By hauntingthelibrary

This is a longer post than normal - but trust me, there’s a damn good reason for that. If you don’t read a single one of my other posts, read this one.

This post is not about some fringe character. It’s a review of a serious book written by a professor who lectures in mainstream education and is involved in compiling the IPCC reports. The book is published by a respectable publisher for a recognized academic institute

And that’s what so scary about it.

Professor David Shearman, MD, is Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University of Adelaide, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University’s Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences and Law School.  Professor Shearman was an Assessor for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report and the Fourth Assessment Report. (1)

Shearman has penned several books on global warming, such as ‘Climate Change as a Crisis in World Civilization: Why We Must Totally Transform How We Live’ and ‘The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy’. His argument is that overpopulation and industrialization are causing an ecological disaster which requires a total change of lifestyle for everyone on the planet. As democracy isn’t up to the challenge, an authoritarian government must (obviously) be imposed to save us from ourselves.

Let’s take a look at one of those books, ‘The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy’, which Shearman co-authored with Joseph Wayne Smith. (2)

The book was written as part of a series sponsored by the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy. The Pell Center was established at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, by an Act of the United States Congress on September 28, 1996, to honor Democrat Senator Claiborne Pell. (3)

The introduction, by the director of the Pell Center, provides a handy summary of the argument contained in the book:

In short, Shearman and Smith argue that liberal democracy - considered sacrosanct in modern societies - is an impediment to finding ecologically sustainable solutions for the planet [intro. p.xi]

Moving to the preface, the authors demand that the reader be prepared to reassess their notions of what is or is not acceptable, and what actions tackling global warming may require. They ask the reader if they are committed to the well-being of future generations:

If so, are you prepared to change your lifestyle now? Are you prepared to see society and its governance change if this is a necessary solution? [preface. p. xiv]

You see, apparently democracy is simply not natural. As the authors put it: ’we argue that authoritarianism is the natural state of humanity’. They propose the formation of an ‘elite warrior leadership’ to ‘battle for the future of the earth’ [p.xvi]. Can you see where this is going yet?

The authors recognize that religion plays a big part in many people’s lives, and they discuss whether Islam or Christianity fits better with the authoritarian government they see as essential, before deciding that there is a better option:

However, they are not the only contenders for providing social glue for the masses. Although too much of the natural world will be destroyed for civilization to continue in its present form, some biodiversity will still exist . . . It is not impossible that from the green movement and aspects of the new age movement a religious alternative to Christianity and Islam will emerge. And it is not too difficult to imagine what shape this new religion could take. One would require a transcendent God who could punish and reward - because humans seem to need a carrot and a stick. [p. 127]

Frankly, I find this kind of thing terrifying. All the talk of ‘necessary solutions’ and a new Green religion that would provide ‘social glue for the masses’ - are we back in the 1930s?

But it gets worse. I know, you must be asking yourselves how much more fascistic it can get. The answer is a lot more:

Chapter 9 will describe in more detail how we might begin the process of constructing such real universities to train the ecowarriors to do battle against the enemies of life. We must accomplish this education with the same dedication used to train its warriors. As in Sparta, these natural elites will be especially trained from childhood to meet the challenging problems of our times. [p. 134]

To combat global warming effectively, these ‘natural elites’ will require a government capable of taking the necessary action to combat climate change:

Government in the future will be based upon . . . a supreme office of the biosphere. The office will comprise specially trained philosopher/ecologists. These guardians will either rule themselves or advise an authoritarian government of policies based on their ecological training and philosophical sensitivities. These guardians will be specially trained for the task. [p. 134]

Worrying stuff, coming from a professor whose previous book (which the Australian government helped to promote) argued that humanity was a ‘malignant eco-tumour’ and an ‘ecological cancer’. (4)

I could go on quoting from the book, but I’m sure you’ve already got the gist of what’s being proposed here: Global warming presents such a massive and immediate danger that democracy no longer cuts it, and an authoritarian ecological government of ‘natural elites’ will have to be found to replace it, as well as a new green religion to help provide ‘social glue for the masses’.

