This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
The Kardashians And Climate Change: Interview With Judith Curry
Submitted by James Stafford via Oilprice.com,
Climate change continues to drive energy policy, despite the fact that there is no way to reconcile eradicating energy poverty in much of the world with reducing carbon dioxide emissions. This is one of the many conundrums of the climate change debate—a debate that has been taken over by social media and propaganda, while scientists struggle to get back into the game and engage the public.
Judith Curry is an American climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as the co-author of over 140 scientific papers. Her prolific writings offer a rational view of the climate change debate. You can find more of Judith’s work at her blog: JudithCurry.com
In an exclusive interview with Oilprice.com, Curry discusses:
• The Koch-funded climate denial machine
• Why the public is losing trust in scientists
• How alarmist propaganda has skewed the climate debate
• How climate change has contributed to a new literary genre
• The impact of social media and the ‘Kardashian Factor’
• Climate and the ‘clash of values’
• Global warming or global cooling?
• The Polar Vortex and ‘global warming’
• Extreme weather hysteria
• Why climate change should not drive energy policy
Oilprice.com: You've talked a lot about the role of communication and public relations in the climate change debate. Where do scientists fail in this respect?
Judith Curry: Climate science communication hasn’t been very effective in my opinion. The dominant paradigm seems to be that a science knowledge deficit of the public and policy makers exists, which is exacerbated by the Koch-funded climate denial machine. This knowledge deficit then results in the public failing to act with the urgency that is urged by climate scientists.
This strategy hasn’t worked for a lot of reasons. The chief one that concerns me as a scientist is that strident advocacy and alarmism is causing the public to lose trust in scientists.
Oilprice.com: What is the balance between engagement with the public on this issue and propaganda?
Judith Curry: There are two growing trends in climate science communications – engagement and propaganda. Engagement involves listening and recognizes that communication is a two-way street. It involves collaboration between scientists, the public and policy makers, and recognizes that the public and policy makers don’t want to be told what to do by scientists. The other trend has been propaganda. The failure of the traditional model of climate science communication has resulted in more exaggeration and alarmism, appeals to authority, appeals to fear, appeals to prejudice, demonizing those that disagree, name-calling, oversimplification, etc.
There is a burgeoning field of social science research related to science communications. Hopefully this will spur more engagement and less propaganda.
Oilprice.com: You've also talked about the climate change debate creating a new literary genre. How is this 'Cli-Fi' phenomenon contributing to the intellectual level of the public debate and where do you see this going?
Judith Curry: I am very intrigued by Cli-Fi as a way to illuminate complex aspects of the climate debate. There are several sub-genres emerging in Cli-Fi – the dominant one seems to be dystopian (e.g. scorched earth). I am personally very interested in novels that involve climate scientists dealing with dilemmas, and also in how different cultures relate to nature and the climate. I think that Cli-Fi is a rich vein to be tapped for fictional writing.
Oilprice.com: How would you describe the current intellectual level of the climate change debate?
Judith Curry: Well, the climate change debate seems to be diversifying, as sociologists, philosophers, engineers and scientists from other fields enter the fray. There is a growing realization that the UNFCCC/IPCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change/Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has oversimplified both the problem and its solution. The wicked climate problem is growing increasingly wicked as more and more dimensions come into play. The diversification helps with the confirmation bias and ‘groupthink’ problem.
Hopefully this diversification will lead to greater understanding and policies that are more robust to the deep uncertainties surrounding the climate change problem.
Oilprice.com: You've also talked about the "Kardashian Factor" ... Can you expand on this?
Judith Curry: The Kardashian Factor relates to a scientist’s impact in social media. There is a growing disconnect between scientists who impact within the ivory tower, as measured by publications and citations, versus those scientists that are tweeting and blogging. While some of the smartest people on the planet are university professors, most of them simply don’t matter in today’s great debates. The use of the term ‘Kardashian Factor’ is designed to marginalize social media impact as shallow popularity.
