By Ben Pile, Climate Resistance
That old chestnut… That the ‘climate denial machine’ is ‘well-funded’… is about to suffer another blow to its credibility.
Lubos Motl of the Reference Frame has an entertaining take on the Climate Reality project, which seems to be Al Gore’s latest stunt. Says Motl,
Just look at the dozens of people who had to participate in the creation of these amateurish, would-be interesting movies that have 12,000 or 15,000 views on YouTube, respectively. Imagine how many millions of dollars have been thrown to the trash bin, how many fat screaming female musicians had to be killed during the shooting. Gore’s videos are completely unoriginal, can’t compare with the videos that inspired Gore (like Honda’s Rube Goldberg device: I recently saw some equally good ones, not just the Melvin Machine, but forgot the URLs), and they really make no sense. Why is a Rube Goldberg machine used in a video about the climate? What point could it make (except that alarmists’ arguments are contrived and extremely unlikely)? Those people are just not capable of thinking, capable of doing anything well. They’re just low-quality people.
It’s a good point. There seems to be no end of cash available to promote the catastrophic story, and the individuals behind it, of course. This latest stunt is a 24-hour long web-TV extravaganza. The man himself, says,
“24 Hours of Reality will focus the world’s attention on the full truth, scope, scale and impact of the climate crisis. To remove the doubt. Reveal the deniers. And catalyze urgency around an issue that affects every one of us.”
AL GORE
CHAIRMAN OF THE CLIMATE REALITY PROJECT
It’s an interesting claim. Reality, it seems, is determined by committee, chaired by none other than himself. ‘I’ve got reality on my side’, he seems to be saying, ‘what have you got?’
We ain’t got enough cash for a 24 hour worldwide telethon, that’s for sure, Al.
This is a promo for the event.
And ain’t that the point...There’s the proverbial sh*t that his the fan, to which the promo visually alludes (oh, the subtlety), but there’s the other idiom, ‘throw enough dirt and some of it will stick’.
What possible use could 24 hours of web TV to settling the argument, other than to bore the opposition into submission? There are only two categories of people who will be willing to endure such a dull enterprise: the choir, who need no preaching; and sceptics, who will find it entertaining to see the climate Great and Good attempt to elevate and flatter themselves. Nobody will be watching this from on the fence.
If this 24 hour Gore-Bore-a-thon is an attempt to do anything, it is yet another attempt to win the ‘debate’ without having it. It’s about asserting a claim about ‘reality’, without ever having the claim tested. It’s not simply ‘bias’; it’s naked dogma. All it will do is epitomise the environmental movement’s intransigence; it’s inability to respond to criticism. It may work, of course, for the true believers in one respect. For the committed, it will be a self-affirming ritual… A ceremony for the smug, who will nod, tut, sigh and laugh on cue. But… there is good news…
This failure to permit dialogue must by now be the essential characteristic of the environmental movement, beyond question. I have lost count of the number of on and off-line discussions I have had, in which it became clear that my opponent’s intentions were not to respond to anything I said, but to merely recite the litany at me. In contrast to discussion, in which a point can be explored, conversations with the Faithful do not progress. These encounters are not conversations. There is no person, merely dogma.
If I were to speculate as to what might be going on, it is this. If one starts from the view that ‘the debate is over’ and ‘the science is settled’, and that all that is necessary to win the debate is to tell the consensus story, it is by definition, an appeal to authority: it’s not me who is saying it; it’s not my opinion; it is science’. Thus the proponent of this view has completely surrendered his own judgement. Lacking any critical function, he has no option but to recycle the litany, as best it fits any turn the discussion takes. He doesn’t have to understand the science, he merely needs to know what to say, and when. It is impossible to have a discussion with such a mind. It is not capable of discussion.
The good news is this, then. As human as this tendency is, so is the tendency to realise that what once seemed like sense is dogma. Since the only people watching the contrived ‘reality’ that Gore and his crew want to promote are likely to be the choir, the only people it will bore are the choir. And the longer they are expected to obediently sit, listen, repeat, and sing on cue, for no reward - for no payoff whatsoever - the more likely they will want to start singing a different tune.
Please, Mr Gore, more 24-hour long ‘reality’ stunts.
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See post by Joanne Nova here.
