If you believe that climate change will kill us all ...

 

I am increasingly impressed with the number of people in the US who have been converted to the climate change hysteric state.  People I have known for years are considering winding up their earthly affairs.  One man asked if the government would help us all  "transition" before the end. 

We Americans seem to be be particularly prone to waves of hysteria.

People lived in dread of a nuclear holocaust during the Cold War.  A lot of money was spent on fallout shelters from coast to coast.  Food stocks were stored against the day of nuclear winter.  My father, who was as tight as a tick when it came to money, actually considered digging up his back yard for the purpose.

And then there was the millennial hysteria when all the computers were expected to stop or start running backward.

After 9/11 people lived in a hysteric state for months afraid of everything and everyone.  The Muslims are coming!  The Muslims are coming! This might have been the grito of the day. Federal Civil servants and employees of the World Bank in DC refused to go to work because they were afraid.  Of what?  of everything and nothing.  I had a beard then and a man on a subway train told me that I should go back where I came from.  Hysteria.  I  offered to give him help with an attitude adjustment.

In 1941 the population of the west coast expected to be bombed and invaded by the Japanese.  Hysteria set in and sober people like FDR and George Marshall accepted the idea that American citizens of Japanese descent should be interned for the duration of the war in camps well away from the Pacific Ocean.  They were interned solely because they were of Japanese descent and public hysteria forced  Washington to act.

I could go on and on ...

How about the hysteria that led to the Spanish War?  "Remember the Maine,"  The ship was supposedly sunk in Havana Harbor by Spanish perfidy.  In fact the Maine blew up  because a coal bunker fire burned through a bulkhead and set off something or other.  That was the US Navy's investigative finding after the war.  Don't tell me about Hearst.  Hearst was just selling newspapers.  The American people went into a hysteric rage against Spain and that was the cause of war.  Hearst just wanted to find "Rosebud."  Figure it out.

And now we have the approaching end of the world through man made climate change.  It would be funny if there were not so many who believe it.

Science?  Hah! For every study you can produce in support of this fantasy I will find you one to rebut it.  All you ecofreaks!  Don't send me material about this.  I will not help you support the hysteric fantasy.  Send money to the Democratic Party.  They believe this crap.   pl.

Comments

[Charlie Wilson]

Colonel

I will stop reading your blog if you don’t believe in our imminent rapture. I draw the line (in the sand, if you must) on this.

Charlie

[turcopolier]

Charlie Wilson

adios.

[Bandit]

Now this is a post I can get behind. For me it has been the hysteria and the ease with which people are manipulated through propaganda that has astonished me, because that is what the climate change agenda is all about. We can all agree that humans have had a devastating impact on every corner the environment,every ecosystem. However, it is a leap of manufactured faith (manipulation) to claim that humans are responsible for climate change.

To support this bogus hypothesis, scientists strangle and manipulate data in an effort to justify draconian laws and policies that can only line the pockets of the very rich at the expense of the rest of the tax paying population. Carbon tax is the real aim here, a totally bullshit pretext to suck more trillions of dollars from the economies of the world. Self-selecting "experts" join the chorus because of fear of censorship and loss of status while the brave ones are called, as always, climate change denialists, and thus denigrated.

[Vegetius]

There is more evidence for a genetic (read: racial) component to intelligence than there is for anthropogenic climate change but if you say this aloud you will see real hysteria.

[Mr Zarate]

The hysteria that erupts when anyone questions climate change says pretty much all you need to know about it.

[ambrit]

Oh man! Even most of the lefties I associate with believe it. They are supposed to, through the tenets of their secular 'religion,' use solid evidence as their guides. The evidence is not persuasive. The Earth has gone through fluctuations in climate for ever. The dinosaurs made do in a much hotter earth, if the geologic evidence be true. It took a cosmic strike to do them in.
Humans are the top predators here because they can adapt to change much quicker than any other animal. Modern human civilization may not be recognizable to any of us in two hundred years. That would be true with or without "climate change." We will carry on, one way or another.
Similarly to what Bandit wrote above, I see various 'elites' angling to make book on whatever does happen. The Science Fiction writer William Gibson has proposed in his book "The Peripheral," a near future based on a massive world population die back that he calls "The Jackpot."
Read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peripheral
All in all, we live in 'Interesting Times.'
Thank you for your indulgence.