Posted on a blog somewhere, such a plan would probably elicit a visit from the anti-terrorist division of the police. But the fact that it comes from a professor at a major university, who works for the IPCC and was written at the behest of a serious academic institute, founded by Act of Congress, means that the author need not be afraid.

But we should be.

1) http://www.presidian.com.au/product-climate-change-litigation.html David Shearman is also listed under “authors and expert reviewers” by IPCC here. 

2) The Climate change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy.  David Shearman & Joseph Wayne Smith (Praeger Publishing: Wesport, 2007). Preview available online here.

3) http://www2.salve.edu/pellCenter/

4) David Shearman and Gary Sauer-Thompson, ‘Green or Gone’ (Wakefield Press: Kent Town, 1997) p. 117. The colophon page states that ‘promotion of this book has been assisted by the South Australian Government through Arts South Australia.

See post here.

By Walter Starck, Doomed Planet

In recent years anyone daring to question the imminent reality of catastrophic global warming has risked being labelled a denialist with implicit, and sometimes even explicit, reference to holocaust denial as well. Ironically, over the past year in the face of a cooling climate and collapsing scientific credibility, climate alarmists have themselves begun to increasingly express opinions that can only be seen as denialist.

Even though exposure of the Climategate emails and other material from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit was unequivocally a major blow to the credibility of AGW science, warmists reacted by trying to downplay the significance as being only an academic spat with no relevance to the scientific validity of any of the research involved. However, as it became apparent that serious breaches of scientific standards and ethics were involved, basic honesty should have called for a clear condemnation. By opting to attempt to dismiss such serious matters as only trivia, damage to credibility with the public was compounded.

Then, to make a bad situation even worse, investigations that were obvious shams were conducted. Predictably they announced finding nothing of any real concern. Instead of resolving suspicions about a few researchers this only served to widen them to the institutions themselves and even to the government.

At the same time, the Climategate scandal also turned public attention onto various other false or doubtful claims about climate change. The result has been a large increase in mainstream media coverage for climate scepticism and a significant decrease in stories promoting climate alarmism. Unable to effectively refute all of the doubts being presented, the proponents of dangerous warming have responded by ratcheting up the level of proclaimed threats. Without any convincing new data, everything was suddenly claimed to be much worse than previously stated.

For persons purportedly committed to reason and evidence, the response of climate change researchers would be more than a little incongruous. It is however, fully in keeping with the politically correct, postmodern perspective which now dominates in academia. In this view objective truth is only a delusion and basic research a bourgeois elitist indulgence. In environmental research in particular, advancement of basic understanding has been largely abandoned in favour of that having “relevance” to “problems” and only findings which support a politically correct agenda may be publically presented. Even researchers strongly committed to the AGW hypothesis have found themselves viciously attacked for offering opinion or findings not fully in accord with alarmist dogma.

When confronted by reasonable doubts or conflicting evidence, the warmist response has been to refuse debate and to instead proclaim authority, expert consensus and moral virtue while attacking the knowledge, standing and motives of any who question the threat of catastrophic climate change. While this kind of denigration may be an accepted practice in academia, to the broader public it only looks like juvenile schoolyard bullying by adults who haven’t grown up. It certainly has not aided the alarmist cause.

Although the climate change bandwagon may appear to roll on unstoppably regardless of all doubts or discredit, it has in fact suffered a serious loss of momentum in public acceptance.  It has lost power and is now only coasting while trying to maintain a face saving facade for those so deeply committed that any graceful retreat is unthinkable.

Worse still from the alarmist perspective, has been the painfully obvious failure of climate itself to cooperate. For the past three years all over the world savagely cold winter weather has repeatedly set new records for snow and low temperatures. Time after time global warming conferences have been greeted by record and near record cold weather. Trying to dismiss this as merely coincidence or just weather, not climate, has lost all credibility; especially after it has happened repeatedly amidst a background of extreme winter conditions over large areas.  Continuing to offer this increasingly lame excuse has only made it look more like a lie or delusion than an explanation.

