Alastair,
I would like to suggest that we climate warmists have been banging too
single-mindedly
on one drum. We've become too fixated on the logic that says if we
continue with business-
as-usual for a few more decades "we are doomed". This might be the
case, but a) we are
not that close to proving that it would be so and b) it's force is
tautologically based on the
assumption that business-as-usual will continue unless we "take
control of our own destiny"
If we were to step back, a little we see several highly significant
global activities that are
singly capable of seriously disrupting business as usual:-
i) the sorry state of the world's financial system with the USA in
particular resembling a
giant Ponzi scheme about to crash into the end of the game ii) the
peculiar growing economic
imbalances between the major trading nations, with China looking well
placed to run the world's
economy as unfairly as America has done since WW11: iii) the ferocious
running down of the
world's natural capital such as forests, water supplies, fish stocks
and soil iv) the growing unrest
within individual countries as the better-off continue their mindless
pursuit of material
goods at the expense of growing impoverished peoples: v) and then
there is Peak Oil
and Peak Everything.
Shouldn't we be constructing a story focused on this multi-faceted set
of dangers and
not just on the biggest one even though it could lead to virtually all
life being wiped out.
So, by no means do we bury this latter: we keep reminding people of it
and pointing out
that it interacts with the other threats in a generally deleterious
way. And we keep track
of the rate we're slipping down the slippery slope of climate change
and keep people
informed of this.
But we do this very much in the context of the "wheels are falling off
anyway" leaving
the stark choices of living for today or starting to prepare for "the
end of the party". This
latter would largely be consistent with combating climate change anyway.
Others seem to have already started out on this logical path:- Nafeez
Mosaddeq Ahmed
and, especially, Paul Rogers see:-
http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/world-in-breakdown?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=201210&utm_campaign=Nightly_2011-01-14%2005%3a30
So, climate change can be ignored if one wishes; you can't see or
touch it. But food riots in the streets are something else - and happen
in part to arise because our climate is changing.
Brian
On 14 Jan 2011, at 17:57, Alastair McIntosh wrote:
> What an interesting set of responses. Thank you all.
>
> I sent a link to Bob Ward's Guardian piece to one of Britain's leading
> contrarian authors - a tabloid consultant who I try to stay on
> civilised
> terms with in the course of challenging his work. He replied back
> with a
> counterblast which I've asked if I might circulate on this list, but
> so far,
> no reply from him.
>
> I'll send his full missive if he subsequently OK's that, but in
> summary in
> my own words, his take is that the reason the media are ignoring
> climate
> science is that they've seen through the bias, of which Bob's
> article, he
> considers, is a prime example. Anybody with the internet, he says,
> can see
> that for themselves. He holds that the Met Office and Hadley data is
> more
> reliable than the American data. The Americans extrapolate missing
> data in
> ways that give too much weight to the Arctic. This he says gives the
> misleading impression that 2005 was the previous hottest year
> instead of
> 1998. The bottom line, and I quote him here as written, "is what
> this means
> to the educated layperson is that THERE HAS BEEN NO SIGNIFICANT
> INCREASE IN
> PLANETARY WARMING SINCE 1998."
>
> I have responded saying that I am not qualified to weigh up his
> claims about
> the science and what the Americans v. Hadley do or do not do. In any
> case, I
> don’t want to spend further time debating with him. However, what I'm
> wondering is to what extent these sort of guys are spreading pre-
> emptive
> messages in the media to sow seeds of doubt and neutralise the real
> science
> when it appears.
>
> One further icon of interest. I was talking yesterday to a prominent
> businessman who was at a function recently where they all had to say
> where
> they'd put £100k of their personal money under current economic
> circumstances. One of Scotland's top bankers was there, and in one
> word
> answered "gold".
>
> A.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Christopher Shaw
> Sent: 14 January 2011 15:15
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Record warming isn't news
>
> Reminds me of when I went to the Heathrow Climate Camp in 2007 to do
> some
> research for my DPhil and finding everyone I went to interview was
> also a
> student researching this new environmental movement ( I exaggerate a
> little,
> but only a little).
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of George Marshall
> Sent: 14 January 2011 14:33
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Record warming isn't news
>
> Dear Alastair
>
> "When prophecy fails" is also strangely relevant in regards to the
> recent
> revelations about infiltrations into the climate movement. The
> flying saucer
> cult investigated in when prophecy fails was so crawling with social
> anthropologists that at some times a third of the people attending
> meetings
> were plants. Amazing that the cult could get anything done at all.
