The mental illness of alarmism – climate depression, climate change delusion

Who would have guessed? A relentless propaganda campaign to generate fear about the climate has generated fear about the climate. It takes billions of dollars to generate delusion on this scale.

After hopes for government-run-climates were dashed in Copenhagen, the price of setting up a fantasy came back to haunt the team.  The fallout was psychological pain. The failure of Copenhagen was a savage set-back for the scare campaign in so many ways. Only now, years later, do we hear just how bad the repercussions were.

The answer to “climate fear” is, of course, to look at data skeptically, and to stay logical. But instead, the big-government-NGO machine diverts more money down the deep well of unreason. Now there are research papers analyzing “The Debilitating Disease of Climate Alarmism”, and counselors are (presumably) paid to counsel people on how to be afraid, but not overly so.

What’s the difference between this and a cult? A 17 year old was hospitalized with dehydration because he believed if he didn’t drink water it would help prevent a water shortage. A PhD grad says ““Every time I talked about environmental issues, I would start crying”.

Meanwhile the sensible types quietly leave, and the maddies press on. Shame about the collateral damage.

A climate of despair

August 13, 2014, The Age

Nicole Thornton remembers the exact moment her curious case of depression became too real to ignore. It was five years ago and the environmental scientist – a trained biologist and ecologist – was writing a rather dry PhD on responsible household water use.

The United Nations was about to hold its 2009 climate change conference in Copenhagen, and Thornton felt she had a personal investment in it. She, like many thousands of activists and scientists and green campaigners, had high hopes that a new and robust version of the Kyoto agreement would be created in Denmark.“But the reality was a massive, epic failure of political will. It broke me,” she says. “The trigger point was actually watching grown men cry. They were senior diplomats from small islands, begging larger countries to take action so that their nations would not drown with the rising seas.”

Thornton pauses,  takes a breath. “It still gets me, five years later. That’s when I lost hope that we were able to save ourselves from self-destruction. That’s when I lost hope that we would survive as a species. It made me more susceptible to what I call ‘climate depression’.”

If the term “climate depression” is new to you, it should be. No such condition is recognised by the world of psychiatry. There is no formalised syndrome.

Yet no matter what the nomenclature (some refer to the problem as “ecoanxiety”, while others talk about “doomer depression” and “apocalypse fatigue”), despondency over a what many believe is societal failure to adequately acknowledge or address environmental issues has become a line of psychological inquiry.

Journals have published papers with titles such as “The Debilitating Disease of Climate Alarmism” and “A Climate of Suffering”.

Six years ago, a dehydrated 17-year-old boy was brought into the Royal Children’s Hospital, refusing to drink water. He believed having a drink would somehow contribute to the global shortage of potable water, and became the first diagnosed case of “climate change delusion”.

The Australian Conservation Foundation had to bring in psychologists (paid from donations?) to help their team cope with the reality after their fantasies of control over the climate collapsed in Copenhagen.

Adam Majcher, of Australian Conservation Foundation, reached out to Burke and Blashki around the time of the failure in Copenhagen (which is acknowledged as an emotional nadir for green activists).

“We were seeing signs of a particular burden on our advocates,” says Majcher. “There was a shift in the moods and attitudes, with people becoming quite despondent, less engaged. Many people usually talkative were going a little quiet. And there was definitely a significant decline in activity in the program, along with frustrations playing out in isolation, anger.”

Burke and Blashki were brought in to deliver a presentation about recognising anxieties in yourself and others, and tips for those in an unhealthy frame of mind. Materials were sent to advocates around the country, so that they could recognise warning signs and look after themselves, or seek professional help.

Read it all at The Age.

No doubt, the sufferers of climate fear blame skeptics for the lack of progress. In reality the people who fuel the fear are those hyping and exaggerating the threat and breaking laws of reason and evidence. Some (but not all) alarmists are milking the guilt and fear of good people for their own career progress and profits.

There’s a thin veneer of logic here:

But other experts point out that we should not so easily or readily confuse helplessness with depression – nor should we mistake correlation for causation.

Professor Helen Berry, of the University of Canberra, has done extensive research into the health impacts of climate change, and says it is “unlikely” there is any such thing as climate depression.

“But it’s not the climate change component that’s causing the problem,” she says. “It’s the repeated failures themselves which make people feel helpless, which is a known cause of depression.”

The other possibility Berry doesn’t consider is that people who are trained to hold irrational views (like that windmills in South Australian can prevent cyclones in Indonesia) are going to experience horrible cognitive dissonance as their beliefs persistently fail to convince other people, and fail against reality.

The sadness of this particular emotional fixation could be so easily lifted (although the depression itself may be real, and caused by something else entirely). In the end, a dose of reason may mean that their irrational fear that governments will not pour billions into trying to change the weather will become a rational fear that governments will.

h/t Ian and Darren

8.6 out of 10 based on 122 ratings

160 comments to The mental illness of alarmism – climate depression, climate change delusion

  • #
    Rick Bradford

    This episode goes to show that, like measles and mumps, believing oneself to be the centre of the universe is an affliction which is best gotten over in early childhood.

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    TdeF

    We have seen this before. The solution was called deprogramming, to undo the work done by cults like Jim Jones, Scientology and the Moonies.

    Children are the most vulnerable, like children who are told meat is murder and decide to be vegetarians. This combination of presumed adult or institutional wisdom and childish trust can be abused, as it has been so often with religions. “Give me a child when he is young” was the title of a book by a good friend. It took twenty years to question those imparted beliefs. Not everything adults tell you is true, even if they really believe it themselves.

    The Green scam has been going so long, a whole generation of people have been educated to believe farmers are raping the planet, water should be set free not trapped in dams, trees are preferable to grass, that we can talk to the planet and that animals prefer not to be eaten. This was ridiculed by Douglas Adams in his book “restaurant at the end of the universe” where the specially bred cow begged to be eaten and was disgusted that the client preferred a salad.

    So as Daniel Hannan, UK representative to the European Parliament said, it will take twenty years to dismantle the apparatus of bureaucracy. How much longer it will take to deprogram individuals is a real question. Then there is Area 51.

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  • #
    Streetcred

    Just goes to show that climate alarmism is a mental illness.

    TdeF, it is just easier to isolate them and let natural attrition work its ways.

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    • #
      James Bradley

      Streetcred,

      I wonder what Lewandowski has to say about that one?

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      • #
        Ursus Augustus

        La Lewandowsky suffers from the affliction in my opinion but is probably locked in a La Nina of the manic phase.

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      • #
        James Bradley

        You know really this is not a new phenomenon – it’s been around since forever – we used to call it ‘being in a tizz’, ‘having a tanty’ or just plain ‘sooking on’.

        Today it’s been elaborately categorised and for the benefit of those that practice the art of the tizz, tanty or sooking they are described as being a ‘sooky la la’.

        Strangely this condition typically afflicts handwringing victim mentalities that normally associate with lefty, socialist, greeny politics and manifests when they don’t get their own way.

        They were spoilt as childrew, never learned to share and probably had an unnatural and unhealthy fixation with themselves.

        They never had the benefit of a sensible upbringing and never learned to chant ‘sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me’.

        Today they are rfecognised by their habit of queing up outside any legal office to take legal action for imaginary offences in order to acheive personal, political or professional gain.

        All they really need is love understading and a good [snip]

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        • #
          Ted O'Brien.

          Not new. But what is new is that “sooking on” is supported by our legislatures and courts.

          And one of the motivating factors is to abuse the courts to generate income for lawyers.

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      • #
        Streetcred

        Does it matter? Nobody takes a lunatic seriously … rather, they shouldn’t 😉 Mmm, the rise of fundamentalist sects … lunatics take lunatics seriously.

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      • #
        James Bradley

        You know really this is not a new phenomenon – it’s been around since forever – we used to call it ‘being in a tizz’, ‘having a tanty’ or just plain ‘sooking on’.

        Today it’s been elaborately categorised and those that practice the art of the tizz, tanty or sooking are described as being a ‘sooky la la’.

        Strangely this condition typically afflicts handwringing; victim-mentalities that normally associate with lefty, socialist, greeny politics and usually manifests when they don’t get their own way.

        They were spoilt as children, never learned to share, and probably had an unnatural and unhealthy fixation with bodily functions.

        They never had the benefit of a sensible upbringing and never learned that ‘sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me’.

        Today they are recognised by their habit of queing up outside any legal office to take action against anyone and everyone for imaginary offences in order to acheive personal, political or professional gain.

        All they really need is love, understading, and a good b#tch slappin’.

        * Moderator – My other similar comment is in moderation so I took the opportunity to clean it up a frag, correct a couple of spelling mistakes and repost – please delete other. Yours, JB.

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  • #
    LevelGaze

    So climate alarmists try to scare us to death, and when that doesn’t happen they themselves are plunged into Stygian gloom.

    Why should I give a toss?

