have falsified their data.
That makes two big “if”s, both without a link to reality.
Can we put our commitment to mortgage our health and our lives on hold for a bit until we figure out what is pure bullshit and what is not?
Or do you just want to continue on with this because of the reading of the entrails of the chicken you have slaughtered at the last new moon?
–GJ–
“the cure is something we need to do sooner rather than later”
Pure bullshit.
Of course the climate is changing; that’s what it has always done and always will do. But the idea that man’s puny efforts have any significant impact on it is sheer hubris.
We now know for certain what many of us have long suspected: the fear-mongerers’ “models” don’t predict anything. Strip away the fraud and data manipulation and we see that global temperatures have gone down over the last decade, despite increasing levels of CO2 emissions. The climate models can’t explain this, so they are fundamentally flawed. Their output is meaningless. Demanding that the West (because the East and the Third World won’t comply) commit economic suicide on this basis is rank insanity.
And even if it can (someday) be proven (not merely hypothesized) that human activity does have some impact, it cannot be anything but one very small part of the overall picture. Rather than destroying our economy, and condemning our descendants to generations of penury in order to slightly slow the rate of change, we would be far better served to figure our ways to adapt to the (slight) change. Build a few dikes, move people away from some low-lying areas, and most importantly enjoy the benefits (longer growing seasons, less petroleum used for heating, etc.) We will have decades to adapt; this is not an emergency.* We have to keep the pressure on; we cannot let the science frauds squirm out of this.
*Except, of course, for the politicians, statists and communist “greens” who are seeing what they had thought was an iron-clad opportunity to seize permanent control over most of the world’s economy slip through their nasty fingers.