Bishop Hill Flatten the Earth Society
Jun 26, 2013 Climate: WG3 Environmentalists' efforts to seek out a neo-medieval future for society continue apace, with public-funded civil servants at the forefront. The Tyndall Centre - a kind of Opus Dei for the green movement - have announced a conference to brainstorm just how this future could be brought into being. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's being held at The Royal Society.
The Climate Change Context
With large-scale impacts of climate change becoming discernable from the background of natural variability, so concern is rising over the global community’s failure to control emissions. The International Energy Agency (IEA) captures this pivotal moment in history, when noting that "The current state of affairs is unacceptable … energy-related CO2 emissions are at historic highs”[i] and emission trends are “perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius, which would have devastating consequences for the planet”[ii]. In similar vein PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC)[iii], the UK Government chief scientist[iv] and a growing body of academics and researchers are allying current emission trends with 4°C to 6°C futures.
Why Radical Mitigation (i.e. emission reductions)?
Today, in 2013, we face an unavoidably radical future. We either continue with rising emissions and reap the radical repercussions of severe climate change, or we acknowledge that we have a choice and pursue radical emission reductions: No longer is there a non-radical option. Moreover, low-carbon supply technologies cannot deliver the necessary rate of emission reductions – they need to be complemented with rapid, deep and early reductions in energy consumption – the rationale for this conference.
Details here.
Reader Comments (68)
Lovely phrasing..........................as to Rudd is better than Joolya - yes I know what you mean.
Thank you Foxgoose,
Lizard Queens are already among us - Cynthia Bower, Joyce Thacker, Mad Hattie Harperson and Suzi Leather to name but a nest....................Plus, if we're not doomed now, expertly and with impatient haste the lizard aliens are guiding us down to a their Utopian green nirvana......and for us, a tangible Dantean journey on earth.
It is a sad sort of spectacle to watch the word choices and the word deconstruction of the AGW fanatics.
If they were not becoming more corrupt and powerful, it would be laughable spectacle. Instead it is the kind of spectacle of watching a pack of jackals giong after some young helpless creature.
The have latched onto "warming" and made that somehow ominous. "Change" and made it into something that has never happened before. CO2 at atmospheric levels into a deadly threat. And now normal weather has become 'weird'.
And of course those of us, no matter the education or experience, who question the official consensus, are now members of some sort of 'flat earth society'.
The AGW obsession is corroding everything to do with rational thought and honesty in its fanatic believers.
@James Evans Jun 26, 2013 at 5:53 PM
'Is it normal for the Royal Society to be used as a venue for political gatherings? The question of what to do about climate change is obviously not a scientific one. It's a question of policy. So why is is being held at the Royal Society?'
According to wikipedia (although accepting it should only be used with caution) 'The Society today acts as a scientific advisor to the British government, receiving a parliamentary grant-in-aid....Through its Science Policy Centre, the Society acts as an advisor to the European Commission and the United Nations on matters of science. It publishes several reports a year, and serves as the Academy of Sciences of the United Kingdom.] Since the middle of the 18th century, government problems involving science were irregularly referred to the Society, and by 1800 it was done regularly. The Society now formally acts as Her Majesty Government's chief scientific advisor'
It is very much concerned with lobbying for policy, and paid a handsome grant so to do.
This is just navel-gazing: a bunch of people who's personal carbon footprints are probably among the highest in the country get together to discuss how we can all "radically" reduce energy use: well, not holding nonsense conferences would be a good start.
Yes Turning Tide, by 'we' they mean 'you plebs'.
Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd. Thrice and once, the hedge-pig whin'd. Harpier cries:—'tis time! 'tis time! Round about the cauldron go: In the poisoned entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one Sweated venom sleeping got, Boil thou first in the charmed pot.
Double,double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blindworm's sting, Lizard's leg and howlet's wing.
For charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double,double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blindworm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing.
For charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good
;-)
what planet are these people living on?
Jun 26, 2013 at 10:23 AM | Mike Jackson
The one with 75% of Arctic ice volume gone since 1979, with glaciers and the Antarctic icecap melting and the northern jetstream tying itself in knots; with droughts in the USA and floods in Canada , India and Pakistan; with temperatures holding at the highest levels since records began and the highest global average temperature measured in 2010.
Let's consider some facts. Is the Arctic warming? Yes, like everywhere else, with a long-term trend for 500 years rising out of the Little Ice Age at the rate of about half a degree per century, due to turn to cooling at least within 200 years. But is there a hockey stick? No.
http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/2865/xkbx.jpg
In fact the Arctic is no hotter than it was in the late 1930's and early 1940's.
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/5030/pso0.jpg
Is there a super-imposed 60 year natural cycle that caused all the alarm during the 30 years of rising prior to 1998? Yes.
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/2496/otc3.png
But it's all natural - every bit of it. And it's nothing whatsoever to do with carbon dioxide, radiative forcing, back radiation, greenhouse effects or any such travesties of physics.
Peter Crawford? Well he writes like a Quare.
Is he on television? Hang on I'll ask Bunny.
I'll put him down as probably a Quare.
(Great video Peter, not seen that before, thanks.)
@EM
Yeah yeah yeah ... so what?
I'm getting *really* hacked off with your lot.
The climate has *always* changed. How will the squillions you advocate throwing away change that in *any* way?
Not one iota, and it's absolute arrogance to claim otherwise.
Folks, for a few bob EM can affect the Arctic melt / re-freeze cycle.
Utter bollocks.
I don't think that the change of PM in Oz should be taken as good news. The freshly recycled PM, Rudd infamously pronounced previously that Climate Change - or was it was Warming - was the greatest moral and economic problem of our time. A lot of people believed him and some still do. Our Opposition is committed to an alternative CO2 reduction plan although I believe many supporters of all major parties have serious doubts about the "dangerous" claim of global warming - if it happens. The Greens attract about 10% in the polls; are of course rusted on believers in the science is settled. The are a mixture of original environmentalists and former communists. Cheers from damp and chilly Sydney.
"...perfectly in line with... 6 degrees Celcius"
Okay, check my math(s). At an equilibrium climate sensitivity of 2.0 degrees C, that would imply 3 doubling from the current 400 ppm. So they're saying the (forecast/projection/whatever) is 3200 ppm?
What's the forecast timeframe?
Okay, 2.5 doublings. Still...
No, 3 doublings is right. Stupid beer.
Why invoke the dangerous radicals of Opus Dei when some of your brethren are still fighting the good fight to keep the Earth where it belongs, in the middle of the universe?
Excellent. Let's send a delegation. Best behaviour, no interruptions, just some pointy questions when they are invited. Perhaps some leaflets to explain some of the logical fallacies, and some face-to-face engagement at break times to dispel the myth that we are a bunch of anti-scientific loons. Any other takers?
PS I submitted a response to the EU consultation on the 2015 climate agreement; a bit rough around the edges but you can find it here. I'd welcome any feedback; I see this as a step towards honing my arguments.
"With large-scale impacts of climate change becoming discernable from the background of natural variability"
If this was written in 2013, as it appears, then either it was April 1st or these people are truly, deeply, quite astonishingly deluded.
Does anybody, anywhere, take them seriously?
I do object this overuse of the word "radical".