I usually only read the toad’s articles as a headline on uClimate, but I couldn’t help looking at this one (sorry).
From what I can see, he’s given up on the “doomsday” man-made warming and is now arguing that there still might be a problem from very low levels of man-made warming. So if we are not heading toward a catastrophe as the Toad now seems to be arguing what are we heading toward?
Catastrophe: “an extremely large-scale disaster, a horrible event.“
In climate terms, does this mean Toad is now predicting less than 2C warming, the level Stern says is unacceptable? The level at which the huge benefits from warming are thought to be overtaken by harm (if one assumes the “scientific” aka “the worst possible imaginable – or worse” scenarios. )
To avoid anyone else having to go to Toad’s blog, I’ve reproduced the article below (And if Toad wants to complain, may I remind him that he refused to help me get a totally scurrilous and false article removed which not only breached my copyright but intentionally libelled me and many other people.)
Anthropogenomorphic: In my view, people invent big words to pretend that simple ideas are complex and falsely give the impression those using them have “special” knowledge. But, in my experience if someone uses these “big” made up words when there is are perfectly good shorter word, it often means they are trying to hide the fact they haven’t a clue what they are talking about.
One of the more stupid debating tricks of the “skeptics” is to oscillate between Ha ha, you believe in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming which is obviously not happening so you’re very silly, and when told that CAGW is a strawman that they’ve invented they switch to if it isn’t catastrophic we’ve got nothing to worry about, have we?1
To which the answer is always some variant of if you can’t imagine anything between “catastrophic” and “nothing to worry about” then you’re not thinking. But I’ve got bored of saying it, so I thought I’d write it down and link to it instead.
I am hard pressed to comprehend how you managed to so miss the point of what Connolley was actually saying.
Connolley has finally admitted to himself that it might not be catastrophic.
When even such a science denialist doommonger like him is admitting “the end may not be nigh”, we have won.
His point is that there is a continuum between complete and total global disaster and nothing to worry about. If you consider “only poor people lose their homes and starve” or “a huge proportion of GDP must be spent on mitigation” to be winning, then fair enough. Claiming victory on a cheap semantic point (which you’ve misunderstood anyway) looks pretty playground rhetoric to me, though.
His point is that because he cannot win the argument where he cannot ban people he is forced to post it where he can.
But in doing so, he has admitted that he no longer believes we are definitely heading toward catastrophic warming.
And don’t you dare preach to me about “poor people”. Some 23,000 people die of cold each year in the UK. That figure will go up because idiots like you and Connolley are raising fuel bills so that they cannot heat their homes.
I’ve no doubt you lot have already killed numerous poor people in the UK and caused untold misery through higher fuel bills.
The Toad is just a rich spoilt brat who flies off on holidays to Japan, spends his spare time rowing down the Cam with his rich-buddies and sends his children to some private school to avoid the people who have to pay for his vitriolic attack on the rest of humanity for daring to want a lifestyle that consumes a faction of the fossil fuel he does.
In short The Toad is a hypocrite.
I don’t think he has given up on Catastrophic, instead he thinks skeptics invented it (really? who created all those photoshops of polar bears drowning and New York flooded ?) and that Ed “One Watt” Davey is a great source of wisdom on the subject.
Anyone thinking Davey knows what he is talking about is worth ignoring.
If you’re right, these warmists are some of the most selfish people alive. They know we aren’t heading toward any catastrophe but they are so obsessed with stopping anyone else using carbon (whilst they fly around all over the place) that they will invent lies and fictions to try to force everyone to live – not how they live – but how they would like EVERYONE ELSE to live.
If it isn’t catastrophic what we have to worry about is that we still have in power a political class (& owned media) who have lied to us for over 2 decades to impoverish us and scare us into obedience (note the Indian Intelligence service assessment that foreign funded “green” activism has cost them “2-3% of gdp growth a year” and then multiply that several fold here and for over 2 decades.
Then worry about the fact that not one of them has lost their career or even apologised and we can be certain the parasites will do it again as soon as they have a good lie (or even a weak one).
That is a damn site more scary than catastrophic warming ever was.
Really you need to read his blog, he has alway spent a lot of his type criticising people over-hyping climate change e.g.
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2009/02/12/apocalyptic-climate-prediction/
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/01/10/grumpy-review-of-an-inconvenie/
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2008/04/19/stern-takes-bleaker-view-on-wa/
What these people don’t seem to realise is that they are literally acting in a criminal way.
It would only need a small change in the public mood or a shift in power by e.g. UKIP getting into power, and I could see many many people PARTICULARLY POLITICIANS finding themselves in court for corruption, misuse of public office, fraud and a host of criminal offences.
I’d convict them! I might feel sorry for them – but they are guilty of a crime and should be punished.
The Toad has systematically prevented proper science deciding policy in this arena. He has been part of a conspiracy to deny the facts about the climate and instead push the extremely biased and anti-science viewpoint of a very small group of politicised eco-activist academics.
He has taken it on himself to be the arbiter of this subject on Wikipedia, when he has absolutely no qualification in science and is totally incompetent to express any view as to the validity.
