The Queen of Climate Crackpottery

Trigger warning: if your household companions include a cat, dog, canary, goldfish or turtle, this article is not a safe space. I’m writing about Harvard’s distinguished agnatologist Professor Naomi Oreskes (above) and her 2014 warning that global warming would kill your pets in 2023. The warning is in her acclaimed but glum book The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. Given margins of error in climate science, the pet die-off might be this year instead. Oreskes wrote,

The loss of pet cats and dogs garnered particular attention among wealthy Westerners , but what was anomalous in 2023 soon became the new normal . … A shadow of ignorance and denial had fallen over people who considered themselves children of the Enlightenment (p9).

Smarter climate alarmists don’t make short-term predictions. They choose a date like 2050 for when the oceans will boil. They’ll be senile or dead by then and can’t be humiliated if the oceans stay chilly.

Top environmentalist Paul Ehrlich forecast in 1971that by 2000 the UK “will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”[1] His 1968 book, Population Bomb, predicted starvation would shrink the US population to 23 million by 1999. Strangely, Oreskes in her book hails Ehrlich as a vindicated futurist. (p3-4 and 56).

The only good news from Naomi is that the IPCC becomes [more] discredited and is disbanded. She replaces it with such alphabet soups as the UNCCEP’s ICCEP which launches IAICEP, which she says is pronounced “ay-yi-yi-sep” (p27).The mission of ay-yi-yi-sep is to sprinkle enough fairy dust aka sulphates in the air to make an anti-sun umbrella and save the planet by 2079.

In September 2014 she was interviewed on the ABC’s Science Show by Dr (honoris causa) Robyn Williams, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, about the pet-deaths. One reader, she explained,

…started crying when the pets die, so I didn’t mean to upset people too much … I was just trying to come up with something that I thought people wouldn’t forget about, and I thought, ‘Well, Americans spend billions of dollars every year taking care of their pets’, and I thought if people’s dogs started dying, maybe then they would sit up and take notice.

 Interviewer Dr Williams[2] was delighted with Oreskes’ pet-panic strategy. He chimed in,

Yes, not only because it’s an animal but it’s local. You see, one criticism of the scientists is they’re always talking about global things…And so if you are looking at your village, your animals, your fields, your park, your kids, and the scientists are talking about a small world that you know, then it makes a greater impact, doesn’t it.

Oreskes: Well, exactly. It was about bringing it literally home, literally into your home, your family, your pet, the dog or cat that you love who is your faithful and trusted companion.

As I type this, I look down fondly at Natasha, our doomed spaniel, although she is neither faithful nor trustworthy.

Oreskes began her Science Show appearance by reading from her book in sepulchrul tones:

Then, in the northern hemisphere summer of 2041, unprecedented heatwaves scorched the planet [and] led to widespread outbreaks of typhus, cholera, dengue fever, yellow fever, and viral and retroviral agents never seen before.

Naomi’s actually playing down her future horrors, she omits to tell him about the arrival of the Black Death:

Dislocation contributed to the Second Black Death, as a new strain of the bacterium Yersinia pestis emerged in Europe and spread to Asia and North America. In the Middle Ages, the Black Death killed as much as half the population of some parts of Europe; this second Black Death had similar effects. (p30).

Australians will wonder: does Medicare charge extra premiums to cover bubonic plague?

Williams, instead of asking Oreskes what she’s smoking, merely observed that all of the above is “fairly shocking”. He further wondered why it is only Western civilization that collapses, leaving the Chinese in charge. One reason, says Oreskes, is that Chinese civilisation is more durable, and two, that authoritarian regimes are better able to deal with hypothesised climate apocalypses.

Looking back from the future, Oreskes viewed China in the early 2000s as a beacon of carbon enlightenment. China, she said,

…took steps to control its population and convert its economy to non – carbon – based energy sources. These efforts were little noticed and less emulated in the West, in part because Westerners viewed Chinese population control efforts as immoral, and in part because the country’s exceptionally fast economic expansion led to a dramatic increase in greenhouse gas emissions, masking the impact of renewable energy. By 2050 , this impact became clear as China’s emissions began to fall rapidly. Had other nations followed China’s lead, the [grim future] history recounted here might have been very different. (p6).[3]

Another interviewer — a friendly one, actually — played the devil’s advocate:

Interviewer: Just how much do you hate the American way of life? What gives you the intellectual chutzpah to make these kinds of projections?

Oreskes: Our story is a call to protect the American way of life before it’s too late.

I identify with Oreskes, who grew up in New York, because as a lass she was a geologist working on Western Mining Corp’s Olympic project in central Australia. I phoned WMC’s retired boss Hugh Morgan but he couldn’t give me any piquant anecdotes about young Naomi.

Her sojourn Down Under must have been unhappy because she’s forecast that the climate emergency will kill off every Australian man woman and child (all 26 million of us). “The human populations of Australia and Africa, of course, were wiped out.” (p33). As a resident of Australia’s pagan state of Victoria, I don’t believe in the afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear. (Witticism courtesy Woody Allen).

Oreskes dropped geology to co-write that Merchants of Doubt book, painting “climate deniers” as the evil twins of those denying that smoking causes cancer. The book in 2021 was set to music by composer Yvette Jackson, who sees climate doubt as having the

… low, somber insistence of the bass clarinet, skittering flute that cranks up anxiety, sonorous cello to hold things together, and the deep, doubting rumble of double bass.

Listen to that anxious, sonorous cello and more here (fourth video down).

At 65, Naomi’s job title is Harvard Professor of the History of Science — but don’t call, she’s on leave. She co-wrote her civilisational-collapse book with fellow alarmist Erik Conway. Her other collaborators include Pope Francis: she did the intro for his Laudato si’ encyclical in 2015.

