This is another must-read post by Mish on science vs. propaganda. Unfortunately it seems that propaganda trumps science, at least long enough to cause immense damage. – Ilene
The Global Warming Religion – A Modern Day Crusade: Do You select The Cause or Does the Cause Select You?
Courtesy of Mish
I received a lot of emails in response to Beware The Ice Age Cometh: Hackers Prove Global Warming Is A Scam
Many were from religious zealots of global warming theory, and as you might surmise they were not printable.
A few common sense comments came my way suggesting that the hackers or insiders (I believe the latter) did not prove global warming was a scam, only that that there is proof scammers are involved in global warming.
I have to admit that is true. Apologies offered. That admission aside, even more damning data has surfaced in regards to data manipulation.
The site Watts Up With That? has this interview with Dr. Tim BallIt seems Dr. Tim Ball was aware of the data manipulation but could not prove it. Here is a partial transcript but I assure you the video is worth listening to entirely.
"[The Emails] confirm suspicions that I have had in 30 years of working in climate science that I saw the hijacking of climate science particularly by computer modelers and then by a small group of people associated with the intergovernmental panel on climate change. The difficulty was that even though I sensed there was these thing going on, proving it is extremely difficult. But now with the exposure of these public files it is not only a smoking gun, it’s a battery of machine guns. … On A global scale it’s frightening. This group of people not only controlled the Hadley Center which controls the global data on temperatures, so that the global temperature record is in their hands, they also control the IPCC. … The IPCC is the basis in all governments for the Kyoto Protocol, the Copenhagen Accord, and so on. ….. The problem they had is they kept saying the 20th century and the latter part of it is the warmest ever. And of course skeptics like myself [and several other names] were saying it was warmer 1000 years ago when the Vikings were in Iceland and Greenland and that’s why they decided they had to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period and they achieved that with the hockey stick. In other words they completely rewrote the history."
It Was Warmer 1000 Years Ago Than Now
There you have it. Reputable scientists think it was warmer 1000 years ago than it is today in spite of all the greenhouse gasses emitted. That does not disprove global warming now, but it sure makes mince meat of the theory that greenhouse gasses are to blame.
Al Gore on SNL skit: What Up With That?
Al Gore was on Saturday Night Live in a skit What Up With That?
Irony abounds. I wonder what Gore was thinking during all this?
The Harry_Read_Me File
Inquiring minds looking for more damning evidence of data manipulation and sheer incompetence can find it in the The Harry_Read_Me File
The hacked e-mails were damning, but the problems they had handling their own data at CRU are a dagger to the heart of the global warming “theory.” There is a large file of comments by a programmer at CRU called HARRY_READ_ME documenting that their data processing and modeling functions were completely out of control.
They fudged so much that NOTHING that came out of CRU can have ANY believability. If the word can be gotten out on this and understood it is the end of the global warming myth. This much bigger than the e-mails. For techie takes on this see:
http://www.tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=118625&page=13CLIMATEGATE: My analysis of the CRU files, starting with "documents/HARRY_READ_ME.txt"
To base a re-making of the global economy (i.e. cap-and-trade) on disastrously and hopelessly messed up data like this would be insanity.
Do People Select Causes or Do Causes Select People?
Tonight I am in a philosophical mood asking "Do People Select Causes or Do Causes Select People?"
I am sure people like to think they are masters of their own causes and perhaps that is true about trivial things but sadly I think when things are really important causes select people, and government is usually at that heart of it with massive propaganda efforts.
Consider the Crusades, World War I, the creation of the Fed in 1913 and support of it thereafter. Were any of those voluntary causes of the masses?
What about the Vietnam War? That one should be easy.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, via the fraudulent Gulf of Tonkin Incident, manipulated the US into the Vietnam War. Did the average US citizen select Vietnam and the "Domino Theory" as a cause or did the cause (accompanied by lies and propaganda) select the average US citizen?
"The Domino Theory" was a religion. On trumped up charges, and a second Tonkin incident that did not even happen, the US entered a disastrous war.
My 7th grade teacher at St. Patrick’s grade school in Danville, Illinois was Harry Don Wirth. He was in the reserves and called up in 1966.
