Monday, December 19, 2016

Confessions of a Climate-Change Denier

I don't worry very much about an extinction level asteroid strike wiping out life on Earth, not because it can't happen, but rather because there's nothing that I can do to prevent it.
I also don't practice curbside recycling or curbside composting because at the end of day, these practices are actually bad for the environment, despite what we are brainwashed into believing.
And so it is that I don't give a fig for climate-change, even if it is real, because there's essentially nothing we can do about it either, despite the entreaties by experts and politicians.

There is no doubt that these views are unpopular, even considered dangerous in our genteel society, and is in fact no different than declaring oneself an atheist in Iran or Saudi Arabia, where such dangerous and unpopular beliefs are punishable by imprisonment or death.
It is easy for us to pass a negative judgment on these radical Islamic societies as misguided and dangerous, confirming that we do indeed believe that sometime whole societies can get it wrong, just not ours.
But are we really so different? Here we believe that climate change must be real because that is what the majority of experts and politicians tell us and so it has become heretical to deny or challenge the collective wisdom.

Those like myself who don't accept the conventional wisdom of climate change are deemed crackpots, demented folks unwilling to accept incontrovertible evidence, idiots who may as well join the flat-Earth society.
But I'll remind readers that the idea of a flat Earth WAS the conventional wisdom of the era and those who proposed the notion that the Earth was a globe were the ones deemed crazy and dangerously disillusioned.

As for the 'expert'  consensus on climate change, it is another crock, another conventional truth that isn't true.
There are many good scientists who debunk the notion and unfortunately there are many others too afraid to speak out. Could you imagine the consequences of a Canadian government scientist in Environment Canada  proclaiming climate change a hoax.
The chances of him or her surviving with their job are about as likely as a government minister in Iran declaring himself an atheist.
Yes it is comparable, because that is how hysterical we've become against dissent vis-a-vis climate change.

When I was but a tween, I watched a documentary on the CBC that described the coming  disappearance of the Great Lakes because of drought. It greatly distressed me and taught me my first lesson about experts when after a few years, these dire predictions faltered and the Great Lakes water level remained stable.
As recent as three or four years ago climate fanatics were claiming that dropping water levels in the Great Lakes were a direct result of climate change, but over the last two years the levels have rebounded and are actually very high.
...Fool me once...

Yes, a hundred years ago 'experts' built the Titanic and a hundred years later experts told us that the world would suffer cataclysmic disaster because of a computer bug called Y2K.
Experts told us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be absolutely false. That particular iota of conventional wisdom sent the USA into a long and protracted war which resulted in a massive upheaval and disintegration of the middle east, the rise of terrorism, ISIS, half a millions deaths and the creation of over 3 million refugees.

Nothing has really changed, experts today continue to make confident predictions that turn out all wrong. Ask Hillary what she thinks of the experts who called her a shoe-in for president.
How many of you were shocked at the election results, feeling a little betrayed by the media and experts who told us confidently exactly what wasn't true.
So it isn't hard to accept that conventional wisdom is often wrong and sometimes even dangerously wrong. However, what is hard to accept is that today's conventional wisdom may be dead wrong as well. Who wants to believe that we as a society may be functioning based on false assumptions.

And so without further ado, I'm telling you now that our current belief that climate change is real and that we can actually control it, is an utter delusion and fallacy.

Oh yes...the experts....

