No pressure – 10:10 on the button

Warning: this new 10:10 promo is not for the faint of heart — but it does include Gillian Anderson, assorted Spurs footballers past and present (David Ginola is a stand out), and music by Radiohead. Script’s by Richard Curtis (Blackadder, Four Weddings, co-founder of Comic Relief and Make Poverty History) and Age of Stupid film director Franny Armstrong also had a hand (or perhaps a bucket) in it. More at the Guardian, and don’t forget 10:10NZ.

[Update: Anthony Watts calls the promo “unbelievably vile“, so it’s obviously effective… 😉 ]

[Update 2, 2/10/10: The 10:10 campaign have pulled the video and apologised for any offence it may have caused. Apart from the massive sense of humour failure evident in the comments arriving here from µWatts, it appears that Franny and the team hadn’t realised just how mainstream the “eco-fascist” meme has become for the political right — especially (but not exclusively) in the USA. On the other hand, where were the howls of protest from Watts and Morano when one of their favourite ranters, James Delingpole in the Telegraph called for a Nuremburg trial for “warmists”? Watts was happy to make sure his readers knew all about that nasty little item… A fine example of the asymmetry of the PR war being fought by the campaign against action on climate change.]

[Update 3, 5/10/10: A Modest Carbon Proposal by Jonathan Swifthack]

[Update 4, 6/10/10: Joe Romm at Climate Progress: More thoughts on the offensive ‘No Pressure’ video — and the denialsphere’s hypocritical reaction]

430 thoughts on “No pressure – 10:10 on the button”

    1. It’s certainly bloody, at the very least. But what’s wrong with a little black comedy in a good cause? Ginola would probably argue it was only a flesh wound…

      1. You must have laughed a lot over films of 9/11 Gareth, especially those people jumping ! A An advertising campaign centred on killing people for a deranged religious belief is unlikely to be just “black humour”. Unlike a Monty Python sketch it is all too likely to come true, and speaks volumes for the underlying mindest of the producers. Sometimes, desires to kill are just that, or is it a bit subtle for you ?

        Interesting to note, the Producer has 2 country homes in the UK, plus a “pied-a-terre” in London, 4 children, and jets around the globe. Perhaps he could off himself and his family now and save a few dozen others from a like fate ? (Just joking of course, it can’t be improper to suggest someone kill themselves, not if it’s really “black” humour).

        1. Actually I imagine Gareth is able to tell the difference between make-believe and real.
          Richard Curtis is not actually going to travel the world swooping down on people and blowing them up. Hippies are not coming to smother you with their dreadlocks or their organic, hemp, loose fitting trousers. You are not being persecuted. Okay?

          1. The reality, Dick, is that the fluffy-bunny-cuddling persona greenies like to project is rather more misanthropic —- as exemplified by the former Director of the Climate Research Unit Dr. Phil Jones when he sent his mate Michael “Hockey-stick” Man the death notice of sceptic John Daly with the note: “In an odd way this is cheering news!”

            1. Ooh look. Jameson did clever things with my name. We should feel so proud that he has learnt to manipulate data.

              Although, Jameson, it is a shame about your inability to perceive reality. These “misanthropic greenies” you talk about, (I love the way you resist the temptation to belittle by using labels, btw!), these would be the people that want to stop or slow AGW so that millions of people they have never met don’t die the protracted death of starvation, right? I’m not quiet sure I understand your definition of misanthropic.

            2. *Alleged* AGW, Mr. C1… sceptic-hater Phil Jones, who provided the IPCC with the temperature data for their Nobel-winning 2007 report, has even conceded that there hasn’t been “any significant warming” since 1995 (+/-0.12C), and that we’ve been in a cooling trend since 2002. How do you like *that* reality, Rich?

            3. C1 , that no significant warming since 1995 meme is wearing a bit thin.

              Phil Jones answered – honestly & scientifically – a question that was deliberately set as a trap for someone who thinks and speaks as he does.

              If he’d had any of the elementary media training which business and political spokespeople go through he would have answered just as honestly, but he would also have managed to give the details that the reporter deliberately obscured in the working of the question.

            4. For some reason there is no reply button on your latest Jameson. Hence the position of this comment.

              I am now wondering about your motivation Jameson, given that you are willing to promote a distorted reality. Are you lazy or dishonest? The information you refer to comes from a BBC interview.
              http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8511670.stm
              If you were too lazy to do the search, then I’ve done it for you, if it wasn’t laziness…
              Read questions B and C. When interviewed Jones agreed that there had been warming since 1995, but admitted that it hadn’t been statistically significant.

        2. “No Pressure” is pure over the top, blatantly black humour. The literal premise is self-evidently ludicrous to anyone with the loosest of grips on reality…but not so to these conspiracy-obssesed loons who are hooked scaring themselves with demons of their own making.

          The absolutely hilarious thing is that any of you are seriously taking it at face value. It speaks volumes to your collective judgement and credibility….ie total lack thereof.

          1. Taking it at face value doesn’t mean we think Phil Jones is gonna strap C4 to the underside of Anthony Watts’ car, Red; what we may safely deduce from it is the dark and twisted psychology of those who made it and endorse it—-warm-mongers united in their unequivocal hatred towards those who dare to so much as question the science.

            1. “Taking it at face value doesn’t mean we think Phil Jones is gonna strap C4 to the underside of Anthony Watts’ car,”

              Not judging by the hysterical frothing from some. But you’ve taken the absurdist, insane motives from the ‘movie’ (remember that, it’s a piece of drama not reality)… and projected them onto real people in the real world. That’s something that’s happened in YOUR mind, not mine.

              But why should I be polite? If the AGW science I support turns out to be wrong, I’m guilty of wanting the world to transition from a dead-end carbon dependency to something better, sooner than might have been necessary. A substantial cost, but ultimately one with a far greater benefit.

              If the AGW science turns out to be right, and you are wrong…then you may well want to consider would then lie on your conscience. A burden so immense you find it literally unthinkable. (Which is why you never admit to this possibility.)

            2. The question, Red, is whether you’re willing to gamble multi-trillions of taxpayer dollars on shonky science? Given your name is Red, I guess I only have to look as far as Marx to know where your motives lie.

            3. Well the world seemed happy enough to gamble multi-trillions of dollars propping up shonky banks (and markets based on even shonkier economic theory) why….just last year. To the tune of about 30% of global GDP in just one year.

              While the cost of transitioning off carbon, onto something better, is generally estimated to be much less than this and spread over several decades.

              Besides given the realities of peak-oil, it’s something we have to do anyway.

          2. @ Richard C1: care to explain how the inclusion of the word “statistically” changes Jones’ assertion that there’s been a temperature swing from +0.12C to -0.12 during the last 15 years — at a time when your prime suspect C02 was going through the roof? You think *I’m* being lazy? You need to read the interview again, Mr Sloppy…
            ………………………..
            BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?

            PJ: Yes, but only just…
            ………………………..

            Observe the psuedo-scientist as he tries to straddle an anomaly, erring it towards a desired result.

            @ Ms Adelady: I’m not surprised this “meme is wearing a bit thin” for you.

            and how does the word “statistically” alter Jones’ assertion that there’s been a largely no change (+/-0.12C) in global temps for the last 15-years?

            3. The word “statistically” refers to the demonstrable fact that if you simply change the reporter’s question to -since 1994- rather than 1995, hey presto! The warming trend is significant at the 95% level.

              Seeing as we’ve just had an extremely hot 3 months, the NH summer, and the only thing that will save this calendar year from being the hottest ever will be if the La Nina really gets its act into gear soon, I’m unsure about your position.

              If you’re really serious about taking a period of 15 years as definitive evidence, what will happen to your argument in 3 months’ time, when 2010 is included and 1995 drops out? In any event, 15 years is way too short. Have you looked at the stats for 30 years? 50 years? If things aren’t warming, how come the Arctic ice figures are dropping off a cliff?

              You need to be very clear about what you say is and isn’t important in your views on the matter. Because 6 months or a couple of years’ data can completely undercut or even eliminate some of the things you appear to rely on. The Phil Jones statement being the obvious one. If a statistically significant rise does show up for a 15 year period, it won’t affect me because I watch the 30+ year stats, but for you there’ll be an issue.

            4. … and if you change the question to, “since the time Eric the Red bred cattle on the land presently covered in a permafrost…” we’ll see what?

              The significance of the non-warming since 1995, Ms Adelady, is that CO2 went through the roof during that period without apparent effect.

              Your meme about the melting Arctic is neutralized by the increase in the far larger Antarctic continent, a fact which you warm-mongers are fond of omitting. For the last 30 years the trend of the combined sea ice extent has passed through the zero anomaly and back again, like the ECG of a healthy heart.

  2. For a wide range of other climate-related films, mostly documentary rather than drama, there’s a free Climate Smart Film festival in Christchurch at CPIT, Madras Street from 9.50 to 5pm on Sunday 10th October. Programme is at our website (PDF) http://www.1010global.org/nz along with details of four other more physically active events: tree planting, walking, cycling and bike maintenance. Over 70 more events on 10-10-10 across NZ, listed and mapped at http://www.350.org.nz

  3. Seems to be a recurring theme of warmist sickoism:
    http://mises.org/daily/2997
    Teaching Kids about the Environment, (Australian) Government Style
    ” On the basis of these answers the calculator determines the person’s CO2 consumption, which is depicted by making the cartoon “greenhouse pig” look bigger, fatter, dirtier and angrier. When the child has answered the questions they are instructed to click on a skull and cross-bones symbol to find out when the person should die, depicted by having the pig explode in a bloody cartoon mess leaving only a pool of blood and a curly tail.

    2. 39 likes? The herd really are with us at the moment!

      Let’s see, a 2008 article about a website that was posted in 2003 proves a ‘recurrent theme’, does it, Steve? And it’s cutting edge stuff, to boot…

      As the website’s designers stated clearly*:

      The idea of getting the greenhouse facts across without taking the whole end-of-the-world thing so seriously has really worked, and it’s great to be recognised with such a prestigious award. Thanks to Film Victoria and ABC Online for taking a punt on what was always going to be an out-there site

      So it’s an ‘out there’ parody trying not to bore ‘The Kids’ by taking it all too seriously, dude!

      Hey, it’s like; ever watch a Ren and Stimpy Cartoon, Steve? This quote seems relevant; ‘Cartoons aren’t real; they’re just puppets’

      Just like some of the visitors we’re getting around here…

      (*They won an award for the site. 7 years ago. I know that because of a thing called ‘research’. Turns out the machine you’re typing into can actually do more than cut and paste snippets from a handful of Libuuuurtarian websites… )

  5. Update: Anthony Watts calls the promo “unbelievably vile”, so it’s obviously effective… 😉

    Effective at what?? Being offensive? Better celebrate then.

      3. I have to admit that the thought of grilling misled warmist children over an open fire (on a stick) is mildly amusing. But no, at the end of the day that too is relatively offensive. It’s certainly not a thought I would advocate or approach celebrities to make a viral video out of.

  6. Well I guess the reasoning might be negative publicity is better than no publicity. Wonder if they sell any of those red button thingees at the Warehouse?.

  7. Fascinating. The deniers get all anxious over a handful of obviously fake deaths potrayed for dramatic effect in an edgy promo, while happily willing to condemn tens of millions to slow lingering …and very real deaths… if it turns out they are wrong.

    But that possibility wouldn’t occur them.

    1. RedLogix October 1, 2010 at 7:30 pm: ” Fascinating. The deniers get all anxious…”

      Skeptics got all anxious over seeing themselves — and their children — portrayed as fit targets for summary execution without due process, for the thoughtcrime of being skeptical.

      Then we get scorned for our concern. We’re supposed to shut up, sit down, and do as we’re told, no objection or complaints.

      And that attitude, frankly, makes me far more anxious than watching Gillian Anderson’s eyeballs slither down my screen.

      Being skeptics, we are far from convinced that tens of dozens, much less tens of millions, will die if we are wrong. We do worry that many will suffer, possibly starve, and even die, if the economy collapses due to ill-planned measures. Or, worse, that a deliberate but mistaken effort to modify the climate actually succeeds in, say, triggering an ice-age.

    2. I think most skeptics are concerned that the cost in mega-deaths of the changes we’re being told to make is actually going to be greater than the human cost of even the worst-case global warming scenarios. Let’s be clear on this: a billion-plus people will have to die to meet the proposed emissions targets. Those are the stakes. If you’re going to kill them to save a mere few tens of millions, you need some basic maths lessons.

  10. Some of my friends think I’m a bit over the top in describing people like you as eco-fascists.
    So I’m not going to ask YouTube to take this scraping the bottom of the cesspit video down. On the contrary, I’m going to forward the link on to every one of the forums I’m on, and to everyone in my address book. I can’t imagine anything more likely to turn them away, for good, from your sanctimonious and dictatorial views.
    I came across a phrase the other night which sums up to perfection organisations like yours; “Climate Leninism”.
    Just like Lenin, and every other dictator that ever was, and their hatchet men, like the Gestapo, the Stazi, the KGB, and the Spanish Inquisition, you’re utterly convinced of two things.
    Firstly, that the end justifies the means – regardless.
    Secondly, that you are 100% right – therefore anyone who even questions your beliefs is, at best, deluded; but, more likely, an enemy of humanity – which not only gives you the right, but also the duty to destroy them.
    Calling you vermin is insulting to creatures like rats and cockroaches.

    1. [We picked up a link at µWatts, so there are a few comments arriving that “speak for themselves”.]

      Thanks Jack, I’ll reflect carefully on the cogent points you make.

      That didn’t take long… 😉

    3. Jack you are spiritually diseased. That final sentence says more about you than you might care to admit. The gestapo used to think a that way about the Jews. So be careful who you call a facist.

  11. My name is Adolf Hitler and I approve of this message.

    Just to introduce myself, I lead an organisation of like minded indviduals called the National Socialist German Workers Party (yes, we really are socialists, I know its hilarious!). We also believe in a brighter, better future for those of a like mind and we too believe that in extreme times extreme measures must be put in place to realise our dream of a cleaner, greener future. On this, we agree with the 10:10 organisation.

    http://www.1010global.org/uk/about

    As some of you may be aware we have suffered some bad publicity due to our campaign, known as the Final Solution. As such we sympathise with the 10:10 organisation as they will undoubtably suffer criticism due to the content of their film.

    But you are not alone! We too believe in the execution of those children who stand in the way of out socialist dream (remember, I did say we are sociallists!). Not only do we agree with your suggested course of action we actually stand in awe of your vision, we salute the strength of character it takes to, not only execute children, but to do it publicy and without trial or recourse to an appeal process. We can only marvel at the power of persuasion such a course of action must have on those children who stand witness to this calculated act of barbarism!

    Of course the public execution of adults who disagree with our program of societal improvement has long been a traditional method of educating others. But, even we with our secret police organisation, felt the need to execute our children in complete secrecy and to destroy as much evidence of these acts as we possibly can.

    Since there is so much on which we agree I would like to publicly invite the 10:10 to our Global Climate event next year. In June, 1942, i mean 2011, we shall be launching a drive into the heart of Russia (tentatively called Operation Barbarossa) in which we will seek to make the world a better place. We would ask that the 10:10 organisation work with us, behind the lines and out of danger, to help eradicate the pestilence of carbon misuse.

    As a mark of our utmost respect we would assign you the top position as Einsatzgruppen 1, the premier league if you will, of our educational organisation.

    Now, it is regrettable that during our Global Climate meeting we will be accused of hypocrisy since we will, in fact, emit quite a lot of carbon through our operations. Well, you cant run a Panzer Division on hot air! However it is our earnest belief that this carbon jackbootprint will be more than offset by the reduction in carbon users (or abusers I should say!) at the end of our operation. You cant make an omlette without executing millions of others as the old saying goes!

    So I hope to see you all on the Russian steppe next year!

    Warmest Regards

    A. Hilter,

    Leader (or Fuhrer if you will) of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

      1. Im not entirely sure that i do see what you mean?

        Anyhoo, theres nothing wrong with a little black humour to highlight a dangerous movement of fundamentalist nutjobs.

        Enviro-facism = Nazi-fascism.

        They where perhaps the last nation state to advocate the execution of children (go on someones gonna prove me wrong!) for not being the right kind of child, be it via disability, race or religeous belief (well their parents belief). I suppose not buying into all the AGW rubbish is reason enough. sets a damned good example to others!

        Still, if i can humoursly parallel the rabid environmentalists with that other well nown socialist lunatic through the medium of comedic imitiation then perhaps I too can make a point. But then again im not Richard Curtiss…..

        I have to say, im grateful to this blog, the Guardian newspaper (noted left wing loons paper of choice) removed an identical post to this from their comments section after about 15 minutes. Not sure which is worse, advocating the public execution of children or censorship..

        1. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have far more in common with the Nazis than any environmentalist. (What impact do they think their vitriolic attacks on climate scientists are going to have on the less stable elements of your right-wing brethren?)

      2. Gareth: “[See what I mean?]”

        Yes, Gareth, but that’s the point. This video is a gift to climate sceptics. They can now go to town on the fascist, Nazi etc accusations and simply point to this video.

        It confirms every paranoid fantasy of climate sceptics and will be used time and again to undercut arguments for action on climate.

        The video is an incredibly stupid own goal. and very damaging to the warming side. I am now beginning to look sideways at my fellow warmers, and find it difficult to imagine the mindset of the creators. That loss of empathy is the first step towards distancing oneself from the entire warming narrative.

        It’s going to be a very long time before we live this one down.

  12. Gareth: “It’s only offensive if you have a sense of humour failure (IMHO).”

    I’m not getting the joke. Usually, in these sorts of things, the authority figures are being satirised, in this case comimg across as fascists prats. Is that the message?

    Perhaps there’s some sub-textual thing happening, along the lines of a commentary on sceptics’ views of warmers or the hypocrisy of celebrities. Or maybe not.

    Whichever, the subtleties get lost in the mayhem. In one fell swoop these people have ruined their cause.

  15. It is a great advert. I love the idea of killing people who have individual thought. Resonates with me as i am sure it does with everyone else in the world. Authoritative figures exploding persons with red splashes of tomato sauce will surely appeal to the sensibilities of the masses. Intelligent, witty, logical, all the signs of a well thought out argument. It is a great idea that the world should be taxed for its carbon emissions, all funds going to the IMF (very reputable institution). Meanwhile, toxic waste is continuously dumped into our environment, foods are being genetically modified and entering our food chain. I assume that when they tackle those issues we can get taxed for that as well. Because, it is our fault that mega corporations, unchecked, have knowingly destroyed our environment. We can pay the bill for them. It all seems to make sense. Next, they might suggest bio fuels that will sky rocket food prices and starve millions of people. But i am sure Monsanto will be happy with that.

  16. Carbon Jihad is accepatble?
    I see,
    little difference between the inferred removal of people who question the science, the majority,
    or the Mullah minority who use the same tactics, the minority.
    40 Countries out of how many? about 140? in the UN

    1. Speaking of “carbon jihad” … First a digression … As a Canadian, I have to ask how many of the “it’s alright, it’s OK” crowd here have ever heard of the late, great Marshall McLuhan? He’s best known for coining the aphorism, “the medium is the message”. Clearly the “message” of this movie is (whether one finds it humourous or not … and I don’t) it’s OK to blow to smithereens those whose opinions differ from yours.

      In fact, in her call to arms msg of 10/01/01, addressed to all 10:10-ers, the oh-so-brilliant and inspirational Franny Armstrong included the following authoritative (as opposed to everyone else’s speculative) depiction of the mini-movie:

      “It’s a fairly simple and to-the-point premise, I’m sure you’ll agree: we celebrate everybody who is actively tackling climate change… by blowing up those who aren’t.”

      That’s her message (and she seems to be stickin’ to it), and the movie’s her medium. But we’re all adults here, right? Some of us even had the benefit of a pre-post-modernist education, and therefore are blessed with critical thinking skills. But I’ll keep my thoughts to myself on this one, because to my mind there’s an even more disturbing message that came out of this boomerang (although I have expressed them on my blog, if you’re interested!) [end digression]

      According to the Guardian website, Jamie Glover, one of the child-actors is reported to have declared:

      “I was very happy to get blown up to save the world.”

      YMMV, but I kinda wonder how many other little eco-jihadists are waiting in the wings for their moment to shine (and perhaps claim their 72 trees in the afterlife). I only hope against hope that none are as disturbed/influenced by the alarmist message as the late James Lee, whose own “carbon jihad” ended in his demise.

      [not sure if URLs are allowed here but … http://hro001.wordpress.com ]

      1. “I was very happy to get blown up to save the world.”

        Note carefully… the young Mr Glover was still sufficiently ‘non-blownup’ and alive to be interviewed. In other words you should be clear that he had not been literally mulched into a bloody paste.

        Even at his relatively young age Mr Glover seems to have a sufficiently developed sense of the abstract to be able to distinguish between the physical act of being ‘killed’, and the metaphysical act of sacrifice entailed in ‘saving the world’.

        You may find the meme familiar from somewhere.

  17. “it does include Gillian Anderson, assorted Spurs footballers past and present (David Ginola is a stand out), and music by Radiohead.”

    Wow. More genefluction before vapid celebrity.

    I thought Radiohead was against this kind of coercive propaganda? Obviously not.

  19. The true art of irony is to usually take the position of those you wish to persuade, and use their arguments to build a conclusion that makes them appear incoherent. Done properly, it can be very effective. Jonathan Swift (of Gulliver’s Travels fame) almost got lynched for his Modest Proposal piece, and that essay is read widely for its effectiveness in irony.

