Beware the church of climate alarm

[calfoxwc]

Beware the church of climate alarm

Miranda Devine

November 27, 2008

 

As the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, an economist, anti-totalitarian and climate change sceptic, prepares to take up the rotating presidency of the European Union next year, climate alarmists are doing their best to traduce him.

 

The New York Times opened a profile of Klaus, 67, this week with a quote from a 1980s communist secret agent's report, claiming he behaves like a "rejected genius", and asserts there is "palpable fear" he will "embarrass" the EU.

 

But the real fear driving climate alarmists wild is that a more rational approach to the fundamentalist religion of global warming may be in the ascendancy - whether in the parliamentary offices of the world's largest trading bloc or in the living rooms of Blacktown.

 

As the global financial crisis takes hold, perhaps people are starting to wonder whether the so-called precautionary principle, which would have us accept enormous new taxes in the guise of an emissions trading scheme and curtail economic growth, is justified, based on what we actually know about climate.

 

One of Australia's leading enviro-sceptics, the geologist and University of Adelaide professor Ian Plimer, 62, says he has noticed audiences becoming more receptive to his message that climate change has always occurred and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

 

In a speech at the American Club in Sydney on Monday night for Quadrant magazine, titled Human-Induced Climate Change - A Lot Of Hot Air, Plimer debunked climate-change myths.

 

"Climates always change," he said. Our climate has changed in cycles over millions of years, as the orbit of the planet wobbles and our distance from the sun changes, for instance, or as the sun itself produces variable amounts of radiation. "All of this affects climate. It is impossible to stop climate change. Climates have always changed and they always will."

 

His two-hour presentation included more than 50 charts and graphs, as well as almost 40 pages of references. It is the basis of his new book, Heaven And Earth: The Missing Science Of Global Warming, to be published early next year.

 

Plimer said one of the charts, which plots atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature over 500 million years, with seemingly little correlation, demonstrates one of the "lessons from history" to which geologists are privy: "There is no relationship between CO2 and temperature."

 

Another slide charts the alternating periods of cooling and warming on Earth, with the Pleistocene Ice Age starting 110,000 years ago and giving way, 14,700 years ago, to the Bolling warm period for 800 years. This in turn gave way to the Older Dryas cooling for 300 years, then the Allerod warming for 700 years, and so on, until the cooling of the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850. Since 1850, we have lived through the "Modern Warming", one of the most stable climate periods in history.

 

Plimer said some astronomers predict we are headed for a new cooling period.

 

Plimer said there is a division between those scientists who sit in front of super computers and push piles of data into the mathematical models that drive the theory of climate change, and those who take measurements in the field.

 

We are not sceptical enough about the data. For instance, Plimer cited differences between results from temperature measuring stations in urban and rural areas. Those in urbanised Chicago, Berkeley, New York, and so on, show temperature rises over the past 150 years, whereas those in the rural US, in Houlton, Albany and Harrisburg (though not Death Valley, California) show equally consistent cooling. "What we're measuring is urbanisation," Plimer said.

 

To understand the chaotic nature of climate change, we need to consider all the inputs - cosmic radiation, sun, clouds and so on, he said.

 

There was much more but essentially Plimer's message is that the idea humans cause climate change has become a fundamentalist religion which is corrupting science. It is embedded with a fear of nature and embraced principally by city people who have lost touch with nature.

 

He likens the debate to the famous 1990s battle he had in the Federal Court, where he accused an elder of The Hills Bible Church in Baulkham Hills of breaching Australia's Trade Practices Act by claiming to have found scientific evidence of Noah's Ark in Turkey.

 

Plimer says creationists and climate alarmists are quite similar in that "we're dealing with dogma and people who, when challenged, become quite vicious and irrational".

 

Human-caused climate change is being "promoted with religious zeal … there are fundamentalist organisations which will do anything to silence critics. They have their holy books, their prophet [is] Al Gore. And they are promoting a story which is frightening us witless [using] guilt [and urging] penance."

