Warmists now in the super-activist phase of false prophecy

From Wikipedia:

"Festinger and his collaborators, Henry Riecken and Stanley Schachter, examined conditions under which disconfirmation of beliefs leads to increased conviction in such beliefs in the 1956 book When Prophecy Fails. The group studied a small apocalyptic cult led by Dorothy Martin (under the pseudonym Marian Keech in the book), a suburban housewife. Martin claimed to have received messages from "the Guardians," a group of superior beings from another planet. The messages puportedly said that a flood would destroy the world on December 21. The three psychologists and several more assistants joined the group. The team observed the group firsthand for months before and after the predicted apocalypse. Many of the group members quit their jobs and disposed of their possessions in preparation for the apocalypse. When doomsday came and went, Martin claimed that the world had been spared because of the "force of Good and light" that the group members had spread throughout the world. Rather than abandoning their discredited beliefs, group members adhered to them even more strongly and began proselytizing with fervor."

Warmists have now recovered from the fact that there is no warming going on and that all their predictions were wrong.  And they have recovered just as Mrs Martin did:  By finding a convenient but invisible  explanation for why the world has been spared disaster.  In the Warmist case they say  that the warming is still going on but the extra heat is somehow magically slipping past both the ocean and terrestrial surfaces and burying itself in the ocean deeps.  The fact that heat tends to rise rather than sink doesn't seem to worry them.  And the fact that the ocean deeps are known mainly for the extreme stability of their temperature doesn't bother them either.

And now that they have that "explanation' for their prophecy failure, they are going on to the next phase recorded by Festinger:  They are becoming more fanatical than ever and are proselytizing frantically  -- as you will see below.

Incidentally, the group Festinger observed is not unique.  The pattern has been observed repeatedly.  A good historical example is the Jehovah's Witnesses.  In the late 19th century, Pastor Russell  predicted the second coming of the Lord in 1914.  And  -- frabjous joy! -- the vast and insane destruction of World War I broke out on cue.  So when Pastor Russell died in 1916 he was sure he had seen the beginning of the end.  Peskily, however, peace broke out in 1918 and no Lord descending in glory was to be seen anywhere.

Did the Russellites give up?  No way!  They said that the Lord HAD come on cue  but had done so invisibly.  And under the dynamic leadership of the feisty Judge Rutherford they renamed themselves Jehovah's Witnesses and began a huge evangelism campaign to persuade everyone else that we are in the last days -- a campaign which continues to this day.  You've no doubt found JWs  on your doorstep at times.  Their degree of committment makes orthodox Christians look feeble.

And just as the JWs had an invisible "parousia" of the Lord, Warmists are now detecting invisible heating.  We won't see the last of them for a long time.

Anyway, below are some excerpts from an article which tells how fired up the Warmists are getting:

Last year, a researcher presented a paper on climate change at the American Geophysical Union’s meeting entitled ”Is Earth F**ked?” which advocated “environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups.”

Last month, the Philippines climate commissioner and self-styled revolutionary Naderev “Yeb” Saño held a 13-day fast in the midst of an international climate summit, just hours after Typhoon Haiyan ravaged his home country. In a tearful speech quoting Gandhi, he said: “We cannot sit and stay helpless staring at this international climate stalemate. It is now time to take action. We need an emergency climate pathway.”

And only last week, a conference of climate scientists in London explored the theme of “radical emissions reduction” after noting that “nothing that we’ve said or done to date about climate change has made any detectable dip whatsoever”. Via a weblink, author Naomi Klein compared the fight against climate change with the struggle against South African apartheid, and said, “an agenda capable of delivering radical emissions reductions will only advance if accompanied by a radical movement.”

Fed up with slow (or in some cases, backwards) progress on climate change, environmental advocates are mulling desperate measures. Emerging at the head of this pack is arguably the world’s most prominent climate scientist: James Hansen, a former NASA researcher turned activist.

In a provocative study published earlier this month, Hansen and a group of colleagues make the case for why radical action is needed. The now commonly embraced international target of keeping global warming at a maximum of 2°C above pre-industrial levels—a hard-won, but politically negotiated goal—is actually much too high, Hansen says, and we should instead aim for 1°C. That would be barely a blip higher than current levels of global warming (around 0.8°C), but still the highest level ever experienced over the 10,000-year course of human civilization. ”Our objective is to define what the science indicates is needed, not to assess political feasibility,” the paper says.

