There is a lot to read about Climategate, but none of it is in the Mainstream Media, with the exception of the Obama-Administration described “not real news” organization. That would be Fox News, which is covering the story.
The New York Times, in a stunning bit of hypocrisy, says they won’t report on Climategate because they didn’t like the way the information was discovered. To the NY TImes, the real story, if they ever deign to cover it, will be about the method in which the story was found, and the ends not justifying means.
There is a valid nit to pick over hacking and how it threatens not just programs but governments and individuals. But when an entire global movement, with accompanying financial interests and public bullying has been founded on “science” that is -at the very least- now confirmed to be “unsettled,” that information, regardless of how it was brought to light, needs to be reported on and investigated.
The NY Times’ prim distaste for the means of disclosure on this issue rather reminds me of a few years back, when someone leaded a memo from the Senate Intelligence Committee, whereby Sen. Jay Rockefeller suggested strategies to undermine “Bush’s war,” and the mainstream media ignored the content of the memo, while waxing indignant over the leak.
The standard media, it seems, only like leaks when they serve their own agendas, or take down their perceived enemies, foreign and domestic.
So, they don’t like this Climategate Story, not at all. Troubling links and trouble, trouble for the narrative.
Let me tell you why the press is blacking out the Climategate story:
In a nutshell, Climategate is a destroyer of world-views. As someone who has always maintained that the AGW hype was a matter of politicians and grifters seizing an opportunity to use unsettled science as a means of getting filthy rich while imposing harsh measures against human freedom, I am very familiar with the world-view of the alarmists. Whenever I wrote about the “hoo-hah” of AGW (and particularly of Al Gore’s stupendous, international fake-out and hypocrisy), my email would load up with people telling me I was “a stupid hick,” unschooled in scientific method (just like Al Gore) and therefore unentitled to opine on anything, so I should just “shut up” and “go away” and of course, I was a “nazi.” These emails occasionally ended with a diatribe against George W. Bush for good measure, and suggested he and I were both “criminals” against humanity. One person even accused me of being Barbara Bush, in disguise.
All of that was standard-issue hate, but nowhere as amusing as the occasional “Sinner, fry in hell” emails I will get from a Jack Chicker, so I stopped reading them long ago.
But I also had a journalist I admired, and who I still consider a friend, privately and gently suggest that if I doubted the truth about AGW then I was as deluded (and perhaps as evil) as a “holocaust denier.”
Yes. The left went that far. The press went that far. They embraced this unsettled science, this unproven theory, with a fervor of moral righteousness; to dispute AGW was to be a bad and stupid person, even if were a dissenting scientist.
To question the point of “environmentally sound” lightbulbs that give bad light and create a dangerous and toxic risk when they break was to “not get the point,” which was that the planet was “dying” thanks to Hanukkah candles and incandescent lightbulbs.
To suggest that large-numbers of privileged people flying scores of private planes to exotic locals, gorging themselves on fine fare while deciding how the common folk ought to live, in order to “save” the planet from AGW was bizarre, wasteful and hypocritical in an era of video-conferencing, was to be sniffed at as “insipid.” Didn’t one understand the power of the Gore Indulgence carbon-offset? Just pay some money to the man with the absolute moral authority on all things green, and your sins are covered. Somewhere, a tree is planted.
The scam of AGW was permitted to gain the foothold it did, because of George W. Bush.
It’s Bush’s fault: if Bush had not fought back when CBS News called Florida for Al Gore before polls in the panhandle had closed, if Bush had not taken Gore’s selective re-count to the Supreme Court, if Bush had just taken those hanging chads like a man and allowed Al Gore to ascend to the presidency (as he’d been groomed to do before he sighed and fumed his way through debates, put his common sense into a lockbox and stumbled into the Buddhist convent, discovering the existence of “no controlling legal authority,”) whether the Vice-President actually won or not (the NY Times eventually admitted “not”) then Al Gore would not have had to seek redemption and his fortune in climate hucksterism, and the left would not have had to over-indulge him in it, overcompensating in order to “kick Bush in the leg.”
That’s basically it. The AGW/Climate Change question became a rigorous boondoggle that got out of control not because the scientist who first suggested a connection between human carbon emission and a change in climate were bad people, or that the question was not worth asking, but because bad people then took the uncertain hypothesis, put it on media-fueled steroids, demonized anyone who disagreed with them, made it political -so much so that even the scientists got caught up in the good/bad, smart/stupid, Gore/Bush, Left/Right identifiers- and found real power there; they allowed the AGW movement to become the dubious centering pole upholding the giant circus tent of their worldviews.
As such, it is not permitted to be shaken. Shake the centering pole, and everything could come tumbling down: Oh. My. Gawd! If the Gore-doubters were right about this, what else might they be right about? And if they’re all stupid, and I’m smart, but they’re right and I’m wrong . . .
Implosion.
If the true-believers of AGW got this wrong, and they’d attached it to all of their politics, all of their hate, all of their superiority, then everything is in a free-fall.
And this is why the mainstream media cannot possibly report on Climategate until they have an acceptable counter-narrative that they can haul out in order to either debunk the story or soften its edges, even as they break the news.
The press, who spent a huge portion of their credibility convincing America that President Bush was a “liar” and a “power-abuser” and an “arrogant chump who made the world (read Chirac and Schroeder) hate us” and then spent the balance of their capital carrying into office a man whose every utterance comes with an expiration date, who seems to have very quickly abused his power and has treated our traditional allies (who were partnering well with the United States from 2004-on) with contempt or disinterest. The press really cannot afford to admit that almost nothing they have said in the past 9 years has escaped ideological or political framing to suit their agenda. Implode, they will.
So the story must not be told, until it can be told from their self-protective angle which is undoubtedly under development as you read this.