 Wikipedia lists only 30 of her honours, including the Stephen H. Schneider Award in 2016 for communicating “extraordinary scientific contributions” to a broad public in a clear and compelling fashion. Schneider (1945-2010) was a top IPCC climate scientist. He urged colleagues there to strike a balance between scaring the pants off the public and being honest about how weak the CO2 evidence really is. Oreskes also scored the 2019 Mary Rabbit Award from the US Geological Society. Her lifetime of bashing denialists is surely worth a million-dollar Nobel.

 The Collapse book is about Western civilisation’s ruin while China saves the planet with its enlightened anti-CO2 measures. She is writing from the future in 2393 when she will be aged 435. Oreskes (as at 2393) is cross because we have refused to build enough windmills to stop at 11degC warming (p32) and eight-metre sea rises (p30). We should not have eaten so many fillet steaks[4] and, personally, I should not have tooled around in my reasonably priced, petrol-powered Hyundai i30 when Teslas were available at $80,000.

Oreskes was talking about Collapse at a Sydney Writers’ Festival when someone in the audience piped up, “Will you write fiction next?” She doesn’t of course view Collapse as fiction: “Speculative? Of course, but the book is extremely fact-based” (p79). And she elaborated to the ABC’s Dr Williams,“Well, it’s all based on solid science. Everything in this book is based on the scientific projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. All we did was to add to the social and human aspects to it and to ask the question; what does this really mean in terms of what its potential impacts would be on people and its potential impacts on our institutions of governance?”

Her “science based” technical projection involved an angry summer in 2023 continuing year-round, “taking 500,000 lives worldwide and costing nearly $ 500 billion in losses due to fires , crop failure , and the deaths of livestock and companion animals” (p8) In 2014, how was Naomi (no-one’s perfect) to know that current agricultural output and yields continue smashing records?

The book’s “fact-based” projections have drought and desert ravaging the US in the 2050s:

The US government declared martial law to prevent food riots and looting [similar to 2020s’ mostly-peaceful burning and robbing]. A few years later, the United States announced plans with Canada for the two nations to begin negotiations … to develop an orderly plan for resource-sharing and northward population relocation (p26). 

The talks led to the combined United States of North America. I imagine Texans started adding “eh” to their sentences, as in Why do Canadians say “eh?”? It’s so silly right? Because we want to, eh.

Even at the age of 435 in 2393, Oreskes remains really sore about the Climategate email scandal of 2009 (IPCC climate scientists conspiring to fudge data). She blames Climategate on a “massive campaign” that was “funded primarily by fossil fuel corporations” (p8) — this alleged largesse must have by-passed sceptic bloggers, who still rely on their tip jars. Oreskes remains vigilant to smite deniers:

It will also be crucial not to allow new forms of denial to take hold. We are already seeing examples, such as the false claim that off-shore wind kills whales and that restrictions on gas stoves are the latest excuse by liberals to control our lives and deny our freedom. Scientists will have to work with climate activists to block the spread of such misleading narratives.

She finished her interview with the ABC’s Dr Williams by claiming, improbably, that some readers of  Collapse wished her 80-page book to be longer. She explained,

We didn’t want it to be too depressing, we didn’t want to go on and on and on, like 300 pages of misery, that really wouldn’t be any fun. So we are sort of hoping that the book, despite the fact that it’s a depressing topic, it’s actually we think kind of a fun read.

Apart from our dead kittens, that is.

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971. Link broken.

[2] The ABC Ombudsman told me it’s fine for people with honorary doctorates to be called “Dr” in any context.

“The ABC style guide does not form part of the editorial standards and we consider there is nothing materially inaccurate in referring to Ms O’Donoghue as Dr O’Donoghue.” Email from James, Investigations Officer, ABC Ombudsman’s Office, Feb 14, 2024. (The late Ms Donoghue’s Doctorates are honorary).

[3] On the ABC iview’s posting of the Oreskes/Williams interview, the ABC claimed the planet was warming at the top of the IPCC models’ forecasting. I wrote to my friend Kirsten McLiesh, who runs Audience & Consumer Affairs (i.e. the complaints department) pointing out that actual warming was at the bottom of the IPCC models’ range. In those days (2014) the ABC had some integrity and Kirsten wrote back,

“Having been alerted to your complaint, the program acknowledges that the sentence read on the website as an incontrovertible fact and have undertaken to remove it. An Editor’s Note has been added to the page.”

[4] Oreskes, Twitter May 4, 2023: “I’m often asked “What can I do to stop climate change.” That’s a hard question because so much of the change we need is structural, but this new study proves one thing: EAT LESS BEEF. (And now, drum roll, here come the beef industry trolls.)”

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• terenc5Brazen liars, both her and Williams.Log in to Reply
• STJOHNOFGRAFTONOnce upon a time this type of pathological doom and gloomer would have had their digs courtesy the governer’s pleasure at Callan Park. Now, said person is integrated into a straight-jacketed society where she is free to inflict us with her madness. Ironically, Callan Park is now a conservation area and has friends not inmates.Log in to Reply
• DaffyFaced with a bill for a pet’s ultrasound of over $1000, I’m all for pet deaths. I was tempted to ask the vet how much to end the gold-digger’s life, but wife was too near.Log in to Reply
  • DaffyAnd, on smoking, it seems OK to take it up…as death for almost all looms. In fact, as elderliness tangles itself about my knees, I must check with the Cancer Council. Surely they know the age at which taking up cigar smoking will have no statistical effect on life expectancy.Log in to Reply
    • norsaintGood luck to you Daffy if you can afford the occasional lardy-da (apologies to Arfur Daly) these days.
      The ludicrous harpy and our former Attorney General, Nicola Roxon, has put that harmless pleasure beyond the means of most, with her outrageous, never-ending duty increases. The last time I checked, a run of the mill cigar cost $80.
      The egregious feminists don’t like anything which men might find enjoyable.
      It reminds me of the old gag of why woman make love with their eyes closed. (punch line available upon request)Log in to Reply
      • norsaintThat of course should read why “women” make love with their eyes closed.Log in to Reply
• Twyford HallHow amazing that questioning anthropogenic global warming has been set to (alleged) music by a composer. I would bet my superannuation that the composer’s remuneration is taxpayer funded.Log in to Reply
• petroalbionSellers of dog meat in Korea were told by the government to give up the trade. They said OK, we will release all 2 million of the dogs we currently own tomorrow. Government lostLog in to Reply
• David IsaacThanks for digging out another failed prediction of climate doom. Paul Ehrlich’s prognosis for Britain may just’ve been delayed by a few decades but on demographic grounds. Given the repression of its native people and the demise of its native population in its largest cities including London and Birmingham it’s arguable whether England has long ceased to exist. Nominally American, Dr Oreske is a New York Jewess, whose father was also an academic, her mother a school teacher and mother of four. The odds of her politics being left radical based on this information alone are very high. Her brother Michael is a disgraced journalist and executive for leftist outfits, NYT, AP and latterly NPR, who was pinged for sexually harassing junior colleagues in 2017. It comes as no surprise that she views ‘science’ as just another vehicle for radical activism rather than as a sacred quest for truth.Log in to Reply
• norsaintAnd another thing. One could hardly say the “”Prof”” is easy on the eye.Log in to Reply

