Study: Skeptics are more environmental — believers do less but want government to solve it instead

Ain’t that the way? When it comes to taking individual action, skeptics are more environmental than the people who call themselves “environmental”.

A new psych study shows that skeptics are more likely to use cloth shopping bags, catch public transport and buy eco-friendly items. Hall et al somehow got 600 people to fill in a survey up to seven times in one year about their belief in “climate change” and their self-reported action. They found there are three types of people: the “highly concerned” about climate change, the “cautiously worried” and the “skeptical”. The “highly convinced” believers may tell the world we have to act, but they were more likely to use plastic bags themselves and drive their car. They were more likely to want government policies to magically solve the problem. Skeptics meanwhile, were more passionately against government meddling than any group was on any issue. It was the single most definitive score.

Hall et al, 2018, Graph, environmental behaviour, skeptics.

Skeptics (blue) were more likely to reuse shopping bags, buy eco-friendly things, and catch the bus and train. The highly concerned (red) were more likely to recycle goods and otherwise support government action.

 

Researchers were pretty much baffled by their results and admitted as much. But most of their confusion, as usual, starts with their assumptions. Firstly, they assume that there is some connection between our global climate and plastic bags — as if people really believe that by using a cloth bag or buying organic tomatoes that they will cool the planet. If we surveyed the reasons people use cloth bags, its probably to reduce plastic in landfill and to stop dolphins getting strangled. Nobody thinks a cloth bag will slow storms and reduce droughts.

The researchers didn’t stand a chance: set up to fail with their choice of words.  “Climate change” and “pollution” are muddy ambiguous terms that mean different things to different people. Language is the main investigative tool we have — but it’s been blunted to mush by spinmeisters. No great gems of truth will be found while mining rocks with ripe bananas.

What the study shows is that skeptics are more diligent and conscientious about reducing their own environmental footprint.

Are skeptics dumb robots or are believers social climbing patsies:

 These results suggest that different groups may prefer different strategies for addressing climate change.

You don’t say.

Thus, belief in climate change does not appear to be a necessary or sufficient condition for pro-environmental behavior, indicating that changing skeptical Americans’ minds need not be a top priority for climate policymakers.

In your dreams believer-academics. The biggest message in this study was that skeptics don’t even want climate policymakers, full stop.

It’s as if skeptics are dumb robots behaving to “save the climate” by catching a train, without even believing the climate needs saving. Maybe the deplorables don’t believe in “climate change” but can’t afford the car? Seriously guys.

It would be just as fair to conclude that if what you want to get people on public transport, using cloth shopping bags and buying eco-friendly products, then convert the masses to skeptics.

If anything the study suggests that believers don’t care much about shopping bags and starving whales. Why do they profess belief? It might not be moral licensing, so much as moral vanity — where belonging to the right tribe is more important than “saving the planet”. But in a democracy, if you want voters to support parasitic gravy trains and inefficient subsidies, you still need to persuade the voters that these things are worth doing.

The alternative — the dishonest Turnbull approach is to hide the carbon trading schemes within meaningless names like “the Safeguard Mechanism” or the National Energy Guarantee. Works for a while, but the public is waking up. So far he has lost 14 seats at the last election and 30 newspolls since.

As for “pro-environmental behaviour” — Hall et al equate catching a bus with supporting a wind farm as if people have a pro-environment button that activates everything Hall and Lewis think of as being “pro-environment”. Instead people pick and choose each action separately.

 Tick the Stereotype – believers are young, white and naive

The old and wise don’t believe everything they read. Believers do:

Overall, participants who belonged to belief clusters that endorsed the existence of climate change and expressed concern were more likely to: be young; White/Caucasian; see climate change as anthropogenic; perceive climate change as harmful to humans around the world, soon; and be trusting of scientific and media communications about climate science.

The Skeptics got more skeptical

Interestingly, after repeated surveys, the worriers kept worrying at a constant level, but skeptics got more skeptical.

Hall, 2018, Psychology, Climate Change, belief, skeptics. Graph.

….

Could it be that the act of repeatedly asking people about their skeptical views helped to solidify their opinion? The skeptical group is the only group that doesn’t get to discuss their opinion in politically correct society. Possibly the more they thought about it, the more sure they became.

Researchers are baffled:

Despite these findings about climate change beliefs, self reported behaviors, and policy support, we were unable to explain why the “Skeptical” low-believers  were more likely to self report more pro-environmental behavior than high-believers. For instance, the “Skeptical” did not report greater identity fit with  environmentalism, did not endorse greater beliefs in individual and political efficacy to reduce climate change, and were not associated with logical  demographic factors (e.g., political ideology, income, education). One possibility is that our findings generalize only to Americans on MTurk who tend to lean  to the political left. Although we cannot rule out this possibility until this study is replicated with other samples, the current sample contained enough conservatives to test for ideology effects; furthermore, other research has documented that conservatives on MTurk are dispositionally similar to conservatives in well-respected nationally representative samples (e.g., American National Election Study; Clifford, Jewell, & Waggoner, 2015). However, it is also possible  that we did not measure partisanship or ideology with enough granularity to detect nuanced differences in climate change beliefs. Indeed, research published  after we collected our data found that “Tea Party” Republicans have the most distinct environmental views (Hamilton & Saito, 2015), whereas conventional  Democratic/ Republican divides (our measure of partisanship) do not sufficiently capture diverse environmental views in the U.S …

Perhaps our “Skeptical” participants had more libertarian leanings, leading them to report engaging in individual level behavior over endorsing federal government climate change policies. Or, the “Skeptical” might have been motivated to report behaving pro-environmentally for other reasons that they did not associate with climate change, such as reducing pollution or waste accumulation. Other possibilities for these results involve the “Highly Concerned”: Perhaps they engaged in moral licensing (Merritt, Effron, & Monin, 2010), whereby their concern about climate change psychologically liberated them from engaging in (and reporting) pro-environmental behavior. Or, perhaps the “Highly Concerned” felt that federal policies were the more effective means of addressing climate change (vs. individual pro-environmental behaviors).

Hall makes a careless but important error in the first line of the introduction:

Although 97 percent of scientists believe in anthropogenic climate change (Cook et al., 2013), not all Americans agree;
depending on the study, only 54–65% of Americans believe in climate change (Hornsey, Harris, Bain, & Fielding, 2016;
Leiserowitz, Maibach, Roser-Renouf, & Hmielowski, 2012; Saad, 2017a).

There is a big difference between 97% of all scientists and 97% of a micro niche subset called “climate scientists”. Hall and Lewis don’t realize that there is no mismatch between scientists and the public — almost half  of meteorologists (2013) (half of meteorologists in 2017) — fergoodnesssake — are skeptics, survey after survey shows that two-thirds of geoscientists and engineers are skeptics, and most readers of skeptical blogs (who chose to respond to surveys and list their qualifications in  comments^) have hard science degrees.

The table with errors and what not (click)

Hall, 2018, Table 1. Psychology research, climate change opinions.

Click to enlarge and see more.

 

h/t GWPF and thanks to Lance especially in the US.

REFERENCE

Hall and Lewis (2018) Believing in climate change, but not behaving sustainably: Evidence from a one-year longitudinal study, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Vol 56, p 55-62, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2018.03.001

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122 comments to Study: Skeptics are more environmental — believers do less but want government to solve it instead

  • #
    Kinky Keith

    I have always been more involved with “the environment” than most people I know.

    I have loved being out in the bush from an early age and have rarely come across others while out walking or, in earlier days, running.

    This suggests that most people do not appreciate and involve themselves with the environment by direct contact.

    Rather they talk about “the environment” as a theoretical concept that will earn green points at social gatherings.

    It is interesting to have come across red bellied black snakes on the track and walked past a 4 ft lizard hanging vertically up the trunk of a tree or to have finally found a Coachwhip picking through leaf material.

    Such experiences are probably foreign to most environmentalists who self identify as such and they would have little appreciation of what might happen to that wildlife when a severe bushfire, caused by their lack of understanding, erupts.

    Nature lovers?

    KK

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    • #
      beowulf

      Ditto Keith. Ever climbed Tomaree? Do it. Plenty of whip birds there but the lower slopes need a match in them to rejuvenate them from decades of choking debris. You’ll be rubbing elbows with tourists along the way, but it’s spectacular and worth it just for the views and the WWII relics.