[Factotum]

You are in good company. In case anyone missed the excellent John Stossel interviews on this very topic "Are we all doomed?": https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2019/11/24/watch-john-stossel-destroys-climate-change-myths-in-terrific-video/

Thank you for the reminders of how many hysterias that also gripped us from the past. Somehow I had assumed this was the worst- a symptom of so many being "unchurched" and ignorant of their own issues about mortality.

However, there was more imminent threat - nuclear war was real, Japanese invasion of US was real, 9-11 was real. Climate change - not even close - why wouldn't a planet who has not had an Ice Age in over 10,000 years not be getting slightly warmer each year?

[guidoamm]

Colonel,

If anyone should need ammunition in their CO2 debates, you may want to consider the following:

The magnetic pole is currently migrating at a very high rate of speed (50Km per year).

The Hunger Stones have once again been uncovered.

There are any number of cities dating back centuries that are today submerged. Depending on your audience, Roman cities may have more impact on the psyche of your interlocutors rather than Asian or Indian cities.

The various wooly mammoths that have been discovered frozen since the 1700s

That should do it... at least as a primer...
g

[Rd]

.... I am surprised at you Col.... shocked...

You missed the big one!!!!! Rossians are coming! They have been coming since about 50s? I have yet to see one.. well may be except smoothieX12 around these virtual lands.. guess the Rossians must not have very good gps!!! they have yet to find their way over here...

you suppose the deep state has found a way to control the minds!!

[Charlie Wilson]

Colonel

No offense intended. It was meant in jest.

[blue peacock]

Col. Lang

This manufactured hysteria has a lot of money behind it. Wall St is backing it to the hilt as they expect to clip a coupon on every carbon "trade". Al Gore has already made a fortune with his Climate Emergency. The European automotive industry is betting billions on replacing internal combustion engines with electric motors. So is China with massive subsidies as they build with the same breath more coal power plants.

[Something To Think About]

You are correct that Americans appear to be prone to hysteria. It would be hard to argue for a genetic basis for that fear, so the nature vs nurture argument would suggest that the hysteria is being nurtured.

The only real argument is whether that is self-reinforcing, or is being deliberately engineered.

Michael Moore is a buffoon moore often than not, but I suspect he is correct in his argument that it is the latter - that too many powerful institutions in the USA believe that they profit (not necessarily monetarily) from fear-mongering.

As for climate-change, well, I assume everyone agrees that the USA has no intention of doing anything about it.

So we'll see soon enough who is right and who is wrong.

[walrus]

So “ten thousand scientists believe “ and have signed a letter. Anyone with experience in academe knows that bucking the accepted wisdom is a great way to lose your career, so the number who “get with the program” is meaningless.

Evidence of warming? Yes, I’ve seen it myself in the range of animals that used to be seen only in tropical areas that have moved South (I’m in the Southern hemisphere). Caused by man? Perhaps. Reversible? Not by man but by nature itself in my opinion.

To put that another way, the Earth has seen bigger catastrophes then the burning of a bit of carbon. It will survive and evolve without us. Plutonium has a half life of 100,000 years. That’s the blink of an eye in geological time. As for us, remnants may survive, I don’t care, but the scare mongering in my opinion is more dangerous than the alleged warming.

[Eric Newhill]

Obviously the whole climate warming/change is hysterical hogwash, but, what I really don't get is why believers think that it will kill humans en mass. Do they imagine people just watching the water rise over decades and not moving? So the water is literally up to your neck, having risen from the level of ankles over the past 50 years, and you just continue to sit there until you drown? Sounds like a great Darwinian purge or another Great Flood sent by God to cleanse the earth of stupid people.

Also, these climate freaks are always so negative. They only see the downside. What about all of the areas of earth that become warm and green enough to be successfully inhabited, farmed, etc. that weren't previously? And, since a lot of these cultists are Marxists too, they should be happy about the climate creating such opportunities for wealth and power redistribution, but it's always with the negative doom and gloom angst all of the time. Bunch of miserable ninnies.

[divadab]

This climate thing is a slow roller. It's hard for us with our limited lifespans to perceive trends and events that are occurring on a geological timescale - trends that takes tens and hundreds of human generations to play out.

SO thee and me, kind sir, are too old to see much of the rolling changes happen, as is true of all living. But if you intend to bequeath land to your posterity, I recommend that you consider its altitude. Why? Because sea level is rising, and in 100 years (that's 4 or 5 generations by my reckoning), sea level will be at least 3 feet higher. And due to the increased level of water in the atmosphere, storms and therefore flooding will be more intense and destructive of our built environments. SO peak tides will also be higher, as will peak floods. This is already happening.