Cool the Planet or We Kill the Dog

• 12th M

My spaniel, Natasha, has outworn her welcome at our house. According to apex climate scientists doing their peer-reviewed work at universities, dogs and cats are harming the planet with their substantial carbon footprints (make that pawprints). I should replace Natasha, they say, with more climate-friendly pets like galahs, edible hens and rabbits, hamsters, and tortoises. If anyone’s got cause for climate grief, it’s Natasha.

They calculate that Natasha’s emissions stem largely from growing the meat in her pet food. There’s  also  the plastic poop bags that I sneak into other people’s red bins during her walks. Her CO2 emissions are about 30kg a year. That’s not counting her direct emissions while we’re trying to watch Kate Winslet slumming it in Mare of Easttown.

The tipping point to ditch the bitch and cull the kitten could be as early as 2023, a mere two years hence. That’s according to Harvard Professor Naomi Oreskes, a doyenne of the catastrophist community. No-one can doubt her credentials. Wiki lists her latest award as the Medal of the British Academy (2019) amid 27 climate honors, such as “Ambassador and Fellow, American Geophysical Union” and “Francis Bacon Award in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Caltech”.

In 2010 she wrote the solemn book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. She’s followed up with an even scarier tract, The Collapse of Western Civilisation. In this book she says global warming will “wipe out” every Australian man, woman and child. Only a few scattered communities — some mountain people in South America, for instance — will survive the killer heating.

More importantly, she prophesises the agonising climate deaths of those puppies and kittens. One reader, she says,

started crying when the pets die, so I didn’t mean to upset people too much … I was just trying to come up with something that I thought people wouldn’t forget about, and I thought, well, Americans spend billions of dollars every year taking care of their pets, and I thought if people’s dogs started dying, maybe then they would sit up and take notice.

I looked up that bit in her book, and found the Kitten and Puppy Mass Extinction occurs in 2023, along with the climate deaths of 500,000 people and $US500 billion financial damage. Oreskes writes, in bold type no less:

The loss of pet cats and dogs garnered particular attention among wealthy Westerners, but what was anomalous in 2023 soon became the new normal. A shadow of ignorance and denial had fallen over people who considered themselves children of the Enlightenment. 

She was interviewed by the ABC’s science guru Robyn Williams AO AM, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and also showered with awards and three honorary doctorates.[1] He enthused with her:

Yes, not only because it’s an animal but it’s local. You see, one criticism of the scientists is they’re always talking about global things … And so if you are looking at your village, your animals, your fields, your park, your kids, and the scientists are talking about a small world that you know, then it makes a greater impact, doesn’t it.

 Oreskes responded:

Well, exactly. It was about bringing it literally home, literally into your home, your family, your pet, the dog or cat that you love who is your faithful and trusted companion.

But surely Oreskes’ pet doom forecast isn’t (trademarked) Peer-Reviewed Science? Yes, her book is kosher, she verifies.

Well, it’s all based on solid science. Everything in this book is based on the scientific projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. All we did was to add to the social and human aspects to it.

Back in the real world, the ABC introduced the Oreskes episode on its Science Show with a typical lie: “The Earth’s climate is changing at the highest of predicted rates.” Fact: The past 40 years’ warming to date is barely half of what the orthodox modelling predicted.[2]

This ABC wallow was all a while back, but there’s now a veritable industry of scholarship damning our pets’ CO2 emissions. Tax-funded full-time climate scientists have assessed the climate impact of St Bernards vs labradors vs Jack Russells. But two studies on dogs’ climate footprints are at loggerheads – one from Australian researchers, the other from Arizona. As a patriot, I support the Australian results showing the CO2 emissions as St Bernard, 90kg; Labrador, 60kg and Jack Russell 20kg. The Arizonans plumped for 20-30 times higher emissions: this is not yet settled science.

The assault on our four-legged friends hit Code Red last month, with Vox magazine USAheadlining, “Are our pets gobbling up the planet?” It’s sub-headed, ominously: “Pet care is unarguably bad for the environment. What can we do about it?”

The piece, copiously illustrated, noted that during COVID lockdowns lots of households acquired new pets, aggravating the global heating emergency. It quoted Gregory Okin, a geography professor at the University of California, Los Angeles: “Reducing the rate of dog and cat ownership, perhaps in favor of other pets that offer similar health and emotional benefits, would considerably reduce these impacts.”

