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Katabasis on the climate science cowards I am in the midst of cleaning my home in advance of a meeting this evening. That is a big task, still not nearly done, so I will be brief. Read all of this, if not now then very soon. It’s about climate scientists and the immoral fools that they are almost all now making of themselves.
It is by “Katabasis” (and yes it is indeed disgusting that he has to use a pseudonym for saying it so like it is (he explains why)), and it deserves to go viral.
I have spent years cheering on the efforts of those who have unmasked those political activists dressed as scientists who, still, peddle the CAGW line (on second thoughts: skip that n). What Katabasis does is nail what you might call the anti-anti-CAGW peddlers for the immoral fence-sitting cowards that they are. This is an absolute masterpiece of the polemicist’s art, and I am very, very envious. Not being any sort of climate scientist, I could not possibly have written it myself but I still wish I had. Go read.
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Yet another reminder that I should be cleaning.
I suspect that it is things like this that prompt people like “Katabasis” to use pseudonyms when speaking their mind.
“…political activists dressed as scientists..”
Is that anything like “credentialed” Economics hobbyists dressed up as political scientists?
The article by Katabasis is superb.
There have been interesting developments recently on the global warming front. First of all Nic Lewis and Judith Curry have published a paper that uses the IPCC’s own data to show the dangers of warming are greatly overstated.
Then Mark Steyn continues to slowly batter Michael Mann to death by media, even before the ‘fraud’ lawsuit comes to trial. With the Lewis/Curry paper acting as a carrot and the example of Mann as a stick, I think a lot of people now have an opportunity to back down from some pretty silly things they have said about global warming. The American Physical Society has previous said that “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring,” but the chair of their committee on writing a new statement has had an op-ed published in the WSJ titled “Climate Science is not Settled”, where he bashes the dreaded models. Hopefully the times are changing…
I’ve written a more detailed article on this on my blog:
http://jonathanabbott99.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/the-carrot-and-the-stick/
It’s never been about the climate, it’s always been about the collectivist policies that such a worldwide crisis allegedly requires.
A recent photo essay about the climate demonstration in Oakland, Ca., demonstrated the extreme and pervasive influence that socialism and warmed-over Marxism have on the movement against fossil fuels.
Energy is the driver of modern technological society. Cut off the energy supply, and the very kind of chaos that progressive demagogues thrive in will certainly ensue.
The climate crisis is merely another Trojan Horse being used by the collectivist forces to move their policies inside the walls in order to take the city.
It doesn’t matter whether the crisis du jour is cooling, warming, floods, droughts, too many people, too few people, too much industry creating pollution, or too little industry that doesn’t create enough jobs, too much oil, too little oil, too much food, too little food, and so on ad infinitum.
As long as there’s a crisis that justifies the state growing and expanding, and shrinking the horizons on the discretionary parts of life for the individual, the tranzi elites and chatterers will jump in with both feet.
And those feet are wearing heavy boots firmly planted in the faces of the ordinary citizen.
There is the collectivist, alarmist, future.
What I’m waiting to see is whether this all will have any effect on people’s susceptibility to panic in the first place. Did the War of the Worlds broadcast increase the general level of skepticism? (Even though the panic it created has probably been overstated.) If a loss of credulity occurs, is it only effective on a narrow class of things closely related to the unjustified panic, or is their a broader loss of credulity? And how long does it last? I would like to think that some progress results from these events, however painfully slow it might be.
But I have to admit that articles such as the one Alisa linked to make me think that not a lot has changed since the days of witch hunts and RC Inquisitions.
Some fundamental things will never change, Tedd – they are part of nature, including the human one. But at the same time, progress is possible, and indeed has been taking place since the beginning of humanity. And yes, I think that overall and as our collective and personal stock of knowledge broadens, we are becoming less credulous over time – even though, as you say, it is a very slow and often painful process.
