Monday
Jan102011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Keep on spinning
Jan 10, 2011 Climate: other Greens You are not going to believe this, no sooner have our green friends rebranded the crisis formerly known as global warming from `climate change' to `climate disruption' than they change their minds again. The Australian has the story:
THE term "climate change" could be replaced by "climate challenges" if a federal commissioned marketing study is taken onboard.
The study of attitudes to climate change among farmers, commissioned by the Agriculture Department, found only 27 per cent of those surveyed believed human activity was causing climate change, compared with 58 per cent of urban dwellers.
Reader Comments (81)
Climate Claptrap?
Climysteria ?
Climate scientists are now suffering from "Consensusivity Syndrome"...
Climate Conflation might be more appropiate.
Hot - blame global warming
Cold - blame global warming
Wet - blame global warming
Dry - blame global warming.
In fact there is no issue or concern that cannot be conflated with global warming.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
I think Climate Profiteering may be what you're looking for John.
Back to Mac (so to speak), obviously the two words global and warming were found together in someone's mouth before 1988. But, as I recall it, as someone who remembers the Beatles' first hit very well, it didn't a common catchphrase or slogan then as it became later. (Just like the phrases 'Just do it' or 'Every little helps' and the like.)
I start the clock of the propaganda side from 1988, when Hansen testified to Congress and George Bush Snr whacked the budget up from $200 million to $2 billion in four years. It was a very hot day in 88 and they kept the windows closed and all that. That was obviously the direction of globally averaged temperature anomaly (GATA) that was being emphasized at that point. Hansen was originally reported by the New York Times as predicting a 10degC increase in GATA, wasn't he?
So I've always found the choice of Climate Change in the IPCC itself that year interesting. Calmer heads than Hansen's knew that even the direction was far from certain. But as I described earlier, by 2001 Global Warming had been adopted and was being used very widely. Later, as the GATA graph went all soggy again, the marketing people went back to Climate Change. (And there simply weren't climate marketing people in the 1950s. Oh happy day.)
If this is the right way to think about the process then it has this practical consequence: if GATA starts to head upwards again for a decade or so, expect further changes in terminology.
I take the position of the big DON'T KNOW on why GATA has gone up and down - though mostly up since the Little Ice Age. I think there's a vanishingly small chance that future warming will be dangerous, because something has kept the earth's temperature within about 20 deg Kelvin within 280 for four billion years, as far as we can tell. Once the oceans and clouds were in place so it seems was the thermostat for the evolution of complex life that Mars and Venus lacked.
Aside from Milankovitch cycles, which have been amazingly confirmed by data in the last century, we are still greatly in the dark as to what triggers what. There's no hard evidence that CO2 has been the driver in the past or that such warming as it's added since 1850 has been or is going to be the least bit dangerous, taken as a whole.
So we should use the current stall in GATA to show how predictions since 1988, especially of computer models but including the great Dr. Viner in 2000, have been way off course. But not (for my money) to bet on or even seem to be betting on any direction at all 2010-2050. We simply don't know.
PS, also to Mac, your timeline also omitted Global Cooling, which was a definite scare that made front pages in the 1970s, though it never I think became the stock phrase in common usage that Global Warming and Climate Change now have (to our great detriment).
Yes, Richard, your suggestion is more to the point. I had also considered 'Climate Cooption', 'Climate Hucksterism', 'Climate Exploitation'. But I think I prefer yours.
Climate Challenges sounds like a tv program with C list celebs marooned in extreme weather
Moonbat coined another one in an interview on Countryfile, "Future Climate Disruption".
Isn't climate "science" itself overdue for a rebrand? It is increasingly perceived as an oxymoron.
How about "geomancy"? It seems to be about right:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=define%3A+geomancy&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
This brainstorming is great. I was going suggest we come up with a Fantasy Climate game but it seems the Climate scientists have already beat us to it.
Scientifically Consensual Anthropogenic Threats? Then we could rename the more dubious climate scientists as SCATologists
So if i get sunburnt in future, does that mean that i'm "climactically challenged"?