This reminds me of Jon Stewart, on the Daily Show, back when Iraq had its first successful election -when even the press could not snarl too much at the pictures of women in hijab pointing their purple fingers in the air as they grinned. “What if Bush was right,” Stewart mused, with a horrified expression.
“What if Bush – the president, ours – has been right about [Iraq] all along?I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may – and, again, I don’t know if I can physically do this – implode.”
There is an anvil-heavy irony to all of this. Part of the smart/stupid, left/right narrative was built on the fantastic strawman that the AGW-doubters on the right were “enemies of science,” that first they were not allowing science to use human embryos for experimentation, and now they were daring to doubt the most imperative scientific advice in the history of mankind.
But if the excesses of the weather-sciences are about be discredited to the degree that -as some worry- may “bring all science into dispute”, then that harm comes not from the right, who simply dared to question, but solely from the left, who refused to permit questions, openness, transparency.
Well, let’s get to the bottom of all of this, and then let us try -if it is possible, any longer- to become a saner world, say I.
Let Al Gore keep his ill-gotten booty and his stupid Academy Award and his worthless Nobel Peace Prize, and let him go away, somewhere, to an abode that is at least as “green” as President Bush’s despised ranch in Texas.
Let people once more get on a commercial air flight without being pestered about how they are guilty of earth-murder.
Let’s name the grifters, disassemble the dubious global policies that have been hovering for landing in Copenhagen, admit that the greatest threat to the world and its people is predicated on bombs and hate rather than some feckless, unprovable idea, and then let’s prepare for the cold, cold winter with some good old-fashioned oil-drilling while we finally begin to debate a nuclear future.
In truth, I just want my incandescent lightbulbs back, please.
Related:
Start Here: This is plain fascinating
PJM -Martin: Climategate violates social contract of science
PJM- Murray: 3 Things You Must Know about Climategate
Monbiot: AGW Rigged?
RCP: The Fix is In
CBS: looking into the leak, natch
Melanie Phillips: Green Totalitarianism
Andrew Bolt: The Global Conspiracy
James Delingpole: The Great British Climate Fraud
Obama’s Science Czar: Involved in Climategate?
True Believer: “Shaken” by Climategate
November 24th, 2009 | 5:53 pm | #1
[...] In a wonderful rant, The Anchoress demonstrates that the AGW fraud is Bush’s fault. [...]
November 24th, 2009 | 5:54 pm | #2
[...] Bettcha didn’t know ClimateGate was Bush’s fault! A great analysis from the luminous Anchoress! [...]
November 24th, 2009 | 6:05 pm | #3
On the other hand. If Climategate goes the same way as “The Great Global Warming Swindle” (remember that?), if it turns out that man-made climate change is a reality, what will the “sceptics” do?
I’ve never encountered these hectoring greens. But I’ve seen a lot of people, Philips & Delingpole at the forefront, getting absolutely incandescent at the thought. There’s something about environmentalism that just enrages them beyond all measure. I always wondered exaqctly what it was that got them into such a frenzy.
Personally? If it turned out mankind was having no effect on the climate I would be a bit surprised. But I would continue to support reducing harmful emissions of industrial pollutants into air, water & soil. I would oppose government policies such as promoting farm subsidies, things like the third runway, deforestation, building on unsuitable areas like flood plains, & would support presevation of open spaces such as green belts, national parks, marine conservation zones & so on.
It makes no odds to me really, I would still take the view that we would be wise to use less plastic, paper etc. & all sensible measures along those lines.
Besides which. The Catholic Church was involved at all levels. You hear about things like this & this. So if it is a deception they are amongst those deceived.
I am not one for silencing “sceptics” & those whose views I don’t share. No one should have said the science was settled. But the mere fact of being a dissenter & disagreeing with everyone else doesn’t in & of itself confer virtue on what someone says.
About Monbiot. He is good. One of my favourites by him was about how he caught & ate his own fish in the sea. I’ve visited the town he lives in & appreciate his work trying to stop a supermarket being built that will sap the life out of the town.
[The Catholic church is as capable of being deceived as anyone. I just want to see the extreme craziness and bullying come to an end. And I have never said we should not try to reduce our environmental impact in sane ways. But I want my damn lightbulbs back. The spiraly ones are supertoxic anyway! If you need a hazmat suit to get rid of it, it can't be good for the environment!
Admin]
November 24th, 2009 | 6:20 pm | #4
I was given some energy efficient bulbs over a year ago by an organisation I was doing voluntary work for. I am still using them to this day. I don’t know whether that proves they are long-lived or good, or what…
I have found it pretty much effortless to start using less plastic (I carry a durable bag around with me instead of carrier bags), paper & water. There was no need to make a martyr of myself. But some regions are severe pressure points for water, some of them in the drier regions of America.
I was thinking about artificial light- reading a book called “The Wild Places” & the author’s description of being in pitch black. I don’t think I’d like that as I cling to the feeling of being in control & wouldn’t take kindly to true wildness. But it is funny how we take all this for granted.
I suppose it is still a better life than what our forefathers knew. When you speak to old-timers who were brought up in poor families, it kills any sentimentalism about the old days. So long as I don’t have to sit around reading parchments by candlelight I’m happy.
November 24th, 2009 | 6:23 pm | #5
But I want my damn lightbulbs back.
Dittos. Amen.
November 24th, 2009 | 6:38 pm | #6
[...] The Anchoress: The AGW/Climate Change question became a rigorous boondoggle that got out of control not because the scientist who first suggested a connection between human carbon emission and a change in climate were bad people, or that the question was not worth asking, but because bad people then took the uncertain hypothesis, put it on media-fueled steroids, demonized anyone who disagreed with them, made it political -so much so that even the scientists got caught up in the good/bad, smart/stupid, Gore/Bush, Left/Right identifiers- and found real power there; they allowed the AGW movement to become the dubious centering pole upholding the giant circus tent of their worldviews. [...]
