Saturday 19 December 2009

Capping Our Carbon and Crushing Our Spirits [update 4]

When the ClimateGate scandal broke, one of the few on the warmist side who emerged with any integrity was British environmental noise-maker George Monbiot. Looking clear-eyed at the evidence, he wrote in the Guardian:
"Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into
denial. . . Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go
away. . . There is no helping it; Phil Jones [the source of most of the emails]
has to go, and the longer he leaves it, the worse it will get."

Monbiot saw well before his colleagues that that the revelations of Climategate were a threat.

And now, Robert Tracinski reckons in his recent writing Monbiot is also unusually clear eyed about the stakes of global warming--his writing making it abundantly clear it "has little to do with science and everything to do with one's view of human nature and man's place in the universe."

Monbiot also knows his adversaries, as Tracinski's latest post reveals.

Read Capping Our Carbon and Crushing Our Spirits by Robert Tracinski. It is much more than just a fisking. It's the most revealing thing you'll read this week.

UPDATE 1:  People are talking about conspiracies.  Is there really a conspiracy to put global warming over on us, as some people insist skeptics are saying?
Well . . .
"The implication [of them saying that] is that the only way the whole edifice of global warming science could be a distortion of reality is if there was a huge, secret conspiracy perpetrated by a fiction-like cabal of mad scientists, hidden away in some smoke-filled room plotting the destruction of the world economy.

"Well, the fact is that there is a 'massive international conspiracy'—only, it’s not of the secret, smoke-filled-room type. The conspirators are united not by a secret plot, but by a shared philosophy that they promote openly and self-righteously: the philosophy of environmentalism."
Read ClimateGate: A Green Conspiracy.

UPDATE 2: Copenhagen climate summit: 'most important paper in the world' is a glorified UN press release

"When your attempt at recreating the Congress of Vienna with a third-rate cast of extras turns into a shambles, when the data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever more phoney, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep increasing and multiplying – what do you do?
"No contest: stop issuing three rainforests of press releases every day, change the heading to James Bond-style “Do not distribute” and “leak” a single copy, in the knowledge that human nature is programmed to interest itself in anything it imagines it is not supposed to see, whereas it would bin the same document unread if it were distributed openly.
"After that, get some unbiased, neutral observer, such as the executive director of Greenpeace, to say: “This is the single most important piece of paper in the world today.” Unfortunately, the response of all intelligent people will be to fall about laughing; but it was worth a try – everybody loves a tryer – and the climate alarmists are no longer in a position to pick and choose their tactics."

UPDATE 3Andrew Bolt summarises the final result of the Copenhagen Hug-In, cobbled togther at a last-minute smoker:
"Hot air, no fixed targets, promises of a vast transfer of wealth from the West and everyone flies back home thinking they’ve been warriors for mankind.
If the report is true, it’s almost as much as a sceptic could hope for."
 Says Anthony Watts: "Just in time for Obama to announce it, and it only cost the USA 100 billion dollars. Thanks Hillary."

UPDATE 4: Chavez's words to the HopenChangin' Love-In Hug-In needed an image, and cartoonist Blunt works fast:


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's a superb piece by Tracinski. Gotta respect the pure statement of his Platonism by Monbiot. Progressive? Ha! He's riding on the back of Aristotelean science - which is now causing him real pain in the rectal area.

Yes, there is the battle line: forwards or backwards people?

gregster said...

Great article by Tracinski!

Thanks for your continuing sterling efforts Peter. Wonderful.

Jeffrey Perren said...

Oddly, Tracinski's article didn't show up on RCP yesterday, nor does it show up when you look at the Friday list. Yet, it's dated 12/18.

Peter, how did you find it?

I'm don't think I'm the only one who didn't see it since there are only three comments (including mine).

Peter Cresswell said...

"Peter, how did you find it?"

It was sent to me by reader Mark T.

Thanks Mark. :-)

Steve D said...

"has little to do with science and everything to do with one's view of human nature and man's place in the universe"

But of course. From the beginning people have lined up on either side of this issue based on ideology, not science.