Climate Media

Official Censors Misinform on Covid, Climate

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Ross McKitrick writes at Financial Post Policing misinformation from the misinformation police.  Excerpt in italics with my bolds and added images.

State-sponsored ‘experts’ on ‘misinformation’ are typically the worst offenders

As citizens of a liberal democracy Canadians have long believed that only the free contest of differing points of view can produce genuine intellectual progress. But now we are told we face a crisis of “misinformation” that calls for vigorous censorship of heretical opinion. On all of today’s major public controversies, we are asked to believe, all of us would enthusiastically assent to the one obviously correct view (which happens to be the view promulgated by the governing class) were it not for the pernicious influence of a shadowy conspiracy of social-media traffickers in misinformation — voices that must be suppressed for the good of society.

In his 1859 essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill decisively rebutted this argument. “Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion,” he wrote, “is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.” It is one thing, Mill argues, if the holders of received opinion conclude their view is correct because, though challenged, it has not been refuted; but another thing altogether if it’s simply assumed true and challenge is therefore forbidden.

Yet that’s precisely the position of today’s would-be “misinformation” police.

In reality, state-sponsored “experts” on “misinformation” are typically the worst offenders. Presuming themselves infallible, they call for new laws to shut everyone else up.

In the climate domain, a group called the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) boasts a Climate Disinformation Team consisting of five staff members, all trained in arts or political science (none in economics or physical sciences) who have put out a long report (and follow-up) supposedly documenting these networks of online misinformation and calling for new legislation and stricter rules for social media companies to combat it.

The reports feature screenshots of social media posts that critique
alarmist climate claims or the high costs of climate policy.

The ISD does not rebut but simply displays these posts — as if their mere existence is proof censorship is needed. For instance, they say “Calling into question the viability and effectiveness of renewable energy sources is a common practice among climate sceptics and delayist actors,” and then show a series of social media posts pointing out problems associated with wind and solar power systems. But wind and solar power systems do have problems, including intermittency and the need for costly fossil-fuel backups. To suggest otherwise is itself misinformation.

Closer to home, an organization called the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), which purports to draw on top experts in Canada to give guidance to policy-makers, recently issued a report on “science and health misinformation” that concludes society would benefit from more vigorous efforts to suppress debate and ban more people from social media.

Much of the report consists of finger-wagging against anyone
who questioned anti-COVID public health measures.

For instance: “(O)ngoing claims that mask wearing is ineffective or even harmful have shifted firmly into the realm of misinformation.” Meanwhile, back in science, a newly-published, peer-reviewed meta-analysis summarizing 10 randomized control trials involving nearly 277,000 people concludes that “Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza-like illness (ILI)/COVID-19 like illness compared to not wearing masks.” So who’s spreading misinformation?

The CCA report also has much to say about supposed climate misinformation. But again none of the authors is an economist or climate scientist. The closest they come to an “expert” is a psychologist who has spent years studying, or more precisely denigrating, skeptical climate blogs and their contributors. In several places, the CCA report relies on his 2012 article asserting that climate skepticism is correlated with a wide set of dubious conspiracies, such as believing the moon landing was a hoax. But it fails to mention a 2015 statistical critique published in the same journal that showed its conclusions “are not supported by the data.”

CCA brags about its peer review process, saying reviewers were selected for their “diverse perspectives and areas of expertise.” But again the reviewers did not include climate scientists or economists; nor is there any evidence of diversity of perspectives. As a rule, one-sided and unimpressive polemicists constitute the CCA’s “expert team.”

And yet CCA complains (at length) about the public’s declining trust in scientific institutions.

To the extent the CCA report offers any factual assertions about climate change, it points to “catastrophic events” such as “droughts, floods, and wildfires exacerbated by climate change.” It fails to mention, however, that Chapter 11 of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report says, concerning droughts, that “Global studies generally show no significant trends” and that in most places around the world there’s “inconclusive evidence” tying droughts to human-induced climate change. In North America in particular there’s “low confidence in the attribution of long-term changes in meteorological drought.”

Regarding floods, “In general, there is low confidence in attributing changes in the probability or magnitude of flood events to human influence because of a limited number of studies, differences in the results of these studies and large modelling uncertainties.” As for wildfires, they have been trending down globally for the past decade. In Canada, according to the Canadian National Fire Database, both the number of forest fires and total area burned peaked in the late 1980s and has been declining ever since. Yet again the CCA offers misinformation to support its case for more censorship.

Here’s a better idea. Ignore the CCA and the ISD
and all the other would-be enforcers of orthodoxy.

Drop the fixation on “misinformation,” which is just the latest iteration of the same old desire of governments to censor their opponents. Allow the public the freedom, as Mill counselled, to hear arguments “from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them.” A dangerous thought in 1859, and judging by the current misinformation craze, an utter heresy today; yet true nonetheless.

Ross McKitrick is a professor of economics at the University of Guelph and senior fellow of the Fraser Institute.

 

Save the Children and Us All from Climate Grooming

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Conclusion from Ben Pile’s Climate Resistance Video above:

Experts have used the authority of institutional science and medicine to convince people that a climate crisis is happening despite there being no scientific observational evidence for it. And this misuse of institutional authority has in turn been used to close down public democratic debate about far-reaching policy and to silence critics of the Green agenda. But computer simulations and hypothetical worlds are not reality and not evidence. They are science fiction and they are used to mislead people into believing that there is a climate crisis so that they may support radical climate policies.

(Question to then IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri) “What do you see as the next tools you could utilize to create change?
(Pachuri Response) “Children. I think we have to sensitize the young and tell them how their future is going to be affected if we don’t take action today. I think if we can get them to understand the seriousness of the problem they would probably shame adults into taking the right steps.”

Global warming and climate change are real, but climate policy is the far more real and more dangerous threat than climate change. The world has seen unprecedented progress in recent decades and much more needs to be done to eliminate problems such as poverty and disease. But by failing to confront green scare mongering, Global agencies, world leaders, politicians, scientists and the media have allowed a dark and dangerous ideology to fester. By causing a widespread ignorance of this progress which it now threatens to reverse, green scare mongering will turn the clock back for Humanity and civilization.

Ben Pile exposes how climate radicals are using media messaging to advance the climate crisis mass delusion in his substack article Behind the ‘climate crisis’ myth: green ideology.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The world is healthier, wealthier, and safer than it ever has been.
And most of this progress has been achieved in the era of global warming.
The green story does not add up.