 

It is difficult for non-scientists to engage in the debate over what causes climate change and whether or not it can be stopped by new taxes and slower growth, because dissenting voices are shouted down by true believers in the scientific community who claim they alone have the authority to speak.

 

Quadrant is under fire for publishing articles by sceptics but, as its editor, Keith Windschuttle, said on Monday night, "People who are really confident [of their facts] relish debate."

 

In any case, ordinary people already have suspicions. The zealotry and one-sidedness of the debate alarmed an 81-year-old Seven Hills pensioner, Denys Clarke, so much that last month, at his own expense, he hired the ballroom at the Blacktown Workers Club for two public forums, titled The Truth About Climate Change. He invited a climate sceptic, the James Cook University professor Bob Carter, a geologist, to speak. More than 300 people attended, some from as far away as Nowra.

 

Carter, like Plimer and Klaus, has come in for his fair share of vilification. But as Clarke proves, you can't stop people thinking. Yet.

 

devinemiranda@hotmail.com

 

 

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/11/26/1227491635989.html

 

 

[Chicopee John]

FWIW, I've always been a skeptic of so called human-induced Global Warming or human-induced Climate Change.

 

I don't necessarily disagree that our climate is changing - it has been changing, evolving, etc. over millions of years. Any time scientists or anybody else tries to take data from a handful of decades - an extremely small data set - within a history of millions of years and projects change, is careless, if not downright reckless.

 

I believe there ARE things that we can do better - and should do better - to support the health and quality of life on earth. However, I do not believe that global warming theory is anything more than a thinly veiled attempt to demean anything industrial, capital and, in the end, American.

 

This is politics, not science IMHO.

 

PS It drives the heck out of me that our town's public schools teach global warming theory like it is gospel. Actually, we'd be better off if they did teach the Gospel, IMHO.

[calfoxwc]

I don't mean to diss global warming. And using our common sense and working to have clearner air, water, and soil, a healthy environment, including wildlfe and farming, fishing/hunting, just everyday living.

 

But like this article says, the idea that human activities, even dairy cows passing gas, campfires, driving cars... makes CO2 a more prevelant

poison gas,

 

really seems like a control/influence/rallying point for political gain.

 

More and more information is coming out, telling the more comprehensive understanding of climate change.

 

Somewhere along the way, so many public school systems have been in the Dem back pocket. I imagine "more gov money"

might do that.

 

Oh well. Meanwhile, cars exude Carbon MONoxide, and plants use carbon DIoxide as food.

 

It bugs me that so many enthusiasts of man made global warming never talk about the destruction of millions of acres a year of

the tropical rainforests in the world, or the unlimited destruction of formerly agricultural areas for roads, parking lots, homes and factories.

 

And still we are said to be starting to cool down in temps. Oh, that's in rural areas - away from parking lots and houses and roads and factories....

[ballpeen]

I would say man has a very minimal impact on the overall climate.

 

Climates have changed in a big way long before man had any impact.

 

Now....do I agree for common sense and quality of life purpose we need to recycle, cut emissions, curtail the raping of South American rain forests....sure I do, but Dan, the ice caps have been receding for hundreds of years.

 

In another age, I am sure someone is going to claim we need to start emitting to stave off global cooling as the ice caps start heading south again.

[DieHardBrownsFan]

If man is responsible, even partially I would have to blame China and India. There emissions are highly unregulated. China is spitting all kinds of poison into the atmosphere and even poisoning there own people with there hurry to become a "super power". India ditto. We have no control over them, and think we here in the USA are doing just as much as any other country to control pollution.

[rich4eagle]

FWIW, I've always been a skeptic of so called human-induced Global Warming or human-induced Climate Change.