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    • #
      Boris

      Yes the Islands didn’t go under water either. Their little brass markers got wet occasionally for a bit and over the next couple of years rose several metres above the water line quite high and dry. So another dire prediction gone west. Well what was it – that’s it. It was tectonic plate movement or so the researchers put out. Makes sense to some but not the loony left climate alarmists. Maybe they could come up with an excuse for the increase in volcanic activity.

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      • #
        Tim

        “…Maybe they could come up with an excuse for the increase in volcanic activity.”

        It’s the missing heat in the oceans don’t you know.It’s even in the ancient religious climatology texts…

        “And lo; the terrible heat doth sinketh deep beneath the waves and the people did then rejoice.
        But, alas, it was false and not to be. Amid much wailing and gnashing of teeth the heat doth again smite them when arising up as terrible volcanoes to wreak fierce vengeance unto the unbelievers.”

        That’s enough Shiraz for now.

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      • #

        Looney left climate alarmists – what other kinds are there. Sane conservative climate alarmists seem thin on the ground.

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  • #
    Matty

    As my employer keeps saying:-
    We should be Embracing the Change, instead of getting all anxious about it because it is inevitable, so we might as well learn to enjoy it & make the best of the opportunities it offers.

    Be assured that’s exactly what the UN , bureaucrats, politicians & Tax authorities are doing.

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  • #
    Safetyguy66

    Its quite sad.

    I was born in 1966 and looking back there was very little in the way of major scare campaigns during my childhood other than aids. As a result I feel like I had a pretty worry free time from 6-16 and beyond.

    These days however it seems like between religion, hollywood and climate alarmism, young people actually and genuinely expect the world to end in their lifetimes. I really feel quite sorry for them, they are being robbed of their innocence and their right to enjoy the world in the same way generations before them have enjoyed it.

    I have wondered for a while though if as a species we are obsessed with being threatened and when we are not threatened, we look for things to call threats. Since the 1940s very few of us in the west have known what its like to experience war. But it seems the greater the distance between now and then the more we try to idealise war and look on it as something we wished was around now. So in the absence of these real threats we seem determined to imagine others and if those other threats can be inflated to have “global implications” all the better.

    Michael Chriton described the environment movement of today as being obsessed with “hand wringing” type problems and AGW is perhaps the ultimate expression of the problem that you can rage over but never actually do anything about. Anyone that genuinely believes we can change the climate catastrophically by adding or removing CO2 needs to seek some help for their condition. So if we assume that at least the majority of rational individuals know we cant do anything and are probably not doing anything now, you have to wonder what the attraction of the self flagellation is.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDCCvOv3qZY

    Basically it suits incumbents at all levels of society, from politicians to scientists and the MSM to preach doom. Impending doom creates the perception of need for more administrative controls in the area of the espoused threat. So what would the CSIRO be likely to say about the need for funding to keep studying climate change? Can you guess? When choosing a front page for a newspaper which is better? “International consensus of scientist agree we are screwed” or “situation normal folks, nothing to see here.” Self interest drives the whole machine, its not a conspiracy, its just a happy coincidence of like minded greed being run at the expense of the mental health of our young people. Pretty ordinary 21st century stuff really.

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    • #
      Rick Bradford

      ..you have to wonder what the attraction of the self flagellation is.

      The attraction is that it makes them feel like noble, caring people, better than the rest of humanity, achieving an unearned moral superiority over the common herd.

      That comfortable illusion also helps them to rail at people they regard as ‘worse’, which essentially means anyone who disagrees with them, chief among whom are the evil and vile climate ‘deniers’.

      It’s simply Infantile Narcissism on show.

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    • #
      Paul in Sweden

      Safetyguy66
      August 15, 2014 at 5:25 pm

      I was born in 1966 and looking back there was very little in the way of major scare campaigns during my childhood other than aids. As a result I feel like I had a pretty worry free time from 6-16 and beyond.

      Well Safetyguy66, I’m a year older and as a kid growing up in NYC we still did Duck and Cover, evacuations from classrooms into the sub-basements almost as regularly as fire drills. Knowing the stories of my father being on the beach at Guantanamo during the Cuban Missile Crisis, I still feel now as I did then that that was a rational fear. A fear based on tangible threats.

      Michael Chriton described the environment movement of today as being obsessed with “hand wringing” type problems and AGW is perhaps the ultimate expression of the problem that you can rage over but never actually do anything about. Yes, but the manufacture of the CAGW problem had goals, goals that had the potential to unify by way of fear, actions that would empower and enrich select groups. We have already seen this come to fruition.

      It amazes me that so many latch on to the we have to do something, anything in reaction to the problem that you can rage over but never actually do anything about. If on the other hand there were identified a life-ending meteor impact, action would be proposed and put into motion that would cause great hardship on all the people of the world to put forth actions that would mitigate the threat or existing plans would be expanded and put into action to bunker subsets of the population for the preservation of humankind. CAGW policies miss the boat on solutions.

      CAGW offers the problem that you can rage over but never actually do anything about with the CAGW policies offering the suffering & great hardship on all the people of the world to put forth actions with absolutely no measurable mitigation outcome. None of the solutions enacted with heavy cost nor any of the proposed actions would have any effect on the outcome. A recent hysteria headline “Melt of Key Antarctic Glaciers ‘Unstoppable'”. Other headlines could be “Hurricane GloriaBigWind heading for the coast, scientists say it is ‘Unstoppable'”, purchase your carbon-indulgences now or Scientists say Sunrise is hours away and it is ‘Unstoppable'”, purchase your carbon-indulgences now”. The first headline from Scientific American could have just as easily been, “GROWTH of Key Antarctic Glaciers ‘Unstoppable'”

      Futile efforts at such great cost to humanity cannot pass without leaving an irreparable mark. The Global Warming Depression & Delusion syndrome is a result of the failure of the Global Warming Industry’s ability to keep the hysterical crowds running towards the edge of the cliff from the imaginary CAGW monster. When members of the herd look back and realize that they don’t see a monster and not everybody is running like a lunatic with them there is doubt, anger, frustration and despondence. There is also often shame for being so blasted foolish & gullible.

      Mankind for millennium has been creating hysteria among the populace to achieve the goals of the few. We say the perceived enemy eats babies and we go to war. During and after the war we often find that the enemy did not eat babies as we were told but a terrible price was tallied offering only a Punic victory and the populace shattered psychologically.

      CAGW Alarmists need to wake up and realize that when riding a Crazy Train the only way to preserve your sanity is to stop the Crazy Train or get the hell off.

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        Michael Chriton described the environment movement of today as being obsessed with “hand wringing” type problems and AGW is perhaps the ultimate expression of the problem that you can rage over but never actually do anything about.

        The world seems to have always been very good at the hand wringing over whatever problem you care to name. The current problem posed by ISIS in Iraq and Syria is a case in point — a lot more complaining and hand wringing than conviction about doing something to stop it.

        I once had some debate with a guy on this site who, by his own statement was in fear for his children’s future. He couldn’t understand how anyone could doubt that the upcoming climate disaster was both real and dangerous. He didn’t stick around once he figured he couldn’t change anyone’s mind.

        I’ve been in fear for the future of those I love many times. I had to learn to take life one day at a time. Most of my fears didn’t come true. And when they did I coped by facing them and doing what I needed to do to get through. Worrying about the future is always futile. I know because at one point I allowed myself to get depressed to the point where I wasn’t making good decisions. I had a good friend who finally woke me up.

        Life is tough enough without worrying about what might happen tomorrow. Prepare as best you can and then go on forward. I understand this problem but I’ve little sympathy for those who get into such a state by their own actions and decisions.

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      Unmentionable

      I was born in 1966 and looking back there was very little in the way of major scare campaigns during my childhood other than aids. As a result I feel like I had a pretty worry free time from 6-16 and beyond.

      You were very fortunate Paul. I’m not much older than you and I distinctly remember listening to the ballot call for ‘Nasho’ (National Service) in Vietnam, on the car radio. I’d seen footage of the war and it looked horrible. So I’m listening to the dates being called from the ballot and my birth date was called. My instantly blood ran cold, I was going to have to go to Vietnam now (I was all of about 5). My parents turned the radio off and said I wouldn’t have to go, but the radio had just said I had to go, so I didn’t believe them for a few minutes.

      This had an effect, the war suddenly seemed real. It was suddenly horribly depressing. Like most people I was introduced to nuclear war from books and movies which was again, horrifying. The threat of someone “pressing the button” was without a doubt the greatest scare-campaign of all human history. We grew up convinced there was going to be a need to duck ‘n cover any day now, they were showing movies in school about it. Every one I knew at school was worried. We really thought it was going to happen.