In the eighties and nineties, Adherents of the precautionary principle argued that a hypothesis of a potentially civilisation-ending catastrophe merely needs to be plausible to be sufficient to compel action, and that the world cannot afford to wait for scientific knowledge to verify the threat with any certainty. This urgency was the basis of the Montreal Protocol on limiting ozone-depleting substances, and it was the hope of many greens that the same formulation could be used again to drive global agreements on climate change.

The problem for adherents of the precautionary principle is that, as is the case with all green ideologues’ prognostications, too much time passed without the events they were sure would befall us, undermining the original hypothesis. In the 1970s, before global warming had been invented, environmentalists proclaimed that civilisation stood on the brink of collapse. Limits to Growth and The Population Bomb were global best sellers, putting green politics at the top of the global political agenda, and cementing the end of post-war optimism with a terminally negative outlook that the West has not shaken off, despite the books’ manifest failures.

The precautionary principle (and many $billions of ersatz ‘philanthropic’ generosity) saved the greens and their ideological project the humiliation they deserved by adding an unending not-if-but-when caveat to their soothsaying. . . The precautionary principle is an article of faith, and work both ways when fully considered. Progress towards a global climate lockdown agreement has been slow in significant part because many countries have been unwilling to undermine the certain benefits of economic growth on the basis of uncertain speculation. The precautionary principle, has thus been of decreasing value towards advancing the climate agenda as time has passed.

There are only so many times even the most faithful are willing to climb the mountain
to wait for salvation from doom before doubt creeps in.

The new claim, intended to overcome the global climate policy agendas’ inertia, is that certainty has been achieved by science, and that scientists have shown that the world is in the grip of the very catastrophe that environmentalists had predicted: people are starving, diseases are rampant, storms, floods, wildfires and heatwaves kill thousands by the day, forcing millions from their homes and into poverty.

The problem, of course, is that it is not true. In every region of the world, and at every level of economic development, people are living healthier, wealthier, longer, and safer lives. In the few places where this trend of continued progress does not hold, other reasons better account for the failure than slightly different weather: failed states, corruption and conflict.

The problem for the green narrative then, as now, is that deaths from these diseases of poverty were falling, and have continued to fall, radically.

Between 2000 and 2019, the number of deaths from malaria in the world fell from 900 thousand to 560 thousand – given the world’s population increase, this is equivalent to a halving of the mortality rate. Over the same time, the number of deaths caused by diarrheal diseases fell from 2.4 million to 1.5 million. And deaths from malnutrition fell from 506 thousand to 212 thousand. What this means is not merely that there is no evidence of a climate crisis, there extremely good evidence of the opposite: humanity is thriving.

Many other metrics of human welfare bear out the same picture of reality. But try to explain this indubitable progress to the protestors who, on the words of UN chiefs, nonagenarian BBC voice-over artists and degenerate green ideologues of the Guardian and green blob, block roads and demand nothing less than the cancellation of industry and the economy and the immiseration of the entire world, to make certain that all of humanity’s development is undone. The good news provokes an angry and uncomprehending rage in green activists.

To compare the story of the climate crisis with the facts is
to betray one’s own children, country and world,
and to condemn future generations to an ‘unliveable planet’.

The facts and stats of the world are in contradiction to the ideological conception of nature held by the global green Great and Good and by the street-level environmentalists, but not the broader public. So what is this ideology, and how does it overwhelm its victims’ capacity for reason and facts?

As David Attenborough explains, it,

Our economies and political systems are unconsciously predicated on the belief that nature will continue to be a benign and regular provider of the conditions we need to thrive. […] Our stable and reliable planet no longer exists. The impacts of this destabilisation will profoundly impact every country on Earth.

We can know that this is a false belief, because it is a myth that nature has ever been anything but extremely hostile, rather than a benign ‘provider’. Hence, until the end of the 1880s, a quarter of all British children died before reaching their fifth birthday. In Germany, half of children did not survive that long. Globally, infant mortality was 22.4 per cent in 1950. In 2021, it was 3.7 per cent. The ‘planet’ is manifestly far less hostile to humanity than it was just a lifetime ago. And this is thanks to industries, to expanding access to markets, and to technological and scientific development – sheer artifice – not to Natural Providence. David Attenborough is as misled and misleading as he is a ‘national treasure’.

My Mind is Made Up, Don’t Confuse Me with the Facts. H/T Bjorn Lomborg, WUWT

“There’s only one world”, a girl explains to the interviewer. “If we destroy it all, then we have no other place to live”. “Right now, we are not acting”, adds her little friend. “We should act now.”

If the words of global climate technocrats, so earnestly spoken by such innocent faces
is not an abomination, then nothing is.

Tiny children’s view of the world and their own futures have been poisoned by an ideology that has no care for facts, much less the children and their prosperity. Their heads have been deliberately filled by the false idea of a ‘climate crisis’ in order to make them instruments of a political agenda, against their own interests, far before they are equipped to understand the claims they reproduce.

Society needs to confront green ideology urgently.
It is the greatest threat to our safety and prosperity.

Please watch and share our film: Why There Is No Climate Crisis (and why people believe that there is)

Reuters Editor Comes Clean About CO2 Hysteria

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Neil Winton disavows his uncritically adopting global warming belief in his Daily Skeptic article:  Covering Climate Change for Reuters, I Thought CO2 to Blame for Rising Temperatures. I Was Wrong. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

If you wonder why much of the mainstream media seem united in accepting that the world will soon die unless humans don hair shirts, freeze in winter and walk instead of driving, you need to know about websites like Covering Climate Now (CCN).

Reuters and some of the biggest names in the news like Bloomberg, Agence France Presse, CBS News, and ABC News have signed up to support CCN, which brags that it is an unbiased seeker after the truth. But this claim won’t last long if you peer behind the façade. CCN may claim to be fair and balanced, but it not only won’t tolerate criticism, it brandishes the unethical ‘denier’ weapon with its nasty holocaust denier echoes. This seeks to demonise those who disagree with it by savaging personalities and denying a hearing, rather than using debate to establish its case.

CCN advises journalists to routinely add to stories about bad weather and flooding to suggest climate change is making these events more intense.

