In climate believers the river of reason runs uphill

Professor Michael Kelly last night gave a deeply thoughtful presentation full of insight into what has become the perilous intersection between UK policies on energy and climate change. (Thanks to Bryan Leyland and the Auckland branch of IPENZ for hosting the event at the University of Auckland.) This is a brief note; I’ll be saying more about Michael Kelly’s plain and practical message shortly.

During question time one chap clearly approved of the widespread and expensive campaign to spend our taxes in subsidising ‘non-carbon’ forms of energy such as windmills and solar panels (but not nuclear or hydro) in order to save the world, for he believes that the greed of man is wrecking the planet, no less. He said so several times.

But this belief did not rise from evidence, for global systems are normal. Rather, the belief having been implanted, the believer then inquires into evidence of wrecking to justify the belief. No believer has succeeded in this, but belief born without evidence needs none to survive. So the river of their reason continues to run uphill from conclusion to inquiry.

In that engineer-filled lecture theatre our loquacious friend, with effortless effrontery, many times called the climate sceptics ‘climate deniers’. But he does not see that the denial resides in the climate believers. Like so much that fills the hollow anthropogenic global warming scare, the truth is the reverse of the common view.

It is the climate believers who deny climate change, in what can only be called pure denial—for they campaign to stop it from changing! If you don’t believe me, read what they say:

examples of climate denial are legion

The most arrogant, ridiculous claim man ever made—but regrettably now one of the most widespread. Climate change is a household word and the fiction that we control it penetrates every level of society.

Climate sceptics assert from the evidence that the degree of man-made climate change is vanishingly small, whereas climate believers claim it will destroy the world. Destroy? They don’t offer evidence, but in a note of desperation they do call it ‘overwhelming’.

Everyone wants to save the world, but this time, the only threat to the world is the campaign to save it.

I say, let reason run its proper course. And, since the scientists have failed us, bring on the engineers.

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15 Thoughts on “In climate believers the river of reason runs uphill

  1. Andy on 10/04/2015 at 3:01 pm said:

    I noticed that the Green Party facebook page seems to be full of sceptical comments whenever they bring up the climate issue, and I don’t think these are all “drive by trolls”

    Anyway, I am off to the land of windmills today (Scotland) via a more sensible country called Norway.

  2. Richard Treadgold on 10/04/2015 at 3:04 pm said:

    That’s great news about the Greens. They ought to be listening to some opposition.

    Have a good trip, Andy, and let us know the news from the North! Is, by any chance, the name Scrase of Norwegian origin? Huh?

  3. Andy on 10/04/2015 at 3:23 pm said:

    No not Norwegian, English name.

    Anyway, the Mussel farm closure is due to “climate change” we are advised.

    http://www.3news.co.nz/business/climate-change-forces-christchurch-mussel-plant-to-close-2015040919

    I hope to find some “climate change” in Norway in a couple of weeks when I don my skis and burn off some much needed calories in the mountains. It appears the winter is still in full swing there. I’ll let you know.

  4. Richard C (NZ) on 10/04/2015 at 3:58 pm said:

    >”one chap”

    Probably an itinerant preacher from the Church of Climatology with a golden opportunity for a sermon to a captive audience.

    Unfortunately another chap from mainstream religion, the Pope, has sold his soul and crossed over to the CofC:

    [‘Climate Change Encyclical’ sneak preview] – “the conservative ideal of individualism is undermining the common good.”

    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/pope-franciss-new-climate-change-encyclical-sneak-preview-2015-04-09?page=2

    This is one of eight of the pope’s public warnings edited in the “Catholic Climate Covenant”, from his “Apostolic Exhortation,” from the Guardian and other news sources, warnings on the “rapidly accelerating climate change” and global warming risks to the environment, along with our individual responsibility to “safeguard Creation, for we are the custodians of Creation. If we destroy Creation, Creation will destroy us.”

    1) “Catholic Climate Covenant”?

    2) “rapidly accelerating climate change”?

    3) “Apostolic Exhortation”?

    So much for truth (and the saving of souls goes down the gurgler to make way for Gaia).

    Page 1 of the article above shows the Pope pictured with Obama. This is what Obama said in his inauguration speech (written by his speech writer Jon Favreau):

    “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. (Applause.) Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms.”

    And,

    “With common effort and common purpose……”

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/21/inaugural-address-president-barack-obama

    Birds of a feather……

    And again, so much for truth.