      I grew up on a 6,000 acre farm of river flats and small mountains, and I roamed alone into those hills and gorges and rainforest clumps most weekends into places where it would have taken them 3 days to find me had I broken a leg or some such. Later I got into rainforest botany and propagated thousands of local provenance trees to re-plant and stabilise sections of the riverbank that were slumping into the river on a worrying scale, and busted a gut to keep them alive during a drought. I still keep a daily record of bird sightings in my backyard, and grow a lot of bird-attracting plants . . . yet I’m as far from a greenie as you can get.

      I believe in felling trees for a good purpose. I believe in the regenerative power and necessity of regular fire in the Australian landscape. I believe in the virtue and necessity of coal power even though it is “in my back yard” (I live about an hour down-wind of Bayswater and half an hour from the nearest concentration of open cuts.)

      I’m sure many greenies would happily spit on me for my beliefs, yet when I encounter them I invariably come away shaking my head at their astonishing levels of ignorance on all things natural. It seems they learned all their nature from WWF brochures. To see the hypocrisy of their attitudes you need only check out the mountains of plastic and paper rubbish they leave behind after every green rally. I think that says it all.

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      • #
        Kinky Keith

        Hi Beowulf ,

        Yes I’ve been to the top a few times.

        An amazing area but more recently have been exploring, mostly by car, around Wollombi and out near Wattagan creek near what I call little Yengo.

        For over 65 years I’ve been aware of Glenrock area and seen the growth build up and choke the bush _ modern environmentalism.

        There have been a few very disturbing fires through there and out to Dudley.

        Regular maintenance is absolutely essential.

        KK

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        • #
          Mark M

          Here is a a story from 2004 …

          Bell Bird causing damage to forest ecosystems

          Whether or not you like the Bell Bird’s call, you can’t deny it’s distinctive. It’s also a sweet sound for a creature being associated with the destruction of trees.

          A series of inquiries into what’s causing dieback in Australian forests is now zeroing in on an unlikely culprit – the native “Bell Bird,” also known as the “Bell Miner”.
          Dieback is ruining both forestry productivity and biodiversity.

          And those bell birds basically drive out other insect eating birds and the numbers of a sap sucking insect in the tree crowns called psyllids, explodes and stresses the trees and over time that stress will cause the trees to die.

          http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1200578.htm

          the sound of bellbirds:
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_72WGRT0mJw

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          • #
            Kinky Keith

            If you live in Newcastle and drive past the power lines just east of the entrance to the Old Gun Club road you will always hear bell birds.

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            • #
              BruceC

              Bellbirds can also be heard on Kalaroo Rd heading towards Redhead from Jewells (near where the creek always floods over the road in heavy rain).

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              • #
                BruceC

                Can also remember as a wee-tacker going down to Sydney on the old Pacific Hwy and going through Kangy Angy.

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          • #
            sophocles

            Dieback is ruining both forestry productivity and biodiversity.

            Hmm. Which forests and where?
            Is a cause known? eg fungus?

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            • #
              sophocles

              by known, I was thinking proven. Parasite overload causing destruction usually goes hand in glove with infectious agents. If it were purely parasitic overload, the tree(s) concerned would have evolved their own defences over time.

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              • #
                beowulf

                Multiple causes Sophocles. Dieback was more of an issue some years back. Psyllids, armillaria fungus and phythophthora fungus (cinnamon fungus) are all implicated. The fungi are by far the worst. They have devastated certain plant families, especially the Proteaceae, which are very common in Oz, but they are happy to also attack eucalypts which are the backbone of our timber industry. The main vector is humans via vehicle tyres where dirty logging gear and weekend warriors in their 4WDs charging around fire trails have aided the spread, even from the west coast to the east.

                Another factor is fire in the tall Mountain Ash forests of VIC and TAS. Mountain Ash is one of the few eucalypts easily killed by fire. An Ash reaches its peak reproductive age at about 300 years. If fires occur too frequently and too hot before it reaches that age, the entire stand will die out. Locking up forests at the behest of greenies creates hot fires that turn vast forests into graveyards.

                The main factor wrecking the timber industry though is locking up forests and making them unavailable to millers. Numerous mills have closed because they can no longer access logs due to green tape. Even bee keepers are now locked out of state forests in NSW because honey bees are not native.

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              • #
                sophocles

                Beowulf, thank you for the response.

                We have a problem in native-forested areas around Auckland City (Waitakere Ranges) with Agathis Australis (New Zealand Kauri) suffering a dieback from an aggressive fungus thought to be spread by feet (shoe soles).

                The affecting fungus, here, is Phytophthora agathidicida which seems to be unique to the kauri and is the main problem. Phytophthora cinnamomi (also present) can attack and kill kauri too, but is considered a much lesser problem.

                It seems very Interesting that both countries could be having such a problem—fatal fungal infections of timber trees, at about the same time, around the solar maximum. The kauri dieback was first noticed around 1970 and is now of significant proportions. The concurrant infections could all be coincidence.

                Even bee keepers are now locked out of state forests in NSW because honey bees are not native.

                Heh, I’m sure the not-native wasps won’t mind at all. We have big problems in our own forests from those but we haven’t been so stupid to ban bees. Not yet, I hasten to add.

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              • #
                beowulf

                Interesting theory about the solar max. I hope that Agathis fungus stays on your side of the ditch. We have 3 Agathis spp, plus a few Araucarias and the dinosaur Wollemi Pine — all closely-related cousins that could be susceptible here.

                Whilst I don’t imagine fire was a major factor in NZ forest ecology (I know you still have some big fires — you lot help us out with personnel and monsoon buckets whenever we are in a pinch), in the Oz context I wonder how much effect the change in the fire regime has had by not regularly suppressing fungal disease in the topsoil or insect activity above. The lack of a cleansing flame every now and then might have a lot of knock-on consequences beyond fire intensity that no one has considered.

                The bee ban has created an artificial shortage of honey and high prices. The greenies have a lot to answer for. First they came for our timber and we did nothing; then they came for our coal and we did nothing; . . . then they came for our honey . . .

                PS. I have mailed you a dozen cute possums. They don’t eat much.

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          • #
            robert rosicka

            Bell birds one of maybe even the only bird that farms , the leaf sucking parasite it spreads and feeds on can destroy eucalypts.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        I think a lot of the “greenies” are urbanites who embrace the political clout and trendiness of “the environment”, and probably to impress some girl they are keen on….its the new “caring sharing” fluffy nonsense for people devoid of actual understanding how the physical world actually works.

        I have berated one engineer who was into climate change for abandoning logic and rigorous science. He doesn’t talk to me any more, but such is life. Fools are in all professions, you just have to take an uncompromising stand if we are to preserve the actual integrity of science and engineering….

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        • #
          Kinky Keith

          Steve,

          The indoctrination is incessant.

          Every media outlet is on the kick to promote renewables and make sure we bunnies know that renewables will be cheaper than coal fired soon.

          A while back they did the same thing with water so that they could put the land and money for dams to better use.

          I need a break.

          KK

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      • #
        Simon

        I am sorry Beowulf you are weird because you are too logical and normal.Where on earth are you able to state the obvious. Shame on you.

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  • #
    RicDre

    This finding is actually very similar to findings in the 2006 book “Who Really Cares” by Arthur C. Brooks. His study was about who is more charitable, people who believe in Big Government or people who believe in minimal Government. One of his finding was that people who believe in Big Government tended to be less charitable because they felt that it was the Government’s job to deal with people in need. Similarly, people who believe that the Government must solve “Climate Change” may also tend to believe that Government actions frees them from any responsibility to act on “Climate Change” themselves.

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  • #
    Ian1946

    Socialist and Conservative tags could also have been used. Socialists believe in big government and usually do not contribute to society or get involved in community activities.

    Socialists, especially on Facebook, resort to personal abuse if someone has a differing view. They never present facts as the facts always run counter to their arguments or religion.

    Socialists would be the sort who would have joined the SS or the Stasi to ensure their view is the accept d one.

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    • #
      RicDre

      Given that “Nazi” is an abbreviation for Nationalsozialist” (The full name of the political party was the “Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei” – the National Socialist German Worker’s Party), German socialists did join the SS.