Social media is changing the world, and academia hasn’t quite figured out what to do about it. On issues relevant to public debate, social media is rivaling published academic research in its impact. Social media is leveling the playing field and democratizing science. The skills required to be successful in social media include good writing/communication skills and the abilities to synthesize, integrate, and provide context. Those who are most successful at social media also have a sense of humor and can connect to broader cultural issues – they also develop a trustworthy persona. These are non-trivial skills, and they are general traits of people that have impact.
So, why do I do spend a lot of my time engaging with the public via social media? I’m interested in exploring social media as a tool for engaging with the public, group learning, exploring the science-policy interface, and pondering the many dimensions of the wicked climate problem. I would like to contribute to the public debate and support policy deliberations, I would like to educate a broader and larger group of people, and finally I would like to learn from people outside the group of my academic peers (and social media is a great way to network). I am trying to provoke people to think outside the box of their own comfort zone on the complex subject of climate change.
Oilprice.com: Does the current debate seem to lack 'layers' that get lost in the politics and socio-economics?
Judith Curry: The debate is polarized in a black-white yes-no sort of way, which is a consequence of oversimplifying the problem and its solution. Although you wouldn’t think so by listening to the Obama administration on the topic of climate change, the debate is becoming more complex and nuanced. Drivers for the growing number of layers in the climate debate are the implications of the 21st century hiatus in warming, the growing economic realities of attempting to transition away from fossil fuels, and a growing understanding of the clash of values involved.
Oilprice.com: How does the climate change debate differ, in your experience, in varying cultures; for instance, from the United States to Western Europe, or Canada?
Judith Curry: The U.S. is more skeptical of the idea of dangerous anthropogenic global warming than is Western Europe. In the U.S., skepticism is generally associated with conservatives/libertarians/Republicans, whereas in Western Europe there is no simple division along the lines of political parties. In the developed world, it is not unreasonable to think ahead 100 or even 300 years in terms of potential impacts of policies, whereas the developing world is more focused on short-term survivability and economic development.
Oilprice.com: How significant are cultural elements to this debate?
Judith Curry: The cultural elements of this debate are probably quite substantial, but arguably poorly understood. A key issue is regional vulnerability, which is a complex mix of natural resources, infrastructure, governance, institutions, social forces and cultural values.
Oilprice.com: Are we in a period of global warming or global cooling?
Judith Curry: The Earth’s surface temperature has been generally increasing since the end of the Little Ice Age, in the mid 19th century. Since then, the rate of warming has not been uniform – there was strong warming from 1910-1940 and 1975-2000. Since 1998, there have been periods exceeding a decade when there has been no statistically significant warming.
Continually increasing amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse act to warm the planet, so why hasn’t the surface temperature been increasing? This seems to be caused primarily by a change in the circulation patterns in the Pacific Ocean, although solar cooling is also contributing to an extent that is uncertain.
Oilprice.com: What is the 'polar vortex' and what does it have to do with global warming?
Judith Curry: The polar vortex is a circulation pattern in the upper atmosphere that influences surface weather. Ideas linking changes in the polar vortex to global warming are not supported by any evidence that I find convincing.
Oilprice.com: How does the media take advantage of every major -- or even semi-major -- weather event to make dire climate forecasts or support one or another polarized side of this debate? Can you give us some recent examples?
Judith Curry: The impact of extreme weather events in raising concern about global warming became apparent following Hurricane Katrina. The psychology of immediate and visible loss is far more salient than hypothetical problems in the next century. Hence extreme weather events have been effectively used in propaganda efforts. This is in spite of the assessment of the IPCC that doesn’t find much evidence linking extreme weather events to global warming, other than heat waves.
Oilprice.com: Where should energy fit into the climate change debate, and how much of a concern to the climate is the energy resources drive? Does anyone really know?
Judith Curry: It has never made sense to me for climate change to be the primary driver for energy policy. Even if we believe the climate models, nothing that we do in terms of emissions reductions will have much of an impact on climate until the late 21st century. Energy poverty is a huge issue in much of the world, and there is no obvious way to reconcile reducing CO2 emissions with eradicating energy poverty. Again, this conundrum is evidence of the wickedness of the climate change problem.
Oilprice.com: You can see our first interview with Judith here: The IPCC May Have Outlived its Usefulness - An Interview with Judith Curry
»
- 5837 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Well fucking said.