  5. Richard C (NZ) on 10/04/2015 at 4:25 pm said:

    It will be interesting to see how Catholicism reconciles, in terms of priority, the Pope’s ‘Climate Change Encyclical’ with, say:

    James 4:4 – Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

    Problematic for Friends of the Earth but they REALLY like the Pope, now that he’s working for a new boss:

    ‘Can the Pope be cooler than Mick Jagger?’
    http://www.foe.co.uk/news/pope_big_ideas_40826

  6. Andy on 10/04/2015 at 8:14 pm said:

    With respect to the Green Party of NZ, I should add that a perusal of their facebook page suggests that they are fully supportive of the Greenpeace act of piracy on the Shell drilling rig heading up to Alaska.

    It concerns me that a party funded by the taxpayer, and potentially part of a future government, is promoting illegal activity against a company like Shell

    If they really want to pick a fight, they could try some of the less ethical outfits in the oil business from Saudi etc.

    I guess they have figured that, living in a soft democratic culture, it is easy to pick on these targets. Yet the very culture that they seem to despise enables them to conduct these actions.

  7. Mack on 13/04/2015 at 12:13 am said:

    These Greenpeace people are actually getting what they want. …The price of oil has dropped because the US has now got an oversupply with the shale oil production. Their refineries are at max and can’t cope with the glut. OPEC have just kept on producing oil at undercut prices and so we have this huge, sudden laying off of tens of thousands of oil workers, and workers in all the ancillary supply companies. We’ve got hundreds of off-shore oil rigs being mothballed. All the helicopter pilots laid off ,except for one or two to get a few maintainance men out to the rigs to inspect them and make sure there’s no leaks.
    The oil industry is big. The ongoing effect of this could be a big hit on the global economy. Nothing startling here in NZ except lower petrol prices.
    The Greenpeace crowd soon will be able to throw a party on a deserted oil rig and nobody will take any notice

  8. Richard Treadgold on 13/04/2015 at 8:19 am said:

    Yes, interesting comments, Mack, but Greenpeace has failed to dampen the demand for oil. Surely that remains and once the reserves are run down a bit production must ramp up again to satisfy it?

  9. Andy on 13/04/2015 at 3:45 pm said:

    Mack is right, the Oil industry is hurting big time.
    Even Statoil have shed about 15% of staff, which is something unheard of in Norway. That are all used to having jobs and prosperity.
    History tells us that the climb back up is much slower than the downturn.

  10. Richard Treadgold on 13/04/2015 at 4:29 pm said:

    Yes, good points, Andy. But whether the recovery is fast or slow, we should see demand return to previous levels and more because behind the short-term economic fluctuations the world continues to want what the oil can do, and populations are still rising.

  11. Richard C (NZ) on 14/04/2015 at 10:14 am said:

    The BIG LIE continues:

    [MIT News] – “Marotzke’s lecture will first illustrate the physically fundamental manifestation of anthropogenic climate change — increasing ocean heat content in relation to rising greenhouse-gas concentrations. This increase in heat content has gone on unabated for at least the past 40 years.”

    http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/kendall-lecture-jochem-marotzke-what-warming-hiatus-means-for-climate-change-0413

    1) IPCC AR5 Chap 11 Detection and Attribution speculates (no science to cite after 25 years) that “air-sea fluxes” are the “expected” anthro ocean warming mechanism.

    2) Chap 3 Oceans: Observations was unable to isolate said “air-sea fluxes” from AO interface observations.

    3) Even if there are “air-sea fluxes”, downwelling longwave infrared radiation (DLR) in the IR-C range has no effect on the ocean surface below about 100 microns depth (effective depth 10 microns):

    http://omlc.org/spectra/water/gif/hale73.gif

    The only DLR effect is evaporative i.e. cooling of the ocean surface. Heating is by solar IR in the IR-A/B range.of the EM spectrum.

    4) The IPCC (and Marotzke evidently) are not cognizant of planetary thermal lag in the sun => ocean => atmosphere system in respect to solar change. The various estimates place the lag somewhere between 10 – 100 years with the most recent estimate being 30 – 40 years.

    But they’ll persist with the BIG LIE as long as possible anyway because this is climate science.

  12. Richard C (NZ) on 14/04/2015 at 10:46 am said:

    Monckton’s list:

    Climate Nazis

    2005: Margo Kingston, in Australia’s Daily Briefing, said: “Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence. It is a crime against humanity, after all.”

    2006: Bill McGuire, at University College, London, said: “We have Holocaust deniers; we have climate change deniers. And, to be honest, I don’t think there’s a great deal of difference.”