Why 1°C is the danger level

Hansen’s main point is simple: If the Earth hasn’t experienced temperatures warmer than 1°C as a result of natural climate variability for at least the last 100,000 years, that’s probably about where we should draw our human-caused global warming line-in-the-sand. Beyond that point, things start to unravel pretty quickly. Environmentalists have dubbed this acceleration of warming “the wheelchair curve“:

Because the world is going to end up in a wheelchair if this happens.Jos Hagelaars/Max Edkins/World Bank

As warming crosses 1°C, Hansen and his colleagues’ research shows that additional heat is stored mostly in the deep ocean, where it can remain locked away for hundreds or thousands of years. (Water circulates very slowly down there). That essentially locks in further climate change, even if emissions are drastically reduced later on, because that circulating water will continually replenish the surface with relative warmth from below. Additional warming will also begin to trigger feedbacks (melting permafrost, thawing methane) that will unleash additional greenhouse gases and drive further warming.

As warming approaches 2°C, it locks in an additional 10-20 meters of sea level rise over the next few hundred years—enough to flood every coastal city in the world. Ecosystem collapse would be virtually assured, as plants and animals that have evolved into precise niches over hundreds of thousands of years are forced to adapt to new conditions in just a decade or two. Even assuming we eventually stop emitting CO2 completely, reaching 2°C could, the study shows, mean we remain above 1°C for hundreds of years or more.

As we reported recently, the UN has endorsed a carbon “budget”—a maximum of one trillion tonnes of carbon emitted into the atmosphere to keep warming below 2°C. To stay below 1°C, Hansen et al argue that the world can burn only half this amount.

But the cost of waiting is enormous. If global CO2 peaks in 2013—that is, sometime in the next week or so—followed by drastic reductions, we’re still locked in to climate change of 1°C or so until about 2100. If we delay this peak until 2030 (the green line in the chart on the right above), Hansen projects extensive climate-change impacts will continue for a further two centuries. If we delay until 2050 (the red line), dangerous climate change will be locked in until past the year 3000.

Hansen and his associates admonish the environmental community for doing the same things over and over again—advocating for renewable energy, recycling, and hybrid cars—and expecting different results. The change that is produced in this way is much, much too slow, they say. Their study concludes with what can only be characterized as a call to arms: a global challenge akin to the anti-slavery and civil rights movements, begging the world’s young people to disrupt their governments and demand immediate action on climate change.

In short, we’re talkin’ ’bout a revolution—or in the words of the paper, “a human ‘tipping point’.”

In Hansen’s view, young people have the best reason to fight the system. He has said he quit his job at NASA so he could more fully embrace climate activism, including a plan to sue the government on behalf of younger generations for failing to act on climate change in time. (At least in the United States, trying to sue corporations would probably fail). He explained his strategy of helping youth fight climate change through the court system in a recent op-ed for CNN.

SOURCE





Dec 16th Global Sea Ice Highest For 25 Years


Global Sea Ice Area at Dec 16th

 Global sea ice area is the second highest on record for Dec 16th, and the highest since 1988. For most of this year, it has been above the 1979-2008 mean.



SOURCE  (See the original for links)




Media Bored with Climate Change: Study

A new FAIR survey looking at top national news networks found that while reports of extreme weather dominated the media in 2013, networks failed to include hardly any mention of human influence. From January to September 2013, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and ABC World News aired 450 segments consisting of 200 words or more, FAIR reported Wednesday. However, only 4 percent of those reports actually mentioned the words "climate change," "global warming" or "greenhouse gases."

Climate change coverage in the media has long been scarce. Similar reports of the media neglecting talk of global warming occured in the days after Hurricane Sandy, when CNN and Fox News made little to no mention of "climate change" in their reports. Fox News has been criticized several times in the past for its denial of the human impact on weather, and a study in August revealed that the more time viewers spend consuming conservative news, the more likely they are to become skeptical of climate science.

SOURCE





Lawrence Solomon: For global warming believers, 2013 was the year from Hell

Almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong for the cause of global warming

2013 has been a gloomy year for global warming enthusiasts. The sea ice in the Antarctic set a record, according to NASA, extending over a greater area than at any time since 1979 when satellite measurements first began. In the Arctic the news is also glum. Five years ago, Al Gore predicted that by 2013 “the entire North polar ice cap will be gone.” Didn’t happen. Instead, a deflated Gore saw the Arctic ice cap increase by 50% over 2012. This year’s Arctic ice likewise exceeded that of 2008, the year of his prediction. And that of 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Weather between the poles has also conspired to make the global warming believers look bad. In December, U.S. weather stations reported over 2000 record cold and snow days. Almost 60% of the U.S. was covered in snow, twice as much as last year. The heavens even opened up in the Holy Land, where an awestruck citizenry saw 16 inches of snow fall in Jerusalem, almost three feet in its environs. Snow blanketed Cairo for the first time in more than 100 years.