Yeah but you're going to miss our coastal cities when they're gone.
On the bright side, if any of the really bad-ass non-linear, out-of-control escalation scenarios happen, he won't miss them for long.
Exactly. I'm really rooting for that. I want to see Florida under 8 feet of water. I'd drive out there just for that.
You'll be gone before they are, even in the worst scenario.
Question is, do you care about future generations?
Do you have kids?
If you care about where you live, you have to care about the planet. Simple.
Unless you have another handy planet to move to, that is.
I have kids.
I live in a small house, use hardly any electricity, have a garden for a back yard, and I ride a bicycle to work.
It's not much, won't save them any pain, but it's what I can do so I do it.
We have a lot in common.
Wish I had a back yard, though. I live in an apartment, but there's only room for one on my balcony, due to tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs.
I cycle 365 - average about 100 - 120 miles a week. Coldest I rode in last winter was -42ºC.
Had to lay off for a couple of weeks recently due to mis-judging a trail bend and breaking a couple of ribs!
60 next year, hope to be riding trails at 70.
I have kids, and I hope they don't spend thier entire lives working to enrich Al Gore's kids over some feel-good excuse.
oh cripes stfuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu I think I just popped an eyeball rolling them so hard...coastal cities all underwater...
the asteroid will arrive some day, but until then, the coastal cities will be just fine, even though some halfassed models said they'll be buried under 50 feet of water.
Fashionistas rule , OK
So, it is okay to point the finger at the moneyed interests against the climate change political agenda? Where are the names of the people funding the agenda? Soros? Maurice Strong? Rothschild? Rockefeller?
Let's get all the players on the board.
"climate change political agenda"
What are you talking about exactly?
Are you actually denying that politicians are heavily involved in this issue from the White House to Copenhagen to Kyoto to the UN, perhaps even driving it?
At stake in perhaps trillions in additional taxes, heavy regulations, and the financialization of carbon. Not to mention forcing the will of the American-led developed world on the rest of the planet by fiat. World conquest by "the science is settled."
Politics is driving what exactly? What issue are you meaning?
I have no idea at all where you are coming from with all this.
The money craving psychopaths running the place are driving this, and everything else, because they've managed to fool or buy off enough people to keep it going.
I hope to be aroundlong enough to see the end of it.
I really hope to see the end of the carbon dioxide scam also
Politics is driving what exactly? What issue are you meaning?
I have no idea at all where you are coming from with all this.
-----------------------
I think you missed the /s....lol....were you truly serious about that?
Were it not for potential tax revenue, do you really, honestly think politicians would be in the least bit concerned about some models with extremely finely tuned parameters? (not to mention gaping swiss cheese holes...)
Take away that tax potential and forget it, we woouldnt have had 1/50th of the attention paid to this non issue.
I'm all for environmental causes. Real ones. Not imaginary ones conjured up out of poor assumption, bad math, depraved levels of frankenstein stats...
The quaint notion that there is a fair likelihood that a bunch of elitist globalist fat cats will make a shitload of money forcing the Muppets to jump through a bunch of junk science scam gummint hoops.
If you like your climate, You can keep it
Denied.
I've been following weather for at least 15 years..read plenty in that time. My conclusion is that if history serves us a guide to the future, we are fucked in sooner or later and the ice sheets will return. Glaciation seems to be a common theme in the past, i doubt another ice age or 100 will occur before the sun burns out taking Earth with it in another 5 billion years. In the end the fossil fuel age will be but a blip in the history of man (If we make it)... better master breeder reactors and be able to harvest He from the moon...or we'll be back to burning wood and walking in 100-500 years (or less).
I do believe humans will burn it all before its all said and done....the gas, the oil, the coal, and then we might take out a bunch of woodlands... we already burn half our corn. Solar/wind might slow the process. Nuclear is a wild card, but a scary one (see Fukishima).
Good luck humans. I've got ugly news for my kids when they mature enough! Oh..a.n speaking of that...this planet needs to she about 5 billion people. (yes...i should do myself a favor and drive into oncoming traffic)...