>
> X
> George
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alastair McIntosh
> Sent: 13 January 2011 22:19
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Record warming isn't news
>
> David ... just picked this up ... trapped in my spam box, otherwise
> I'd have
> responded in my previous message.
>
> I have been struck recently by how quiet this forum has been. It's
> not that
> there's not some interesting people on it or that, for a "crisis
> forum",
> there's not interesting stuff to discuss.
>
> My sense is that a helluva lot of us are stuck as to what we can
> meaningfully say that doesn't just sound like the virtual equivalent
> of
> speaking into the wastepaper bin. I've been working quite a bit
> recently in
> writing stuff for a forthcoming Ashgrove book on human ecology about
> postmodernism, and it does seem to me that during the 20th C we've
> seen a
> progressive drift away from grounding, at various levels - both
> physical and
> psychological (I would add spiritual, but we can leave that aside
> for now) -
> in reality.
>
> The people who form and moderate opinion are all living so
> comfortably,
> relatively speaking, that they don't want to lift the lid. I had a
> disturbing exchange recently with a good friend of mine and his
> wife. He's a
> serving army general. We expect to disagree, but not as much as
> you'd think,
> on war. What really surprised me was how animated he became about
> climate
> change, his wife too, playing out all the Christopher Brooker type of
> arguments and basically, a very intelligent scientifically literate
> man just
> not wanting to know.
>
> My sense in both this exchange and others similar is that most
> people can't
> face the contradiction of their lives. Festinger summed it all up in
> the
> 1950s with his study of cults ("When Prophecy Fails") - and how, the
> more
> that the cult failed the more the believers believed. You'll be
> familiar
> with his whole cognitive dissonance theory that came out of that. My
> sense
> is that we have to create space for people to live with their
> contradictions. The poet Alice Walker says, and I quote from memory,
> "take
> the contradictions of your life/ to wrap around you like a shawl/ to
> parry
> stones/ and keep you warm."
>
> If we can't do this with ourselves and others we force denial, and the
> problem with denial is that it's worse than hypocrisy because it blind
> people to truth. At least if you're not blinded to the truth you
> have the
> possibility of getting your bearings.
>
> I'd better go ... my wife's just back and it's late ... but I'm
> concerned
> about this stuckness - in the media, even, I sense, on this forum,
> and I
> wonder if you or others have reflection on this, or is there nothing
> else
> that can be done but to sit with heads in the sand? Is that where
> we're at
> in the human condition?
>
> Alastair.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Cromwell
> Sent: 13 January 2011 18:30
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Record warming isn't news
>
> Alastair asks of the BBC:
>
> " What is going on in their science journalism?"
>
> I'd remove the word "science" and just ask:
>
> "What is going on in their journalism?"
>
> Please forgive the plug, but see:
>
> http://www.medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=93&Ite
> mid=51
>
> And it's not just the BBC. It's the Guardian, the Independent, C4
> News and
> all the other news media we're supposed to regard as the most
> responsible.
>
> David
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alastair McIntosh
> Sent: 13 January 2011 18:20
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Record warming isn't news
>
> You beat me to it, Bob. I had been watching out and was about to
> make the
> same observation. What makes it all the stranger is that early today
> the BBC
> had as the lead item on its science website evidence of climate
> change in
> rainfall in the English uplands -
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12151866 They've since
> substituted a story about the Sun. Astonishing that they can miss
> out that
> the last year was the world's warmest equal, and the world's wettest
> ever.
> What is going on in their science journalism?
>
> A
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bob Ward
> Sent: 13 January 2011 18:06
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Record warming isn't news
>
> Apart from a small brief at the bottom of page 25 of today's edition
> of
> 'The Guardian', the UK media ignored the announcements yesterday by
> both
> NASA and the US National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration that 2010
> was tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record.
>
> But it was picked up by the media in most of the rest of the world,
> even
> in the United States, where 49 of the 50 states are currently under
> snow.
>
> So what's up with our media? I've had a whinge about it here:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/13/uk-media-ignore-climat
> e-change
>
>
> Bob Ward
>
> Policy and Communications Director
> Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment
> London School of Economics and Political Science
> Houghton Street
> London WC2A 2AE
>
> http://www.lse.ac.uk/grantham
>
> Tel. +44 (0) 20 7106 1236
> Mob. +44 (0) 7811 320346
>
>
> Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic
> communications disclaimer: http://lse.ac.uk/emailDisclaimer