One learned estimate is that a medium dog needs 0.84 hectares of arable land for its pet food. That’s more than the ecological footprint of a Fourth World citizen, and twice the ecological footprint of a 4.6 litre LandCruiser doing 10,000km a year.[3] Even a cat’s ecological pawprint equals that of a VW Golf, or so said a pair of British academic pet specialists, lately educating New Zealanders from Victoria University, Wellington.[4]

Professors Robert and Brenda Vale wrote a book, Time to Eat the Dog? Responding to a public outcry, Robert said, “We need to know what we’re doing when it comes to the environment. We can’t go blind into this debate. Nothing should be off limits no matter how uncomfortable it is to discuss it.” Their book title was deliberately provocative: don’t expect breast of kelpie from Coles. They didn’t want pups and kittens culled, let alone eaten, but they’d have no problem with tinned rats for cats, or dog-owners switching to pet rabbits and boiling the bunnies’ offspring for lunch. The smaller the pet, they say, the better for the planet. I think it was Woody Allen who claimed his parents gave him ants for pets. If bikie gangs had any climate conscience, they’d use chihuahaus and Pomeranians to guard their clubhouses instead of mastiffs and Rhodesian Ridgebacks.

 A 2019 study reported that the average Dutch dog’s carbon emissions just for food were up to 1.4 tonnes and cats were up to 0.25 tonnes. (Cats win again). This is nearly double the annual electricity carbon emissions for the average UK household just for dog food and about a third of household electricity emissions for the average cat’s food.

The 160-odd million pets in the US create 64 million tonnes of greenhouse emissions, equal to 13 million cars, says one of those sciency papers in PLOS ONE, which boasts “rigorous peer review”.

Moreover, humans and their pets are getting obese at similar rates. People replicate their food fads with pet foods, with about a year’s lag. Thus we get “No Carb” and Paleo Diet pet foods. Fido’s tin of lamb hotpot may now include rice, pearly barley, broccoli, spinach, blueberries, flaxseed, marigold petals, burdock root and alfalfa. That certainly sounds better on a label than cheaper pet food’s “hydrolysed feathers”, horse, Skippy and “animal derivatives” like hair, teeth and bowels.

Some climate scientists have flogged the reverse narrative that pets are victims rather than culprits of the global heating emergency. They scare the punters with tales that warming will worsen pets’ ticks, fleas and heartworms.

The climate scientists now want legal limits on the type and number of our pets. Although I am older than 17 and not as learned as Greta Thunberg, I still intend to mobilise schoolchildren the world over (except China) for a School Strike for Labradoodles. We march on Federal Parliament next week with our Staffies, groodles, spoodles and cavoodles, and your Siamese, Persians, Abyssinians, Maine Coons and Ragdolls. Cavalier King Charleses, united, will never be defeated.[5]

Further Reading: 7 signs you love your pet more than your partner. For example: You return from grocery shopping with a basket of treats for your dog and forget the one thing your partner asked for.

Tony Thomas’s next book from Connor Court, Foot Soldier in the Culture Wars, will be launched at il Gamberos, 166 Lygon St, Carlton Vic on Wednesday June 16 at 6pm. All welcome, contact tthomas061@gmail.com.

[1] His partner, Jonica Newby, is both an ABC veteran and a veteran veterinarian. Last March she published Beyond Climate Grief. It’s about “How do we find courage when climate change overwhelms us emotionally?”

[2] I forced the ABC to add the following to its iview page:

[Editor’s note: The original introduction stated that “Earth’s climate is changing at the highest of predicted rates, scientists have given up on the much talked about two degree ceiling …” In context these words telegraphed the premise on which Prof Oreskes’ work of fiction is based; however, it has been interpreted as a statement of incontrovertible fact and has therefore been removed to prevent any further misunderstanding.]

[3] The ecological footprint means the amount of land needed to support the pet.

[4] Robert Vale’s retired, his wife Brenda is a Professorial Research Fellow.

[5] Cavalier King Charles 1, admittedly, lost his head.

Climateers Come Another Cropper

Grant-gobbling catastropharian fabulist Ed Maibach’s plan to survey TV meteorologists must have seemed a good idea at the time, the object being to pump out fresh PR releases lambasting sceptics. Alas, like the climate itself, the results confound warmist expectations

Of course, as we have so often been assured,  97% of scientists believe in dangerous global warming, mostly caused by human activities’ CO2 emissions. Except that the 97% claim is hokum. A survey of members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) was published last week detailing their support — or rather, lack of it — for the alleged consensus. There were 4092 of 7682 members who responded and of the 4092, only 67% endorsed the consensus.

That is, one-third of the respondents, who include many hundreds of academically credentialed TV weathercasters and other weather communicators, don’t buy the party line on global warming. Twenty-seven percent don’t believe humans are mostly responsible and 6% are don’t-knows.

The scientific community, we’ve been told, is virtually unanimous about CO2-caused warming. That alleged consensus justifies the trillion-dollar spending on windmills and solar farms, as opposed to, say, Third World electrification, clean water, the eradication of malaria and other health scourges now damning billions to poverty and despair.

The reality is that the CO2 emissions dogma is now so shaky – especially given the 21^st century’s pause or halt to warming –  that peer-reviewed papers sceptical of the orthodoxy are  flooding into scientific journals. Kenneth Richard has been tabulating these papers and lists more than 660 published in just the past  27 months – including 133 since the start of 2016 and 282 last year. The mainstream media ignores them,  ditto the IPCC whose remit is  to look exclusively for evidence of human-induced, rather than natural, climate change.[1]

Returning to the AMS survey,  its members are well qualified in science generally and weather in particular. Most respondents had a Bachelor (32%) or Masters (30%) science degree, or PhD in meteorology or atmospheric science (33%). More than a third rated themselves ‘expert’ in climate science, whatever either term may mean. The discovery of one-third sceptics in AMS ranks undoubtedly understates the real level of scepticism in the organisation. The key issue concerns the 3592 non-respondents.  In fact 3,364 of them didn’t even open the emails, despite being reminded up to five times.

A plausible reason for a sceptic not to respond was that the survey was run by Dr Ed Maibach, of George Mason University, a communications specialist. Maibach is has been bluntly described in the sceptic blogosphere as a ‘slimebag’ because he was second signatory on the “RICO20” petition to President Obama last September, calling for sceptics to be prosecuted under the Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organisations Act. Thus any sceptic AMS member getting an email from Maibach asking, among other things, whether they are sceptics, could suspect that Maibach might misuse such information to threaten, sue and blacklist them.[2]  As Anthony Watts put it,  “The man asking the questions might flag you for criminal prosecution for having an opinion he doesn’t like.”