November 24th, 2009 | 6:42 pm | #7
Here in Canada, we may not be getting the full story, of course. However, what I have read of “climategate” in no way calls into question the science of climate change. It suggests the scientists are partisan, yes, and often nasty — you bet. That does not mean they are wrong. That said, the politics of climate change are, of course, open for grabs as is the fact that the sophisticated computer models of the climate scientists may be wrong. We are proposing to stake an awful lot on the very chancey idea that science is right this time when it has been wrong many times before about global projections and catastrophes.
I love your blog, but especially when you talk about prayer, the Blessed saints, the Church and your own life. Do you ever think that the angry partisanship you show on some of these disputed issues undercuts this witness? Not saying I disagree with you on many of your opinions. It’s just that at my age, I am beginning to think that gentleness is more important than anger and that our mission is more to reconcile than to revile. Probably this sounds self-righteous, but actually, it is just the reflection of perhaps a fellow addict trying to get out of the addiction of anger and resentment, which doesn’t seem consistent with the call to holiness.
[Think about this for a second...if these emails did not bring some serious questions into play about how sound the science is -if they were just a bunch of punkish emails- do you think the press would be as silent as they are being? Since the emergence of the emails, some of the GW alarmists have already admitted that "maybe the science isn't so settled," after all. Examination of all of this is going to expose an epic boondoggle, and the press knows it. They're hunkering down. I like what Jonah says here:
And as Jonah notes, some of the emails are nothing. But some are something.
As to the rest, if you read me with any frequency, Mary, you know that I am always battling the anger and my Irishness...I think I've softened quite a lot since I began 5 years ago. But it's a process. Yes, I do worry about it. Yes, I try to mind my tone. No, I don't always succeed, especially when I feel we're being lied to or people are comparing my opinion with holocaust denial!
Pray for me!-admin]
November 24th, 2009 | 6:47 pm | #8
I am not entirely a skeptic. In any event, I think reducing carbon emissions is a good by itself. My reaction has not been to the idea of reducing emissions, but rather the fact that those who were hectoring the loudest still fly around in private jets.
As Professor Reynolds once wrote — I’ll believe it is a crisis when those telling me it is a crisis act like it is a crisis.
Rather, I believe it is about control. People are more willing to accept control when they believe they are living in a crisis. People accepted levels of government control during WWII and, to a lessor extent the Depression, that they would not have accepted in the 1920s or today.
I just believe it is a manifestation of the managerial state.
November 24th, 2009 | 6:55 pm | #9
I have no problem at all with Dry Valleys giving up a 21st century Internet-user’s lifestyle (eg., electricity enough to supply several entire Third World villages, smokeless home heating, automobiles, air transportation, home delivery of Monbiot’s books, cotton pyjamas…).
November 24th, 2009 | 7:03 pm | #10
[...] Of course you know it had to be Bush’s Fault. [...]
November 24th, 2009 | 7:12 pm | #11
Anchoress, how dare you insinuate that Gore ever actually had enough common sense to put into a lockbox!
November 24th, 2009 | 7:23 pm | #12
LOL @ Dagwood- you are of course correct! Al Gore never did have much common sense- but he’s always been great for stepping on a bandwagon. He and his plastic wife have always given me the willies!
I agree with Dry Valleys-I LIKE my new bulbs, which last forever- seemed like the incandescent ones were always burning out. I recycle, because why waste what can be reused or repurposed? I’ve always been sceptical of Global Warming- climate change happened before us, sometimes for the good and sometimes not. I’m skeptical that we can know the why with so little data. Or that we can *fix* it- some things just are, you have to go with the flow.
November 24th, 2009 | 7:44 pm | #13
Where’s your trackback? Here’s my two cents’ worth on this worthy discussion:
Soylent green revisited
http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2009/11/soylent-green-revisited.html
November 24th, 2009 | 8:01 pm | #14
Those “harmful emissions of industrial pollutants” that they want to eliminate are not the air pollution of old, they are carbon dioxide – the same carbon dioxide that we all expel with each breath, folks like Algore spewing more of it than more, and which green plants use like we use oxygen, to breathe and function.
The science — the real science — is already known and has been for centuries. Human beings are to the earth as ants are to human beings. Whatever effect humans might have on the global weather system is dwarfed several thousandfold by what the earth itself does, not to mention what the sun does.
Even if man were to become extinct tomorrow, thus eliminating all human-caused carbon emissions completely, the earth could still warm up considerably or plunge back into the ice ages merely by an increase or decrease in sunspot activity. So it really does not matter if we turn back the clock like the Dems want and go back to the 18th century. Whatever carbon “savings” we make will be wiped out in a single day by the dynamic action of the earth itself or by the sun.
It is hubris if the HIGHEST degree to believe that insignificant man has any significant lasting effect on the earth’s climate. Believe it or not — we are not gods.
November 24th, 2009 | 8:02 pm | #15
OK – I’m not a scientist – I only have an engineering degree. My husband, who is also an engineer, is considered a scientist because he does experimentation as a career. For those still defending AGW, you probably still won’t believe me, but here are a couple things I’d like to share:
1) When James Hansen sat in front of a congressional committee and claimed 99.9% certainty about computer *modeling* predictions of catastrophic climate change due to human co2 emissions, he horribly damaged the credibility of AGW climatology. Scientists – good ones anyway – simply don’t speak this way. There is more credible evidence for the existence of Bigfoot than there is for catastrophic global warming due to human co2 emissions. Read Watts Up With That if you’d like to be enlightened on the problem of decent data collection. And computer models of complex systems, like climate, are notoriously unreliable. How frequently does your weatherman get it wrong in a 5-day forecast? Well, long-term predictions about climate are going to be a lot worse than that – nowhere near 99.9% certain.