This is not an established fact, as a simple routine check would show.

I have a particular interest in Reuters’ attitude because I spent 32 years there as a reporter and editor. The global news agency’s traditional insistence on high standards in reporting makes this liaison with CCN seem questionable.

When Reuters announced its tie-up with CCN in 2019 it said this, among other things.

The (CCN) coalition, which includes more than 350 organisations [there are many more now] has no agenda beyond embracing science and fair coverage and publishing more climate change content.

That is clearly not true. It has a partisan agenda and encourages reporters
to dismiss those with contrary opinions as ‘deniers’.   

The involvement of Reuters in CCN seems to me to be in direct contradiction to three of its 10 Hallmarks of Reuters Journalism – Hold Accuracy Sacrosanct, Seek Fair Comment, Strive For Balance and Freedom From Bias.

When I became Reuters global Science and Technology Correspondent in the mid-1990s, the global warming story was top of my agenda. Already by then the BBC was scaring us saying we would all die unless humankind mended its selfish ways.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) was the culprit and had to be tamed, then eliminated.
I had no reason to think this wasn’t established fact. I was wrong.

My Reuters credentials meant that I had easy access to the world’s finest climate scientists. To my amazement, none of these would say categorically that the link between CO2 and global warming, now known as climate change, was a proven scientific fact. Some said human production of CO2 was a probable cause, others that it might make some contribution; some said CO2 had no role at all. Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years as the ice age retreated, but most weren’t really sure why. The sun’s radiation, which changes over time, was a favoured culprit.

My reporting reflected the wide range of views, with Reuters typical “on the one hand this, on the other, that” style. But even then, the mainstream media seem to have run out of the energy required, and often lazily went along with the BBC’s faulty, opinionated thesis. It was too much trouble to make the point that the BBC’s conclusion was challenged by many impressive scientists.

Fast forward 20 years and firm proof CO2 was warming the climate still hasn’t been established, but politics has taken over. Sure, there are plenty of computer models with their hidden assumptions ‘proving’ man is guilty as charged, and the assumption that we had the power and knowledge to change the climate became embedded.

The Left had lost all of the economic arguments by the 1990s, and its activists eagerly grabbed the chance to say free markets and small government couldn’t save us from climate change; only government intervention could do that. Letting capitalism run free was a certain way to ensure the end of the planet; smart Lefties should take charge and save us from ourselves.

The debate about climate change is far from over. I’m not a scientist so I don’t know enough to say it’s all man-made or not. But politicians and lobbyists have decided that we are all guilty.

They are in the process of dismantling our way of life, ordering us to comply because it’s all for the future and our children. If we are going to give up our civilization, at the very least we ought to have an open debate. Journalists need to stand up and be counted. The trouble is that requires bravery and energy, and an urge to question conventional wisdom.

Reuters should be leading this movement. All it has to do is stand by its 10 Hallmarks. And maybe tell CCN thanks but no thanks; it needs to apply Reuters principles to its climate reporting.

See Also Global Warming Theory and the Tests It Fails

Climate Critical Intelligence Q & A

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

H/T David Wojick and CFACT

Doctors for Disaster Preparedness are concerned to be ready for real disasters and not be distracted by irrational fears like global warming/climate change. They have provided a useful resource for people to test and deepen their knowledge of an issue distorted for many people by loads of misinformation and exaggerations.

From David Wojick:

A new lesson set called the Climate Change IQ (CCIQ) provides a good skeptical critique of ten top alarmist claims. The format is succinct and non-technical. Each alarmist claim is posed as a question, followed by a short skeptical answer, which is highlighted with a single telling graphic.

Then there is a link to a somewhat longer answer, which in turn includes links to a few online sources of more information. Each lesson is also available in a printable PDF version, suitable for classroom use. This compact format is potentially very useful.

CCIQ comes from a long-standing skeptical group called the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (DDP). Despite the name, DDP gives attention to pointing out scares that are not disasters waiting to happen. Not surprisingly climate alarmism gets a lot of this attention.

The ten topic questions are wide ranging, including the following. Each speaks to a popular pro-alarmist news hook.

Is climate change the most urgent global health threat?

Are government-sponsored climate scientists the only credible sources of information relating to climate-change policy?

Is the increase in atmospheric CO2 making wildfires worse?

Why can’t all States emulate California’s proposed “clean” energy standards?

What would happen if atmospheric CO2 concentration dropped by half, say to less than 200 ppm?

Are human CO2 emissions acidifying the oceans and endangering shell-making animals?

Will Manhattan and Florida soon be under water if humans do not curtail use of “fossil fuels”?

Do 97% of climate scientists agree that catastrophic climate change will result if humans do not curtail use of “fossil fuels”? (This one includes the dynamite John Christy graph showing the rapidly growing divergence of climate model global temperature forecasts with real world observations.)

Is Arctic ice disappearing?

And the number 1 CCIQ question: Would lowering atmospheric CO2 prevent or mitigate hurricanes?

Note:  Each question title links to a pdf with a longer answer and references. Question 1 link is in red above as an example.  See the CCIQ questionnaire for links to all 10 pdfs

Check it out. Inquiring minds want to know.

Footnote:

“The reason some of us are skeptical about man-made global warming, or climate change, isn’t that we’re in “denial” or the pay of Big Oil. It’s the alarmists’ long run of lurid failed predictions. The models “run hot.” Arctic ice hasn’t vanished. The coral hasn’t died. We haven’t been overrun by rats and super-itchy poison ivy.”  John Robson National Post Canada

On Climate Grooming the Children

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A man who has not been a socialist before 25 has no heart.
If he remains one after 25 he has no head.—King Oscar II of Sweden

One of the observations about the 2022 midterms was how strongly young unmarried women voted for the socialist agenda of today’s Democratic party.  I recall a video clip of two university students saying their vote was all about women’s abortion rights, and thinking these two male nerds’ politics might be biased by their desire to get lucky some night.  But beyond that issue is the campaign of brainwashing children regarding global warming/climate change.

Benjamin Khoshbin shines some light into this climate political grooming in his Real Clear Energy article The Electoral Case for Commonsense Environmentalism  Somewhere Between “No More Meat” and “It’s a Hoax:”  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

We’ve all heard the adage, that a young person not thinking socialist has no heart, while an older person still a socialist has no head.  It sounds true, but it’s not — young voters are no longer aging into conservatism. While Gen X and Boomers did trend more conservative as they aged, Millennials in the U.S. are becoming more liberal as they age, and are estimated to be the most liberal 35-year-olds in recorded U.S. history.