That RICO petition backfired spectacularly on its authors. The lead signatory was Professor Jagadish Shukla, who was quickly exposed for creaming nearly $US6 million  since 2001 for himself, wife and daughter in salaries from his own purported non-profit climate-research foundation.[3] The foundation, in turn, was bankrolled with more than $US75m in US government research grants. In 2014 alone, the Shukla family’s double-dip generated more than $US1m. Shukla is now under intensive audit and faces possible discipline/prosecution over alleged violations of university salary guidelines.

Among other millions falling from the (taxpayer) skies into the laps of the RICO20 witch-hunters is $US3m for Shukla’s pal, Maibach, a three-year research grant to enhance TV weathercasters education, the thrust being to convert them into climate-change warriors.[4]   The AMS survey is part of this exercise, another reason why sceptic members may well have given it a wide berth.

The survey is full of daft questions, the kind contemplated only by unthinking alarmists. Question 1, for example, is,  “Regardless of the cause, do you think climate change is happening?”

Well duh! Climate change is as old as the planet. Fancy asking whether in 2016 climate change has ceased. So 96% replied “Yes”, and only a rogue 1% said “No” (3% were don’t-knows). Author Maibach was actually engaging in spin: the vacuous term “climate change” is used throughout the survey and the more meaningful, and emotionally loaded, term “global warming” is never used at all.[5]

Another dopey question: “To the best of your knowledge, has the climate in your area changed over the past 50 years?” It so happens that 89% of the respondents were unborn or juveniles 50 years ago. On what basis could they   profess knowledge about their local climate in 1966? Nonetheless, 74% claimed their local climate had indeed changed, and more than 40% claimed they had become more convinced about global warming as a result of witnessing local climate change (what exactly would they “witness” to be relevant to global warming?)

It gets worse. AMS weathercasters were also asked if the local climate changes have been beneficial or harmful, whether the local climate will change in the next 50 years, and whether these hypothesized changes to 2066 will be beneficial or harmful? Answering another question, 60% of respondents thought anti-global warming measures, especially global emissions reductions, would work during the next 50 years. They were further asked, in a ridiculous way, if the anti-warming measures would assist the 50-year future of health, farming, transport, homes and fresh water in the US per se. These answers tended towards yes (65%) and no (25%), proportional to the alarmist/sceptics ratio overall.

An extraordinary 29% of respondents thought that climate change (about half a degree of warming in the past half-century) was 81%-to-100% human-caused, as if there were negligible natural climate-change forces before the human fossil-fuel era.

Maibach became a warming warrior a decade ago, after an education at the hands of the Potsdam Climate Institute people. He parlayed that into a career of grant-getting in the cause of climate propaganda.

For example, he won a $US1.06m grant a few years ago to get TV meteorologists to inject more climate-change information into their broadcasts, and another $US1.25m grant to help weather broadcasters convert “unusual weather events as climate change educational opportunities”. This included fingering “weathercasters still undecided about the reality of anthropogenic climate change, the nature of their indecisions, and opportunities to help them reach a conclusion consistent with scientific consensus”. Moreover, Maibech was funded to “develop a prototype conflict analysis and resolution process between weathercasters who reject the scientific consensus and those who accept it.” He was also funded to pump climate orthodoxy into schools and university courses, and to persuade Hollywood gurus to make their films more climate oriented.

A classic piece of Maibach “research” grew out of having been funded to help health professionals better spruik the alleged health hazards of global warming. He claimed that, from a survey he conducted, 60% of 2296 US public health directors were  convinced that they had seen local harmful effects of warming.[6] The reality was that out of his initial sample of 2296, he received responses from only  217, of whom 133 were concerned about warming. This was 3.5% of the initial sample, not the 60% he claimed. So much for Maibach and his surveys.

The original “97% consensus” about human-caused global warming dates to a 2004 study by science historian Naomi Oreskes, who has been babbling for the past quarter-century that warming sceptics are the same as tobacco lobbyists. She  surveyed the literature from 1993-2003 and found three-quarters of 928 papers agreed with the consensus, and a quarter made no comment on it. (The fallacy is that in the highly-competitive scramble by academics for government research funding, any request suggesting the author is not on board with the ‘consensus’ was certain to be refused funding; thus their output never saw the light of day. This censorship-by-shunning is now crumbling).

Then there was  the Doran/Zimmerman study in 2008. This study was supposed to represent  3146 earth-scientist respondents. In fact, laughably, they culled their list down to a mere 79  suitable respondents, of whom 76 (or 97%) backed the consensus.

In 2013,  University of Queensland Ph.D. student John Cook published yet another 97% study, supposedly involving the rating of 12,464 abstracts. The Cook exercise passed peer review and was accepted by Environmental Research Letters, run by the  UK Institute of Physics (I hadn’t known that physics involved measurements of ‘consensus’).[7] It became the most-cited bit of research that year, with 161,000 downloads (currently 470,000). Sadly, the peer reviewers failed to check the study’s own data. This data showed that the number of studies actually backing the orthodox climate view – that most of the past 50 years’ warming is human-caused – was not 97% but 0.3%.

The 97% claim involved nothing more than agreement that there is some global warming and humans play some part in it. Given that the overwhelming majority of sceptics also believe this, the only surprise is that the figure isn’t  99.9%.

The study’s methodology attained a new low for science, even for climate science. According to time stamps on the work of Cook’s team which rated rating the studies, one rater managed to review 675 abstracts within 72 hours — a superhuman effort, as Richard Tol remarked.

The time stamps also reveal something far more serious. After collecting data for eight weeks, there were four weeks of data analysis, followed by three more weeks of data collection. The same people collected and analysed the data. After more analysis, the paper classification scheme was changed and yet more data ­collected.

Cook thus broke a key rule of scientific data collection: observations should never follow from the conclusions. Medical tests are double-blind for good reason.