      Then as an adult in the Reagan period the move “The Day After” came out, and everyone flocked to the movies and watched it and came away more horrified than ever. ‘Sting’ wrote his song, “I hope the Russians love their children too”, and we all felt that way. Reagan’s SDI (Star Wars Initiative) was a topic that regularly came up at the time. So we were genuinely relieved when Gorby appeared and the Soviets collapsed. The future that had seemed remote and unavailable was suddenly available. We’d spent a lot of time self-medicating and living it up until then, because we needed the relief, but from then on everything got brighter, opportunity and optimism abounded.

      So I can understand the doom bleakness of young people now as we used to get sent things in the mail such as unsolicited instruction pamphlets on how to quickly construct an impromptu nuclear bomb shelter from common household items, in the event that we might need one.

      Now there’s a scare campaign!

      I’ve come to accept that scares are good for us sometimes. Fear will make you careful to not catch a contagious disease, it will make you get out of the way of a bad storm, it will make you manage your affairs better. But the sense of doom is different, you don’t even realize it’s there until it isn’t there any more. People get depressed by it and don’t know what’s going wrong, and why they can’t just cheer up. It’s deeper.

      During the 1980s survivalism was big. But it almost disappeared during the mid 1990s and since about the invasion of Iraq survivalism has been steadily returning, and now it’s at least as present as during the cold war. But I refuse to live with doom, people can put the sense of doom aside, I know that now.

      So if a teen or 20 something’s whole sense of the future is made remote and inaccessible by the doom of AGW and all the rest of it, I can understand why they’re made anxious and depressed by the feeling that nothing is being done. That would be a horrible feeling, and yes, it would be highly worthwhile trying to alleviate as much of it as possible.

      Glad I read this post, it added some healthy perspective on what climate doom can do.

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        Roy Hogue

        For most of my life I’ve been what you might call a natural skeptic. I learned early to think for myself. I grew up in the post WW II world where the movie industry in particular was pushing films about the terror of nuclear war. But what they produced was so outlandishly bad that it couldn’t convince me. Climate change has been the same way, completely ridiculous at face value and presented in a way that was certainly insulting — no debate is possible, etc., etc.

        The things that are real and cause fear are the medical problems that threaten the future of my wife and son. Those are the real fears. There are others as the world deteriorates around me. But I handle them all the same way now that I’ve been through it and learned what it’s all about. Do my own thinking instead of letting anyone think for me, prepare as well as I can and then go on forward. You cannot do any better than that.

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        • #
          Ted O'Brien.

          Roy. You mentioned above “..one day at a time”.

          30+ years ago we lost a 5 year old to cancer. Right from the start of his illness I could see that because we were farmers, we were much better equipped to handle this problem than many in our new oncology community. We were accustomed to failures and disappointments that were not through fault of our own. We had a much better understanding than others displayed of the things you can control and the thngs you can’t.

          Even so, it was the new experience which taught us to concentrate on today first. Tomorrow will be there when you get to it.

          I wouldn’t say I fear, but I knew and know that the Australia that my kids have grown up in is very much harder on young people than was the marvellous Australia that I grew up in. And with grandkids now I can’t yet have confidence that this will get better any time soon. It should if only Tony Abbott would call the liars for what they are and fight back at them, but it isn’t happening.

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          • #
            Roy Hogue

            Ted,

            I’m truly sorry to hear of the loss of your son in such a way. But one day at a time is the best advice you can give to anyone. There’s an old saying going all the way back to the bible, “Let today’s evil be sufficient for today…” It holds up just as well in the modern world as it did then.

            I think you’re absolutely right that being accustomed to disappointments and failures gives you strength and a more can-do attitude when the really bad ones come along.

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      old44

      You were lucky.

      Back in my day we used to dream about only having a campaign about Aids.

      Fascism, Communism, THE BOMB, (what’re ever happened to bad weather being caused by the bomb?) poiio epidemics, the Cuban missile crisis the prospect of Collingwood winning a flag.

      Oh yes we used to dream of Aids.

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      I just think we need to openly pont the finger at the powers that be and name the ( poor ) behaviour – namely use of artificial crises to keep the sheep in line through fear.

      Once you strip away the curtain ( a la “Wizard of Oz” style ) to expose the little man behinbd the screen, all the angst disapperars….

      Fear is control – thats all it is.

      The powers that be have also announced retention of data for 2 years , not to fight crime, but with the implied threat of “were watching you”. Another fear meme at work. The NSA for all its massive collection of data hasnt prevented any terrorist attack n the USA. What makes the amateurs here think anything will be different?

      Once you laugh in their face and shove them back, they soon realise they either have to come down on you like a otn of bricks ( unlikely – that would spark an open revolution in this country ), or they back and quietly try and control other areas of our lives in more insidious ways and slink about in the shadows.

      The obective is the same – power through fear and harassment.

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  • #
    Tim

    “The trigger point was actually watching grown men cry. They were senior diplomats from small islands, begging larger countries to take action so that their nations would not drown with the rising seas.”

    Nicole Thornton may have recovered by reading this about the tears (Quadrant Jan 30, 2012):

    Segue now to the IPCC’s Copenhagen conference of late 2009. Ian Fry, Tuvalu’s lead negotiator, told delegates:
    “I woke up this morning crying, and that’s not easy for a grown man to admit, the fate of my country rests in your hands.”

    As he said this, his eyes again filled with tears, and mortified delegates applauded him wildly. Later, some nark noticed that he was not from Tuvalu at all; in fact he is a lawyer from Queanbeyan, Canberra’s next-door neighbour. He’s an ex-Greenpeace liaison officer and specializes in island nations.

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    el gordo

    Alarmism is part of the religious experience.

    ‘At the online nyheter24, Janssen comments that climate science resembles more a religion, noting that even the Swedish Church now devotes more time to activities on climate alarm than Christian preaching. He writes, “The climate debate in Sweden has gone awry and is anything but scientific.”

    – See more at: http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.Vn6JsCeZ.dpuf

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  • #
    pattoh

    Perhaps when enough of the health budget has been diverted towards the mental health & rehab costs of the catastrophists, there may be enough left over to help the growing population of people suffering from respiratory diseases created & amplified due to fuel poverty both in developeed & developing countries.

    Perhaps the WHO should specifically investigate the potential “ballooning storehouse” being created to keep the cyclic infuenza epidemics rolling.

    ( at least it would keep a few UN toadies/troughers gainfully employed)

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  • #
    Andrew

    This is when the actions of celebrities, come into focus. If the MSM fail to scare the cr#p out of kids, try film stars.

    I had a brief twitter chat with Emma Thompson, after suggesting that air travel shoud be reduced (pulled her in acting as a believer) she replied that not flying would be inconvenient, so planes should be redesigned so as not to damage the environment!?? Of course she had no clue as to the natural forces acting on the Arctic, or that exporting pollution to China just makes things worse; she clearly is a classic mushroom; fed with sh1t, kept in the dark.

    I Digress. All the alarmists have left is FEAR. If you cannot see the whites of its eyes, all the better. fear is a major part of religion, if you cannot see it, touch it, smell it, all the better; if you could, the fear may subside and that would be no good. So just tell them “There be Monsters”

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    • #
      NielsZoo

      “… and any that deny theye exist and continue to sail on shall falle off the watery precipice to be devowered by dragons.”

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  • #
    Yonniestone

    I would like to vent my disgust at the Royal Children’s Hospital for thoughtlessly interfering with natural selection, that kid could now grow up to be a Greens candidate FFS!…/sarc off

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    sophocles

    Just for some entertainment: List of End-of-the-world predictions.

    They’re becoming more common. It’s getting to the point where the world will end every year. That gives plenty of choice.

    Such a state of mental illness which occurs when your favourate E-o-t-W Apocalypse fails to materialise on schedule could be called “Apocalypse Suspension Syndrome” or ASS for short.

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    • #
      Ian Hill

      They left out 1976 when South Australian Premier Don Dunstan went to Glenelg (on the coast) to “prove” that a tidal wave (as it was called then) was not going to gobble up Adelaide!

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        old44

        What about the End of the world BBQ’s that were held and all those poor surfers who waited on the end of a pier so they could surf up the Gulf of St Vincent?

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  • #
    Leigh

    I was going to say I have never heard so much crap.
    But hey, we’re dealing with global warmists here and they are for ever pumping it out.
    The only reason their getting all misty eyed and panicky is us skeptics have nearly derailed the gravy train.
    I say nearly because there is still quite a few rails to remove before it topples over.
    A couple of court cases around the world have heightened their collective anxiety of that happening.
    Particularly the Mann/Styne one.(I think that’s how its spelt)
    The reality of a couple question they have to ask themselves is scaring the begeezus out of them.
    If the planets not burning to a cinder like we said it would.
    When exactly is the “free ride” going to come to a halt?
    Are we going to have to give back the money we fraudulently received to save the world?
    If it’s sympathy their looking for, there will be none forthcoming from me.

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      Yonniestone

      Agreed, you’ve made your own bed you now lay in it, rational people can only try talking sense to zealots for so long, then it’s better to just walk away.