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        RicDre:

        Patrick Fermor in A Time of Gifts mentioned how easily Communists switched to the Nazi party. He wasn’t the only one at that time, indeed several intelligent commentators referred to the Nazis as Bolsheviks. And Stalin thought of them as allies not enemies until they invaded Russia, hence his collaboration and help in their early days of power.

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        • #
          RicDre

          Many Communists thought Nazism was a stepping stone between Capitalism and Communism…a common saying among them at the time was “First Brown, then Red”. The Communists had to do a 180° change to their propaganda when Germany invaded Russia…”Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”

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  • #
    Yonniestone

    We actually have reusable shopping bags that are about 15 years old, but I’d point out the Greens have been using the same old bags for ever.

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  • #
    Roger

    The main reason the young are more likely to be Believers in Climate Change is because of the relentless brainwashing they have been subjected to throughout their education.

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    • #
      el gordo

      I agree Roger, the indoctrination of our young minds by socialist teachers is a crime against humanity. There are obviously many teachers without a socialist bent who have refrained from spreading propaganda.

      PM Julia Gillard asked teachers to incorporate climate change into every subject, but that idea fell flat.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Gullard is a UN sop, so I’d expect as much……

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      • #
        robert rosicka

        Kids these days by the time they get to secondary school are brainwashed about the perils of Co2 but have no idea which way is clockwise and some can’t even add 5+2 and get the right answer .
        And you can bet these will be the next crop of pollies and decision makers .

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        • #
          robert rosicka

          Some people think the movie “Idiocracy” was fiction but it turns out it was based on current events .

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      • #
        Ian Hill

        PM Julia Gillard asked teachers to incorporate climate change into every subject, but that idea fell flat.

        While studying Latin? I’d like to have seen that – maybe after Vesuvius erupted!

        Differential equations, calculus, trigonometry? Yeah, right!

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        • #
          Annie

          ‘Urbs antiqua fuit’ or something of the sort….there was an ancient city…not around Vesuvius maybe but history can be ‘modified’ can it not?!

          10

    • #
      TimiBoy

      They have also not yet had Life beat some Wisdom into them. In short, a well tuned Bullshit Meter is a function of Insight, which I find is most often an Experience based skill.

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    • #
      Latus Dextro

      Not only their indoctrination edukashun, but the young have been exposed to incessant eco-propaganda at every level and from every angle, whether the MSM, marketing, advertising, municipal directives, rap noise, institutional policies, and chronic virtue signalling … you name it, a pernicious blend of toxic ideology and societal meme.

      Telling kids they’ll never fail, that they’re a raging unique success and now, that they can control the climate will only end in tears … a deranged generation that believe they’re gods and doomed to brutally learn they’re anything but as their precious, narcissistic ego collide with reality.

      10

  • #
    manalive

    … participants who belonged to belief clusters that endorsed the existence of climate change and expressed concern were more likely to: be young …

    There are exceptions of course but as people age, having been around the block a few times, they become more empirical in their judgements.

    … after repeated surveys, the worriers kept worrying at a constant level, but skeptics got more skeptical …

    The assumptions built into IPCC lower tropospheric temperature projections are not being confirmed by observations, dodgy adjustments notwithstanding.
    With time it is becoming clearer that the projected theoretical negative effects of adding CO2 plus assumed strong positive feedbacks have been exaggerated and the positive effects downplayed or ignored.
    And that the positive effects of “addressing climate change” have been exaggerated and the negative effects downplayed or ignored.

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  • #
    Ian Hilliar

    “Everybody wants to save the planet, but no one gives a stuff about their next door neighbours”.

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    • #
      sophocles

      “Everybody?” No, I think the planet is fully capable of saving itself. It’s 4.5 billion years older than I am and came through the Hadeon Era with all clouds flying. It’s a fully mature planet which evolved multi-cellular life forms both fixed and mobile, over the last 500 million years so it knows what it’s doing and can defend itself more than satisfactorily.

      For that, I give it due consideration, after all, it evolved T-Rex, but “save it?”

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      • #
        Latus Dextro

        I think it also pays to remember that 71% of the planet is water, which would cover the entire surface to an approximate depth of 2 miles were the topography levelled. As it is, 95% of the Ocean volume is ‘undiscovered’. Contrary to the delusion of it being in a small tightly compressed global community, it is a damned vast space that remains essentially empty and unknown.

        The eco-Marxists would like to ban air travel for all except their elite. When the rest of humanity realise that walking, peddling or sailing somewhere might take a decent chunk of life, some may yet tangibly experience the sleight of hand, but most will not, trapped as they will be in their UNEP ordained Habitats adhering to the UN Urban Agenda and living out their ‘transformed’ lives.

        10

  • #
    pat

    9 May: Fox News: Haley: No to UN global pact for the environment
    By Ben Evansky
    A proposal for bringing international environmental law under one legally binding treaty at the United Nations will be up for a preliminary vote later this week at the U.N. General Assembly. The United States U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley tells Fox News in a statement that the U.S. won’t support the measure.

    The Global Pact for the environment has the backing of French President Emmanuel Macron and the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, and is being sponsored by France at the world body. It seeks to consolidate what it calls the “fragmented nature of environmental law,” and “codify” it, and make it accessible to all citizens.

    In a statement to Fox News, Haley said that, “When international bodies attempt to force America into vague environmental commitments, it’s a sure sign that American citizens and businesses will get stuck paying a large bill without getting large benefits. The proposed global compact is not in our interests, and we oppose it.”

    First launched in Paris just weeks after President Trump took the U.S. out of the Paris agreement on climate change, the pact was drawn up by a group of 80 legal experts from 40 countries. At the opening event Macron was joined by the former Republican Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, who offered his support to it, telling Agence France-Presse that the issue was not a political one.

    In September, Macron set out the goals of Global Pact at the United Nations. He said the framework would “establish rights, but also duties for mankind.”
    Macron urged quick adoption in his speech, “I very strongly believe that the world is ready for this and that it’s our responsibility.” Guterres also gave his support to the pact at the meeting.

    Marc Morano, publisher of Climate Depot, and author of the new book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” charged that, “This new global environmental pact will have more teeth and cover more aspects of human civilization than the U.N.-Paris climate pact. This new environmental pact is looking to be the U.N. Paris agreement on steroids because they are making it binding, and it appears even wider in scope.”

    One United Nations diplomat told Fox News that, “the unknowing and uncertainty is what makes us so nervous, because you just never know where this can go and it could open up a Pandora’s Box.”…

    A vote on the French draft resolution is likely to take place this coming Thursday.
    http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/05/08/haley-fights-frances-push-for-legally-binding-treaty-on-fundamental-principles-environmental-law.html

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    • #
      Kinky Keith

      We need to get out of the United Nations.

      Auxit.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Agreed. The UN is a global strait jacket , of the Communist variety….

        The chilling phrase from the French Prez is this :

        “In September, Macron set out the goals of Global Pact at the United Nations. He said the framework would “establish rights, but also duties for mankind.””

        From http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

        Article 29.

        (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
        (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
        (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

        In other words – your rights are whatever the jack-booted UN flunkies say you have.

        Our grandfathers would have called them jackals and hyenas in suits…..

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        • #
          sophocles

          Sounds very like Agenda 2030, which also, very nobly, proposes to cure’ poverty. That is really scary as they didn’t say how. There is only one cure for poverty which works, so I don’t think they know how. I fully expect advanced communism.

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    • #
      RicDre

      “He said the framework would “establish rights, but also duties for mankind.”

      I think this means that the treaty would give the UN bureaucrats the ability to impose their will on everyone, or in other words, the UN will become the EU writ Large.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Correct.

        Its called global slavery.

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      • #
        Latus Dextro

        Ah yes, those elusive “duties.” One of them will be to consume less, much more in keeping with the post 2015 ‘transformational’ Agenda with its due date of 2030. In 2015 it was announced that it contains “17 Sustainable Development Goals with 169 associated targets which are integrated and indivisible” one of them being…

        28. We commit to making fundamental changes in the way that our societies produce and consume goods and services. Governments, international organizations, the business sector and other non-State actors and individuals must contribute to changing unsustainable consumption and production patterns,…”

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    • #
      manalive

      This is just the latest example of what has been the UN modus operandi from day one viz. mission creep, the organisation was originally set up early in 1945 “for victory over Hitlerism”, then nuclear disarmament (MAD was a more potent guarantee against nuclear war) then ‘human rights’ and so on.
      Having ‘achieved’ Kyoto and Paris they are now just ratcheting up.
      If they ever get an agreement amongst the member states it will be adhered to by only those countries that have more than adequate environmental protection or over-protection (US excepted) measures in place with an even more stifling effect of there economies.
      And that is the intent:

      “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution …that will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change, be it COP 15, 21, 40 – you choose the number,” she said. “It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation”

      (Christiana Figueres, who heads up the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change May 2015).