I think Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara nailed it with;
"greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud"
(That was of course a comment on the theory, not to be confused with medals awarded or anything.)
After reading of the recent paper running a climate model out to the year 3000 (here and here), I can only describe this as
Meteorological
Extremism by
Rather
Dubious
Extrapolation.
Sorry for intruding on your area, Atomic.
Whatever happened to "Climate Chaos" ?
Jan 10, 2011 at 2:53 PM | Unregistered Commenter Len
The RSPB still use this - I saw it on one of their posters last week.
'Climate crap' is good but 'Climate Bollocks' will always be the one closest to my heart.
Only 27% of farmers believe in AGW? And they are the ones who actually have to live in the weather every day of their lives, and their livelihood depends on it. And 73% don't believe in AGW?
What more do you need to cause you to rethink, eh?
Climate bollocks. That gets my vote.
I think "Irritable Climate Syndrome" is really funny -
but, on balance, I think we're definitely dealing with:-
Climate
Related
Anthropogenic
Postulation
Yup - It's C R A P
Climate
Rubbish
And
Profit
Pestilence Proclamations
Predictioneering
Scientifically
Challenged
Heatwave and
Ice-age
Tracts
What? No 'Climate Karma'?
==============
Stuck-Record said...the peasants just won't believe in Hell. Maybe we should rebrand it?
It may have been at that moment a marketeer came up with purgatory and limbo, not very pleasant but a hell of a lot better than that other place.
Suspect
Claims
And
Modelling
I made a comment a few days ago saying I was waiting for a peice that linked the Aussie floods will Global Warming.
Well
"The extent to which any of this – the floods, warm oceans, or very strong La Niña – is linked to global warming is unknown, because the requisite studies to test this have simply not been done yet," said Nicholls.
But as a general point, said Prof Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, a warmer world is a wetter world. "As the average global temperature increases one would expect the moisture content of the atmosphere to rise, due to more evaporation from the sea surface.
Usual its weather but !!!!!!
What about the 3 cold NH winters than, is that weather or not !!!!!!!!!!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/11/australia-floods-la-nina
Rant over
Relax
I can't be the only one who thought so this:
Climate Climax....oooo...it's getting steamy in here...
I feel embarrassed just writing this. hahaha...
CLIMAGASM!
@Richard
'I think Climate Profiteering may be what you're looking for John.'
this the sad part Richard, there are real problems we can solve now, but the money goes to the above.
Quote from the Australian "Many primary producers expressed the view that human-induced climate change is yet to be proven and dismiss the idea that it is behind the climatic situations they currently face. Instead, they prefer to see it as yet another period of drought or change in conditions that will eventually pass."
The old cow-cockies are smarter than they look, and they have the pollies confused to boot, LOL.
As for nameing; I think Climate Porn was ever the best description.
Why not name it "natural climate variability?"
Forecasting it is damned hard.
In Australia, we've had dry conditions for some years in South-East Australia being followed by snow just before Christmas (well into summer) near Melbourne, then all-time record breaking floods at numerous towns along the East coast.
A current Bureau of Meteorology web page plaintively notes -
"The Bureau's national flood warning service is being enhanced to improve its accuracy and effectiveness. This will provide greater lead times for warnings and support more effective defence against flood damage."
Neville Nicholls, very senior in the BOM, is quoted above by Breath of fresh air ""The extent to which any of this – the floods, warm oceans, or very strong La Niña – is linked to global warming is unknown, because the requisite studies to test this have simply not been done yet," said Nicholls.
David Karoly, Ph.D. thesis “Stationary planetary waves in the atmosphere”, had a long interview on Aust national TV today 12 Jan 11, saying that the influence of La Nina was amplified by the abnormally high sea surface temperatures around Australia caused by global warming from man-made CO2 was causing more evaporation, so that when hot winds from the North-West crossed the coast from the continent they caused abnormally heavy rain inland .... I think I have that accurately.
David was a lead author for AR3 and AR4 of the IPCC. Forgive him, Father.