      In this country your legally an adult at 18 years of age, any decisions you make for the rest of your life are just that, YOURS and no amount of crying or blaming is going to change that.

      I recently had a 90+ year old woman say to me that “people today should just harden the F@#& up”, words for a nation to live by.

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  • #

    Jo, there is another example of exactly the same thing, climate hype causing stress and anxiety, here,

    “Group therapy tackles climate change anxiety”

    “Psychotherapist Rosemary Randall counsels people on their feelings of powerlessness and anxiety around climate change issues”

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      PeterK

      ‘Group therapy tackles climate change anxiety’
      ‘Psychotherapist Rosemary Randall counsels people on their feelings of powerlessness and anxiety around climate change issues. In this interview with DW, she explains how this can contribute to a necessary transformation.’
      There is a quick cure for climate depression, climate change delusion; that WILL transform the [snip] in question, back to a sane individual.
      Pick someplace remote, say Northern Canada, where you are about 500 kms from the nearest village.
      Empower the delusional idiot in question by dumping him / her off here.
      Give them a knife, a pack of matches, a bottle of water, a map and a compass.
      I’m sure that when they finally reach civilization, they will be cured or we will never hear from them again.
      Problem fixed. No need to spend health resources to cure an idiot.

      20

  • #
    JLC

    Not all alarmists are experiencing “climate despression”. Perhaps the people described above have an inherited vulnerability to depression and any severe stresses might have caused depression. The actual stresses they experienced were caused by wallowing in the CAGW cult.

    I have experienced clinical depression but I have no sympathy for the people in the article. They deliberately tried to inducee fear and despair as way of pushing other people into action. It didn’t work too well so they tried harder and harder. Now they are experiencing the emotions they tried to induce in others.

    They deserve it.

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    • #
      the Griss

      “They deserve it.”

      Just look at the WC.. the depths to which is forced to go for relevance..

      Sad in a way …. but HILARIOUS to watch. 🙂

      If he was a real person, rather than a figment of his own imagination, one might even be concerned.

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      • #
        James Bradley

        I’m pretty sure his cat is real – maybe he’s a figment of the cat’s imagination.

        The cat’s name is Schroedinger and who knows what it will find when it opens the door to the apartment.

        WC just can’t be for real, but hell, you know what cats are like.

        120

  • #
    el gordo

    A Climate of Alarmism

    http://arctic-news.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/horrific-methane-eruptions-in-east-siberian-sea.html:

    “A catastrophe of unimaginable propertions is unfolding in the Arctic Ocean. Huge quantities of methane are erupting from the seafloor of the East Siberian Sea and entering the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean.”

    Maurice Newman might have a little trouble selling his global cooling meme, with so much hysteria already in the air.

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    • #
      the Griss

      Hey, that’s great news. The methane will react quickly in the air and turn into LIFE-GIVING CO2. 🙂

      All that old carbon being released, just as the world’s population needs food. 🙂

      Someone couldn’t have timed it better if they had tried. !

      180

      • #
        NielsZoo

        No. It will catch fire first, heat the atmosphere, create CO2 to heat the atmosphere more and for good measure the H2O left over will raise sea levels… and it will suck all the O2 out of the atmosphere and we’ll be gasping for breath.</sarc>

        100

        • #
          the Griss

          I think you might be being a tad bit EXTREME in your analysis.. ….just my opinion 😉

          60

          • #
            NielsZoo

            Well… I figured the grant request needed to stand out from the rest of the doomsayers… and it’s getting harder and harder to find a catastrophic scenario that hasn’t already been blamed on Global Climate [insert current scary term here] caused by evil humans.

            30

            • #
              the Griss

              I’m pretty sure I recall somewhere that one of the more rabid alarmista has tried the one about reduced oxygen in the atmosphere…

              Sorry !.

              10

  • #

    You can’t blame the poor dears. If you genuinely thought the world was going to end and all you had to prevent that happening was a collection of clowns like Gore, Pachauri, Flannery, Mann et Nauseam, you’d have good reason to be depressed

    Pointman

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    • #
      PhilJourdan

      True. The cause is different, but the malady is the same. Susceptibility to hysteria. The ones suffering from it are really the conspiracy nuts. They believe it because they have been told it must be true – so they forgo simple observation.

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    • #
      James Bradley

      pointman,

      “If you genuinely thought the world was going to end and all you had to prevent that happening was… ?

      wait around for alarmist groups to waste a lot of time and resources submitting applications to government bodies for tax-payer funding and grants and then wait some more while generous tax-payer funded subsidies to exploit more tax-payer funded handouts are wasted on expensive and inefficient technology to replace efficient and inexpensive energy infrastructure to the net detriemnt of society.

      … you’d have a good reason to be depressed.”

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  • #
    turnedoutnice

    It’s enough to make you sick…..

    100

  • #

    “a rather dry PhD on responsible household water use”

    Jesus wept. Surely it would be cheaper to shut down 90% of academia and keep them on the dole?

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    • #

      No.
      You will soon have to work for the dole – and academics don’t work; it’s against the rules.

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    • #
      the Griss

      I’ve been thinking about that PhD thesis and wondering how the heck that could ever be anything except a Junior high school assignment.

      90

      • #
        the Griss

        Or a 1st year uni Arts degree assignment.

        100

        • #
          James Bradley

          Griss,

          How many permutations of the phrase “responsible household weater use” can there possibly be?

          60

        • #
          Len

          At the UWA there was a paper hand towel dispenser in one of the male toilets with “Arts Degrees, Please take one” written on it. Added to this was “For Law degrees just wipe arse on it”.

          [Was that in the Engineering Department? – Mod]

          30

          • #
            bobl

            I think the same degree dispensers exist in every engineering department in the country. I remember one at QUT when I was there. What surprises me is the fact that there actually are engineers that believe the cAGW mantra, something I can’t fathom. I personally know two. It takes less than a minute to mathematically refute cAGW, for any engineer it should be a doddle.

            30

            • #
              the Griss

              “It takes less than a minute to mathematically refute cAGW”

              Depends where the funding is coming from.

              Engineers need research grants too, y’know. !!

              10

  • #
    cedarhill

    Interesting, isn’t it, lots and lots of the money for the campaign comes from “deniers”. For example, ever bought a ticket to a movie?

    40

  • #
    pat

    speaking of depression, or rather depressing, have a read of Readfearn’s latest, & check the learned comments of his readers:

    15 Aug: Guardian: Fact check: How Maurice Newman misrepresents science to claim future global cooling
    Picking over the climate science denialist claims of Tony Abbott’s top business advisor
    by Graham Readfearn
    Maybe Maurice Newman was hoping nobody would check…
    Given we’ve been here before, I’m starting to think that Newman might actually have written some clever computer code that first scrapes climate science denial blogs for conspiracy theories and common misrepresentations and then turns them into 950-words for The Australian newspaper…
    When you start to test Maurice Newman’s claims you find the whole case is about as sturdy as a house made of playing cards placed on a poorly constructed raft made of rolled up copies of The Australian floating on the ocean… in a tropical cyclone…
    I apologise for the length of this post by the way and some of the overly technical stuff, but every once in a while I think it’s worth picking at the claims made by people in influential positions…
    FROM THE COMMENTS:

    thespaniard48: Your article sir is a beacon of good sense…
    It is a greater pity that your sensible research will not get the mass audience it requires.

    blacksnake: I wonder how Maurice will deal with this from AUSMIN:
    “Recognising the challenges climate change poses to security, Australia and the United States intend to continue to work through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change process to negotiate a new, ambitious climate agreement applicable to all countries by 2015 to take effect in 2020.”

    UrikHunt: Graham, in fairness, in all the time you’ve been talking up the end of the world like a Hellfire preacher has even one of your predictions come true?
    In the meantime, those you call deniers who’ve been saying people such as yourself have been exaggerating, what have they got wrong?
    I know this is in an unfair question because you need a couple more lifetimes to be vindicated, but in your short time as a young journalist, what have you been right about?
    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2014/aug/15/fact-check-how-maurice-newman-misrepresents-science-to-claim-future-global-cooling

    12 Aug: DFAT: AUSMIN 2014 Joint Communique
    3. Global challenges
    Recognising the challenges climate change poses to security, Australia and the United States intend to continue to work through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change process to negotiate a new, ambitious climate agreement applicable to all countries by 2015 to take effect in 2020…
    http://dfat.gov.au/geo/us/ausmin/ausmin14-joint-communique.html

    40

  • #
    ROM

    Leigh @ # 13 has gone well down the track on my line of thinking about this subject of depression and delusion leading to to serious psychological problems for many in society.
    But like Leigh I wonder if the assumptions on which will be the largest group of sufferers from alarmist created depression has been thought through by many who read “Jo’s” blog.

    Climate alarmism only really got off the ground around 2000 . The seeds for it were created initially by Hansen in that well known Congressional hearing in 1988.
    But the offilicialisation of climate alarmism had the seal put on it at the Madrid Conference of 1995.
    The history of the deliberate creation of climate alarmism can be found in the articles as listed below. .