    This movie fails considerably in these regards. The skeptics (its not science without them) have considerable reason to be suspicious given the fudging of data, rigging peer review and general incivility to dissident views of those top level folks who’ve been carrying the AGW banner. Blowing up of people who dissent is exactly how those skeptics expect people of that sort to behave, so this movie will suggest to them, and reasonable people everywhere, that AGW proponent fantasies are on display here.

    In the manner of Jonathan Swift, this movie may be remembered for a long time, but the people who made it may wish otherwise.

  20. Pingback: 10:10 exploding skeptical children video “disappears” | Watts Up With That?

          1. If you want to learn anything about the lies perpetrated about the world on temperature data fiddling, or as they say at the CRU, adding value, then it is best you find out for yourself rather than being told by someone else. That way you discover the truth.

            1. Pat, are there black vans parked outside your house?. Hey, don’t just fling open the curtains!……make it casual looking.

    3. There hasn’t been any warming since 1896 in the USA, unless you use Hansen’s adjustments. You know how those pesky thermometers measured much too high a long time ago! Temperature is a different animal now than it used to be, you know…

  22. Yep, the expected microcephaly from microWatts.

    BTW, Gareth, two technical issues:

    Is there a trick to playing nthe video? I get the “friend” message but then it does nothing.

    Also, seemingly unrelated but who knows, I’m not seeing the thunbs down button at all.

    1. The video has been disappeared, apparently there’s actually an adult over at 10:10 who realizes that pornography really isn’t the best way to put the point over.

  23. People who justify the worth of this video because the end justifies the means place themselves on the same level as the witch-burners of Salem, the inquisitors of Spain, the final problem-solvers of Germany and the suicide-bomber organisers of Islam. This truly is the work of eco-facists, no joke. Believe or die.

  24. Finally the environmentalists have found a debating style that might work. Kill anyone who disagrees with you.

    Terrorist tactics seem to be a persuasive motivator for people, right? And if you kill 10% of the world’s population you’ve got your 10% CO2 reduction right there.

    Lets start some more wars and kill millions of people… for the environment!

    Or was I supposed to take away a message aside from the two obvious ones… killing people who disagree with you is good when you’re right and they’re wrong (i.e. always); and murdering people for a good cause is a good thing.

    That was it, right? Have to go sharpen my killin’ knife; people are always being wrong and disagreeing with me, and I don’t have any explosives handy…

  25. The sick video has now been disowned by the people who commissioned it – the 10:10 campaign ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/01/a-message-to-1010-sorry-just-doesnt-cut-it/).

    They will go down in the history of the CO2 Scam as bottom-dwelling amoral fanatics.

    Perhaps it will encourage some now alarmed by CO2 to look more deeply into the lack of science behind the scare. The people pushing it are more alarming than this largely beneficial trace gas in the air. Here is a good place to start: http://www.nzclimatescience.org/

    1. I like the trace gas. I grow endangered and threatened cacti native to the Great Basin in the intermountain west of the U.S. I’ve been following the debate for years. I’ve suspected that people weren’t hearing the skeptic side for a long time because I’d see articles or studies in obscure places that made sense, but weren’t in mainstream magazines. Then, last year we find that the CRU people among others were blacklisting skeptics, while at the same time saying these people weren’t real scientists because their papers weren’t being published. Then we had proof one side of the discussion was missing because of publishing bias.

      Since the sixties, I’ve been seeing folks suggest lowering the population worrying about carrying capacity. They made dire predictions which never came true. What did come true were millions of people dying because DDT got banned. They got some of their wishes at what expense? I note the people who suggest people off themselves don’t follow their own dogmas. And some people have been straight up about killing off various segments of the population. So we expect a bit of that out of the environmental/climage change people. I just never expected to see it as blatant as the No Pressure video did it. Humor (American spelling 🙂 is context sensitive. So a piece like Monty Python’s “How not to be seen” is funnier than`”No Pressure” which has no humorous premise to start with.

      It might be fun to see people redub the movie in German, then give it the “Downfall” treatment. That’s the movie about Hitler that people parody all the time on Youtube.

    1. Absolutely. Over at WUWT, they have AGW proponent commenters who are treated civilly. So I can appreciate this site allowing differing viewpoints to be shared. I do have one suggestion, if possible: is it possible to have the thumbs down option open without hiding posts that have a negative rating? Its wonderful to be loved, but it doesn’t give useful feedback which allowing a negative rating would provide.

      Awhile back I saw complaints about Digg where partisans would bury opposing views by flagging articles negatively. I’d rather have spam than that.

      So thanks for letting us say our peace Gareth 🙂

      1. I turned off the “dislikes” because it was a quick solution given the influx from µWatts — which swamps what passes for normal traffic around here.

        I only moderate comments that are too rude or defamatory, spam or way off-topic. In this instance I’m being very liberal, because I think its instructive to see what some sceptics think passes for rational thought.

  28. That video was quick sick. It’s not in the least ironic. The murder of those who dare to non-violently disagree with others is not a joke. Black comedy can be funny, but it needs then to be self-deprecating or involving some sort of rebellion against an authority figure. The gassing of Jewish people, the murder of school children: these are inappropriate topics for humour. The people who made this video have done their own supposed cause more damage than they can imagine. Can you imagine if some conservative party supporters made a video about the mass killings of people they dislike?

    1. “The people who made this video have done their own supposed cause more damage than they can imagine” – Adam Scott

      Uh, dude, that would include you. If one could pick and choose whom is to be affected by the looming climate crisis that would be just dandy.

  29. I think I may be losing my sanity, is it just me or do many of these commenters actually not realise this isn’t real?

    I showed it to my wife and she was deeply offended – apparently the teacher at the start tells the students their dads can insulate the loft.

    1. Of course we know its not real, if you mean the exploded people. The problem is the idea it represents without a context for humor. Even with a context with humor there would be more than a few who would still be disgusted with the film.

  30. So I take that all these deniers who condemn this tiny little video with five…count them five deaths… get equally judgemental and angry whenever a movie portrays a violent death?

    You know… that same so called ‘entertainment’ industry that gratuitously murders tens of thousands in our living rooms, each and every year for ‘dramatic effect’.

  31. This video plagiarises the idea from the Hollywood movie Mars Attacks! You can guarantee no extraterrestrials will be visiting earth after seeing that movie.

    I’m no expert but what I think that the message from this video is that if you use logic and reason then the AGW deniers will eventually come to accept your point of view.

    1. Huh? The message of the video was “help with cutting carbon emissions or die”. No logic there, only primal fear for one’s life. Or maybe you watched a different video?

  32. Tony…trying watching this through a ‘South Park’ lens. Modern ironic idiom has moved on from Morecambe and Wise.

    The message is simple and dark…. failure to act condemns people to death. Not fake dramatic ones, but real horrible ones when nations and societies collapse into starvation and chaos.

    Now I know most of you deniers dismiss that possibility. You are certain it cannot happen, by which means you close off the horrendous consequences if you are wrong.

    On the other hand if the science is wrong, and we unecessarily wean ourselves off carbon onto alternative, sustainable ways of living …then what has that really cost?

    More importantly you may want to think who stands to lose the most in such a transition and why they’d want to prevent it from happening.

    1. Redlogix: “The message is simple and dark…. failure to act condemns people to death. Not fake dramatic ones, but real horrible ones when nations and societies collapse into starvation and chaos.”

      Two points:

      1. In the video, people are being wasted by authority figures portrayed as fascist prats. That message is the bread and butter of a certain type of sceptic. The makers of this video have handed those people a loaded gun. Smart move.

      2. Your warning about “nations and societies collaps[ing] into starvation and chaos” mirrors precisely the sceptics’ hysteria about death and destruction from actions taken to mitigate global warming. Fact is, it’s 2010, not 2080, and it’s very difficult to predict the future. The latest statement from the Royal Society says as much.

    2. No the message is not “failure to act condemns people to death”. If that were the message maybe it would be acceptable.

      The VERY CLEAR message is: if you resist our ideas, WE will exterminate you. In each case it is not the person who fails to act or questions who causes his death, but the authority figure that presses a big red KILL BUTTON.

      How can you be so stupid as to even think that this movie will be taken as anything other than a death threat by the not-already-totally-committed?

      Sheesh….someone really turned off his brain on this one.

      Or is 1010 actually a covert denier organization? It would almost have to be… amazing, amazing, amazing.

    3. The skeptics actually don’t know what will happen whether it be hot or cold. Cold is way worse than hot. What the skeptics are saying is we don’t know enough about climate to be taking any kind of action. The precautionary rule doesn’t help here because you have a two edged blade. If you take measures to cool things down, it may trigger an ice age that’s been on hold because of CO2. Much of our ability to feed the world depends on areas that would be unfarmable if it were much colder.

      If the models that simulate climate actually worked, they would have predicted the current 10 year holding/cooling pattern. If the models don’t work except on past data, they’re not much use. Blindly cutting carbon emissions and devastating economies to accomplish something whose effect is unknown is foolish. Many skeptics believe that the current alarmism is a manufactured crisis to give politicians more power over our lives.

      I’m very grateful to the producers of this film as they have brought much needed attention to the discussion about the mindset of the alarmists. 50+ people contributed to its production and nobody was aware of the backlash it would create? That is mind boggling. Group think at it’s finest!

      1. Sorry Bill, you’re a million miles off the mark. We know far more than enough to act on cutting carbon emissions. The uncertainty is centred how round how bad will it get, not the direction of change.

        You’re wrong about models, too. And what holding pattern? Heat continues to accumulate in the system, melting ice, changing weather patterns.

        What’s “manufactured” is the opposition. It’s been very well documented. You could start by reading James Hoggan’s Climate Cover Up…

      2. Current 10 year holding / cooling pattern? Que?

        Depending on which dataset you prefer either 1998 or 2005 was the hottest year ever. That cooling pattern ?
        http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2010summer/

        All that can stop 2010 being the hottest ever calendar year will be if the La Nina intensifies and lasts into 2011. If that doesn’t happen it will ‘only’ be the second or third hottst year ever. And this is surprising. Why? Statistics.

        When a temperature record starts, you expect records to be set and broken frequently. The longer the record continues, the less likely a record breaking event is (whether hot or cold). So why are most of the top 10 hottest ever records clustered within the last few years? And where are the top 10 coldest ever records clustered?

    4. “The message is simple and dark…. failure to act condemns people to death”

      Well, I agree, in part … the message of the movie is simple, and the message of the movie is (very) dark. However, in light of the movie’s very clear message, the latter part of your interpretation is in dire need of correction:

      “,,, failure to agree with me ‘n my friends condemns you to death”

      HTH

      1. ““,,, failure to agree with me ‘n my friends condemns you to death”

        Think “Punch and Judy’. An old form of folk performance that was not meant to be ‘nice’. One that stirred up all manner of dark emotions and responses.

        Think ‘Monty Python’ with the giant foot squashing cartoon characters and the ‘Black Night’ or ‘Tennis’ sketches. Think of the insane violence in ‘The Young Ones’. Think ‘South Park’ or ‘Family Guy’ or ‘Mars Attacks’….and on and on.

        They work because the literal message, the insane, self-evidently ludicrous premise in your face, the one that your gut is reacting to… is there only to wrong-foot your intellectual defenses.

        The real message is framed in the language of the subconcious, and is meant to be uncomfortable, to stir up things you’d normally leave unexamined.

        It’s not me, or any ‘eco-fascist’ who wants to kill you because you disagree with us …and at some sane level you know that. What really makes you uncomfortable is that you understand the need to act, but that you cannot bring yourself to sacrifice the ‘life’ you currently live in order to to ‘save yourself’.

        1. Oh, I remember Punch & Judy from my childhood … and Monty Python et al from later in my life. Unfortunately, the message of this movie was conveyed by none other than Franny when she wrote:

          “It’s a fairly simple and to-the-point premise, I’m sure you’ll agree: we celebrate everybody who is actively tackling climate change… by blowing up those who aren’t”

          As for your:

          “What really makes you uncomfortable is that …”

          Don’t give up your day-job … because as a mind-reader, you fail.

  33. @RedLogix

    “So I take that all these deniers who condemn this tiny little video with five…count them five deaths… get equally judgemental and angry whenever a movie portrays a violent death?”

    I count seven. But hey – it’s climate science…

  35. When you run out of arguments, you simply blow up those with whom you disagree. Well, bin Laden came out today and joined the Green movement, so at least you have a guy who knows how to blow up kids.

      1. Gareth: “I can remember my parents finding that sketch tasteless and stupid. I laughed.”

        Yes, Gareth. Tennis through the lens of Peckinpah. We get the joke and the absurdity. And the gore is self-inflicted by the inanity of the players.

        I know that explaining a joke ruins it, but can you explain the No Pressure joke, because I don’t get it.

        1. Well, the premise is self-evidently ludicrous (except, as it turns out, to the people who think environmentalists would actually behave like this, or want to push that view), and the execution (ahem) so over the top (Mars Attacks, Python etc), that I think it’s obvious it’s black comedy. No pressure? Quite a lot actually…

          There’s clearly a divide, however, between those who get this, and those who don’t. Quite a lot of British humour doesn’t play well in the US, for instance… Should the 10:10 team have anticipated this reaction? Arguably. It might have been a good idea to have run the film past Bill McKibben, for instance, because he obviously wasn’t impressed.

          As for the “violence” – a few days ago I stumbled on a ten minute fight between gladiators in the US cable TV series Spartacus. It was a *very* graphic depiction of injury and death, far more sickening than a few buckets of fake blood splashed around, and out there on mainstream media.

          PS: It’s not “tennis” through the eyes of Sam Peckinpah (Straw Dogs was in the news at the time), it’s Salad Days, a successful 1950s British musical set in the sunny 1920s..

          1. Gareth: “Well, the premise is self-evidently ludicrous (except, as it turns out, to the people who think environmentalists would actually behave like this, or want to push that view)…”

            Exactly. Many people do actually believe that, and now they are using the video to confirm those beliefs. That’s why it’s such an appalling misjudgement.

            “PS: It’s not “tennis” through the eyes of Sam Peckinpah (Straw Dogs was in the news at the time), it’s Salad Days, a successful 1950s British musical set in the sunny 1920s.”

            I understand the reference. The joke works because it subverts our expectations of the genre. In contrast, the No Pressure video confirms the expectations of a bunch of viewers. That’s why it has fallen flat.

            Gareth, you need to get your head around this issue. It’s not about violence or bad taste. It’s about confirming peoples’ expectations about the intentions of warmers.

            1. The film does subvert our expectations, and — for me — it works. It’s obvious that it also feeds into a particularly nasty denier meme — the enviro-fascist nonsense so graphically on display in the comments above. Should 10:10 have seen that coming? Arguably, as I said above. But I think they do protest too much… As I said in the update, where’s the outrage at Delingpole’s rant?

            2. At least Dellingpole was advocating a trial where truth can be tested for warmists – rather than extermination at the push of a button.

            3. Another point – I think 10:10 missed a trick here…instead of blowing those non-believers up they should of beaten them to death with hockey sticks.

              A lot more personal.

            4. Gareth: “The film does subvert our expectations…”

              Fair enough. What expectations are those?

              “It’s obvious that it also feeds into a particularly nasty denier meme — the enviro-fascist nonsense so graphically on display in the comments above.”

              Yes, and the video just confirms those suspicions. That’s the problem.

              The presentation is also confused, and therefore confusing. The authority figures are unsympathetic and so alienate the viewer, who sympathises with the victims. But the authority figures are the ones pushing the actual message of the video (the AGW issue). Therefore, the underlying message is subverted, not supported, by the narrative.

              Given that confusion, most people will pick up on the overt meaning (kill the non-conformists) because that’s the one that is consistent with the narrative.

              “Should 10:10 have seen that coming?”

              Yes, yes, and yes. The amazing thing is that more than a few people thought this was a clever idea.

            5. No my friend, they protest not nearly enough. Blowing up kids (or anybody else) because they don’t agree with you, even in a film, is not ever going to be OK. That you do not seem to appreciate how obnoxious and repugnant this mini-film is reflects badly on both your maturity and your personal judgment. I think you need to take a break and think about this for a while.

          2. Gareth states
            “except, as it turns out, to the people who think environmentalists would actually behave like this, or want to push that view”

            Your memory is short … it was only a month ago that this happened:

            SILVER SPRING, Md. — A gunman police shot to death after he took hostages at Discovery Channel’s headquarters said he hated the company’s shows such as “Kate Plus 8” because they promote population growth and its environmental programming because it did little to save the planet.

            From
            http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j3HWmZzozhVViJ3jG784a_iYoXEQD9HVL5780

          3. Apparently this video was done without the consent of the Directors of 1010 and they and many others within 1010 are just as offended as thousands of others …. seems only the “fringe” appreciated the “humour”. Maybe you should think about whose judgement has been impugned.

  37. I haven’t seen this vid so my comment relates to my impression upon reading down the thread.. and there seem to be an amazing number of people lacking any real sense of propriety..

    For instance, do they not know – as Jonathan Swift would have known in his time, too – that those who listen at keyholes seldom hear good of themselves.

    The main event of which has happened already and these same people took succor from it. Not facts, to be sure, but self-serving interpretation. Which is to say they are using their sense of freedom to portray something other than the case in clear evidence.

    Which perhaps explains how in this event the same behavior is on stage. My guess is that not hearing good of yourself does nothing for the inferiority complex that has them keyhole in the first place.

    And nothing at all for keyholing adherents, their suckers and so on..

  38. Comrades! This is bolshoi revolutionary film!

    Unfortunately, we know where you got idea. But you give “aid and comfort” to plutocrats and their Running Dog lackeys like WattsUpWithThat. Your nekulturniy efforts only encourage Capitalist resistance to Glorious People’s Revolution.

    Stalin would have had you all shot for such pitiful efforts. Please to enter boxcar for re-education camps, da?

  39. Pingback: WUWT’s story on 10:10 3rd most popular on Wordpress globally – even in New Zealand | Watts Up With That?

  40. Ref your update, gareth:— A fine example of the asymmetry of the PR war being fought by the campaign against action on climate change.

    Anti-media that it appears to be. Though my question would be that if attacking the so-called msm is a role for the above PR serfs wouldn’t self-defeating (Delingpole etc) be part of the strategy.?

  41. Gee Gareth, how does it feel to be made a laughing stock in front of MILLIONS of WUWT viewers?

    I bet all those people whom you have ridiculed in the past are now basking in the warm glow of schadenfruede.

  42. Pingback: No Pressure 10:10 « Jim’s Blog

  43. Gee David, such a good name(David)—why would you despoil it with with association to the capitalised claptrap above.?

    Or, OTOH, is the answer obvious?

  45. As a skeptic I love this movie, and we’re not offended by it, in fact we’re promoting it and re-uploading it to many video sites, including youtube. The age of stupid indeed. Children killed at school is always a hit with parents. It’s the extreme activists secret fantasy and therefor funny for them. For all the rest? Not so much.

    I’m getting the popcorn ready for the reaction from politicians and corporations if this movie goes viral.

    Well done Morons. 🙂

  46. Gareth

    The uproar is not about black humor or irony misunderstood.
    The issue has nothing to do with global warming, it has to do with morals.
    With your privileged Oxford liberal arts education you should at least have understood that. You should have disowned this nasty piece of agitprop and distanced yourself, or merely just distanced yourself.
    You are free to hold your views on global warming, and indeed to promote them within the bounds of the law; and hopefully with reason and respect. That you chose to try and defend the indefensible and resort to name calling when pressed, shows lack of judgement. At least you are to be commended for allowing comment to flow freely.

    1. Name calling? What name calling? If you mean referring to Watts’ web site as µWatts, I’ve been doing that for years.

      PS: That’s an Oxford science education, thank you very much.

  47. There you go again, Dave.

    Morals, hah. If that is the case and you wish to be taken seriously then comment @motsatt who is all about promoting the sketch to young people and their parents ought register your significant offense, too..

    So let’s hear it..

    Also, as I said earlier I have not seen it, perhaps you would recall its primary features/theme for my benefit. Or yours if that is what you perceive.. I shall be looking, of course, for moral precept, just so you realise why I would ask in the first place..

    Nice, shake-free night!

  48. Dave.

    Oh yes… it has everything to do with morals alright. It cuts right to the truth, failure to act, failure to curb of carbon addicted economies will eventually cause the mass collapse of societies, suffering and death on a scale literally unthinkable.

    That’s the power of black humour like this, it sweeps aside the bs obfuscations, landing it’s kick square in the testicles. As I said above, the message is simple and direct…failure to act will kill people. And the deniers will be culpable.

  49. May as well wade in.

    It was kind of funny. Makes people puzzle over the message. It certainly doesnt warrant the opprobrium it is getting.

    We have videos all the time that graphically show the effects of drink driving. Ten Ten could have produced a video showing children slowly drowning, starving etc. Maybe some shots of children in Pakistan?

    So what’s the big problem with the black humour here?

    In terms of people exploding – as one blogger has out it – things have moved on from Morecombe and Wise. The kids are up for this stuff.

    So the big issue is that people will be put off by this video and do nothing about radically reducing carbon emissions.

    Well, whatever is going on so far is not working.

    Here’s my idea. A video showing ordinary decent people throwing Santa into the street and beating the crap out of him. Because we are destroying his home.

    Sorry, have I handed another ‘victory’ to the deniers? Crossed some moral line? Gosh, better get back to polite chats and quiet moral persuasion. Don’t want to offend. Only, I thought the kids in Pakistan wouldn’t mind if we all got a bit more, you know, urgent ….

    1. Your comment shows so many misguided assumptions it is not funny.

      From your comment you imply that anyone who ‘denies’ climate change is driven by people is a racist. That is the only way I can interpret being asked if I would care if it was non-white children being blown up. For the record I would care, just as much.

      By choosing Pakistani’s perhaps you are implying that the strongest racism is for largely Muslim races. And that many ‘deniers’ are Christian. For the record I am not Christian, but am tolerant of all civil (and I include Islam in this) religions.