Based on their behavior in the 2022 midterms, Gen Z is likely to follow suit.

According to the Edison Research National Election Pool exit poll, 63% of Gen Z voted for Democrats in House races, compared to just 35% who voted for Republicans — a whopping 28-point gap. While many salient issues for young voters are likely driving this, one stands out: climate change.

Millennials and Gen Z are more concerned about climate change than any other generation. A Harris Poll survey of American 13–19 year-olds found that more than 8 in 10 teens believed that if climate change isn’t addressed today, it will be too late for future generations as some parts of the planet will become unlivable. Nearly 80% of teens in the survey also believed that protecting the environment should take priority over economic growth.

My deeper look into the 4H/Harris Survey

I have posted before on climate push polls designed to get results supporting a political agenda.  What participants say is shaped by how questions are asked and answered. This survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of 4-H from January 5 to January 18, 2022, among 1,500 respondents ages 13-19.   The age cohort is interesting to show how successfully has been the educating of children regarding environmental concerns, and especially climate change.  The survey content is here Environmental Impact Survey  Exploring the impact of the environment on teens.

Indeed the title of the report refers not to impact upon nature, but rather the impact of environmental messaging upon impressionable teenagers.  The survey itself consisted of stating preferred conclusions and offering agree/disagree options.  Typically strongly and somewhat agree responses are lumped together into agree percentages.  Some Examples:

84% of teens agree, “I am concerned that if we don’t do more to protect the environment, humans and other species, wildlife will suffer and possibly go extinct.”

82% of teens agree, “If we don’t do more to protect the environment today, I expect to have to make future life decisions based on the state of the environment, including where I live, what kinds of jobs will be available, or if I will have children.”

56% of teens agree, “International governments are working towards global initiatives and policies to protect our planet.”

84% of teens agree, “Climate change will impact everyone in my generation through global political instability.”

84% of teens agree, “If we don’t address climate change today, it will be too late for future generations, making some parts of the planet unlivable.”

69% of teens agree, “I am worried that my family and I will be affected by climate change in the near future.”

77% of teens agree, “I feel responsible to protect the future of our planet.”

84% of teens agree, “We need more corporate action from companies today to improve our climate for tomorrow.”

83% of teens agree, “We need more legislative action from government today to improve our climate for tomorrow.”

79% of teens agree, “Protecting the environment should take priority over economic growth.”

Khoshbin: These findings should trouble Republicans. Young voters believe that climate change is an existential threat, but they mistakenly think that environmental protection and economic growth are mutually exclusive. In reality, since 2005, 32 countries — both developing and developed — have absolutely decoupled carbon emissions from GDP growth, having successfully grown their economies while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions.

My Comment:

That is not the only mistaken perception among these teens.  Mind you, they were only exposed to the alarmist POV, and followed their hearts and feelings.  Note the repeated 84% agreement percentage suggests a central tendency in responses with little if any consideration of nuances between statements.  Basically this survey confirms that a narrative is embedded in these people.

An interesting contradiction appears here:

• Over 9 in 10 teens grew up engaging in a number of outdoor activities, yet today a majority of teens spend 5 hours or less outside per week – or less than 11 days a year

Another survey source indicates where children get information NEEF Teen Benchmark Survey National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF): Some relevant findings:

See Also

The Art of Rigging Climate Polls

YouGov Climate Push Poll: Still no Believer Majority

 

How Climate Evangelists Took Over Your Local Weather Forecast

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

The battle by alarmists for hearts and minds is extending to many fronts, including recruiting family doctors, and in the case of this post, media weather reporters. Surveys have shown the meteorologists are not more convinced of global warming/climate change than is the American public (a slight majority). But efforts have been underway to convert them and use their telecasts and columns to promote climatism.

Luke Mullins writes at Washingtonian This George Mason Professor Trains Weathercasters to Be Climate Advocates.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

You’ve probably seen his handiwork on local TV and didn’t even know it.

About 13 years ago, Ed Maibach identified a TV meteorologist in Columbia, South Carolina, who was willing to use his airtime not just to provide tomorrow’s forecast but to show viewers how climate change was impacting their local community. Over the next decade, Maibach would expand this experiment into what you might call a weather underground—a coast-to-coast network of TV weathercasters who believe that educating their audiences about global warming is as crucial as telling them when to bring an umbrella. The initiative, known as Climate Matters, has forced Maibach to confront a series of entrenched problems inside the broadcast-­meteorology community, including alarming levels of climate denial and skepticism, fears about alienating audiences, and the occasional harassment of participating weathercasters.

Yet by the end of 2021, the Climate Matters network of meteorologists had penetrated into nearly every media market in the country, and Maibach had pioneered a promising new approach to a complex crisis.

Truth is, if you’ve recently watched the weather report on the local news in the Washington area, there’s a decent chance you’ve seen Maibach’s handiwork—the Climate Matters network now includes weathercasters at NBC4, WUSA9, WJLA7, and Fox 5. But like local-news consumers across the country, you wouldn’t have known that behind that telegenic meteorologist are a social scientist in his sixties and a team of academic researchers, data crunchers, and ex-weathercasters. “To a lot of our viewers, it’s lost on them how much work Climate [Matters] really is doing,” says Kaitlyn McGrath, a meteorologist at WUSA9. “But it is so far from lost on us.”

Background from previous post:

A balanced and analytical report appears in Bloomberg (an interesting place for such independent thinking).  Climate Evangelists Are Taking Over Your Local Weather Forecast Excerpts below.

Amber Sullins gets a minute or two to tell up to two million people about some extremely complicated science, using the tools of her trade: a pleasant voice, a green screen, and small icons denoting sun, clouds, rain, and wind. She is the chief meteorologist at ABC15 News in Phoenix, so her forecasts mostly call for sunshine. Within this brief window, however, Sullins sometimes manages to go beyond the next five days. Far beyond.

Amber Sullins, weather reporter at ABC15 News in Phoenix.

“We know climate change could affect everything about the way we live in the future, from agriculture and tourism to productivity and local business,” she once noted. “But at what cost?”