2) I’m with the renowned Australian scientist Ian Plimer on this… co2 is PLANT FOOD. If you want to “green” the planet, emit more co2. Breathe rapidly, light lights, keep animals – whatever it takes to make life more abundant. It is why I add strings of ceramic lights to my *pre*lit Christmas tree. I love the planet and I love life! More, please.
[And candles! Light candles at church! -admin]
November 24th, 2009 | 8:11 pm | #16
Oh – one more thing…
3) My husband and I have worked for government contractors. When the government pays for something with tax dollars, the government *owns* it. I think climate scientists denying access to their data and models is at least unethical – scientifically speaking, but it may even be criminal in that the taxpayers *own* what the taxpayers fund. In this sense, the hacking was not of private property – it was finally exposing public property to public scrutiny.
November 24th, 2009 | 8:24 pm | #17
What’s the left going to say when the intelligence on WMD (Weather of Mass Destruction) proves off the mark? I guess we are beginning to find out.
p.s. Anchoress: Your Irishness makes for good reading.
p.p.s. Attention Yankees: Hands off Mauer! Look what happened when you nabbed Knoblauch. He started believing the first baseman was positioned in the second row.
November 24th, 2009 | 8:52 pm | #18
The AGW Hypothesis is a fraud.
Hyptothesis:
Increases in the air level of CO2 shall lead to increases in the air temp.
Refutation:
1 – Never in the history of earth has this ever happened.
2A – The level of CO2 in the air has gone up all decade
2B – The air temp has not
Conclusion:
Hypothesis Fail
November 24th, 2009 | 8:55 pm | #19
Regarding the New York Times’ maidenly recoil from publishing material that was “acquired illegally and contain[s] all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye”: I don’t recall them expressing similar scruples with the Pentagon Papers.
And as far as avoiding “private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye”, does this mean they plan to shut down their operations? Isn’t that their definition of News?
November 24th, 2009 | 8:57 pm | #20
Bottom Line, as many have said before: “When the people telling me this is a crisis start acting like its a crisis, then I’ll take it seriously.”
When the environmentalists start living by example, especially the vocal politicians who seem so eager to control everyone else’s life, then they will have ground on which to stand. But Gore, Pelosi, et al. aren’t about to sacrifice their private/public jets and international conferences-kinda like the taxes thing, sacrifice is for the little people.
November 24th, 2009 | 9:00 pm | #21
Great post, Anchoress!! The Lamestream media never covers the important things going on in the country and around the world. And, I’m with you 100% on wanting the damn incandescent lightbulbs back. It’s hard to read with those stupid toxic spiral bulbs.
[Can't put on makeup, pluck eyebrows or otherwise make oneself more fit to be seen, either! admin]
November 24th, 2009 | 9:21 pm | #22
Plus, the lights are useless when you need light quickly (such as in an emergency). The lights take soooooo long to reach even an OK level of illumination.
November 24th, 2009 | 9:58 pm | #23
Mary,
Please consider this… There are people (like me!) who initially visited this blog purely for the political commentary. I never would have stumbled across it if the subject matter had been strictly spiritual.
I view the Anchoress as passionate and authentic, not “angry” or “partisan” and I LOVE that she talks about politics AND religion. I completely disagree that talking about politics undercuts her witness. In my opinion, the opposite is true. She has peaked my interest in spiritual things.
Anchoress –
Maybe ClimateGate will give some people (Lindsey Graham, John McCain, etc.) a chance to redeem themselves on the climate change issue and cap-and-trade. This certainly gives anyone who bought into it (based on the “settled science”) an opportunity to change their minds without looking foolish or like a flip-flopper.
November 24th, 2009 | 10:02 pm | #24
This is not a “scandal”.
It is not a “politically motivated” cooking of the books.
It is not a matter of greed or elitism.
We are in a war. This is part of the war. The good guys are losing right now. In fact, we are getting thrashed and bloodied. There are casualties – ways of being and living that are dead and never coming back.
It is either us or them.
We will never win; we will never even have a chance if we don’t realize that it is a war.
If we ever do that (I doubt it – did the Jews in Germany, for example, ever really admit what was happening to them until it was too late?), then we have yet another issue to settle: Will we fight or not (I doubt that as well since virtue has been bred out of us for 2 generations now).
November 24th, 2009 | 10:04 pm | #25
Anchoress, I don’t think your rage is uncalled for, or undercuts your religious posts.
Given the current state of the world, sometimes anger is called for.
November 24th, 2009 | 10:41 pm | #26
Anthony: “In any event, I think reducing carbon emissions is a good by itself. My reaction has not been to the idea of reducing emissions, but rather the fact that those who were hectoring the loudest still fly around in private jets.”
I’d be more than happy to climb aboard, if they would convince us by force of argument and public debate. But since they’re trying to convince us by brute force, I’ll have no part of it.
“Rather, I believe it is about control.”
You’re absolutely right – and you have no idea how much control they intend to put upon us. We are lobsters in the pot; they are turning up the heat ever so slowly.
About Gore’s “common sense into a lockbox”: good one. Reminds me of Gore’s “Social Security lockbox” (during the Presidential debates). A few days ago, on a TV interview, he told us that the interior of the Earth was “a few million degrees”. If that were really the case, we’d be another star in space.
November 24th, 2009 | 11:39 pm | #27
I know it’s a little old, but please go watch the Great Global Warming Swindle–produced by the BBC. It is utterly enlightening about how this all got started, and it’s chock full of scientists who go on record about how it is THE SUN, STUPID!.
I grew up in a giant family that gardened and composted. We didn’t waste anything because we couldn’t afford to–but the gobal warming crisis is so utterly fabricated it is criminal.
Anchoress, thank you so, so much for being such a voice of reason. You are one of my few daily reads.
I also suffer from an Irish temper, a pear shape, and a desire to Seek First the Kingdom of God.
November 25th, 2009 | 12:08 am | #28
“The Catholic Church was involved at all levels. You hear about things like this & this. So if it is a deception they are amongst those deceived.”