      Perhaps you assume all ‘deniers’ fit the US right wing Christian conservative stereo type? For the record I vote for small government. But I support liberal social policy such as the ability for GLT civil unions. I also do not support needless, and often criminal, foreign entanglements such as the Iraq war.

      You also assume that anyone who takes offense, or who does not support 10:10, is a ‘denier’. I consider myself agnostic when it comes to AGW (and many other things). But I find the video very confusing and troubling (when it finished I had a kind of “I don’t get it thought”, “The video suggests its was made by 10:10, but it seems to be satire, was it made by someone else and given a fake 10:10 logo???).

      By calling me a denier you show that you are in denial about opposition to AGW science conclusions. You are able to disregard opposing arguments because you convince yourself they are not genuine. You do not consider ‘deniers’ thoughtful human beings. Or intelligent humans. You put yourself on a pedestal of genuine, intelligent opinion. And opposing views do not require you to question your own beliefs, or be sceptical, because you convince yourself they are simply unintelligent and non-genuine.

      Although I am making judgments about you here, I do not ‘deny’ that many scientists believe AGW is real and that these scientists are intelligent and are genuine in their belief. I just happen to also feel the same way about skeptical scientists. My conclusion is that there is still a lot of uncertainty about AGW. I also read the policy analysis and conclude that only moderate action is required at this time. So please apologise for the insinuation that because I hold these views I am likely to be also racist.

  51. No, of course they wouldn’t care. The WUWT crowd are just working themselves up and jumping out of their usual hiding place in the comments section of WUWT. Classic case of “attack the messenger” (as well as attack the message).

  52. Jesus christ! Black humor? It shows blowing kids up at school. And suddenly its about moral?

    No matter what the moral debate will bring witch I don’t want any part of by the way. No one can possibly disagree that this video is a recruiting disaster and a complete a**-***k for the greens that work on getting some sort of policy though.

    Us skeptics are having fun with this over the weekend writing to politicians and corporations that are affiliated with 10:10. I have already written two emails to corporate press offices, and have barely started on my list. This video has hurt the environment movement and made skeptics look even better.

    🙂

  53. Dappledwater

    If by ‘deniers’ you mean people who see climate change as a global conspiracy etc – I dont think anyone would target that group for an advertising campaign.

    So the group being targeted is people who understand the climate problem, but not the urgency. Since the situation is urgent, why is the relatively gentle approach of black humour a problem? It was basically an attempt to capture the 15 minute news cycle. It achieved that. Pity they pulled it. It might have kept the debate at a high level for weeks. In any event it will hopefully continue to be debated. People should be shocked and asking, “exploding kids – why would someone do that?”

    The mistake in my view is to worry overmuch about deniers who say they will use it to ‘expose’ eco-fascism etc. Good on them. Indifference is the problem. We need people talking and reacting. The weird weather reports will (unfortunately) do the rest.

  54. Why is there so much uproar and outrage about a film faking deaths and yet so very little uproar and outrage over the real deaths of say: First Nations residents who live downstream of the toxic hell that is the Alberta tar sands and are dying of cancer? The millions of children dying from water bourne infection, drought, flood and famine excerbated by climate change? These are what are worthy of our outrage. The denier camp have been driven to such a frenzy by this piece of fictional nonsense they will probably self implode.

    1. Probably Stu because because none of these things have been excerbated by AGW. With you on the tar sands though, if the billions spent on fighting the AGW myth were spent on fighting pollution and world hunger, the world would be a far better place to live.

    1. And it´s Sue- not Stu. If you are correct and pumping tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere does not cause warming which causes the climate to change and thus exacerbate flood, drought and famine then there is only one way to find out. Let´s do the empirical experiment- let´s double the atmospheric concentration of CO2 – the faster the better-and see what occurs. That way we can eliminate all doubt and determine whether the AGW hypothesis is correct or not.

      1. Sorry about the name Sue. The doubling of CO2 (and more) has already been done, many times in the earths past, the carboniferous era for one, where it was approximately 1500 ppm. Plants and insects thrived during this period. So I guess your empirical experiment has already been done and all doubt can now be eliminated!?

        1. That won’t wash, Andrew. The carboniferous era? Exactly how many million years ago?

          The era that allowed the evolution of humans, that’s us, and the more recent development of agriculture which allowed us to thrive (and expand our population a bit too much) is called the Holocene.

          I don’t care, and neither does anyone else, that this rock can hurtle its way around the sun under any climatic conditions. I live here, in fact I live in a house on a block of land. If the house burns down, the land is still here – but I’ve got nowhere to live unless I move elsewhere. Same thing for my one and only planet – except there’s no other planet for me and my 7 billion friends to move to.

          The Holocene has nurtured and sustained us in a way that the carboniferous couldn’t have even if we were around then. Just like our personal dwellings, it behoves us to take the best care of it. Taking care of the favourable planet climate is not quite the same as cleaning the gutters outside and maintaining a flow of fresh air inside, but it’s just as necessary.

          1. I agree with you 100% except when the premise for taking care of the planet is based on a lie. By all means take care of the planet, and by taking care of it take care of ourselves, but base it on the truth and not politised science.

        2. No sorry- can´t accept that- for one humans weren´t around then so we don´t know how the carboniferous climate would impact modern human civilisation or human life- oxygen was at a higher concentration than now for example and we are not evolved to deal with that sort of climate. Plus there is still controversy over proxy data and the paleo record is disputed. So to be scrupulous, the experiment must be conducted now. If it is conducted now there should be no more wiggle room for anybody. The experiment shouldn´t be too difficult to conduct or monitor- we simply need to burn as much fossil fuel as we can, and as fast as we can until some sort of target is reached- 400ppm/450ppm/more? The parameters etc would all have to be worked out and agreed on, but that part shouldn´t be beyond our ability. The results would either bear out the AGW hypothesis or not, at those concentrations.

          If what you are saying is correct then there would be no discernable disruption to our climate system. If the hypothesis is correct then there would be a higher incidence of extreme weather events, all of which would be observable.

          We could start with some real effort to increase our emissions: a special day for instance, give it a catchy name “Ramp it Up” or some such and get people signed on. It would be easy to do- all people would have to do is double their fossil fuel energy consumption. It would take some time but a target of, say, 450ppm could be reached fairly quickly if people are committed to determining the truth. The oil and coal companies would be behind it without doubt and give support.

          I am sure you agree this is really the only way we are going to settle this `debate´.

          1. Similarly, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Early Carboniferous Period were approximately 1500 ppm (parts per million), but by the Middle Carboniferous had declined to about 350 ppm — comparable to average CO2 concentrations today! Earth’s atmosphere today contains about 380 ppm CO2 (0.038%). Compared to former geologic times, our present atmosphere, like the Late Carboniferous atmosphere, is CO2- impoverished! In the last 600 million years of Earth’s history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm.

            1. So you are up for doing the experiment then? More C02 will be beneficial and we should be ramping it up rather than considering reducing emissions? It is not good enough to keep quoting paleo data at me. It is all about empirical testing and observations in the present and immediate future. If you are right we should be looking forward to a better, greener future thanks to increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and no foreseeable disruptions to our climate system. So we should be burning more fossil fuels rather than less: this is what you are proposing?

              A new slogan could be “Burn Baby Burn”. That should get those Teapot people involved.

  57. The thing you greens don’t seem to understand is that we don’t care about the attacks on us. What we care about is how many people will die if the insane climate policies comes to power.

    Haven’t you read what high ranking environmentalists say about population reduction? You don’t have to read any theory but the words from their own mouth. Go have a look at who Holdren, Hansen, Gore, Chu and the rest is endorsing, and saying themselves.

    It’s out there, you just have to read it. Just read their own quotes. Like Obama saying that “electricity prices will necessary skyrocket” with his policies. Millions will die if that happens. This isn’t a joke. Thats why this isn’t funny.

    Your movement shooting itself in the leg, now that is hilarious.

  58. Gareth et al,
    Have you seen Climate Progress? While James Hansen is under arrest after a mountain-top coal mining protest, Romm and McKibben are having a hissy-fit over a 3 minute video on You-tube by fellow AGW-concerned group 10:10.
    I think Romm and McKibben have lost the plot on this one. They are the ones giving the own goal to the “Sceptics”. They need to get out from their RSS feed aggregators a bit more often. .

    1. I have, yes. In a way, I agree with you. The “backlash” is expressed as such extreme nonsense (see comments above) that I suspect they’re doing far more harm to their own position than 10:10 has with its film. The target here is the unpersuaded — the people we need onside to get action going. Screaming about enviro-Nazis and eco-fascists doesn’t play well with the moderate middle. And there is also a tendency to think that the entire “debate” plays out in the blogosphere. It doesn’t. There are loads of people doing 10:10 and 350.org events, and their visibility and role in the community will do much more than Anthony Watts manufacturing outrage in his commentariat.

      1. Spot on, Gareth.

        Talk about over-the-top bluster and selective riding of high horses!

        The moral outrage is a sight to see.

        Perhaps we might consider some special prizes for the efforts involved?

      2. Gareth: “The target here is the unpersuaded — the people we need onside to get action going.”

        And how will they be “persuaded”, Gareth? I am persuaded, but I’m starting to toy with being unpersuaded. Why? Because I don’t want to be associated with people who act like “enviro-Nazis” and “eco-fascsists”, and I don’t take kindly to bullying, fictional or otherwise.

        The astonishing aspect of this video is that none of the many people involved had second thoughts about the message and its presentation. To my mind, that spells something rotten in the woodwork.

        You really need to gain some clarity on this one.

        1. See further down, Brendan. It is chilling. RedLogix says “We are at the point now where reasoned persuasion has demonstrably failed; coercion or mass death are the only choices left on the table.”

          He admits that AGW cannot persuade doubters using reason!

          So now the solution is force and violence?

          Who will bring some sanity to the eco-terrorists?

          1. DavidW: “See further down, Brendan. It is chilling. RedLogix says “We are at the point now where reasoned persuasion has demonstrably failed; coercion or mass death are the only choices left on the table.”

            David, you get your nutters in every movement. For example:

            http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/publicly-crazy-1010/#comment-37377

            “There are literally tens of thousands of absolutely viral environmentalists who would like nothing better than to cull the population according to their preference.”

            Nevertheless, I take your point that some people on the warming side mouth dangerous platitiudes. However, I am not the owner of this blog, so have little control over its content, nor the time and inclination to act the policeman.

          2. “He admits that AGW cannot persuade doubters using reason!”

            Absolutely. You have proven immune to it for a decade. Otherwise a pathetic attempt. This is about your failure to understand, and says nothing about the science. Just because you probably couldn’t derive Schroedingers equation to save youself, doesn’t mean quantum mechanics is a crock.

            “So now the solution is force and violence?”

            I’m the least likely person to impose force or violence on you David, but ultimately it is the tool that all societies use to protect themselves from external and internal threats. What else are you expecting? Why on earth would you find this simple truism chilling?

        2. “none of the many people involved had second thoughts …… To my mind, that spells something rotten in the woodwork. ”

          No, it speaks of people who grew up laughing hysterically at Monty Python and Blackadder on TV and the Scream franchise at the movies.

          Tasteless. Crass. Beyond stupid. All of those things. What’s the problem?

          This video has none of the talent, spontaneity or wit of those predecessors. Why not?

          Those things were funny _because_ they were pointless and silly. Trying to use that approach to deliver a meaningful message (of any kind) was doomed from the start.

          It might appeal to 11 year olds or some sub-groups of Python-addicted adults, but it was never going to work on the general public.

          1. Adelady: “No, it speaks of people who grew up laughing hysterically at Monty Python and Blackadder on TV and the Scream franchise at the movies.”

            Perhaps I was overreacting. Mind you, expecting people who making a living pretending to be other people to be stable adults is probably a stretch.

            In my view, luvvies should be put away in little boxes until we need entertaining. It would keep a lid on a lot of crazy.

          2. Completely agree with my fellow Adelaidean.

            I laughed myself silly when I was a kid watching ‘Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days’ from Python or the Goodies’ ridiculously violent ‘animal home’ episode, precisely because they were an absurdist overthrowing of convention and everyone knows that nobody (and nothing) really gets killed, even symbolically.

            But ‘No Pressure’ only made me squirm.

            (Perhaps Curtis should have got Ben Elton in to help him out? Blackadders 2-4 worked, whereas one – the one he wrote on his own – didn’t, to my mind.)

            So chalk me up for ‘a lapse in taste and judgment’.

            Which was not, no matter how you twist it around, authored by the IPCC, could have done with quite a bit more peer review, clearly does not represent the whole ‘Warmist’ movement, and has been a convenient distraction for the Deniers given the ‘kachink’ of the hottest September on record falling into place and ongoing extreme weather events are making them all look rather silly.

            Plus, get some perspective: it’s really only 4 minutes of fillum that barely stands out in the world of South Park and Kick Ass…

      3. “There are loads of people….”

        OK, Gareth, would you be so kind as to provide those like me who are scientificaly-challenged with the most current definition of “loads”.(as it pertains to “people” of course, but you knew you that, didn’t you?!)

        Thanks

        P.S, thanks also for your fact-free fantasy that those who don’t agree with your bull-dog defense of the logically indefensible assertions you scatter throughout your “responses” [using the term very loosely] are deserving of one of your (predictable … sorry, there’s no convenient neutral synonym that comes to mind at the moment) scorn and/or opprobrium paste ‘n smear attacks.

        1. On a different planet are you? Check out the 350.org web site, and the various national 10:10 sites (I’ve linked to both in recent days), and you will find a lot of actions taking place world wide. No, I’m not going to count them just because someone rude turns up at my blog…

  59. This video is the most vile, obnoxious, disgusting, amoral piece of pornography that I have ever seen. The weasel worded apology for purveying such filth is worse. If you, Gareth, think otherwise then I am sorry for you and I hope you never have to watch a newsreel from Iraq, Gaza, Afghanistan, or countless other places where children are regularly maimed in the cause of “World Peace”. It is no wonder your latest convert is Osama Bin Laden: He obviously feels he is with kindred spirits.

  61. If you had shown any signs of intelligence I would.

    [OK: That’s enough random abuse. Any more and you’ll be snipped (in a WUWT moderator manner). GR]

  62. Gareth, I’m very surprised you allow the negative comments posted here to be displayed, that’s not something I see often on sites such as this.

    Speaking personally, I think as a sceptic it’s important to remain sceptical of all information especially that posted on sceptical sites. It’s a nice surprise to find a pro AGW site that allows questioning comments, I think you would be surprised at the levels of censorship involved elsewhere.

    As for the video, the company employee scene is very effective because there are companies in the UK where questioning AGW would see your career explode messily, if not your actual body. I’m not saying there isn’t a certain loony fringe on the far right, but it is possible to be sceptical of certain doomsday predications based on doubtful evidence, while at the same time being politically left leaning.

    1. Chu, You’ll find when normal transmission resumes that Gareth allows his believers to vote-down comments they don’t like, which makes sceptical comments disappear.

      A trifle Pilate-like, or perhaps Henry II. They don’t really tolerate dissent that well.

      1. Except that they don’t really disappear – but you knew that already – and Gareth is actually remarkably tolerant ; anybody who can put up with the likes of Joe Fone can hardly be accused of being censorious…

  63. “No Pressure” is a brilliant piece of agitprop that cuts through piles of sanctimonious bs that BOTH sides have their heads buried in. The message is simple and dark…failure to act will kill people.

    The blunt truth is this. The carbon companies campaign of doubt and confusion has made us delay a decade longer than we should have. The chance to act in a measured fashion has been stolen from us. The only effective methods now remaining to us will be drastic and authoritarian.

    Along the lines…”the house is burning down, get out NOW!!!”. We are at the point now where reasoned persuasion has demonstrably failed; coercion or mass death are the only choices left on the table.

    If that makes us ‘eco-fascist nazis’ … then so be it. By fiddling while the planet burned you brought it on yourselves.

    October 2, 2010 5:08 PM

    1. No, coercion or mass death are not the only choices left on the table.

      Coercion will be needed when evacuating people from the path of fires and floods, mass death will follow when the evacuations are unsuccessful. Mass deaths from starvation will precede coercion in the form of rationing for many people when food supplies fail. Charity will fail when there isn’t enough food in the first place.

      As for the lifestyle questions. Peak oil prices will override many people’s desire to drive personal cars. And renewable energy? If not now, then when our descendants run out of fossil fuels.

      Personally I think oil is too valuable to burn. Burning stuff is too much of the caveman for me. If we want to be modern, clever, advanced societies we should abandon primitive methods of gaining power, transport and heat. Sophistication and science have already showed us the way. We just need to make the best of it as soon as possible.

  64. @RedLogix “We are at the point now where reasoned persuasion has demonstrably failed; coercion or mass death are the only choices left on the table.

    “If that makes us ‘eco-fascist nazis’ … then so be it. By fiddling while the planet burned you brought it on yourselves.”

    Wow. Is that a declaration of jihad/violence/war?

    1. Why yes it is. A war against stupdity.

      If you’re in a plane, you don’t open the door in mid-flight. That’s not a ‘fascist attack on your freedom’… its the rules. A direct cause and effect that only children or dullards cannot perceive.

      Unfortunately the consequences of carbon addiction will take some decades and centuries for their impact to become fatal. Harder to predict but consequences all the same. Sadly this means many people like to pretend they do not exist.

      We have a powerful right to defend our civilisation against the greedy and irresponsible; it trumps your selfish desire to drive a motor car.

        1. Carbon addiction describes the dependence of our current western economies on fossil fuels. It’s proving to be a difficult “habit” to break.

          So yeah, nothing to do with us being carbon (but not carbon dioxide) based lifeforms.

  65. Opening an airplane door at 30,000 feet is a reproducible experiment. The outcome is known and repeatable. The result can be fatal to bystanders, but survivable by other passengers, given a good pilot.

    You have an unproven belief system that thinks that the sky is falling. You have convinced yourself by listening to and congregating with others holding the same beliefs, and by listening to sermons and reading holy texts from those on high. In your mind, the dogma is the only right path. Anyone holding alternate views (or no views) is apostate, and worthy of infringing all their rights to liberty, happiness, private property, freedom of speech and ultimately, life itself.

    How is this different from Islamic jihad?

    > “We have a powerful right to defend our civilisation against the greedy and irresponsible; it trumps your selfish desire to drive a motor car.”

    You have no such right, and any attempt to assert such a right will be an act of unprovoked aggression.

    1. The evidence for global warming is not “an unproven belief system”, unless you think you can wish away 150 years of scientific endeavour and rewrite fundamental physics. You, on other hand, demonstrate a touching faith in the rectitude of your course. Forgive me if I prefer to ground my views in observable reality.

      1. “Observable reality” is good. Computer models are not observable reality (as Jackboot Bill said earlier). Satellite measurement of tropospheric temperatures show no significant trend. Land and ocean temperatures show no significant trend, unless researchers apply so-called “corrections”.

        The IPCC is an incestuous cadre of tenure-holding gravy-trainers, feathering their own reputations and wallets, by “adjusting” their science to produce the hockey-stick graphs their patrons and purse-string holders are seeking. You cannot get pure science when the conclusion has been purchased (and written by “policymakers”) before the science is published!

        But I’m more interested in the thinking that your “questionable science” belief system gives you the right to use force to deny others their unalienable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? You have no such right.

        1. “The IPCC is an incestuous cadre of tenure-holding gravy-trainers, feathering their own reputations and wallets, by “adjusting” their science to produce the hockey-stick graphs their patrons and purse-string holders are seeking. You cannot get pure science when the conclusion has been purchased (and written by “policymakers”) before the science is published!”

          You wrote this silly piece of emotive clap-trap, DavidW. It’s a string of unproven assertions, accusations and abuse, without any facts or evidence whatsoever.

          The funny thing is you have waxed righteous about the immorality of the video this thread relates to, but seem quite unconscious of the ugliness of your own words and the mentality behind them.

      2. David, my right to the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ends right at the point where it interferes with others’ rights to life and liberty. (Not so sure about the pursuit of happiness as many people understand it.)

        All my freedoms end at the point where they violate the freedom of anyone else. I drive on the correct side of the road, I obey traffic lights. And I reduce the risks to life and health of myself and other people by driving within the speed limit. The problems we are creating for ourselves by clinging to outdated technologies are that we are progressively reducing our own freedom of action. Because the life and liberty of ourselves and others is more and more challenged by increasingly unstable weather and food supplies and reducing FF supplies.

        To stick with the driving analogy, if roads are slippery and street lights and traffic lights are not operating, is it safe for me to drive faster? No it’s not. But that’s what people who suggest we should just keep burning, burning! irreplaceable resources are saying we should do.

        1. You are most welcome to travel by electric car, bicycle, horse (if you clear up the mess) or foot. But don’t force your “sky is falling” views on me.

          You are at liberty to choose to have no children, if you believe in carbon footprints. But don’t blow up mine.

          You may gorge yourself on organic tofu salads. But don’t dictate to the rest of society what we may and may not eat.

          We don’t believe your thesis. If you cannot persuade us by reason and (unadulterated) facts, you are the equivalent of a fringe cult. And just as important.

          1. I have children, David. I expect to have a couple of grandchildren in the near future.

            I also live in a place that’s had a taste of the “hell” in the hell and high water scenario. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of silver, china and handmade lace heirlooms to hand on to my greatgrandchildren. What I cannot do without help from others is hand on to them a useful stock of carbon resources.

            So I advocate moving away from old-fashioned technologies which destroy, by burning, materials which would be far more valuable converted to carbon fibre or whatever science two generations from now can dream up.

