Bishop Hill Pointman on the infowars
Jun 7, 2013 Climate: Sceptics Greens Media Pointman has written another of his incisive analyses of the climate debate, this time looking at the failures of the alarmist public relations strategy.
On one side you had the alarmists, who had all the politicians in their pocket, a massive PR budget which was usually and still is replenished by governments grants, all the mainstream media including the crypto-state television channels like ABC, CBC, PBS and BBC, pretty much the whole of the journalistic establishment, all the activist prominenti of climate science, the EU, NASA, NOAA, BOM, EPA, IPCC, pretty much anything you can think of which has an acronym, the seamier side of the investment industry, every environmental organisation right down to the smallest fruit loop loony tune outfit, all the major science journals, presidents, prime ministers, the world, his brother, his sister, their dawg and even the frigging cat, never mind their bloody hamster.
On the other side you had us and we had, umm, well, as a matter of fact we’d bugger all beyond the wit to point out the teensy-weensy cracks, nay yawning crevasses, in the science, and in a political sense, sound the alarm bell about the sort of Armageddon the hysterical bandwagon was slouching towards.
Given that match up, the obvious question has to be – how the hell did they ever manage to lose and why are we doing so well, while their once soaring ambitions now lay in smoking ruins?
Reader Comments (68)
I would add Canada to states on our side. And the most important player, the Earth: the temperatures are not going up. The only reason the warmists got this far is because of their "adjustments". Lies, damned lies, and adjustments.
Jun 7, 2013 at 1:15 PM brumby,
"But when will the first windfarm be demolished?"
What was built with great fanfare will be torn down without "Main Stream Media" comment.
Take a look at the "Wreck of the Carizo" in the attached post. My bet is that 99% of the readers here never heard of it:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/05/15/solar-power-in-florida/
I put in an earlier post to the effect that Diogenes (June 7 11:43pm) is correct and Pointman is wrong (empty rhetoric) with this link
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/
saying that when large-circulation MSM outlets seriously discuss issues from the Spencer link and engineering issues connected with renewabubbles, I may commence to begin to start to wonder if "we" are winning ... perhaps next century
BH censored (redacted, modified, detained, arrested ...) this. Now why on earth could he possibly object to this, one wonders ?
Jamesp:
14,000!!!
14,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fourteen f-ing thousand!!!!!!
What monster have we created?!
Drag the AGWistas by the ears and take them to look at the desolation their dreams will lead us to.
Here is a similar article by Roger Pielke Jr. He says that they lost because no one cares about the science. It's called 'the deficit problem'. The science is essentially irrelevant.
Have the climate sceptics really won?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/political-science/2013/may/24/climate-sceptics-winning-science-policy
Pielke argues that it doesn't matter if the public believes in AGW, they will never pay for it. Neither will big business.
What do you prefer, coke or pepsi ? You say pepsi.
Are you prepared to pay 20% more for it. No, you really don't care about coke or pepsi whatever you answered. There have been no major public demonstrations of support for AGW. Despite truly massive propaganda from the corporate media like the BBC, Guardian, Telegraph, Times and Independent.
It is my view that Pielke is noticeably smarter than anyone else in this game. He has played his cards like a master. The Pointman articles are excellent too, but Pielke is playing against the big boys and winning.
And, I’ve just noticed the date – November 2011 – over 18 months ago! How many more have been added, since?!
In Britain, the AGW battle will continue because the European Trading System is still limping along. The EU decided not to prop it up and it has a precarious existence in the absence of similar systems elsewhere in the world.
In America, AGW is dead. Liberals are obliged to play lip service, but the reality is 'drill baby drill', possibly the biggest fossil fuel boom in history.
ianl8888 6.45am
No redaction, or censorship, etc. Your post of 1.29am had entered the spam filter and I do have to go to bed sometimes.
That is a very perceptive account. Although, in many respects, the tide of opinion is slowly turning it still has a far way to go especially in the UK. Here the reality is that the Climate Change Act and all its consequential regulations, institutions, subsidies and ROCs remain in place. It is said that a majority of the public still believe wind farms to be a good idea. The renewable gravy train continues to career down the track - egged on by the under reported speech by the PM earlier this year. The government`s Carbon Plan remains in place and is still appears to be used as the operational guide for some Ministers (such as Greg Barker and his advocacy of negawatts). A committed green in the person of Ed Davey is Sec of State at DECC. All this suggests to me that the CAGW movement remains in control of the "commanding heights" that determine the successful (as they see it) outcome of their cause.