Judith Curry is a ClimateGate denier!
you can tell that TPTB are in on the AGW scam, because if there was a shred of credibility to the whole setup, climategate would have been a huge fucking deal.
instead we get people bitching about who broke into the servers, quick delete my emails, no, what I said didnt mean what those words all lined up and apppeared to mean!!!
FFS....the whitewash was absolutely pathetic.
Let me dust off my "Save the Humans" T-Shirt!
I say GODDAMN! There are a lot of climate experts on ZeroHedge tonight!
Damn right! Great to finally be on a forum where so many can say with such certainty what's going to happen and why! It's about fucking time we got some expert opinion on the matter.
Yeah but now I'm going home. Don't decide anything important while I out, 'kay?
It's all "Cli-Fi.
Climate on earth is because of that thing that makes up 99% of all matter in the solar system--the sun.
We are headed into an iceage at this time based on the suns cycles. CO2 has no relationship to atmospheric temperatures. It has risen off of the charts in the last hundered years and yet the earth has cooled.for the last 20.
When ya' getchur news for Ronan Farrow, nothing else matters.
I have not heard a single convincing argument why global warming is BAD.
Everyone says it's bad and should be avoided, but I am convinced global warming is good for the planet.
So even debating whether global warming is caused by natural cycles or by the intensive burning of fossil fuels is irrelevant, because GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD.
Everyone acts as if climate was in static equilibrium before fossil fuels. But it's a fact that climate is always changing and in a state of flux between different equilibriums (like market prices).
Think about how many people die because of ice on the roads, how many people freeze to death, and how much farm land is frozen in tundra and taiga.
I guess you came up with your name based on your intellect.
Yup - the IQ of a potato.
I guess you came up with your opinion on AGW based on your level of indoctrination...
Humans blamed for climate change?
At the present time, the main dialectical debate in my mind is the bigger picture about climate change, (that is NOT an obvious issue, that yields clear results when researched deeper) which I could currently summarize as my attempts to guess which one of the following views will turn out to be more correct:
Guy McPherson versus Ben Davidson
http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/climate-change-summary-and-update/
versus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PDC5s3VD7I&list=PLHSoxioQtwZcqdt3LK6d66tMreI4gqIC-
The deeper problems are the PARADOXICAL results of the development of human intelligence, as the internalization of natural selection, in the context where other human groups were usually the greatest threat to survival, above and beyond all other natural factors. After human being evolved enough intelligence to become the top carnivores, their worst enemies became other groups of human beings. That drove the history of warfare, in which success was based on backing up deceits with destruction, which then became the foundation for political economy based on enforced frauds. THAT is the real context in which the theoretical issues regarding climate change, and the degree to which human activities have driven that climate change, are "debated."
The tragic irony ends up that it barely matters in any practical way whatever the "truth" might be regarding climate change (except in the longer term, which makes barely any difference now, until that actually manifests.) Since the real world is controlled by lies backed by violence, the "truth" about things will not matter all that much, because human civilization will continue to be controlled by systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence.
The PARADOXES with respect to attempting to understand how human energy systems fit into natural energy systems raises the basic questions about how human energy systems actually work, which is that they operate according to the methods and principles of organized crime, with the history of warfare being organized crime on larger and larger scales, creating the countries which sovereign powers, which had the powers captured by the best organized gangsters, the banksters.
Inside of that that context, the "truth" about climate change barely matters, (except in the longer term, by which time it will be too late to respond to.) Our society is already terminally screwed up, sick and insane, due to the ways that it is controlled by lies backed by violence, which constantly amplified the situation that the violence can never make those lies become true, but nevertheless, effectively continued to work to develop systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which drive runaway social polarization and destruction of the natural world.
By and large, the mainstream morons and reactionary revolutionaries who try to promote the notions that "climate science" should be respected remind me of the silly superficial notions of people who argue that drug law policies should be based on rational evidence. HAH! What those kinds of people typically refuse to do is take a more scientific view of that nature of governments themselves. Attempts for better climate science to promote changes in human attitudes vis à vis climate change, mostly tend to deliberately ignore the basic social facts that governments are the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals. Furthermore, that situation developed due to the real ways that civilizations operate as general energy systems.