Why is it when people want to make a point in either direction they get the Catholic Church involved and show their hypocrisy. To prove the Church is stupid in Science we hear the story of Galileo. To prove that there must be something to AGW, we find the Church buying into this science as somehow proof. When the Church appears to support healthcare reform by adding millions to coverage it is good, but if it wants protection of infants, it is bad. While all of us are guilty at times of hypocrisy, I find it interesting how often the Catholic Church becomes involved when any real study of actual teaching shows it to be very strong in truth consistency.
November 25th, 2009 | 12:52 am | #29
By George I think She’s got IT!
Well said, madame. Well said. I am going to quote you (thanks for putting into words that which I had not the wit to say).
November 25th, 2009 | 12:58 am | #30
Well, let’s get to the bottom of all of this, and then let us try -if it is possible, any longer- to become a saner world, say I.
Let Al Gore keep his ill-gotten booty and his stupid Academy Award and his worthless Nobel Peace Prize, and let him go away, somewhere, to an abode that is at least as “green” as President Bush’s despised ranch in Texas.
Let people once more get on a commercial air flight without being pestered about how they are guilty of earth-murder.
Let’s name the grifters, disassemble the dubious global policies that have been hovering for landing in Copenhagen, admit that the greatest threat to the world and its people is predicated on bombs and hate rather than some feckless, unprovable idea
***
Anchoress, I love you but nowhere in here do you mention the punishment of these people, the shaming and absolute ruining they not only richly deserve, but that we need to administer to them so as to stop these corrupt and yes, I’ll say EVIL people from ever trying this again.
Name them, shame them, and then pile on them so that their lives are as ruined as they planned to make ours.
November 25th, 2009 | 1:34 am | #31
There’s something about environmentalism that just enrages them beyond all measure. I always wondered exaqctly what it was that got them into such a frenzy.
Maybe it’s the millions of people (mostly children) who have died of malaria since DDT was banned?
Maybe it’s the unholy marriage of big business with big government, forcing us to less efficient/more expensive solutions that squeeze money out of us while enriching whoever is in bed with whomever is power.
Maybe it’s the fact that we’re teetering on the edge of energy crisis, because they won’t let us drill, they won’t let us mine, they won’t let us fission. (Yeah, that’s a verb!)
Maybe it’s just a love of freedom? Maybe people don’t like that a group using bad science as an excuse to keep the rest of us from doing what we like? And teaching it to our kids as if it were real science?
Those things tend to sort of tick me off.
November 25th, 2009 | 1:46 am | #32
I was born in 1973, so while I am not young, I’m not exactly aged. I’ve heard this Global Warming hysteria all my life- only in the 70s it was all about how the next ice age was coming. Then the narrative changed, and we were all going to fry and drown. In the meantime we went from reusable, refillable glass coke bottles to plastic bottles everywhere you look. Even the water comes in bottles now (and costs you 1.19 apiece.) We went from driving our leaded gasoline-cars with the windows down to unleaded with air conditioning- and car phones (now cell phones) and ipods charging while the kiddies watch a dvd in the backseat. We quit aerosol-hairspray but replaced it with other, more expensive “beauty” products procedures. We added a blue-million tv channels and satellite radio and the internet and netflix and we wonder why nobody reads books anymore, why kids don’t play outside.
My point is this: no matter what we do to “lighten” our impact on the environment, someone somewhere is always introducing the next new luxury that quickly becomes a necessity, and new ways of waste ( in both resources, and human time) are always right around the corner. I’m with you, I want my lightbulbs (and my glass coke bottles) back. But I also really want people to stop buying every thing they see on tv, or read about in People magazine. If you want to tread lightly on the earth, how ’bout not filling her up with so much useless junk? That’d be an environmental movement I could finally believe in.
November 25th, 2009 | 2:17 am | #33
Why is it when people want to make a point in either direction they get the Catholic Church involved and show their hypocrisy. To prove the Church is stupid in Science we hear the story of Galileo.
Because they are lousy historians in addition to being lousy at science. Many of the groundbreaking people in science have been Catholic priests or religious! The Galileo dispute was not about the Church intruding into science, it was about Galileo insisting that theologians changing their views. (See The dispute between Galileo and the Catholic Church and also The Galileo Affair) To be sure, Galileo was enthusiastically received by cardinals and the Pope.
It was only when Galileo started insisting that certain of his theories were true without being scientifically proved (and would not be for a couple hundred years) and that theology was wrong that he began to get into trouble. Nevertheless, Galileo was still buried in a major Catholic basilica in Florence (Santa Croce).
November 25th, 2009 | 4:20 am | #34
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was founded in 1988 as a political organization to give the UN and its NGOs increasing power and influence in the world. The IPCC does no original research, does not monitor climate and only publishes special reports. These are supposed to be the ‘guidebook’ on which governments base their decisions.
They prominently featured Dr. Michael Mann’s climate model “hockey stick” graph which showed temperatures pretty constant through the centuries, and suddenly shooting up in the late 20th. It has been thoroughly discredited, but the scientists involved in the CRU scandal have refused to admit it, and have altered temps (according to the email evidence) to continue to insist that it proves global warming. The surface records of temperatures have been proven faulty with thermometer stations located next to air-conditioner outlets, vast paved areas, reflective walls and trash burners. Hadley’s CRU tree rings were a fraud, and NASA’s GISS records had bad numbers.
Environmental Journalists belong to the Society of Environmental Journalists where they learn about the environment from–each other. Real scientists seldom or never darken the door.
Governments have invested vast amounts of money to prove that global warming is human-caused. (Not to investigate climate and what influences it). There’s a big difference!
It is not known whether the release of emails and documents was by a hacker or an inside whistle-blower. They are clearly genuine, and show a small group of alarmist scientists trying to prevent any skeptics from publishing, ‘peer-reviewing’ each other’s papers, influencing journals to refuse any papers from skeptics, and fudging and falsifying the science.
