On 20th May, 2009, Monbiot had an article at Guardian Environment entitled Price of doing nothing costs the earth with the sub heading
MIT scientists forecast a global temperature rise of 5.2o C by 2100 – but climate change deniers reject models devised by the world’s finest minds. So what do they suggest instead… seaweed?
Here are comments number 11 -15
Hamlet4 (20 May 2009 2:10PM
@George
Thats not science – its a computer model trying and failing to describe a immensely complicated chaotic system. Please read up on the butterfly theory to find out HOW wrong such models can be over time. The 90 % confidence levels for forecasts over 90 years is simply absurd. Rubbish in – Rubbish out.
Hamlet4 (20 May 2009 2:18PM)@Monbiot
OK, all those of you who reject modelling, answer the question: what would you use instead?
nr 1 – How about using your brain, not your political belief system.
nr 2 – Try and build models that explain the present stagnation in temperature, sea-level rise and increase in ice-extent, instead of just pretending its not happening.
nr 3 – Emphasize the limitations of such models, instead of using them trying to create fear and thereby grants.
scunnered52 (20 May 2009 2:29PM)
George the only person you are scaring is your self. All climate model projections are currently in serious error because they over-estimate “climate sensitivity”; and that’s due in main to what the modellers don’t know. I would recommend you undertake to create your own climate model. Here is DIY course on how to do so…
geoffchambers (20 May 2009 2:38PM)
At the end of the article … is this:
“This work was supported in part by grants from … foundation sponsors of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change”.
And who are these industrial sponsors? Why, Exxon, BP, Shell, Total, among others. This is research funded by Big Oil money. Can this be right?
Monbiot (20 May 2009 2:44PM)
Hamelt4: [sic]
You appear to be suggesting that the MIT team is guided by political beliefs and is using this model to create fear and harvest grants. Perhaps you would care to provide some evidence?
Monbiot denied the accusation that the models were used to “create fear and thereby grants” but deflected Hamlet4’s demand to Monbiot to “us[e] your brain, not your political belief system” onto the MIT group, which Hamlet4 hadn’t mentioned (though I had). Clearly, Monbiot was rattled, because 11 minutes later, he was back with this comment:
Monbiot (20 May 2009 2:55PM)
scunnered52:
Of all the posters on these threads, you are the one who looks to me most like an astroturfer: in other words someone posing as an independent citizen while being paid by organisations which have an interest in the outcome. Is my suspicion correct? How about providing a verifiable identity to lay this concern to rest?
Now look at scunnered52’s intelligent comment above and try to spot why Monbiot should accuse him of being an astroturfer. Odd, isn’t it?
Half an hour later, a puzzled Hamlet4 replied to Monbiot’s non sequitur of a question, with a comment that finished:
Try and THINK Monbiot – do you really believe that these models are producing accurate descriptions of our climate 90 years from now ???.
scunnered52 and Hamlet4 then disappeared, and I went off on another tack:
geoffchambers (20 May 2009 3:35PM)
George asks whether we should use computer models or seaweed for predicting future climate change. Research conducted by the International Institute of Forecasters on the accuracy of forecasting suggests that predictions made by the general public are usually more accurate than those made by experts. This is because the man in the street tends to believe things will probably continue much as they have in the past, while your expert tends to follow the spaghetti off the edge of his graphs into the wide blue yonder. So the correct answer is: seaweed.
I then came back to the subject of research financed by Big Oil:
geoffchambers (20 May 2009 4:36PM)
thesnufkin at 4.10pm complains we denialists are giving him nothing to get his teeth into. How about this? Monbiot’s new estimate for temperature rise in 2100 comes from what he describes as “the world’s most sophisticated models devised by the world’s finest minds”. And who are these world’s finest minds? They’re the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Their site lists them all in democratic alphabetical order. Most of them are foreign exchange students in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Urban Planning, Engineering etc. Bright people Im sure, but when it comes to forecasting “the end of life as we know it”, (George’s expression) no more reliable than your average Jehovah’s Witness. And they are financed by Exxon, Shell, Total and BP – which is fine by me, but I wonder what George thinks about it?
geoffchambers (20 May 2009 10:28PM)
Filster at 10.04pm is still attacking the fossil fuel lobby, while Monbiot has moved on. The source for the alarmist prediction in this article is research financed by precisely the fossil fuel lobby which Monbiot so often decries. See the last paragraph of the MIT News article to which Monbiot links for special thanks to Exxon, Shell, BP and Total.