You cannot change how to ­collect data, and how much, after having seen the results. If you want to believe climate researchers are incompetent, biased and secretive, Cook’s paper is an excellent case in point.

The study also claimed the raters were independent and had not colluded. In fact the raters were Cook’s intimates on his  Skeptical Science team. In what they supposed were private webchats, they freely admitted colluding on ratings and looking at material they were not supposed to under the study’s guidelines.[8]  For a simple check on Cook’s honesty, go to his own website, where he claims his study was “tweeted by President Obama”, viz. – “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: ‪#climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” Not only did Obama make no such tweet (Barack Obama@BarackObama is a third-party tweet shop) but it is also untrue that Cook’s alleged 97% consensus endorsed that warming was “dangerous”.

Sceptic Brandon Shollenberger discovered that the team had left open cyber doors to the private section of the website, and when he got inside, he found an image of  Cook elaborately Photoshopped by his followers in the Nazi drag of an SS Reichsfuehrer (left), the title held by Heinrich Himmler from 1929-45.[9] Another image showed “Herr John Cook”, in lieu of Hitler, addressing a Nuremburg rally, with the massed ranks of troops hand-labelled “SkS” (i.e. Skeptical Science).[10] For SS logos and swastikas, Cook’s helpers had laboriously substituted Skeptical Science logos.

What this was all about, no-one but Cook and his team knows. (Shollenberger’s e-book on Cook’s oddities, The Climate Wars, can be downloaded for $A1.39.)

Cook was mightily embarrassed that Shollenberger had walked, through open links, into Cook’s inner web sanctum. Next thing, Shollenberger got a ferocious letter from the University of Queensland’s legal team not only threatening to sue but asserting that the ‘We’ll sue!’ letter itself was confidential and copyright and Shollenberger would be doubly sued for disclosing its contents, even, presumably, to his own solicitor.[11] This deserved, and quickly got, a Hitler Downfall parody.

It seems a characteristic of “climate science” that its most vocal practitioners leave an odiferous trail. In the case of the American Meteorological Society survey, the trail includes McCarthyist attacks on “deniers”, a gravy train of funding that branches into multi-million mismanagement, and survey questions of laughable inanity. Earlier attempts to demonstrate a (meaningless) “consensus” about global warming made a mockery of scientific methods and inquiry, and traipsed into a morass involving Nazi portraiture and farcical lawsuit threats by university lawyers.

The only “consensus” demonstrated to date is that the global-warming community is a weird mob.

Tony Thomas blogs at No B-S Here, I Hope

 

 

 

 

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[1] Namely, “…to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”

 

[2] It is unclear whether responders could be identified personally, as this involves technical detail about the survey software.

 

[3] Shukla’s huge foundation salary was for 28 hours work per week.

[4] E.g. “Providing participating weathercasters with professional development activities and training on use of Climate Matters materials to help them become confident and competent climate educators”.

[5] The AMS had helpfully defined climate change as change in climate, i.e.  “Any systematic change in the long-term statistics of climate elements (such as temperature, pressure, or winds) sustained over several decades or longer. Climate change may be due to: natural external forcings, such as changes in solar emission or slow changes in the earth’s orbital elements; natural internal processes of the climate system; or anthropogenic forcing.” I assume the AMS  with its sloppy wording in the survey meant “and/or” rather than “or” concerning the causes of climate change.

[6] Members of the National Association of County & City Health Officials

[7] ERL’s executive board includes Peter Gleick, who confessed to fraudulently obtaining confidential information from the Heartland Institute.

[8] Brandon Shollenberger, The Climate Wars, Kindle location 193.

[9] Climate Wars, Kindle location 42.gr

[10] Climate Wars, Kindle location 46

[11] “The University of Queensland  owns the copyright in this letter and you are advised that any publication by you of this letter , or persons acting in concert with you, will constitute an infringement of The University’s copyright. The University of Queensland reserves its right to take any and all legal action against any person, including you, who publishes this letter.”

 

 

 

 

 

tags

• Ed Maibach,
• john cok,
• Potsdam Climate Institute,
• skeptical science

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The ABC Rights a Wrong

TONY THOMAS

No need just yet to hug your kitties and pups one last time. Climate change is still a mortal peril, according to the national broadcaster, which has admitted in one of its rare posted corrections that soaring temperatures and rising seas will take longer to kill Fido and Fluffy than originally thought

Hooray! I’ve forced the ABC to correct one of its  howlers in global warming reportage. On September 2,  I wrote in Quadrant Online about Harvard History of Science Professor Naomi Oreskes and her forecast that global warming would kill everyone’s puppies and kittens in 2023, followed by the entire population of Australia. Admittedly, her book was supposedly written looking back from 400 years into the future, but as she put it, it was all based on genuine Climate Change Science ™.

Science Show host and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science Robyn Williams loved the pet-holocaust idea, saying:

“Yes, not only because it’s an animal but it’s local. You see, one criticism of the scientists is they’re always talking about global things … And so if you are looking at your village, your animals, your fields, your park, your kids, and the scientists are talking about a small world that you know, than it makes a greater impact, doesn’t it?”

 Oreskes responded:

“Well, exactly. It was about bringing it literally home, literally into your home, your family, your pet, the dog or cat that you love who is your faithful and trusted companion.”

If you go to the ABC Science Show site at you will now find this correction:

Editor’s note: The original introduction stated that “Earth’s climate is changing at the highest of predicted rates, scientists have given up on the much talked about two degree ceiling …”  In context these words telegraphed the premise on which Prof Oreskes’ work of fiction is based; however, it has been interpreted as a statement of incontrovertible fact and has therefore been removed to prevent any further misunderstanding.

This is an almost-OK response by the complaints department. Timing-wise, the show was aired on 16 August, my complaint was on September 1, and the correction posted on September 23 — expeditiously by ABC standards. My only quibble is that Williams and the ABC still cannot bring themselves to admit publicly that saying “earth’s climate is changing at the highest predicted rates” is flat-out wrong, the opposite of the truth, whether or not the assertion is real or made “fictively”.