It was a 35-second segment in a nightly newscast, a mundane moment preceding reports about three fallen firefighters in Washington state and a dangerous development for air travelers. But that climate-focused scene, and hundreds of others like it playing out at local news stations across the country, marks a major shift in the way Americans hear about climate change. The safe and familiar on-air meteorologist, with little notice by viewers, has become a public diplomat for global warming.

There are about 500 broadcasters like Sullins and Morales, who each receive regular data dumps and ready-to-use graphics from Climate Matters, an organization whose mission is to turn TV meteorologists into local climate educators. The program was founded in 2010 by Climate Central, a research-and-journalism nonprofit, with help from George Mason University, the American Meteorological Society, and others. Newscasters who participate are sent possible topics for climate-related segments every week, with TV-ready data and graphics pegged to large-scale meteorological events, such as unusually high heat or precipitation, local trends, or seasonal themes.

Two-thirds of 18- to 64-year-olds in the U.S. watch a news broadcast, either on TV or a digital device, at least once a week, according to 2015 research by the market research company SmithGeiger LLC. Nearly 40 percent of people within this wide age group watch broadcast news on daily basis, and the reliable presence of an on-air meteorologist is a huge part of the draw.

“Local TV news wouldn’t exist any more if it weren’t for the weathercasts,” says Ed Maibach, director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication.

Part of meteorologists’ reluctance to talk about the climate stems from the treacherous tools of their trade. Meteorologists learn very quickly that weather models are messy. Some no doubt sour on finicky climate models because of this experience. If short-term weather models make mistakes, it may seem reasonable to assume that a model projecting into the next century is ridiculous.

“Meteorologists are used to looking at models and being burned,” says Paul Douglas, a former TV weatherman-turned-serial entrepreneur, who recently published a book on climate change and faith.

Sullins, 34, knows there’s tension in telling her viewers about conditions in the 22nd century when she is reluctant to commit to a two-week forecast. “I can’t tell you what the high temperature is going to be on July 4 of this year, today,” Sullins says. “I can’t possibly tell you that. But I can tell you, based on climate, that in July, here in Phoenix, it’s going to be over 100 degrees. That’s easy.”

Her point is that weather and climate are “two entirely different beasts.” It’s like the difference between someone’s mood and disposition, Sullins says. She wants viewers of the nightly news to spend more time thinking about the planet’s disposition.

Summary

The PR campaign continues and intensifies with simplistic soundbites to persuade people to fear the future, in order to advance the anti-fossil fuel agenda. It is a Chinese water torture program well-funded and essential to the climate crisis industry.

But note the logical fallacy in Sullins’ statement above. She says: “I can tell you, based on climate, that in July, here in Phoenix, it’s going to be over 100 degrees.” That’s not climate change, that’s climate stability, something we depend on despite the fear-mongering.

How will viewers respond to this?  Will ratings improve by watching weather people jumping the shark? (It didn’t work for “Happy Days” TV show).  Or will people resent the attempted brainwashing and switch channels?

Footnote:

The hottest temperatures ever reported in Phoenix came in January 2015, when Fox 10 weatherman Cory McCloskey faced a malfunctioning temperature map on live television. “Wow, 750 degrees in Gila Bend right now,” he said, without breaking a sweat. “And 1,270 in Ahwatukee. Now, I’m not authorized to evacuate, but this temperature seems pretty high.” More than 6 million people have watched the blooper on YouTube.

See Also Urban Flooding: The Philadelphia Story

 

 

Climatist Psy-Ops Spreading

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Stephen McMurray published a pamphlet at Zero Watch The Climate Change Cult and the War on the Mind. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Introduction

As the eco-zealot group Just Stop Oil continue to break the law and cause mayhem, it is perhaps time to investigate who is pulling the strings of this and other fake grassroots movements. Even a cursory glance will make it clear that the people behind them are not everyday members of the public but a group of highly influential American billionaires.

The Climate Emergency Fund

According to the Just Stop Oil website, their main source of backing is the Climate Emergency Fund. The three founding members of this group, who also fund Extinction Rebellion, are Aileen Getty from the Getty oil family, Rory Kennedy, daughter of Senator Robert Kennedy, and philanthropist Trevor Neilson. All three own houses on Malibu beach, which is odd as disciples of the climate cult claim that sea levels are rising dramatically, and you would therefore assume that seafront real estate would be a bad investment.

Most of the focus has been on Getty but it is Neilson who has the most interesting background. After university he worked as an intern in the White House when Bill Clinton was president. Later he worked for the then newly formed Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as Director of Communications, and also acted as the Gates’ personal spokesman.

In 2002 Neilson was a co-founder of DATA (Debt, AIDs, Trade, Africa) with Bill Gates, Bono and George Soros.  DATA was allegedly created to help ease poverty in Africa, seek debt relief for African countries and help fight AIDs. They also claimed to want to end hunger in Africa, an idea that is interesting since climate
activists want to reduce carbon dioxide which is essential to all plant life; any reduction would clearly reduce the amount of food crops, causing more hunger rather than alleviating it. Neilson was also a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, the Council of Foreign Relations, and was one of the Young Global Leaders for the World Economic Forum.  In other words, he is a friend to all the usual globalist suspects who are pushing the green agenda for their own ends.

If we move on to current advisory board members of the Climate Emergency Fund, we see more of the usual themes and ideologies that have nothing to do with the climate but are warmly embraced by the climate crisis zealots. Stephen Kretzmann founded Oil Change, an organisation pressing for the end of oil production. He is a supporter of the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement. On the Oil Change website he writes an article that promotes BLM and trots out extremist left-wing tropes.

Another on the advisory board of the Climate Emergency Fund is Bich Ngoc Cao. She is also on the board of left-wing news site Mother Jones. The site denigrated Moms for Liberty, a group who have fought against their children being indoctrinated by gender and LGBTQ ideology in schools, calling them ‘Moms against libraries’ and ‘book-banning bathroom-police’, because they want to remove inappropriate sexual material from school libraries and keep single-sex bathroom spaces. Bich Ngoc Cao is also on the Board of Library Commissioners for the city of Los Angeles.

Bill McKibben is another CEF advisory board member who compares climate issues to racism, and uses the death of George Floyd to make his point.