Regardless of the ongoing hype and spin of the diehard proponents of AGW, the attitude of a large majority of the electorate has turned decisively against the idea of any imminent threat. This shift in sentiment is unlikely to reverse anytime soon. It developed over time and involves not just the Climategate emails but a much wider shift in the balance of public awareness as well as a sense of betrayal and dishonesty by researchers claiming certainty and righteousness. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Once a belief is abandoned, few people readily return to something they have decided was false. All the spin and hype is now achieving is to exacerbate the discredit. For supposedly intelligent people, this kind of behaviour does not indicate it.

Meanwhile, as the warmists continue their doomscrying and seeking further hundreds of billions of dollars to carry on their vast charade, the whole economic structure upon which everything depends is teetering on the brink of disaster with little effort to address or to even recognise the very real and present dangers which confront us.

All over the developed world, governments have committed to unfunded liabilities and fostered a proliferation of bureaucracy which their increasingly uncompetitive productive sectors cannot sustain. Most are now running on empty with no credit left, no plan B and no apparent recognition that the path they are on leads only to the edge of a cliff.

In the U.S., Japan and most of the EU, government debt and deficits have passed a point of no return and are rapidly escalating. The bailouts and stimulus efforts have only deferred inevitable defaults while making them even larger and more damaging. Taxes cannot be raised without accelerating the economic decline and any meaningful austerity will result in riots and political suicide for the party in power. 

There is no painless solution. The situation has developed over decades and will require major reforms as well as long hard effort to correct. Large sectors of many basic industries no longer even exist. Their skills, knowledge and factories are gone and their products are now imported. Much of what does remain struggles to remain profitable while meeting ever increasing government demands and ever growing competition by lower cost imports from developing countries.

In Australia the price of food, housing, utilities and finance are among the highest in the world. For increasing numbers of people the cost of living is becoming unaffordable and all indications are for ongoing further increases. None of this is because of shortages of resources or lack of knowhow. Overwhelmingly, it stems from government policies and demands.

In addition to a deteriorating economic situation, the proliferation of government and bureaucracy has been accompanied by a serious degradation of basic personal rights and freedoms which are the very soul of democracy. It is fundamental to democracy that ultimate sovereignty resides in the people, not the government. However, over recent decades government has increased its power and control to the point that the people are becoming only chattels of the state, indentured wage serfs who will have to toil their entire working life in order to simply pretend to own a home.  In reality they will just rent it from the state through payment of exorbitant rates until their sham “freehold” is confiscated either for old age care or via taxes.

Bloated dysfunctional government cannot even recognise, much less rectify, the problems it has created. It has grown into an engorged parasite on the body politic. Until the people reassert their rightful sovereignty, severely prune back government and make it properly subservient, it will continue to drain the vitality of the productive sector until economic collapse must result.

The idea that they will fix things by redistributing wealth is a pathetic joke. The wealth of a society ultimately depends on what it produces. Wealth in private hands can only be spent, invested or saved.  Any of these uses results in increased production. Only government pays people to produce nothing, or to produce things no one wants, or to actively interfere with those producing the things that are needed and wanted. Even when it does try to do useful things, government tends to do so inefficiently, poorly and at high cost. Too much government is the problem. More cannot be the solution. No genuine economic recovery is possible unless government is downsized, basic rights restored and the productive sector permitted to function more freely again.

In a world teetering on the edge of economic chaos with a huge population highly dependent on a healthy economy and severe winters not seen since the Little Ice Age, the ongoing obsession with global warming and decarbonisation is surreal. Every day government deficits grow larger. Even with a 100% tax on income, the U.S. government would still be in deficit. Most state governments and many municipalities there are operating in serious and growing deficit. Already the first municipal defaults have occurred. In the EU bankruptcy looms over various member states. Interest on government bonds is having to be substantially increased and even then buyers are becoming harder to find. Serial sovereign defaults and further severe global economic recession seem unavoidable.

In these conditions, the ongoing obsession over AGW is looking more and more like a mental disorder, not unlike the mass manias of the Middle Ages. It seems an especially poor time to be insisting on failed prophesies calling for austerity and increased costs. In the likely prospect of severe hardship becoming manifest, angry mobs may be only too willing to accord full credit to false prophets.