My suggestion is that, now the ABC has begun behaving almost like an impartial taxpayer-funded news institution, we should use the complaints mechanism on every occasion the national broadcaster  falls into error on climate and/or politics.  No one can now say such complaints will be frivolously dismissed or ignored.

My complaint read:

The introduction [to the Science Show’s Oreskes interview] says, “The Earth’s climate is changing at the highest of predicted rates.”

The IPCC in its final draft for its 5th Report, showed actual temperatures running below the lowest bound of the IPCC forecasting.

This graphic (re-produced below) was omitted  in the published report,

replaced by this account:

However, an analysis of the full suite of CMIP5 [modeling] historical simulations   reveals that 111 out of 114 realisations  [forecasts] show a GMST [global mean surface temperature]  trend over 1998-2012 that is higher than the entire HadCRUT4 [actual temperature] trend ensemble  ” Chapter 9, WG1, Box 9.2

In other words, actual temperatures are running lower than  97% of the forecast runs, not at “the highest of predicted rates” as claimed by   the Science Show.

I would like to see this false and misleading statement corrected on The Science Show.

Thanks

Tony Thomas

The ABC’s reply  reads,

Dear Mr Thomas,

Your complaint has been considered by Audience and Consumer Affairs, a unit which is separate to and independent of content making areas within the ABC. Our role is to review complaints alleging that ABC content has breached the ABC’s editorial standards. These standards are explained in our Editorial Policies which are available here –http://about.abc.net.au/how-the-abc-is-run/what-guides-us/our-editorial-policies/.

The intention had been to convey Naomi Oreskes’ view but having been alerted to your complaint, the program acknowledges that the sentence read on the website as an incontrovertible fact and have undertaken to remove it.  An Editor’s Note has been added to the page.

Audience and Consumer Affairs is satisfied that these steps are adequate and appropriate to remedy the cause of your complaint and accordingly we consider it resolved.

Thank you for giving the ABC the opportunity to respond to your concerns.

Yours sincerely,

Kirstin McLiesh
Head, Audience and Consumer Affairs

I say modestly, no, don’t give me credit for this virtually unprecedented backdown by the ABC on global warming catastrophism. Credit belongs to level-headed sceptics everywhere  in what Shakespeare once described as “a naughty world.”

And, if I may say so, Long Live the ABC!

Tony Thomas blogs at tthomas061.wordpress.com

We’re Doomed … Kittens and Puppies Too

If you have a bill of climate goods to peddle, as Naomi Oreskes always does, what better foil than ardent warmist and Science Show compere Robyn Williams? When flogging a book, it is handy to have a radio pal who has never encountered an alleged peril too silly to inspire a raised eyebrow — not even the mass extinction of household pets

Global warming is going to “wipe out” every Australian man, woman and child, according toNaomi Oreskes, the much-quoted Professor of the History of Science at Harvard. Revered by catastropharians the world over, she was a guest on a recent edition of Robyn Williams’ Science Show on Radio National.

The glum forecast is in her latest book, The Collapse of Western Civilisation (co-author Erik Conway). She is so globally famous that her previous book, Merchants of Doubt, about the great warming-denialist conspiracy, is now being made into a movie by Sony Pictures Classics. This film-to-be is being touted as the successor to Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, which may be an ironically apt comparison, as Gore still hasn’t amended his flick to correct the nine howlers identified in a UK High Court judgment.

Robyn Williams doesn’t seem to have read Oreskes book about Western civilisation’s collapse, because its forecast of Australians’ extinction (at 464/1172 on my Kindle version) went unmentioned on his Science Show.

What Oreskes predicts is that some people in northern inland regions of Europe, Asia and North America, plus some mountain people in South America, wil survive the killer warming. These lucky ones are able to “regroup and rebuild. The human populations of Australia and Africa, of course, were wiped out,” she says, writing from a viewpoint some 400 years into the future.

I have to wonder: will some future Pat Dodson arrive and plant the Aboriginal flag on our climate-scoured terra nullius?

But Oreskes forecasts something much worse than the death by climate for every Australian human. She prophesises the climate deaths of puppies and kittens. One reader, she says, “started crying when the pets die, so I didn’t mean to upset people too much…I was just trying to come up with something that I thought people wouldn’t forget about, and I thought, well, Americans spend billions of dollars every year taking care of their pets, and I thought if people’s dogs started dying, maybe then they would sit up and take notice.”

I looked up that bit in the book, and found the Great Kitten & Puppy Extinction occurs in 2023, along with the incidental deaths of 500,000 people and $US500b financial damage. Oreskes writes,

“The loss of pet cats and dogs garnered particular attention among wealthy Westerners, but what was anomalous in 2023 soon became the new normal. A shadow of ignorance and denial had fallen over people who considered themselves children of the Enlightenment.”

To make sure no-one misses the pet die-off, she repeats it in a bold-type breakout.

Radio National’s Williams was delighted with Oreskes’ pet-panic strategy. He chimed in,

“Yes, not only because it’s an animal but it’s local. You see, one criticism of the scientists is they’re always talking about global things…And so if you are looking at your village, your animals, your fields, your park, your kids, and the scientists are talking about a small world that you know, than it makes a greater impact, doesn’t it.”

Oreskes responded:

“Well, exactly. It was about bringing it literally home, literally into your home, your family, your pet, the dog or cat that you love who is your faithful and trusted companion.”

As I type this, I look down at my faithful (but not always trusted) spaniel companion, Natasha, and let my own tears fall.

Oreskes doesn’t think she’s writing fiction. She told the admiring Williams, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, no less:

“Well, it’s all based on solid science. Everything in this book is based on the scientific projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. All we did was to add to the social and human aspects to it … and to ask the question; what does this really mean in terms of what its potential impacts would be on people and its potential impacts on our institutions of governance?”