The executive director of the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF) is Margaret Klein Salamon, an American in her mid-thirties. She is a clinical psychologist and therefore has been involved with vulnerable people suffering high levels of stress and anxiety.  In her role in climate activism, she appears to be using her experience to frighten vulnerable people. She is the founder of Climate Awakening, which, according to her page on the CEF site, is ‘a project to unleash the power of climate emotions through scalable small group conversations’.

However, if you go on to the Climate Awakening website, on the first page it says, ‘Share your climate terror, grief, and rage with people who understand. Join a Climate Emotions Conversation – a small group sharing & listening session about the climate emergency.’ Below that there is a screen with images of three young people and the words: ‘What are you FEELING about climate emergency? Make sure to name the emotions (fear, grief, anger, despair, isolation)’.

Salamon also had an article in Psychology Today where, as ‘The Climate Psychologist’, she gave ‘relationship advice for the Climate Emergency’. A reader asked: “How can I tell my partner I am afraid to have children? …Why would I want to bring a child into this world, right now? Imagining the future they would grow up in fills me with terror.”   Part of Salamon’s reply reads as follows:

“Let me be clear; despite widespread denial of the Climate Emergency and how it will affect our society, your worries are in fact based in the reality of what the global scientific community is telling us, and you have every right to feel that way.”

So again, a woman is saying she is terrified, and Salamon, rather than relieving her terror, says she is right to feel that way. Salamon then tries to get her involved in climate action groups instead of talking to her partner.

This is typical of the behaviour of a cult. Feed on the person’s fear, tell them the fear is real and not to listen to what their family say and ultimately try to recruit them into the cult as well. One of the sites she advises people who are terrified of climate change to go to is the Good Grief Network.  They introduce themselves as a group who only want to care for you amid the chaos all around. They will then get you in a group of like-minded people to expose you to groupthink. When you have all bonded, they will strip you of all your preconceived ideas and mould you into their reality. They will then fill the void left by destroying any prior belief system you had, with their own worldview.

In their ten-step programme to ‘Personal Resilience & Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate’, the first step is, yet again, to tell you to be very afraid and ‘accept the severity of the predicament’.  Step 8 is the most disturbing: ‘Grieve the harm I have caused.’  Telling you that you are to blame for some of the ‘harm’ increases your fear by making you feel guilty. If you feel guilt then you will desperately want to make up for your actions and will do whatever you are told to do to achieve that, namely to go on and traumatise other people by telling them the world is about to end.

The Psychologists

If you think Margaret Klein Salamon is an oddity amongst psychologists, think again. Many are now boarding the climate crisis gravy train. Dr Gareth Morgan, a clinical psychologist from Leicester University, is an Extinction Rebellion supporter because “as many professionals have observed, climate activism should be seen as central to our professional identities if we truly take on board the science that indicates climate breakdown presents the biggest threat to human health worldwide.’  Once again extreme left-wing bias appears to cloud his judgement. He opines, ‘while the same colonial and neoliberal ideologies that support racism and inequity also prop up the unfettered capitalism that is threatening all life on Earth.’

The Climate Psychology Alliance wishes to use their expertise in the field of psychology to nudge people into believing in their worldview of impending climate-induced doom. The group is overtly stating that ‘facts’ aren’t really persuading people that the climate crisis is real and that they need use psychology to pressure us all to become true believers. Most telling though, is when they say it can’t be ‘positivist’ psychology, based on empirical evidence, but that a deeper type of psychology is to be used. In other words, ignore the facts of the situation and use mind manipulation techniques and fear to convert the non-believers. They even say that climate anxiety is a good thing.

It is not just individuals these groups want to target, but corporations as well. An organisation called Climate Psychologists offers consultancy courses to companies.  They aren’t just offering support to employees traumatised by the ‘climate crisis’, but are using behavioural change programmes and ‘ethical nudging.‘ They are telling employers how to subtly manipulate the minds of their employees to believe in the climate emergency. This is reminiscent of the government’s SPI-B Behavioural Insights team, which used psychology to terrify people into accepting Covid lockdowns.

Indeed, there is direct evidence that the government is using the tactics they developed during Covid to coerce us all into believing the climate crisis narrative.  On October 12 this year, the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee published a report entitled In our Hands: Behaviour change for climate and environmental goals.  It is a sinister document, in which the government openly states that all aspects of our life need to be managed to lessen the impact of climate change, and that mind control techniques, very similar to the ones used to force the public into acquiescing to Covid lockdowns, need to be used against the population. Sir Patrick Vallance, one of the architects of the disastrous Covid policy, was a witness. He told the committee: ‘The reality is that behaviour change is a part of reaching Net  Zero. It is unarguable.’

So every government department will be required to use psychology as a weapon against the public, to ensure we behave in line with what the climate alarmists demand.  It is clear from this that not only are all government departments to be targeted, but the private business sector as well, even if it is not in their financial interest to do so.

This sounds suspiciously like Klaus Schwab’s infamous statement that Covid offered a window of opportunity to bring about the Great Reset.  To emphasise just how much they want to control the minutiae of daily life, one of the key points the committee make is:

Priority behaviour change policies are needed in the areas of travel, heating, diet and consumption to enable the public to adopt and use green technologies and products and reduce carbon-intensive consumption.

Therefore, you will be told what to eat, where you are allowed to go and how you are allowed to get there. Another key point clearly states that they will tax and legislate you into compliance:

Information is not enough to change behaviour; the Government needs to play a stronger role in shaping the environment in which the public acts, through appropriately sequenced measures including regulation, taxation and development of infrastructure.

But it is not just businesses they are trying to use to make you change your behaviour. They also want to use charities and religious institutions to control the minds of the masses.  When referring to the various levers of change the government could use, they identify ‘regulatory and financial (dis)incentives which alter the availability and affordability of options.’  This suggests that the government would be prepared deliberately to create scarcity and make certain things unaffordable. Does that sound familiar with relation to the current energy crisis?

They appear to have no sense of irony when speaking of clear messaging and open information during the pandemic, and seem to think that propaganda, lies, data manipulation and censorship is actually truth and transparency.  It is evident that the climate alarmists, with the backing of billionaires, psychologists and the government, are waging a war on the minds of the people to bring about the Great Reset dystopia.