By next day the discussion had moved on to discussion of Mann and the attitude of the Chinese. Then gpwayne, (whose interventions have been retroactively graced with a “C for Contributor” since an article he recently wrote for the Guardian) joined in:
gpwayne (21 May 2009 5:59AM)
What fucking rubbish Geoff. You should be ashamed of yourself for writing such childish, stupid crap.
Apparently I was blogging under moderation at this time, because in my reply to gpwayne is this:
geoffchambers (21 May 2009 9:08AM
Hi. Nice to hear from you again. I’ve been away, under moderation for insulting Guardian readers, and sneaking in a couple of words in Chinese to a comment.
I’m surprised you didn’t know about Mann’s censored data file. It’s been much discussed by McIntyre and others, though possibly not on Guardian Environment.
I admire your reasoning: if the Chinese believe it, it must be true. I suppose the appeal to authority works best if the authorities you are appealing to are themselves authoritarian.
Don’t feel you have to reply. Blogging under moderation is like breakdancing with a ball and chain round your ankle, or arguing with a heavy stutter.
I tried to interest my interlocutors in Monbiot’s newfound enthusiasm for research financed by Big Oil, to no avail:
geoffchambers (21 May 2009 10:08AM)
thesnufkin at 9.37am asks what was in Mann’s file marked censored data. Peer reviewed tree-ring data, stalactite data, Finnish varves, I expect. But it wouldnt matter if it was full of old socks, would it? The point is he inadvertently handed a file named Censored Data to McIntyre. It’s not a conspiracy theory, simply an odd fact. Like the fact that Monbiot is expressing absolute faith in the results of research financed by Exxon.
geoffchambers (21 May 2009 10:57AM)
to gpwayne at 10.19am. You ask why China does this and that. How would I know? It all looks like perfectly sensible international diplomacy to me. You dont see the Chinese ambassador to the Vatican lecturing the Pope on dialectical materialism, but that doesnt mean that Beijing has gone Catholic.
And why ask me who censored Mann’s data? No-one. Its just the name on a file which Mann inadvertently sent to McIntyre. Read about it at ClimateAudit if youre interested.
While we are in rhetorical question mode, what do you think about Monbiot’s newfound faith in research funded by Exxon?
And just at this point, 20 hours after his last intervention, Monbiot turned up. So what did he think about China’s environmental policy, Mann’s censored file, or Exxon’s financing of his favourite alarmist climate model? Nothing.
Monbiot (21 May 2009 11:01AM)
Still no response from scunnered52. Interesting.
I got one decent response to my question though:
thesnufkin (21 May 2009 11:04AM)
If the work is sound it doesn’t matter who pays. The Renaissance was largely funded by the Borgias, but the art was still good.
I tried again:
geoffchambers (21 May 2009 11:43AM)
Since Monbiot has turned up, perhaps he would like to say how he feels about plugging data from research funded by Exxon?
But Monbiot was gone, never to be seen again on this thread. But the fun wasn’t over:
thesnufkin (21 May 2009 12:03PM)
scunnered52 has turned up!
And indeed, the blogger Monbiot had accused, without the slightest evidence, of being an astroturfer, had been busy at another part of Guardian environment, posting six times at :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/may/19/vaclav-klaus
The last five posts followed Monbiot’s accusation. Two have been deleted. Another two repeat, with different examples and links, the basic message of his first comment, which was posted before the comment which provoked Monbiot’s unfounded accusation:
scunnered52 (20 May 2009 10:22AM)
Who benefits from Cap-and-Trade? In the US it has been calculated that an economy-wide cap-and-trade program could generate up to $300 billion a year in PROFITS! With so much money at stake it is little wonder that those advocating eco-business attack sceptics. The Greens are just as greedy as you average oil billionaire.
