Dear sceptic (skeptics),
you might know me as “Scottish Sceptic”, in real life I’m Mike Haseler, a father of three, who like so many others felt obliged to fight the non-science in what some called the “climate wars”. I believe I speak for most of us, when I say our aims were modest: to stop the stupidity, arrogance and politicisation that infested academia and those like NOAA from seriously impacting our society, economy and yes … the environment. Because, I sincerely believe that at the heart of most sceptics is not only a passion for honesty and real compulsion to do what we believe is right for society, but also a deep concern for the earth.
And in a real sense we have “won” the climate war, because Green groups are now all but admitting what I call the “Dead Parrot Talks” (as I call them) in Paris will be a “failure”. They are now discussion “how to make people care” about the (lack of) warming. And the reality is that whatever their rhetoric, governments like the UK are starting to dismantle the global warming bandwagon.
But in another sense, the war can never be “won”, because the fight against arrogant stupidity and greed will always be with us. Because so long as there are gullible people, there will always be the profiteering sharks, ready to fabricated crisis to line their pockets. So, there will always be a need for us sceptics!
But like “the Dead Parrot” sketch of Monty python, this parrot (global warming) is dead as more and more the public realise that it was only ever on its perch “because it had been nailed there” as the sketch goes.
So, I think it is time we all gave ourselves a pat on the back,. But unfortunately, we sceptics initially few in number, but now overwhelming in numbers, do not have some leader to stand on some battleship and proclaim “the war is over”. Nor can we cannot award medals of gallantry to those who stood out for their devotion to duty however much they are deserved.
However, I can say without modesty or fear of contradiction (by the facts), never have so many owed so much to so few. Those bloggers who stood up against tyranny in the dark hours of repression, those who supported them in the comments, even just those who read the posts in quiet support, have all been responsible for one of the greatest victories of humanity: not against actual weapons of mass destruction, but instead against false ideas and ignorance. I sincerely believe that if there had not been those few first sceptics willing to take the lead and this global warming hysteria had taken a deeper hold, the impact to our society would have caused a Stalinist type holocaust greater than any war the world has ever seen.
That threat has gone (for now), so as the turmoil of the “climate wars” ebbs away and governments, academics and governmental agencies, begin to wake up to the changing world, I would just like to say “thanks” to each and everyone sceptic.
thanks!
Thank you all the bloggers both big and small, all of whom played a vital role disseminating the truth. Thank you to everyone who has contributed articles and comments both on my blog, here and everywhere else. It has been a pleasure getting know people throughout the world. Thank you wives & husbands, families & friends that have put up with us “enthusiasts”. Thank you the few politicians who listened to us and thank you to those journalists who did their job and ensured the public heard the “other side” of the debate.
But those like me contributing on the internet at least could escape the vitriol and hatred thrown at us by the ignorant and greedy on line. In contrast, in areas like academia, sceptics not only risked their own careers, but in some notable cases lost them. So a particular thanks to them for their personal sacrifice in standing up for real science against the evil of ignorance and political spite.
But last of all one special lady deserves a mention. Without her, none of us would be here. She is without doubt our greatest sceptic who has consistently put up two fingers to all alarmists. She was the original sceptic who was just as sceptical of the global cooling crisis as the 20th century warming. So, let us all, in our own way say:
Yes, I think thanks are in order, especially to those who have put themselves out to try and engender some common sense. Every blog, every sceptic scientist paper is a drop of water that slowly erodes the AGW alarm mountain that grew so quickly out of nothing. There’s still a long way to go and I don’t think we’ve seen the worst that the warmists will try in the last weeks before Paris.
The El Nino looks like it’s at the 1997 stage of the 1997/8 event. Annoyingly there will be warming which the warmists will try to screw the last drops of alarm from. Of course on past performance a warmist is due to do something hugely embarassing and damaging in their desperation.
I’ve often wondered whether, if I knew how much time it would take, whether I would have given up the idea of paid work to campaign against global warming.
The fun thing is hearing world leaders repeating words & ideas that I know I created just a few years before.
And there are now so many people that know its a scam, who know there’s no real science behind it and who are prepared to speak out and tell all the gullible people they are being gullible that there’s no way on earth they can keep the sham going – whether or not it ends in those who are guilty of crime going to jail, the truth is that there are now so many sceptics who know it’s a big con that it will slowly grind to a halt.
The wording of that sounds like a goodbye – Are you stopping the campaign?
It’s far from over – the propaganda and brainwashing continues unabated.