The GREAT IRONY of human intelligence is that it was the internalization of natural selection, into cultural forms of artificial selection, which tends to deal with the most serious factor, namely the threat to survival of some groups of human beings by other groups of human beings. That ended up producing the kind of social pyramid system civilization that we are living in at the present time, whereby things are controlled by the maximum possible deceits and frauds. Inside of that context, for human beings to come to terms with relatively more objective facts regarding the natural environment ends up totally entangled within the ways that the cultural artificial selection systems have primarily developed the abilities of some groups of human beings to control others by being dishonest, and backing that up with violence.
The ironies raised by issues of human caused climate change are that "climate science" tends to continue to be grossly unscientific when it comes to social sciences, because social sciences are based on the biggest bullies' bullshit, which dominated everything in the combined money/murder systems, as well as also seriously perverted, and actually inverted, the development of the history of the philosophy of science itself. Since the oldest and best developed social science was warfare, whose success was based on backing up deceits with destruction, and that became the foundation for a political economy whose success was based on enforced frauds, there is a serious disjunction between relatively objective natural sciences versus human sciences. The issue of whether or not human beings are causing the Earth's climate to change, and what to do about that, tend to be dismal! Indeed, economics is a dismal science, ecology is a doubly dismal, while the combination of economics with ecology is dismal cubed.
At the present time I believe that human beings do NOT understand the basic science about the Solar System enough to be confident about climate change. However, I am SURE that human society is controlled by lies backed by violence, in which context more "truth" about human beings driving climate change is NOT going to make any rational responses collectively emerge out of that sort of civilization, which is almost totally dominated by systems of enforced frauds.
Personally, I enjoy attempting to better understand what is happening in both the human and natural world. I greatly admire the scientific methods, and efforts to seek out rational evidence and logical arguments. However, the most important conclusions that flow from doing that are the obvious discoveries that our civilization is so totally based on systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, that the human responses to discovering more objective truth about climate change are practically guaranteed to become another aspect of the approaching times of PEAK INSANITIES.
The basic problem is the relationship between natural selection and artificial selection. Since the current systems of artificial selection were developed by the history of warfare whose success was based on deceits, which then became the foundation for an economic system whose success was based on frauds, wherein the primary applications of science and technology actually became ways that some human beings could become even more successfully dishonest and violent towards other human beings (while, of course, those social facts are deliberately ignored and denied), the resulting effects of irreconcilable social polarization are being trumped by irreparable destruction of the natural world.
However, since everyone is relatively successful within the human world by operating their own systems of organized lies and robberies, and so, relatively successful within that human world by participating in the overall social pyramid systems run by professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, the efforts that some human beings are making towards appreciating the factors of natural selection that are impinging upon us (such as climate change, and especially the degree to which there is human driven climate change) have to work through that sort of social pyramid civilization system, which is based on the maximum possible deceits and frauds, which of course, continue to deliberately ignore and deny those basic facts.
The great challenge that the human species faces is whether we can find any ways for our relative successes at internalizing natural selection into the form of human intelligence may come to better terms with the chronic political problems inherent in the nature of life, which drove some human beings to become the worst enemies of other human beings. The paradoxical ways that social sciences emerged in the context of warfare and economics, whereby systems of organized lies operating robberies were rationalized and justified by the biggest bullies' bullshit social stories, become more and more intense, the larger their Grand Canyon Contradictions develop.
Attempting to bridge the gap between natural selection and artificial selection is what climate science in the political context is trying to do. By and large, the vast majority of climate scientists have been profoundly naive about that issue. Indeed, almost all scientists tend to suffer from socialized tunnel vision. Most scientist are mainstream morons, or reactionary revolutionaries, who are attempting to argue for more rational evidence and logical arguments regarding their particular area of expertise, while they overall continue to deliberately ignore, or deny, what happens IF one does that with respect to understanding human civilization itself as an energy system.
