Reposted from Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
Posted on May 6, 2021 by curryja |
by Judith Curry
The damaging effects of generating eco-anxiety in children. Climate Etc. as an antidote.
Earlier this week, I received this letter via email:
To the Esteemed Dr. Judith Curry:
You don’t know me but I am a frequent reader of your articles and find them to be fascinating, as well as eye-opening. Unsure if it is at all welcome to offer you some words of encouragement, but first I would like to explain in detail why I decided to contact you by e-mail with this rather strange method of offering a message. It is because you changed my mind about global warming and climate change entirely. Rest assured, I am not the only one who is beginning to see things in a different more scientific light.
I grew up in the 90’s ‘era’ of ‘acid rain is going to kill us all!’ ‘all the trees are going to be cut down!’ ‘people do more harm than good for the environment!’ Any kind of frightening prediction that you can think of and immediately name, I was subject to it, and at an age where I didn’t fully understand the meaning of ‘question what you hear’. I fully believed–literally, until this very year–that the Earth was going to perish in flame, the oceans would be covered in oil, the rainforests would all vanish and that Earth would very much resemble every circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. It also didn’t help matters considering I grew up with a very, VERY Jehovah’s Witness aunt and uncle, who kept repeating to me that the world would end! Add frequent news reports to the mix (I was not in any position to disregard it–my late mother would blare it through the house) and you have quite the sizeable ball of anxiety. No, seriously, I was diagnosed with GAD along with depression during my middle school years.
I wince now seeing all the younger people (I’m in my early thirties) acting exactly as I did–going forth with the mentality that humans are a plague and that they ruin EVERYTHING good. That was the first twinge of ‘something isn’t right’. We live in the least polluted country out of them all, our air quality has improved drastically, the forests are mostly intact, MORE greening is happening, and endangered species are making comebacks that I never could have imagined in my younger years. So why then, are we constantly bombarded with ‘humans are the disease’ messages? The constant blaring siren of ‘DO SOMETHING!’ wore me down to the point where I was seeking some kind of reassurance–not the best way to deal with an issue, but it was my method–and I happened upon your site. My ‘side’ frequently sneered at scientists who either try to douse the figurative flames created from their panic or better yet, prevent the fires from spreading. Why wouldn’t anyone want to hear, “Good news! The planet is NOT doomed!’?
I heard so much about these ‘climate deniers’ and I felt anxious upon coming to your site as if I was actually viewing the forbidden fruit from afar, thinking that at any moment, I would be struck down by an avenging angel for disobedience. (Again, grew up in a somewhat Christian household, didn’t exactly help matters…) Nothing of the sort happened. I scoffed at first thinking, “This person is entirely wrong. The climate is bad, people are going to die, there’s flooding happening over the ocean SOMEWHERE–” And then I stopped myself remembering that I once lived, for over twenty years of my life, NEAR A TOWN NEAR THE OCEAN. Nothing of that sort even vaguely happened! In fact the ocean’s level near my old hometown hasn’t risen by much. We’ve had only a handful of hurricanes hit in the course of two decades.
If climate ‘deniers’ were so deranged and so into helping ‘big business’ then why is it that their sites depend solely on donations, and why are their arguments so clear and concise? You don’t sound deranged at all, being a scientist (someone who actively USES THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD TO OBSERVE! Yes I know so many caps, but I wish there were individuals in the back who could hear this!), so why is it the goal to dehumanize the people who are actively studying the effects of climate and climate itself? It made no sense. Then I went to Watt’s Up With That?, Not A Lot of People Know That, CFACT, Farm Babe, the list goes on and on, and I wanted to challenge my own views (as if they were my own views…they were not, they were impressions slammed into me at the tender age of ten…) and I found a wealth of points that were more sound and less theatric than, say, shouting the world is on FIRE. How sad it is for actual science that its true practitioners get the boot in favor of junk science. (“Because it’s settled and we say so, so there!”)
Meanwhile the actual deranged ‘scientists’ are people like Bill Nye (it hurts me to type this because I actually liked him very much as a child–his show was quite entertaining and informative) insisting that people must DIE in order for the planet to survive. I can safely say I’d much rather avoid talking to them than to someone who says “Fossil fuels burned by humans aren’t changing the planet and here’s why.” At least the ‘denier’ doesn’t want me dead simply for breathing
Please, please, PLEASE…keep doing what you do, and I hope you and your peers succeed in changing many more minds before this madness can come to fruition! You don’t know this but you bring people hope rather than despair, you and Michael Schellenberger, Roger Pielke Jr., Paul Homewood, and many others I’m sure I have left out due to faulty memory (or lack of research, if you could point me to many others I may have missed, please let me know if you are so inclined.