2013 marks the 17th year of no warming on the planet. It marks the first time that James Hansen, Al Gore’s guru and the one whose predictions set off the global warming scare, admitted that warming had stopped. It marks the first time that major media enforcers of the orthodoxy — the Economist, Reuters and the London Telegraph – admitted that the science was not settled on global warming, the Economist even mocking the scientists’ models by putting them on “negative watch.” Scientific predictions of global cooling – until recently mostly shunned in the academic press for fear of being labeled crackpot – were published and publicized by no less than the BBC, a broadcaster previously unmatched in the anthropogenic apocalyptic media.

2013 was likewise bleak for businesses banking on global warming. Layoffs and bankruptcies continued to mount for European and North American companies producing solar panels and wind turbines, as did their pleas for subsidies to fight off what they labelled unfair competition from Chinese firms. Starting in 2013, though, their excuses have been wearing thin. China’s Suntech, the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer, has now filed for bankruptcy, as has LDK Solar, another major firm. Sinovel, China’s largest manufacturers of wind turbines and the world second largest, reported it lost $100-million after its revenues plunged 60%, and it is now closing plants in Canada, the U.S., and Europe.

While these no-carbon technologies get buried, carbon rich fuels go gung ho. Last month Germany fired up a spanking new coal plant, the first of 10 modern CO2-gushers that Europe’s biggest economy will be banking on to power its economy into the 21st century. Worldwide, 1200 coal-fired plants are in the works. According to the International Agency, coal’s dominance will especially grow in the countries of the developing world, helping to raise their poor out of poverty as they modernize their economies.

But important as coal is, the fossil fuel darlings are indisputably shale gas and shale oil. This week the U.K. sloughed off the naysayers and announced it will be going all out to tap into these next-generation fuels. Half of the UK will be opened up to drilling to accomplish for the U.K. what shale oil and shale gas are doing for the U.S. – drastically lowering energy costs while eliminating the country’s dependence on foreign fuels. China, too, has decided to tap into the shale revolution – in a deal with the U.S. announced this week, it will be exploiting what some estimate to be the world’s biggest shale gas reserves, equivalent in energy content to about half the oil in Saudi Arabia.

2013 as well marks a turning point for the governments of the world. January 1, 2013, Day One of the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol, saw Kyoto abandoned by Canada and Russia, two fossil fuel powerhouses. With their departure Kyoto became a club for the non-emitters – the Kyoto Protocol now only covers  a paltry 15% of global emissions. At UN-sponsored talks on global warming in Warsaw last month, the Western countries of Europe, North America, and Australia refused to even discuss a proposal from developing countries that would limit emissions in the future.

2013 also saw Australia elect a climate-skeptic government in an election that was hailed as a referendum on climate change. Upon winning, the government promptly proceeded to scrap the country’s carbon tax along with its climate change ministry, now in the rubbish heap of history. Other countries are taking note of the public’s attitude toward climate change alarmism – almost nowhere does the public believe the scary scenarios painted by the climate change advocates.

2013 was the best of years for climate skeptics; the worst of years for climate change enthusiasts for whom any change – or absence of change — in the weather served as irrefutable proof of climate change. The enthusiasts fell into disbelief that everyone didn’t join them in pooh-poohing the failure of the climate models. That governments and the public would abandon the duty to stop climate change was in their minds no more thinkable than Hell freezing over. Which the way things are going for them, may happen in 2014.

SOURCE





In Light of Decreased Global Temperatures, It's Time to Take a Look at the Global Warming Spending Racket

International media outlets deserve credit for reporting accurately on the redistribution schemes that flowed out from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. But they should follow up by asking some hard questions about scientific assumptions that have not materialized.

Since the planet appears to be getting colder rather than warmer, it would seem that public policy should be reshaped to reflect challenges that have gone unaddressed at the U.N. Part of doing that involves taking a harder look at the massive amounts of money that are being spent trying to fight a problem that increasingly appears not to exist at all.

Dozens of nations signed off on an agreement that said they would make “contributions” toward reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage is non-binding; so it’s not clear what the “contribution” actually means. In a press release, the UNFCCC said “detailed work” would begin next year in anticipation of upcoming conferences in Lima, Peru and Paris, France. That should give the media ample to dig into the impact global warming policies might have on the vulnerable populations the U.N. claims to champion.

They could begin with representatives from the 132 developing nations that walked out of the Warsaw conference when their demands were not met. If the Western governments genuinely believe in their claim that human emissions are responsible for dangerous levels of global warming, then there is an argument to be made that the poorer countries are in need of some form of financial aid.