 

I don't necessarily disagree that our climate is changing - it has been changing, evolving, etc. over millions of years. Any time scientists or anybody else tries to take data from a handful of decades - an extremely small data set - within a history of millions of years and projects change, is careless, if not downright reckless.

 

I believe there ARE things that we can do better - and should do better - to support the health and quality of life on earth. However, I do not believe that global warming theory is anything more than a thinly veiled attempt to demean anything industrial, capital and, in the end, American.

 

This is politics, not science IMHO.

 

PS It drives the heck out of me that our town's public schools teach global warming theory like it is gospel. Actually, we'd be better off if they did teach the Gospel, IMHO.

 

If you fully understand thermodynamics and entropy and enthalpy you would indeed believe humans can contribute to global temperature increase in the short term. The total amount is an unknown quantity it may be very small or an igniter system for tragedy in a short number of years. In the big scheme of things 50-100 years is the short term. If this seems nonsensical and thermodynamics is too complex to understand .......try this............turn on the fire place and stick your hand in if it does not get burned there is no such thing as human inducement of thermal change.

 

I do like Diehard's simple minded cause of the issues.........prefect............

[calfoxwc]

Rich,

 

What is your detailed appraisal of the information in the original post at the top of the thread?

 

 

[Mr. T]

Here is some more New Shit and that is what it is!!!!!

 

British Children Being Turned into Eco-Nazis

 

They moan about lights, whine if you don't recycle and nag you for using the car... Our kids have become pint-sized Eco-Nazi

 

When I was a child, 'pester power' meant stamping one's feet in a shop. It involved little more than begging one's mum in an irritating voice for the latest He-Man figure or for one of those unusually thick pink milkshakes from a place called McDonald's.

 

 

It was a feeble force, this alleged power of the pest, easily quashed by a clip around the lughole or by that most ominous threat issued by mums-in-distress: 'Just you wait until your dad gets home.'

 

 

How times have changed. Today, 'pester power' is a powerful political tool.

 

New Labour is explicitly recruiting children to its climate change and respect agendas - its illiberal, conformist, thought-policing programmes of 'good behaviour' promotion - in the hope that they might, 'use their pester power in a positive way: reminding grown-ups how to behave'.

 

 

After coating Britain in CCTV cameras, the Government is nurturing a battalion of child spies, an army of ethically minded Veruca Salts, to harry and hector the badly behaved adults of 21st-century Britain.

 

 

Earlier this month, The New York Times reported the emergence in New York of 'pint-size eco-police' - 'environmentally conscious children' who 'pour scorn' on their parents for everything from leaving the lights on to failing to sort their egg boxes from their bottle tops when recycling the weekly rubbish. Experts refer to them as an 'army of eco-kids' who have been 'steeped in environmentalism at school, in houses of worship, through scouting and even via popular culture'.

 

 

This is no American curiosity. Here, too, children are actively encouraged, by the authorities and by popular culture, to monitor their parents' environmental behaviour. Eco-Schools, a governmentfunded scheme active in 5,500 schools around the UK, calls on teachers to integrate environmentalism into the curriculum as a way of empowering children to police their parents. Andrew Suter, head of the scheme, says it allows kids to 'tell their parents what to do for a change'.

 

 

 

Cue thousands of ethically empowered pests nagging their folks about how often they use the washing machine or what kind of petrol they put in the car.

 

 

Parents aren't happy. At a school in Worcestershire one mum complained: 'Can you please tell my daughter that we are allowed to have some lights on - she's got us sitting in the dark like mushrooms.'

 

 

Michael, a dad- of-two in North London, tells me his daughter recently came home from school with an 'eco check-list' to find out how green their home is. 'I used to help her with her homework. Now her homework is about helping me to be a better person!' he fulminates.

 

 

Politicising pester power is all the rage in green-leaning education circles. David Uzzell, a professor of environmental psychology at the University of Surrey, reports attending an educational conference a couple of years ago where 'everyone was absolutely convinced. . . that "pester power" was the answer [to the problem of climate change]'.