In the end, militarism is the supreme ideology, despite that being the most extremely paradoxical ideology, because that ideology of the human murder system was based on the history of success through backing up deceits with destruction, and that success itself selected for those systems to end up surrounded by other kinds of religions and ideologies, which were forms of controlled opposition, that were co-opted and compromised to continue to operate within the same frame of reference as the biggest bullies, and their bullshit world view, which, of course, also had profound historical effects upon the history of the philosophy of science itself!
Basically, any realistic human response to climate change is going to end up primarily becoming changes in the artificial selection systems, which are preeminently changes in the death controls, with the ways that the human murder systems operate becoming the most obvious manifestation of that. Since the death controls back up the debt controls, while the debt controls direct the development of the economy, actually responding to real climate changes mostly will involve those factors.
However, that predicament then returns to the GRAND PARADOXES with respect to the relationship between natural selection and artificial selection. The way that climate changes, and especially human driven climate changes, are politically responded to will happen within the basic social pyramid systems, where there are the ruling classes, and those they rule over, who metaphorically act like Vicious Wolves and Zombie Sheeple. In my opinion, the ONLY apparent ways that the ruling classes have prepared for the natural disasters and limits to natural resources, which are becoming more obviously important all the time, at an apparently exponentially accelerating rate, are to prepare to start more genocidal wars, as well as prepare to impose democidal martial law.
Given that the vast majority of people act like political idiots, or Zombie Sheeple, there appears to be no other practically possible political ways to respond to the issues of intensified natural selection, because our basic society operates its artificial selection systems through the maximum possible deceits, and frauds, towards which facts our society attempts to maintain its extreme degree of evil deliberate ignorance. Inside of the ALREADY established global civilization, it is practically impossible to better bridge the growing gap between natural selection factors and artificial selection factors. Instead, we are watching the runaway contradictions there get crazier and crazier, as manifested by the ways that it is practically impossible to have any kind of rational public debates about climate change, despite the degree to which that would be a supremely important issue for everyone!
Put down the bong.
I already did, "put down the bong," quite a few years ago. Then I started using a vapourizer machine. However, mostly these days, I no longer consume cannabis at all. I find that I no longer can enjoy getting high, like I could when I was younger, because I now do not have the slightest shred of idealistic optimism left.
Your ad hominem attack, butchtrucks, just reinforces my view that the vast majority of human beings are acting like evil idiots, which are headed towards their own mass destruction, unless there was some prodigious series of technological miracles, and even greater political miracles. Meanwhile, I will admit that I reluctantly understand the people who are able to dismiss the evidence that human activities are killing the planet, since then they are more able to indulge in continuing to do that. However, suppose it turns out to have been that the view expressed by Guy McPherson (as linked above) was correct, especially in a slightly longer term, of several more decades? Then, we are driving ourselves, or rather our children, towards our a serious bottleneck after severe die-off, or even extinction, due to the ways that we developed the industrial revolution.
So far, I have not seen any good reasons to doubt that the future will probably be even worse than these two charts indicate:
http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/shape-of-typical-secul...
http://www.marijuanaparty.ca/IMG/png/limits-to-growth-forecast.png
Meanwhile, sarcastic stereotypical comments, like that made by butchtrucks, which are in fact false, merely emphasize the main point that I made in my comment above, which is that it is practically impossible for enough human beings to cooperate enough to change to prevent causing their own mad self-destruction, especially since those who most are enjoying doing the things that will cause that mad destruction are also the ones most able to rationalize and continue to justify themselves doing that!
http://doomfordummies.blogspot.co.at/2014/07/blog-post.html
The Apocalypsi Library at the End of the World
Dave Pollard's review of the two writers:
Jared Diamond, Collapse...
and
Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress
http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2005/03/23/
"While Diamond suggests the errors of excess and foolishness that led to previous collapses were unwitting, and well-intentioned, Wright describes human society-building as steeped in violence, genocide and savagery, and demonstrates that evolutionary success of human cultures has been proportional to their readiness and willingness to exterminate or subjugate ‘competitors’ (plants, animals, other human cultures and members of their own culture) with deliberate, zealous and ruthless barbarity. The consequence is that human evolution has self-selected for savagery and bred compassion out of the gene pool, and has consistently provided the most ruthless members of our society (psychopaths, megalomaniacs, war-mongers and power-crazies) the method, the motive and the opportunity to seize control and establish rigid and vicious hierarchies that entrench and reinforce extreme inequality, hold power by the threat of violence (sacrificing subordinates in wars and in prisons to keep others in line) and anchoring their authority by claims of divine right."