You think stoat “decides policy in this arena” (as well as being Wikipedia arbiter). You have got to be joking!!!
I’d be happy to. With app 17,000 unnecessary winter deaths per year I have no sympathy. It is easy to show that the ecofascist have, including DDT, the destruction of the nuclear industry, banning of golden rice etc, killed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined.
The team and their cohorts not only published all the non-science on climate, but peer reviewed all the non-science and then wrote the articles on Wikipedia based on all their non-science.
The Toad was just a gullible sycophantic idiot who either worked for them or even worse, wasted all his own time pushing this climate non-science to get other people grants.
I do agree that most greens are pretty sick people who don’t care a damn about what they do to others like the elderly and poor in Scotland who die from winter deaths.
To use the ever helpful medical analogy – your doctor tells you that you are suffering catastrophic heart disease. Very shortly you will start to feel the effects and the only way to delay the inevitable is to make drastic lifestyle changes and even that would see you suffering for the rest of your life. Six months later you go back to the doctor and express wonder that you’re still alive and actually feel fine, despite failing to make most of the recommended changes. At that point your doctor admits that you’re just suffering from angina. You’re devastated but the doctor asks ‘you’re living a better life because of the scare, so what’s your problem?’ You grab the doc by the throat and shout ‘I told my boss he could stuff his job. I realised all my assets and blew all the cash on world travel and presents for my friends. I told my girlfriend I hated her so that she wouldn’t waste her time caring for me and last month she married my gym instructor and now you admit that the word ‘catastrophic’ was just to encourage me to get more excerise and go on a diet!’
There is actually a very similar phenomenon to that of the “Skeptic v. Academics” of glopbal warming in medicine which is the “expert patient”. These are people usually with rather rare long-term illnesses that have built up far more medical expertise in their own condition than their GP and even in some cases the consultants.
You can imagine that some naive, arrogant young doctor meeting one of these patients for the first time would start pontificating about “you must do this” and “I think I will try you on that”… and each time the patient will have to explain to the arrogant young man — why it is that they are wrong.
The arrogant, naive, doctor/academic faced with someone they don’t believe to be an “authority” will feel threatened and insulted. That might turn to overt insults, put downs, etc.
But as doctors get better — they begin to trust their patients, and the really good ones learn that dealing with an illness is a partnership in which the patient is the expert in some things and they in others (or in some cases, they just write the prescriptions endorsing the real expert who is the patient).
Unfortunately, our planetary “doctors” haven’t yet realised that there are plenty of other experts around, many of whom are far far better in their particular bit of expertise than they CAN EVER HOPE TO BE.
And, either these arrogant, naive, ignorant academics will learn to trust the vast wealth of expertise outside — or they will be kicked off the job and the outside experts WHO UNDOUBTEDLY ARE BETTER SUITED TO DEALING WITH THIS KIND OF ENGINEERING ISSUE – will get responsibility for the “patient” (who in most respects is actually looking better now than she has for over a century)
The CAGW strawman was invented by sceptics. The strawman aspect is the presumption that everyone who is not a sceptic is a “CAGW supporter” without really defining the specific concerns of that particular non-sceptic.
Connolley takes the piss out of Ed Davey in the post linked to by the post SS links to.
Off-topic gish-gallop response, surely. PeteB provides evidence that Connolley criticises people who over-hype climate change. SS response ignores the evidence.
It is clear you will not be persuaded out of your belief in this vast conspiracy amongst climate scientists (normally scientists are a pretty argumentative bunch and there would be plenty of incentive to spill the beans) so there is little point in trying to discuss this further. FWIW I think you are making a fool of yourself by expressing such beliefs.
No remotely honest warmist has ever denied that the warmists claimed catastrophic warming. Obviously if it isn’t catastrophic they couldn’t have demanded trillions (or even billions) be spent on it. of course no remotely honest warmist has ever denied that the overwhelming majority of warmists are corrupt liars.
[Obviously if it isn’t catastrophic they couldn’t have demanded trillions…]
That’s another version of “If it isn’t catastrophic we’ve got nothing to worry about, have we?”
I spent £50 on fence paint at the weekend to prevent my fence from rotting away in the future. I did so despite not expecting a Catastrophic Fence Rotting event. Am I an alarmist CFR believer or someone undertaking sensible, though perhaps cautious, measures on the basis of experience and research?
Obviously your “version” is wrong. The correct phraseology would be “If it isn’t catastrophic it isn’t catastrophic.”
I assume your fence would cost more than £50 to replace or you would be a fool to spend more reducing the chance you might need to. If some creosote salesmen, formerly selling double glazing, offered you his special creosote, designed to work against DDT and acid rain, for a mere £1 billion, I suspect you would demur. Whether you would demur if you were spending the taxpayer’s money rather than your own is a question that goes to the heart of the fraud.
As it happens I do think we have nothing to worry about, apart from the dishonesty of those in power, to worry about. Indeed that CO2 rise is beneficial.
But if you have some actual evidence otherwise i’m sure you will produce it.