The anthropogenic climate church is now bleating about “climate reparations” (levies and someone to oversee them!).
Dear Mike Haseler,
I want you to know that I do appreciate all you have done over the years. Tell your family that I appreciate their support of you as you have worked on this blog and your comments elsewhere. I know how hard it is as I blog also as a sideline (mostly libertarian theory and not climate)
My personal beliefs lead me to think you will be rewarded in some way for all your efforts. At least I hope so. I also hope you keep at it.
If you ever run out of ideas, a look at exactly what the warmists and even the luke-warmists mean when they say that CO2 effects our climate would be nice. They have several different versions of this meme and a categorizing would be helpful.
Yours, Mark
The sceptic blogosphere has certainly had an impact on the MSM (Telegraph, Mail and Times), helping to give respectability to the sceptic viewpoint, but I think the main reason why Paris will be a non-event is the fact that low CO2 energy is a joke/scam.
I see “Climate Change” as just one facet of The Blob, the vast non-wealth-creating sector of the decadent West, so whilst this battle may be won the War Against The Blob must continue on all other fronts.
This will make you laugh:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3207392/Met-Office-fury-BBC-gives-contract-worth-millions-foreigners.html
“Met Office fury as BBC ‘gives contract worth millions to foreigners’: Broadcaster announces plant to scrap its 93-year relationship with the weather forecaster.”
Was the MET too expensive, too often wrong or not alarmist enough?
You paint a grim picture for the future of climate science.
(Or, to borrow a term, climate non-science.)
“Green groups are now all but admitting…”
“…governments like the UK are starting to dismantle the global warming bandwagon…”
“…this parrot (global warming) is dead as more and more the public realise that…”
“…so as the turmoil of the “climate wars” ebbs away and governments, academics and governmental agencies, begin to wake up to the changing world…”
“…it’s a big con that it will slowly grind to a halt.”
It’s a grim picture. A very grim and…vague picture.
There’s no time frame and there’s no specifics.
When the admissions are admitted and the dismantling is done and the realizations finally and truly realized and the ebbing has fully ebbed and all are woken up and the changes are finally finished changing…then what will that actually look like?
[snip – too long and goes off subject]
Almost exactly like the warmist promises then? They keep saying that any minute now we’ll all see that we’ve been wrong and write blank cheques to renewables companies. At least one of those claims is bonkers. Only time will tell who was the sane voice in the wilderness and who was the crack pot.
Warmists will have to take a new tack if significant warming doesn’t start soon and continue in a determined fashion. They will have to admit that some of the earlier alarms were overblown. If they don’t they’ll be a long time waiting for anyone to trust them again. Whining that moderate or light warming was always within the original possibilities won’t impress anyone.
Whatever the truth of AGW, the pot has most clearly gone off the boil. Global leaders have more urgent issues on their plate. Even Al Gore and his band are lackluster in their enthusiasm. If global scepticism has an unexpected ally – it’s warmist themselves. They’re just so unconvincing and dare I say it… lazy.
[off subject]
So long as the world contains people like Cedric, blogs like this one perform a valuable service.
Having observed on another thread the 12 rules of the Cedric Katesby School of Debate, I decline to engage with him any more. I see he’s still using his rules of debate, anyway. Suffice to say that so long as organisations like the BBC and his beloved NASA only give us some of the news and part of the story, sceptic blogsites remain important, so that those people who are not lazy and gullible enough to believe that they are being told the whole story, can discover interesting things about the climate, and make up their own minds. Things like constant adjustments to the datasets, which have the effect of cooling the past and warming the present; the ignoring of satellite data which contain the inconvenient truth that the planet stopped warming during the period when 30% of all of the man-made CO2 emissions were emitted; stuff like that.
And yes, even enabling debate to take place with the likes of Cedric is a valuable service. The fact that he won’t go away and feels the need to return to sites like this demonstrates what a good job the sceptics are doing. If the case he supports was so clear-cut, and if sceptics were such a bunch of losers, Cedric and his ilk wouldn’t waste their time engaging with us, otherwise that would just make him a bigger loser, surely?
I know Cedric will respond with a tedious and repetitive diatribe straight out of his playbook, so just to be clear, I won’t reply when he does.
In the meantime keep up the good work – you’re obviously annoying him, so that has to be something.
Ah bless, I feel all that angst coming across. The lack of CO2 reduction must really be getting to you. Like all people who denounce religion, you are as invested in it as the believers and just as bigoted.