The money, prestige, career enhancement available have drawn grant proposals from everyone in any scientific career path. Not to mention the trillions of dollars that are being spent by governments all over the world in attempts to delay or ameliorate a non-existent global warming. It has not warmed for ten years, and has cooled since 2003. That’s a lot of taxpayer money wasted, utterly wasted.
November 25th, 2009 | 5:10 am | #35
Excellent. I think the person who suggested that I might like to revert to the Stone Age would be glad if I did. But I wouldn’t
As for The Great Global Warming Swindle, I am surprised to see it cited as an authority. The people who made it admit that it is a polemic, not an impartial statement, & have a history of anti-green activism.
In fact many of the scientists who were quoted by it say that their views were misrepresented & they wouldn’t have taken part if they’d known how his comments would be put across. He then filed an official complaint.
This is the sort of thing that it just typical of the whole thing. I thought this was well known?
I suppose you could call Martin Durkin the anti-Al Gore, eh?
November 25th, 2009 | 5:12 am | #36
I have just written a comment which has not appeared. Perhaps the computer instinctively knows that it’s a final, irrefutable point that no one can withstand, & wants to stop it on that grounds?
November 25th, 2009 | 7:53 am | #37
Dear Thrashing About for Something to Believe in,the Earth is not god anymore, (nor are you), “Oh no! We’re all gonna die!” former Greens,
You are still partly correct. There is something larger than us. (And you’re right about that gonna die insight tool.) Now that you have discovered what many other knew all along, I’d like to suggest a place to begin the attempt to make contact with that ‘something’. Here is a hint. All human beings have two place to start, left knee, and right knee. Indulge me a moment. No one coming home and finding smoking rubble where their house used to be say, “Oh no, the carbon footprint”. Universally we hear, “Thank God no one burned to death”. Why is this? Because events can bring us to prayer when it is the last resort, and nothing else, including free will has yet done the trick. I suggest not waiting on events. Start with an attitude of gratitude. If you really want to be counter-cultural, and revolutionary, try using knees. “IHS”
November 25th, 2009 | 8:43 am | #38
My background is in science, and my career involves doing statistical analysis on huge data sets. So far, I have not been convinced that global warming exists, but only because I haven’t seen enough data for myself to prove or disprove the theory. But on the other hand, I also know that when you are doing statistical analysis on big data sets, you do have to do some massaging of the data. You often have aberrations that don’t fit the averages or outliers. If you can explain the cause (i.e. we had a cold month in this year because of a volcano explosion that skewed the data for that month), then it is generally permissible to remove that data. I don’t know that this is what they were doing in this situation, but like the whole global warming debate, don’t have enough information to actually make a call on why they did what they appear to have done. Doing an experiment with an expectation of the outcome isn’t really good science, but sometimes you have enough information so that you can have a reasonable expectation of the outcome. I remember learning about Millikan’s experiments to determine the charge of an electron – he already knew what it should be, and his notebooks contained a lot of stuff showing that he disregarded experimental results that didn’t agree with his expectation.
November 25th, 2009 | 10:51 am | #39
I react very very badly to being bullied. It brings out the worst aspects of my Hungarian nature. Ergo, when people started hectoring at me to buy those environmentally pristine lightbulbs, I hit my local big box store and stocked up on incandescents.
I do not believe that man has sufficient intelligence OR power to have any effect whatsoever on our climate. If we had that kind of competence, wouldn’t we do something to deflect hurricanes from places like, oh say, New Orleans? Any part of Florida? I’m sorry – only God has the power to affect our climate and to think otherwise is to arrogate onto oneself His powers – and that is blasphemy!
November 25th, 2009 | 10:58 am | #40
E
Please look up Anthony Watts site: Watts Up With That. He really is a good practitioner of the scientific method – and it’s not just me saying that. He has commentators and contributors who are scientists from around the world. He’s been conducting a physical survey of weather station data collection sites in the U.S. (using volunteers and doing it himself) for years now and, if you have a science background, you will be impressed (perhaps appalled is more correct) at what he has found. He also, while being a site for AGW dissent, does not tolerate abusiveness from either side of the debate. Sort of like our dear Anchoress.
November 25th, 2009 | 11:00 am | #41
Kerry – you’re brilliant. The knees have it! One thing that visiting the Anchoress is that it has helped to redirect me back to my Catholicism and for that I am eternally grateful to our good and valued hostess!
God bless and happy Thanksgiving to all. Life is short and can turn on a dime (despite which, I survived this year and I’m grateful for that) so eat dessert first y’all. You heard it here first!
November 25th, 2009 | 11:18 am | #42
[...] linked to the Anchoress in a while, but she has great commentary and linkage here. Category: Humor, Politics | Comment (RSS) [...]
November 25th, 2009 | 11:23 am | #43
Missi, given the current state of the economy, I doubt that many people are going to be buying “everything they see on TV”, or in People magazine. In fact, I suspect they’re not going to be buying much at all; they’re too busy trying to hang on to their homes, and their jobs (or looking for new jobs, to replace the ones they lost.)
(Hmmm, it’s funny, but, even before the current economic crisis, I didn’t know anybody who felt compelled to go out and buy
everything they saw advertised on television, or who were slaves to People Mag.)
[I'll tell you whut, we've cut WAY back on our Christmas shopping this year, and I emailed my nun-friends over at Summit, NJ (who are eternally grateful that you guys buy soap and hand creme from them) asking how their sales were going, and they said, "nothing like the bonanza last year, but we are still seeing orders and we're so happy to receive them," (I just got their unscented hand creme in a jar, btw, and it's my new favorite thing. It makes the old lady skin on my arms go away.) So, yes, I think lots of people are cutting back this year, out of necessity. But I can say I have known in my life a compulsive shopper who buys whatever seems to be in front of her face of an instant. Poor woman -admin]
November 25th, 2009 | 11:59 am | #44
[...] Climategate Implosion is Bush’s Fault [...]