Al Gore hopes he has reality on his side. But the reality is the relentless slide of the polls. It’s the crashed Chicago Climate Exchange, the kaput green jobs. It’s the long list of countries who are are shaking themselves free of the eco-shackles. The apostles of a bygone cult are reduced to saying that warming causes cooling, death, disease and even prostitution in Ghana. The babbling last players standing are talking about saving the world from aliens. Sadly, those are not the nutters, no, they’re the ones from NASA.
The NASA crew worry that the aliens who have been blind to the last 60 years of I love Lucy beamed out to space, have instead been transfixed by a trace gas composition change from 0.028% to 0.039% on the third rock from the sun in a distant galaxy. I’m scared now, not of the aliens, but of our collapsing collective IQ. This is modern public debate (and from the team that got the man on the moon.)
Gore’s seedy scare will be viewed in history books as we marvel at Fowlers Arsenic Cure now.
Gore is the modern witchdoctor incarnate, armed with special effects, no scruples and buckets of money. He knows he’s losing the war with the thinkers, he’s given up even trying to win the educated. Now it’s straight from the Saul Alinsky playbook of personal smear.
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See Heartland’s collection of real scientists that how bankrupt the IPCC and Gore’s politicized movement really is here.
Reminder: An alternative balanced view “The Changing Climate of Global Warming” is screening FREE over the Internet on September 14th
Click on this link anytime on September 14th to watch the Documentary.
See this Gore Day of Destiny response from CEI.
September 12, 2011 by Steven Goddard
In order to win an election, a candidate needs to have carefully thought out, well-rehearsed one-liners to respond to difficult questions. Obama was very good at that in the 2008 elections - “I don’t feel responsible for what Bill Ayers did when I was seven.” “They call me a socialist because I shared my sandwich in elementary school.” Completely irrelevant non-sequiturs, but they did the trick.
Suppose you are a candidate and are asked “which climate scientists don’t believe in global warming?”
All scientists believe that the climate changes and that man has some effect on the climate. But how much? Richard Lindzen is MIT’s top climatologist, and he doesn’t believe that humans are having a catastrophic impact on the climate. Same for Freeman Dyson, the world’s most brilliant living physicist. There are tens of thousands of others who do not believe that we are having a catastrophic effect on the climate.
Hurricanes are getting worse, how do explain that?
In the year 1900, the city of Galveston was flattened by a hurricane, and 8,000 people died. Do you think that Hurricane Irene was worse than that?
The US has been hit by only one hurricane during the last 36 months - one of the quietest three year periods in history. It has been six years since a major hurricane hit the US. But in the year 1888, the US was hit by seven hurricanes - including two majors. Why do you think hurricanes are getting worse? Did Al Gore tell you that?
Fires are getting worse, how do you explain that?
In the year 1871, dozens of cities around the Great Lakes burned to the ground along with millions of acres of forest. Thousands of people burned to death in Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan. Chicago burned to the ground. Do you think the fires in Texas this year were worse than that?
Heatwaves and droughts are getting worse, how do you explain that?
In June 1934, every region of the country was over 100 degrees, and 80% of the country was suffering drought. Do you read your Steinbeck in high school? You should know this already.
Floods are getting worse, how do you explain that?
In 1927, Vermont had their worst flood on record. That same year, the Mississippi River had it’s worst flood in history. In 1931, three million people died in a flood in China. Do you think this year’s floods were worse?
Tornadoes are getting worse, how do explain that?
NOAA data shows that severe tornadoes have declined since April 1974, which was the worst month in history for severe tornadoes. 24 of the 25 deadliest US tornadoes occurred prior to 1956. Tornadoes are certainly not getting worse.
What about other countries?
Australia has been having severe droughts and floods for as long as people have lived there. Pakistan had much worse floods in the 1970s. They blamed it on global cooling at the time.
Is this the worst year in history?
There have been many years with comparable or worse weather in the 1880s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1970s. We have recently been blessed with a long spell of mild weather, and just don’t remember.
"Last October, on 10/10/10, the activist group 10:10 has become notorious for their No Pressure video in which the lives of climate skeptics and even the lives of insufficiently excited alarmists (including two school kids, three secretaries, a soccer star, and an X-Files actress) were ended. The video opened the eyes of many viewers who hadn’t previously understood that global warming alarmism was the Nazism of our time. What has Al Gore learned from this event?”