JC comments
The strategy of ‘scaring the children’ is absolutely reprehensible. I grew up in the late 1950’s-1960’s. The children-scaring tactic of that period was the Russians – they were ready to take over the U.S., we would be bombed (remember the bomb shelters of that era?), we would lose our freedoms, your neighbors could be Russian spies (anyone see the TV show The Americans? It is superb). This scare was conveyed to me by a Catholic nun, which was amplified in the school yard. At the ripe old age of 8, I ended up with stomach ulcer, worrying about all this. My doctor told me not to worry about this stuff, it was all silly politics, and to just enjoy my childhood. I said ‘Ok’, and I was pretty much done with all that. But explicit government sanctioned and academic efforts in ‘cli-sci communications’ (climate ‘crisis’, ’emergency’, ‘extinction’) to scare children over climate change for political purposes is absolutely reprehensible.
Such scare tactics will backfire, as children grow up and they see the scary prophesies to be unfulfilled. We’re breeding generations of people that are learning to distrust scientists. More harm is being done to children with scary climate stories than any consequence of climate change in their lifetime.
In the meantime, Climate Etc. and other blogs are acting as an important antidote to such unjustified, reprehensible and damaging rhetoric.
Here is now like being there.
Leftists like to think they are the guy in the circle. Their ideology, however, has taken over government, MSM, NGOs, entertainment, etc. Conservatives are now that guy.
It is strange how all the “radicals” and “revolutionaries” are in full agreement with governments and what the mainstream media tells them.
Yeah, as a guy who went to college in the 1970’s I’m amazed that the current crop of student radicals are in agreement with the administrators. The only point of disagreement I see is in how harshly to punish white male students. Of course most college students are now women, mostly in the soft humanities (I won’t use the oxymoron ‘social science.’). But even in the current environment I wouldn’t wear a manbun to get laid.
As an old hippy who once had very long hair- I think man buns are incredibly stupid looking. As for women- in case anyone hasn’t noticed- the editors of most magazines are now women- including Scientific American- not just THE editor but most of the associate editors. Also, amazingly, the editor of The Northern Logger, a trade journal is- yes, a woman- though she’s doing a good job. Not so sure of those running Sci. American.
Well they didn’t want to lose the groundwork they had created when no one was watching them – that the German National Socialist Workers’ Party was not a socialist party. From Encyclopedia Britannica:
Nazi Party, byname of National Socialist German Workers’ Party, German Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), political party of the mass movement known as National Socialism.
Definitely! I was born in 1955, and grew up with Silent Spring and Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb, as well as second cousins who were John Birchers, and other relatives who were as far left politically as the Birchers were right. I also had a close friend who was a Jehovah’s Witness, who told me Jesus was coming back in 1974 (or was it 1972?).
So if anyone tries a scary story on me, either scientific or political, my first impulse is to figure out the scam.
I think I may have seen Jesus in 1976 in Times Square. He took a quick look, I’m not sure he’s coming back.
I tell the kids –
“always look behind the curtain”
Indeed , not to mention peak oil and the ice age cometh , had to ask my parents should I ever get married and bring children into a world that seemed doomed .
It appears to be a never ending cycle of scare tactics and power mongering by our ‘rulers’ .
Tom
The Birchers quite accurately predicted the current state of affairs. As with any group, some have been rather extreme but most are quite pragmatic questioners of authority and consensus. If not for them, I would likely not have been cured of the disease of groupthink and my current state of skepticism would have been at best long delayed. I suspect that had the John Birch Society not awakened me to a the fallacies of the environmental movement and its unholy alliance with authoritarian science, I would not hold WUWT in the high regard that I do.
Regards,
Mark
Tom, I can remember the eye-opening experience I had in my freshman year in college, reading Welch’s ‘Blue Book’ after having been raised in a Democratic household. Between that book and my American history classes I learned that conservatives most closely adhered to the principles of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution.
All of the regular readers of WUWT are well aware of H. L. Mencken’s words on politicians and I also have been thinking of Justice Holmes words concerning free speech not extending to being able to shout ‘FIRE’ in a crowded theater.I believe warmists are doing exactly that when they spew their message of imminent doom unless we all become docile little leftists overnight and do what our ‘dear leaders’ tell us to do.
How long does this woke crap have to go on before enough Americans wake up to the fact that our personal freedoms are rapidly being taken from us?
While I was a precocious brat, and read “None dare call it Treason” in 1966 or 67, and it more of immunized me on radicalism of any party. My mother’s grandfather ran for Mayor of Rock Springs, Wyoming on the Socialist Labor Party ticket, so I had been preached at by multiple flavors of political weirdness.