            I’m not going to smash or burn my private resources. And I think it’s foolish to burn shared resources when there is no need to. We’re not cavemen, and we’re not 19th century industrialists. We have options, we have science, we have intelligence. We should do better.

  66. An “unproven belief system” called science, Davidw.

    It’s one of the most prominent ironies (among many!) of denialists like yourself that you throw around the “believers” accusation while you apparently cannot see that your denial of mainstream science is entirely driven by your belief systems, your idealogies. You are indeed, “True Believers”.

    Have a good look in the mirror…. 🙂

  67. David,

    You have had a decade to examine the science and form your view about it. We all have. I’ve made up my mind as you clearly have. There is no need to wait for further evidence, further studies or more IPCC reports.

    The time for reasoned persuasion is over. We now get to be held responsible for the consequences of our choices…as do all grown ups.

    Now I’m quite happy to tell you that there remains the possibility that the body of science around AGW is wrong, that the planet still has some major twist up her capacious sleeve which takes us all by suprise. That could happen, and the consequences of error will be that we’ve weaned ourselves off an unsustainable carbon economy (peak oil remember) onto some better, something sustainable sooner than we had to…and if you think that so bad then I apologise in advance.

    If you are wrong then it will be hell and high water…and for the civilisation collapse, and mass deaths that will result… I hold you personally culpable. That’s not ‘unprovoked aggression’… it’s simply being held to account for the choices you made.

    1. @RedLogix “If you are wrong then it will be hell and high water…and for the civilisation collapse, and mass deaths that will result… I hold you personally culpable. That’s not ‘unprovoked aggression’… it’s simply being held to account for the choices you made.”

      That is fascism. You are saying: “We are right — you are wrong. And because we don’t agree, we will force you to do what we say. You will forfeit your rights to think and speak and act as you see fit.”

      “No more cars, incandescent light bulbs, contrary blog posts, independent schools, procreating…”

      Welcome to the Eco-Totalitarian state. (As foreshadowed by the title mini-movie, above!)

      1. Enough of all this serious talk

        Here is something we can all have a good laugh about on a lovely spring Sunday in NZ.
        As Salamu Alaykum -Peace be with you.
        Onward and Upward

        Oh by the way, you should check out isotope data, of which there are lots. It was a lot warmer 120,000 years ago, and 7000 years ago, not to mention a lot of evidence around 2000 and 1000 years ago. And it’s a fair chance that several years in the 30’s were as warm as 1998.

        So although the world has been on a warming trend for the last couple of hundred years, and may have been pushed up a bit but not much by rising CO2, there is no need for Chicken Little alarm, and certainly not any Frannie Armstrong inspired eco jihad.

        It looks touch and go at the moment whether this year will be hotter than 1998, also an El Nino year; but all that demonstrates is that there has been no global warming for around 12 years.
        There are cycles on cycles, and another descent into a little ice age is probable in the not too far future

        Worth monitoring? yes

        worth panic? no

      2. Enough of all this serious talk

        Here is something we can all have a good laugh about on a lovely spring Sunday in NZ.
        As Salamu Alaykum -Peace be with you.
        Onward and Upward

        Oh by the way, you should check out isotope data, of which there are lots. It was a lot warmer 120,000 years ago, and 7000 years ago, not to mention a lot of evidence around 2000 and 1000 years ago. And it’s a fair chance that several years in the 30’s were as warm as 1998.

        So although the world has been on a warming trend for the last couple of hundred years, and may have been pushed up a bit but not much by rising CO2, there is no need for Chicken Little alarm, and certainly not any Frannie Armstrong inspired eco jihad.

        It looks touch and go at the moment whether this year will be hotter than 1998, also an El Nino year; but all that demonstrates is that there has been no global warming for around 12 years.
        There are cycles on cycles, and another descent into a little ice age is probable in the not too far future

        Worth monitoring? yes

        worth panic? no

        I’m off to shoot some goats

        1. “It looks touch and go at the moment whether this year will be hotter than 1998, also an El Nino year; but all that demonstrates is that there has been no global warming for around 12 years.”

          Repeating an often debunked argument as if was fact. Epic fail.

          Look up the ‘isotope data’ …my arse. If you had some real data you would reference it …but you don’t.

          Specious appeal to a made up authority, another epic fail.

          Serious talk? Yes, this isn’t some abstract intellectual talk-fest…the real scientists, the one doing actual work in the field or working with real information (not armchair critics who do no real work themselves, or aged academics who long ago lost touch) all understand what is happening and what is at stake. eg

          http://www.christurney.com/Home/Blog/Entries/2010/9/20_A_Lesson_from_Past_Global_Warming.html

      3. Oh you’re free to think and act as you like, but you will be responsible for the consequences.

        Are you still such a child that you imagine you’ll get a free pass?

        “Welcome to the Eco-Totalitarian state.”

        If we had acted a decade ago when we still had time to take measured, calibrated responses, then it would never have come to this. You brought it on yourself and now you whine about it…

    2. Ok… this is getting ridiculous. A decade to examine the science?

      All right, I guess I’m a “denier” (which is why I am writing here—I felt the filmmakers were threatening me personally for daring to disagree with them). But what exactly is it a “denier” denies?

      It stands to reason, from basic physics, that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause the planet to get a bit warmer. Perhaps
      it won’t, but it seems rather believable it would.

      What has the IPCC said? That they think that after decades of fiddling with the numbers, they believe they have found evidence of this warming effect. (And they use the completely pseudoscientific expression “there is a 9 in 10 chance” that they have found such evidence. Fine, it may be nonsense but I get the idea.)

      Yet, there are many many steps of inference between finding such evidence and getting to the point where it is necessary to blow up children to save the planet (assuming your ethics permit that).

      Does anyone have a real idea of how much warming there
      will be? No.

      Does anyone actually know that warming is a bad thing? No.

      Does anyone actually know that reducing CO2 emissions is the cheapest (within, like, a factor of 100) way to control the warming? No.

      Does anyone know that there exists any method of controlling warming that is economically defensible—EVEN for the people from low-lying, poor countries? No.

      Does anyone know that conservation and “green tech” will even lead to reduced CO2 emissions? No.

      So now it’s about scaring children and intimidating people? I think this is horrible. Of course I don’t know how things used to be but I get the impression that anything associated with this sort of thing wouldn’t have passed for serious science some years ago… except maybe in the Soviet Union.

      1. Well Dogthree, I certainly hope you show some consistency if ever diagnosed from a 9 in 10 chance of dying from cancer. What the hell do those stupid doctors know eh?.

  68. If the directors, shareholders and executives of those corporates who profited from the sale of asebestos, tobacco and leaded petrol for decades after it was KNOWN that they were toxic substances, had known they might have been charged with murder for every excess death they KNOWINGLY caused…things would have changed a lot faster.

    If I gave one of your children a poison that killed them within hours, then rightly you would look to see justice done…and promptly. Yet if I fed them a poison that kills them over decades, and falsely claimed that there is no ‘provable cause and effect’ …then why would you happy to give me a free pass?

    We have a powerful right to defend ourselves against the stupidity or greed of those who would put our whole civilisation at risk. If we show that we don’t respect them while doing it, then so be it. Let irresponsible, deluded, dangerous, gullible types like you David feel disrespected. You’ll get over it.

    If you continue to poison public perceptions much longer, the eco-systems that support us ALL may not get over it.

    1. @RedLogix “We have a powerful right to defend ourselves against the stupidity or greed of those who would put our whole civilisation at risk. If we show that we don’t respect them while doing it, then so be it. Let irresponsible, deluded, dangerous, gullible types like you David feel disrespected. You’ll get over it.”

      The collective is more important than the individual. If you will not bow to the State, you will be crushed underfoot.

      I can understand that, in times of war, everyone had to black out their windows, etc. And that not to do so was an act of treachery.

      But you (like all those involved in the 10:10 video) are totally deluded to think that we are in an equivalent situation. Quite the contrary — as CO2 levels rise, so plant growth is more prolific (CO2 is fertilizer for plants!). As temperatures rise, more land becomes potentially arable.

      To use the “calamity de jour” to horrify children, just because “reasoned persuasion” has failed smacks of utter desperation.

      If your scientific basis was sound, then reason would be sufficient. There would be no need to resort to skull-duggery to manufacture hockey-stick graphs, suppress dissenting studies or criticisms, engage in publicity stunts and force-feed “Hollywood docu-fiction” to schools.

      We are passing from the Age of Reason, to the Age of Eco-Totalitarianism.

      1. Carbon dioxide increases plant growth? Which plants? Which parts of plants?

        No-one’s interested in increasing the leaf growth of grain crops. We’re only interested in maximising flowering, fertilising and seed set of such plants. And that’s a shame, because the most important crop, rice, is already showing reduced yields under increased night time temperatures at the “wrong” stage of growth. Not models, not greenhouses, real farms, real crops, real yields.

        http://www.ausfoodnews.com.au/2010/08/13/climate-change-temperature-increases-will-affect-rice-yields.html

        1. Re your link to the rice-yields article – you got sucked in by a poorly worded eco-piece – fairly typical of the genre. Read the article again, and this time think about the meaning of
          “the past 25 years have already cut the yield growth rate by 10-20% in several locations.”.
          This is a typical example where science is perverted by politically active scientists with the collusion of poorly educated journalists.

          1. PaulC – it would not have occurred to you to read the actual scientific paper so:

            Rice yields in tropical/subtropical Asia exhibit large but opposing sensitivities to minimum and maximum temperatures – Welch 2010

            Some important findings:

            Temperature and radiation had statistically significant impacts during both the vegetative and ripening phases of the rice plant. Higher minimum temperature reduced yield, whereas higher maximum temperature raised it; radiation impact varied by growth phase. Combined, these effects imply that yield atmost sites would have grown more rapidly during the high-yielding season but less rapidly during the low-yielding season if observed temperature and radiation trends at the end of the 20th century had not occurred, with temperature trends being more influential.

            Looking ahead, they imply a net negative impact on yield from moderate warming in coming decades. Beyond that, the impact would likely become more negative, because prior research indicates that the impact of maximum temperature becomes negative at higher levels. Diurnal temperature variation must be considered when investigating the impacts of climate change on irrigated rice in Asia.

            Please save your anti – science zealotry for Watts’ wacky forum.

            1. You’ve missed the point. adelady was clearly talking about “Not models, not greenhouses, real farms, real crops, real yields”. That’s REAL actual hard results.

              Looking at the real and not the ‘implied’ results we have from the paper itself and your quote:
              “Higher minimum temperature reduced yield, whereas higher maximum temperature raised it; radiation impact varied by growth phase”.
              It’s only when they start talking about models and ‘implied’ scenarios that they typically wax lyrical about temperature being a problem. With the real measurements – there were no problems and no measurable economic impacts.

              According to the real-world stats, the yields have been increasing – the article and the science says so.
              It’s the RATE of increase that’s been declining – but that’s no surprise at all.
              The paper and journalists reporting the paper have misled both you and adelady by use of deliberately deceptive words.

      2. “Quite the contrary — as CO2 levels rise, so plant growth is more prolific (CO2 is fertilizer for plants!). As temperatures rise, more land becomes potentially arable.”

        Repetition of frequently debunked nonsense. If you were sincere you would have found the correct answer to this nonsense years ago.

        And yes just because you cannot hear German bombers blitzing you from overhead, does not mean there cannot be any threat. Are you so very childish that you do not understand the slow, inexeorable and and subtle nature of this menace? That just because it will not kill you today or tommorrow that cannot be real?

        And yes, the collective is more important than the individual. We remove the rights of criminals, we tax everyone to pay for the collective services we all benefit from, we submit to laws and modes of acceptable behaviour in order that our civilisation can function. Those who persist in acting against the interests of the collective are inevitably crushed. What else did you imagine would happen?

        Even if we were to mutually accept that that the science case was just 50:50 …the cost of failing to act is so vastly greater than the cost of responding, there can be doubt about the imperative course of action. How could you pretend otherwise?

  69. Redlogix:

    You are a perverted byproduct of science, bled from the same vein as that pathetic an disgusting movie. A small mind inhabits your even smaller soul. As a scientist and an educator, you are my failing; not only did you not get what was going on in class, you took what was said and warped into some Unabomber view of the world.

    .

  70. Sorry Sam, but did the great scientist have an argument or just insults? Or have I just gotten you angry because I’ve pricked your denial bubble?

    Oh yes, I understood the what was going on in class alright, and I’ve been doing ‘reasoned persuasion’ for a decade …but it didn’t work.

    At some point in the future apocalyptic weather events, like the Pakistan floods, will become undeniably understood as linked to the world’s addiction to carbon. Now you and I are safe and economically secure, at least for now. But for how long do you think the millions of victims of our culpable inaction be content to leave us alone?

    I’m not the one who will carry out the accounting.

    1. “I’ve been doing ‘reasoned persuasion’ for a decade …but it didn’t work.”

      The ‘reasoned persuasion’ didn’t work because the scientific merit of the case has fallen short under scrutiny (can’t think of any natural climate drivers so it must be CO2).

      So now the ugly propaganda starts.

      And the depraved indoctrination of children.

      And the underlying hate for fellow humans is exposed to full view.

      And it’s all funny, and in good taste – apparently

      1. The underlying hate for fellow humans? Where does this come from.

        What I hate is that we, the comfortable wealthy industrial societies, turned our backs on the chance to do real good in the world. How much better off would the people of the South Asian or African continents be if we’d hurried up rather than held back on developing small-scale, easily installed and maintained renewable power systems? Villagers and residents of small towns would dearly love to have a cheap, possibly free, source of power for even a few hours per day. This could promote small scale industry and food processing and education and a myriad other things that would improve their lives unbelievably compared to the same amount of power squandered on too cold air conditioning of unused bedrooms in Oz or the US.

        But no. We could have started ten or twenty years ago. We preferred to moan and whine about our “freedom” to continue endangering the lives of coal miners and ruin the pristine waters of mountain streams with slag rather than modernise our antiquated approach to technology. And simultaneously improve the lives of millions of people.

        Shame on us.

        1. @adelady “The underlying hate for fellow humans? Where does this come from.”

          From the 10:10 video. Why the smiling assassination of dissenters?

          Mini self-contained nuclear power stations are imminent. Zero CO2 emissions. Zero fossil fuels. They lasts for years, buried in the ground. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

          1. Sounds good. How are they cooled?

            France and Tennessee have had major shutdowns of their current reactors because of lack of cooling water at the hottest times of the year. Either the rivers dried up or the water got too hot. Neither event is good news for any kind of power plant that relies on stuff being burned or getting super hot..

        2. “We preferred to moan and whine about our “freedom” to continue endangering the lives of coal miners and ruin the pristine waters of mountain streams with slag rather than modernise our antiquated approach to technology”

          You are talking about irresponsible polluting here. No human-caused climate change sceptic is advocating that. On the contrary, we all have a vested interest in mitigating pollution so no argument there.

          But isn’t this blog about “Global Warming and the future of New Zealand”?

          The metrics though, are just not reflecting the irrational alarm being promulgated.

          As of now:-

          Ocean Heat Content – falling
          Ocean Mean Sea Level – falling
          Sea Ice Extent – recovering
          Atmospheric temperatures – plateaued

          There’s the dis-connect.The anecdotal “evidence” (Pakistan floods, NH heat waves etc) supporting the CAGW hypothesis are not being borne out in the metrics. So why then make a misplaced pollution-CAGW connection when it is not necessary?

          A responsible attitude to pollution is admirable in itself, why sully yourself with ugly agit-prop.

          1. Sea ice extent recovering, on which planet?

            Or is that the wonderful technique of adding NH and SH sea ice? Well that’s not much of a comfort if that’s what you’re talking about. As far as I remember, Antarctic sea ice is projected to increase for a few years at the same time as extent, area and volume of Arctic sea ice decreases. (There is no volume measure relevant for the SH because the sea ice there melts out fully every year.)

            Unfortunately, the Antarctic might be following the projection but the Arctic is dropping like a stone. But the only item of serious interest in the Antarctic is the ice sheet. Any remarks about how well GIS and WAIS are doing?

            1. Sea ice extent recovering, on which planet?

              This planet.

              JAXA AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent -15% or greater
              JAXA AMSR-E Sea Ice Area
              NSIDC Arctic Sea Ice Extent – 15% or greater
              University of Bremen Arctic Sea Ice Extent – 15% or greater
              NANSEN Artic ROOS- Sea ice extent 15% or greater
              NANSEN Artic ROOS- Sea ice AREA
              Danish Meteorological Institute Arctic Sea Ice Extent – 30% or greater
              NH Anomaly
              Danish Meteorological Institute – Mean Temperature above 80°N

            2. Again total misrepresentation. Recovery from what, the record 2007 year is probably the data point you are dishonestly cherry picking.

              From the people who actually do the measuring:

              http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq.html#why_more

              Quote:

              Is Arctic sea ice starting to recover?

              In 2008, Arctic sea ice reached a minimum extent that was about 10 percent greater than the record low of 2007, and the minimum extent in 2009 was greater than either 2007 or 2008. Does this mean that Arctic sea ice is beginning to recover?

              Even though the extent of Arctic sea ice has not returned to the record low of 2007, the data show that it is not recovering. To recover would mean returning to within its previous, long-term range. Arctic sea ice in September 2008 remained 34 percent below the average extent from 1979 to 2000, and in September 2009, it was 24 percent below the long term average. In addition, sea ice remains much thinner than in the past, and so is more vulnerable to further decline. The data suggest that the ice reached a record low volume in 2008, and has thinned even more in 2009. Sea ice extent normally varies from year to year, much like the weather changes from day to day. But just as one warm day in October does not negate a cooling trend toward winter, a slight annual gain in sea ice extent over a record low does not negate the long-term decline.

            4. 2010: and the Arctic sea ice almost certainly set a new record for low volume at Sept minimum. No recovery there, at all…

              Sea level isn’t falling, either, and (IIRC) the 12 months to July were the warmest in the temp record. OHC measurement is subject to uncertainty, but there’s no doubt about the long term trend — upwards.

            5. Gareth Re 194

              I’ve addressed your points 197 – 204 but I do concede that recent trends are short-term and not guaranteed to continue but the same can be said for long-term.

              “no doubt” implies absolute certainty but given the recent inflections, are we really that certain?

            6. “Are we really that certain?”

              Yes. For OHC, see here and read the papers linked.

              The direction of change is set by the earth’s energy imbalance, caused by CO2 and other GHG forcing. OHC will continue to rise until the planet reaches thermal equilibrium at whatever GHG levels eventually stabilise at.

            8. RC2, you’re obsessing about the wiggles. In the short term, for almost any climate figure you care to mention (OHC, sea level, temp etc) wiggles can dominate. Longer term trends are the important thing.

            9. Yes I am obsessing about the wiggles because those wiggles give me an indication of the current condition.

              What I observe is points of inflexion across the metrics in the mid 2000’s (some changes of sign) and the new trends have continued unabated to date.

              I don’t give a toss about model simulation projections or (with respect) your opinion of what “will” happen in the future; I want to know what is ACTUALLY happening now.

              The test (of your perspective and mine) over the coming few years is: will the present short-term trend continue into a long-term trend (don’t forget the anecdotal weather) or will it change course again and return to the previous long-term trend?

              Time will be the adjudicator.

            10. Maybe I should leave this conversation the Gareth, but I cannot help but point out the hopeless inconsistency in your argument.

              One one hand we’ve managed to agree that climate is variable and reacts to many different forcings on many different time scales. (A statement of the obvious and undeniable.) You keep telling us that all the changes we are seeing are simply ‘natural’ and have nothing to do with CO2.

              On the other hand if you want to insinuate that temperature should increase monotonically in response to increasing CO2 ( ie a rising response with no wiggles) … then logically there can be no room for any other influences to act.

              You cannot have it both ways.

            11. “On the other hand if you want to insinuate that temperature should increase monotonically in response to increasing CO2 ( ie a rising response with no wiggles) … then logically there can be no room for any other influences to act.”

              No, this is not my case (yours maybe?). Time for a reread.

              You should have left if to Gareth.

            12. Time will be the adjudicator.

              In this respect you are undoubtedly correct. But it is time we don’t have. Every extra gigatonne of carbon in the atmosphere commits the system to more warming, making the end result worse. You and I may not live to see that, but our children will curse us for our stupidity.

            13. Except that those gigatonnes of carbon are not producing the prescribed AGW signature of warming in the troposphere.

              The tropospheric “hot spot” is not being revealed by the satellites and you have the problem of the “missing heat”.

              You are replacing scientific method with undue reliance on the results of computer simulations that are hard-wired for AGW-only.

            14. The “hot spot” is not a signature of warming by GHGs – it would appear with warming from any cause. Stratospheric cooling, however, is unique to GHG forced warming, and is clearly seen in the data.

              You are woefully mistaken about climate models: they are not “hard wired” for anything, they are numerical models of the physics of the atmosphere/ocean system. The climate features that emerge from the models (pattern of “weather” etc) are a good (but not perfect) representation of what we observe, which shows that we’ve got the basic physics more or less right.

            15. If not a tropospheric hot spot, then what is the signature of your warming @ 210?

              The warming MUST occur BELOW the GHG blanket because we are told by AGW proponents that GHG’s “trap” heat.

              Have addressed the models 249 – 255

            16. “The warming MUST occur BELOW the GHG blanket because we are told by AGW proponents that GHG’s “trap” heat.”

              And that’s why I know you don’t actually understand what it is you are pretending to debunk.

              I’m not going to do your homework for you, because if you are sincere (and not just some professional disinformer, which is how you are behaving) you’d want to know the correct science for it’s own sake and your own intellectual curiosity….and no-one could stop you from finding it.

              Which you will never do hanging about denier sites.