Having spotted scunnered52’s reappearance on the Vaclav Klaus thread, thesnufkin piled in:
thesnufkin (21 May 2009 12:01PM)
scunnered52 Do you fancy replying to george monbiot’s allegation that you’re just an astroturfer? We’re all waiting.
scunnered52 (21 May 2009 1:01PM)
Did I actually get under old George’s skin that much … and I didn’t even know. LOL. Yes, my secret is out I am astroturfer – sponsored by Neeps&Tatties – a duplicitous grassroots organisation that acts as front for a secret group of empiricalists who have invested heavily in plastic macs and thermal long-johns. It is not in our interests to have people believe in global warming.
I’ve said too much already, but I trust you Snufkin not to pass this information on.
scunnered52’s next two comments have been deleted but he comes back one last time to denounce green greed.
scunnered52 (22 May 2009 9:30AM)
Climate Alarmism = BIG Profits. Knowing that relationship helps you understand the motives of Al Gore, Goldman Sachs, George Soros, Exxon, etc. Monbiot and company are just serving the vested interests of corporations. The Greens are just as greedy as your average billionaire.
So Monbiot, was accusing a sceptic commenter, who had already denounced the involvement of big business and oil billionaires in climate change policy, of being paid by big business.
Scunnered52 continued commenting wittily on climate matters until August 2009, when his comments stop. His user page is still up, indicating that he has not been banned.
Meanwhile, I had transferred my questioning of the morality of praising research funded by Big Oil to the Vaclav Klaus article, where Environment Editor John Vidal had been criticising Klaus’s sceptical book because it was financed by Exxon
geoffchambers (21 May 2009 5:10PM)
No answer to my question about big oil money, so I’ll rephrase it and try again:
Why is it ok for Vidal and Monbiot to quote approvingly from research funded by Exxon, but not ok for President Klaus to have his book sponsored by a think tank funded by Exxon?
No answer from Vidal, but thesnufkin replied, and I responded:
geoffchambers (21 May 2009 10:37PM)
to thesnufkin at 10.17pm
..which comes down to: “it’s ok for Exxon to fund good stuff, but not bad stuff”.
I can accept that, but the problem is, John Vidal can’t, because his whole article hinges on the argument: “if its funded by Exxon, it must be suspect”. Which is quite amusing, given that back in March he was praising the same Exxon-funded research which Monbiot attributes to the world’s finest minds…
Some other good sceptics joined in, including our own BobFJ, and the thread came to the usual unsatisfactory conclusion. Which is where the matter rested, until Monbiot reopened the debate on astroturfing a few months later with an article on the need for censorship at CiF.
At least this story demonstrates that Monbiot and Vidal don’t always have things their own way at CiF, and we commenters may sometimes influence policy at Guardian Environment.
The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change were introduced to Guardian readers in March 2009 with three fanfare articles – one by themselves, one by Vidal, and one by Monbiot. They were described proudly as members of the Guardian Environment Network. They were next quoted in the May 2009 article analysed above. They haven’t been heard of since.
Tonyb #22
I agree about the ineffectiveness of commenting at well frequented sites where minds are already made up. I come here to learn something and pass on snippets I hope will be useful, but I have no illusions about changing any minds.
Also about being even-tempered and factual, even though it doesn’t necessarily elicit the maximum number of responses.
On the subject of trying to influence policy makers and media without first getting to the public: I feel strongly we’re all open to the challenge “you and whose army?” -that we’re just a few lone bloggers with nothing better to do.
The dedicated website idea – isn’t that what Lawson and Peiser’s GWPF tries to do?
E-books and e-articles is somethig Iknow nothing about. I’d like to discuss this at length some time but work calls.
Work is calling me too, so just a few bullet points:
1) E-books and e-articles: lots of these sites on the net, e.g., Helium, HubPages, Squidoo.
2) Facebook and Twitter: I’d guess still chronically under-used, in comparison to the AGW proponents/activists, who IMO consistently punch above their weight, in that regard.
3) Politicians and influential people have e-mail and blogs. I’ve e-mailed my local MP several times, most recently about the 10:10 campaign.
4) On the connection between certain green activists and political movements of the past, I’d say these people lack at least two crucial things:
a) Sufficient political/economic chaos, of which to take advantage. Obviously, that might change.
b) A sufficiently charismatic leader figure, again not in evidence right now.
c) Mass public support (following from a) and b)). Very unlikely at this time, IMO. Compare for instance the recent Crude Awakening protests with the fuel protests of 2000.