It is already, of course, an economic disaster for the nation. It seems to me that arguments about the science (however sound) will count for less with the voting public than the realisation that these measures are taking bigger and bigger bites out of the family wallet. The default position for the politicians and the green movement will be, indeed is, to blame the energy companies. They are an easy target, not least because they are slow to defend themselves and are the recipients of the "guaranteed returns" so generously offered by the PM at our expense in that under reported speech.
As an aside, a new front has been opened up by the UN agencies and NGOs on food scarcity and food poverty. We have already seen the publication of a UN report advising us all to change our eating habits, which many nodding donkey MPs have already endorsed. The BBC has already run several story lines on the subject, including the virtues of adding grubs and insects to the menu. This morning on the BBC breakfast programme a lady running the IF campaign was inviting us all to "channel our anger" at big business for dispossessing farmers without compensation. It sounded like the development of a new propaganda front, another strand to the anti-globalisation campaign.
oldtimer
You are correct. The uniquely criminal and undemocratic Climate Change Act is still in place. However ..
‘GET-OUT CLAUSE’ WOULD LET MINISTERS SCRAP UNILATERAL EMISSIONS TARGETS
Date: 18/05/11
The Government has inserted a get-out clause in its climate change plan that will allow it to scrap a new emissions target within three years if other European countries fail to take similar action.
http://www.thegwpf.org/cables-victory-get-out-clause-would-let-ministers-scrap-unilateral-emissions-targets/
That's next year. I predict the targets will be scrapped.
Brilliant posting - made me laugh out loud (about the 'bloody hamster'...)
Seriously - we've got a long way to go yet - mainly because those who have access to being on the telly and in the papers just keep spouting the same old same old... However - chinks ARE appearing in the armour (to wit the letter from Tim Yeo to Deben). Not much but its a start...
I'm just glad to be on the side of righteousness...!
I'm afraid Pointman and commenters are utterly wrong.
The argument was convincingly and inexorably won years ago by the wrong side. Yes, the alarmists have had this sown up for ages and Pointman explains how in his piece.
Those who are able to might listen to BBC Radio 4's Any Questions program last night on iPlayer. The excellent scribe James Delingpole was hardly allowed to speak by the two lefties on the panel and the audience shouted him down (admittedly, there was a huge contingent of watermelons imported by the Beeb). Regrettably, although James writes well, he is totally unable to put his argument across cogently in person - the techniques are different: using "eco-loon" is fine in print (it's true!) but a short answer on the radio needs facts. Listen to the last 20 minutes or so, it is telling.
The simple fact is that the great unwashed believe the CAGW carp and there is no point in denying (sic) the fact.
diogenes,
Thank you guys in Europe for implementing Kyoto so vigorously that Floridians won't have to.
Florida has about 60% of the UK's electrical generating capacity. A few years ago FP&L started building huge solar plants. Fortunately, the capacity growth in their latest plan is from nuclear (<$0.03 per kWh) with zero new solar capacity:
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/electric-power-in-florida/
Opposing Views on Global Warming: The Corporate Climate Coup (how the oil companies support global warming)
by Prof. David F. Noble - York University, Toronto, Canada
The second -“positive”- campaign, which emerged a decade later, in the wake of Kyoto and at the height of the anti-globalization movement, sought to get out ahead of the environmental issue by affirming it only to hijack it and turn it to corporate advantage. Modelled on a century of corporate liberal cooptation of popular reform movements and regulatory regimes, it aimed to appropriate the issue in order to moderate its political implications, thereby rendering it compatible with corporate economic, geopolitical, and ideological interests. The corporate climate campaign thus emphasized the primacy of “market-based” solutions while insisting upon uniformity and predictability in mandated rules and regulations.