              PS … don’t use any bridges, vehicles, enter tall buildings, or god forbid fly in an aircraft. Or indeed use anything engineered/technical system designed anytime in the last 15 odd years. They’re pretty much all designed using those dreadful ‘computer models’ that you are so certain cannot predict anything.

            17. “‘computer models’ that you are so certain cannot predict anything.”

              On the contrary.

              I’ve shown (249 – 255) that the models that use CO2 spin-up datasets (specifically, the Law Dome ice core-Mauna Loa splice) ARE hard-wired to predict ACO2 induced warming.

            18. You clearly don’t understand how the models work. I suggest you do some reading: the section on modelling in Spencer Weart’s History of Global Warming (link in blogroll) is excellent.

              If you run the models without an increase in GHGs (but all other forcings as measured), you get no rise in temp over the last 40 years (see IPCC AR4, WG1 SPM, fig 4).

            19. “If you run the models without an increase in GHGs (but all other forcings as measured), you get no rise in temp over the last 40 years (see IPCC AR4, WG1 SPM, fig 4).”

              Exactly.

              And both sets (ACO2 forced and naturally forced) fail to account for the 1930’s warming.

              This is because the only forcing in the IPCC Natural Category is solar. The consequences and shortcomings of this approach I have already described (see 253, 255, 257 – or thereabouts depending on whether the comment ID’s are reset).

            20. “You clearly don’t understand how the models work.”

              It is not so much how the models work but how RF methodology works. This is the prescribed methodology that the models mimic.

              The hard-wiring takes place in the spin-up parameterization input runs BEFORE any of the physics formulations are invoked in simulation runs.

              The Law Dome icecore-Mauna Loa CO2 concentrations in ppm are transformed into radiative flux to give CS.

              How else are the 2xCO2 scenarios run?

              Please refer comment 268 (or thereabouts) October 4, 2010 at 10:01 pm for my understanding of the models.

            21. This is also wrong. IPCC natural forcings are solar and explosive volcanic. Put the two together and you get a reasonable hindcast of the 20th century (see, for instance, Fig 9.5, WG1, Chap 9, p684).

              Your point about CO2 is not clear. On the one hand you say the models are “hard-wired” to show increasing temps, but when you remove the CO2 forcing temps don’t rise. That shows that the models are incorporating the radiation physics of GHGs correctly, and gives us confidence that increasing GHGs further will result in further warming.

            22. The hard-wiring takes place in the spin-up parameterization input runs BEFORE any of the physics formulations are invoked in simulation runs.

              Gobbledegook.

              Models include radiation transfer code that calculates the effect of any give GHG trajectory, whether historical or projected in a scenario as the model is run. Radiative forcing, for instance, is an output of the models, not an input (IIRC).

            23. “This is also wrong. IPCC natural forcings are solar and explosive volcanic. Put the two together and you get a reasonable hindcast of the 20th century (see, for instance, Fig 9.5, WG1, Chap 9, p684).”

              Here’s the RF Table 2.4 from AR4
              http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/fig/figure-2-4.jpeg

              Please show me “explosive volcanic” in the Natural Category.

              Volcanic events can only be incorporated in retrospect.

              “Your point about CO2 is not clear. On the one hand you say the models are “hard-wired” to show increasing temps, but when you remove the CO2 forcing temps don’t rise. That shows that the models are incorporating the radiation physics of GHGs correctly, and gives us confidence that increasing GHGs further will result in further warming.”

              The problem is two-fold:

              1. The models fail to mimic the last decade’s plateaued temperatures with CO2 forcing in and also fail to mimic the 1930’s warming with CO2 forcing in so there can be no confidence ascribed to models using CO2 forcing, in the current RF configuration.

              2. The models fail similarly in the 1930’s and 1990’s with natural forcings in so no confidence can be ascribed to models using natural forcing in, in the current RF configuration.

              The situation is more complex as we are neglecting feedbacks. Models are in continuous evolution which I describe in 257 so simulation submissions for AR5 will return different results than those submitted for AR4.

              The conventional models of AR4 are at odds with newer superparameterized models that will be submitted to AR5, in regard to feedbacks from clouds.

            24. Not gobbledegook.

              Here’s a PCMDI specification.

              A. PIcntrl: 1850 to 2100
              C480: B. 200-year spinup from Levitus climatological conditions
              C490: B. 250-year spinup from Levitus climatological conditions
              C. Monthly varying, but annually fixed, some industrial and natural aerosols and Boucher’s 1850 sulfate burden, see solar constant is fixed at 1367 (W/m^2)

              A. 20C3M: 1850 to 2000
              C483: B. 200-year spinup from Levitus climatological conditions
              C493: B. 250-year spinup from Levitus climatological conditions

              D. Greenhouse gases: http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/IN/GHGA1B.LP ; Boucher’s time varying sulfate burden (1850 to 2000), see http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/cp4×3in.html (#16); other forcing agents have monthly changes, but no annual changes

              A. SRES B1: 2000 to 2100
              C484: B. Initialized from end of C483
              C494: B. Initialized from end of C493
              D. Greenhouse gases: http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/IN/GHGB1.LP ; Boucher’s time varying sulfate burden (2000 to 2100) for IPCC SRES B1, see http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/cp4×3in.html (#16); other forcing agents have monthly changes, but no annual changes

              A. SRES A1B: 2000 to 2100
              C485: B. Initialized from end of C483
              C495: B. Initialized from end of C493
              D. Greenhouse gases: http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/IN/GHGA1B.LP ; Boucher’s time varying sulfate burden (2000 to 2100) for IPCC SRES A1B, see
              http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/cp4×3in.html (#16);
              other forcing agents have monthly changes, but no annual changes

              This:

              “Models include radiation transfer code that calculates the effect of any give GHG trajectory, whether historical or projected in a scenario as the model is run. Radiative forcing, for instance, is an output of the models, not an input (IIRC).”

              Takes place after the initialization process but RF is dependent on the relevant parameter. It is a simple calculation (external to the models) as I have shown down-thread (263) to arrive at RF from CO2 concentrations in ppm, for example.

            26. While waiting for my response to “gobbledegook” to be dug out of moderation (sorry), here’s the GISS ModelE code that demonstrates that the first place the code looks to in the INITIALIZATIONS sequence, is the parameters (PARAM database) in the INPUT routine (abridged for clarity).

              If the run is the first spin-up run, the parameters are the historical forcings datasets.

              If the run is a subsequent simulation run, the parameters will be set by the equilibrium condition of the preceding run (in this case spin-up)

              PROGRAM GISS_modelE,160
              !@sum MAIN GISS modelE main time-stepping routine
              !@auth Original Development Team
              !@ver 1.0 (Based originally on B399)
              USE FILEMANAGER, only : openunit,closeunit
              USE TIMINGS, only : ntimemax,ntimeacc,timing,timestr
              USE PARAM

              C**** INITIALIZATIONS
              C****
              CALL TIMER (MNOW,MDUM)

              CALL INPUT (istart,ifile)

              SUBROUTINE INPUT (istart,ifile) 1,131
              C****
              C**** THIS SUBROUTINE SETS THE PARAMETERS IN THE C ARRAY, READS IN THE
              C**** INITIAL CONDITIONS, AND CALCULATES THE DISTANCE PROJECTION ARRAYS
              C****
              USE FILEMANAGER, only : openunit,closeunit
              USE TIMINGS, only : timing,ntimeacc
              USE PARAM

            27. Please show me “explosive volcanic” in the Natural Category.

              IPCC AR4, WG1, Chapter 2, sec 2.7.2 Natural forcings: explosive volcanic activity (p193 et sub).

              1: The last decade’s global temp record falls well within the ensemble range of model runs for the period.

              2: Models do a pretty good job of 30s and 90s, see references I provided above.

            28. Yes, the models are run to equilibrium state with a prescribed atmosphere and other forcings, before being fed the trajectory chosen for study. This does not mean that the “parameters are hard-wired”, it means that the intial climate forcings are chosen to allow a stable “climate” within the model. The response to forcing from that state is prescribed by the physics in the model. If you want to argue about the radiation transfer code, then you need a different debate.

              AR5 modelling will use the latest versions of the earth systems models available, and also use new “policy relevant” scenarios. This means that they will (of course) produce projections that differ from AR4. That’s a good thing, not a sign of failure.

            29. All of the issues we have been discussing (and more) are being addressed at the Judith Curry Blog.

              I note that I am not out on a limb.

              There are some very influential people assembling for what will be an ongoing series in respect to climate models that will have international repercussions.

              Given the level and quality of input, I urge you to follow the progression there (see October 5, 2010 at 6:20 pm comment up-thread for link – was 229).

              Not much more (certainly nothing internationally influential) to be gained by our continuance here.

            30. So you are happy to accept that you are wrong in the particular respects I have pointed out? Or are you just not prepared to continue the discussion…

            31. “So you are happy to accept that you are wrong in the particular respects I have pointed out? Or are you just not prepared to continue the discussion”

              Whether you or I are right or wrong at this juncture is immaterial in this 1:1 debate.

              The appropriate international forum for all the issues we are covering has now opened up at Judith Curry’s blog.

              I suggest that our respective points of view are presented on that forum where deficiencies of argument are immediately taken to task by experts. Given that the focus of the forum is uncertainty in the models, I think you will find that you are defending the indefensible.

              So I will be continuing this discussion on that forum (but not here) and whether you contribute or not there is up to you.

              Thank you for the opportunity to present my point of view on your Blog; this discussion has been much more stimulating than preaching to the converted at sceptic sites.

          2. “Ocean Heat Content – falling
            Ocean Mean Sea Level – falling
            Sea Ice Extent – recovering
            Atmospheric temperatures – plateaued”

            Total nonsense. More repetition of utter bollocks that 30 mins of sincere effort would rectify. You know this, you know that you are lying… but you persist in this self-deception.

            Why?

            2. Yes that graph from NOAA confirms that you are completely wrong. Ocean heat content over the last 40 years has increased substantially. The modest plateau in the last 5 years is completely consistent with similar behaviour at earlier periods.

              Certainly there is nothing there to substantiate the nonsense claim that ocean heat content is ‘falling’ in any significant way.

              Sea Levels.

              Why pick NOAA for one data source and Goddard’s cryptic little trend plot for another? …when NOAA has a much more comprehensive set of information on this complex topic. eg:

              http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html
              or:
              http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.shtml?stnid=690-011

              Is this the best you can do? This is why I’ve given up on ‘reasonable persuasion”. I’ve seen this drivel over and over, and countering it never ever makes any difference.

            3. “The modest plateau in the last 5 years”

              No, that’s a falling OHC trend over the last 5 years RedLogix, don’t kid yourself it isn’t.

              You’ve linked to regional and local MSL trends – don’t the global metrics support your argument?

            4. And it was a falling trend between 1960 and 1970 and again between 1980 and 1986. Yet over the entire period of the graph it’s gone up substantially, a far greater increase than any short-term decrease.

              You can see that can you?

              I didn’t spot it at first…that Sea Level graph of Goddard’s is data from just this one year only… again you make the basic mistake of confusing noise with signal.

            5. This is progress.

              You’ve just described the planets natural warming-cooling cycle and the general warming trend coming out of the LIA.

              Nothing to do, with CO2.

              Okay, I’ll concede the 4 months falling MSL but a 5 year falling trend is definitely at odds with the current alarm.

              Have you considered the factors that influence MSL. (ground water extraction; increased run-off from urbanisation)?

              The 3.3mm/yr is from the satellites but IPCC quotes 1.7 globally and Hannah 2004 1.6 for NZ.

              A recent study has calculated ground water extraction to add 0,8mm/yr, ice melt will add more, say 1mm/yr, thermal expansion from OHC (now contracting) ?mm.

              So where’s the alarming MSL rise due to anthro carbon?

            6. Well Ocean Heat value in the period 1960 – 70 is definitely a much larger falling trend for 10 years… far more sustained and deeper than the relatively modest little fall over the last 5.

              Point being that these short-term variations, as you say, are perfectly normal and have nothing much to do with CO2. Therefore cherry picking one falling period, while ignoring the overall 40 year rise that totally dominates the trend is quite meaningless. And you’re intelligent enough to know this.

              As for sea level, as I said before it’s a complex topic:

              http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/mtsparker.html

              Trying to tell us that a single year of data has anything at all to do with the long-term trend is again quite meaningless.

      2. “The ‘reasoned persuasion’ didn’t work because the scientific merit of the case has fallen short under scrutiny”

        Your mind was closed from the outset. At some level you know this and you know that you are wrong, but you have invested too much into this to change your position. You will take the cowardly route and maintain a faux-certainty of your rightness to the very end. There is no evidence, no case, no report that will ever change your mind. That much is certain.

        Because to ever admit to even the smallest possibility that the science was actually right, the enormity of the overwhelming consequences would expose your total moral failure for all to see.

        It won’t be me that condemns you personally Richard and David, it will be your children and theirs. Worse you may just get their pity.

  71. 10:10 has just done to Cap & Trade what the Muppet Show did for Advertising with this Reagan era spoof –
    First Muppet: “What do you think about Gonella Bread?”
    2nd Muppet:
 “I don’t like it.”

    First Muppet grabs cannon, blows away 2nd Muppet and points barrel at audience,:
    “Now what do YOU think about Gonella Bread?”
    I’m glad Britain’s mad men have come to their senses, now will someone please buy off Morano and Monckton so we can go back to science as usual ?

    1. Sighs… is that the best you have…oh mighty learned one? A puerile, desperately unoriginal mangling of my nom, and an even more banal suggestion that I’m mentally unbalanced and need ‘help’. That kind of thing was passe within months of the first dial up BBS’s.

      Does anyone still imagine that this debate is a polite ‘marketplace of ideas’, where the free exchange of ideas and reasoning results in a persuaded consensus for action? Hell no.

      It’s a culture war. And one side will win…

      1. Sorry, I disagree. No one will win.

        Even if some Nobel Prize winning science bombshell comes out with entirely new mechanisms correctly describing the physics of CO2 as having different behaviours and effects in the climate as opposed to a laser – so it’s not causing the current warming. Anybody feel like a winner?

        Such an outcome doesn’t change the chemistry and biology of the oceans. No more coral reefs, not too many fish.

        Free to use up all the carbon sink fuels in the earth’s crust? Goodbye any chance for following generations to use, rather than burn, those resources.

        And if that Nobel Prize winning science miracle doesn’t arrive? We hope fervently that climate sensitivity is as low as possible.

        No winners anywhere here.

        1. Of course you are right, there will be no winner…the final adjudicator will be the climate itself.

          And she will condemn us all….with brutal efficiency. The only ‘victory’ I’ll get to see will be the final irony of being able to say “I told you so”, just before I starve to death…

  73. I’m in the group that thinks the video is a PR disaster. For those who think otherwise, try this mental exercise.

    Imagine that the whole thing is a South Park episode — no real people and you expect the cartoon characters to be subjected to violence, and you expect it to be funny.

    What would your impression be then?

    I think it would be, obviously, viewed as a parody of the AGW proponents. South Park would be portraying the AGW movement as deranged.

    Same as the real one is viewed.

    1. Nah… this kind of thing isn’t intended to work as any kind of ‘mental exercise’. That’s the power of it, it short-circuits all the self-serving intellectual bs, and goes right for the gut. It’s meant to be a kick in the gonads.

      That’s why it works, that’s why everyone is SO upset about it,.

  74. My comment ratings on this are because everyone is upset…. because it WORKS.

    We’ve been doing reasoned, intellectual fair play debate for twenty years. But one little video portraying a handful of obviously fake cartoonish deaths…and you’re frothing with outrage. You aren’t concerned about the ‘deaths’, or the fact it was nice white schoolkiddies or nice corporate office suits …or that it portrays an absurdist grotesquely over the top fascism.

    No you are angry because you ‘get’ the simple, direct message to the guts…’failure to act will result in people dying’ is brutally effective. And you are reacting defensively because you know I’m right and that conflicts and embarrasses you. Tough, you’ll get over it.

      1. LOL! Sally, they call that a Godwin. When people start with the Nazi references, they’ve lost the plot and conceded the argument.

        Your comments are completely hyperbolic and emotive.
        That would be Joseph Goebbels you’re referring to, BTW? Comments like yours have a lot more in common with Goebbels propagandist arts than a fairly silly video, and people not buying your irrational nonsense on an internet forum.

          1. Sally, open your eyes and read the comments. Look where the “vitriol” is being expressed. You are one of several who throws around fascist and Nazi references.

            Would I be right in deducing that the Watts site is pushing something in those terms perhaps? It looks like a few of the faithful are repeating their lines with great care on here.

            No, Sally, you haven’t lost the plot. i think you might be following the script quite well!

            1. FYI, I have not been at the Watts site. Your assumptions are in line with your closed mind. The indoctrination of fanatics pushing the global warming scam reminds me of the going-ons of an ultra-fundamentalist religious sect.

              You have been brainwashed and refuse to look at your plight with a set of fresh eyes. Just try it and you might wake-up to just how ridiculous your ravings are.

              But from what I have read today on this blog, I doubt that this will happen.

              So sad!

            2. You didn’t take this “No Pressure” video literally did you?

              Oh dear..how very sad.

            3. Good Grief, Sally, what a bunch of baloney! And I think you posted that with a straight face too. The level of irony contained there is off the scale.

              Whether you’ve been to Watt’s site or not, you’ve drunk the Kool Aid somewhere similar. The mindless rhetoric tells the story. I wonder who the “leader” of your “cult” of anti-science is?

              The “ravings” and “Fundamentalist religious sect” are what you have demonstrated here in your postings.

              “You have been brainwashed and refuse to look at your plight with a set of fresh eyes. Just try it and you might wake-up to just how ridiculous your ravings are.” That’s uncannily, unconsciously exactly what you reveal in your posts. You couldn’t have described your own position more exactly.

              Don’t worrry, Sally, you won’t get “contaminated” with open-mindedness. You’re all locked up, and, sadly, that will be that.

        1. Actually RL I didn’t waste my time in watching what appears to be absolute trash. I unfortunately found a link to this blinkered site and have been shocked at the tactics of its followers.

          Time you bullies all got a life and let go.

          1. I unfortunately found a link to this blinkered site and have been shocked at the tactics of its followers.

            Cut and paste that one a lot, do you? Not just part of some dreary Wattsian bandwagon, then?

            Feel free to grace us with your absence.

  76. Redlogix @ 188, 189

    We’re in business again.

    RedLogix @ 189

    You seem to imply here (correct me if I’m wrong) that the assumption is: because there has been a 40 year sustained rise prior to the 5 yr fall (blip) then a return to continued sustained rise is guaranteed in the near future.

    This assumption is at odds with the planets warming-cooling cycle and has been challenged by Geologists

    Akasofu
    http://mybroadband.co.za/photos/data/500/akasofu_ipcc.jpg

    Easterbrook
    http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/research/global/coming-century-predictions.pdf

    So over the next 30 years one faction will be proved right and the other wrong by simple observation. In view of the cycle, can a cool 30 yr phase be discounted?

    I note that Akasofu’s cycle shows a much hotter climate around 2050 than we are currently experiencing but again this is natural and not ACO2 induced.

    1. “You seem to imply here (correct me if I’m wrong) that the assumption is: because there has been a 40 year sustained rise prior to the 5 yr fall (blip) then a return to continued sustained rise is guaranteed in the near future.”

      Classic misdirection technique #… oh hell I’ve seen it so often…putting false words into you opponents mouth in order to pretend to demolish a stupid argument.

      The trend will do what it likes, next week there might be a massive volcano that changes the pattern for a decade. The fact that climate displays sensitivity to so many different drivers is cause for far less complacency… not more. So yes the trends will carry on showing varied bumps and turns in response to all manner of things. It’s what the real climate scientists have been telling you all along, but you never read them, so you missed it.

      But the underlying rising trend of the last five decades …in any number of independent measures… has only one rational explanation. Rising CO2.

      Interesting also that you dismiss climate as innately unpredicatable on one hand, and then try to pass off a single prediction based on pure speculation as gospel on the other.

      1. Reassuring that you recognize the existence of “so many different climate drivers”.

        The problem (as Akasofu’s graph displays), is that the projection of a continued warming trend in accordance with the apparent CO2/Temp correlation, leads to the (as yet unsuccessful) search for the “missing heat”.

        I note your arrival at the explanation of the major climate driver is via rational means.

        To ensure we are debating the same subject, I need to establish the basis of argument i.e. is the “Rising CO2” that you refer to, the same CO2 that is unable to heat the ocean via LWIR back radiation?

        1. What are you dribbling on about? “Reassuring that you recognize the existence of “so many different climate drivers”. As I said if had been reading the real climate science, instead of wallowing about in the denier site’s nonsense, you wouldn’t be coming out with these basic, basic misunderstandings.

          I’ll make it very simple and slow. Yes the real scientists have been telling us from the very beginning that climate is sensitive to a range of different forcings. CO2 being only one of them. Sorting out which influence is having what effect, when and to what extent is what the science has ALWAYS been about.

          But lets go with Akasofu’s (the retired plasma/high energy particle/astronomer) graph for a moment. Let’s pretend he has a point, that the earth is still warming out of the last interglacial, the so-called “Little Ice Age”. Interglacials are of course driven by the Milankovitch solar forcing cycles, which means that if Akasofu is right the increasing temp trends we are seeing are due to solar forcing.

          Let’s pretend that this increasing solar forcing is happening. (In the time frames concerned it’s not, but let’s pretend). Now you have increasing solar forcing, AND increasing CO2 forcing …both effects well-known from all the ice-cores to be mutually coupled together in a positive feedback that amplifies the effect of solar forcing.

          How did you get to the idea that this could possibly mean that the planet was cooling?

          And if you had bothered to read the link earlier on I gave on the issues surrounding measurement of ocean heat content you wouldn’t be staking out an argument on such ground.