    2006: The Grist.com website called for Nuremberg-style trials for climate skeptics. The article was later retracted.

    2006: Heidi Cullen featured Dave Roberts, who said online, “When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards – some sort of climate Nuremberg.” The remark was not later retracted.

    2006: Mark Lynas, a “green” columnist, wrote: “I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead. I put [their climate change denial] in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial – except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have time to avoid it. Those who try to ensure we don’t will one day have to answer for their crimes.”

    2006: Spiked Online reported that when a correspondent for the American current affairs show 60 Minutes was asked why his various feature programmes on global warming did not include the views of global warming sceptics, he replied: “If I do an interview with Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?”

    2007: Ellen Goodman, in the Boston Globe, said: “Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.”

    2007: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lashed out at global warming skeptics, saying: “This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.” The penalty for treason is death.

    2007: Yvo de Boer, secretary general of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said ignoring the urgency of global warming would be “criminally irresponsible”.

    2007: Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, a UN special climate envoy, said: “It’s completely immoral even to question” the UN’s scientific opinion on climate.

    2008: Dr James Hansen of NASA demanded that skeptics be “put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature”. The penalty for crimes against humanity is death.

    2008: David Suzuki, a Canadian environmentalist, said government leaders skeptical of global warming should be “thrown into jail”.

    2008: Alex Lockwood, a British journalism professor, said that writers questioning global warming should be banned.

    2009: A writer at Talking Points Memo said global warming “deniers” should be executed or jailed. He later retracted this remark.

    2010: James Lovelock, inventor of the “Gaia hypothesis”, told The Guardian: “I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”

    2010: Dr. Donald Brown, Professor of “Climate Ethics” at Penn State University, declared that skeptics, who had caused “a 25-year delay in acting to stop climate change”, may be guilty of a “new crime against humanity”. The penalty for crimes against humanity is death.

    2010: A video from the “10:10 campaign” showed climate skeptic children being blown up by their teacher in class, and their classmates were spattered with their blood and guts.

    2011: An Australian journalist said climate skeptics should be “branded” with cattle-irons to mark them out from the rest of the population.

    2011: Another Australian journalist said skeptics should be “gassed”.

    2012: Professor Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz, Austria, recommended the death penalty for skeptics. He later withdrew.

    2012: Dr. Donald Brown, Professor of “Climate Ethics” at Widener University School of Law, again declared that skeptics may be guilty of a “new crime against humanity”. The penalty for crimes against humanity is death.

    2014: Dr Lawrence Torcello, assistant philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, wrote that people who disagreed with him should be sent to jail.

    2014: During a February cold snap, the New York Times ran a cartoon headed “Self-Destructing Sabers for Dispatching Climate-Change Deniers” and showing a climate skeptic being stabbed with an icicle.

    2014: The gawker.com website said: “Those denialists should face jail. They should face fines. They should face lawsuits from the classes of people whose lives and livelihoods are most threatened by denialist tactics.”

    2014: The host of MSNBC’s The Ed Show promoted Soviet-style re-education for climate skeptic politicians by conducting an on-air poll on the question “Should climate-denying Republicans be forced to take a basic earth science course?”

    2015: Katie Herzog at Grist.com on 16 January wrote: “If this planet is to survive the scourge that is humanity, we all have to stop reproducing. Yes, all of us. In that spirit, I propose we … sterilize every human male on his 10th birthday.”

    2015: Comment on the webpage of the Brisbane Times about a category 5 cyclone along the Queensland coast on 19/20 February: “These type of weather events could happen further south in future and be more intense with global warming … if anyone has to suffer out of this one I hope it is a climate change denier, if anyone.” Downloaded from http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/cyclone-marcia-live-coverage-20150219-13iuaw.html.

    2015: The Australian Capital Territory’s Arts Fund gave $18,793 “to assist with costs of the creative development of a new theatre work, Kill Climate Deniers”.

    Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/04/punishing_climate_change_deniers.html#ixzz3XEo0RGvu

  13. Mike Jowsey on 16/04/2015 at 5:04 pm said:

    OT – on the next Post I’m getting a 404 when trying to post a comment

  14. Richard Treadgold on 16/04/2015 at 8:49 pm said:

    Mike,
    Just got home. Works for me now. Try again?

  15. Mike Jowsey on 17/04/2015 at 4:39 pm said:

    Hi Richard – it turns out it occurs when I start my comment with a html tag such as [blockquote] or [i]. Both Chrome and Firefox go to a 404 error page if I do that. Cheers.

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