    [ Madrid 1995: Was this the Tipping Point in the Corruption of Climate Science? > MADRID 1995: Tipping Point?—The Quest (Part II)—The Last Day (Part II)

    Linked to

    Were key 1995 IPCC scientists’ conclusions of man-made global warming, tampered with?

    [ quoted ]

    In fact, the IPPC report itself documented the reality that the man-made warming claim was false. The “fingerprint test,” as displayed in figure 8.I0b of` the 1995 report, shows the pattern correlation between observations and climate models decreasing during the major surge of surface temperature warming that occurred between 1916 and 1940.

    The IPCC’s Climate Change 1995 was reviewed by its consulting scientists in late 1995. The “Summary for Policy Makers” was approved in December, and the full report, including chapter 8, was accepted. However, after the printed report appeared in May 1996, the scientific reviewers discovered that major changes had been made “in the back room” after they had signed off on the science chapter’s contents. Santer, despite the shortcomings of the scientific evidence, had inserted strong endorsements of man-made warming in chapter 8 (of which he was the IPCC-appointed lead author):

    There is evidence of an emerging pattern of climate response to forcing by greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols … from the geographical, seasonal and vertical patterns of temperature change. … These results point toward a human influence on global climate. [ch.8 p.412]

    The body of statistical evidence in chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate. [ch.8 p.439]

    Santer also deleted these key statements from the expert-approved chapter 8 draft:

    *”None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.”

    *”While some of the pattern-base studies discussed here have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed] to [man-made] causes. Nor has any study quantified the magnitude of a greenhouse gas effect or aerosol effect in the observed data – an issue of primary relevance to policy makers.”

    *”Any claims of positive detection and attribution of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.”

    *”While none of these studies has specifically considered the attribution issue, they often draw some attribution conclusions, for which there is little justification.”

    *”When will an anthropogenic effect on climate be identified? It is not surprising that the best answer to this question is, `We do not know. “‘

    Santer single-handedly reversed the “climate science” of the whole IPCC report–and with it the global warming political process. The “discernible human influence” supposedly revealed by the IPCC has been cited thousands of times since in media around the world and has been the “stopper” in millions of debates among nonscientists.

    The journal Nature mildly chided the IPCC for redoing chapter 8 to “ensure that it conformed” to the report’s politically correct Summary for Policymakers. In an editorial, Nature favored the Kyoto treaty.

    The Wall Street Journal, which did not favor Kyoto, was outraged. Its condemning editorial, “Coverup in the Greenhouse,” appeared I 1 June 1996. The following day, Frederick Seitz, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, detailed the illegitimate rewrite in the Journal in a commentary titled Major Deception on Global Warming.

    Oddly enough, a research paper, coauthored by Santer, was published at about the same time – and says something quite different than the IPCC report. It concludes that none of the three estimates of the natural variability of the climate spectrum agrees with the other, and that until this question is resolved, “it will be hard to say, with confidence, that an anthropogenic climate signal has or has not been detected.”

    Why did Santer, a relatively junior scientist, make the unsupported revisions’? We still don’t know who directed him to do so, and then approved the changes. But Sir John Houghton, chairman of the IPCC working group, had received a letter from the U.S. State Department dated November 15, 1995. It said:

    It is essential that the chapters not be finalized prior to the completion of the discussions at the IPCC Working Group I plenary in Madrid, and that chapter authors be prevailed upon to modify their text in an appropriate manner following the discussion in Madrid.

    The letter was signed by a senior career Foreign Service officer, Day Olin Mount, who was then Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. The Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs at that time was former Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO). Wirth was not only an ardent advocate of man-made warming. but was a close political ally of then-President Bill Clinton and then-Vice President Al Gore. There seems little doubt that the letter was sent by Mount at the behest of Wirth.

    Mount was later named Ambassador to Iceland. That’s a plum post in a pleasant, peaceful First World country. That ambassadorship has often gone to a political ally of the White House rather than to a career diplomat,

    The Madrid Plenary, held in November 1995, was a political meeting. There were representatives of ninety-six nations and fourteen nongovernment organizations (NGOs). They went over the text of the “accepted” report line by line. Chapter 8, which should have governed the entire IPCC report, was rewritten to accord with the global warming campaign being waged by the United Nations, the NGOs, and the Clinton administration.

    For the record, here are excerpts from Frederick Seitz’ Wall Street Journal op-ed, 12 June 1996:

    Seitz: A Major Deception on Global Warming

    …In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.
    [ end of quote but much more reading on the history of the deliberate corruption of sciience and the creation of the whole global warming ideology now turning fanatical cultist ]
    _________________

    As with all emotion based beliefs too much of the alarmism and creative versions of what supposedly passes for truth and reality eventually sates and overloads the emotional protective mechanisms we all have within us to protect ourselves from long term extreme emotional pressures.
    So people just simply switch off as they have other much more important things in life turning up minute by minute that have to be dealt with and disposed of often immediately.
    And that has a far higher personal ranking and an immediacy that eventually far exceeds the never appearing, far distant catastrophe that is predicted to occur at some unknown time still possibly far into the unknown future.

    And so the public perceptions shift and in a democracy, the entire centres of climate alarmism are all situated in the western democracies, politicians who are intent on going to their graves with well entrenched reputations for being good listeners to the public and reacting in the public’s interests, will also respond and react accordingly as the mood of the public as that mood shifts from fear and depression about a future climate catastrophe.
    A catastrophe which is all the fault of the individual as being supposedly and directly responsible for the future climate catastrophe according to the deliberately constructed and psychologically and mentally very damaging meme of the alarmists that both points straight at individuals and creates a deep and serious personal guilt complex in some individuals.
    [ something the vocal and extremist climate alarmists of every stripe should be severely prosecuted for ]

    But all such emotionaly based causes eventually sate the public’s capacity for self mortification and life then moves on and new causes, some also potentially dangerous and potentially catastrophic from the personal [ ebola ] societal and national [ jihadi islam ] interests and events arise to replace the the previous emotionally based and emotionally reliant for impact, cause.

    And thats when the politicals and society takes a hard look at the resources being poured into the previous cause [ global warming / climate change research and etc ] and decides that the newest cause what ever shape it takes, is far more deserving of those limited resources than the older cause for which there is not yet any evidence that it will eventuate or perhaps circumstances have changed [ cooling ] negating the potentials of that past cause to create a predicted catastrophe.

    And then, with only a fraction of the resources particularly if the climate catastrophe cause is increasingly being seen as a great confidence trick by climate researchers, then the proposed resources available for climate warming / climate change research, even if only a fraction of the past resources may also be stripped m from climate research and it’s scientists.

    Then comes the Internet as those now out of employment in climate research with expertise entirely limited to just one narrow subject and with a mediocre at best publishing record or for most, far worse than that, employment in other science disciplines becomes a goal far beyond the reach and intellectual capability of most of them.

    And for employment elsewhere, well the employer makes a quick check through the means of the World Wide Web and lo, the record of that supposed scientist and his offerings and attitudes and hates and denigrations of those who did not agree with his ideology will all be there, permanently recorded on the Net for all to examine.
    And it might just be a record that by then may stink to high heaven in the new science and business environment.

    And so we do have that climate created depression and emotional and mental break downs and fears but all occurring in those same groups of climate alarmists who took great glee in spreading entirely false and horrific tales of predicted catastrophes to come unless the populace on bended knee heeded their gracious words of knowledge and wisdom on what awaited mankind unless they followed the dictates of those same enlightened ones.

    It will be the false prophets , the enlightened ones of climate alarmist science who will suffer depression and mental breakdown and self harm as their world collapses about them.

    And the best pointer to that is that is that passage in Jo’s post above that might be so presaging of the future for those same climate alarmists

    The Australian Conservation Foundation had to bring in psychologists (paid from donations?) to help their team cope with the reality after their fantasies of control over the climate collapsed in Copenhagen.

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  • #
    robert wykoff

    I will bet anyone one hundred and eleventy billion dollars that the grown men crying in Copenhagen were upset because hundreds a billions of dollars of free climate gibsmedats went down the pie hole, and not because their island was in imminent danger of drowning. Any takers?

    120

    • #
      Glen Michel

      Nah they are just a bunch of sooks.I try to reason with academics like these and appeal to such, alas too hard-wired!

      10

  • #
    hunter

    The utter stupidity and disconnection from reality that the article’s Nicole demonstrates makes me wonder what the academic world is doing wrong. A healthy academy would not be producing such ignorant, poorly balanced unreasonable deluded people. Instead she seems to be all too typical.

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    • #
      Andrew McRae

      The fact she was a trained scientist makes it all the more bizarre. You would think a scientific person would decide to only believe in things for which there is evidence, as opposed to most people’s thought process which is that they feel entitled to believe in anything which can’t be disproven.