Anyway, got to go.
Correction: that was three crucial things!
Geoff said
“The dedicated website idea – isn’t that what Lawson and Peiser’s GWPF tries to do?”
The trouble with both of these is that they are perceived as political or have their own agenda.
tonyb
Geoff #26
As you know I write a variety of climate related articles from a historical view point. In this respect I try to make them interesting-to the layman-as well as scientifically accurate.
In my opinion there are already more than enough papers and studies on climate science to refute the current beliefs, but they are not marketed very well. By this I mean that articles/papers tend to come and go quickly and have no lasting life so get rapidly forgotten.
Some are also highly technical which is all very well when speaking to experts, but most experts have already made up their minds either way.
So I see the need to collect relevant material together in as logical a format as the IPCC documents and host them on a dedicated web site. It would be updated only when new information came in.
Any interaction would take place on a separate section and I would limit that to comment on new material. The internet is a great place for proposing a theory and have it critically examined in a fraction of the time it takes peer reviewed papers. However, by allowing partisan comment-from whatever side-the blog will degenerate quickly into a slanging match.
I see a need in then marketing this coherent and selected material to the target audience which certainly includes policymakers and media.
In consequence each article or section probably needs a summary of its contents as that may be the only thing that will be read.
I would see the role of sceptical bloggers as directing people to this dedicated site which needs to rise above politics. That would not stop anyone from also engaging with warmists on the choice of blogs of most interest to them.
HS is one of the best examples of an even tempered site that -although sceptical- is not strident about it. However, as you will have seen with Peter, when it comes to climate science many people have already taken up a position and refuse to even look at new material. To be fair to Peter he has his counterparts at WUWT and other sceptical blogs. However this merely reinforces the notion that there is no point in trying to influence certain categories of people and we should concentrate on policymakers and media and ensure the educators have an alternative view available.
tonyb
Geoff Chambers, #26:
Two points:
The influence of sceptical blogs should not be underestimated. The MSM were, initially, reluctant to give Climategate the attention that it deserved, and it was only as a result of information, which provided context, flowing from the blogs that they eventually did so. The whole affair could all too easily have been swept under the carpet. I make no claims for HS in this respect, but CA, WUWT and Bishop Hill played a very important role. It is also worth noting that the contact between journalists and blogers at that time made the MSM aware that sceptical arguments can be intelligent and well informed. Many blogers, and high profile sceptics who are associated with blogs, are now regularly contacted by journalists, which is a new development during the last year.
The GWPF website is, IMHO, an invaluable international news digest for sceptics and serves a very useful purpose. Although it is not a blog, it does reprint selected blog posts, including ones from HS. There is reason to believe that the GWPF’s readership is politically influential and is likely to be visited by a rather different audience from the blogs.
TonyN
I am not disagreeing at all with any of your comments
http://www.thegwpf.org/
Everything has its purpose-and you should not underestimate the impact of HS- but ‘we’ lack the coherent AR4 type document which people can reference in part or in whole as circumstances dictate.
The Heartland one is good in parts but its background would certainly make me nervous, let alone waiverers.
In this respect we need something that can act as a counter to William Connolleys Wikipedia pages which will be the only source of information for many people. They won’t know its been manipulated.
PS Do you know of a source of £500,000 to fund the project? :)
tonyb
Roger Pielke Jr. took my information about anti democratic forces seriously enough to include it in a book review article published in Nature magazine, referencing Hansen and one other. Hansen recommended Keith Fanishe’s book calling for the destruction of civilisation (yes, that is ecofascism).
The problem is that nowadays, the extreme right don’t reveal themselves as such for obvious reasons. All of Monbiot’s articles, including the current one could have been written by another upper class, anti capitalist, anti globalisation campaigner, Oswald Mosely.
Being grown up and sensible is a big turn off in 2010, as are ideological driven old timers like Nigel Lawson and loony Lord Monckton (who is very smart, but far toomeasy to ridicule).
Credibility is everything, which is why I post on Piekle Jrs’s site. I focus on the politics because that is what is important, but honest physicists are invaluable.
Hal Lewis doesn’t bandy numbers with (literally) uneducated trolls on cif, he wrote
“It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.
Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist”.
http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1670-hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society.html
James Lovelock in the Guardian
I have seen this happen before, of course. We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad that something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked, or incompetently done
on computer models
I remember when the Americans sent up a satellite to measure ozone and it started saying that a hole was developing over the South Pole. But the damn fool scientists were so mad on the models that they said the satellite must have a fault. We tend to now get carried away by our giant computer models. But they’re not complete models. They’re based more or less entirely on geophysics. They don’t take into account the climate of the oceans to any great extent, or the responses of the living stuff on the planet. So I don’t see how they can accurately predict the climate.
tonyb, #32:
Your demand for funds seems very modest. Apparently Greenpeace’s budget for 2007 was £213m. Just think what sceptics might do with that kind of money.
TonyN #35 “Just think what sceptics could do with £213 million”. I can’t imagine. What’s the price of an MP these days?
to your #31: I agree about the usefulness of the GWPF site. Lawson was careful to publicise the cross-party support on its masthead, which should give it more authority among opinion-leaders. Its structure is much like Icecap, which was my favourite site when I was educating myself on the subject. Then when I started proselytising on CiF, I made a point of mentioning WUWT and Climate Audit. It was amazing how many warmists had never heard of Mcintyre or Watts. Then they became the standard reference for warmist accusations of “copying and pasting from dodgy sceptic blogs like WUWT” and I started plugging Harmless Sky and Climate Resistance, to bring the battle back home, as it were.
TonyB #30: Your idea of a sceptical reference site with a stable data base is excellent. I get so fed up with posts with umpteen links to peer-reviewed articles which are far too complex for the average blogger to explore. Take a recurring warmist meme like the “97% of climate scientists…” for example. I once went to the bother of looking up the research. You can refute its conclusions in a couple of paragraphs. But by the next time the meme came up, I’d lost the reference. While we’re waiting for a Jeremy Grantham to fill our Christmas stockings, it would be nice to develop the idea in more detail, with a skeleton subject list, for example.
TonyN #35
Ah but I am modelling the initial modest budget on our MP’s example, so whilst the grant is relatively modest there will be a whole host of perfectly legitimate expenses.
These will result in houses, cars and overseas holidays for us all. Theres even an ‘aga’ fund to help with your recalcitrant piece of metal.
tonyb
geoffchambers #36
Yes, the stable data base of agreed quality articles/papers is key. This core of information would only be changed if new information came to light. This does happen of course, for example AR4 is very out of date now but it still gets quoted.
To replicate the perfectly sensible IPCC report format means that there is a need for agreed ‘Chapter’ headings, each covering a key subject. Within those would be good quality articles that reflect the ‘consensus’ sceptical view. These will vary in length and format as they have not been written to a formula.
Consequently in deference to the short attention span of much of the audience-politicians, poicy makers, media- there would need to be a good summary that directly links back to the article.
A Q and A section would be fine as this is in the IPCC format. As you say there is barely a question that a sceptic at some point hasn’t properly answered, but the wheel gets reinvented each time the question is asked in another place.
Bearing in mind our small budget (see above) I think that to do this well we have to initially restrict ourselves to specfic key areas. More peripheral ones can be added later.
(it would be interesting to get your take on what you believe to be key)
I am also keen on the section that would allow new papers to be discussed and then amended following comment, cutting the peer review process time scale dramatically. In this respect I would encourage input from both sides, but kept strictly related to the subject. This is not a general blog-there are already plenty of those that allow comment.
As an example of on line peer review I have got a major series on sea levels in preparation as I consider this a key area.
History AND science shows that sea levels have fluctuated throughout our recorded history and is currently (generally) around 30cm lower today than in the Roman and Medieval warm periods. The IPCC have bee highly selective in their cut off point, only capturing the rise since 1900 and not putting this in context.
I see context as being an important element-we seem to have been taken over by computer modellers and there are currently very few people like me trying to put things into its historic context. No one has replaced Hubert Lamb or John Daly.
I would be keen for the site to be seen as an objective alternative voice and for that reason am nervous about too close an association with those mediums that might be seen as political or unacceptable-this should not become an advocacy forum.