Interestingly, such mass scare campaigns are absolutely nothing new in human history. They have been enshrined in Aesop’s fables and other stories like the Emperor’s New Clothes and the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Such fables, which are hardly mentioned any longer, are clues to the young to hone their bovine excrement meters. Only a child can stand up and call out BS without fear of losing their job.
Luckily in some respects, the rhetoric has become so absurd that many of the younger children are awake that it is all to phantasmagorical to believe. Their BS meters have twitched and they have their youth to give them the energy to wake others.
Once 10% have been woken up to climate deception or to COVID deception, it is no longer regarded as whacky conspiracy-it is mainstream. Then, it will spread like wildfire.
ONLY the People can rise up to overthrow such tyranny. Our leaders will not (they have been bribed and blackmailed), so it is up to us. Resistance can be quite simple- wear a yellow mask with AGAINST MY WILL on it and wear it out where you have to. It can be putting on your letterbox VACCINATED AGAINST COVID PROPAGANDA. Resistance does not have to be guns.
Bottom line, be creative and use your experience of how you had that lightbulb moment of waking up to lead others to wake themselves up.
I wear an OD green rectangular shaped mask saying: “FRONT TOWARD THE ENEMY” [For the uninitiated, that’s a claymore antipersonnel mine.]
Thanks for the ideas, HT.
It really does look like a lot of young people (teens, young adults) have figured out that the COVID thing really isn’t much of a threat to them and have been acting accordingly. So maybe there’s hope that when the climate scam starts impeding them more, they’ll start blowing that off too.
Paddle boarder arrested in Malibu, ignored coronavirus closures – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
Next Wednesday I pick up two t-shirts I have being made:
“Stop Climate Fear
Warmer is Better”
And when I go to Publix supermarket now I do not wear a mask. I was addressed yesterday by a woman who asked why I didn’t have a mask on, I replied “I have TB and it hurts to wear a mask”. She moved away quickly. I know, that is kind of mean.
Tom
I just received my “THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS” bumper stickers to go along with the “FREE THE CARBON” ones I had made years ago.
I must chuckle at your Publix story. The gullible masses are easy targets. As the lone unmasked at Smith’s yesterday I did get some uneasy looks, but not even the employees said anything to me other than the customary “Hello”.
Utah never went full Monty restrictions, and I think most people here are skeptical of alarm but still uneasy with full return to normal (whatever normal is). I suspect that condition too is not entirely without design. Call me cynical.
Mark
Eco-anxiety – a wholly new man made neurosis
Even the psychiatrists are on board with this one – opportunity knocks.
Dunno about the general eco-anxiety damage to children. Probably depends on parents. Greta Thunberg is clearly damaged, and that is on her parents.
My grandkids know Granpaw’s stance, with which my daughter and her husband strongly agree, and with which my son and his wife don’t disagree. Both despite their liberal college disagreeing with me strongly.
But the general damage to science from generating ‘eco-anxiety’ is incalculable. We now have the ‘Mag 7’ newly showing in Science that almost all the JCU ocean acidification fish stuff isn’t just fishy, it comprises scientific misconduct. Peter Ridd discusses this new replication failure paper in Science over at GWPF.
Well, that second paragraph was cryptic. But Rud comments are worth a closer look, so a decryption.
JCU – James Cook University, yes them again.
Mag 7 – a research group somehow dubbed “The Magnificent 7 (from the movie of the same name?), looking into dubious claims.
Science – The (once) prestigious journal has very surprisingly published a contrarian piece.
GWPF – Listed here on the blog roll. Surf over and read, it is short and sweet.
The gist of it:
The “Magnificent 7” look into claims of reef harm by JCU and find them wanting. Some researchers do not like it.
Pull quote from GWPF piece:
Portner, a co-chair of one of the IPCC’s working groups, stated that “building a career on judging what other people did is not right.”
and
objected to the Magnificent 7’s work stating “if such a controversy gets outside of the community, it’s harmful because the whole community loses credibility.”
Apparently Super Hurricanes, 20 feet of Sea Level Rise, massive wildfires burning the planet, Ocean Acidification killing all life in the worlds oceans are all OK, no harm to the Scientific Enterprise. But just a bit of “wait a minute, this does not add up”, and you would think the world is coming to an end.
“the whole community loses credibility.” Indeed. *sigh*
More proof that the UN IPCC work is not about explaining, but is done to convince (propaganda).