OMFG!!!! An ad hominem attack!!! The noive ah dat guy!!!!!!!!
I like your posts....and appreciate the context of tangent. but given that I've gone on many a similar tangent over the years, I can also appreciate the put down the bong comment :D
radical, you know me i've commented on your pieces before.
you have a good outlook. but you write too long. when someone writes 'put down the bong' it's because they were too lazy to read what you wrote.
what they see is your name "marijuana" and then they see a rambling onslaught of words , a long post, a very long post, without desiring to read it.
the dynamics of posting and reading are such that when someone sees a very long post , IF THEY ARE LAZY OR BUSY THEY WILL SKIP IT, if they read some of it and had a hard time reading it, they will assume it is a ramble and skip the rest.
youre ideas are good, but you , like me, write too much and too lengthy. a lot of the great writers talk about the hardest part of writing being editing and cutting. the best writers do that part in their head before they put the sentence down on paper.
your accusation of an ad hominem is silly because
1) the assumption he made about a bong is based on your name
2) in this case it happens to be false because you stopped smoking, but the truth of the issue is not the issue here. it is the truth of the manner in which he intended his words to be understood that is the issue
3) the stereotype about people on marijuana having a tendency to ramble exists because it is a general result of doing marijuana same as speaking fast is a general result of doing cocaine
4) you did in fact write a hell of a long posting and much of it was difficult to read through, much of it a ramble.
5) the point he is making by telling you to put down the bong is that he wants your to write more cohesively and shorter.
that is not an adhominem, that is a fairly direct criticism of your communication style. i'm only writing this extended response because i like many of your ideas, but i wished you wrote in a more condensed style. i too skip many of the paragraphs of your postings because they are simply to long or too rambling. i only usually comment to write something postiive and i've only written to you a few times.
that said, i'd probably write more if you condensed your writing style, but then----we all ramble a lot here on zh. it's more for ourselves to get our thoughts out than anything else a lot of the time.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, teslaberry. You were probably correct.
"it's more for ourselves to get our thoughts out than anything else"
That is the ONLY reason why I bother posting comments. The relationship between human beings and climate change is one of the most important examples where more "truth" makes no practical difference to how people actually will continue to behave. Rather, the "science" itself has been so distorted by the ways that its funding has been dominated that it is not reliable. While the "solutions" proposed by the ruling classes appear to almost totally have evil ulterior purposes, which will backfire badly.
Human civilization today is dominated by the triumph of backing up lies with violence, over any more relatively objective truths, by a factor of at least 100 to 1. In that context, I enjoy attempting to understand the world, and I write as a tool to help to do that. HOWEVER, I AM CONVINCED THAT WILL MAKE NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE, WHICH IS WHY WRITING MORE CONCISELY WOULD ALSO MAKE NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE.
Without stating it directly, Curry alludes to the age-old phenomenon that "authorities" and "experts" who persistenly prove themselves untrustworthy by banging their drums for apocalyptic consequences if mankind doesn't change it's ways (to suit them) will also become steadily distrusted by the general public when forecast disasters fail to materialize as promoted. There are good reasons why people ignore the figure on the street corner tiredly waving a sign saying "The End is Near!"
Curry is one of the few climate scientists with unempeachable bona fides as a former department chair of a major university, author, and solid contributor to the field who has steadfastly refused to join the chanting chorus of noisy pleaders for policy "solutions" mandating immediate massive government (of course) action to address a problem defined far more by manic, delusional fear than compelling hard evidence.
"Scientists" who clandestinely manipulate and refuse to release both data and methods of analysis but expect their godlike "findings" to be accepted without independent validation are blatantly anti-science and dangerously anti-scientific. In at least one case, the original data was manipulated for an end purpose and that original data was then conveniently "lost", which means there's no way to judge what effect the manipulation had on the data used to produce the claimed "result".