A number of us have been kicking the idea around for some time, but setting it up would take considerable time and effort. Bearing in mind the disparate nature of sceptics getting a ‘consensus’ view might be difficult!
tonyb
E Smith, PeterM
Based on thoughts of Harun Yahya, a prominent Muslim intellectual (so not necessarily a defender of either the Roman Catholic or Lutheran churches) paganism was, indeed, “the adopted religion of Nazi Germany”, as E Smith wrote:
We’ve even got “Mother Earth” in there.
Max
Here’s the link
http://www.islamdenouncesantisemitism.com/thepagan.htm
TonyB #38
The idea is great, but people like me would not be of much use to you. All I do is point out logical fallacies, media bias, dodgy opinion polls etc. There are occasional areas where I might have an input. For instance, the IPCC chapter on the European heatwave was a simple reiteration of the death tolls, plus one peer reviewed paper suggesting that heatwaves might become more common. Given that the Wikipaedia sites on the subject in English, French and Italian have contradictory estimates of the death tolls, a bit of basic fact checking would do the trick. That’s the sort of area where a non-scientist like me could possibly contribute.
If I understand you, it would cover a lot of the same ground as the science based blogs like Climate Audit or WUWT, except that it would be arranged by subject instead of chronologically, and comments would be limited to substantive alterations to the articles.
Would you include existent articles from other blogs? If McIntyre or Watts or Laframboise has already written the definitive position on a subject, it’s hard to see the interest in reiterating the same point, with fulsome acknowledgements. I find simple lists of links most off-putting, unless one knows what one is being linked to. Would it be possible to have links plus summaries of the article being linked to? In that case a lot of volunteers could contribute, suggesting articles and writing summaries, which a small number of Wiki-like editors could then sift, edit and arrange.
It would be nice to hear more suggestions from the many here who are more adept than me at pulling the relevant facts out of their magic top hats. Max?
manacker
Thanks manacker, great article. I’ll put it on my ecofascist page.
By the way, I am not accusing anyone today of being a Nazi, that was 70-80 years ago. However, the correct term for a philosophy which wishes to dismantle modern civilisation is ‘ecofascism’, it was central to Nazi anti capitalist ideology.
The new wave of ecofascism
“I have a feeling,” Lovelock said, “that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.” His words may be disturbing, but other ecologists have gone much further.
Take for example Pentti Linkola, a Finnish fisherman and ecological philosopher. Whereas Lovelock puts his faith in advanced technology, Linkola proposes a turn to fascistic primitivism. Their only point of agreement is on the need to suspend democracy. Linkola has built an environmentalist following by calling for an authoritarian, ecological regime that ruthlessly suppresses consumers. Largely unknown outside of Finland until the first English translation of his work was published last year, Linkola represents environmentalism pushed to its totalitarian extreme. “An ecocatastrophe is taking place on earth,” he writes concluding several pages later that “discipline, prohibition, enforcement and oppression” are the only solution.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/sep/16/authoritarianism-ecofascism-alternative
James Hansen recently endorsed an extreme eco fascist book by Keith Farnish calling for the destruction of industrial civilisation.
Farnish writes
The only way to prevent global ecological collapse and thus ensure the survival of humanity is to rid the world of Industrial Civilization
and
Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine. The process of ecological unloading is an accumulation of many of the things I have already explained in this chapter, along with an (almost certainly necessary) element of sabotage.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023339/james-hansen-would-you-buy-a-used-temperature-data-set-from-this-man/
If you want to read effective anti AGW propaganda, Delingpole (Alan B@stard’s kid brother) is your man.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100059574/chris-huhnes-favourite-yoghurt-ingredient/
E Smith
Thanks.
Scary stuff, but I am in agreement that the more extreme AGW-believers (such as Hansen) want to abolish democracy to “save the planet”.
Max
James Hansen is advocating nuclear power which isn’t quite consistent with your argument that he’s wanting an end to industrial civilisation.
You can always find a few cranks who might want all kinds of odd things to happen, but the best course of action is to stick with established scientific bodies like the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences. If they ever start to advocate mass murder then we’ll know we really are in the sh*t!
All this discussion about what the Nazis may or may not have been in favour of is somewhat juvenile.
For instance Hitler was a vegetarian who liked dogs. So are all dog loving vegetarians to be compared to Hitler?