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    • #
      TdeF

      While the US is eternally grateful to the French for the 1770s help and inviting them to World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Haiti and all the fun French places, they have every right to be very suspicious of French motives.

      I doubt the French ever recovered from the Battles of Trafalgar or Waterloo or the Louisiana purchase and are determined to punish both the British and America. There is no greater fun that making up laws which the US have to obey. Of course it is about saving the planet. Wasn’t it always?

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        One of my relatives fought at the battle of Trafalgar ( on the british side ).

        I guess we could remind the french on the effectiveness of the Maginot line…

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        • #
          Another Ian

          And those “pristine French rifles” for sale

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        • #
          TdeF

          When the Americans arrived to help at the end of WW1, they had no weapons at all. They had to buy these from the French.

          However in the amazingly successful battles upto and including the battle of Amiens, the blackest day for the Germans, the Australians and 1,000 Americans fought side by side in reversing the tide of war under the Generalship of Sir John Monash. Monash was also recognized by Sir Bernard Montgomery as the finest general of the war.

          Also the Americans brought with them the ‘Spanish’ flu. It was the biggest pandemic in history killing over 30 million, but particularly young men with strong immune systems. I suspect this was what broke the back of the Germans, reinforced by 1 million men who left the Russian front.

          The French are still at the forefront of Climate Change and punishing everyone for their refusal to speak French.

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          sophocles

          … and the honour of the Vichy government …

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        Another Ian

        I once read of a man described as “One of those Frenchmen still trying to prove that they won at Agincourt”

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        MudCrab

        Jokes aside, French bitterness at losing the Franco-Prussian War did significantly affect their foreign policy coming into the early 20th century.

        If the French have a military problem in ‘modern’ warfare then it is trying to fight the next war based on the perceived mistakes of the last. After the Franco-Prussian the feeling was they had been too passive and decided that the way to win battles was to constantly attack.

        That didn’t really work and after WW1 they decided that attacking was bad. In defence of this defensive mindset there were a LOT of people in the 1920s with very personal reasons for not wanting to see anymore French soldiers killed so the policy of massive fortifications was well intended. It also needs to be remembered that the Maginot Line defences did effectively work as intended – it kept the Germans from invading from across the border. The fact the Germans invaded France via Holland and Belgium is however something they probably should have considered and planned for a bit better, but their real fault was assuming battles would proceed at the tempo of WW1. It is not as much the French in 1940 spent great amounts of time running away, but more their command structure was not up to the task and couldn’t react remotely fast enough.

        Apart from that the real last time they were a serious world power is back when the Sun King was in charge.

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          Re perceptions at the outset of WW1, on a constricted
          battle field, up against rapid firing weaponry, confidence
          that yr cavalry would win the day is a bit deja vu, fighting
          this war based on 19th century battle modes.

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    PeterS

    In other words, as the article below points out we sceptics have a thinking problem for denying the science of CAGW because we use dichotomous thinking. The article actually can easily be turned on itself to PROVE the article is actually nonsense and false, and full of dichotomous thinking. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. The article below goes further and is actually saying the pot (the article in question) is calling the kettle (those who are sceptical of CAGW) black while it’s calling its own colour is white when it’s in fact black. This is typical of leftists thought process. They are the ones in denial.

    The thinking error at the root of science denial

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    • #
      el gordo

      Its black and white.

      Green ‘deniers perceive the spectrum of scientific agreement as divided into two unequal parts: perfect consensus and no consensus at all. Any departure from 100 percent agreement is categorized as a lack of agreement, which is misinterpreted as indicating fundamental controversy in the field.’

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        I know of green supporters who exhibited independent thought, only to be attacked by other greens, who then forced said person to drop back into line…..its scary to watch….

        They don’t confront me any more, I like fried seagull…..favourite dish…..its good sport…everyone needs a hobby…

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        • #
          Ian1946

          Steve, this sounds like an example of preventing thought crime

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        • #
          el gordo

          In my milieu all conversation on climate change is banned because of my contrarian views, which makes for dull gatherings.

          Looking at the big picture, Antonio Gramsci and his hegemonic theory is to blame for AGW, it has been extraordinarily successful.

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          • #
            OriginalSteve

            Banned? ….you should hint at it to watch warmists start to arc up… At least you wont be bored, and if you time it right, as one warmist goes supernova, others might go off in a chain reaction….hours of fun….

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        PeterS

        I’m afraid a lot of other people think the same way. I see them everywhere, and most of them don’t follow the Greens at all. I see too much evidence supporting the idea that mankind is devolving into a lesser and lesser intelligent species. Jordan Peterson meets them all the time and it’s fun to watch how he demolishes their arguments and pulls them down from their ivory towers to the point of making them look less intelligent that a rodent.

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          el gordo

          Peterson is an intellectual with the courage of his convictions.

          ‘I see them everywhere, and most of them don’t follow the Greens at all.’

          That is true, but green sentiment through the MSM propaganda wing has brainwashed the masses, so all we require is equal time on the ABC to bring about a revolution.

          My thinking is that extreme weather will give us the edge, because we know what is happening and the Klimatariat don’t want to talk about it.

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            PeterS

            True the Greens sentiment has poisoned much of the media and as a result the people. I think though it all started with the education establishments, from schools to Universities and colleges. I recall some 35 years ago when I was at Uni some of my friends were so far to the left it still scares me. One in particular was extreme and eventually became a senior lecturer at a Uni in Sydney. I have contacted him recently and he hasn’t changed. I can just imagine what sought of ideas he pushes onto his students.

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              el gordo

              A couple of my lecturers in journalism (Comm) were avowed Marxists, so I understand why the MSM is what it is.

              But there is hope that we can dismantle the education system bit by bit.

              ‘Renowned quantum physicist Michelle Simmons shone a spotlight last month on the short­comings of NSW’s 2001 HSC physics curriculum when she ­delivered an explosive Australia Day address in Sydney.

              ‘Simmons, the professor who leads the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at the UNSW’s school of physics, says when she ­arrived in Australia from Britain she was “horrified” to learn how the high school physics curriculum had been “feminised” in NSW.

              “In other words,” she says, “to make it more appealing to girls, our curricula designers in the ­bureaucracy substituted formulae with essays. What a disaster.”

              Oz

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              • #
                PeterS

                But there is hope that we can dismantle the education system bit by bit.

                I wish I could share your optimism. Given it’s still getting worse it will be a very long time before we even see things starting to turn around. They are just more numerous in number and greater in force than the quiet types on our side.

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                Latus Dextro

                The University of Melbourne has taken to advertising for women only …
                University of Melbourne mathematics school advertises women-only positions
                The infection by the LEFT in academia is complete. No one should tolerate this attempt by the University of Melbourne to orchestrate equity of outcome instead of equity of opportunity in a notionally free society in which men and women are and have been entirely free to chose their careers. It now seems they are no longer. Ipso facto, Australian society is no longer ‘free’ and has openly dispensed with any illusion that it might have been.

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      sophocles

      The author blew it in the first sentence:

      there are three important issues on which there is scientific consensus

      my bold.

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    PeterW

    The “believers” seem more likely to come from a cohort that have never experienced any real suffering, and therefore have this belief that “it can’t happen to me”.

    Therefore they are more likely to fear some hypothetical global catastrophe, than personally running out of money because they can’t pay the power bills.

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  • #
    el gordo

    The propaganda wing of the green blob had a yarn from warmist Dana Nuccitelli in 2013.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/dec/02/meteorologists-global-warming-consensus

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  • #

    Academic surveys are push polls which require simplistic responses to slack, loaded terminology. The fact that the odd “survey” occasionally proves hard to rig and gives “findings” which “baffle” should not blind us to their essential worthlessness.

    That said, conservation is a forgotten value since we went green. I don’t know what belief cluster my opinion belongs in or whether it has a dependent measure, latent factor mean or latent factor SE hanging off it. I just think we should stop simultaneously bagging our coal and wasting it.