The prayer to the Mayan jaguar goddess Ixchel at the recent Cancun climate meeting seems singularly appropriate to our times. The Mayan gods were a bloodthirsty lot and at least one early Spanish account reports that young women were routinely sacrificed to Ixchel. If the warmists were to have their way and full decarbonisation imposed, agriculture, transport and winter heating as we know it will no longer be possible. This alone should provide a sacrifice of at least several hundred million persons. Ixchel must surely be pleased at the prospect. However, this promise must surely have had more credibility if only the conference had offered a down payment as a show of good faith. If they really wanted to assure Ixchel’s favour they could have selected a few hundred delegates to have their hearts removed with obsidian knives atop the great pyramid at Chichen Itza and their bodies tossed down the steep steps. This would have been far more convincing to Ixchel than just beseeching her with dubious promises.

Our large brains provide our species with a remarkable capacity to rationalise whatever benefits us personally and dismiss that which does not. AGW has provided fame, fortune and a delicious sense of moral righteousness to many of those so ardently proselytising for it. Our politico-economic problems offer only austerity and great effort. Unfortunately, repeated experience strongly indicates that there is an objective reality which does exist regardless of whatever we might choose to believe. However ardently we may choose to deny it, it always prevails. How much more of it is going to be needed to make us give up our fantasies and start dealing with it?

UPDATE: The December Central England Temperature which is one of the longest running record extending back to the Little Ice Age (1659), had a -0.61C provisional average (reported by Hadley as -0.7C). This is the SECOND COLDEST DECEMBER trailing only 1890 which came in at -0.8C. It was also the 20th coldest month in the entire record.

The enlarged is here. The data can be downloaded here.
Keep this in mind when you read the garbage pedeled by Samuelsohn and all the agenda-driven, rent-seeking liars below. Much more on this December to Remember early this week.

By: Darren Samuelsohn, Politico
December 31, 2010 05:37 AM EST

Hey America! Are you ready to get wonky on global warming?

After a year that started with fallout from the “Climategate” e-mail release, saw the cap-and-trade bill die in Congress, and ended with a gang of Republican climate skeptics winning House and Senate seats, global warming experts are going back to basics.

Environmentalists, scientists and lawmakers have renewed public relations efforts to put global warming plainly before Americans’ eyes and also rebut opponents who say nothing is happening.

“Folks are enraged about this, rightly so, and are looking for ways to educate,” said Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned (Corrupted) Scientists.

Climate science hit a high-water mark with the media and public in 2007 when Al Gore and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won Nobel prizes for their work spreading the message. But the Democrat-led Congress and the White House were ultimately unable to translate that attention into a first-ever limit on domestic greenhouse gas emissions emissions.

Despite mounting evidence that the greenhouse gas buildup in the Earth’s atmosphere is causing runaway changes to the climate - NASA this month declared 2010 the hottest year on record - several pollsters say the American public isn’t listening.

In a recent survey, Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change, found that the number of people in the United States who believe in global warming fell from 71 percent to 56 percent between 2008 and 2010. Just 34 percent of the public thinks there’s scientific agreement on climate change, down from 47 percent two years ago.

Enter the next phase of the climate education campaign.

Advocates recognize their chances for passing cap-and-trade legislation are dead for at least two years, maybe longer. But they want to make sure the public and policymakers don’t forget about the problem, especially with President Barack Obama insisting that he remains committed to lower-hanging fruit within the energy portfolio to try to get the job done.

Several key moments are ahead for inflection on climate science. Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is pursuing emission reduction regulations hotly contested by industry and Republicans. A wide-open GOP presidential nomination campaign will test the political sway of conservative activists who say global warming is a scam. U.N.-led negotiations continue on whether to extend the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will roll out its next assessment in 2013 and 2014, covering all the key bases from the physical science to adaptation and ways to reduce greenhouse gases.

Expecting a surge next year in Republican-led House hearings on global warming science, the Union of Concerned Scientists sent experts out earlier this month to Washington and New York for meetings with reporters from 60 Minutes, Time, USA Today, Reuters, Bloomberg, MSNBC and other news organizations. Frumhoff said the journalists “were keenly interested in understanding how casting doubt about mainstream scientific findings that upset powerful financial interests, from the health risks of tobacco to the reality and risks of global warming, is a tactic that has been used time and again to delay or avoid regulation.”