In the 1970's experts told us that a new 'Ice Age' was upon us and that we should prepare for the coming glaciers. Really...
Among the top global-cooling theorists were Obama’s current “science czar” John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, the author of Population Bomb, which predicted mass starvation worldwide. In the 1971 textbook Global Ecology, the duo warned that overpopulation and pollution would produce a new ice age, claiming that human activities are “said to be responsible for the present world cooling trend.” The pair fingered “jet exhausts” and “man-made changes in the reflectivity of the earth’s surface through urbanization, deforestation, and the enlargement of deserts” as potential triggers for his new ice age. They worried that the man-made cooling might produce an “outward slumping in the Antarctic ice cap” and “generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.”
....Hmmmmm
I'm not going to argue the present day climate change science, except to say that just about every climate disaster prediction made in the last twenty years has not panned out, in fact, it is quite the opposite.
If we were to believe Al Gore, David Suzuki and other climate hysterics, we'd already be up to our knees in sea water.
"...the UN featured 73 computer models and their predictions. All of them “predicted” varying degrees of increased warming as atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) increased.
The problem is that every single model was wrong — by a lot. Not only did temperatures not rise by as much as the models predicted, they have failed to rise at all since around 1996, according to data collected by five official temperature data­sets. Based just on the laws of probability, a monkey rolling the dice would have done far better at predicting future temperatures than the UN’s models.....almost laughably, in its latest report, the UN IPCC increased its alleged “confidence” in its theory, an action experts such as Christy could not rationalize. “I am baffled that the confidence increases when the performance of your models is conclusively failing,” he said. “I cannot understand that methodology....  It’s a very embarrassing result for the climate models used in the IPCC report.”

David Suzuki- Canada's premier climate blowhard
As for Canada's plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030,  the plan, even if successful, would reduce our contribution to worldwide greenhouse gas from 1.7% to 1.2% a net loss to the world by a meagre 1/2 of one percent, this at a cost of tens of billions of dollars.
Should the world remain at the present rate of emissions (an impossible task) it might mean that Canada has delayed the effects of global warming by a few months at best, all at an enormous cost.
 And so I remain bitterly skeptical over the assertions by our very own Canadian climate alarmists who tell us that if we don't make this sacrifice now, the world as we know it will end.

Of all the Canadian Chicken Littles, nobody is as sickening as David Suzuki, a man whose personal lifestyle is the epitome of a carbon footprint abuser. Complete with his many expensive homes and land holdings, personal wealth, lavish lifestyle, five children and a formidable air travel schedule, it's hard to accept advice from someone who doesn't practice what he preaches.

Suzuki reminds me of those televangelists who make a living demanding followers follow the pure and chaste life while snorting cocaine and philandering in private.My favourite take-down of this charlatan;
"Oh. My. God. David Suzuki on the very first question is revealed as a complete know-nothing. His questioner tells him that the main climate data sets show no real warming for some 15 years. Suzuki asks for the references, which he should have known if he knew anything of the science. His questioner then lists them: UAH, RSS, HadCrut and GISS - four of the most basic measurement systems of global temperature. Suzuki asks what they are. Anyone interested in global warming should know right there that Suzuki has absolutely no understanding of what he is talking about. In my opinion he is a phoney" Read the rest of the story

And so Suzuki and our Prime Minister continue to push an expensive agenda that in reality can have little or no effect as long as our neighbours to the south are committed (under Trump) to merrily pollute away along with the rest of the world, paying lip service or otherwise making a mockery of emission reduction goals.
The only real consequence of lowering Canada's carbon footprint is to make our companies less competitive, forcing them to operate with one hand tied behind their back.

Let us consider that China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico and Iran account for 38 percent of the world's emissions and even the most strident climate-change fanatic will admit that it is well nigh impossible to get their cooperation to stabilize their CO2 output, never mind reducing it.
Before asking Brazil to reduce its greenhouse emissions perhaps we can convince them to stop chopping down the rain-forest! 
And asking China to reduce emissions is also a pipe dream, the country has 1,300 coal fired electricity plants and is building more each week.  If Canada closes a plant or two, what on Earth is the effect?
And what about Iran, do you think the mullahs give a flying hoot about pollution? After all, God will protect them from climate change and at any rate, pumping oil is what pays their bills.
Mexican society has enough problems dealing with poverty and the murder and mayhem of the drug business. Think climate change is a priority?
Indonesia has the highest rate of deforestation in the world (an emission disaster) and it continues unabated.

