By Dennis Ambler on SPPI
A new paper at SPPI looks at the history of extreme weather events.
The on-going claims of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming have been ramped up again lately because of the opportunities presented by the heat wave in Russia and the floods in Pakistan, which are also being claimed as attributable to anthropogenic CO2. If the amount spent on global warming were to be diverted to mitigating and preventing the worst effects of natural disasters, then the desperate plight of the people of Pakistan would be relieved more quickly.
The paper can be downloaded here.
The Author, Dennis Ambler, concludes:
Extreme Weather - The Blame Game
The Aztecs had sophisticated irrigation systems and "astrolonomical" observatories, (apparently a mix of astrology and astronomy), to attempt to predict the weather and reservoirs. But the unseasonal frosts and cold, followed by severe, prolonged drought, may have taken them to the brink of collapse. Once the climate became more benign again, they praised their gods with human sacrifice.
"When rainfall and agriculture had resumed, the Aztecs responded by massively increasing the number of human sacrifices to their rain god Tlaloc. It is thought that hundreds of thousands of people were sacrificed."
In the Little Ice Age, witchcraft was blamed for the devastating climate:
Fagan's The Little Ice Age (Basic Books, 2000):
“Witchcraft accusations soared, as people accused their neighbors of fabricating bad weather… Sixty-three women were burned to death as witches in the small town of Wisensteig in Germany in 1563 at a time of intense debate over the authority of God over the weather.”
"Almost invariably, a frenzy of prosecutions coincided with the coldest and most difficult years of the Little Ice Age, when people demanded the eradication of the witches they held responsible for their misfortunes."
These days we don't blame witchcraft for the weather, instead we blame it on our emissions of carbon dioxide, describing it as a pollutant that must be controlled by Government taxes and vilifying anyone who dares to challenge the orthodoxy.
We ignore thousands of years of climate evidence, in favour of an agenda based upon a century and a half of sometimes distorted and often-disputed temperature records, coming out of a known Little Ice Age and we call it "Science".
Have we really left the Dark Ages behind?
See more here.
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It appears not:
New Low: Desperate Warmist Video Detonates Deniers into Dead Meat
By John O’Sullivan
UK cinemas see national release of ‘fun’ new climate activists campaign video showing killing of global warming deniers. Film marked with a parental advisory warning. Touted in The Guardian newspaper the film labeled, “Not suitable for children” marks a new low in environmentalist cinematic propaganda. Announcing the film’s release the national newspaper boasts, “Our friends at the 10:10 climate change campaign have given us the scoop on this highly explosive short film, written by Britain’s top comedy screenwriter Richard Curtis, ahead of its general release.” (hat tip: Barry Woods).
Last Ditch Attempt in Failing Campaign
The offering is being dismissed as a lamentable a last ditch attempt to salvage something of the British government’s futile and soon redundant ‘10:10 climate change campaign’ (an initiative to persuade Brits to cut 10% from their carbon emissions in 2010). Official figures show that UK household emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) increased by more than 3% this year as domestic fuel use rose due to colder temperatures.
Guardian readers are invited to guffaw as role models and authority figures depicted in the film press a red button and detonate global warming ‘deniers’ into gory lumps of offal. Packaged in the guise of humor this naked hard sell seems a pitiful attempt at convincing the ‘one or two’ of us who are still left that the sky really is falling despite no rising temperatures globally since 1998.
Gillian Anderson (X-Files) and Radiohead join the motley collection of B listers and has-been former soccer stars. Along with indifferent school kids and non-compliant office workers the naysayers all have their innards exploded. No doubt an enhanced 3-D high-definition sequel will be in the pipeline if the premier of this ‘offaling’ goes well. For your edification you can watch a nay-saying soccer player and movie star vaporize into gory pulp - all for ignoring their carbon footprint!