But a rising number of climate skeptics now question the premise of man-made global warming theories. Almost half of meteorologists are of the view that human activity is not responsible for climate change. Marc Morano, editor of the Climate Depot site, has identified over 1,000 scientists worldwide who are firmly in the skeptical camp. Yet, Western governments continue to pour time, energy and precious resources into global warming initiatives as if widespread scientific skepticism did not exist.

The White House report on Federal Climate Changes Expenditures (budget authority) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2013, which ended on September 30, provided the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), with the opportunity to refresh its calculations of total government expenditures based on three reports: 1) "Climate Change: Improvements Needed to Clarify National Priorities and better Align Them with Federal Funding Decisions" by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), May 2011, which covers the period from 1993 (calendar year) to FY 2010; 2) "Funding for Federal Climate Change Activities, FY 2008 to FY 2012, from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), April 26, 2012; and 3) Federal Climate Change Expenditures: Report to Congress by the White House, August 2013, which covers FY 2012 & 2013.”

Here is what it found: “The GAO report shows a total of $107 billion in hard expenditures, including about $31.5 billion on climate science. These sums includes expenditures under American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Stimulus Bill). The GAO report also shows . an additional $16 billion for soft expenditures. The CRS report shows $8.9 billion and $8.3 billion in hard expenditures in 2011 and 2012, respectively, of which $2.4 billion went to climate science each year. The White House report shows that in 2012 soft expenditures amounted to about $10.1 billion, roughly what was previously estimated. In 2013, total expenditures were $22.2 billion, of which $2.5 billion went to climate science, and about $13.1 billion were soft expenditures.

The total for the 21-year period are: $185 billion, with $133 billion for hard expenditures, of which about $39 billion went to science, and about $52 billion for soft expenditures.”

Since the planet has been getting cooler, not warmer since 1998, the media should be asking questions about the opportunity cost of the investments Western governments have been making. Since it is now evident there is a large and growing disparity between climate model predictions and actual scientific observations, it’s pretty clear the federal government’s spending priorities have been misplaced.

Astronomers are taking note of a calm solar cycle that translates into fewer sunspots. “It is the weakest cycle the sun has been in for all the space age, for 50 years,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association physicist Doug Biesecker has told members of the press. This could be a major contributing factor behind cooler temperatures that have been recorded recently.

A group of German scientists are now forecasting a cooling trend that will persist for the duration of the 21st Century as a result of decreased solar activity. This is what Donald Easterbook, a retired geologist from Western Washington University, anticipates 25 to 30 years of global cooling. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), and sun spot activity over the past century strongly correlate with previous warming and coolings, Easterbook explains. The recent shift of the PDO back into a cool phase is “right on schedule,” Easterbook points out in a Dec. 2008 paper for the American Geophysical Union.

Contrary to what high profile U.S. government officials have said, historical records show that cooling phases tend to be more dangerous and destabilizing to vulnerable populations. Food shortages and civic turmoil have been linked to global cooling, not global warming, Morano reports on his web site. By denying developing countries access to cheap, affordable energy in form of fossil fuels, environmentalists and their allies in the U.N., are putting these populations in a more comprised position.

The draft version of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Fifth Assessment (AR5), which is already on the Internet, is narrowly focused on the human contribution to global warming and its potential after effects. Updated scientific research now shows that these assumptions are well off the mark.

It’s time for members of the press to taking a harder look at the impact of global warming policies as opposed to global warming, per se.

SOURCE





Americans Have Little Faith In Scientists, Science Journalists: Poll

How much faith do Americans have in scientists and science journalists? Not a whole lot, a new survey finds.

In a new HuffPost/YouGov poll, only 36 percent of Americans reported having "a lot" of trust that information they get from scientists is accurate and reliable. Fifty-one percent said they trust that information only a little, and another 6 percent said they don't trust it at all.

Science journalists fared even worse in the poll. Only 12 percent of respondents said they had a lot of trust in journalists to get the facts right in their stories about scientific studies. Fifty-seven percent said they have a little bit of trust, while 26 percent said they don't trust journalists at all to accurately report on scientific studies.

What’s more, many Americans worry that the results of scientific studies are sometimes tainted by political ideology -- or by pressure from the studies’ corporate sponsors.

A whopping 78 percent of Americans think that information reported in scientific studies is often (34 percent) or sometimes (44 percent) influenced by political ideology, compared to only 18 percent who said that happens rarely (15 percent) or never (3 percent).

Similarly, 82 percent said that they think that scientific findings are often (43 percent) or sometimes (39 percent) influenced by the companies or organizations sponsoring them.

Republicans in the new poll were most likely to say that they have only a little bit of trust in scientists to give accurate and reliable information, and the most likely to say that they think scientific findings may be tainted by political ideology -- possibly reflecting distrust in scientists over topics such as evolution and climate change.

SOURCE

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