Is your head hurting yet? Do you really want to hear more?

In fact developing countries are responsible for 63% of worldwide emissions and these are countries where emissions are going up, not down, as they race towards modernization. 
Do you think that citizens of these countries will sacrifice one ounce of their meagre lifestyle for the benefit of the greater good?
These facts cannot be pooh-poohed and lead me to conclude  that we cannot and will not control global warming (if it exists) through a worldwide cooperative and concerted effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
It is a pipe dream as unrealistic as a plan to end global war by spending trillions to root out the causes.

As for the ridiculousness of some predictions my favourite is the one that shows Florida underwater because of rising sea waters with much of the state being reclaimed by the sea.

It is predictions like this that make me laugh at the stupidity and desperateness of the climate-change industry who want the USA to spend trillions and trillions of dollars to combat climate change, yet cannot fathom the country having the wherewithal to build a sand berm or dyke (like Holland) around affected beaches, even if it comprises the complete state.
It is these types of doomsday predictions that prevent me from drinking Kool-aid.

To conclude I offer this observation:
"Finally, think about this question, posed by Ronald Bailey in 2000: What will Earth look like when Earth Day 60 rolls around in 2030? Bailey predicts a much cleaner, and much richer future world, with less hunger and malnutrition, less poverty, and longer life expectancy, and with lower mineral and metal prices. But he makes one final prediction about Earth Day 2030: “There will be a disproportionately influential group of doomsters predicting that the future–and the present–never looked so bleak.” In other words, the hype, hysteria and spectacularly wrong apocalyptic predictions will continue, promoted by the “environmental grievance hustlers.”"


Now I understand that if you are a climate-change militant, the above facts are a trifle, an inconvenient truth, the ramblings of a disconnected outlier and easily dismissed over the weight of countervailing opinion.
 I understand that changing the minds of climate change adherents is as likely as me convincing believers that there aren't 39 virgins awaiting them in Heaven after martyrdom.

And come to think of it now, who's to say there  isn't?

10 comments:

  1. Didn't it used to be called "global warming", which was then changed to "global cooling" when the weather didn't cooperate with the theory, and then they finally settled on the neutral "climate change"?

    Interesting that global warming is only pushed for the West, not for China where all the manufacturing has gone.

    To me this whole effort seems like a progressive cover story for de-industrialization of the west. Yes, your jobs are going oversees, but that's for your own good. After all, the will be less pollution. It's like the other progressive justifications engineered by "progressive" left wing of the elite as covers for the ravages perpetrated by the "conservative" right wing of the elites: in the 70s for enticing women into the workforce through "feminism", or driving down wages through offshoring ("globalization") and bringing cheap labor in ("multiculturalism", "diversity")

    "Global warming" also fits with the austerity agenda. Drive less, eat less, become a vegetarian, live a frugal life, while the elites travel around the world burning tons of jet fuel and dine on the finest steaks. They will even burn fuel travelling half way around the world to exotic locations to attend "conferences" that could be done via teleconference.

    Then the carbon taxes - raise the taxes and sell it as something good for us (we're protecting the environment as we're being fleeced)

    I am all for ending mindless consumption and living off of credit, and in favor of protecting the environment (ideally by focusing on something concrete and focused - like cleaning up a river, rather than something abstract and totalistic like "global warming") and simple living, but when the elites are pushing this, it gives me pause. There's a deeper meaning to this, as is in everything they're trying to sell as "progressive".





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    1. "Didn't it used to be called "global warming", which was then changed to "global cooling" when the weather didn't cooperate with the theory, and then they finally settled on the neutral "climate change"?"

      it is global warming. but it can cause some places to get colder. if everybody could understand this simple thing they wouldn't have changed the expression.

      climate change is just a better term, don't you agree? an improvement really. i think you should give credit for this instead of trying to use it to undermine the phenomenon.

