So it's not just me then
Well, well, well. All this climate change hysteria surfaced again on Thursday with the founder of the US Weather Network calling it a ‘Scam’. I’m inclined to agree, even though dissenting voices like these seem to be few and far between. At least those that get the serious column inches in the mainstream media.
There are even rumours that there is some sort of semi official policy aimed at repressing the dissenting voices. The scuttlebutt coming out of the back door of academia tends to indicate that this is the case. I keep running across people with friends and family in and around academic circles whose stories all have this in common; If you want funding for any type of University research, then inserting ‘ as pertaining to Global warming’ or ‘as affected by climate change’ in your bid for funding is all but essential to get that research moolah. Rather like research into proving smoking leads in many individuals to the development of heart disease or various Cancers was once almost impossible to get. Those who held the purse strings, the vested interests, the politicians, were not interested because they didn’t want it to be true. Thus it seems to be with any ‘unfashionable’ postulation, whether there is truth in it or not. Now I can’t ‘prove’ this definitively because I personally don’t know anyone who wants funding for climate or other scientific research. All I have to go on are the anecdotes that keep filtering out which contradict the fashionable view.
Similarly, published scientific studies that contradict the “Omigod! We’re all going to drown / die of sunburn / be eaten by wandering Polar bears because the evil Americans and their SUV’s have melted the world’s ice!” propaganda tend to get rubbished, sidelined or ignored.
The regular press tend to bury them, rather like the story that the man who founded the US Weather Network who called ‘Global warming’ a scam. On the Daily Telegraph website, around 08:00 9th November 2007, this story was front page news. When I finally kicked Mrs S off our elderly laptop and logged on just before 23:45 9th November 2007 it had disappeared. To find it in the archives you had to know what you were looking for to find the story at all. Searching with the keywords ‘Climate change’ and ‘Global warming’ on the old Torygraph’s web site couldn’t find it. Almost as if it had been shunted off into a side room like an embarrassing Great Aunt.
Delving a little deeper I found this little gem of scientific analysis; no pseudoscience, no anthropomorphism, no Gaia, no ‘statistics’, just pages of data and analyses, which although hard to understand (To me at least), seem to contradict the version foisted on us by the politicians and mainstream media and point to much lower levels of change than we are constantly being told are occurring. The final paragraph of page 19 being the kicker. Don’t take my word for it, read it for yourself, and for those of you who find all this data confusing, that is where key points such as this can be found;
“the climate system may be considered in near steady state to applied forcings”
So all those in the higher latitudes thinking of turning in their ice skates and skis for sun loungers should not perhaps be in quite such a hurry. The ice and snow will be back shortly. With a vengeance. Remember the Ice Storms of 1998? Ice storms aren’t new.
Other sources which challenge the new orthodoxy may be found here, here, here, and here.
Like anyone who has spent a good deal of their time outdoors I hold that the Earth is a dynamic organism where change is the only constant. Stuff happens in cycles. Examples are strewn all through recorded history. The comparative warmth of the Roman period, the Medieval warm period. The exceptional European winters from 1550 to the 1680’s when ‘Winter Fairs’ were held on the frozen river Thames. Anecdotal evidence from a Chinese exploration fleet that found little ice in the polar regions around 1276. Change isn’t new. Very little of it is to do with human activity. We are almost incidental to our world’s climate.
Look at the fossil record and tell me if the Dinosaurs or Trilobytes, or any one of the species that suffered mass extinctions had a consumerist lifestyle. No? Well there’s a surprise.
To quote the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam;
"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it." Anthropocentric? Hah! Mankind as a species isn’t that important. Ten million years (A twitch in geologic time) and all we’ve ever been will be odd fossils for the next intelligent species to come along. Deep time will see to that.
As for ‘reducing your carbon footprint’, ‘Carbon offsetting’ and all the stealth taxation riding on the back of the hysteria – doesn’t this all sound suspiciously like the newly established political class flexing it’s muscle? I will go even further and suggest the following; Man-made climate change is a fairy tale invented as a tool for political repression which goes as follows; “Stop having fun right now or we’re all going to die and it will be all your fault!” On the other hand this suppression could all be a massive cock-up, which knowing my fellow humans as I do, seems far more likely. Discuss.