They have the power and the money on their side, but clearly, having to resort to mind control techniques, they don’t have the truth. As George Orwell is reputed to have said: ‘In the time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’  It’s time we all became revolutionaries, because the truth is that it is not the climate crisis that is the biggest threat to our wellbeing, but the climate crisis alarmists who want to remove the last vestiges of our freedom and plunge us into a never-ending Dark Age.

See Also Climate Hysteria is a Global Psy-Op

Here Comes the Climate-Medical Complex

The Antidote: Climatists, Spare Us Your Guilt Trip!

 

 

Seven Ways Climate Reparations Are Absurd

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Dan Hannan explains at Washington Examiner Demands for ‘climate reparations’ are laughable.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The demands for climate reparations from wealthy countries are so absurd, so unscientific, and so offensive to natural justice that it is difficult to know where the criticism should begin.

The argument is that, since countries that industrialized earlier produced a lot of carbon a hundred years ago, they now owe a debt to poorer states. Naturally, this argument appeals to assorted Marxists, anti-colonialists, and shakedown artists, and COP27 has been dominated by insolent demands for well-run states to pony up.

Some, including Austria, Belgium, and Denmark, have capitulated. No doubt others will follow. These days, once something is framed as poor-versus-rich or darker-skinned-versus-lighter-skinned or ex-colony-versus-ex-colonizer, the pressure becomes irresistible. Nevertheless, it is worth running through the absurdities in play.

First, the claims are rooted in indignation rather than science. For example, Pakistan, which leads the G-77 group of poorer states and is leading the campaign, claims that its floods are a product of climate change. But might Pakistan look a little closer to home? Although Europe and North America have seen significant reforestation over the past half-century, Pakistan has gone in the other direction. A third of its landmass was forest when it became independent in 1947. Now, it is one-twentieth, and the rains run straight off the mountains into silted-up reservoirs that then overflow, whence the floods.

But never mind all that — blame the colonialists, eh?

Second, there is the utter refusal to acknowledge what wealthier countries are already doing. I don’t just mean in terms of making direct monetary transfers — though, sticking with Pakistan for a moment, Britain has been borrowing around $400 million a year to give to that country, which pleads poverty while funding a nuclear weapons program. No, I mean in terms of impoverishing themselves through drastic action on carbon emissions. Britain has cut its carbon dioxide production by nearly half since 1990, largely by closing down its coal mines. Pakistan has more than 100 coal mines in operation.

But, again, blame the colonialists, eh?

Third, there is the ingratitude. One of the things I used to resent about the European Parliament was the entitled and hectoring way in which representatives of poorer countries (they were usually very rich people) would call for bigger transfers. “This is unacceptable,” they would say of whatever offer the Brits, the Dutch, or the Germans put on the table. Fine, I’d think, don’t accept it, then. Yet the numbers only ever got bigger. Look, I’m sorry to be blunt about this, but a 2-degree rise in temperature is far less menacing for Britain or Canada than it is for most countries.

The least-threatened countries are doing the heaviest lifting by far.
But don’t expect any gratitude.

Fourth, there is the implication that industrialization, the miracle that released our species from 10,000 years of backbreaking labor, is regrettable. In truth, as well as giving us longer, healthier, and freer lives, the wealth released over the past 200 years of specialization and exchange is cleaning up the environment. The air and water are purer in London than in Lahore because GDP is higher. For the same reason, natural disasters have become far less lethal. The 1950 floods in Pakistan killed many more people than this year’s, because they hit a poorer country.

Fifth, there is the related assumption that rich countries owe their wealth to exploitation, that one nation’s gain must mean another’s loss. This is palpable nonsense. The enrichment of a country, other things being equal, is good news for all of its trading partners. And countries get wealthy not by conquering others (a process that is always expensive) but by pursuing the right policies, such as secure property rights, low taxes, independent courts, light regulations, and free trade.

If you tax successful countries to pay unsuccessful ones, you will end up with
fewer of the former and more of the latter.

Sixth, and most preposterously, there is the ugly collectivism that lurks behind every shakedown attempt, from the return of artworks to slavery reparations. Our criminal justice system, like every Abrahamic religion, is based on the idea that we are individually responsible for our actions. But when it comes to these scams, we are all suddenly defined by ancestry or skin color.

It is precisely because Western nations broke out of that dispensation that they became rich in the first place. And it was by copying their individualist outlook that other countries were able to catch them up. Far from complaining about industrialization, the rest of the world should thank us for having developed capitalism, and they should seek to emulate it.

Postscript: Absurdity Seven

Climate reparations are a legal quagmire.  From Hulme et al. (2011):

At the heart of the loss and damage (L&D) agenda is the idea of attribution—that specific losses and damages in developing countries can be “associated with the impacts of climate change,” where “climate change” means human-caused alterations to climate. It is therefore not just any L&D that qualify for financial assistance under the Convention; it is L&D attributable to or “associated with” a very specific causal pathway.

Developing countries face some serious difficulties—at best, ambiguities—
with this approach to directing climate adaptation finance.

Investment in climate adaptation, they claim, is most needed “… where vulnerability to meteorological hazard is high, not where meteorological hazards are most attributable to human influence”. Extreme weather attribution says nothing about how damages are attributable to meteorological hazard as opposed to exposure to risk; it says nothing about the complex political, social and economic structures which mediate physical hazards.

And separating weather into two categories — ‘human-caused’ weather and ‘tough-luck’ weather – raises practical and ethical concerns about any subsequent investment allocation guidelines which excluded the victims of ‘tough-luck weather’ from benefiting from adaptation funds.

Contrary to the claims of some weather attribution scientists, the loss and damage agenda of the UNFCCC, as it is currently emerging, makes no distinction between ‘human-caused’ and ‘tough-luck’ weather. “Loss and damage impacts fall along a continuum, ranging from ‘events’ associated with variability around current climatic norms (e.g., weather-related natural hazards) to [slow-onset] ‘processes’ associated with future anticipated changes in climatic norms” (Warner et al., 2012:21). Although definitions and protocols have not yet been formally ratified, it seems unlikely that there will be a role for the sort of forensic science being offered by extreme weather attribution science.

See also: Climate Loss and Damage, Legal House of Cards

 

 

Climatists, Spare Us Your Guilt Trip!