Oreskes starts The Science Show by reading from her book. Be afraid:

“By 2040, heatwaves and droughts were the norm. Control measures—such as water and food rationing and Malthusian ‘one-child’ policies—were widely implemented. In wealthy countries, the most hurricane- and tornado-prone regions were gradually but steadily depopulated…

“In poor nations, conditions were predictably worse: rural portions of Africa and Asia began experiencing significant depopulation from out-migration, malnutrition-induced disease and infertility, and starvation…

“Then, in the northern hemisphere summer of 2041, unprecedented heatwaves scorched the planet, destroying food crops around the globe. Panic ensued, with food riots in virtually every major city. Mass migration of undernourished and dehydrated individuals, coupled with explosive increases in insect populations, led to widespread outbreaks of typhus, cholera, dengue fever, yellow fever, and viral and retroviral agents never seen before.

“Surging insect populations also destroyed huge swaths of forests in Canada, Indonesia and Brazil. As social order began to break down in the 2050s, governments were overthrown, particularly in Africa, but also in many parts of Asia and Europe, further decreasing social capacity to deal with increasingly desperate populations.

“As the Great Northern American Desert surged north and east, consuming the High Plains and destroying some of the world’s most productive farmland, the US government declared martial law to prevent food riots and looting. A few years later, the United States announced plans with Canada for the two nations to begin negotiations toward the creation of the United States of North America, to develop an orderly plan for resource-sharing and northward population relocation.

“The European Union announced similar plans for voluntary northward relocation of eligible citizens from its southernmost regions to Scandinavia and the United Kingdom…”

The ever-credulous Williams, instead of asking Oreskes, “Mmm, you’re smoking something good?” merely observeds that all of the above is “fairly shocking”, further wondering why it is only Western civilization that collapses, leaving the Chinese in charge. Oreskes gave two reasons. One, Chinese civilization is more durable, and two, authoritarian regimes are better able to deal with climate catastrophes.

It’s no surprise that Oreskes is a fan of our very own Professor Clive Hamilton, ethicist and leading public intellectual. In Collapse, she cites approvingly his book Requiem for a Species, in which he says that combating climate change will impose moral obligations superior to mere obedience to the law. Hamilton has also welcomed the prospect of emergency measures, such as the suspension of democratic processes. If you are as smart as Hamilton thinks he is, what need to take the views of lesser mortals into account?

Oreskes’ other Australian bestie is former Greenpeace International CEO Paul Gilding, of Tasmania, author of The Great Disruption. Gilding doesn’t quite forecast the extinction of all Australians, but he does say:

“I do believe it’s going to be catastrophic by today’s standards. Potentially, billions will die in famine, there will be conflict between nations, there will be a dramatic change in lifestyle enforced by a war-like effort in response…We should be on a war-footing…”

Oreskes seems to share the same authoritarian yearnings. She said last February that sceptic groups ought to be prosecuted via the Racketer-Influenced Corrupt Organisations (RICO) statutes that have been wiely used in the US to convict leaders of criminal syndicates for helping third parties to commit crimes. In Merchants of Doubt, she notes with approval how RICO, conceived to de-rail the Mafia, was later used to prosecute tobacco-industry executives for suppressing knowledge of health impacts.

Oreskes, the frequent object of Williams’ gushing admiration, — insists ‘no one’ in the ‘scientific community’ now thinks global warming can be confined to 2degC.

“Things that only a few years ago scientists thought were unimaginable, almost unspeakable, like a four-degree or a five-degree temperature range, now we realise we have to speak about them because that is where we are heading.”

Given there’s been a warming halt of between 14 years and 18 years, depending on whose charts you consult, it’s hard to see why her climate scientists are suffering such rising panic. The halt even seems to have penetrated Williams’ warm brain, since his next (excellent) question was:

Williams: How much sympathy do you have for the ordinary person who picks up bestselling daily papers and sees that there hasn’t been a temperature rise in 15 years, who sees that the IPCC is quoted as predicting that sea level will hardly change at all, that the temperatures won’t go up beyond two degrees and they are quoting all this stuff, as if (and you use the word in your book) people like yourself are just alarmists?

Oreskes: “Well, I have tremendous sympathy for the ordinary citizen…. We have been victims of two things really; a systematic and organised disinformation campaign … and then we’ve also been the victims of a tremendous amount of false equivalence in the media…

“There are hundreds of millions of people around the globe… who will say to me, ‘Well, I read in the New York Times‘ or ‘I read in The Australian’ and then they will spout some nonsense, something that we know is factually incorrect, and yet it has been presented in the media as if it were somehow equivalent to actual scientific data…The media has done a huge disservice by perpetuating what are really lies—lies, misinformation, disinformation—that ordinary people read and think are true.”

Well said, Naomi, except that you’re now calling the IPCC crowd liars, since they’ve acknowledged the 15-year hiatus. (5AR, Policymakers Summary).

Williams, or the ABC (the official website isn’t specific) introduced the Oreskes episode on the Science Show with a big fib:

“The Earth’s climate is changing at the highest of predicted rates.”

In its draft for its Fifth Report, the IPCC showed actual temperatures running below the lowest bound of the IPCC forecasting. This graphic conveniently disappeared from the published report, replaced by this account:

However, an analysis of the full suite of CMIP5 [modeling] historical simulations … reveals that 111 out of 114 realisations [forecasts] show a GMST [global mean surface temperature] trend over 1998–2012 that is higher than the entire HadCRUT4 [actual temperature] trend ensemble …” Chapter 9, WG1, Box 9.2

In other words, actual temperatures are running lower than 97% of the forecast runs, not at “the highest of predicted rates” as claimed by The Science Show. Expect a correction from Robyn Williams any day (as I’ve put in an official complaint).

Oreskes finished her interview by claiming, improbably, that some readers of her Collapse wanted her bok to be longer. She explains,

“We didn’t want it to be too depressing, we didn’t want to go on and on and on, like 300 pages of misery, that really wouldn’t be any fun. So we are sort of hoping that the book, despite the fact that it’s a depressing topic, it’s actually we think kind of a fun read.”

Apart from the dead kittens, she means.