November 25th, 2009 | 12:06 pm | #45
Wow, Anchoress, this is one of the best commentaries you’ve ever produced. Really brilliant. Great comments, too, folks.
The corporate media is predictably following their template. If it hurts Democrats (and this does, badly) ignore it, bury it, or distort it.
November 25th, 2009 | 1:43 pm | #46
[...] The Anchoress – Climategate Implosion is Bush’s Fault [...]
November 25th, 2009 | 2:05 pm | #47
There are, of course, compulsive shoppers, that I don’t deny.
On the other hand, I really don’t believe that vast swathes of the American people are so brainwashed they buy things just because they see them on T.V., or because a magazine tells them to (and, of course, compulsive shoppers will shop, no matter what anybody tells them.)
I was responding to what seemed to me Missi’s rather over-sweeping generalizations; I don’t think shoppers buying “luxuries” (what counts as a luxury, by the way?) are the primary cause of environmental impact on the planet. Big business, governments and wealthy, jet-setting elites create their share, too. However, the latter two rarely get criticized for their excesses, even when the consume more and own more, in the form of houses, jets, cars, etc., than your average American magazine reader.
November 25th, 2009 | 2:09 pm | #48
And, sadly, many of my friends have lost their jobs, and their homes. A dear friend, one who was chief bridesmaid at my wedding, just had to walk away from her home. She couldn’t afford the payments anymore.
So, far from going out and buying luxuries, many people are just scrapping by. They’re certainly not impacting the planet by buying too many things. Whatever problems Mother Earth, Gaia, whatever you want to call her might be having at the moment, they aren’t the ones responsible for them.
November 25th, 2009 | 5:48 pm | #49
Rhinestone, you may be right, perhaps many folks are just scraping by. But this week I’ve been watching my own family prepping their black Friday assault, and it’s disheartening. Mom’s hours are down, but her credit card is out, and it’s almost as if the bad financial situation is making her even more desperate. “Must buy this LED TV on sale now, in case I can’t buy it later.” Nevermind that she lives alone and has tvs in three bedrooms. I reiterate: America’s consumer society generates junk, massive amounts of it; much of which winds up floating around in huge trash islands in the oceans; I can’t help thinking that all this “Climate Change” boondoggle has wasted money that could’ve gone to repairing real environmental damage.
[Your point is not a entirely off, of course. But I don't know if the "consumer society" is wholly to blame. No one can say to her, "you have three televisions; you don't need this?" When I see a sibling of mine, who cannot seem to stop shopping buying JUNK, just to have bought it, I wonder what is broken inside of her, what is that void that she thinks can be filled by it? That's a spiritual wound, and I suspect there are many spiritually wounded who try to find their solace in consumerism. THAT may speak volumes about our society, in myriad ways. Peace -admin]
November 25th, 2009 | 7:15 pm | #50
This point also needs to be made – global warming has become a secular religion. The Goracle is its high priest.
November 26th, 2009 | 12:06 am | #51
Great post, Anchoress.
I just wanted to comment about the energy-efficient bulbs. I replaced my whole basement with them about 1 year ago. About half of them have burned out since then, which is not any better (perhaps worse) than the incandescent bulbs they replaced. Add in the fact that lights are usually on when it’s colder/cooler (at night and in the winter), and the extra heat ‘lost’ from incandescent is no longer a waste. Add in the other fact that they’re a heck of a lot cheaper and less toxic than the swirly ones, and it’s a no brainer that the government shouldn’t be doing anything to take my bulbs away from me.
November 26th, 2009 | 1:14 am | #52
Happy Thanksgiving, Anchoress!
The problem, of course, is not with climate science and it never has been.
It’s with climate scientism.
November 26th, 2009 | 4:52 am | #53
Dry valleys,
Just out of curiosity, but this doesn’t make sense, and could be construed to be something of an “appeal to authority” logical fallacy.
“In fact many of the scientists who were quoted by it say that their views were misrepresented & they wouldn’t have taken part if they’d known how his comments would be put across. He then filed an official complaint.”
“many of the scientists” “their views” “they wouldn’t” and then you revert to the singular “his comments” and “He then filed”
I have not seen the video (?) in question and have never visited this site, but this comment struck me as odd. perhaps you could clarify? Were there many scientists or just one? Happy Thanksgiving!
November 26th, 2009 | 9:56 am | #54
I’m still waiting for someone to explain how shutting down the clean factories here and moving production to the much more polluting factories in China will reduce pollution.
Just wondering…after all Chinese industry pollutes far more per unit of production than industry in the developed world so it seems the Copenhagen treaty would increase pollution, not reduce it..
November 26th, 2009 | 11:29 am | #55
“In truth, I just want my incandescent lightbulbs back, please.”
Exactly!
November 27th, 2009 | 5:43 am | #56
Blaming Bush for what Gore did after losing the election makes no sense in any logical way. That’s like saying that you’d be to blame for the columbine shooting because you passed the shooter (who you’d never seen before) in the street early that morning and you didn’t call the police to arrest him (even though he hadn’t done anything yet, and you had no reason to suspect he ever would do anything). Maybe you were being sarcastic and if that’s the case then I apologise. However, if you were serious then you need to seriously work on your logic.
[Um. Yes. I was being sarcastic. -admin]
November 27th, 2009 | 6:52 am | #57
Polluting is a crime.
Polluting should be a crime.
But Carbon, Rainwater, and Babies are NOT forms of pollution.