Were you open minded you’d have asked what I believe, not assumed that I think it’s all false. A warmist is someone who refuses to admit that there remains a lot of questions about the size of the CO2 effect and refuses to accept that others aren’t about to ditch their lives on the say so of clearly flawed science. That’s me and several billion other people who are currently ignoring it.
My wish for any potential for catastrophic climate is that supposedly clever people stop pretending that there’s nothing wrong with the science or the solutions. Start treating it like any other field that impacts on people and set up some decent regulation of it. And please, don’t mention peer review or I will have to laugh.
To start slowing the CO2 increases, never mind reversing the trend, requires a huge change in society, even if magical alternatives to fossil fuels are found, which are not guaranteed. That would need extraordinary evidence and persuasion. Climate science is very wide of that mark. As a defender of the science you are also a defender of the status quo. How’s that working for you so far?
And if you want me to list some more of your lazy celeb friends:-
Obama and his penchant for golf and jet travel
Farrell Williams writing his climate change song for Al on his private jet.
Leonardo Di Caprio doing things like sending his jet to collect his vegan belt and sandals.
Prince Charles jetting anywhere to tell people they can’t have central heating or a car
Emma Thompson taking her daughter to see icebergs melt in the Arctic
Just about anyone who ever appeared at or went to an environmental concert.
Dr Chris Turney and his doomed Antarctic cruise with his family
The Guardian who sent not one but two journalists along for the ride
The BBC who never misses an opportunity to fly a journalist anywhere in the World, despite having both journalists stationed in, and stock footage of, every part already.
The IPCC and all the greenies who jet to some lovely location every year, despite knowing that there is zero chance of any useful agreement.
Now call me small minded but I’m not going to curtail my modest lifestyle if the biggest supporters for the idea are massive and unrepentant emitters.
Here here. And don’t forget Rajendra Pachauri jetting back to India from New York for a weekend so that he could watch a day’s cricket.
Assuming it wasn’t a bit of sexual harassment instead/as well.
“Even NASA and every scientific community on the planet etc”
That does sound impressive doesn’t it? But only if you forget that almost all of them have nothing to do with working out what effect CO2 has on the temperatures. They can be experts on all sorts of things that might change as a result of warming but they are irrelevant to the fundamental question.
But of course you know that. Which makes me wonder why anyone who linked to Randi’s web site would attempt such a cheesy attempt at misdirection. Did it make you feel dirty acting like a street con artist?
Or are we merely counting learned votes and universities? In which case you have surely equal proof that god exists for there are many respected people and institutions that swear there is a deity. They might not be scientists but they are ‘experts’ in the unknown just like climate scientists.
The lack of CO2 reduction must really be getting to you.
Me? Oh, no. Nothing to do with me. I’m just some guy on the internet.
NASA, remember?
A warmist is someone who…
Do you mean….NASA?
[off subject]
But only if you forget that almost all of them have nothing to do with working out what effect CO2 has on the temperatures.
Well….NASA does that.
Go through any scientific community on the planet and pick only the ones that suit you in the criteria that you are looking for.
No problem at all.
The result is the same.
It’s NASA and every scientific community on the planet that fits your criteria or whatever.
There’s no scientific community on the planet that’s bravely rejecting the scientific consensus.
Not a sausage.
Not even a tiny sausage.
Same deal with evolution and the moon landings and the link between tobacco and cancer and the safety of vaccines and the Earth going around the sun etc.
Or are we merely counting learned votes and universities?
Good attempt at building a strawman but…no.
No. There is no ‘voting’.
That’s not how a scientific consensus works. It’s the science part you are missing. Only the work counts.
Learn.
Scientific consensus and arguments from authority
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTJQPyTVtNA
“So long as the world contains people like Cedric, blogs like this one perform a valuable service.
[That’s skating on thin ice – as I don’t allow attacks on other commentators]
Having observed on another thread the 12 rules of the Cedric Katesby School of Debate, I decline to engage with him any more. I see he’s still using his rules of debate, anyway. Suffice to say that so long as organisations like the BBC and his beloved NCSE only give us some of the news and part of the story on evolution, sceptic blogsites remain important, so that those people who are not lazy and gullible enough to believe that they are being told the whole story, can discover interesting things about Darwinism, and make up their own minds. Things like transitional fossils, which have yet to make an appearance; the ignoring of textbooks using fake diagrams of Hackel’s Embryos and the inconvenient truth that Darwinism contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics; stuff like that.