Probably, at first. Later on the scope of the issues may broaden, as at least some people will make the necessary logical conclusions. And still later on the numbers of such people may grow, I hope.
veryretired – Spot On…
The powers that be have a definite agenda. Another manifestation is uncontrolled immigration being used as a vehicle to eliminate the nation state, as they have diagnosed that Nationalism causes wars (eg WW I and II.) Being supremely overconfident, they are unwittingly moving Europe rapidly towards social breakdown and civil war. You can also see this in the economic effects of the Euro.
I fear for our children. Their campaign is utterly relentless…
I think one of main problems is language.
The left dominates it because they are proselytizers from very beginning. They go to professions where they can proselytize : Journalists, Teachers.
The power of repetition that they have by power of their resources can make them propel contradictory concepts without being a afraid of being called for: equality+liberty, equality+justice
By their repeating this often most people doesn’t even question the lack of logic behind it.
It is absorbed like a prayer and not like a logical concept.
We miss words to identify this.
“Some fundamental things will never change, Tedd – they are part of nature, including the human one.”
Change can only occur with new words and concepts. This is what is and was achieved by Marxism and neo-Marxism.
No company would be capable of murdering millions and have still millions of supporters without working at language level presenting a narrative.
Just today we were treated to a global warming screed from that gibbering idiot
Bat-shitBan Ki-moon in, of all places, the Wall Street Journal. These people will never stop. “[C]limate change is now higher on the global political agenda than it has ever been,” he says. I fear that he’s correct.I liken the attitude of CAGW proponents to Mao’s Four Pests Campaign, the last of which, elimination of the sparrows, caused an even greater ecological disaster than the one it was trying to prevent. Most pro-CAGW activists don’t have a clue what to do about their perceived situation because they are politically driven with no grounding in basic economics, and if there is an answer to combatting climate change it lies in economic planning not throwbacks to the stone age.
As veryretired points out, the reality is that any economic answer to the CAGW problem doesn’t quite suit their political beliefs so they come up with idiotic schemes that sound nice because they pander to the collectivist effort but quite often make the original problem worse.
“they come up with idiotic schemes”
They are not idiotic schemes. They are schemes designed to undermine or reverse the “over-consumption”, i.e. the abundance or things we enjoy, that sustain life and make it pleasant.
These schemes are designed to destroy the wealth of the Western world, and to revert to poverty. They are designed to destroy human well being, and even human life – in the poorer societies. The greens hate human beings, they are “overpopulation” or pollution.
So, these schemes are well designed for their purpose: promoting energy-scarcity, poverty, suffering and, ultimately – death.
^
It’s wishful thinking but it would be nice to see these people in court someday. Preferably in Texas.
It’s a great article by Katabasis. Unfortunately, given the level of language and the assumptions that the audience already knows the rationale behind the polemic, it’s wasted.
What we need in this fight is a celebrity champion, someone unafraid to be labelled and who can speak Focus Group, who can talk without using verbs and who probably got a PPE.
We’ve won the empirical argument – the climate is not warming and indeed seems to be on a cooling cycle. CO2 is not the red button of global warming the IPCC and the statists would have the world believe. But we lack a champion who can ridicule, lampoon and raise the ire of the deciding classes in our society.
Katabasis just sang the most beautiful aria ever, to the choir.
Alex Epstein protesting the protesters – “this city…and your banner are made from fossil fuels…”
Part one…
Part two…
Part three…
Part four.
Once upon a time there was a little chicken that got hit in the head by an ACORN that fell out of a tree….
From this week’s Booker column in the Sunday Telegraph, reporting on the UN Climate Summit;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/11124976/Dreary-climate-summit-was-surely-their-saddest-fiasco-yet.html
” “The most powerful speech” apparently came from Leonardo DiCaprio, which recalled a claim made more than 20 years ago by that other Hollywood star, Robert Redford, Hollywood star, when he said, on global warming, that it was “time to stop researching and to start acting”. This prompted Richard Lindzen,the physicist and climate-change sceptic, to observe wryly that it seemed “a reasonable suggestion for an actor to make”.
Made me smile.
What in the world makes Dr. Lindzen think Mr. Redford is an actor?