Back before the days when the alarmists starting obviously faking the global temperature by adding in “readings” … is what best describes the dross data from buoys … to fake a warming trend, you could say two things about alarmists:
- They were winning the propaganda battle as most people believed them not sceptics
- They were hugely embarrassed by the lack of warming since around 2000.
But eventually, clearly the pause got to them and they fabricated warming by massively multiplying a miniscule sub-noise trend seen in buoys (and one extremely easy to manufacture by selecting where the buoys are placed). They then created their latest “graph” that clearly shows unequivocal warming … but they then lost the propaganda battle. Why?
I was thinking about this. From the public’s point of view, they have absolutely no way of knowing whether the alarmists are faking their data. So, how come they lost faith when the graphs got better?
The reason I suggest, is that people like the alarmists are a lot more believable when the data DOESN’T support them. To be more exact, the DATA is more believable when it doesn’t fit what the “experts” want it to be. That may seem crazy. The idea experts look more credible when they’re struggling to explain why the data is “wrong” sound crazy, but apparently it is true.
So, far from becoming more and more believable as the data became a better and better fit to the predicted CO2 “warming”, the reverse happened: it became more and more obvious the data was being tampered with and that the “experts” were just a bunch of frauds.
That’s because the public know that data that doesn’t fit what the experts want it to show is more believable, than data that happens to show exactly what the “expert” says (and particularly when a few years back they showed very different data that wasn’t showing what they wanted it to show).
The Role of Sceptics
Paradoxically, looking back, Sceptics did a lot to add credibility to the “not obviously faked” temperatures. Because the public naturally look at what those who are vociferously against something to work out how plausible it is. And when we sceptics were arguing about the nuances of temperature readings and whether an odd station was being tampered with but generally agreeing it had warmed, the public were thinking: “like all groups the ‘experts’ are pushing the scales, but despite all their efforts, the sceptics generally agree on warming”.
But these days, I know the temperatures are so corrupt that I won’t even discuss them.
So I had been thinking: “I know refusing to discuss looks like I have no evidence and it won’t look good – but on principle, I’m not entering a discussion where I know the temperatures are bogus”.
Fortunately, I can’t manufacture my contempt for what the alarmists did as my contempt is instinctive, not calculated. However I can see how my attitude has changed since the bogus temperatures, and I’ve no doubt that the public do see these “vibes”.
Indeed, even when I see alarmists posts these fake graphs, they obviously don’t say so, but the way they don’t pursue us, clearly shows they accept our feelings about the graphs are understandable.
The role of supporters
And I suspect the public also get the same vibes from supporters. Back in the days when they still showed the pause, we sceptics were being viciously attacked by the supporters of the alarmists. Then along came the fake temperature graphs and what did the supporters do? They went wild about plastic. In other words, they stopped attacking sceptics and changed the subject.
They never said they stopped believing the “experts”, but changing subjects is a very strong indicator that they did.
You couldn’t make it up
The alarmists bring out graphs that appear to show unequivocal warming. And what is the response? On the one hand sceptics stopping arguing about temperature, on the other supporters of the alarmists find something new to talk about.
Surely any reasonable person would conclude that the debate really was over?
But far from becoming MORE accepted, concern over global warming plummets. The reason I think is that the public recognise that despite the apparent surface of the “debate” showing the alarmists have won, the reverse is true: the “vibes” show they’ve just made up the warming. It would be impossible to co-ordinate people to behave in a way that drew the public to that conclusion, it is just what they conclude when they see supporters and opponents behaving in this odd way.
I think that there’s a strong element of this going on but there are other issues too. The warmists gave the impression that people would be able to see the warming. They expected a heatwave every other if not every year. They expected the snow to go away. They didn’t appreciate that the scientists were talking about fractions of a degree. They could see that hurricanes ween’t getting worse, although they have short memories and each event is as if it never happened before, espcially to the young. They expected the ice to be gone by now, even in the winter but reality is much more subtle. If you admit to the subtlety you open up the question of accurate measurement.
However after a while climate change got boring. The Day After Tomorrow had to put an ice age in to make it interesting. Also there are no heroes to come along with a magical solution that doesn’t involve hardship of the part of the public. Cutting Co2 is like dieting. You never get to stop and it never gets easy.
I agree with Tiny.
We were promised a Mediterranean climate with orange bushes and olive trees in our allotments. Frost and snow free winters and rising sea.
OK so we in this country were not getting that, but maybe people in other lands were suffering. But international travel and holidays demonstrated that the Maldives were not awash, the ski resorts were not going bankrupt.
At home the long hot summers when we ran all day in bare feet (pre mass dog ownership days) and paddled and swam in sea water from mid morning to dusk are no more. This in 1950s SW Scotland.
This personal experience, coupled with obvious hypocrisy of globe trotting climate scientists and their hangers-on told us that something fishy was going on. Even changing the name of the Scarey-thing from Global Warming to Climate Change could not alter what our own eyes and nerve ends were telling us.
So they, and the health gurus have besmirched the public perception of other sciences, so that they are all doubted.
Which is maybe how it should be.
“We were promised a Mediterranean climate with orange bushes and olive trees in our allotments.” … yes we were.
I was thinking the other day that around 2003 I was into winter climbing and after a particularly warm start to the winter it eventually got cold. I went up a route I described as “climbing up a gutter with a trickle of frozen water”. (Obviously on a steep slope). At the time with all the global warming madness I though “I might be the last person to climb the ice on this mountain”.
As it turns out – I’ve not been back up that mountain, not because the cold winters did not return, but because I just can’t stand the thought of climbing a mountain and seeing bird-mincers.