I remember like yesterday what he said right before he left "I do not think we should have entered this war but we can’t leave now". Did he select the cause or did the cause select him?
"We can’t leave now" became a religion in and of itself. That government message was trumped into everyone’s head. How many came to believe "We can’t leave now"? How many died because "We can’t leave now"?
By the way we all loved Harry Don Wirth. He was one of the best teachers I ever had. If someone knows how to get in touch with him, I would like to do so. I believe he was sent to Saigon to work on intelligence, something no one would be able to disclose today.
President Bush invoked his own religious beliefs on trumped up charges of "weapons of mass destruction". All it takes is one madman in the right place to start a crusade.
Of course the military machine promoted the war and after enough propaganda was spewed out by war mongers, the cause eventually selected enough weak souls who would not challenge Bush. The Democrats sheepishly went along for fear of being labeled "soft on defense".
Some might argue that WWII selected us we did not select it. Yet, WWII had its roots in the disastrous US entry into WWI by a president who vowed to keep us out. An unfair settlement of the war led to the rise of Hitler.
Al Gore’s Crusade
Al Gore and those at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) have launched another modern day crusade. The message is powerful: "We need to save the earth from global warming".
Now who does not want to support that noble cause?
Proponents like Bill Maher latched on and helped spread the word. People want to believe in something and want to do their part. The message worked. If the propaganda is powerful enough, the cause eventually selects enough people until critical mass is reached.
A Rational Thought Process
Let’s go through a rational thought process step by step.
Q. Is there global warming?
A. Although we can say ice caps are melting, we cannot say that greenhouse gasses are to blame. After all, it was warmer 1000 years ago than today.
Q. Is it possible there is global cooling?
A. Yes that is actually possible because mapping the last 100 years in a period of thousands or millions of years might be meaningless. Whatever warming there is (if indeed there is any), might be a temporary blip in the grand scheme of nature.
Q. What if there is global warming and what if it is caused by greenhouse gasses.
A. What if there is global cooling?
OK let’s assume for a moment there is global warming and it is caused by greenhouse gasses. When does it matter? Now? 500 years from now? 1000 years from now? Can we realistically do anything to stop it?
OK Let’s assume we have some time to act but not a lot of time to act. Is Cap-And-Trade going to work? Let’s answer that question with a question: When has Congress ever done anything that made matters better?
Remember, these are the guys that came up with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and 300 some odd affordable housing programs that all failed. These are the guys that gave Paulson at the Treasury a blank check to solve the banking crisis and to stimulate lending.
On a cynical basis alone the odds are strong that Cap-And-Trade will increase global warming, not decrease it. On a scientific basis the cynics are right. Please consider Cap-And-Trade "Three-Card Monte" Dead For 2009.
The Science study argues [the Cap-and-trade program] is a false economy, because it doesn’t consider changes in land use. If mature forests are cleared to make room for biofuel-growing farms, then the carbon that would otherwise accumulate in those forests ought to be counted on ethanol’s balance sheet as well.
Cap-and-trade programs exacerbate the problem because developed countries (where emissions are putatively capped) get credit for reductions from ethanol—despite the fact that their biofuels are generally grown in developing countries (where emissions aren’t capped). So if Malaysians burn down a rain forest to grow palm oil that ends up in German biodiesel, Malaysia doesn’t count the land-use emissions and Germany doesn’t count the tail-pipe emissions.
By way of a solution, Mr. Searchinger and his coauthors modestly suggest doing away with the regulatory three-card monte and counting net ethanol emissions from where they are actually emitted. But this is political heresy on Rep. Henry Waxman’s Energy and Commerce Committee, which passed its own cap-and-tax program in July with the votes of farm-state Democrats, because the bill all but banned the Environmental Protection Agency from studying land-use changes. So much for letting "the science" guide public policy.
Does any of that matter to the modern day crusaders? Of course not. Propaganda trumps science and causes select people. Once selected it is extremely difficult for those selected to give up the crusade. Instead they become missionaries for the cause.
Thus "We need to save the earth from global warming" whether it is warming or not, whether it is caused by greenhouse gasses (if indeed it is warming), and whether or not the plans to do so make any sense (which they don’t).