You simply cannot make this stuff up.
Given their publicly revealed private agenda and abject failure to meet the most basic professional standards, it's a wonder this branch of "science" allows some key figures to retain their seats of privilege in academia. Fortunately for them, the modern university is little more than a giant cash-flow machine where money production measures institutional "excellence". Penn State inevitably comes to mind, of course.
Climate "change" has been an ideal hobby horse for grant-seeking adventurism by individuals and institutions handsomely profiting from their scare-mongering thesis which these few key figures agreed to in advance (see their private emails) in order to agreeably advance their academic standing and enhance their personal living standards by claims made on public finance.
It is no small irony that a railroad engineer was appointed to direct an international organization answerable to no one but politicians which has no other purpose than to railroad the global public into believing terrible consequences are virtually certain unless swift and certain "action" is imposed by governments, regardless of cost. That cost is to be borne by the public, of course, and not by snake oil vendors who personally profit from selling this "cure".
There is no other test of a scientific theory but its power to accurately predict. And as many established scientists in various fields have pointed out, a scientific theory need fail only once to be falsified:
The flip side is that a scientific proposition which is not stated in terms which allow it to be falsified is just another superstition. It isn't "science" merely because it's believed by some (or even all) scientists. There are some people who say breaking a mirror delivers 7 years (undefined) "bad luck". Because this belief cannot be positively disproven doesn't mean the believers' superstition is vindicated. It only means they publicly admit to being superstitious.
+ love that Feynman quote
It's just those evil humans as the planet has NEVER gone through natural climate changes in its BILLIONS of years of existence. They ke is to look at records over the last 100-125 years and assume that any changes MUST be because of people and could NEVER just be a natural thing. 125 years is a great representation of billions. I recall reading a couple years ago some climate scientist say that despite the propaganda hoopla of this big bad warming that we live in a period that is most likely generally cool compared to the average for the planet's existence.
How people can believe this garbage is beyond me yet people believed in witches back in the middle ages so I guess I can't say I'm surprised and I firmly believe that if humans are around in a few hundred years that people then will look back at this climate change/global warming crap and wonder how anyone actually believed humans were responsible and could control the climate.
I have no doubt the acts of humans do factor in somewhat (as do other things like volcanoes which magically get ignored it seems by the climate fear mongers) but to act like they control everything smacks of thinking the species is more important than it is. It's just a great sign of the hubris of humanity and if the sun ends up torching this planet or possibly burning out I am sure humans will say they were responsible for that. Note that I am a misanthrope so I'd be naturally inclined to blame humanity for anything that is "wrong" in the world but in this case I simply see any climate change being a natural thing.
I also chuckle when people talk about the "science" because of something they readin a magazine or at a science website and figure it MUST be true because hey, scientists are infallible and none of them EVER have an agenda. There is a lot of stuff "science" says that ends up being wrong or inaccurate. The blind faith people have in whatever supposed scientists tell them is as bad as the blind faith religious people have in their beliefs. This is especially true when these supposed unbiased and infallible scientists are shown to have agendas and hide and make up data like many of the climate fear mongers have been shown to do.
Oh and the whole AGW jazz isn't a fully accepted thing among scientists so one can't even act like it is universally accepted and anyone who doesn't believe in it is just some unedcuated kook.
Judith "The wickedness of the Climate Change problem."
Its not wicked and its not a problem. Its just climate.
tell me that "Trees cause Pollution" and youre like to get a kife in the back
hey cli-fi fans..... tell us how you intend to stop the methane plumes in the atlantic.... methane is a "greenhouse gas" ...
also advise on stopping volcanoes and underwater eruptions.... besides ITS THE SUN THAT CONTROLS OUR CLIMATE VIA THE HEATING OF THE OCEANS AND OCEAN CURRENTS... gore and crew - go fuck your stupid selves....
Love how the british "royal " family is on the gloabl warming bandwagon...this inbred foul looking and acting cretin crew are in it with politicians as the latest way to fleece the sheeple....and enrich themselvese.... those who worship at the climate change altar deserve the financial sodomy they bring upon themselves....