As I’ve said before, the whole reason for the climate scary story is to soften the peoples of the World into accepting the “only solution to manmade global warming caused solely by evil wicked free-enterprise capitalism, that being a one world global guvment with the guvment membership made up of un-elected, un-democratic, un-accountable, & un-sackable, bureaucrats, just like the intellectuals elite EU Commissioners, in charge of everything, responsible for absolutely nothing, padi £100k ++, huge expense accounts, £10k++ per child to be privately educated, err trained, in specialist EU schools around the EU!!!! USA watch your backs, the slime is everywhere!!! From 1945 through to 1975, we were ALL going to hell in a handcart due to the inevitable & imminent nuclear war, when that didn’t happen we were ALL going to hell in a handcart due to the inevitable & imminent holocaust due to bio-chemical warfare, when that didn’t happen, global cooling was the immediate scary story as the world had been cooling since the early 1900s, when that didn’t happen, the world mysteriously started to warm, over the same period I point out, we were ALL going to die etc blah blah blah! There is & probably always will be a scary story waiting in the wings as soon as the last one has run its course!!!! Somebody once said, “Power corrupts, & absolute power corrupts absolutely!”.
“…such tactics will backfire, as the children grow up and see the prophecies unfulfilled”? Greta is just getting started…she can probably carry on the rest of her life…it’s always just 9 years away.
Maybe. How long before she begins to get sidelined, before her followers grow disillusioned and drift away? How long before those schoolkids she encouraged to play truant on Fridays realise that this is no longer a game and they need to get real jobs? How long before she’s seen as completely irrelevant?
She will work for UN quango’s or the UN itself for the rest of her life, no doubt collecting many ”prestigious” awards along the way and get wealthy as well.
All the while vicariously burning fossil fuels
An answer to your Greta question:
Delingpole: Doom Goblin Greta’s TV Show Is a Massive Ratings Flop (breitbart.com)
Yep, the climate liars are being forced to lie harder as this sorry episode in human history comes to a close. Just how much damage it has done to real science will unfold. As a real scientist myself, this is what pissed me off in the first place.
Well that’s definitely a good start!
Maybe, just maybe, there will come a day when Greta might just dare to open the Pandora’s Box and look inside to find out what the sceptics are saying and why they are saying it.
Parents, remember they are YOUR kids! Not the school system’s. Not Disney’s. Not social media’s. Not the Geico commercials that make fun of becoming your parents.
Pay attention to what they are being led to believe.
Not Geico. Progressive. You got it wrong. I had to look it up. Which shows that these dumb commercials are not just irritating. They are ineffective. After hearing them a gazillion times, we can’t remember who was being advertised.
Thanks for the correction.
Apologies to Geico.
(If I was a certain climate “scientist”, I would have sued you.8-))
I like Progresso Traditional Chicken & Wild Rice Soup.’O’ Wait – – – Never mind!
“Your birthing person” taunts have recently surged among US school children. News is that a few incidents of fights among pupils have broken out. The longest fight surprisingly started when one child told the other: “Your birthing person is so fat they jumped and got stuck in the air!” Possibly the most hurtful reportedly uttered to another was: “Your birthing person is so stupid they failed a CoVid test.” But the absolutely quickest fight to start was prompted by: “Yo’ birthin’ person so ugly they went into a haunted house and come out with a job application!”
I remember when I was young, my friends and I made fun of adults’ attempts to propagandize us. Most youth have well-tuned B.S. meters. I’m not all that worried about the bulk of the current crop; the world keeps turning.
Or how about – your mother is so stupid, she let’s you call her your birthing person?
Your birthing person is so fat when she went to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade they tried to tie ropes to her.
Yeah but “You got up early, no body cares” and “The waiter doesn’t need to know your name” are funny because they are true.
Well, that was a breath of fresh air!
Funny he (or she) should mention acid rain. I worked in the utility industry during its political hey-day. Then I went to law school, and one of the research papers I wrote compared the acid rain scare to the climate change scare. Same tactics, same goal. And the same amount of speculation as to the root causes. One thing I never found was the smoking gun paper on the causes of acid rain. I found a paper that speculated the source was coal burning, written by Gene Likens in about 1975. That was it. After that the science was accepted.
Acid rain legislation and emissions control reduced emissions by the early 2000s (reduction of SO2 emissions by well over 90% from 1975 levels), and the reduction in acidity of rainfall as expressed in pH has been negligible, even today. Changes in water quality in the most threatened lakes and rivers (poorly buffered oligotrophic waters surrounded by poorly buffered soils) have also been negligible.
Just like the climate system, the water cycle is probably more complicated than the acid rain hypers thought it was.