And yes, even enabling debate to take place with the likes of Cedric is a valuable service. The fact that he won’t go away and feels the need to return to Intelligent Design sites like this demonstrates what a good job the sceptics are doing. If the case he supports was so clear-cut, and if Darwin sceptics were such a bunch of losers, Cedric and his ilk wouldn’t waste their time engaging with us, otherwise that would just make him a bigger loser, surely?
I know Cedric will respond with a tedious and repetitive diatribe straight out of his playbook, so just to be clear, I won’t reply when he does.
In the meantime keep up the good work – you’re obviously annoying him, so that has to be something. God bless you.”
So why do you care if people listen to NASA or not?
Note, nothing from Cedric but rhetoric, not a single scientific fact.
Cult Religion at it’s worst.
But then everyone can see that for themselves.
Mark, I agree don’t feed the troll.
What’s NASA to me? Just a bunch of employees with a company policy to follow. They can’t make me or the billions like me do as I’m told. NASA is more than happy that celebs etc advertise their pet concern. They make no attempt to distance themselves from their clay footed buddies. Sorry guys but you will be judged by the company you keep.
I included people from all areas, to demonstrate that few warmists are living by their own beliefs. That I’ve not listed NASA employees is simply because I can’t be bothered to look them up but I’m sure there are many instances of blatent hypocrisy. The annual climate jamboree should be example enough of how climate scientists waste their time.
There are only a handful of people involved in trying to work out what effect CO2 has from real data, few if any of them are at NASA. Few of them agree on a figure, except the trend is to assign a lower and lower value for the sensitivity to CO2.
NASA, the MET etc, try to use those estimations (and other influences) to reverse engineer how the climate varied in the past and predict the future. As yet they seem to demonstrate little skill at that task. You almost certainly disagree, which is fine. Get on and live by your beliefs. Me and the billions like me will do the same. Only you don’t like that status quo, you want us to sign up to your cult too. Sorry, but I need the evidence to meet MY criteria, not yours before I throw all the comforts of 21st century living away.
You guys are soooo clever you can’t see the bleeding obvious. You need to be much more effective than sceptics to get any success in reducing CO2 at all and you’re still in the foothills of resistance.
Don’t dis’ Al Gore. He handed warmists their closest attempt at victory. Pity he did it with information that was known to be wrong before the movie was screened. Those scientists at NASA have let him down as they’ve failed to provide better evidence than was available ten years ago. In fact there’s less as some of the things that seemed cut and dried in 2005 are now back in the unknown pile. Hurricane anyone?
I predict there will be a cat 4/5 this year that warmists will swear is proof that CAGW exists. Yeah, pull the other leg, it’s got bells on.
Incidentally many climate scientists are not warmists as they reluctantly admit that the consensus is meaningless and that there are some significant uncertainties in AGW. They usually remain naive about renewables however.
To illustrate the trend in CO2 sensitivity estimates
http://jo.nova.s3.amazonaws.com/graph/models/climate-sensitivity/climate_sensitivity5.png
“Note, nothing from Cedric but rhetoric, not a single scientific fact on Darwinism.
Cult Religion at it’s worst.Cult Religion at it’s worst.
But then everyone can see that for themselves.
Mark, I agree don’t feed the troll.”
[Off subject]
To illustrate the trend in CO2 sensitivity estimates…
You are linking to a blog. That’s not how I get my science information. I don’t get my medical information from NaturalNews and I don’t get my biology information from AIG.
Not happening.
I have standards that have to be met.
Blogs don’t meet those standards.
Only the work counts.
The scientific arena.
Which is why my first port of call on climate change is NASA. Sometimes NOAA or the Royal Society or the British Antarctic Survery or the CSIRO or…well, all of them really.
But NASA is the usual first stop.
Here’s why…
Science Works! How the Scientific Peer Review Process works
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-gzM8bsbpg
To avoid the comments going off subject, I’m taken Cedric’s various comments and created his own article:
http://scottishsceptic.co.uk/2015/08/24/cedrics-nasa-comments/
If you want to reply to Cedric could you do so there!
“Not according to NASA.”
List them or just list the papers that name them. CO2 sensitivity is a specialism, just any old climate scientist or modeller won’t do.
Stop waffling about other issues, they have no relevance to AGW. All sciences have gone through periods where healthy scepticism would have saved lives. Or do you think doctors still use the medical consensus of 500 years ago? Or 100 years or even 10 years ago? Only history will tell us if climate science is at it’s start or it’s prime.