 

 

A 2006 report by the Department of Trade and Industry said environmental energy efficiency should be made into 'an integral part of [a child's] mindset' so that he or she can help to 'shape attitudes in the wider community' and bring about 'the desired cultural shift'.

 

 

The illiberal, one might even say Maoist, bent to this campaign to turn children into eco-cops is made clear in the book How To Turn Your Parents Green by James Russell, published last year.

 

 

It encourages children to 'nag, pester, bug, torment and punish the people who are merrily wrecking our world' - that is, grown-ups, or 'groans', who spend their time 'slumped in front of the TV' or 'salivating over a holiday brochure' and who poison the world with 'Revolting rubbish, fiendish fertilisers and pestilential pesticides'.

 

 

Russell says children should 'channel their pester power', 'gripe' for organic carrots, and issue fines against their parents and other ' transgressors' of the environmentalist code. Children should be the 'guardians of the glorious green future', pestering groans until they sign up to a green charter.

 

 

Bullying and bugging the 'transgressors' of eco-orthodoxy . . . children as the heralds of a glorious green future . . . harnessing children's pester power to bring about the Government's desired cultural shift in eco-attitudes - I can't be the only person who is freaked out by this ominous language.

 

 

How long before children carry around little green books and snitch on their parents to a glorious green council if they book a cheap flight or eat an apple imported from Kenya?

 

 

When children are not snooping for 'climate crimes' in the home, as James Russell describes it, they have been co-opted into spying on adults on the streets. In April last year, the Government's Respect Task Force launched a competition in schools to find children to provide 'the voice' for the first talking CCTV cameras - cameras that not only watch us, but tell us off, too.

 

 

In 20 towns and cities, children at schools were asked to design posters that challenged antisocial behaviour. The winning designers were invited to sit in their local CCTV control rooms on the day that the truly Orwellian 'talking cams' were unveiled, from where they admonished citizens for littering, loitering, drinking and so on.

 

 

The Respect Task Force said this was about getting kids to 'use their pester power in a positive way, reminding grown-ups how to behave'.

 

 

Last month, it was reported that councils around the country are recruiting young people as 'junior streetwatchers' to spy on, and even photograph and video, people who commit dog-fouling, littering or bin crimes (i.e. putting the wrong rubbish in the wrong bins, or allowing it to spill on to the street).

 

 

Some councils refer to these juniors as 'covert human intelligence sources' and have even give them James Bond- style code names. Ealing Council in West London admitted that 'hundreds of junior streetwatchers, aged eight to ten, [have been] trained to identify and report enviro-crime issues such as graffiti and fly-tipping'.

 

 

Harlow Council in Essex said it has 25 'street-scene champions', all aged between 11 and 14, who are encouraged to email or telephone the council if they suspect that an enviro-crime - ranging from vandalism of bus shelters to large-scale littering - has been committed. It is the mark of a truly authoritarian regime to recruit children to nag out-of-tune parents or to spy on disobedient citizens.

 

 

A writer for the Guardian celebrates eco-pester power on the basis that children make 'natural campaigners - no shades of grey, no nuanced arguments, just loads of passion and clarity'. Yes, and that is also why ruthless governments, from the Soviets to Maoists, cultivated zealous little police-kids: because childish minds are easily moulded to accept political orthodoxies.

 

 

In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, it was 'almost normal for people over 30 to be frightened of their own children' because they were 'ungovernable little savages' who spied for the Party.

 

 

Before we become scared of our kids, too - as they patrol our homes, speak to us from CCTV cameras or squeal on us to councils - I suggest dealing with this politicised pester power in the same way my mum dealt with my childish demands: by administering a collective clip around the lughole to the child spies.

 

This article first appeared in The Spectator magazine. Brendan O'Neill's satire on environmentalism, Can I Recycle My Granny? And 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas, is published by Hodder & Stoughton.