          1. A cooling phase in a warm-cool cycle is not a long-term cooling trend.

            I already acknowledge (see 197) that the planet is in a general warming trend coming out of the LIA but again, the alarming temp rise due to ACO2 emissions is not borne out in the metrics – hence the breakdown in the apparent correlation.

            Solar “forcing” is only assumed by the IPCC’s Radiative Forcing (RF) methodology.

            RF methodology (in case of solar 0.15Wm2) has shortcomings when we analyze the events of the 90’s.

            The late 90’s warming was attributed to ACO2 but in the early 90’s, the earths albedo decreased (reduced cloudiness caused by what?) to the the extent that more TSI was let in to heat the oceans and subsequently the atmosphere.

            But this phenomenon was not accounted for in the IPCC’s Natural Forcings category in its RF table, nor was it accounted for in the models. If there is no adjustment mechanism available using RF, the accounting must take place by feedbacks.

            There has been some progression in model evolution since the IPCC AR4 2007 submissions that produced positive feedback from clouds. Even back in 2005, the reports authors were aware that models using superparameterization (CRM) were returning negative feedbacks from clouds but where were those papers cited in AR4?

            The Royal Society (5 years later) now acknowledges this development.

            55 Other uncertainties may start to be resolved. For example, satellites now incorporate improved techniques to measure cloud characteristics across the globe. Using climate models for day-to-day weather prediction will enable, for example, identification of errors in the representation of clouds in models; any such errors will lead to errors in forecasts of maximum and minimum temperatures (which are easily observed). New high-performance computers will allow climate models to represent some smaller-scale phenomena (including cloud systems and details of tropical storms) directly, and are
            expected to improve confidence in regional predictions.

            Basically, we are back to square one for IPCC AR5 temperature projections.

            1. Don’t you get puffed and panty dragging the goalposts all over the show like this?

              First you claim everything’s cooling. When that flops you have a go at ocean heat content, and then an idea that has zero science traction that essentially the sun is still driving us up from the LIA , ignoring totally that there has been absolutely no significant change in the solar forcing that correlates to any of the changes we’ve been measuring. Do you imagine that the real scientists didn’t think to check the sun???

              And now clouds, in which you do a bit of maybe this and maybe that, hopeful handwaving…. and then pronounce the science dead and ‘back at square one’.

              Do you think we can’t see what you are doing here? You’ve been digging holes all over the paddock.

            2. There will never be just one set of goalposts in a complex chaotic system but the IPCC insists on just one – temperature. As this has been raked over ad infinitum, I will resort to plagiarism:

              1 Are clouds a forcing or a feedback; the short answer is who cares; this is semantic quagmire. To refresh everyone’s memory and make sure we are talking about the same thing; a forcing is an exogenous factor which has a climatic effect; now CO2 is already in the climate system and humans are natural but we are told that human CO2, ACO2, is exogenous to the [natural] system and therefore a forcing; on that basis cloud seeding would make those clouds exogenous. What about CR caused clouds? If you accept Svensmark, Shaviv, Veizer views on CR, CRs cause clouds to form so the CR is the forcing but the clouds are still feedback. This confusion comes from the IPCC definition of forcing: Christopher Game explains the limitations of IPCC definition of forcing:

              “forcing” can include any amount of internal state variable contribution, as well as external driving function contributions. And according to this IPCC formalism, there is only one dynamically distinct internal state variable, the climate temperature, that functionally determines the apparently distinct but really merely functionally dependent “feedbacks” of their formalism.”

              By including internal or endogenous factors as forcings and using only temperature [and therein radiative imbalance] as the measure of those forcings the IPCC ignores the fact that what it designates as feedbacks, such as clouds, can be unrelated to temperature or radiative flux; as Spencer and Brasell note:

              “Since it is well known that the processes that control cloud formation and dissipation are myriad, complex, and in general not perfectly correlated with surface temperature variations
              (e.g., vertical temperature and water vapor profiles, horizontal temperature gradients), the existence of non-feedback sources of cloud variability should not be unexpected.” From:

              http://www.drroyspencer.com/Spencer-and-Braswell-08.pdf

              By regarding clouds as a +ve feedback the IPCC modeling artificially inflates climate sensitivity. Even if we ignore Spencer and Braswell’s legitimate concerns about the stochastic, non-feedback nature of clouds and look simply at the radiative effects of clouds and cloud types we see that clouds, en toto, are a NEGATIVE feedback:

              http://stm.arm.gov/2008/presentations/0310/7_Dupont.pdf

              2 Climate sensitivity, equilibrium [ECS], the delayed sensitivity, and transient sensitivity [TCS], what is happening now. ECS depends on either storage of the heat so that it can’t be measured now by the designated internal state variable of temperature, which is both impossible and not happening, or that long-term, lags in the climate system are created so that the effect will not be realised for centuries. ECS is usually associated with the alleged long life, or retention of ACO2 in the atmosphere. But ACO2 is not long-lived in the atmosphere:

              http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5e507c9970c-pi

              Clearly the IPCC views about the lon-life of ACO2 is an outlier.

              As for TCS; this is defeated by the simple fact that CO2 concentration has gone up ~ 40-45% since 1900 but temperature, again the designated internal state variable for measuring CS, both ECS and TCS, has only gone up ~ 0.7C. According to Table 8.2, AR4, p631 has an average ECS for all relevant models of 3.2C; the TCS should be, given that CO2 has risen by 45%, 3.2/10 x 4.5= 1.44C; the actual temperature has risen by only 1/2 of that; and even the IPCC acknowledges that TSI has contributed either 0.4C [TAR] or 0.1C[AR4] to temperature increase; ignoring natural variability and the predominance of +ve PDOs since 1850 [which arguably account for all the recent temperature increase] the TCS falls short of what it should be by either 0.84C or as much as 1.14C.

              It is obvious that CS estimates by IPCC are grossly exaggerated.

              “First you claim everything’s cooling’

              Didn’t need to – the metrics prove that.

              “hopeful handwaving”

              Nope:-

              Wyant 2006
              Bretherton 2006
              Christy 2010
              Knox-Douglas 2010
              Spencer-Braswell 2010

              Need I go on?

              “science dead”

              Are computer model projections “science” in the first place?

              Are they not guesses at a future condition with considerable uncertainty?

            4. Re solar forcing @ 225

              Running a natural forcings only simulation where the only natural climate driver is the solar forcings dataset (contentious in itself) that is used in the anthro forced simulations negates the expectation of any meaningful result.

              The Royal Society (and IPCC) say:

              34 Natural forcing due to sustained variations in the energy emitted by the Sun over the past 150 years is estimated to be small (about 0.12 Wm-2);

              But solar influence is far more complex than that (including cloudiness variations and solar influence in combination with other climate driver hypotheses) as this paper by Dr Theodor Landscheidt shows

              SOLAR ACTIVITY: A DOMINANT FACTOR IN CLIMATE DYNAMICS
              http://www.john-daly.com/solar/solar.htm

              Excerpt
              “Variations in radiation are not the the sun’s only way to influence climate. Between energetic solar eruptions and galactic cosmic radiation modulated by the solar wind on the one hand and electric parameters of the atmosphere on the other, exist couplings, the strength of which varies by 10% in the course of days, years, and even decades [113]. The most important change is to be found in the downward air-earth current density, which flows between the ionosphere and the surface. R. Markson and M. Muir [71] have shown how this affects the thunderstorm activity, while B. A. Tinsley [113] assumes that electrically induced changes in the microphysics of clouds (electrofreezing) enhance ice nucleation and formation of clouds. These approaches have the advantage to be independent of dynamic coupling between different layers of the atmosphere, since these variations affect the whole atmosphere. Therefore, IPCC scientists who allege that there are not any physical explanations of a solar impact on climate change must be unaware of the relevant literature.”

              Re CO2 back radiation and clouds

              LWIR back radiation from CO2 is unable to heat the ocean. This is described in detail here

              Why Greenhouse Gases Won’t Heat the Oceans
              http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-greenhouse-gases-wont-heat-oceans.html

              Now might be a good time to read “The Thermostat Hypothesis” Guest Essay by Willis Eschenbach at WUWT

              http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/

              I prefer a steam boiler blow-off valve analogy but I’ll settle for thermostat. The process is also described in NIPCC 2009

              http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2009/2009report.html

              2.1. Clouds
              Based on data obtained from the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere—Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment, Sud et al. (1999) demonstrated that deep convection in the tropics acts as a thermostat to keep sea surface temperature (SST) oscillating between approximately 28° and 30°C. Their analysis suggests that as SSTs reach 28°-29°C, the cloud-base airmass is charged with the moist static energy needed for clouds to reach the upper troposphere, at which point the cloud cover reduces the amount of solar radiation received at the surface of the sea, while cool and dry downdrafts promote ocean surface cooling by increasing sensible and latent heat fluxes there. This “thermostat-like control,” as Sud et al. describe it, tends “to ventilate the tropical ocean efficiently and help contain the SST between 28°-30°C.” The phenomenon would also be expected to prevent SSTs from rising any higher in response to enhanced CO2-induced radiative forcing.

              Synopsis. The tropical cumulus towers punch up through the GHG layer, releasing latent heat of evaporation as sensible heat at the top where is is free to dissipate to space but the GHG’s (including CO2) have NO INFLUENCE ON THIS PROCESS WHATSOEVER.

              Re CO2 datasets

              Just to highlight that the CO2 forcings dataset is a bogus contrivance.

              The modelers combine natural and anthropogenic CO2 concentrations to arrive at the anthropogenic forcing. The Mauna Loa uptick in the combined dataset provides the magnifier that is assumed to be a result of increased human emissions and assumed to be the reason for post 1958 warming!

              This is the best illustration and example I can find for someone new to climate model anthropogenic CO2 (ACO2) forcings datasets.

              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Temp-sunspot-co2.svg

              For this graph, the author pulled in two CO2 datasets and spliced them together. Under “Data Sources” they are Law Dome Icecore and the recent Mouna Loa.

              Law Dome
              ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/law/law_co2.txt

              Mauna Loa
              http://web.archive.org/web/20070829134646/http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/co2_mm_mlo.dat

              This dataset and splice – looks like a hockey stick, is the same as that used in model simulation spin-ups for A1B runs but the values pre 2010 are similar across all IPCC SRES scenarios.

              From another un-verifiable source:-
              This graph (A) illustrates that there is in fact no correlation between the spliced Law Dome icecore-Mauna Loa CO2 concentrations dataset of IPCC AGW theory and the Hadcrut3 temperature series. Even the revised warming model on the graph is doubtful IMO given the current PDO situation
              http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/5721/newhadcrut3warming.png

              This graph (B) illustrates the divergence between the IPCC AGW models and actual RSS satellite observations
              http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/8838/rsslogwarming.png

              Note the difference between the multipliers in the un-realistic extrapolations in (A) and the RSS trendline in (B).

              4.7 and 2.33 in (A) vs 1.05 in (B)

              [Richard, two points – please call yourself Richard C2 to avoid confusion with another commenter, and try to avoid lots of links. Long comments with lots of links end up in the moderation queue or the spam filter because to WP they look like spam, and I have to dig them out.]

            5. I’ve just realised from reading all this copy and pasted denialist piffle, that you actually have no idea at all why CO2 warms the planet!! You don’t actually understand what it is you think you ‘debunking’. If you did, and you were sincere in your efforts, you would know what the core of the argument is, and you would address it. But you don’t.

              That’s why all you can do is flail about from one patch of muddy goalpost holes to another, faffing about with one contradictory bit of nonsense after another in the vain hope that some people might be impressed by all the links to denialist blogs that have no credibility here whatsoever.

              Clouds explained without the jargon intended to impress. They play a double role, they reflect energy back into space acting as a negative feedback, and at the same time reflect energy back towards the earth surface acting as a positive feedback. And while there are lots of details you can try and happily distract folk with, overall the nett effect is that clouds are not considered a dominant player in the game.

              As for the CO2 residency time. Your sources have deliberately confused the difference between residency time of individual atoms in the atmosphere, which IS in the order of 5 years, and excess amount of CO2 in dis-equlibrium with the ocean…that has a time-scale in the order of centuries.

              Two completely different things. But you knew that.

            6. Let’s see if I understand RF methodology correctly.

              The IPCC table of Radiative Forcings (figure 2.4) in AR4 was compiled for 2005 where the ACO2 forcing is quoted as 1.66 Wm2 (1.49 to 1.83).

              To arrive at that value we select a corresponding empirical value from the Mauna Loa dataset
              MLO 2005 06 382.14 (this is concentration in ppm)

              GISS ModelE uses 379.800 for 2005 A1B and I’ll use GISS from now on to get Wm2.

              TAR provides Table 6.2: Simplified expressions for calculation of radiative forcing

              For CO2 F= (g(C)-g(C0)) which expanded looks like this:-

              F= 3.35 *( ln(1+1.2C+0.005C2 +1.4 x 10-6C3) – ln(1+1.2C0)+0.005C0)2 +1.4 x 10-6C0)3))

              This is Hansen’s “tweaked” formulation to try to make the RF methodology results closer to the observed condition. ModelE does not actually use this formulation but it can be used to readily calculate a forcing for any year. By my calcs for 2005:-

              B1 1.70 Wm2 (B1 is basically a no-change scenario)
              A1b 1.72 Wm2
              AR4 1.66 Wm2 (1.49 to 1.83)

              So my calcs using the GISS datasets are within the AR4 envelope.

              How’s my grasp of the fundamentals of AGW?

              But unless you know each algorithm for each allocation in every model, you will be in the dark as to how ACO2 emissions are transformed into temperature change (CS) in terms of the models.

              Here’s the formulations for ModelE:
              http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/DOC4X3/ATMOC4X3.TXT
              (the symbols don’t come across on the web)

              Here’s the source code:
              http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/modelEsrc/

              I’ve already presented the CO2 spin-up datasets so here we have AGW hard-wired into the models.

              “clouds are not considered a dominant player in the game.”

              By whom?

              This opinion seems to be at odds with the Royal Society and the latest (and relevant) climate science papers I cited (see 236)

            7. I’ve busted your ‘short residency CO2’, and all your other nonsense, each one you drop that like a hot potato and you respond with more cut and paste filler in a mangled context to what’s gone before.

              It’s the hallmark of insincerity. a form of Gish Gallop, throwing disconnected and often contradictory assertions into the ring, in the hope that it will make you look informed.

              Well you aren’t. You’ve gotten the whole RF thing arse about face and still you’ve not shown the slightest clue that you know why CO2 impacts atmospheric temperatures. I can tell because you keep leaving out crucial terms and understandings that you won’t get from regurgitating other people’s work.

              Meanwhile back in the clouds:

              http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/patterns/feedback_loops.html

              And the for CO2 lifetimes:

              http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2005.fate_co2.pdf

            8. Sorry, I’ll keep it simple.

              CO2 fails dismally to account for the 1930’s warming but sunspot cycle length correlates with temperature over the entire warming period:

              http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_Part6_SolarEvidence_files/image013.jpg

              CO2 fails dismally to correlate with Arctic-wide Surface Air Temperature anomalies:

              http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_Part6_SolarEvidence_files/image024.gif

              But solar irradiance does:

              http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_Part6_SolarEvidence_files/image023.gif

  77. Fascinating stuff.. and resultant an anticipated extension plotted midcourse this thread. Thank you Gareth for that opportunity.

    Yet still no answer from those who considered the sketch “vile”, “obnoxious”, whatever, for why they watched it.? To punish themselves..? Perhaps thereafter go about punishing others for what they had found themselves enduring..?

    Where lies responsibility in that setting or scenario..?

    Interesting also to see do and don’t David — nay not the one who clearly refused or evaded answering my earlier question — and Sam and Richard C who may not realise how they are so like Swoopy sceptics.

    Having shown it yet clearly not knowing it is cause for some personal contemplation guys. Mebbe under tomorrow’s clear blue skies..

    G’night all

  78. A second logical source of funds for a
    global response to global threats is a set of
    fees on globally important transactions orpolluting emissions. This is probably some
    way off, but even at this stage it is worth
    considering some of the more promising
    options, two of which are discussed in chapter
    4. One is a tax on the international
    movements of speculative capital suggested
    by James Tobin, winner of the Nobel Prize
    for Economics (special contribution, p. 70).
    Tobin suggests a tax rate of 0.5% on such
    transactions, but even a tax of 0.05% during
    1995-2000 could raise $150 billion a
    year. Such a tax would be largely invisible
    and totally non-discriminatory. Another is a
    global tax on energy: a tax of $1 on each
    barrel ofoil (and its equivalent on coal) during
    1995-2000 would yield around $66 billion
    a year.

    United Nations Human Develpment Report 1994

    1. While the Tobin Tax is a fine idea in theory, Andrew, it is the the destination of the funds that is the problem. The UN would LOVE to get their hands on that, to set up their global government.

      Then the scenes depicted in “No Pressure” would be even closer to reality.

      [cries from the Left of “global conspiracy theories”!]

      Well, after that brief glance behind the curtain at how these people REALLY think about dissenters, don’t be surprised when we say… “No thanks”.

      1. Thank you, I agree with you 100% David.

        “Mankind’s problems can no longer be solved by national governments. What is needed is a World Government.”

        United Nations Human Develpment Report 1994

        1. Andrew How did I miss this before I responded to David’s earlier remark?

          World Government. 1994, eh. 16 years ago.

          I don’t follow this “Human Development Report” series. Anything more recent, last 5 years, last 10 years? Anyone still hawking this around? Any takers?

          Has anyone even tried to get started on a committee to consider a working party to formulate the terms of reference for a task force to recommend how many staff might be needed to administer the paperwork supporting the management team who will be organising the invitations to the preliminary … …. ?

          I don’t think this one’s much of a goer.

          1. Hi Adelady, yep still doing this rounds. Here’s something for your from 1994. I wonder if there were any takers for this highly original idea, what do you think?

            One way of controlling greenhouse gases
            would be for an international authority
            to issue tradable pennits that
            entitle the holders to emit a certain
            quantity of pollutants. The authority
            could lease the permits for a certain
            time and use the proceeds for environmental
            projects-or it could distribute
            the pennits free of charge.
            Countries that did not need their
            full quota could sell or lease their surplus
            to others. Those generating more
            pollution would thus pay more, and
            “ecological space” would be priced for
            all nations rather than being freely plundered
            by a few.
            This scheme poses two major problems.
            First, it demands an international
            consensus on total permissible emissions
            of greenhouse gases–a consensus
            that might be difficult to reach.
            Second, if the distribution of pennits
            were based on income, the largest share
            would go to industrial countries. If it
            were based on population, most would
            go to developing countries–though
            this would be the most equitable system
            since each person has an equal right to
            use the earth’s atmosphere. An intermediate
            solution would be to allocate
            half the permits on the basis of population
            and the other half on the basis of
            GNP
            The industrial countries are the
            largest polluters, so if they wished to
            continue emitting at current levels, and
            a population- and GNP-based distribution
            were introduced, they would have
            to buy most of the permits from the developing
            countries. This could lead to a
            very significant transfer of resources
            from the rich to the poor nations: some
            estimates suggest $500 billion to $1 trillion
            a year. Such flows would be neither
            aid nor charity. They would be the outcome
            of a free market mechanism that
            penalizes the richer nations’ overconsumption
            of the global commons.
            The system would give all countries
            a strong incentive to reduce pollutionand
            generate funds that could be earmarked
            for environmental protection
            programmes in developing countries.

            1. My suspicion is that far too many people were flushed with the success of international cooperation over acid rain and the ozone hole. They thought that international cooperation had moved on to a new footing. And that this formed a new basis for negotiation and action.

              All very nice apart from overlooking how long those negotiations took and how hard they were to get through to final agreement and implementation.

              There is no new paradigm in international relations. There certainly isn’t the hope and optimism about the UN following WWII. In fact, many big new players don’t even have a seat at international negotiations.

              I rather fancy that there are good reasons why there’s nothing new or concrete about this since 1994. I think the Kyoto Protocol diverted all the effort and energy that might have gone into this. And, into the bargain, demonstrated with brutal clarity, just how little chance any such proposal had.

      2. Well, after that brief glance behind the curtain at how these people REALLY think about dissenters, …. ….. ..… “No thanks”.

        These people? So you really think that we all think the same way. Really? And so on this thread, on this topic you expect to see only 2 points of view.
        1.You and your respectable adult friends say it’s terrible (and one of your friends actually wrecked it for you with a Godwin).

        2. I and my alarmist-commie-hippie-pinko-greenie-immature-looney friends say it’s absolutely terrific, just the ticket.

        But that didn’t happen. So does that mean that we’re unworthy of your respect because some of us are feeble backsliders who don’t hold the line with an agreed position? Could it mean that we’re just people and that we have different tastes and various views?

        I’m having trouble at this point. Do you really mean what you said that this film indicates how millions of people think ? This pathetic little schoolboy / undergrad violence-is-fun and stupid-bloodthirstiness-is-better production. As it happens I know quite a bit about what silly kids think is exciting to write about, especially untalented, violence-obsessed boys,

        That someone who claims to be a level-headed, mature man would lump me in with this lot is impolite at best.

  80. Redlogix is living for the day when they can say “I told you so..”

    Just cant keep something like that hidden – it just keeps pouring out, eh, the real motivation of the disaster-mongers. An ego-fuelled gravy train – the perfect vehicle for the unproductive.

    1. Feeble straw man Eddie.

      The words I used were “The only ‘victory’ I’ll get to see will be the final irony of being able to say “I told you so”, just before I starve to death…”

      Obviously and clearly flagged irony and I’m just so looking forward to ‘starving to death’.. NOT.!!