The Nazis built autobahns. Does that mean that all those who advocate building more are Nazis?
The pre Christian European religions are usually categorised as Pagan – From Pays-Gens or the religion of the country dwellers. They make no more or less sense than any other religion but they aren’t any more Nazi than Volkswagen Beetles!
“All this discussion about what the Nazis may or may not have been in favour of is somewhat juvenile.”
No tempterrain, your argument is entirely and predictably infantile. Hansen endorsed Farnish’s book. Either he is an ecofascist or a complete and utter moron. Take your pick. Notice the thuggish use of the word ‘force’.
Hansen
Keith Farnish has it right: time has practically run out, and the ‘system’ is the problem. Governments are under the thumb of fossil fuel special interests – they will not look after our and the planet’s well-being until we force them to do so, and that is going to require enormous effort. –Professor James Hansen, GISS, NASA
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Times-Up-Uncivilized-Solution-Global/dp/190032248X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265053838&sr=8-1
Here is another academic with the same Tony Soprano angle on AGW.
Time To Terminate Western Civilization Before It Terminates Us
By Guy R. McPherson – professor emeritus at the University of Arizona – 18 August, 2010
Get over it. This war has two sides, finally. This revolution needs to be powerful and fun, and we cannot afford to lose. We cannot even afford to worry about seeking credibility from those who would have us are having us murder every remaining aspect of the living planet on which we depend for our survival.
Credibility? Respectability? It’s time to stop playing by the rules of the destroyers. We need witnesses and warriors, and we need them now. It’s time to terminate western civilization before it terminates us.
http://www.countercurrents.org/mcpherson180810.htm
Here is an academic who knows the score.
Guardian comment by Michael K. Dorsey
Everyone should stay vigilant and keep their danger sniffers on full alert when the likes of those high on the Dark Mountain and others associated with “deep ecological” tendencies get on about “crises” of “humanity.” Sadly, we have a great deal of evidence now, that such ‘dark’ tendencies have been built upon a legacy of misanthropic meandering, petty eco-fascism and immigrant bashing– souped up in talk of waywardness from the “myth[s] of human centrality”–by the likes of Teddy Goldsmith, the gaggle of old Ecologist sods, inter alia, some of whom helped precipitate the Cornerhouse.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/may/10/deepwater-horizon-greens-collapse-civilisation?showallcomments=true#CommentKey:7d400bce-4a2c-4578-b079-351145ee98db
Dr. M. K. Dorsey is a professor in Dartmouth College’s Environmental Studies Program and the Director of the College’s Climate Justice Research Project.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_K._Dorsey
tempterrain
I assume you know that absolutely everything on television is true. This was on television. It must be true.
The SS and the Aryan Race
Haushofer was also a persuasive advocate of Lebensraum (living space), a theory that had been a prominent strand of German imperialist ideology since the 1890s and had gained common currency on the German political right. Proponents of Lebensraum demanded the German recolonisation of the Slav lands conquered by the Teutonic knights in the Middle Ages and the reuniting of the ethnic German populations of eastern Europe and European Russia.
Hitler was already familiar with these theories, but Haushofer’s work undoubtedly provided some of the ideological underpinning of what would evolve into Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
Antediluvian primitivism
Hitler, the arch-propagandist, recognised the powerful appeal to the German mind of the antediluvian primitivism espoused by the followers of Thule and Vril. It legitimised the desire of a defeated people (the Germans in 1918) to reassume the mantle of greatness (of the Teuton victors over the Romans). And it dovetailed with the oft-stated Nazi belief that that its creed was ‘more than a religion: it is the determination to create a new man’.
Moreover, there was one plank in the creeds of both the Thule and the Vril societies on which Hitler and Himmler were in complete accord – an absolute determination to destroy the Jews, who were seen as the racial enemy of the Volk, the German people.
Enforcer of racial doctrine
In 1933, when Hitler became chancellor of Germany, the fantasies of Himmler and the Thule Society became reality. Tasked with the imposition of the Nazi diktat – and, in particular, racial purity – was Himmler’s SS (an abbreviation of Schutzstaffel, protection squadrons), which had begun life as Hitler’s 300-strong personal bodyguard. By 1939, the SS numbered some 500,000 men, and in World War II, its armed formations (collectively known as the Waffen SS) would fight alongside the regular armed forces of the Third Reich – seen by Himmler as the reincarnation of the Teutonic knights and the knights of the Round Table celebrated in Arthurian legend.