Now I’m off to walk my dog and watch the Sea Otters. If I’m lucky an Orca or Sea Lion might be passing down channel pursued by one of the ‘Whale Watching’ boats.
There are even rumours that there is some sort of semi official policy aimed at repressing the dissenting voices. The scuttlebutt coming out of the back door of academia tends to indicate that this is the case. I keep running across people with friends and family in and around academic circles whose stories all have this in common; If you want funding for any type of University research, then inserting ‘ as pertaining to Global warming’ or ‘as affected by climate change’ in your bid for funding is all but essential to get that research moolah. Rather like research into proving smoking leads in many individuals to the development of heart disease or various Cancers was once almost impossible to get. Those who held the purse strings, the vested interests, the politicians, were not interested because they didn’t want it to be true. Thus it seems to be with any ‘unfashionable’ postulation, whether there is truth in it or not. Now I can’t ‘prove’ this definitively because I personally don’t know anyone who wants funding for climate or other scientific research. All I have to go on are the anecdotes that keep filtering out which contradict the fashionable view.
Similarly, published scientific studies that contradict the “Omigod! We’re all going to drown / die of sunburn / be eaten by wandering Polar bears because the evil Americans and their SUV’s have melted the world’s ice!” propaganda tend to get rubbished, sidelined or ignored.
The regular press tend to bury them, rather like the story that the man who founded the US Weather Network who called ‘Global warming’ a scam. On the Daily Telegraph website, around 08:00 9th November 2007, this story was front page news. When I finally kicked Mrs S off our elderly laptop and logged on just before 23:45 9th November 2007 it had disappeared. To find it in the archives you had to know what you were looking for to find the story at all. Searching with the keywords ‘Climate change’ and ‘Global warming’ on the old Torygraph’s web site couldn’t find it. Almost as if it had been shunted off into a side room like an embarrassing Great Aunt.
Delving a little deeper I found this little gem of scientific analysis; no pseudoscience, no anthropomorphism, no Gaia, no ‘statistics’, just pages of data and analyses, which although hard to understand (To me at least), seem to contradict the version foisted on us by the politicians and mainstream media and point to much lower levels of change than we are constantly being told are occurring. The final paragraph of page 19 being the kicker. Don’t take my word for it, read it for yourself, and for those of you who find all this data confusing, that is where key points such as this can be found;
“the climate system may be considered in near steady state to applied forcings”
So all those in the higher latitudes thinking of turning in their ice skates and skis for sun loungers should not perhaps be in quite such a hurry. The ice and snow will be back shortly. With a vengeance. Remember the Ice Storms of 1998? Ice storms aren’t new.
Other sources which challenge the new orthodoxy may be found here, here, here, and here.
Like anyone who has spent a good deal of their time outdoors I hold that the Earth is a dynamic organism where change is the only constant. Stuff happens in cycles. Examples are strewn all through recorded history. The comparative warmth of the Roman period, the Medieval warm period. The exceptional European winters from 1550 to the 1680’s when ‘Winter Fairs’ were held on the frozen river Thames. Anecdotal evidence from a Chinese exploration fleet that found little ice in the polar regions around 1276. Change isn’t new. Very little of it is to do with human activity. We are almost incidental to our world’s climate.
Look at the fossil record and tell me if the Dinosaurs or Trilobytes, or any one of the species that suffered mass extinctions had a consumerist lifestyle. No? Well there’s a surprise.
To quote the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam;
"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it." Anthropocentric? Hah! Mankind as a species isn’t that important. Ten million years (A twitch in geologic time) and all we’ve ever been will be odd fossils for the next intelligent species to come along. Deep time will see to that.
As for ‘reducing your carbon footprint’, ‘Carbon offsetting’ and all the stealth taxation riding on the back of the hysteria – doesn’t this all sound suspiciously like the newly established political class flexing it’s muscle? I will go even further and suggest the following; Man-made climate change is a fairy tale invented as a tool for political repression which goes as follows; “Stop having fun right now or we’re all going to die and it will be all your fault!” On the other hand this suppression could all be a massive cock-up, which knowing my fellow humans as I do, seems far more likely. Discuss.
Now I’m off to walk my dog and watch the Sea Otters. If I’m lucky an Orca or Sea Lion might be passing down channel pursued by one of the ‘Whale Watching’ boats.
1 Comments:
Climate Audit is another interesting read.
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