      Perhaps some people gravitate towards fatalism and crisis and would be fussing about something else if it weren’t for CAGW, but for the common and garden variety warmist it was definitely due to being fed a diet of misinformation from the global climate science machine.
      I mean, high school students were indoctrinated into this beginning in 1993. They’d only had the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and the IPCC released its very first report in 1990. That has to be a world record for the fastest time taken for a bleeding edge unproven scientific hypothesis to be shoehorned into the school curriculum.

      Nobody needs to be paid money to believe in a falsehood, people are quite capable of doing that themselves without prodding. But I agree that “It takes billions of dollars to generate delusion on this scale.” Think of all the other popular delusions in economics, religion, psychology, etc.
      All these ideologies have huge amounts of money behind them to keep the beliefs alive. It doesn’t seem to matter whether they offer a better future or a worse one. Exponential economic growth, Freudian analysis, and religion generally promised a better (after)life. CAGW, Peak Oil, and (in the 80s) Nuclear War predicted a worse future. All gained adherents who thought they were better off for believing it.

      The old Harrison Ford movie “Mosquito Coast” is a very watchable fictional example of what can happen when you get serious about avoiding the Apocalypse.

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      • #
        Unmentionable

        You would think a scientific person would decide to only believe in things for which there is evidence, as opposed to most people’s thought process which is that they feel entitled to believe in anything which can’t be disproven.

        I’d add to your list religion and religious education which is even more disconcerting as you’re flipped from burning in a Lake ‘O Fire or, Paradise in heaven with a buddy of God. So the disturbance level is even more intense. Just look at the stories of people coming out of fundamentalist cults, they’re terribly damaged people and it takes years to begin to feel normal again.

        I was made to go to two catholic schools (due to a lack of local alternatives) when a boy. I’d spent a few years travelling around Australia and going to numerous state and private schools, for mostly a few months, so I was very accustomed to enrolling and fitting into schools, and meeting many new (normal) students, teachers and admins. But after a couple of years of this I went to the two catholic schools twice consecutively in different towns and was shocked at the difference, and also the unnecessary level of violence of both the nuns at both schools and of some of the children at the second school.

        Mostly it was the older nuns not the young teachers (who were very nice people I thought). But I had never seen such vicious attacks, using big sticks and blackboard rulers on young children. It was unhinged, when I first saw it I was aghast. These were not normal schools with normal people, they were, to some extent, disturbed. Some of the nums and old teachers were clearly deeply unhappy, frustrated and taking out fury on others, via what could only be called a publicly accepted process of arbitrary physiological and physical child abuse, which none of these religious people seemed to realize was not normal. I suspect it was the notion that if God punished people for ever via casting them in to Lakes ‘O Fire, then viscous over-the-top punishment was OK by God.

        So after I went to this first catholic school for a year (the longest I had gone to any school) I did began to feel quite depressed. But against my wishes I was then made to go to a second catholic school, and within 30 mins I saw arbitrary and painful violence inflicted on the boy who was tasked with showing me around. But this time I simply got angry and fought back against all the bullies no matter who they were or how big. My mother was angry with me and didn’t understood why I’d gone rouge and I couldn’t begin to explain it to her. But I developed an outspoken penetrating way of challenging them and putting them on the spot in front of everyone watching. I wasn’t trying to change anything, wasn’t even thinking, I’d just had enough of all of these people, and was so p_ssed for being forced to put up with another school full of such people (the second school was far worse).

        That was formative and liberating, and shortly after I’d really lost it on a bunch of them all at once I was enrolled at another school and it was all normal once again. Almost no violence or abuse at all, which is, as I now realised, the normal state of people. It was a great relief to not be surround by disturbed violent people any longer. It’s sad for the people who spend years at such a horrible school and don’t know that it is not normal.

        From that experience I now equate religions with depression, disturbance, violence and less peaceful more aberrant extremes.

        Now look at where global conflicts are most intense, and at where fundamentalist religion is ‘normal’.

        Correlated ya think?

        Apocalypse doom is the most damaging form of doom-depression … and it becomes self-fulfilling.

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    James Strom

    “It was five years ago and the environmental scientist – a trained biologist and ecologist – was writing a rather dry PhD on responsible household water use.”

    I should hope it was dry.

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  • #

    I am an avid AFL Port Power supporter.
    At the end of August in 2001 I was sure we would win the premiership. We didn’t.
    I have never recovered from that loss of opportunity.

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    Fox From Melbourne

    I wonder just how many teenagers have been made depressed and suicidal by all this Green’s, environmentalist “the world is dieing” and the future is going to be so bad and terrible with climate this and that stuff. How many have killed themselves? Were are the health warnings when they make all these claims about stuff that isn’t happening or hasn’t happened yet and or probable never will. “Environmentalism killing our kids”, I bet you will never hear about that on “your ABC” now will we.

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  • #
    Barry Corke

    The demanding little brats didn’t get what they wanted at Copenhagen so poor little Nicole had a meldown. There was a time when the word “depression” was associated with a period in history when things really were tough. Perhaps it’s time for Nicole and her despairing friends to either grow up or shut up.

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  • #
    Bill Irvine

    Two things.
    1 WC Fields also had an aversion to water.
    2 Such depression is typical of what happens when your team loses. Ask any English cricket fan.

    71

  • #
    Bill Irvine

    No.
    Actually Three things.
    Thank you for your efforts.
    Allmuch appreciated.

    71

  • #
    QuixoteNexus

    Banned again from Guardian!! what is this the 6th time?

    My last 4 innocuous , in my opinion, comments ,what is it with the Klingon alarmista feckers?


    QuixoteNexus commented on Fact check: How Maurice Newman misrepresents science to claim future global cooling.
    15 Aug 2014 12:14pm
    1

    Fact check: How Septic Seance misrepresents science to claim future global disaster

    http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/john-cook-skeptical-science.html
    QuixoteNexus commented on Fact check: How Maurice Newman misrepresents science to claim future global cooling.
    15 Aug 2014 12:07pm
    2

    God does,nt need to change the laws of physics the IPCC and its cohorts have already done that ,so that thermodynamics Laws are a thing of the past , please keep up!
    QuixoteNexus commented on Fact check: How Maurice Newman misrepresents science to claim future global cooling.
    15 Aug 2014 12:01pm
    1

    You could have just linked to sceptic seance rebuttals for the ignorant and saved a lot of cutting and pasting , would you care for a link rebutting the rebuttals ?
    QuixoteNexus commented on Global warming is moistening the atmosphere.
    15 Aug 2014 10:56am
    1

    Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner 2009

    An old paper , i,m sure it has been debunked by Skeptical Seance but well worth a read in understanding the climate.

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    QuixoteNexus

    So flaming mad , and then I get an email from the Guardian soliciting their shitty blogs,
    my response :-
    Stick your sniping emails up your snip ! , your moderators are a sniping discrace!
    When writing on climate matters I am invariably banned for pointing out salient facts , advising correctly on comment
    And showing sites where the information is available. All the guys who write supporting the Guardian/IPCC line are given free rein to be as rude as they wish .
    It is high time someone in authority at the Guardian sorted these snipers out , they are censoring free speech , eliminating argument and allowing only the Global warming Propaganda to maintain.
    For a supposedly radical newspaper of free thinkers you are hardly liberal in your attitudes ,in fact you are the pits!

    There now I feel better………snips!

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    • #
      diogenese2

      Abate your anger Nexus, high blood pressure is a certain life reducing agent, surely you did not expect a different response from the Graniad. These people are lost, FUBAR and (if you really believe they are deluded) will inevitably suffer the depression of disillusionment. The more passionate they are the worse they will suffer. If they thought Copenhagen 2009 was bad – just wait till Paris 2015. All you need is patience, truth will always out.
      I just hope to live long enough to see the green clowns, carpetbaggers, troughers and pseuds as a great frosted chorus line – up to their arses in snow, shaking their fists in the air singing “Husa diga eebowai”.

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    QuixoteNexus

    Good news is that I,m not depressed , furious but not depressed. Leave that to the weepy, tree ring huggers.

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    • #
      James Bradley

      Anger is good, QN, the US Postal Service did a study and found that amongst its frustrated and disenfranchised workers, anger was the second last step to their recovery.

      10

    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      Fury is a form of depression.

      10

  • #
    Mike Spilligan

    Part of the non-problem here is that psychologists, and their fellow-travellers, sociologists, take themselves too seriously. If someone I know reasonably well were to say to me, “I’m feeling depressed”, my response would be to tell them that they’re just feeling “a bit down in the mouth” – as most of us do from time to time – and then suggest they have a little, mildly alcoholic drink.
    That attitude, I know, works wonders. However, someone who falls among professionals are likely to feel a great deal worse – it’s how the pros make money, y’see.

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    Jason Calley

    “If the term “climate depression” is new to you, it should be. No such condition is recognised by the world of psychiatry. There is no formalised syndrome.”