    Because our coal is paying for everything…including all the green carpetbagging, white elephants and cappuccino university faculties.

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    • #

      How true is this where mosomoso mentions this: (my bolding here)

      Because our coal is paying for everything…including all the green carpetbagging, white elephants and cappuccino university faculties.

      This is most true here in Queensland. Until you have seen the Government Royalty Payments setup for coal sale, you have no idea of the money coming in, and without that, the State would go broke, literally.

      Then there’s the electrical power. Queensland has 8 coal fired power plants in all, and only one of them is outright not owned by the State, (Milmerran) and two of the four Units at Callide are in private hands, and while the Gladstone plant is owned by the same owners of the Aluminium smelting company, the Government has total access to the remaining power not being used by that Smelter at any time. So, of the 23 Units in total, the Qld Government owns all but 9 of them. The Government also owns the largest electricity retailer Ergon Energy.

      The coal for those plants is mined in coal mines wholly owned by the State Government, and is transported to the plants on the Government owned rail system on Government owned rolling stock.

      Now perhaps you can see why the major finding of the Qld 50% Renewables by 2030 was that NO coal fired power plants would be closed by that date, ensuring that 50% renewables target will NEVER be reached, unless of course you are the gullible public believing what they tell you.

      Imagine the wholesale job losses spread far and wide if they were to close them down.

      And the public just blindly believes whatever that same Government tells you about how ‘green’ they are.

      Tony.

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        Another Ian

        O/T a bit

        In the spirit of “The Agony and The Extacy”

        When the power goes out you are dealing with “The Ergony”

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    TdeF

    This pscyh study may well be separating thoughtful people from unthinking people. All scientists are sceptics, the very definition of science, people who require proof. Logical people are sceptics, the very essence of thinking people, people who want the logic behind a conclusion. In contrast sheep do nothing about anything, munch grass all day and follow the leader. Nothing wrong with that, but unthinking and easily led. Unfortunately they vote too.

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    Jim

    Personally, I like climate change, summer is coming on, winter with its snow, spring with its greens and budding plants, and fall with its colors. What’s wrong with that? But, the earth at one season hasn’t happened since the last ice age. And the next time that happens may be closer then further away. And will be cold again.
    For the record, environmental responsibility is a personal issue. That’s different then climate. The local environment we can control. The climate?

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    Ruairi

    When alarmists by group-think are cowed,
    They signal their virtues out loud,
    Warning, skeptics must learn,
    To show real concern,
    For the climate and follow the crowd.

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    Russell

    I’m surprised that nobody on this blog has (yet) commented on the garbage that was being spouted by Simon Holmes à Court on Richo (Sky News) last night. He was reeling off purported statistics that fly in the face of many of the erudite comments frequently made by actual qualified electrical engineers, etc. on this blog.

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    Jeff

    I am a skeptic.
    My transport is a scooter and I only travel on it about 200 km a year (petrol usage negligible).
    My daily electricity usage is about 3kWh (with electric cooking)
    I do have 1 kW of solar panels feeding into the grid.
    And I compost everything (including bones and meat).
    I don’t bother putting out the council bins because all my garbage fits in a little bag.
    So yes it no surprise to me that ‘Skeptics are more environmental’

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    pat

    reminders about what Macron has in mind for his environmental pact:

    24 June 2017: Daily Mail: Predator! Arnold Schwarzenegger swoops in for a kiss on French president Emmanuel Macron’s wife on his latest trip to France
    The Hollywood star is in Paris ahead of talks about a global environmental pact
    Schwarzenegger will join legal experts and politicians to discuss legally-binding agreement
    He has been a fierce critic of President Donald Trump over his environmental policies
    By Dave Burke
    Schwarzenegger is visiting the French capital alongside politicians, legal experts and activists who are launching a campaign for a global environmental pact…

    It comes just weeks after President Donald Trump announced he would pull the US out of the 196-nation Paris Agreement on curbing dangerous global warming.
    It brought a scathing response from Schwarzenegger, who said: ‘One man cannot destroy our progress.
    ‘One man can’t stop our clean energy revolution. And one man can’t go back in time. Only I can do that.’…

    Backers of the proposed pact want it to protect the human right to a clean, healthy environment.
    The end goal, organisers said this week, is a legal treaty under which states can be brought to justice for flouting the rights of a group or individual.
    The new pact, being blueprinted by top legal minds from several countries, should eventually be put to the United Nations for adoption, and impose legally-binding obligations on signatory states, its drafters say…

    ‘We already have two international (human rights) pacts… The idea is to create a third, for a third generation of rights – environmental rights,’ said French judicial expert Laurent Fabius, who will chair tomorrow’s meeting.
    The earlier covenants – one for social, economic and cultural rights, the other for civil and political rights – were adopted by the UN in 1966.
    Fabius, who chaired the 2015 UN conference that approved the hard-fought Paris Agreement, said the new text should outline rights and duties, provide for reparations to be made in case of a breach, and introduce the ‘polluter pays’ principle.

    ***It would mean that people can bring states to court, “to have them held responsible or to compel them to adopt laws that are more protective of the environment,” explained Yann Aguila of the French Club des Juristes, a think-tank involved in the project…
    Participants in Saturday’s meeting would include ex-California governor-turned climate campaigner Arnold Schwarzenegger, former UN chief Ban Ki-moon, as well as high court judges from several countries…
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4633912/Schwarzenegger-swoops-kiss-French-Lady.html

    lengthy, lots of detail here, when Macron first proposed it at UN, links to “draft pact”:

    12 Sept 2017: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: France’s Macron to pitch global environmental rights charter to UN
    French president Emmanuel Macron is set to call for a global pact affirming universal principles for environmental protection at the UN general assembly next week.
    As the US under Donald Trump reneges on its climate commitments, Macron will speak at the UN on 19 September, pitching to unite the rest of the world behind a binding green charter…

    Yann Aguila, leader of the 30-strong team who produced a draft pact (LINK) in June, said France was seeking UN support to set up a working group. That would eventually result in a document to be agreed by the UN general assembly or another international body, and ratified by member states.
    “The stars are aligned,” he told Climate Home in response to written questions. “France has gained a position of leadership in environmental issues, and the decision of the United States to withdraw from the Paris Agreement has not had the disastrous effect that one could have expected. On the contrary, many states have decided to go beyond their initial commitments and to reinforce their action. Now more than ever, we can hope for the Global Pact for the Environment to become a reality.”

    The 8-page proposal could give teeth to existing “soft law”, the authors suggest, listing principles, such as the right to an ecologically sound environment, that already find expression in other environmental agreements…READ ON
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/09/12/frances-macron-pitch-global-environmental-rights-charter-un/

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      Graeme No.3

      pat:

      “On the contrary, many states have decided to go beyond their initial commitments and to reinforce their action. Now more than ever, we can hope for the Global Pact for the Environment to become a reality.”
      And just how many countries have agreed to make any emission reductions in their initial committments?
      And how many countries have made reductions in emissions? (Apart from the USA who aren’t in the Paris Accord).

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    OriginalSteve

    A bit of light relief…..all this nonsense floating around from French Presidents etc etc…..

    Monty Python’s Philosophers Song

    “Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable,
    Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could drink you under the table,
    David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
    And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was twice as sloshed as Schlegel.

    There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach yer ’bout the raising of the wrist,
    Socrates himself was permanently pissed.

    John Stewart Mill, of his own free will, on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill,
    Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whisky every day,
    Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle, Hobbes was fond of his dram,
    And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: “I drink, therefore I am.”

    Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed –
    A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed.”

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      • #
        TdeF

        My whole family knows this song! We sing it at family functions.

        More importantly, I visit the tomb of Rene Descartes at St. Gemaine de Pres whenever in Paris. Just a plaque on the wall.
        Amazing man who changed the world with mathematics and really started rational thinking, something sadly missing from the Climate Change ratbaggery. Ergo cogito sum. I think therefore I am. Cartesian coordinates, but also the idea of variables and equations and variables, y=mx+c etc., without whom Newton could not have formulated his mathematics.

        We have Australian of the Year Tim Flannery, ancient kangaroo zoologist and high priest of Global Warming. However we also have Sir Howard Florey who scored a tombstone in the floor of Westminster Abbey for all the millions he saved with Penicillin. It’s a balance, I guess.