Read what from Dr. Lubos Motl. We are back in the Dark Ages.
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A sad and twisted story: Stealing the limelight from real problems in the real world
By Nils-Axel Morner, Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm, Sweden, morner@pog.nu
Ban Ki Moon and the Secretary-General of the Pacific Islands Forum have recently claimed that serious sea level rise problems occur both in Tuvalu and Kiribati. This is what two misguided politicians may say. But what is the reality, we must ask.
The answer is clear and straight forward: the is no sea level rise going on - at least for the last 18 years - either in Tuvalu or in Kiribati.
Over and over again, have I tried to demonstrate (Mörner, 2007; 2010, 2011) that sea is not at all in a rising mode in Tuvalu judging from the only information there is; i.e. the tide gauge records. The same has been done by others, especially Gray (2010). This is illustrated in Figs 1 and 2, where there are no signs of any sea level rise.
Fig. 1. The total tide gauge record from 1978 for Tuvalu (from Mörner, 2010). Since 1985 there are no signs of any sea level rise. Three major ENSO events with significant drops in sea level are recorded in 1983, 1992 and 1998.
Fig. 2. The SEAFRAME tide gauge record from Tuvalu with no sign of any ongoing sea level rise (redrawn from Gray, 2010).
So, if our observational facts say: no rise in sea lever, why are people continuing to drive the sea level rise illusion. It doesn’t become better (rather the opposite) if you are the Secretary-General for the United Nation or Pacific Island Forum. It is simply wrong. But what is worth; it steals the limelight from real problems in the real world.
The same is true for Kiribati. It lies in an area of the SW Pacific where satellite altimetry proposes a sea level rise in the order of 5 mm/year. Gray (2010) showed that this does indeed not concur with the last SEAFRAME tide gauge record from Kiribati (Fig. 3). The record spans 17 years. Still, it does not record any long-term sea level rise; just a stability.
Fig. 3. The SEAFRAME tide-gauge record from Kiribati (redrawn from Grav, 2010) (Enlarged) provides no documentation of any long-tern sea level rise; just a stability of the past 17 years.
Vanuatu is another famous site in the sea level debate. Here, too, there is a total absence of indications of any sea level rise over the past 17-18 years (Mörner, 2007, 2011; Gray, 2010). The list can be enlarged over wider (the Indian Ocean with places like the Maldives and
Bangladesh) and wider (spots all over the globe; not least northwestern Europe where it all can be put at a test; even so in Venice).
Obviously, there is a major clash between scenario based computer simulations and reality in the form of observational based facts and observations in nature itself. Therefore, there are all logical reasons to turn away from the propaganda information and concentrate all attention and interest on observational facts. In this case, those facts give a very clear and irrefutable message; there is no alarming sea level rise either in Tuvalu or Kiribati.
Ban Ki Moon and his friend from the Pacific Islands Forum should both feel ashamed of their claims and statements with respect to Tuvalu and Kiribati.
References
Gray, V., 2010. The South Pacific Sea Level: A reassessment. SPPI Original Paper, p. 1-24.
Morner, N.-A., 2007. The Greatest Lie Ever Told. 1st Edition, 2007, P&G print, Stockholm.Also: What Sea Level Rise? 21st Century Science & Technology, Fall 2007, Front, p. 25-29, 30-34.
Morner, N.-A., 2010. Some problems in the reconstruction of mean sea level and its changes with time. Quaternary International, 221, 3-8, doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2009.10.044
Morner, N.-A., 2011. The great sea level humbug. There is no alarming sea level rise. 21st Century Science & Technology, Winter 2010/11 issue, p. 7-17.
See also this sea level piece in SPPI and Master Resource by Chip Knappenberger.
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Back to Gore and the equally misguided but probably more honest Bill McKibben of 350.org who will rally this month after the Gorathon.
350: The most brain-dead campaign of your life
By Tom Nelson
The stupidity in the campaign mentioned here is absolutely breathtaking. Excerpt:
The most recent science tells us that unless we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, we will cause huge and irreversible damage to the earth.
Take a careful look at the black line in this graph (enlarged):
If you see any reason to panic when CO2 is over 350 ppm, please let me know immediately…