At the same time it hyped the global climate issue into an obsession, a totalistic preoccupation with which to divert attention from the radical challenges of the global-justice movement. In the wake of this campaign, any and all opponents of the “deniers” have been identified – and, most importantly, have wittingly or unwittingly identified themselves – with the corporate climate crusaders.
http://alturl.com/2oafi (Google scholar doc file)
- TRUE BELIEVERS are a small group, but with a hand on the wheel of the CLIMATE POLICY BUS, at BACK : 5 skeptics with a pole sometimes hit the BRAKE PEDAL.
- there are NOT 2 sides in the debate Everyone else realises there are lots of issues and lots of opinions, except for the TRUE BELIEVER CULT who think it is 2 side debate :"GOODIES vs DENIERS"
Imagine the Climate Policy Bus with 50 people on it, for simplicity lets say there are : 10 Politicians taking turns at driving, 10 journalists, 10 scientists, 5 climate scientists, 5 hippies, 10 plebs (members of the public)
20% of each category have become TRUE BELIEVERS, 20% of each category have become TRUE SKEPTICS
- The bus was going along the PROGRESS as USUAL ROAD, the excited naive TBSs shouted out "no, CATASTROPHE is down there , take this turning here through the TOLL GATE marked WAR on CO2"
- Then after a while there was another turning marked "GREEN FANTASY SOLUTIONS, Wind, Solar PV etc" ..TBs shout "YES, DOWN THERE DOWN THERE I KNOW THE WAY"..most of the politicians said "are you sure ?"
TBs "yes yes", they then the 2 journalists in their group push forward the 1 Climate Scientist and 2 General Scientists in their group "WE'VE GOT THE SCIENCE" they say .."1 of the climate scientists mumble "unsure , need more research" ..Finally "The 2 True Skeptic scientist says "something wrong here", the 2 TS journalist hears this & passes the message to the other True Skeptics "2 politicians, 2 general scientists, 1 hippy & 2 plebs).. hence the True Skeptic movement finally starts.
- Meanwhile the True Believers have run forward to the front of the bus close up to the politicians trying to get hands on the wheel.
- The insanely polite True Skeptics ummed & arred ..and have finally got hold of a pole which they are sometimes manage to tap on the brake pedal with..
TB's have Confirmation Bias on Their side, TSs have reality on their side... Poitiicans like reality don't they ?
Some other analogies Gulf War/ CO2 War, Dowsers KNOW it works, Climate Catastrophe Jehovah's Witnesses
1. The Trillion Dollar War on CO2 vs The War in Iraq - So the TBs are telling us that they have a dossier proving that Fossil Fuels are WMD and we need to destroy them
- The obvious question what have we got to show for it for all the $billions that we have spent so far ?
What would be the climate today if we had done nothing ? Do we have a limit on spending ?
2. - Should we base government policy on Dowsing ?
- just as dowsers over-extrapolate and are REALLY REALLY SURE "it works !" TBs also over extrapolate the science beyond the validated.. and are absolutely sure of things that are yet to be proved.. that "weather is more extreme", that the "North Pole, will always become free of ice"
Dowsing really works as long as the people know where the water is. If they don't as under proper blind trials, then results are the same as chance. (it's the idealamotor effect plus confirmation bias)
3. - The ClimateCatastrophe Jehovah's Witnesses - JWs really believe their religion, there are millions of them, but should we be basing government policy on the Watchtower ?
- Is there a difference wetween Climate True believers who over extrapolate the science and JWs ?
- You are walking down the street of life and the BBC & the Guardian, Oz ABC are always pushing the CLIMATE CATASTROPHE PORN WATCHTOWER in your face
From reading Pointman's comments : A good technique might be to set up :
"I became a Skeptic Because ... testimonial site, where explain how they saw the light.
- Of course the True Believer PR machine ..would try to Game this (remember the "Richard Muller used to be a skeptic" fabricated story)
brumby, fowle, hill et al:
Your points are well taken, and I agree that we're not actually winning. But AGW could well be the basis for their losing. In this instance, the bien pensants have 'gone a bridge too far' and set themselves against the natural world - amazingly, they imagine it will dance to their tune (or at least they're telling us that it will do this). That could bring the whole house down and them with it.
That's the 'beauty' of AGW. (And in a strange, awful way, it may be an appropriate means for us to enter the Space Age.)