November 28th, 2009 | 4:27 pm | #58
Global warming didn’t take on the religious fervor it now has among its disciples because Al Gore used it for his own self-aggrandizement. He hitched his horse to that cart to give himself some relevance, but the cart already had significant momentum. The whole issue was highly politically charged throughout the ’90s and even in the late ’80s; even when I first heard about it it had that special stink of someone grinding an ax. Before Gore got involved, people who desperately sought any reason at all to hate Bush tried to use Kyoto against him, in spite of the fact that in the ’90s the Senate had already very sensibly said NO.
Al Gore’s only real contribution was to make a movie that the media collaboratively touted as a must-see film, and then use that film to falsely claim an overwhelming consensus and throw a lot of alarmist garbage in people’s faces. The sorts of people who see movies based on a film’s social importance had already had a few sips of the Kool-Aid anyway, so the film didn’t so much change minds as sweep healthy doubts under the carpet. Hopefully the revelation of the scope of this fraud will not only ignite real discussion of the science but also completely ruin the careers of anyone who has used this for political gain.
If AGW is real, let’s handle it with real, honest, open science and let skeptics take sledgehammers to any point that isn’t bedrock-solid. Let’s consider all variables instead of just CO2, because pretending climate is one-dimensional is idiotic. Let’s talk openly about other methods of sequestering carbon, like seeding forests or even geoengineering, instead of insisting the only solution is to drive the world into poverty. The people who politicized this don’t only want to force a narrow view of the (alleged) problem, they want to force a specific solution. We should tolerate neither.
November 28th, 2009 | 8:52 pm | #59
[...] the Anchoress: If the true-believers of AGW got this wrong, and they’d attached it to all of their politics, [...]
November 28th, 2009 | 8:56 pm | #60
The Science Bubble Explodes
The 21st Century has, in less than a decade, seen the explosion of three “bubbles.” In 2001 we saw the tech bubble explode, leaving in its wake the collapse of numerous fortunes and a renewed appreciation for value rather than promises of ever more extravagant high-tech dreams. Tech stocks were valued at hundreds if not thousand times their earnings, and even more if they had no earnings at all. And then it all came tumbling down and took with them venerable names like Bell Labs (Lucent).
Swearing that the stock market was rigged, people decided to put their money in houses. “Real estate never goes down” was the new mantra, and as evidence we saw houses “flipped” – on TV – for huge profits and real estate assessments climb 20, 30 or 40% per year, proving how to get rich by simply buying your own home. And then the real estate bubble burst and crushed people whose mortgages were larger, much larger than their homes’ values. And the people who owned these mortgages? They could not get rid of their worthless loans and venerable names like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers went out of business, whole governments throughout the world injected capital (read credibility) into the remaining lenders to prevent a total global financial collapse.
And now, out of the blue, we see something that the innocent bystanders never expected to see: a collapse of the “science bubble.” It’s early yet in this collapse. As in previous bubbles, the professionals, the press and the government tell us that it’s just a blip. Here are some echoes of the past:
“Buy Enron when it’s down 50%” was the advice; you’ll never see it this cheap again!
Here’s your chance to buy your dream house at low, low interest rates … no money down, no principal payment for 10 years! No credit, no job, no problem!
And now we’re told that the global warming science is still settled even though the “scientists” pushing global warming conspired to keep opponents from publishing, created computer models that were pure sludge, refused to share their data so that it could be checked, and claimed that they lost large parts of their original data. And the experts, press and politicians are telling us that it’s just a blip, a glitch, not to worry, they know what they’re doings and that they are going ahead with their plans to re-make the world.
The unforeseen outcome of this scandal goes way beyond the issue off global warming. Just as the collapse of the tech bubble did not just affect one or two companies or even just tech stocks, and the collapse of the housing bubble did not just affect homeowners. Scientists in all fields will be eyed with suspicion. The next time I read a news article that includes the phrase “scientists say,” my BS detectors will go off. Because scientists say a lot of things and it’s now apparent that a lot of it is a lie.
November 29th, 2009 | 4:23 am | #61
[...] analysis by the Anchoress: In a nutshell, Climategate is a destroyer of world-views. As someone who has always maintained [...]
November 29th, 2009 | 4:57 am | #62
“I’ve never encountered these hectoring greens. But I’ve seen a lot of people, Philips & Delingpole at the forefront, getting absolutely incandescent at the thought. There’s something about environmentalism that just enrages them beyond all measure.”
Environmentalism, no. Evangelism, yes. They don’t want to be told how to live based on science that isn’t scientific.
November 29th, 2009 | 2:10 pm | #63
It does make you wonder what else the conventional wisdom is mistaken about. Since the “criminality” of the invasion of Iraq is settled by some of the same folks, I’ll just throw this out there…
November 30th, 2009 | 1:54 am | #64
” But I also had a journalist I admired, and who I still consider a friend, privately and gently suggest that if I doubted the truth about AGW then I was as deluded (and perhaps as evil) as a “holocaust denier.” ”
-
Soooo, what does this journalist have to say now?
Perhaps it’s your turn to gently suggest that if he wasn’t skeptical now, then he is deluded and perhaps evil. But say it with a smile.
[It's not my way - admin]
November 30th, 2009 | 12:11 pm | #65
” [It's not my way - admin] ”
I figured that was the case.
Snark aside, what does this ‘friend’ now say?
November 30th, 2009 | 10:15 pm | #66
[...] As I noted last week: There is an anvil-heavy irony to all of this. Part of the smart/stupid, left/right narrative was built on the fantastic strawman that the AGW-doubters on the right were “enemies of science,” that first they were not allowing science to use human embryos for experimentation, and now they were daring to doubt the most imperative scientific advice in the history of mankind. [...]
November 30th, 2009 | 10:47 pm | #67
[...] Climategate Implosion is Bush’s Fault [...]
December 3rd, 2009 | 1:27 pm | #68
[...] Simon: It’s not just about the weather. No, as I said last week, this is a “destroyer of world views” and as such must be put [...]
April 19th, 2010 | 12:03 pm | #69
[...] I want my incandescent lightbulbs back! Comments [...]
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