UCS has also been leading behind-the-scenes efforts to get its scientists on television, radio and in print stories, as well as in front of Rotary clubs and editorial boards.

Heidi Cullen, the CEO and director of communications at Climate Central, a non-profit media group, said she’s trying to explain the scientific fundamentals to the American public while pinpointing solutions reflective of the size of the problem. She’s also trying to avoid frightening language.

“I think we need to approach it as a solvable problem,” Cullen said. “There’s a way to talk about this in sort of a rational, decision-based framework that has people saying, ‘Oh, OK, I see the risks and what I can do about it’ without feeling overwhelmed.”

Cullen has produced stories explaining when it is appropriate to make connections between daily weather like heat waves, storms and cold snaps - things that the public takes much greater notice of - and long-term climate projections linked to global warming. She’s also focused on the costs if government doesn’t act, as well local links like the need for greater emergency management equipment to protect Miami-Dade County’s multi-billion dollar tourism industry from stronger hurricanes and sea-level rise.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), co-author of several unsuccessful climate bills over the last decade, said he agrees with the need to make more local connections for the public. Hitting home for him are studies showing lobster and winter flounder moving north out of Long Island Sound.

“It’s not the end of the world, and yet it suggests the world is changing,” Lieberman said. “It’s one small example. The world is full of them.”

Lieberman said he thinks there’s a need for more TV and radio commercials that capture the most eye-catching images. “Just show people what’s happening,” he said. “Show them satellite pictures of the ice caps.”

Princeton University climate researcher Michael Oppenheimer said advocates will be effective in raising public awareness with a campaign that focuses on specific opinion leaders.

“This is just one among many” hefty issues competing for Americans’ attention, alongside nuclear arms proliferation, health care and the federal deficit, he said. “And when the public is besieged by a plethora of complicated issues, they make their decisions not by looking granularly at the details, but mostly they look to people they trust.”

Cullen said Obama should eventually play an important role as the nation’s educator-in-chief. “I think it’s really critical,” she said. “It’s absolutely required. I don’t know when or if that can happen in the next two years. A lot of folks are feeling like it’s not the time.”

Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes said in an interview that the Obama administration is engaged on several levels in climate education by bringing the latest science to land, water and wildlife managers. He cited an 11-year old water shortage in the Colorado River Basin. “It’s one of the worst droughts in history,” Hayes said. “And we’re bringing the data to the table.”

The Senate’s leading global warming skeptic, Oklahoma Republican Jim Inhofe, said he’s not concerned about another blitz of information, whether from Obama or anyone else.

“No matter what they do, whether it means being more articulate or anything else, they’re fighting a losing battle because the science is cooked,” Inhofe told POLITICO. “The trouble is they’re not trying to educate the public. They’re trying to influence the public.”

Lawmakers say their efforts have been undermined by skeptics like Inhofe who create the appearance of scientific conflict. Several cited Bill Sammons, the FOX News managing editor in Washington who sent a memo to staff last December after the “Climategate” story broke urging them to “refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.”

“The problem is that we now have people create their own set of realities and then debate that,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.). “If I said the world is round, and there’s substantial evidence to believe that, and someone else said the world is flat, the report is there’s a dispute on the shape of the world. Well, there’s not a dispute at all.”

“It’s easier to discredit something than it is to build the case for it too often,” added Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “That’s why these guys are so good about lying about stuff.”

Jim Connaughton, President George W. Bush’s top White House environmental adviser and now an executive vice president at Baltimore-based Constellation Energy, said the next education campaign should focus on getting Americans up to speed on the shortcomings in delivering them their power.

“I think the public knows more about climate change science than they do about the major impediments to a really efficient well functioning electricity and natural gas system,” said Connaughton, who added that climate science should be considered settled.

Climate policy advocates also are looking for help in getting their message out from business leaders who can show the public why this hurts their corporate bottom line.

“The scientific community is not skeptical, you know,” Virgin Atlantic CEO Richard Branson told Newsweek this month. “But let’s assume the odds were only 50/50. If you have a 50 percent chance of getting knocked over by a car crossing the road, you’re going to take out insurance, or you’re not going to cross the road.” See Politico here.