NOw you can ignore or gainsay the science that backs this up - but there's no way I'm buying land other than for short- and medium-term profit that is exposed to sea level or is in a flood plain. Similarly, as California will be burning every summer for the foreseeable future, living in forested areas subject to this burning is similarly contraindicated.

And in a few hundred years Greenland will be populated by homesteaders. Trump is right to try and buy it.

[turcopolier]

divadab

do as you please. I see that you have already bought into the hysteria.

[turcopolier]

Charlie Wilson

It was understood to be such. Is the gorgeous blond still working in your outer office. I confess, like Jimmy Carter, to have lusted in my heart. That, also, was in jest, a memory of bygone days.

[srw]

The Enlightenment Era has reached me. I believe in the science of global warming, until proved wrong, but not the hysteria.

[J]

Instead of the Age of Aquarius, it's the Age of Chicken Little. Every dew drop spells doom, every molecule of air spells doom. Doom, DOOM!!

And to add fuel to the fire we have elites like Bill Gates wanting us to eat ourselves (spelled cannibalism) down to what he and his elites buddies term an acceptable level of humans on the planet. Course, if one mentioned to Mr. Gates and his buddies how about they go first like eating their young, you'd get most probably a 'WHY NOT ME, NEVER WOULD I!' from Mr. Gates and his crew.

Whether it be an Tunguska Asteroid event, or a lump of burning coal, this little blue marble is going to be around till the heavens determine its no longer needed (in other words our blue marble is here to stay).

I'll be like Slim Pickens riding the nuke, YEE HAW!

[turcopolier]

srw

Yes, there is climate change.

[JJackson]

pl
We have been here before on SST and I know you are not open to persuasion on this topic but there just too many data points for me to understand your position. I have great respect for your general knowledge and ability to understand data and extract meaning from it which makes your adamance worrying. The planet will be fine but humans are going to have a very hard time adjusting to the coming changes. People will migrate to more hospitable areas which will cause conflicts which will just exacerbate the problem. It is not the end of the world just the end of the climate system that has been atypically stable for the last 12,000 years. Look at climate system graphs for different time scales and how quickly it has transitioned from one steady-state to a quite different one. If it, with or without our help, decides it is time to transition it will be a problem orders of magnitude worse than any of the items in your post bar large scale nuclear conflict. I will not bother with links as those who have tried to understand the data know where to go.

[Dan]

I'm sorry guys but greenhouse gases have long-established physical properties. Nobody argues that it works - its why our planet can retain heat in the first place. We are digging carbon out of the ground and putting it into the atmosphere, and increasing the heat-trapping properties of the atmosphere.

You don't have to like the hysteria, and exact predictions are impossible because there are 1000 interrelated factors. But you can't deny the simple fact that CO2 and other gases help trap heat in an atmosphere, and over the longterm increasing their concentration in said atmosphere will make it hotter.

[English Outsider]

AGW aside, we use energy like there's no tomorrow and if we keep on this way there won't be.  Or nothing like today.  Some efforts to cut down might be genuine - I liked this article on one such effort, particularly for the immortal line "There are not a lot of tree-huggers in the Marines". Can this be true?

https://www.naval-technology.com/features/going-green-sea-can-us-navy-cut-vast-energy-footprint/

Such venturesome efforts apart, the US armed forces use enough energy to keep a small country going.  The UK and French forces would happily do the same if they had the money and the kit, as would all others.  The Australians ship entire mountains of coal abroad and the Green Germans burn lignite to the tune of a hundred and more terawatt hours per year.  We transfer millions of people from warm parts of the world to cold and therefore energy demanding parts of Europe.  

We pride ourselves on living in a post-industrial economy and plan for a carbon neutral future while outsourcing the pollution to China.  Our virtue signalling renewables never look that virtuous after a full energy audit.  One could go on.  If AGW is a reality we don't even start to put our money where our mouths are when it comes to combating it.

This ecofreak isn't happy, but for another reason.  The jury's out on AGW but it's a hanging jury when it comes to EROEI.  We have built an entirely new civilisation on cheap energy and haven't the faintest what to do when it stops being cheap.

[Patrick Armstrong]

The principal cause of global warming is asphalt and aircraft engines.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/05/was-the-anchorage-all-time-temperature-record-aided-by-airport-growth/

[turcopolier]

EO

We have lots of energy here. You, on the other hand, have a problem.