I do think we humans are hard wired to need a crisis, and our politicians know that. the more things change the more they stay the same.
In the US northeast, the acidification of lakes and rivers was shown to have been caused by reforestation. Rainwater filtering through decomposing leaves picks up a little bit of acidity.
Nature was returning to normal, it was a good thing, not the “sky is falling” nonsense the media pushed.
I remember “acid” rain. Was any rainfall actually documented as having a pH below 7.0? Maybe only after it hit our “acidificated” oceans?
Scary labels to scare people into believing we have problems only the label makers can solve.
A genuinely scary phrase, “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you.”
Yes, the natural pH of rainfall is well below 7.0–around 5.6 in pure air. It has been measured as low as 3.0 or so, usually in thunderstorms where there is a lot of NOX formed by lightning. But it can be above 7.0 if it contains dust from alkaline soils.
The oceans have a pH of about 8.1-8.2, although it varies diurnally and from place to place. Lots and lots of dissolved solids.
Bottom line is that rainfall pH naturally has a broad range for a variety of reasons, and the pH of surface water has an even broader range for even more reasons, most of which are poorly understood and some of which are not known.
DOH!
I knew that.
(Repeat to myself – “Think before you type. Think before you type. …”)
Rain is basically distilled water (pH 7.0) with zero alkalinity UNTIL it picks up something as it falls. A few gas molecules of, say, CO2, and the pH drops. A speck of alkaline dust, pH rises.
I’ve put a beaker of deionized water with a stirrer in our pH meter. It starts with a pH close to 7.0. But as it picks up CO2 the pH slowly drops to about 4.0 or 5.0. A tiny sprinkle of CaCO3 which would raise a beaker of tap water a couple of tenths will shoot the pH up above 7.0.
Our tap water contains alkalinity (things dissolved in it will which resist a change in pH). Deionized water, as rain water, does not.
The hype was to label it “acid” rain. I remember “the scare” presenting it’s effects on forest in New England almost as if it was Agent Orange!
That’s what I hate most about the CAGW scam. It’s teaching a whole generation (once they realize they were fooled by the ‘settled science’) to be distrustful of science and scientists.
The scientific method is the best way humanity has ever learned of to discern the truth about the universe that we inhabit.
‘Climate Science’ has turned into a complete farce and an embarrassment to the word ‘science’ itself.
I always use ‘CliSci’ to emphasize the difference.
CliSciFi might be more apt.
Thanks, Nick. I’ve started using CliSciFi.
Just as they are using things like the American (de)elections as a tool to destroy trust in democracy? I think any child growing up, looking at the EU and NATO and CNN are learning to hate democracy, the selective application of law (Chauvin vs BLM) make them lose trust in law and justice, and the Pope is showing them the ridiculousness of loving god.
…and Californi is trying to ban mathematics for being racist…
The end of “western civilisation” comes, not with the bang of war, but the soft whisper of cooling fans as social media servers erase all contrarian posts.
It’s not complicated. Some people just like to be afraid. They attend horror movies, scream their heads off, and are terrified of global warming. Some people are imbeciles.
Climate doomsters have a perfect NEGATIVE predictive track record – every very-scary climate prediction, of the ~79 they have made since 1970, has FAILED TO HAPPEN.
“Rode and Fischbeck, professor of Social & Decision Sciences and Engineering & Public Policy, collected 79 predictions of climate-caused apocalypse going back to the first Earth Day in 1970. With the passage of time, many of these forecasts have since expired; the dates have come and gone uneventfully. In fact, 48 (61%) of the predictions have already expired as of the end of 2020.”
To end 2020, the climate doomsters were proved wrong in their scary climate predictions 48 times – at 50:50 (idiot odds) for each prediction, that’s like flipping a coin 48 times and losing every time! The probability of that being mere random stupidity is 1 in 281 trillion!
It’s not just global warming scientists being stupid. These climate doomsters were not telling the truth – they displayed a dishonest bias in their analyses that caused these extremely improbable falsehoods, these frauds.
There is a powerful logic that says no rational person or group could be this wrong, this obtuse, for this long – they followed a corrupt agenda – they knew they were lying.
For true believers who are terrified of global warming, here is a suggestion – you should be afraid of the fact that you are so incredibly stupid – I see no hope for you.
BE THIS GUY.
That guy is probably put there to check that everyone else is doing what they’re told!
It doesn’t matter if the tactics backfire. By the time the children wake up, it will be too late to wake up. First, they will be living in a police state where they have few liberties while their “comrade” leaders have all the liberty. They wanted socialism, now they got socialism. And they better hope the red purge doesn’t find them. Second, there won’t be enough time to think about how they were duped because there all their free time will be spent trying to find enough food to eat for the day. Their “comrade” leaders that they worshiped will always eat food that is considered a luxury even today.