    Oh, climate depression is real. A friend of mine came down with a bad case of it. He totally drank the Koolade. He was constantly worried, could not sleep at night, was certain that we (the Earth) had already passed the “tipping point” and that it was too late to do anything. All he could see was the largest extinction event in planetary history with dead oceans and sterile deserts. No, I am not kidding — that was his vision. The saddest part is that he was a very bright guy, a great mathematician and well above average in science. He tried his best to convince me of disaster, and I did my best to explain why CO2 induced CAGW was a fraud. The more I resisted, the angrier he became, and eventually he stopped talking to me. That was almost five years ago.

    It is important to remember that even powerful intellects can be overwhelmed by an emotionally powerful memeplex.

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    • #
      Unmentionable

      What we think is almost always based on the NET of opinions which we self-select and then keep editing as we feel fit and this we call ‘knowing’ stuff. About 20 years ago I pursued a theory on the basis of observations which I thought irrevocably confirmed the theory. So I built an edifice of reinterpretation around it’s implications. This went on swimmingly for a couple of years and an observation came along which extended the context of the first observations and nonchalantly the theory exploded to nothing. Just like that. It took all of about half a second. What a revelation that was! Shocked to the core. I’d been convinced I had no illusions, that I knew something solid, for certain – but that was the illusion itself. I found this completely intolerable, my instant overriding concern was, “What else don’t I know?!

      For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words, with even more distinctness than that which I conceived it. There is however a class of fancies, of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which, as yet, I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt to language. These fancies arise in the soul, alas, how rarely! Only at epochs of most intense tranquility, when the bodily and mental health are in perfection. And at those mere points of time, where the confines of the waking world blend with the world of dreams. And so I captured this fancy, where all that we see, or seem, is but a dream within a dream.” – Tales of Mystery and Imagination

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    Renato Alessio

    According to Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, around 95% of people depress themselves by demanding that things be other than what they are, rather than just preferring or wishing that things be other than what they are. And that around 5% of depression has a physical or chemical or hormonal basis, and no amount of therapy will help those unfortunate individuals – they will require medicines.

    Note well, 95% of people don’t get depressed, they instead actively depress themselves with irrational thinking. Thus Climate Alarmists who depress themselves have the double whammy of giving themselves two doses of irrational thinking, the Climate Alarmism itself and their demand that the world be the way they want it to be, rather than just wishing it was that way.
    Regards.

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    It is anything to distract from having to do the real work of dealing with the real problems facing us. We have a future to prepare for and to make happen in a way that is conducive to our survival and thriving. Nature, entropy, and our actual political and cultural enemies are doing everything to keep the future, our future, from happening.

    It must but that doing the work of creating the future takes too much work. The work of knowing, learning, thinking, evaluating, choosing, and acting in such a way the right things happen in the right way at the right time. It is so much easier to cower in the corner, submit to irrational and fantasied fears, and hide from any real problem facing us. We then rely on the so called authorities who know even less what to do or how and when to do it to make it all better.

    A very light reading of history tells us that the authorities are only really successful at mucking things up at an astronomical cost of wealth and lives. Anything good they accomplish is mostly accidental and also at a cost much higher than we could provide for ourselves. Sadly, most of us stand by, yielding our lives, our fortunes, and our futures to those who know nothing and have never done or produced anything of value for anyone on earth.

    What can we do?

    We can accept reality is real, face reality first hand, and then do what it takes to stay alive and thrive. Or does that simply take too much work to make happen? You say you don’t want to die. Then act like it! Do the work.

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    john robertson

    The stages of recovery from cult involvement continue.
    Depression follows bargaining?

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  • #

    On the Beach is worth a re-watch. Substitute global warming for nuclear holocaust and it perfectly captures the ennui and melancholy of 21st cc. climate angst.

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    Uncle Gus

    I volunteer at Oxfam, because I do actually care about people starving to death. I have to do a lot of keeping my mouth shut. Oxfam is almost entirely an environmental charity these days, and nobody there can see the contradiction between being against development because it’s “bad for the planet” and trying to feed the hungry.

    The mindset seems to be; if you’re a good person you believe in global warming. You believe everythingabout global warming. You don’t believe there can ever be anything bad about combating global warming, no matter who it hurts.

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    Bruce

    The richer we are the more frivolous we become.

    The appears to be no end to it.

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    Steve McDonald

    The sceptical thinkers have used accurate data derived from measurement and observation for their tools on climate science.

    The alarmists have used propaganda and a form of psychological terrorism to steal money from the poor and accumulate what will become known as disgraceful fame.

    Personal vilification and what they can make people believe is what they call climate science.

    The saddest part of their agenda is that many of them have our children trapped in our education system.

    From pre-school to university.

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    scaper...

    Karma.

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      Len

      Karma is an Indian term. In the Western culture the correct term is the Law of sowing and reaping. The theory of Karma basically has one for one. The Law of Sowing and Reaping has an increase built into to it. Sow one unit and reap 30, 60 or 100 fold.
      Sow goodness, reap goodness. Sow evil, reap evil.

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    Scott

    I feel for her, I felt the same way when I found out there was no Santa Claus

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    James McCown

    I am engaging in another debate with some global warming zealots on facebook. They are trying to claim that all the sea ice, whether arctic or antarctic, is fresh water.

    I am saying the ice can be either fresh or salt water depending on the source. If an iceberg calves off a glacier from say the antarctic continent or Greenland, then it is fresh water. But if some sea water becomes frozen due to sufficiently low temperature, then it is sea water ice.

    And furthermore, I am saying that most of the ice is composed of sea water, such as what is listed on this graph:

    http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/Sea_Ice_Extent_v2_L.png

    Am I correct in thinking most sea ice is salt water?

    Thanks.

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    • #
      the Griss

      Sea ice forms at the ocean surface once the surface temperature drops to the freezing point during fall and winter. The freezing point for salty ocean water is about 29oF (-2oC), slightly colder than it is for fresh water (32oF, 0oC). When sea ice forms, a lot of the salt is expelled from the ice crystal structure, but the ice still ends up being slightly salty (about 1% salt, compared with about 3.5% salt in the ocean).

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      • #
        James McCown

        Thanks, Griss. So when this ice with 1% salt melts in the ocean that has 3.5% salt, it will raise the sea level due to lower density?

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        • #
          the Griss

          Sea ice came from sea water, then it goes back to seawater when it melts 🙂

          Net SL change.. ZERO !!

          I bit rusty on this, but iirc, pure ice has a lower density than sea ice, so it sits higher in the water.

          I heard of a guy once who figured all this out.. Name was Archie.. or something like that.

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            James McCown

            Griss, I see what you’re saying. But what if we compare the sea level with a whole bunch of ice with 1% salt floating in it. Then melt all that ice and measure the sea level again. Wouldn’t the sea level now be higher because the H2O in that water is less dense?

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            • #
              the Griss

              No. Read up on Archimedes Principle.

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            • #
              the Griss

              A Fun experiment..

              Get a half glass of good scotch. (Scotch is a good substitute for sea water, and much tastier)

              Put two or three ice cubes in it and mark the level. Now wait for the ice to melt.

              As the ice cubes melt the concentration of the scotch will change.

              Archimedes says the level in the glass should stay the same.

              disclaimer

              Whenever I try this experiment, the level always seems to drop significantly.

              I can only assume that Archie was doing something wrong. 🙂

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              • #
                James McCown

                Yes, I will try it with a glass of Bushmills tonight.

                But doesn’t alcohol have a lower specific gravity than water? Therefore the level should drop, even without any help from me? 🙂

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            James Bradley

            I read all his stuff too, Griss… boy that Jughead really cracked me up.

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          • #
            Ted O'Brien.

            No, Griss. The ice stands partly above the sea level, but its surface is part of the sea level. So, until it melts again, it raises the sea level.

            Thanks for the earlier info re salt & temp.

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      • #
        the Griss

        ps.. If you could “snap freeze” the sea water, it would retain more of its original salt content.

        This can happen, but the more general event is the one given above.

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  • #
    handjive

    1933 :
    Australia’s Chief Weather Expert Said That Belief In Climate Change Is An “Error Of Human Memory”

    “The Commonwealth Meteorologist (Mr. Watt) smiles when he is asked about what is wrong with tthe weather, because all the records show that it is normal.

    “There has been no appreciable climatic change anywhere since the dawn of history,” said Mr. Watt today.

    When people compare the present with the past, they remember only the abnormal. The ordinary is forgotten.

    The belief that climate is changing is only an error of memory.”

    http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/1933-australias-chief-weather-expert-said-that-belief-in-climate-change-is-an-error-of-human-memory/
    ~ ~ ~
    Uncovered 16th Century Hallucinatory Images Suggest That Today’s Climate Science Is Nothing But A Persistent Human Mental Disorder

    The online Spiegel today has a report on a new book titled The Book of Miracles which presents and examines a collection of 16th century depictions of celestial phenomena and portentous signs.