The Camelot of the SS was to be the castle at Wewelsburg, near the Teutoburg forest, which became a shrine to Himmler’s belief in a new world order. Wewelsburg was to be at its epicentre, a pagan powerhouse that some thought would eventually house the Holy Grail for which King Arthur’s knights had quested.
There was an overpoweringly dark side to this vision. In World War II, the SS was the principal enforcer of Nazi racial doctrine. They staffed the Reich’s concentration and extermination camps, where they conducted cruel experiments to demonstrate ‘Aryan’ racial superiority, and formed the core of the Einsatzgruppen (special formations) that were responsible for cleansing eastern Europe of Jews.
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/n-s/nazimyths.html
Geoff Chambers #41
Of course people ‘like you’ would be useful, as there are many different aspects that require work. Below is a summary of the probable broad outline of an independent site that could provide an alternative scientific/view to the IPCC.
* See if there is a need-examine other websites, for example Gwpf, Ice cap etc.
* If there is, decide the format/structure/chapters/target market
* Seek voluntary computer experts able to carry out the work
* Appoint voluntary editorial panel to set the standards/read articles
* Determine consensus position on each major heading
* Look for existing articles/information that fit into the categories required (note there may be a first and second phase)
* Agree material that is required;Ensure it is robust
* Get permission to use
* Ask for rewrite to fit into editorial policy; for example no use of emotive language
* Construct site according to agreed parameters
* Commission new work where appropriate (to be peer reviewed on separate section of site)
* Write individual summaries/index etc so it comes over as a complete document
* Ask former IPCC lead author to check overall content
* Put all elements together and test for ease of use/functionality
* Plan marketing campaign to promote it, including advising politicians/media
* Ask other bloggers to use site as a resource
* Revise chapters as new material becomes available.
* Highlight new material as that provides topicality.
As a general policy, no work from anyone who has taken an extreme position would be required or whose involvement/association would reduce credibility. I am thinking for example of Monckton and Heartland.
Where possible work from known scientists would be used, but there are many good articles from others which could be included if the results are robust.The intention is to keep it all in the public eye in a single credible place rather than let material be forgotten in the archives of a hundred different blogs.
Just some initial thoughts. All do-able, if there is a need. The financial costs are limited if volunteers can be recruited, but there are considerable time resources to be considered in instigating, maintaining, and promoting, such a resource.
Tonyb
Geoff Chambers
Just for both our references, here is a copy of the Heartland document.
http://www.heartland.org/ClimateChangeReconsidered/frontmatter.html
It suffers in part from its emotive language and its association with a robust political view point that many Europeans might feel slightly uneasy about.
Having said all that, much of the material is very good. However, I don’t think I have ever seen any blogger referencing it in the same way that warmists will link to an IPCC chapter as if that were irrefutable proof.
The Heartland format is also good, although the summary could do with linking to the relevant chapter and could have some pictorial elements-a graph can be highly expressive as we saw with the hockey stick. I see my suggested format as living only on the internet so it could make better use of the medium than does the Heartland item, which seems to be primarily intended to be used as a printed document.
As a bit of market research, are you aware of this document and do you ever use it, if not why not?
Tonyb
TonyB and geoffchambers
You mention the Heartland Institute. I do not know much about other publications, but they did publish this report for the NIPCC, which contains a lot of good information you won’t find in the IPCC reports.
http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2009/pdf/CCR2009FullReport.pdf
If, for some reason, you prefer not to quote publications of Heartland, here is another good summary by Bob Carter (who also contributed to the NPICC report).
http://www.eap-journal.com.au/download.php?file=671
Finally, for a shorter summary of exaggerations, distortions, errors, and omissions in the latest AR4 report of IPCC (especially the political SPM summary report of WG1), which were gathered by PaulM on a now defunct thread on Climate Audit, see
http://sites.google.com/site/globalwarmingquestions/ipcc
None of these were published using politician-supplied taxpayer funding, as far as I can tell (so should be clean).
Max