The ones peddling eco-scares know this. They know that there will be no consequences from the lies because too many won’t wake up until they can’t do anything about it.
No; think Yellow Vests. The average person will not willingly allow the standard of living of his family to deteriorate when it is avoidable. Even a large minority (say, 30 to 40%) can change governmental practices. Look at how the Woke minority is shaping policy.
I dunno, Dave. Polls show a large majority of Venezuelans want change. Skilled autocrats can maintain power, especially if they have experienced outside advisors. (Think Cuba.)
The socialist government disarmed normal Venezuelans.
The average person will not willingly allow the standard of living of his family to deteriorate when it is avoidable.
It’s already happening
Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey
It has already been happening. Social media has just masked it from the view of the majority of people. That is ending, too.
People go mad in crowds and come to their senses one at a time.
Judith, it must warm your heart to know you are making a positive difference in this person’s life, and more than likely, she is not the only one who is starting to see the light through your efforts.
Keep on plugging! 🙂
Judy, i’ve been there. And worse.
I was appointed to the faculty of the UVa Department of Environmental Sciences in 1979. It was great then, though I thought “The University” was a bit over-rated, having spent my previous four years at UW-Madison. I met you once in Reid Bryson’s office though I suspect you don’t remember.
Gradually the UVa Department I cared about became beholden to politically correct funding from Washington: Acid rain money put it on the map. Global warming and its knock-ons grew Mike Mann (whom I was instructed to contact re joining the faculty), vegetation modellers with Al Gore on their speedials, literally. Ozone depletion spreading into the troposphere…you name it. And they were all–each and every one of them–exaggerations and the funding was there to provide excuses for overarching regulation, and it continued only if the results fed the beast. So they did.
As a result we have RCP 8.5 “science”, professional pogroms against any practicing dissenters, and an inviolable monolith that cares not whether it is used to destroy our economy or not. Just keep the funding coming, and get promoted.
Did I lose my faith in science? No; in scientists, yes, thanks the to way we reward and promote them. We are in a totally bought and paid for profession. And you, too, are experiencing the same. So I don’t think it is only the millenials and younger that are going to distrust science while they should be distrusting scientists. It is us. We experienced it first–and BTW it did start with the traumatizing bomb drills in the late 1950s.
How to stop this, I can only guess at. The best thing for global warming would be a dramatic reduction in research dollars, but that’s not going to happen. If you want to see the horror show ahead, google and read Eric Kaufmann’s “Academic Freedom in Crisis”, an incredible piece of research that foretells the destruction of the Academy. I’ve got a long-form piece on it headed for a major outlet, don’t know which yet.
It’s going to get much worse before it gets any better. The left will drive anyone but themselves out of the Academy. You and I know this from experience. Sorry to report but thanks so much for publishing that wonderful email to you, and keep on writing. Historians will ultimately read you.
And keep pointing that the prediction of the “Put-on-a-Pedestal” scientist have been wrong.
Even those times others have thrown in “Climate Change!” to whatever they’re talking about have been wrong.
Where I live, brood X of the cicadas is imminent. I read one story that talked about emergence might be effected by climate change (aka Global WARMING).
They come out when the ground warms to (I think) about 64* F.
I looks like we won’t see them till a week or so later than usual because the temps have been so much WARMER. (NOT!)
“and an inviolable monolith”
That’s a good way to describe it.
Hi Pat,
Nice to hear from you – it’s been a while.
Climate skeptics have been far too polite when dealing with global warming advocates. Here is reality, as published today in Update 1e of my latest paper:
To end 2020, the climate doomsters were proved wrong in their scary climate predictions 48 times – at 50:50 (idiot odds) for each prediction, that’s like flipping a coin 48 times and losing every time! The probability of that being mere random stupidity is 1 in 281 trillion!
It’s not just global warming scientists being stupid. These climate doomsters were not telling the truth – they displayed a dishonest bias in their analyses that caused these extremely improbable falsehoods, these frauds.
There is a powerful logic that says no rational person or group could be this wrong, this obtuse, for this long – they followed a corrupt agenda – they knew they were lying.
Excerpted from my not-so-polite paper:
CLIMATE CHANGE, COVID-19, AND THE GREAT RESET
A CLIMATE, ENERGY AND COVID PRIMER FOR POLITICIANS AND MEDIA
By Allan M.R. MacRae, Published May 8, 2021 UPDATE 1e
Download the WORD file
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/climate-change-covid-19-and-the-great-reset-update-1e-readonly.docx
Best regards, Allan MacRae in Calgary
Aren’t they killing Greta?