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        • #
          TdeF

          St Germain des Pres. Add a silent e and a silent s. French! St. Gemain in the fields, outside the Paris walls.

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          • #
            Graeme#4

            Two silent “s”? And a soft “G”? My favourite place to stay when in Paris. The cafe district.

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          Another Ian

          TdeF

          Thomas Crapper scored his name on a manhole cover in St Paul’s too

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          • #
            sophocles

            We still have manhole covers in Central Auckland with “Thomas Crapper & Sons” cast into them. That’s how they came out of his works.

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          sophocles

          “Ergo cogito sum” … “Therefore I think I am.”

          That’s an Interesting outlook. Personally, I prefer:

          Scio sum” “I know I am.”

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    pat

    10 May: NBC: Here’s how rising seas could swallow up these coastal cities
    It’s not a pretty picture.
    by Cara Maines
    That’s just what you can do with EarthTime (LINK), a new online tool that blends satellite photos of Earth with data from university research programs, government agencies, and nongovernmental organizations to create eye-popping animations showing how seas rise in tandem with temperatures to swallow up low-lying areas…

    “Sea level rise is a profound threat,” Michael Mann, director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center and a noted expert on the effects of climate change, told NBC News MACH in an email. “Globally, as many as 650 million people live on land that will be submerged or exposed to chronic flooding by 2100 given business-as-usual burning of fossil fuels and sea level rise of 6-8 feet.”…

    Created by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, EarthTime has long been used by the World Economic Forum but was just made available on the web. The tool shows other forms of environmental despoliation, including deforestation, coral bleaching, night fires, and glacier depletion as well as sea level rise…

    AT BOTTOM:
    VIDEO: 2mins27secs: (SHOWING SOLAR PANELS) The U.S. military’s plan to fight climate change (INCLUDES WIND TURBINES)
    https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/here-s-how-rising-seas-could-swallow-these-coastal-cities-ncna872466

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    ROM

    There is one question for such a survey that would have encompassed and explained probably quite accurately the answers and results of that above survey Jo has listed.
    .

    Now I don’t know and haven’t the ability to define the precise wording that would be required to give an unambiguous answer to the question but the question revolves around ” How important to yourself are other people outside of your immediate group and how do you regard other people and their interests and attitudes and other races and how important is humanity to you personally and what would you do or what are you doing personally to help and support other humans around then world.
    Or do you think they should be looking after themselves or should they be removed from the planet because too many humans are destroying the planet.

    Now the above is not the wording that would be used nor is it a full compendium of what I would ask in that question/s if I knew how to format the question into a useable form.

    But the answers to a properly formatted question along those lines would very rapidly differentiate the eco-fascists from the skeptics.

    The results of the survey that Jo has listed above clearly indicate the attitudes that skeptics and eco-fascists have towards the interests of their fellow man
    The skeptic thinks , its a bloody mess and somebody has got to clean this up.
    As we helped make that mess then we had better clean up instead of expecting some other poor bugger having to do it.

    The eco-fascists/ enviro -nazis take is , “they are getting paid to clean up so its not our problem”.

    In short a question around how important to you is your fellow man and his / her intersts to you at a personal level?

    Followed by “How important to you is the human race as a whole ?”

    Again I am groping for the right wording but a few relatively simple question/s along those lines will, from all the examples we have seen over the last couple of decades , rapidly delineate the so called “liberal” eco-fascists and enviro-nazis from the “conservative” skeptics.

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      Mary E

      I’d like to see a survey like the one below, given to three groups – a random population sampling, a group of self-selected liberal/green and a group of self-selected conservatives. Two rounds of questions to the same participants, a week apart. Maybe two weeks.

      First round:
      Do you consider yourself: A. Liberal B. Conservative

      How important is the quality of life for you and your self-selected social group? (select a number on a scale of 1 – 10)

      How important is it that you and your group be allowed to determine your own way of living and goals? (select a number on a scale of 1 – 10)

      How far would you go to protect your way of living and goals from others who would attempt to change them? on a scale of 1 – 10, with 1 being gentle persuasion and 10 being forceful action (up to and including war.)

      Second round:
      Do you consider yourself: A. Liberal B. Conservative

      How important is the quality of life for those who are not part of your self-selected social group, who are different from you in many respects? (select a number on a 1 – 10 scale)

      Do you think these people should be allowed to determine their own way of living and goals, even if this is different from your group’s goals? Yes or No

      If no, do you think your group should intervene? Yes or No

      If yes, on a scale of 1 – 10, with 1 being gentle persuasion and 10 being forceful action (up to and including war,) how far would you go?

      I’d really be curious about the results.

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    WXcycles

    OT:

    https://www.windy.com/?temp,-31.878,133.770,3,i:pressure

    As mentioned last week, the weather models predicting an early cold snap have eventuated. This will be the eatliest cold pulse into North Queensland in about 15 years, looks like it will get North to about Cooktown.

    But is this a transient event, or the setting of a seasonal pattern? i.e. an actual early cold winter to follow?

    As we will have all noticed, each years’ season has its own ocean temp and wind setup, which characterises the season, for that year.

    Within the current forward model runs, of the next 10 days (11 including yesterday)/there is a clear pattern of a large blocking-high, in the ‘Great Australian Bight’, that regresses west and reinforces roughly 3 times, in that 11 day period, with complex ECL in the Tasman Sea, for much of that time, which is what’s driving the cold air so far North, so early in this already establishing winter season pattern.

    We know this pattern, we’ve seen it many times before, but usually only for ocasional and transitional ‘cold-snap’ periods. No biggie there.

    But the other notable factor in the current and recent model runs is that fetch of these cold winds is deep down in the Southern Ocean. And it gets even deeper south even as the ECL effects dissipate to the East. Thus maintaining the deep cold flows, into central and eastern Australia.for atleast the next 10 days. As it doesn’t let up, and there is no indication in the end of the model run when it will dissipate or move on.

    In other words, this is not going to be the typical early winter ‘cold snap’ pattern, as it sets-in, and stays cold for the foreseeable.

    Now, will this be this years characteristic dominent seasonal pattern ocean temp and wind setup? It certainly looks like it could be.

    The High doing this remains offshore in the Bight, but next month these will be over South Australia (if not later this month). In which case, if this is the dominent seasonal pattern for this year, that will produce the sort of cold Winter we have not seen, in North Queensland, since at least 1983. That year was the last really memorable cold year, in NQ, with frosts down to sea level, even close to the coastline, which burned the grass rust red beside the Bruce Highway in between Townsville and Bowen. Something that had not happened since mid-1970s (occurred a few times in the 1970s). And has not reoccurred in NQ, since 1983.

    If we got a 1974 style winter, this year, most of the now local population of NQ would be shocked and taken by surprise, as most people living here now, were not here in those very cold 1970s winters. The new ‘locals’ all think it can’t get cold around humid rain forests. But that is not the case. I lived in Cairns during the mid 1970s, and it was dry and bitterly cold those winters, with cold fogs most mornings, especially in 1974. I’ve never shivered so much in my life as that year, and I’d lived in Albany, WA, before moving to NQ, in 1972, so I knew cold winter weather well. But in 1974, Cairns felt just as cold as Albany had, except we had the cloths for it when in Albany, but in Cairns no one had proper cold weather clothing, we mostly didn’t have heaters, blankets or electric blankets, and what there was sold-out real fast. And it sermed to take months before we got enough warm clothing, and enough blankets, and heaters. And boy, did we envy people who had electric blankets and hotwater ‘bottles’. No one in Cairns has experienced anything remotely like that since at least 1979—40 years.

    I’m sure there will be younger people reading this, living in or near Cairns now, thinking that can’t possibly be, but you would be wrong.

    So I’ve often wondered what made that to suddenly occur in the 1970s, for several years in a row, into.the late 1970s? And why did it more or less suddenly stop, in about 1980?

    Plus what could possihly sustain that cold, for all of a longer than normal winter?

    Well, the pattern you need for early, long cold winters in NQ are present in the current 10-day model run, for today.