      Trying to twist this into the complete opposite is Dishonest Debating Tactics 101. That’s why you get no respect from me.

      (Hell I’d even be faintly impressed by some faintly creative dishonesty from you …but no, you haven’t even the talent for that.)

  81. Bloody marvellous. I go away for a few days, and when I come back I find somebody posting opposing views but using the same moniker as me.
    Gareth, I think you need to number us.
    And to the deniers, you poor terrified and persecuted little things feeling threatened by the red button? I thought you were meant to be sceptics, how does the red button work exactly, why are you all so terrified?

      1. Richard C2 is fine (just spotted your notes)

        I cobbled together what should probably be three comments but they were all in response one comment so a bit lazy – I’m sorry for any unnecessary digging (accidental pun).

  83. The very fact anyone can defend this vile and stupid video reveals what’s really going on inside the head! Yes we all know it’s ‘not real’ Gareth and that it was supposedly “meant to be funny” somehow (how??), but it also says a hell of a lot about the attitudes of you leftist eco-Nazi tossers.

    Based on your support for this extremist eco-tosh do you also endorse the sentiments of psychopath Pentii Linkola who would like to see an end to civilisation in order to “save the planet”?

    What’s wrong with you people?

  84. There you go again, Joe. Great to have an excuse to let it all hang out, eh!

    I suppose you have the encouragement of lots of similar silliness in the thread, but irrational hate-talk like this is very revealing. It says a lot about you, and not much about anyone else.

    Are you actually a Poe, a parody of the angry , prejudiced. conspracy-theorist denialist? You’re doing a good job! 🙂

  85. No, Johnmacmot, unlike you AGW yes-men, I can think for myself.

    So you think this 1010 video was in good taste then? And you think the subtle underlying message that the “Final solution” is to kill everyone off to save the planet?

    That’s good is it?

  86. Think for yourself, Joe? Where is the thinking? I’m seeing lots of irrational anger and abuse – I don’t think you can post without it.

    Thinking – nah, very little of that.

  87. I note you very carefully avoid answering the question Johnmacmot.

    So I’ll ask it again:

    So you think this 1010 video was in good taste then? And you think the subtle underlying message that the “Final solution” is to kill everyone off to save the planet?

    That’s good is it?

    1. Well, I’ve been fixing a couple of chook houses, ao just catching up with the World According to Joe.

      I notice, Joe, you’ve carefully evaded any comment on my analysis of the real content of your posts – the rabid abuse. We’ll wait for you on that one, but don’t expect much wisdom to be shared.

      As for the video, a mis-placed effort using Pythonesque black humour to highlight the seriousness of climate change. Tasteless, a bit funny, not too smart as a PR effort. Not that big a deal, really.

      Ironically, it has showed up the hypocrisy of the Watttsits and all who have blustered and fumed and played the victim-bully role to perfection. The string of posts on here that have, like you, taken great gusto in pulling out their best abuse have been educational, but no surprise. Intelligent comments like “you leftist eco-Nazi tossers.’

      I’m sure, Joe, you were similarly outraged at the witch-hunts directed at Jones, Mann, Santer. You objected to Morano, Limbaugh, Beck, and all the other demagogues who suggested various kinds of punishment and violence directed at scientists. You will have raised concerns at the campaign directed against Jim Salinger.

      I could go on at length, but I would appreciate you sharing with us your views on real, personalised threat and intimidation, not all this faux outrage at a piece of mis-guided black humour and satire.

  88. Joe does raise a point, however, the point of what would constitute justifiable self-interest in the context of this thread..?

    Joe, you first…

  89. Joe you are a hypocrite.

    On other threads you’ve been asked quite reasonable questions and have never answered them – in fact you’ve been quite evasive in doing so.

    I did not see the video but I gather there was nothing subtle about it. Also you need to take a step back and realize MOST of the concern about AGW is about it’s impact on human society. E.g., food security and the vulnerability of our food production systems to even modest shifts in climate. Why take an unnecessarily reckless gamble with the lives of future generations? – whom you seem to have absoloutely no regard for.

  91. I don’t see the video as portraying a “final solution”. The blood and gore is pretty gross.
    What is really offensive is the portrayal of a schoolteacher whose groupthink attitude has completely divorced her from any acceptance of any other point of view other than her own.

    This is shown in detached compassionless way that she dispatches her victims without a second glance, then carries on announcing
    the homework as though nothing had happened.

    This is what our society has become. Any dissent from the environmentalist script whatsoever labels you a “denier”,
    a turd floating in the toilet bowl, to be flushed away without a second thought.

    The fact that some people find this video funny only demonstrates to me how numbed to this worldview we have become.
    But this is the state-sponsored world-view. It was corporates and the UK taxpayer that funded this video.

    This video has already gone viral. There are several parody versions out: it is the new “Hitler’s last stand” Youtube phenomenon.

    I can’t see how this can do the environmental movement any good at all.

    1. “This is what our society has become. Any dissent from the environmentalist script whatsoever labels you a “denier”,
      a turd floating in the toilet bowl, to be flushed away without a second thought.”

      No deniers have ever suffered physical harm but your opinions/arguments are flushed away without a second thought. Why is that? I’ll tell you why; it’s because you slander honest scientists, repeat discredited arguments, ignore evidence, cherry-pick data, etc etc.

      To me deniers – who incidentally are the best example of groupthink going – have zero credibility.

      What teacher has ever blown up kids at the push of the button? Have you seen the Mr Bean video, with the headmaster and the father of the dead student? You could make similar criticsms about a senior teacher having a callous disregard for the welfare of the student, but that would be silly – PC even.

      1. I’ll tell you why; it’s because you slander honest scientists, repeat discredited arguments, ignore evidence, cherry-pick data, etc etc.

        where exactly did I do this?

        1. Well if you personally have never posted comments such comments then I apolgise. I’m glad you agree with me that the climate scientists are honest, diligent, are not politically motivated, and are not eco-fascists.

          I’m also sure you’d agree with me that those deniers who do “slander honest scientists, repeat discredited arguments, ignore evidence, cherry-pick data, etc etc” polarise/poison the debate on how we should respond to rising levels of CO2 – and incidentally intellectually (but perhaps not emotionally) weaken the arguments of someone who might reasonably wish to balance economic and environmental risk in any debate on policy response. Personally, I do feel that the climatic/envrionmental risks are not well understood and are much greater than the general public – including MP’s – believe. In this case traditional economic arguments receive too much weight.

          The deniers sadly have been too effective at limiting policy repsonses thus far. Mild, sensible measures such as mandating more fuel effcient vehicles – which would not have caused global economic collapse or the demise of US automakers (who over the last 25 years relied more on lobbying Washington and marketing rather than innovation to succeed) – effectively were cast as a left-wing green attack on the American/western way of life.

          1. I’m glad you agree with me that the climate scientists are honest, diligent, are not politically motivated, and are not eco-fascists

            where exactly did I agree with you?

            1. I’ll break it down to 4 statements. You can give simple disagree/agree answers in reply.

              Climate scientists are in general
              1) dishonest
              2) not diligent
              3) politically motivated
              4) eco-fascists

              I look forward to your answers.

            3. In reply to Richard T:

              Climate scientists are in general
              1) dishonest Disagree
              2) not diligent Disagree
              3) politically motivated Agree. In some instances, yes. E.g James Hansen (see post on this blog to prove my point)
              4) eco-fascist No comment on scientists, since I have no evidence to support this assertion

            4. Well the reply button is still broke – but to John D.
              As for 3: I would concede everyone has sub-consious biaes and these may in part be politically inspired – however I think almost all scientists remain objective in their assessment of the data, and we have peer-review to maintain balance.

              Hansen’s protests seem confined to the arena of climate change – a single issue voter as it were! Hardly evidence of a wider politcial agenda.

              There are a number of my colleagues who have (or had) centre-right/conservative leanings that have been extremely disgusted by the right-wing campaign against their climate-science colleagues. It might be a long time before they forget.

              4:Well I can assure the numbers would be very small indeed

  92. This video does seem to be a bit of an own goal.

    Yes it made an impact but it essentially played into the fears of the Climate change deniers who state that those who hold mainstream views on the subject are attempting to crush all dissenting opinion and railroad society down a particular nasty totalitarian path.

    While I appreciate the humour myself I doubt it will sway many people sitting on the fence that supporting the aims of the 10:10 movement is a good idea.

  93. While I appreciate the humour myself

    Gosman, maybe you’d like to check out the Moslem version of the video that is also on Youtube and tell me if you still find it funny.

    1. Perhaps you could expand on what the Moslem version is showing as I don’t think I have access to it at the moment (and don’t want to try).

      My sense of humour is irrelevant to this discussion anyway. The point is whether or not this tactic is effective in generating interest in the 10:10 movements aim. I would suggest it is counterproductive as evidenced by the backlash it has generated.

    1. According to Wiki

      Groupthink is a type of thought within a deeply cohesive in-group whose members try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. It is a second potential negative consequence of group cohesion.

      There are individual members involved in group think. The group is a singular value set, as are the individual members. However, the collection of members in the group is a multi-valued set.

      So the answer is Yes and No

    2. Oh Joe, you missed your Godwin moment and I think someone else beat you in the race to the islamo-fascist flag.

      Who on earth thinks that that awful man is relevant to anything in the world at large except a high-security jail?

      1. adelady,

        I am sorry, but Godwin’s law does not apply in this case, in my view.

        From Wiki:

        the law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering genocide, propaganda, eugenics (racial superiority) or other mainstays of Nazi Germany, nor, more debatably, to discussion of other totalitarian regimes, since a Nazi comparison in those circumstances may be appropriate

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

        I feel that it is entirely appropriate to use a Nazi comparison in the case of the 10-10 movie, because the teacher is implying a form of superiority because two of her pupils do not conform to her view.

        No questions were asked of why the children were not partaking of the carbon-cutting event, they were simply exterminated

        Had it ever occurred to anyone that there may be people in the world who cannot make cuts for some reason? Maybe they don’t have any cuts to make. Maybe they have already made all the sacrifices they can.

        Never mind, they do not conform, they look or sound different (sound familiar to TVNZ viewers?)

        They are different, so kill them.

        1. Oh dear you took the self-evidently ludicrous premise of this bit of blatantly ironic and black humour literally…didn’t you?

          Actually what’s got you so wrong footed is that for the first time we’ve used one of your own agit-prop techniques, and turned your paranoid ‘eco-fascist’ meme…against you.

          Hugely successful judging by the outraged response.

          1. “Black Humour”?

            Yes, it was a laugh. I pissed myself.
            Just as I did at the girl with the noose round her neck in that climate poster, the baby drowning in the bath in the Greenpeace ad.

            Bit of a giggle eh?

            How come all of the corporate sponsors (excluding O2 so far) have withdrawn their support?

            Did you laugh at the Moslem parody of the video?
            Franny seems to have a sense of humour failure here. She is frantically pulling the videos from youtube

            I can’t understand why.

            I find videos of Muslims blowing up Christians hilarious.

            A real giggle

            1. “I find videos of Muslims blowing up Christians hilarious.”

              Again because you are dumbing everything down to a primitive literalistic interpretation you completely fail understand the difference in context between those terrorist videos and “No Pressure”.

              And you’re falling face first into this trap because you’ve first bought into the paranoid ‘eco-fascist’ idea, which means when you watch this video you’re suckered into creating a literal ‘these lying nut-jobs want to kill me for disagreeing with them’ interpretation…which if you step back into the real world for a moment… is self-evidently ludicrous.

              In it’s own way what you are saying is as disconnected from reality as the ‘myrrh’ lower down in the thread, insisting it’s all a scam because CO2 is denser than air and is all separated out to the bottom meter or so of the atmosphere. Now you and I can see he’s fallen into a total self-delusion, not even the evidence that he continues to breath air…is sufficent to change his mind. Consider the power of what is going on in his mind.

              Because for most people, untrained in science and it’s methods, emotion trumps logic almost all the time.

            2. Again because you are dumbing everything down to a primitive literalistic interpretation you completely fail understand the difference in context between those terrorist videos and “No Pressure”.

              No, I am not.

              The Muslim 10-10 version is exactly the same video. It has a different soundtrack, and subtitles.

              It depicts a schoolteacher asking her kids what steps they have made to become good Muslims.

              When two children (called Jesus and Mary) do not put up their hands, she blows them up.

              Google “10-10 Muslim parody” to find the video.

            3. Oh you were not clear about which “muslim” video you were referring to.

              The Muslim paraody one you have in mind is just that… a parody. No I did not take it seriously. It’s the kind of thing that would get fundamentalists all hot and bothered…because the very nature of their belief system is to dumb everything down to primitive, materialistic literals.

    3. That will be some more of your deep thinking for yourself stuff, Joe.

      You have nothing to say to my last post?

      That’s exactly what I expected.

  96. Who on earth thinks that that awful man is relevant to anything in the world at large except a high-security jail?

    All his supporters in the Muslim world, perhaps?

    People who probably do not share your world view, and would be happy to blow you up on a plane or tube train to prove the point.

    I believe there’s a parody video on the internet on this very theme…

    1. I doubt that I’m special in the get-blown-up category. My superficial observation is that ‘that man’ and his followers are perfectly happy to blow up anyone and everyone, including people who share their world view along with children and babes in arms who’ve not yet had the chance to form any opinion of any kind.

      Criminals with no regard for the life or the happiness of the people who live in their own neighbourhoods are beneath contempt. They don’t even pretend that such attacks have anything to do with people like me. Terrorism for such people is like a drug. They’ll find any excuse to ply their trade anywhere, preferably maintaining personal safety by getting some other innocent or misguided or intellectually disabled person to do it on their behalf.

      And no. I’m not interested in their own or anyone else’s video on the subject.

  97. I have heard, adelady, that master watt himself does.. not intended of course, more pratfall than anything.. or pehaps revelatory of their anthony being as human as they are..

    still waiting, Joe..

    John D, the each-way bet answer..? nice touch for you assert the group as multivalued. could even rate evidential as justifiable self-interest.. yes? wiki-dependent, however, is disappointing since it was you and your opinion of the term you used above that I had wanted to see..

    Want to try again..?


  98. your opinion of the term you used above that I had wanted to see..

    Want to try again..?

    My “opinion” of a word?

    My opinion is that the meaning I gave earlier was sufficient. What exactly are you fishing for?

  99. John D,

    how about you look over your answer from “According to wiki” .. spot differences if you can..

    then, unless you are the wiki author whose expressed definition you relate – which I doubt (not a crime remember.. doubt) then your last answer reeks somewhat..

    and hey, all I was asking for was for you to have another try.. of course if this is beyond you…

    1. Groupthink is a concept that was identified by Irving Janis9 that refers to faulty decision-making in a group. Groups experiencing groupthink do not consider all alternatives and they desire unanimity at the expense of quality decisions. Learn more about groupthink and then complete the interactive exercise at the end of the discussion

      http://www.abacon.com/commstudies/groups/groupthink.html

      Since “Groupthink” was a term coined by Irving Janis in 1972, I am sticking with that definition, though in itself that may be considered groupthink, in that a group of people have got together and decided what groupthink means.

      I am at a loss to come up with another definition for groupthink. I do, however, see it a lot in my business life

      Perhaps the group here can independently come up with a definition for groupthink, no conferring!

  100. IMHO: Janis sought to frame his own authority upon the misgivings relating to corporate america..

    which makes your choice of his definition interesting.. and happily conferred with your observations pertinent to business life..

    But perhaps we should source more original creation and usage of the term “groupthink” [ not two words but one as Bill Safire wrote back in the NYTimes, ’04 I think, before he passed on ].

    This attribution relates Groupthink (one word, no hyphen) was the title of an article in Fortune magazine in March 1952 by William H. Whyte Jr.

    Groupthink is becoming a national philosophy, he wrote. Groupthink being a coinage.. We are not talking about mere instinctive conformity — it is, after all, a perennial failing of mankind. What we are talking about is a rationalized conformity — an open, articulate philosophy which holds that group values are not only expedient but right and good as well. [ my ellipsis ]

    Further, Whyte derided the notion he argued was held by a trained elite of Washington’s social engineers.

    Which, IMO, opened up the field for Janis.

    Personally, at this stage I’d aver to open rationalized discourse from and by educated and informed people as perhaps holding merit here, something one could say for many of the commenters above.

    That says, John D, that Janis’ appears badly constrained and overly confining. Not something open to wideranging and pertinent debate.

    Then, for myself, Gareth’s determination as to merit is all the more relevant..

    G’night

  101. oops! Paragraph should read:—

    Personally, at this stage I’d aver to open rationalized discourse from and by educated and informed people as perhaps holding merit here, something one could NOT say for many of the commenters above.

  102. I guess uWatts at altera should consider what the people living in 2110 will have to say when they come across a web archive of this site, the Watts blog and others.
    I am deeply convinced that these people will call all those – like Watts and his ilk – who so desperately try to prevent civilization from turning away from our current course of self destruction – the true vile people alive today.
    There is no sane argument anywhere that can be made in favor of continuing with the status quo. A planet that is on average 4 Deg warmer than today will be unrecognizable in many places which today sustain the billions alive and will no longer be able to do so then.
    Those who deny how severe the crisis will get have no sense, no understanding and no regard for the suffering that will surely ensue.

  105. Gee, why did this harmless PR effort go so wrong? Heck, it involved something like 40 production staff, 50 actors (many 9-year olds under the supervision of their parents), none of whom objected to the script. With prior review and clearance of the story boards from charitable and corporate governing boards who’s participating numbers probably numbered a hundred blokes or more. None of these folks voiced any concern on the message. It was supposed to be classic English SATIRE for crying out loud! Everybody has seen the Python skits and Mr. Bean. So, come on! Lighten up!

    Okay, maybe the class scene of murdering children put parallels in the minds of folks of the Khmer Rouge killing children who had the wrong ideas (or eyeglasses, bilingualism or love for their parents) through disembowelment (the KR couldn’t afford explosives). The Red Guard and Soviets asking children to report unacceptable statements by their parents, who were then killed or sent to the Gulag. The Hitler Youth who were brainwashed into fighting to the death outside of Hitler’s Berlin bunker. The Palistinians who’s children’s TV program promote suicide bombing and anti-Semitism. Okay, all of which are comparable and similar tough subjects to satirize. But this was an exception!

    Or maybe it was including the background quote from one of the 9-year old actors that it was okay to be blown up for the Green cause put the whole video over the top for some people. But that’s only because the critics are a bunch of knee-jerk reactionaries with a knowledge of history, and not visionaries like the video producers who want to re-write old and create new histories. Not our fault.

    After all, we have the scientific consensus on our side. And what’s the harm in putting on video our (understandable) frustrations with the opposition, and (understandable) fantasies with dealing with the Deniers?

    Of course, we would never do anything like that if we ever got the power over their lives we are seeking.

    Really.

    Trust us.

    1. Now remind me Jerry from Boston, exactly how many thousands of innocent school children were actually blown to smithereens by your US military during its’ invasion of Iraq?.

      And you yanks have the audacity to whine about fake deaths?. Truly twisted!.

      1. Oh, and Jerry from Boston, don’t know if they’re still online, but Wiki leaks had videos from your military showing real Iraqi children being blown to kingdom come. Again not fake deaths, but the real deal.

        Guess they must have posed a real threat to the helicopter gunships hundred of meters away eh?.

            1. So, RW, you are justifying this video on the basis that Americans have killed children in war?

              Let us remind ourselves that this is pretty much the only blog on the entire internet that is supporting this video.

              Joe Romm and Bill McKibben have both publicly stated their distaste.

              No pressure, though

            2. Actually John D those were real children killed in real wars. Don’t you find that objectionable? Take your time, no pressure.

            3. No John D, I was not supporting the video. I am pointing up the utter hypocrisy of the Watts nutters – many of whom would be – apart from those in the background, the self-serving politicians and the global corporations and other big-hitters ploughing money into the mass spreading of downright lies and smears – middleclass resource-gobbling individuals who don’t give a damn about any worldview other than their own, let alone the future of the planet.

              Maybe one day you’ll come up with something worthwhile on climate change – no pressure though!

            4. Perhaps RW and Richard C would like to justify the money that NZers gave to the IRA in the 80s and 90s to blow people up in Omagh etc.

              Perhaps they’d like to justify the “aid workers” they put on boats to Gaza, that are actually supporting Muslim extremism.

              No pressure,

            5. That bit about justifying IRA money isn’t simply illogical it is completely nonsensical.

              Why would I want to justify it, why would I even agree with it? John D what sort of weird mental picture are you trying to superimpose on the world?

            2. Gee, Rajendra Pachauri himself made the 10/10 video, I suppose, and then the ad that has the cartoon puppy going under? And the ‘tick tick’ thing?

              And then the long nightmare piece which is intriguingly chopped up at the end with a bizarre insertion of Pachauri that doesn’t gel at all, and it’s all cut off before we can learn who and what it was actually promoting (leaving one to ponder quoting-out-of-context or cherry-picking – and, as one pauses to note the provenance, we can also see he’s already coined another ‘gate’! They do love their repetition in angry land!…)

              Perhaps, John, we could test if your skills run beyond the standard Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V and you could identify for us the original sources for these ‘outtakes from various climate change propaganda videos’ and determine if they were actually intended to be screened during childrens viewing hours, aimed at schools, or were intended for adults etc.?

              Because this risible ‘guilt by association’ juxtapositioning actually proves zip.

  106. where were the howls of protest from Watts and Morano when one of their favourite ranters, James Delingpole in the Telegraph called for a Nuremburg trial for “warmists”?

    An odd juxtaposition – while murdering children has minimal popular support, the Nuremberg trials are generally regarded as having been a good thing.