They are driving Greta crazy. Along with millions of others.
That would be the shortest drive in history.
I, too, grew up on Silent Spring and The Population Bomb.
What really woke me up, though, was The Energy Crisis. During the Carter years when I was in grade school there was an energy crisis and extreme measures were needed RIGHT NOW to prevent the end of the world. Nationwide 55 MPH speed limits, year ’round Daylight Savings Time (or was it year ’round Standard Time?) and minimal heat in winter and AC in summer.
These things impacted me hard. The drive to my grandparent’s house went from 10 to 14 hours–eternity for a child. I waited for the schoolbus in full dark during the winter. And my pet iguana died that winter because we had to keep the house so cold.
I suffered all these things believing that I was making a difference. I was saving the world. We had sinned against the Earth and must suffer to atone for it.
Then, when Regan was elected, The Energy Crisis evaporated. It wasn’t fixed, or cured, or solved, it just ceased to exist. What’s more, as far as the news was concerned, it never had existed. One minute it was the top news story every night, and the next no one had ever heard of it. It was like George Orr had dreamed it out of existence.
I realized later that Regan didn’t do anything to end The Energy Crisis–he just quit doing the things that had created it. The whole thing had been a sham, a made up apocalypse. All of the actual privation and the terror of the bleak future to come was just political theater. And nobody would admit that, so they just forgot it had ever happened.
Jimmy Carter murdered my iguana to try to win an election.
I have never trusted a “crisis” since then.
That point was very strongly made by Steven Koonin in a short interview with Tucker Carlson I think last night US time, it can be seen on YouTube.
Tucker Carlson intends to have an extended interview with him in future.
Tucker’s upcoming interview should be good. I believe Tucker does a one-on-one for about an hour in this format, so Koonin will be able to go into detail about his thoughts on the subject.
I’m not sure how well versed Tucker is on the subject of climate change. I guess we will find out during the interview. He will be a lot better informed after the interview, I’ll bet. 🙂
Koonin may be a voice the Alarmists cannot shut up. He’s very credible and knows the subject backwards and forwards.
Koonin may contribute to reducing the anxiety of those who are not sure what to think about the frenzied clamor over CO2 and the Earth’s climate.
I would like for Fox News to use Mark Steyn more in this climate change debate. He also knows the subject backwards and forwards, and we will all be less well-informed if we don’t hear from Mark Steyn on the subject.
I searched for it- couldn’t find it.
Come to think : this letter from this lady in her 30s is so well written and so well presented. If Judith Curry has only this one anonymous email on hand – can it be trusted to be authentic?? Could it possibly be written by an impostor??
I am a suspicious old sceptic.
I thought the same thing- also being a suspicious old sceptic- but then, why would anyone bother? Maybe to show how easy it would be to be deluded.
Bill Nye is NOT a scientist. He is a TV clown actor playing a caricature of a scientist.
If he was a scientist he would have been able to design an experiment to produce warming with a jar full of CO2 instead of having to FAKE the video evidence because he did not know that glass blocks infra-red radiation.
For those who haven’t seen it- here’s Bill torching the planet while swearing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjXxAVayBEY
He forgot to put his brain “on”.
Oh wait….
I think he has a degree in mechanical engineering. He is not using that either.
The Germans, Chinese and Russians certainly knew what they were doing when they created the Young Pioneers, the Red Guard and the Hitler Youth. Now almost every university is following the same path. Since the start of the Thunberg Phenomenon I have identified her as an abused child and wondered why the Swedish Police did nothing. Now the BBC is cashing in on Thunberg and adding one more crime to their portfolio. These are the people that preach tolerance but are terrified of speaking to anyone who differs from their scientifically illiterate dogma.
Biden is creating his version of the Climate Change Young Pioneers. He’s talking about spending big money on it and recruiting thousands (tens of thousands?).
Now, what is Biden going to have all those people doing? Going after climate change skeptics, would be my guess.
The Biden Youth?
I don’t know what they are planning on calling these people, but AOC wants a $10 billion budget for these Brownshirts (that’s what I call them), and says it will create 1.5 million jobs so I guess they are planning on having about 1.5 million Brownshirts running around the U.S. harrassing skeptics.
$10b for 1.5m jobs? But what about “living wage”?
That’s $6667 per job. At the “living wage” of $15/hour that’s barely 11 weeks of full-time employment.