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  2. Excellent post...and one I with which I am fully in accord.
    Albert Einstein ran into the same problem with consensus...with the German government of the 1930s who didn't like his particular brand of physics. So what did they do? They published a book with 1-2 pages essays each by 200 prominent scientists and leading thinkers of the day in Germany...all refuting Einstein's claims.
    When Einstein was asked about this, his response was: (paraphrased) why 200? All they needed to refute me was one.
    Progress in science ONLY comes about when 99% consensuses are thrown out because one particular individual comes up with a better explanation of the world around us. I suspect that the day before Einstein came out with his special theory of relativity that there was a 99.99% consensus amongst all the scientists in the world that time was absolute. The day after, that near 100% consensus began being chipped away at. But even Einstein had to wait about 15 years before his hypothesis could be tested (at, I believe, the next full eclipse of the sun). And, of course, it was.
    If we were to take a poll of the scientists of the world today -- some 110 years after Einstien published -- I dare say that there would be a 0% consensus that time was absolute and all would agree with Einstein that it was relative.
    There used to be a consensus in Europe some 600 years ago that little men called humours lived in our bodies and ruled our physical attributes. Today? Well, that consensus no longer exists.
    Science is not a democracy where one can take a vote on what the physical reality of the universe is. What is important is the scientific method which requires one putting forth a claim of how the world works. And this must include an hypothesis so that the claims put forward can be verified by comparing the predictions of the hypothesis with real-world observations. This was mentioned, above, by Philip when he wrote about the 73 computer models (i.e., predictions of 73 hypotheses). Except for 1 or 2 (which did NOT predict any discernable rise in global mean temperature) they were ALL way, way off, as Philip indicated.

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    1. "There used to be a consensus in Europe some 600 years ago that little men called humours lived in our bodies and ruled our physical attributes. Today? Well, that consensus no longer exists."

      all arguments based on this line of though are bad. basically you're saying climate change is not happening, or is not human's responsibility because some other consensus through history turned out to be false. wtf?!? it does not make any sense to call up einstein or the shape of the planet to ground one's position about climate change.

      if you want to attack the arguments of climate scientists you need to explicit where they went wrong in data collection or analysis, not claim that other people were wrong a century ago.

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    2. student writes:

      "if you want to attack the arguments of climate scientists you need to explicit where they went wrong in data collection or analysis, not claim that other people were wrong a century ago."

      I thought I didn't have to as Philip had done that, above, in his blog where he talks about the 73 computer predictions and how they did not come even close to predicting anything.

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  3. Two excellent comments from Adski and Tony.
    Perhaps the re-booted NoDogs 2.o will have less readers and commentators, but quality is no doubt more important than quantity.

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  4. It's easy for us, the global 1%, to sit comfortably in our homes and say there's nothing we can do to stop the problem we created. This is our fault. Not Canada specifically but Europe, the United States and the rest of the industrialised world. We pointed our smoke stacks in the air for 200 years and as soon as the rest of the world gets access to basic electricity and transportation we shift the blame on them. Canada is one of the highest per-capita polluters in the world and there is no good reason for it. We have the technology and the resources to change this but we would rather do nothing because impoverished countries like Indonesia and China aren't doing enough about it? Are you kidding me? Hundreds of millions of people live in the low-lying river deltas that produce the world's rice. These will be the first places to be flooded and we are already seeing the erosion happening right in front of our eyes. The warmest 10 years on record have all been since 1998. It's happening. Period. It's our responsibility and duty to clean up our own mess and help the developing world avoid the same mistakes we made.

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    1. This was my comment. I accidentally made it anonymous

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    2. What has pollution got to do with catastrophic man-made climate change? Very little. CO2 -- a greenhouse gas -- is NOT a pollutant (despite what the hapless EPA says) but is a basic building block of life.

      Indeed, if we were to successfully and dramatically reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, life as we know it on the planet would die out.

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    3. We should be increasing CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, not reducing them. CO2 is a wonderful, free fertilizer that is greening the Earth.

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