Bad Year for Hollywood’s Warmist Cinema
Sadly, 2010 is fast turning into a bad year for tree-hugging film makers. It started with so much promise with the general release of James ‘Chicken’ Cameron’s animated full length feature, ‘Avatar.’ But, Cameron, the new Hollywood darling of the warmist crazies, turned tail and ran after canceling at the very last minute after demanding a climate debate with prominent skeptic, Marc Morano of Climate Depot.
On this evidence, Curtis and Hamilton have so much in common: both appearing to be intellectually bankrupt yet filled by self-loathing as they mournfully concede that public interest in climate-related issues just walked off a cliff.
Setting the bar so low with its most simple (or should that be simplistic?) message, this mercifully short film, also showing on Youtube, is literally tripe and speaks more to the converted than non-believers. But as they say, all publicity is good, right?
WARNING: the following has some graphic scenes that may upset /should upset many viewers.
The following is series of emails from 10:10 explaining their intent:
From the Washington State 10:10 office to Climate Depot’s Marc Morano:
Hi there,
The film was intended for a British audience, and has had a variety of responses, mostly positive, but not from a global perspective. I appreciate your email and am forwarding it to UK headquarters. Please know that there was a technical glitch and the film wasn’t intended to be on the global sites, only the British site. It has been removed from all sites and here is the statement for me to send to you from the UK. Thank you again for your email. JXX
From the UK:
Sorry.
Today we put up a mini-movie about 10:10 and climate change called ‘’No Pressure’. With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making people laugh. We were therefore delighted when Britain’s leading comedy writer, Richard Curtis - writer of Blackadder, Four Weddings, Notting Hill and many others - agreed to write a short film for the 10:10 campaign. Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn’t and we sincerely apologise
to anybody we have offended.
As a result of these concerns we’ve taken it off our website. We’d like to thank the 50+ film professionals and 40+ actors and extras and who gave their time and equipment to the film for free. We greatly value your contributions and the tremendous enthusiasm and professionalism you brought to the project.
At 10:10 we’re all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn.
Onwards and upwards,
Eugenie, Franny, Daniel, Lizzie and the whole 10:10 team.
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Green Panic in Holland
By Hans Schreuder
The turning tide against climate idiocy is gaining strength, at last!
After months-long coalition talks, the Dutch have finally got a new government, leaning heavily towards common sense.
One of the consequences is the removal of “green energy subsidies” and the “green investment funds” have promptly closed their doors to new investors.
Use an online translator for further details on this story.
Criminals and Muslims who refuse to abide by Dutch law have also been given notice - this is news you won’t see in a hurry on your TV screens. So far not a word on the BBC web pages.
Hans Schreuder
www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com
By Paul Chesser on 9.29.10
From this morning’s edition of the Washington Examiner’s weeklong series on Big Green:
The median salary among all 15 of the highest-paid Big Green environmental officials (the nonprofits like Environmental Defense Fund, Nature Conservancy, etc.) is $261,295, while the median total compensation for the 15 is $308,465....
You know—these are the leaders of the groups who constantly wail that nature is under unrelenting assault by Big Oil, whose money and influence they say is the Goliath to the enviros’ David.
Meanwhile:
[Big Green] opposition nonprofits analyzed by The Examiner included the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Concerned Women for America, Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Citizens Against Government Waste, National Taxpayers Union, and the American Conservative Union.
An Examiner analysis found a median salary of $228,703 among the opposition groups, or nearly $33,000 less than that received by the environmental executives. The gap is even wider when media total compensation figures are compared, with top executives at environmental opponents receiving $254,605, or nearly $54,000 less than the top 15 environmental executives.
Wait a minute?! Aren’t these largely the same conservative nonprofits that Greenpeace says are in the back pockets of the pollution-loving Big Oil (specifically, the Koch brothers)?
But then again, those Climategate guys were also sucking up to the Big Oil companies for cash themselves. And, believe it or not, so were the Big Green groups, as Amy and David Ridenour noted in June:
According to published reports, major environmental advocacy organizations that accepted major gifts from BP in recent years include the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund, the World Resources Institute, various branches of the Audubon Society, the Wildlife Habitat Council and others....