The letter-writer, despite her Belief in the “Climate Crisis” had somehow managed to maintain a shred of intellectual curiosity, and ability to reason. That is admirable, but I suspect, highly unusual for Believers. I should mention that prior to 2008, while I believed the stuff about climate was true, it was more an assumption. I had no reason to suspect that it wasn’t true. The irony is that the way I found out, gradually, that it wasn’t true was because I was looking for ammo to refute arguments that a “climate crank” was making in a local newspaper. But, in order to do that, I had to look at both sides, and to be honest, I wasn’t even much aware of the skeptic side. What struck me right off was the completely different ways that the arguments were being made by the two sides. The Alarmist side (or as I then thought, the side of science) tended to shout down and shut down anyone who disagreed. That alone made me suspicious.
This is why I have been advising “skeptic” friends to confront “alarmists” PREMISES rather than their CONCLUSIONS of apocalyptic future scenarios or economically devastating solutions.
Warmist’ PREMISES (e.g. worst extreme weather eva’!) can easily be addressed with hard data.
Arguing future scenarios or policy without refuting the PREMISES is only playing in their swamp, by their rules.
I also used to be a man-made climate change believer many years ago, but what changed me into a skeptic was two things. One was that the idea of tiny molecule that makes up such a miniscule fraction of our atmosphere could do much of anything, especially that which it is accused of doing. Kind of like the butterfly effect on steroids – improbable to the point of being ridiculous.
The second thing was the extreme urgency that the AGW proponents present. They reminded me much of hucksters selling counterfeit wares at way too cheap prices on a street corner. Kind of like a dubious pitch of ” you must act NOW!” or the “deal” goes away….I’ve lived long enough to realize that people who ply their pitches at the world with that kind of false urgency are almost always looking to deceive….
All those movies about walled or enclosed cities that no one inside ever leaves? Think those were just fantasy/sci-fi? And Outside is a death trap, obviously, so no one raised Inside ever goes Outside…. or something like that.
Sometimes, I think the “walled city” idea, where those Inside aren’t even allowed to think about leaving (and therefore, never do, because Outside might be scary) aren’t such a bad idea. Make sure all the ecohippies are in there, with their vegan diets that give them soft bone structure and odd smells as a permanent fixture, and don’t let them out. Eventually, they’ll just sort of wither away to dust…. and no on will miss them…. and the hunter-gatherer people will still be out in the Wild parts, farming and carrying on like normal people. (OK, that’s mixed metaphor, but I don’t care. It’s Saturday.)
Ever read “The Giver” by Lois Lowry? Scary stuff, but we are almost living it.
There are consequences to fostering “idea pathogens” in generations of children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC3fscF_nA4
Gad Saad | You can’t hide from “The Saad Truth”
Gad’s latest book, The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas are Killing Common Sense eviscerates the nonsense and logical fallacies that riddle politically correct ideology. Gad details how, what he calls, “Dangerous Idea Pathogens” have taken hold of the west and provides us the the tools we need to find our way back to reason. Gad is a professor of marketing at Concordia University, author, and host of the incredibly popular YouTube show The Saad Truth.
What a great letter. One by one people will change their minds.
Having Eco-anxiety? STOP IT!
One of Bob’s best, for sure. STOP IT!
This all has the possibility of being the next Piltdown man
I was born in 1952, which was just in time for the Cold War and the tale that the world was on the brink of global nuclear war. Fortunately I had intelligent, kind parents, who were careful to explain to me that no, nobody was going to start a nuclear war, because mutually assured destruction worked perfectly as a deterrent to nuclear war.
Many people were not so fortunate, and there was a subset of often highly educated people who really did fear nuclear war. The last big sucker on the line for that story was Helen Caldicott, who was an Australian physician who had made it to the faculty of Harvard Medical School. Dr. Caldicott quit her job and fled her marriage and went around giving well-attended lectures about the imminence of the nuclear holocaust. It’s just that her thinking was obviously disordered. She would go on and on about the physical effects of nuclear war, somehow extrapolating from that that nuclear war would happen, when obviously it was the horror of nuclear war that would prevent it. No one was ever going to start a war that couldn’t be won or even survived for more than a week after it had begun, but Dr. Caldicott couldn’t seem to get that into her otherwise marvelous brain.
Climate catastrophe enthusiasts are a lot like Dr. Caldicott. Their thinking seems to be that, if climate disaster as they imagine it really did happen, much of human life would be wiped out. Since this would be so terrible, it is necessary to head it off, even if the probability that it will happen is virtually nil. That is, if you can imagine that an catastrophe will be bad enough, it doesn’t matter if it is unlikely to happen. You have to take steps to stop it now, even if this means severe and harmful disruptions to the way we produce and consume energy.