    The images were created as Europe was in the grips of the Little ice Age, a time of bad weather, bitter cold, storms and crop failures, starvation and human misery.
    The 16th century depictions reveal images of a civilization obsessed with the end-of-the-world.

    Sound familiar?

    http://notrickszone.com/2014/02/16/uncovered-16th-century-hallucinatory-images-suggest-that-todays-climate-science-is-nothing-but-a-human-mental-disorder/

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    dp

    All drama queens have days like this. It’s what they live for. I’m over it.

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    TdeF

    It is surreal. After all the scares, tipping points, collapsing societies, droughts and floods, hurricanes and bushfires in the “great moral challenge of our generation”, we are apparently faced with the emotional, economic and social fallout from the fact that after hundreds of billions of dollars in measurement alone, 97% of scientists have determined that the temperature of our planet has not changed at all in most of twenty years.

    So be afraid, be very afraid. Nothing has changed at all? That this should be a terrible situation instead of total relief is amazing, but we are told the failure of the planet to even change a little bit has produced unlivable stresses in ecologists and the caring, sensitive environmentalists. Finding out nothing at all is wrong should have been a time for celebration but the reverse is true. You could only think the failure to change threatens careers and jobs and economies which were based on the desperate hope and expectation that temperatures kept increasing and the failure of the world to end is the problem.

    Then you have to feel for those people the day after the Rapture, the ones who sold everything and gave everything away, even abandoning their families and friends. No homes. No money. No family. No friends. Alone. Self proclaimed idiots for the rest of their lives. They had Rapture passports. At least that was over in a day. Warmists in denial will continue to suffer. How tragic.

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    • #
      ROM

      I have been told by a gliding friend who personally knew a couple who when the Y2K bug scare was on in 1999, did sell up and brought a heap of survival gear and headed up into Victoria’s alpine regions just before the big switch over to the new century.

      They firmly believed and were totally convinced by the hype surrounding the so called Y2K bug that civilisation was going to collapse.

      As TdeF says above ; “It is surreal” and that is probably being very nuanced indeed.

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      • #
        Unmentionable

        Individual extreme survivalism seems to be an inability to accept or observe that life is not survivable at all. They’re clawing at the unattainable. Better to focus on making something good happen because then the bad things probably won’t happen.

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    Power Grab

    @ handjive:

    Fascinating! I have been noticing lately that very many of our words were “canonized”, if you will, during the Little Ice Age. At least, when you look them up in the dictionary, their source is giving as some time in the 1500-1600, in the depths of the LIA.

    So at a time when people were printing books (IIRC ink was invented in Holland in the 1400s – correct me if I’m wrong; I know people will probably say China invented it first), and setting down words and their definitions, at the same time, there were supposedly widespread mental disorders with weather and cosmic phenomena.

    A lot of our “classic” music was created during the LIA as well.

    I wonder what proportion of the population was troubled by the mental disorders, and what proportion were busy creating durable versions of art, letters, and music?

    Could it be that the urge to document and put things into extreme order was prompted by having to deal with extreme weather and unexplainable events in the outside world?

    Oh, I just remembered reading something that described some kind of brain disorder that was first documented among nuns in the same country where the ink was invented. I should look for that article again.

    I wonder if the ink became an environmental poison, in addition to the contaminated grain (maybe ergot and such fungal things?) that people probably had to consume because crops were so unpredictable and damaged by the extreme swings in weather.

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  • #
    Vince Whirlwind

    It’s always projection with these people.

    Accepting reality isn’t

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    The one thing that is most noticeable to me, is the people on Facebook that are the loudest warmists,
    are the same ones moaning about the Israeli treatment of Gazans. However, no mention of ISIS and Syria, or Russia and Ukraine. The warming agenda, in fact is hardly mentioned the past month, although the attacks on Abbott and Hockey are still epidemic. It must be depression!

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    handjive

    The madness of reputable climate scientists to destroy their careers in the name of doomsday global warming is astounding.

    The complete failure of Australia’s BoM with it’s 2014 El Niño predictions is an example.
    ~ ~ ~
    And Dr Neville Nicholls. http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/elnino/biog.htm

    Here is Nicholls in 1997 talking about El Niño:
    “The next challenge may be to understand and predict how the El Niño – Southern Oscillation will react to climate change, especially any change humans may cause.”

    http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/elnino/story.htm

    15 years later, 2012, the good Dr. sticks by 40 years of research:
    “The past two years have been Australia’s wettest two-year period since at least 1900.
    Not surprisingly, people ask whether global warming caused the record rains and floods.

    The simple answer is ”no” – the heavy rains and floods have been caused by back-to-back La Nina events.”

    But, in a moment of madness, he blatantly lies:
    “Before both the last two summers, the Bureau of Meteorology predicted an increased chance of above-average rainfall, because the climate system was already in the middle of a strong La Nina event.

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/la-nina-brought-flooding-but-climate-change-not-off-the-hook-20120312-1uwdd.html

    No. The BoM did not. 38 people died.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010–11_Queensland_floods

    February 17, 2009
    Drought and fire here to stay with El Nino’s return

    VICTORIA is likely to come under the influence of another El Nino within the next three years, exacerbating the drought and the likelihood of bushfires, a senior Bureau of Meteorology climate scientist says.
    David Jones, the head of the bureau’s National Climate Centre, said there was some risk of a worsening El Nino event this year, but it was more likely to arrive in 2010 or 2011.
    “We are in the build-up to the next El Nino and already the drought is as bad as it has ever been — in terms of the drought, this may be as good as things get,” Dr Jones said.

    http://www.theage.com.au/national/drought-and-fire-here-to-stay-with-el-ninos-return-20090216-899u.html#ixzz1nrZUq1ik
    . . .
    The madness of climate change: 40 years of research trashed by one lie.

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    stan stendera

    What all the commenters and the article itself has failed to recognize is that with this Age piece the alarmists have basically admitted they are crazy.

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    Gbees

    I’m thinking that the real reason the senior diplomats from island nations were crying was because they were witnessing the dollars of wealth transfer from us to them slipping between their fingers.

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    Gbees

    Nicole sounds like a prat. My niece is bipolar. Nicole is welcome to come over and find out what’s it’s really like for people struggling with mental issues. No that won’t work. She’d probably think that bipolar has something to do with the poles. That’d only make her worse!

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  • #
    Gbees

    At my daughter’s 18th birthday a number of her friends were in my study and noticed all of the climate change material, books, papers, etc etc.. Sipping on a few beverages we discussed the nonsense. One of them at the end said “so we’re not all going to die?”. We’ll not from BS such as human induced climate change. Phew what a relief. Back to the party! Best 60 minutes I spent turning these inquisitive minds away from such depressing thoughts. In one fell swoop I undid all the propaganda taught them at school. I slept well that night.

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    luvthefacts

    There is a big shindig going on in Tasmania at present where 200+ Firefighters are being advised by a Global Warming Jokester that they will need to prepare for more instances and longer periods of bushfires. Oh yes, how could I overlook, of course, there will naturally be greater intensity.

    Lets hope he offers a money back guarantee on this snake-oil advice.

    Firefighters do a fantastic job Australia wide, its just wrong that Global Warming/Climate Change pranskters want to ride along as they work to built better sustainability into Australian communities.

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    richsrd

    we need a website dedicated to all the good things happening.

    No1 – since the 1920’s deaths from extreme weather have declined by 90%.

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  • #
    Steve McDonald

    The biggest organised crime gang in the history of humanity.
    Nobody goes to jail.

    10

  • #
    el gordo

    Self Delusion

    ‘Thornton pauses, takes a breath. “It still gets me, five years later. That’s when I lost hope that we were able to save ourselves from self-destruction.

    ‘That’s when I lost hope that we would survive as a species. It made me more susceptible to what I call ‘climate depression’.”

    ‘If the term “climate depression” is new to you, it should be. No such condition is recognised by the world of psychiatry. There is no formalised syndrome. If there is a disorder of this kind, it has not been acknowledged by the medical community. Thornton herself wonders whether the moniker is misleading – whether “despair and disempowerment” might be better.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/a-climate-of-despair-20140813-102r1w.html#ixzz3AbJOeHRG

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    Owen Morgan

    I’m very late to this one, but I’m just thinking: wouldn’t Nicole Thornton have saved herself all those tears, had she only taken the trouble to read a few of those Climategate e-mails? I’ll hazard a guess that she completely ignored the Climategate scandal, then and later.

    As for the first “Climate diagnosis”, six years ago, why wasn’t Paul Ehrlich diagnosed, thirty-odd years earlier? After all, when’s the last time one of his predictions/projections/scenarios came to pass?

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    • #
      RogueElement 451

      Classic [snipped] paranoid, delusional tendencies ,often associated with [snipped] depression.

      [Depression is common and we don’t want to deliberately associate it with those other things you mentioned. – Mod]

      10