Posted on by Ron Clutz

An example of climate hysteria comes from the usual suspects published at the usual venue, Inside Climate News. Polar Ice Is Disappearing, Setting Off Climate Alarms

Excerpts below with my bolds: The short-term consequences of Arctic (and Antarctic) warming may already be felt in other latitudes. The long-term threat to coastlines is becoming even more dire.

“When you’re taking out 30, 40, almost 50 percent of the ice cover, that’s a big change in the environment,” Meier said. “Whether we’re seeing it yet, there’s still some debate, but whether there will be an effect as we continue to lose ice, I think that’s pretty obvious.”

“There’s no evidence that anything is recovering here,” said Mark Serreze, the director of the NSIDC. “What we’ve seen historically is a downward trend in ice extent in all months. Superimposed on that are the ups and downs of natural variability. We’re going to continue to head downward.“

“We are looking at an ice-free Arctic Ocean sometime in the 2040s,” said Serreze. “There’s no evidence that we’ve seen anything like this before.”

Ted Scambos, lead scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said that while the current pace of melting is not alarming, a series of papers “has led to a realization that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may already be in an irreversible retreat.“

Greenland is melting, too—for now, it’s the biggest threat. “Greenland has become Loserville,” said Jason Box, who tracks ice for the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

“New observations from many different sources confirm that ice-sheet loss is accelerating,” the United States Global Change Research Program said in its comprehensive special report on climate science. “Up to 8.5 feet of global sea level rise is possible by 2100” in a worst-case emissions scenario. That’s almost 2 feet more than scientists expected just a few years ago.

“So we’re guaranteed significant sea level rise no matter what we do, even under the optimistic Paris scenario,” Box said. “We had better prepare.”

These warnings of wolves are starting to sound the same: “It never happened before, is not happening now, but it will surely destroy us in the future if we don’t do something.”

Meanwhile the facts on the ground are not alarming: For example September minimums:

More details at 16 yr. Plateau September Arctic Ice 2022

And the refreezing is faster than unusual:


These outrageous appeals by alarmists in the face of contrary facts remind me of the story defining the term “chutzpuh.” A young man is convicted of killing his parents, and later appears before the judge for sentencing. Asked to give any last words, he replies: “Go easy on me, your Honor, I’m an orphan.”
alcoholics-anonymous-logo-e1497443623248

Fortunately, there is help for climate alarmists. They can join or start a chapter of Alarmists Anonymous. By following the Twelve Step Program, it is possible to recover and unite in service to the real world and humanity.

Step One: Fully concede (admit) to our innermost selves that we were addicted to climate fear mongering.

Step Two: Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves causes weather and climate, restoring us to sanity.

Step Three: Make a decision to study and understand how the natural world works.

Step Four: Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, our need to frighten others and how we have personally benefited by expressing alarms about the climate.

Step Five: Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our exaggerations and false claims.

Step Six: Become ready to set aside these notions and actions we now recognize as objectionable and groundless.

Step Seven: Seek help to remove every single defect of character that produced fear in us and led us to make others afraid.

Step Eight: Make a list of all persons we have harmed and called “deniers”, and become willing to make amends to them all.

Step Nine: Apologize to people we have frightened or denigrated and explain the errors of our ways.

Step Ten: Continue to take personal inventory and when new illusions creep into our thinking, promptly renounce them.

Step Eleven: Dedicate ourselves to gain knowledge of natural climate factors and to deepen our understanding of nature’s powers and ways of working.

Step Twelve: Having awakened to our delusion of climate alarm, we try to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Summary:

With a New Year a month away, let us hope that many climate alarmists take the opportunity to turn the page by resolving a return to sanity. It is not too late to get right with reality before the cooling comes in earnest.

This is your brain on climate alarm.  Just say No!

Climate Change Chumps 2022

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Definition “chump”: A foolish or easily deceived person.

Update March 21, 2022

In this overheated time of school kids in the streets and elected “adults” declaring emergencies without any understanding of what is or is not happening, it may help to know how we got here.

Why are so many people taken in by climate alarms? The question is often on my mind, especially when tens of thousands attend UN conferences like Glasgow, or when hearing the caterwauling in the media over the climate scare of the week. Recently while watching a football game, my escape from the issue was interrupted by a commercial break that included a flaming earth on the screen for a few seconds. It was an ad for Discovery Channel including the image above.

[Old joke:  I don’t know if they are using subliminal advertising, but yesterday I went and bought a tractor.]

And in a flash I realized how several factors are driving warming suckers into a fearful frenzy.

Firstly, The power of images over words and thinking.
A picture is worth a thousand words. (Sometimes attributed to Chinese)


The Asian attribution is doubtful, but Confucius did say something similar:

Second, We are immersed in imaging technology, entrancing the public. I have no interest in post modern philosophers, but in this sense they are onto something perverse: We are mistaking images for realities.

Third, Pied Pipers are using the media to put us under their spell.
A key point in the fable is the piper’s ability to put a spell on the children, and thereby rob the village of their future.  And he did this to get leverage over the council when they refused to pay for exterminating the rats. Our children have been brainwashed with environmental activism since preschool, and educators have taken Confucius to heart:  The process goes beyond preaching, to videos, posters and projects.

Fourth, Our embrace of mass and social media makes us suckers for fake news, including climate claims.

Note that the majority are not confident to discern fake from real news.  Even worse, today’s “fact checkers” operate out of spin rooms.

Fifth, Social proof is now all that matters.

Climate lemmings rushing over the cliff.

Finally, the drumbeat of climate alarms imprints ever more deeply a false assumption.

It doesn’t matter if any particular climate claim is false or exaggerated, the communications continuously reinforce the underlying myth of the Garden of Eden:  Nature is perfect and eternal so long as humans don’t mess it up.

The reality is more subtle and complex.  Humans are also a force of nature, and with our self-awareness we have the ability and responsibility to add order and purpose to the rest of nature.  Go to Kyoto and watch the landscapers labor for hours to fashion an exquisite Japanese garden, the fruition of collaboration between humans, plants, water and rocks.  Humans can and do improve on nature by taming destructive natural forces to preserve and enhance living structures.

The UN IPCC process is a blind alley, a path to nowhere.  It plays upon fears and guilt feelings.  Worse, it distracts from rational programs of actual environmental stewardship.  I fear it will only get worse in the next 12  10  8 years:

See also Brits Run Con Game at Glasgow COP

Doomsday was predicted but failed to happen at midnight.