BP also was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, contributing substantial funding to the climate-change-related lobbying efforts of the environmental groups within it, which include the Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nature Conservancy and the World Resources Institute.
So the likes of Environmental Defense’s Fred Krupp ($496,174 in 2008 compensation) and the World Wildlife Fund’s Carter Roberts ($509,699 in 2009 compensation) are greedier fatcats soaked with Big Oil money than are the “climate deniers!” Read more here.
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It’s still the same old radical California agenda
By Paul Chesser
America’s first Earth Day, in 1970, was supposedly inspired in part by Sen. Gaylord Nelson’s tour of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill.
As he flew to San Francisco, the Wisconsin Democrat—who had already developed a following for his passionate environmental advocacy and liberal politics—read an article about college campus teach-ins being conducted across the country.
“If we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause,” he said, “we could generate a demonstration that would force the issue onto the national political agenda.”
Meanwhile in Northern California, a collection of radical leftists labored to put their principles—incorporating the newfound eco-passion—into print.
Read the rest here.
By Nicholas Ballasy
(CNSNews.com) - Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) told CNSNews.com at a “Sustainability Education Summit” hosted by the U.S. Education Department on Tuesday that environmental education in schools can “promote the agenda” of climate change and population growth through the influence it has on children.
“Like I keep saying over and over again, if you get young people invested in those ideas early on, that will result in those kinds of positive policy developments,” Sarbanes told CNSNews.com. “So, whether it’s climate change, whether it’s population growth, whether it’s all these factors that impact the health of our world, raising that awareness early among young people is only going to promote the agenda.”
CNSNews.com interviewed Sarbanes after he spoke at a U.S. Department of Education event--"Sustainability Education Summit: Citizenship and Pathways for a Green Economy"--hosted by Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Sarbanes also said; “If we can provide them with a framework and help promote educational opportunities, in the beginning as I said, at the earliest stages, they’ll just grab hold of it and take it from there. So in a sense it’s a wonderful partnership where the adults can create this policy framework and help support it with grant funding and other kinds of initiatives and then the young people are going to take that, and they’re the ones that are really going to push it to the next level.”
When asked if students should be taught that global warming is a threat, Sarbanes said: “If you’re promoting outdoor education, building that into educational programming, they [students] can’t help but understand about climate change because they’re going to see the effects of it. They’re going to go to a local science center, right, and they’re going to learn about the effect that global warming is having right in their own communities.
“I mean, for example, the National Audubon Society has an initiative now where they are highlighting the fact that state birds all across the county are actually migrating out of the states that they’re the state bird of because the climate is changing,” said Sarbanes. “Well, a young person’s going to understand that if they are engaged in environmental education. So, it’s going to raise that awareness of climate change that, in turn, I think, can make them stewards, stakeholders in policy changes we have to make to try to address climate change going forward and so, another wonderful result that you can yield if you do this environmental education.’
John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology co-authored an essay for the World Bank on “The Meaning of Sustainability” that said that human race must face up to a “world of zero net physical growth,” reduce material consumption and limit population growth. CNSNews.com asked Rep. Sarbanes if he thinks those ideas would help the U.S. economy.
“I think the more you focus on the environment, the need to preserve the environment, protect the environment, the more it’s going to lead to sensible policies going forward,” he responded.
Rep. Sarbanes continued, “Sure, there’s so much we can do in terms of reducing our consumption of natural resources and that’s the lowest hanging fruit right? To implement conservative measures and so forth and again young people are in a position to help drive that new way of thinking.” See more here. See the comments which represent the anger of most Americans tired of being told how their children or grandchildren should be brainwashed. Tired of being told if we don’t agree we must be mentally inferior. That Sarbanes, Kerry, Waxman, Markey, Boxer, Reid, Pelosi, Lieberman and the rest of the 15% APPROVAL CLUB in congress and their equally unpopular mainstream media know what’s best and so take we need to just accept their expertise and take our medicine. Not a chance.