    The establishing pattern may dissipate in two weeks from now, and go back to the usual (now typical) mild winter patterns, once more, but I know how this can playout. So I’m going to hedge early, given that establushing early pattern, and buy some warmer clothing now, just in case, before they are sold-out. Probably today though it would not take as long to get warm cloths and heaters in NQ. Plus many newer homes are far better insulated and less drafty than those horrible 1970s era ‘old-queenslander’ house (yes, I detest them, they were bloody awful).

    What I do remember from the 1970s is that the cold was in the USA and Europe, in the same year periods, and both have just had early long cold record-breaking winters.

    Just keep an eye on this establishing regional pattern, if it petsists on into mid June, buy some warmer clothing and bedding.

    Hopefully it just dissipates into a ‘normal’ winter pattern, in a few weeks, but be aware that if you’re in warm sunny Queensland that it can get bitterly cold, like you would never expect, when that seasonal pattern continues right through winter.

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      el gordo

      ‘The establishing pattern may dissipate in two weeks from now, and go back to the usual (now typical) mild winter patterns, once more, but I know how this can playout.’

      Blocking Highs are here to stay, its a regional cooling signal.

      It might simply return to the familiar pattern during the 1950s thru to the mid 1970s, or perhaps we could cycle to the mid 13th century.

      Extreme weather in the midlatitudes is a dead give away that cooling has begun and Stephen Wilde deserves another post.

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        WXcycles

        The do seem globally more persistent since the end of El-Nino. The next 12 months should clarify if we’re going to cool tangibly. If it’s gradual onset I wouldn’t mind, but the 1970s cold onset was a shocker. 4 to 5 years of that was enough.

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    It speaks to the ignorance of a great many people that such a low proportion of people answered something other than 7 for this question

    2.4.1. Climate change belief

    Participants answered on a 7-point scale (1 definitely not happening – 7 definitely happening), “Regardless of the cause, to what extent do you believe climate change is happening?”

    Does anyone here think that the answer is not 7 and has some reason for thinking it is not 7?

    Note that participants had this and a bunch of other questions to answer and they got the same questions 7 times so they had plenty of time to educate themselves

    2.4.2. Climate change causes

    Participants indicated the extent to which they believed climate change was caused by (a) human activities and (b) natural causes. Both items used a scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much).

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      anyone else reading the paper… the skeptical group was primarily assigned based on a low number response to 2.4.1. Seriously? The paper notes that people in this group also had a high response to natural causes and low to human activities, but still 2.4.1 is such a poor criteria for assessing skepticism

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      robert rosicka

      Ignorance you say ! Yes the climate is changing and always has been and always will but this is the fundamental crux of our argument ,your side is frordulently espousing a consensus that it’s Co2 wot dunnit despite proof that Co2 was higher in the past regardless of world temps .
      Consensus only proves the scam , evidence and repeatable experiments prove or disprove the theory .
      Models are great to look at but worthless junk despite what you say about my life being dependant on models , Garbage in garbage out .

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        So you’d say 7 then and in this study you’d be grouped with the highly concerned.

        I’m don’t think you got what I was saying from your response.

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          robert rosicka

          Personally not a seven no because at the moment the climate seems stable but the weather on the other hand is a different matter but then that’s just weather isn’t it .

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        on models

        The image of the world around us, which we carry in our head, is just a model. Nobody in his head imagines all the world, government or country. He has only selected concepts, and relationships between them, and uses those to represent the real system (Forrester, 1971).

        this is how you manage to turn on a light without ripping open the walls to check on all the wiring, or pull apart the switch and light to see all their subcomponents. You have made a model of the process that tells you the likely (indeed extremeley likely) outcome of flicking a switch. If you didn’t use models you’d be motionless or wall-less

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          robert rosicka

          So that’s why I can’t work out how to to flick a switch and keep burning myself on hot stuff and trying to breath underwater without scuba gear and shivering when cold and get dizzy when spun around and say sugar when I hit my thumb ! It’s all because of models , why thanks leaf you have no idea how grateful I am to you for setting me straight ! I would have been lost without you .
          Just one question if I may does the model suggest I wipe upwards or downwards , I can never quite figure it out ?

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          Mary E

          on models

          The problem with that sort of “philosophy” is that most minds don’t really work that way – people don’t think that way, or even know most of the things it is assumed in the statement you made, Gee Aye. You flip a switch, the light comes on, or goes off. If it doesn’t come one, then you check the bulb. If you are savvy, and a new bulb doesn’t work, you check the fuses. Beyond that, you call someone who knows about what happens between the switch and the expected reaction. It isn’t a model that you hold in your head, it is a check-list of things that you know to do.

          I don’t subscribe to the idea that a mind, or a group of minds, is a mere set of models. It’s a chaotic sampling of experience, memory-associations (scents, colors, sounds, physical sensations leading to things like “aha, chicken is frying” or “red sky at night, sailors’ delight” (good weather)) and learned knowledge (school, tutoring – how to read, do sums) with emotional reactions to any and all of the above (I like fried chicken – good memories, someone else may have been beat by pappa on every and only fried chicken night and have a fear/pain association with it.)

          Like climate, the mind is not a series of mathematical constructs that can be mapped out and modeled. Even hive-mind, mob/group-think, is not something that can be modeled with complete success. You may know that the angry mob is going to do something horrid – but will that be an attack on a person, a destruction of property, or shouting, marching, banner-waving and yelling? Or perhaps a combination of several of the above, in varying degrees? If things like this were able to be modeled, as the idea behind the philosophy suggests, then riot control would be easy and uneventful – the potential actions would have been mapped out, prevented, and the mob defused.

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    TdeF

    Latest Spectator. Great lead article on “Parisites”. Andrew L. Urban cannot resist a good pun

    So he has identified the people of the Paris Accord

    Idological Parisites, teh well-fed Campus Parasite (Parasite Academus)
    Political Parisites (Parasite Pox)
    Financial Parisites (Parasite Gimme)

    A good read, like most of the Spectator. Available under the counter in a brown paper bag in all good newsagents.

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      TdeF


      Front cover “Parasites Eating Australia
      Andrew Urban on
      Climate Change Leeches.

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      TdeF

      Sorry, I keep getting the spelling right and so wrong. It is Paris-ites. I apologise for calling the lefty academics Parasites when they are simply Parisites. (Parisite Academus)

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    pat

    more good news:

    10 May: ScienceAlert: The Trump Administration Just Jeopardized The World’s Ability to Measure Carbon Emissions
    You know, the stuff that’s causing climate change.
    by CARLY CASSELLA
    Apparently, withdrawing from the Paris climate accord wasn’t enough. Now, the Trump administration wants to restrict the world’s ability to measure carbon emissions.

    According to a new report (LINK) from the journal Science, the Trump administration has quietly killed NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (LINK) (CMS) – a $10 million-a-year research project, which monitors the flow of Earth’s carbon…

    The move jeopardizes plans to verify the national emission cuts agreed to in the Paris climate accords, argues Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of Tufts University’s Center for International Environment and Resource Policy.
    “If you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the agreement,” Gallagher told Science.
    She added that canceling the CMS “is a grave mistake.”

    A mistake, or maybe an insidious way to attack climate science on a global scale.
    Phil Duffy, the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, told Science that the CMS was an obvious target for the Trump administration…READ ON
    https://www.sciencealert.com/the-trump-administration-just-quietly-got-rid-of-nasa-s-carbon-monitoring-system

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      Mary E

      The Chinese just put up a satellite that does that
      https://phys.org/news/2018-04-global-carbon-dioxide-chinese-satellite.html
      so why should the USA spend billions, trillions, on developing something that we can stea borrow/make better? And reading further, it seems that the current projects will be completed – it is new projects that have been given the ax. The list of projects going up this year is fairly impressive https://carbon.nasa.gov/missions.html

      We have so much junk floating about in orbit right now that adding more to it, without clearing a path, will soon be near impossible. Perhaps someone should be funding a way to collect and recycle the no-longer-working bits of space junk. A manned janitorial space mission. Could be a practice run for collecting other space objects, mining asteroids, etc.

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    This shows that the lack of information and misinformation are doing wonders!

    The idiots will be idiots all their lives!

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    pat

    update on an old joke:

    8 May: Scotsman: Scottish Government spends £400,000 on unclaimed energy prize
    by Chris Green
    The Scottish Government has spent almost £400,000 of taxpayers’ money on a prize for marine energy which has still not been awarded more than a decade after it was announced, it has been revealed. The true cost to the public of the Saltire Prize, which was announced by the former First Minister Alex Salmond in April 2008, is likely to be significantly higher as four years are unaccounted for.

    Ministers have spent a total of £393,546.09 running the award since the 2012 financial year, according to documents published following a Freedom of Information request.
    When it was launched, the £10m Saltire Prize for innovation in marine energy technology was trumpeted as the largest of its kind.

    Its aim was to help the commercial development of wave and tidal energy technology, but the deadline for the award passed last summer with no firm named as the winner.
    While a handful of companies have been in the running for the prize over the years, none were able to meet the criteria and several have even gone into administration.
    Despite the problems, the Scottish Government has pressed on with the Saltire Prize and now says it it is “considering options” for “reshaping the award” so it can finally be won…

    More than £68,000 was spent on rebranding and secondment work in 2012/13, while a further £3,760 went on a “redesign study” in April 2014.
    The documents also show that £162,000 has been spent on “resourcing costs” for the Saltire Prize Challenge committee, the panel of experts tasked with overseeing the award…
    Over the past six years the Committee has also racked up an expenses bill of more than £6,300, while a further £3,570 was spent on dinners, catering, venue hire and launches relating to the prize.
    Another £60,000 was spent running the Junior Saltire Prize, an annual competition for school pupils, while £48,418 went on sponsored PhDs. Both schemes were discontinued in 2016…

    Liam McArthur MSP, energy spokesman for the Scottish Liberal Democrats, said it had been clear “for quite some time” that the Saltire Prize was “dead in the water”…
    https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-government-spends-400-000-on-unclaimed-energy-prize-1-4736581

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    MudCrab

    Interesting muse on those results concerning the use of public transport.

    First we probably need to consider why people use public transport. Prime would probably be ‘because I have no other choice’ which would be the people who don’t own or are too young to operate cars.

    Second would be ‘because it is effective’. Back when I worked in the CBD I used the bus as screw paying for all day parking in the city. For nearly everything else I used a car. If one works in the suburbs the chances of being on a useful bus/train route get increasingly small and the cost effectiveness of running a car vs paying for bus/train fare isn’t that attractive either. (Or isn’t in Darkest Adelaide at least. Your home town may vary.)

    I would suggest that ‘ethical’ would be down the list of reasons why people would use public transport which makes the results of the study a bit tricky to understand. What are we saying? Skeptics are more ethical? Skeptics have places to actually go? Warmest don’t? Skeptics actually have well paying CBD jobs, while Warmests are still living with a crippling HECS debt?

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    The main goal of global bankster Marxist education; is to stifle any learning\understanding by the vast unwashed serfs! All that may ever be correct has been already decided by the Zentral committee. Bool Shat; MAGA instead; like with text messaging cell phones! (Anyone know how to get dis dead rhinoceros ofen my body?) 🙂

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      (Anyone know how to get dis dead rhinoceros ofen my body?) 🙂 ” Hey guy, oversize tow-truck wid large canvas sling headed your way! (TANK ya’all! 🙂 )

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    Another Ian

    Developments!

    “President Trump Cancels Paris Agreement Carbon Monitoring Project”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/05/09/president-trump-cancels-paris-agreement-carbon-monitoring-project/

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    Mary E

    It seems that most people who spend a lot of time outdoors, who have to save (conserve) money and resources, who are aware of what is happening around them and don’t need to be told by the media, are skeptical. So the very things that we’d expect the eco-greens to be doing are what the conservative/skeptical people do every day as a matter of course – the skeptical are very aware of their surroundings, they live in them, travel through them, take care of them. Some make a living off the land and water that surrounds them, have done so for generations. They understand cycles, conservation of resources, what nature has to throw at them.

    I generally self-identify as a center-liberal. But I am considered by many, especially the eco-greens, to be a conservative. If it is a conservative who is labeling me then I am left-leaning loon.

    I am a skeptic – I question things. I am a conservative – I conserve/preserve things. I am a liberal – I believe in each person having the freedom to choose their own way and speak their mind. I am civilized – I believe that a basic set of laws that govern how far we can each go in our pursuit of happiness is necessary to avoid utter chaos and anarchy, to protect the weak, the young, the old.
    I am human, an animal that has a brain that works in the past and future and uses both to deal with the now, a grasping hand, an upright posture. I live in a modern, technical age, full of wonder and amazing inventions and freedoms that have improved exponentially from the beginnings of the technological age and will continue to improve unless we shoot ourselves in our collective foot.

    I am a realist – climate changes, it always has, it always will. I might not like what the climate is doing, but I know I cannot control it, no one can. CO2 is NOT the control knob, it is a sign of the change the planet is undergoing and its reaction to those changes – which are continual and vary just enough in each of the myriad cycles that we know of (and we don’t know them all) that prediction is impossible. We barely understand the past, models and pet theories aside; we cannot even guess at the future.

    If there is a man-made issue, it is the urban-heat effect, the building up of cities and concrete and asphalt and massive structures that hold the heat in and lack the trees and waters that help cool the environment. That is mostly a local phenomena and can be solved with relatively little expense – plant trees and bushes and grasses where-ever possible, create green spaces, create places for water to flow or open up and clean up the streams and creeks that we covered and turned into sewers and install proper sewers (bonus – less sewage flowing into common bodies of water, nice clean water to play in and drink) build underground “low-rises” where practical (bonus – underground offices are easier to heat and cool, earth is a natural insulator) and leave nature to itself as much as possible where possible.

    The trillions spent on gizmos that provide anything but free energy could have been used for the above by each industrialized nation, plus building modern sources of electricity and the grids to carry it for those nations that don’t have it, supplying those places with the knowledge and ability to provide sewage and waste controls, which would help provide clean drinking water, which would cut down on disease and crippling parasitic infections, and the people would gain – health, education, employment, skills. And after all that, there would still be money left over.

    The UN has failed in most of its self-set modern climate “mission” – CO2 is still rising, only the US has managed to reduce emissions (and not because of the UN policies and promises) and Australia, which barely emitted CO2 to start with, is digging its own economic, and maybe national, grave with wind and solar that can’t keep up with reality. “Spreading the wealth” isn’t happening, except within the UN and its science-y buddies, and the push to modernize the 3rd world nations with renewables has gotten nowhere.

    China is supplying the power to Africa and other places. China – communism, socialism, just like the UN thinks it is but effective and much more powerful – is slowly gaining trust and favors that will need repaid, out-doing the UN in socialist -action-, and the rest of the world, aside from Trump’s USA, is either clamoring for money (which seems to be building runways and hotels so the eco-greens can visit and see how wretched they really are, or simply lining the elites’ pockets) or wallowing in self-hatred and setting themselves up for failure (and more self-hatred) with impossible to reach goals.

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    Sceptics think logically using established data to reach a scientific decision.
    MMGW believers use the latest fashion and group think to make their decision.
    They are lazy by nature.
    The logically inclined believers know that it is a fraud but seize the opportunity to make a few million dollars of the trillions robbed from the public.
    These people are criminals by nature.

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    Latus Dextro

    There is a big difference between 97% of all scientists and 97% of a micro niche subset called “climate scientists”.

    Jo, ‘important errors’ are unlikely to be ‘careless’. Hall & Lewis set this up bewitched as they were by confirmation bias, certainty of their results before they undertook their method, let alone when considering their study design and … ‘aim’ (LOL).

    Funding approval could not have taken place were it remotely suspected that they would be ‘baffled’ in their nauseating arrogance. It may have been pointed out before on this post and thread, if so, my apologies for repetition. Citing Cook et al. (2013) should never ever have passed muster at peer review. That paper has been so thoroughly and obviously debunked that any self-respecting researcher (I’ll avoid using the term scientist) would not use it for fear of being called out at peer review. However, as we’re clearly dealing with scientivists, pall review and climatism auto-funding, they once again succeeded in monumentally betrayed themselves.

    This was no ‘slip of the pen’, ‘typo’, or omission. It was the gravest sin of commission and it betrayed them all in their ideological barrel of green slime, namely that they are as far away from ‘science’ as they could possibly get. What seems surprising was that the research actually got to see the light of day and was published.

    Things seem to be a changin’, but it is not at The Con or in “academia.”

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    Svend Ferdinandsen

    It follows the hype, that it is the oilcompanies fault.
    It could never ever be because we ordinary peoble buy their products.

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