    Still, it’s possible to 1. think AGW is real and 2. think something should be done about it without being a frothing-at-the-mouth totalitarian. The problem is that the left has hijacked the issue in an attempt to reverse the verdict of 1989/1990.

    1. While the right has conceded moral authority through their capture by
      nutty deniers, “mad hatters”, and neo-conservatives.

      The 1898/1990 verdict being the break up of the Soviet Union?
      Only die-hard communists and the extreme far-left would wish to reverse that.

  107. ah yes … word is getting out. One site says Gareth’s thrilling to 10:10 shows what a “vile turd” he is. Right on. Disaster-monger to be sure, poisoning the minds of our children. (Or blowing them to smitheereens perhaps, if they dare to resist the indoctrination.)

    1. Another hypocritical dimwit pretending to take the 10:10 video literally in order to fake outrage. Nah … get to the back of the queue , this doddery old hack has been much overworked and needs a rest before it’s next outing.

      I live for the day when these one of these numpties actually manages something not utterly derivative and transparently dishonest.

  108. John D: “Perhaps RW and Richard C would like to justify the money that NZers gave to the IRA in the 80s and 90s to blow people up in Omagh etc.

    Perhaps they’d like to justify the “aid workers” they put on boats to Gaza, that are actually supporting Muslim extremism.”

    Setting up straw men I see? Still ducking the fundamental issue, because you don’t have a valid point to make.

  109. Pingback: The 10:10 Splattergate goes “sploot” – a roundup | Watts Up With That?

  110. Like the Audi spot this one have an intimidation objective, now to the level of making acceptable murder.
    If you disagree with me you are murdered that is the moral behind it.

    At first i saw this i thought was a exageration by the sceptic side, but not very funny since the argument keeps repeating itself. Now i am not so sure the eco-nazi tag is so over the top. Too many cases of human haters adding up..

    1. Well lucky, what happens if you are wrong? I won’t insist that I’m right and you’re wrong. I’m just asking you to entertain the possibility the science is right, like most science is most of the time, so it’s not an unreasonable ask.

      Because if the science is right, there will be hundreds of millions of desperate, angry people asking why we didn’t act to mitigate the catastrophe while we still had time. And looking for someone to hold to account. ‘Hate’ is a word that might well describe their mood.

      Now you may well be expecting to be long dead before we arrive at that point, or maybe not…but either way you may want to contemplate the moral burden that will fall onto those who stood in the way.

  111. RedLogix re the link to length of time CO2 stays in the atmosphere, this is not science. Carbon Dioxide is heavier than air, is 1.5 times heavier than air, it displaces air, it always comes down.

    That report is gibberish.

    All, this video shows that the mindset already prevalent in AGW, calling those who say the hypothesis has already been falsified, deniers, but it’s only the young or those without any sense of history who would find it amusing. Those further up the top of the pecking order wouldn’t think twice about including you in those to be blown up.

    http://www.prisonplanet.com/global-warming-alarmist-calls-for-eco-gulags-to-re-educate-climate-deniers.html

    Be careful who you think is a scientist, one who called for the mass extermination of 90% of the population got a standing ovation from his peers.

    The problem begins when sociopaths, around 6% of the population, get to influence events. Important to remember, they’re not actually normal.

    1. “Interesting” read,Myrrh…decontextualised comments from some prominent scientists,carefully juxtaposed with those of genuine fringe crazies like Pentti Linkola,and the usual mentions of Manson and that unfortunate gunman of recent times. The article definitely claims that gunman Lee’s “guru’ was Linkola.Can you personally provide some genuine evidence that this was the case…you know,possession of Linkola’s literature ,evidence of correspondence …because the article doesn’t. Oh,that was just ‘journalese’,was it?

      Actually,Eric Pianka was ‘framed’ by creationist activists who decontextualised his comments,started a slander campaign and got him investigated. Nice of Prisonplanet to give us the background. Paraniodplanet would be a more honest site name. Meanwhile,you no doubt have all the answers to how to indefinitely grow a human population on a finite planet. But you won’t share them?

      Insinuating that Jim Hansen and Linkola are fellow travellers because they share a couple of words in common is convincing for you? Pitiful you.

      Now that I know you are a crank,I understand why you refuse to handle information on CO2 residence fairly.

  112. “Carbon Dioxide is heavier than air, is 1.5 times heavier than air, it displaces air, it always comes down.”

    Myrrh, I can’t figure out whether that comment was profoundly ignorant or profoundly stupid.

  113. The reply buttons seem to be out of action.
    WRT to the discussion on models and Curry’s recent work. Alot of what she says is not that controversial nor startling to most climate modellers -whom whenever I’ve talked to them are always a quick to point the short-comings of the model. However, there is still the fact that GHG levels are rising in the atmosphere and this is due to human use of fossil fuels. This is indisputable.
    We also see a warming trend in temperature records, glacier retreat, and loss of arctic sea ice – and other biological indicators of warming, and ocean acidifcation, coral bleaching etc, etc.

    This warming seems to fit with simple physical arguments on the effect of atnospheric CO2.

    So how do you answer the question – what will the impact of increasing CO2 be?

    In the worst case, even if the models are worthless and can’t tell you a thing, governments still need to decide on what if anything to do. Doing nothing involves risks; waiting decades for the models to get better also involves risk – the issues she raises are not going to be solved overnight.
    What if at that stage the models all converge and point to a catastrophe – and that by then it’s too late to mitigate. Oh dear; how sad; never mind!

    Curbing emissions now can be done, it is achievable.

  114. RichardC1 – why do you have a problem with it? That’s its weight in relation to air, therefore, it displaces air. In other words, it cannot ‘accumulate for thousands of years’ as in that so called scientific study. A scientist who claims to be reporting on a molecule as an authority when he has no idea of its properties or its relationship to air, is, well, whatever, but his science is gibberish because of it.

  115. Well, you know how water vapour rises in the air to form clouds and then condense back into water liquid to come down as rain? It does so because water vapour is lighter than air, and water liquid is heavier. So, carbon dioxide which finds itself in the air from being blown around, will come back down to earth once the wind stops blowing. In great amounts, such as released by volcanoes, if there is no wind to disperse it, it will sink, flowing like a river to lower ground.

    1. Sorry, while you have some things right (Google Lake Nyos, for example) you are wrong about CO2 in air. It’s “well mixed”, as they say, and does not come back down to ground. Think sugar in your morning tea…

      Not Ken Ring in disguise, are you?

  116. Like, when you blow up a balloon. Because your exhaled breathe contains more carbon dioxide than the air you breathed in, the balloon now filled with it will sink to the ground because carbon dioxide is heavier than air, which is mainly nitrogen and oxygen.

    This page on helium balloons explains why a lighter than air gas rises, because it has bouancy in air..

    http://science.howstuffworks.com/helium2.htm

    “Helium ballons work by the same law of buoyancy. In this case, he helium balloon that you hold by a string is floating in a “pool” of air (when you stand underwater at the bottom of a swimming pool, you are standing in a “pool of water” maybe 10 feet deep – when you stand in an open field you are standing a the bottom of a “pool of air” that is many miles deep).”

  117. Gareth, it’s not “well-mixed”, it varies from season to season and place to place and so on.

    The AGW use of “well-mixed”, I discovered recently on trying to work out why this view, is that it uses ideal gas laws to describe real gas properties.

    Ideal gases do not exist, they are hypothetical, and can’t be used to describe the properties of real gases. They have their mathematical uses, but not to describe what real gases actually are and do.

    Ideal gases have no weight, no volume, not subject to gravity, pressure, do not interact with anything else except to bounce off them – they do not exist in the real world.

    In the real world atmosphere, gases are subject to real world conditions, pressure, gravity, weight, they interact with each other – if they just bounced off each other travelling at these amazing speeds as they “thoroughly mixed in the atmosphere”, we wouldn’t get molecules combining to form stuff, hydrogen and oxygen molecules would just bounce off each other and we’d never have water.

    Why these ideal gas laws are being used, and taught in schools, to describe how carbon dioxide acts is because of the AGW influence over the last decades. This is why scientists such as the one above assumes that this is a correct description of how CO2 molecules work in the real world and has ended up with a gibberish paper claiming it can stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, accumulating.

    Air is an body of real gas, it exerts pressure, it can be compressed to a liquid. Ideal gases do not have a liquid state because they’re only hypothetical as gases, they don’t really exist, so their laws do not relate to real gases.

    Real gas molecules do not travel at these “great speeds through empty space”, air isn’t empty space.

    That’s why a molecule of carbon dioxide in air will always move down to the ground, because it displaces air which is lighter. It takes force, such as wind, which is moving air, to disperse it or to change its direction which is always to move downwards.

    1. Oh dear. The misunderstanding is deep in this one…

      Myrhh: of course there are seasonal differences in the global and regional distribution of CO2 in the atmosphere – but the differences are on the order of a few ppm, and make very little difference to the overall warming effect.

      Otherwise, you need to take the time to read and understand some basic atmospheric physics.

    2. Interesting discussion on why balloons sink. I would have thought that it might have something to do with the density of the balloon material too.

      But to get the thread back on topic.

      Qu: What do balloons and schoolchildren have in common?

  118. Having a BBQ tonight. All welcome. Will be burning warmists over a coal fired pit, please bring a buddy as we’re expecting a big crowd of hungry deniers to feed.

  119. Gareth, basic atmospheric physics says carbon dioxide does not mix thoroughly, does not stay up in the atmosphere accumulating for hundreds and thousands of years, because carbon dioxide can’t do that.

    Ideal gas laws are not basic physical physics on gases.

    They are hypothetical, imaginary, gases, they do not actually exist.

    What is happening in this argument, about CO2 and its properties from AGW, is that CO2 is claimed to act in the physical world as if it was an ideal gas. It can’t physically do it.

    In the physical world of real gases, (real and ideal are technical terms in gas discussions, real actually relates to this our real physical world), gases have weight, have volume, react with each other, can be put under pressure, can turn into other states, become liquid, solid. An ideal gas is a concept of a gas without any of the characteristics of a real gas.

    The description ‘becomes well mixed in the atmosphere because it moves at tremendous speeds as a molecule through empty space and collides with other molecules and they all become thoroughly mixed’, is a description from ideal gas laws, CO2 exists in the physical real world and does not act like this.

    CO2 does not move through empty space, because the ‘space’ it moves in is not empty, it is full of air, and air is a real gas. Carbon dioxide travels through air. Air is not empty space, molecules do not travel at ‘great speeds’ through it.

    Even the majority of the molecules in air of nitrogen and oxygen do not do that, because the volume of air is subject to gravity and the pressure of air as it gets nearer the ground gets more, becomes heavier.

    A good description of what air is comes from understanding how sound travels. The pressure of a sound on air makes the molecules vibrate, they do not move very far, but pass on that vibration to the molecules near them. Like a Mexican wave, the people don’t move from their seats but the wave travels all round the stadium.

    Molecules in real air, the real atmosphere, act according to that medium. CO2 is heavier than nitrogen and oxygen and water vapour molecules and so will sink through that gas air. It does this by displacing the lighter molecules.

    Being heavier than air it cannot then rise up into the air without some other force acting on it. So descriptions of CO2 such as it ‘diffuses into the atmosphere to become well-mixed without another force acting on it’ are actually impossible for it.

    So, these two things claimed for CO2, that the molecules move at great speeds to diffuse into the atmosphere and that they can stay up in the atmophere for hundreds and thousands of years, is physically impossible.

    1. Umm. I think you drastically underestimate the speed at which molecules at temperatures above about 1 Kelvin are moving.

      Air might appear to be still, on the macro scale there may be no average pressure one way or the other (except of course, wind) – but if there was no movement of molecules, there would be no diffusion, and you wouldn’t be able to smell anything. Consider how quickly a container with a vacuum inside will fill if it is emptied; it is an implosion at great speed – that is the thermal kinetic energy of the gas!

      Pressure waves do not require the medium to not be moving; you are quite mistaken.

    2. OK.

      So you’re telling me that if I tip a heap of dry ice into the bottom of an aquarium or a nice big jar, that the container will be full of carbon dioxide the next day, the day after, however long I leave it and it won’t mix with air unless I tip it over or turn on the fan?

      Really?

  121. No, no, no, Myrrh right, the atmospheric gases are all layered according to weight that’s why we are all born with big long snorkels. How else would be able to get the right mix to keep on disco dancing.

  122. Sam Vilain – even smells travel according to what they are or what the medium for dispersing them. Warm moist, water vapour is lighter than air and warmth rises, will diffuse smells better. http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Smell

    “..but it is well known that the odours of flowers are most distincly perceived in the morning, or after a shower, when the atmosphere contains considerable amount of aqueous vapour. It would appear also that odours of animal effluvia are of a higher specific gravity than air, and do not readily diffuse – a fact which may account for the pointer and bloodhound keeping their noses to the ground. Such smells are persistent and are apparently difficult to remove from any surface to which they have become attached.”

    You can see by this that the weight of something affects its diffusion in air which is itself a gas. Whatever travels through air on a molecular level has weight relative to the weight of air which is practically all nitrogen and oxygen. You can look up the weights, carbon dioxide is 1.5 times heavier, that’s a lot heavier. It takes another force acting on it, such as wind, to move it from its always downwards direction through air. Wind is moving air.

    Adelady – yes, if there is nothing to move it a pool of carbon dioxide won’t budge, because it is heavier than air. In a brewery for example, carbon dioxide produced in the vats will spill out over the edge and sink to the floor, it does this because it is heavier than the air molecules which it displaces on its move downwards. If nothing changes in the conditions which caused it to pool in the first place it physically can’t get up and move itself upwards because it’s heavier.

    In your experiment remember that carbon dioxide is invisible, when it changes from dry ice to a gas you won’t be able to see it. You can test it by putting in a lit taper, carbon dioxide displaces oxygen so the flame will go out, the principle carbon dioxide fire extinguishers use.

    There’s a page of experiments with dry ice here, http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/00000055

    Laurence – our atmosphere is a dynamic system, but important to remember that air is an entity in its own right. Air has weight and is subject to gravity, the nearer to the ground the more the weight of air on us. Wind is moving air, it’s not something other moving things through air, when air stops moving for any length of time the heavier molecules in it will sink and the lighter ones rise to form layers, example in a mine or pit. Miners have long been savvy that methane rises and collects at ceiling level, they would cover themselves in wet towels and go in with a flame on a long pole to test for it.

    Carbon dioxide is a trace gas, dry air is 100% is nitrogen, oxygen and a tiny bit of argon, but within that there is practically always water vapour which is lighter than air, we wouldn’t get clouds and rain if it wasn’t lighter, so dry air has to be thought of as a test-tube measurement. Some places are more humid than others so the actual percentage of the different molecules will be proportional to the amount of it in our atmosphere. At very high levels where there is less pressure of air bearing down on all the air below it, where the air gets thinner, even molecules of nitrogen and oxygen will separate out. They’re practically the same weight, but at very high levels the nitrogen will move away from the oxygen because it is lighter.

    Even air itself will not ‘mix thoroughly in the atmosphere’, there are weather patterns which show this. There are distinct movements of air in the northern and southern hemispheres. They mix a little at the equator, but the flow of air is forced to move back from the equator into its own pattern of flow depending on which hemisphere it is in.

    1. Blah,blah,blah…all correct…meanwhile,a small matter of a technically accurate and consistent global monitoring system post-1959 demonstrates that CO2 is well-mixed gas in the atmosphere

      1. Small pieces may be correct, but it’s glued together with a narrative which is rubbish.

        Smells might travel further in warm air, this just supports the theory. And the reason that dry ice pools as COâ‚‚ in a container is because it is cool. Once the temperature reaches equilibrium, the COâ‚‚ will have dispersed and become well mixed.

        There is direct evidence that the conclusion you have reached is wrong, as Nick mentions. When observations don’t fit your theory, you need a new theory.

        Myrrh, if you’re not Ken Ring you’re certainly channeling his thought train.

    2. How did I miss this?
      “In a brewery for example, carbon dioxide produced in the vats will spill out over the edge and sink to the floor, it does this because it is heavier than the air molecules which it displaces on its move downwards.”
      “If nothing changes in the conditions …. ”
      but the conditions in a brewery *do* change. They keep on brewing.

      What happens in a brewery if they stop brewing, turn everything off and close the doors? The next day, the next week, a month later?

      The CO2 concentration may be higher in the building generally and lower in the building specifically than outdoors, but it will ***not*** remain layered in the same concentrations even with absolutely no air movement. . A year later, still closed up?

  123. So you are right. And the bottom few meters or so of the atmosphere is CO2 that’s separated out because it has a higher density….what are you breathing right now?

    1. I’ve just done my layer cake calculations.

      So if this molecular weight thingie works, our atmosphere consists of ozone, 48, kicking around our feet, CO2, 44, endangering the lives of small children and animals, oxygen, 32, then nitrogen, 28, water vapour, 18, is the icing on the cake and methane, 16, is the sprinkles / shredded coconut right at the top. (Don’t ask me how oxygen gets the chance to mix into rivers and oceans.)

      What a shame they’re not coloured. This could be prettier than a sunset.

  124. Nick – no it doesn’t. Satellite data shows it isn’t, and you mustn’t mistake given averages as meaning every place and time. The average rain fall of a year in a particular place does not mean that is the rainfall every day in that place.

    Here – http://www.science20.com/chatter_box/co2_greenhouse_gas

    “Figures cited for CO2 such as 389 ppm are global [i]average[/i] distributions. this average figure is an artificial construct. Any attempt to disprove the global warming effects of anthropogenic CO2 based on the tacit assumption that the ppm figure applies to a well-mixed gas is a fallacy of the average.
    The Fallacy of the Average is based on the false notion that the effect of a thing averaged out is equivalent to the effect of any randomly chosen specific instance of the same thing. Imagine, etc.”

    Sam Vilain – note the description was not of warm air re the flowers giving off stronger scent, it was wet air. Wet air is lighter than dry air, so carrying the smells as it rises. Remember, water vapour is lighter than air.

    So prove that once the temperature reaches equilibrium the CO2 will have dispersed and become well mixed. CO2 is heavier than air. How can it rise back up through the air once it is at its lowest point?

    Again, you’re using arguments from ideal gas laws which simply do not apply to real gases. An ideal gas is postulated on high temperature and low pressure, and no real interactions with surrounding molecules because they have no volume, weight, attraction, etc. The CO2 stays put because it is a real gas in real interactions with other real gases, it doesn’t go anywhere unless you change the circumstances. It can no more get up and ‘diffuse into the atmosphere’ than a piece of paper on your desk.

    You can’t use the very specific parameters of ideal gases to describe real gases. Ideal gases don’t actually exist, it’s imagined. Real gases do not move the way this imaginary ideal gas moves.

    Observations of CO2 fit the known, observed, bog standard physical properties of real gases, among which it has a weight 1.5 times that of air in which it moves. It is constrained by and interacts with the molecules around it, being heavier it sinks through lighter molecules which is what the bulk of air is (nitrogen, oxygen and water vapour).

    Ideal gases move at great speeds in straight lines through empty space, taking up no room, etc. How on earth can this describe the real properties of gases, which have volume, weight, etc.? The ideal gas does not become a liquid or a solid. It is a purely imagined gas, that has no actual reality.

    You cannot use the description of the ideal gas to describe real gases.

    If you haven’t read the link I posted on how sound travels, do. You’ll see that not even the oxygen and nitrogen molecules move anywhere, but vibrate on the spot, passing that vibration on until it reaches the ear. Like the waves in the sea, it’s not the water moving; the wave is created by energy, pressure, the water stays where it is. Air is a real gas, it can be turned into a liquid, etc., it has weight, it’s an entity in its own right, a body of gas. Molecules do not move through it at the high speed of the ideal gas, which is premised on it moving through empty space. Air is not empty space, it is a body of gas with weight exerting pressure and subject to gravity. None of which applicable to the ideal gas.

    What you should be asking yourself here, is why are descriptions of CO2 in AGW being given as totally different from its actual real gas, real physical world, properties?

    When observations do not fit your theory, you need a new theory.

    RedLogix – CO2 is a trace gas, when it comes to earth which is its natural place in the atmosphere of air we have, it is mainly eaten by any plants that are around, it is plant food. Plants turn it into energy for growth in photosynthesis during which time they give us the oxygen we have in the atmosphere. You are a Carbon Life Form, CO2 is the food in the Carbon Life Cycle.

    If you are in a room full of people for any length of time all of you breathing out carbon dioxide in your exchange of oxygen which the plants gave you, then you’ll become aware of how stuffy it can get, headachy even. That’s the time to open a couple of windows..

    Adelady – wouldn’t that be something! Oxygen also comes down as rain. But don’t forget to include actual amounts of the stuff… And if you have pot plants, talk to them, they’ll enjoy the extra CO2. Best time is in the morning according to some research, seems plants spend the afternoon digesting.!

    This on ozone – http://falconblanco.com/health/ozone/use.htm

    1. CO2 is a trace gas, when it comes to earth which is its natural place in the atmosphere of air we have, it is mainly eaten by any plants that are around, it is plant food.

      So logically if the CO2 is not ‘well mixed’ in the atmosphere, and it’s not sitting in a dense layer at the bottom because the plants all got it…then where is it? All gone?

      Much of what you are saying sort of makes sense for gases at a very low temperatures…but at normal ambient temperatures the thermal energy of the gas molecules is much larger than their potential energy due to their mass in the earth’s gravitational field. Which is why your idea is wrong.

      It’s why CO2 as ‘dry ice’ does temporarily sink to the floor when it’s released from a container…because it’s about 50-60 degC colder than all the other gases in the room. Of course it doesn’t stay that way for long; within minutes it warms up to ambient temperature and mixes with the rest of the atmosphere.

      It’s also why the CO2 concentration measured at Manu Loa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna_Loa
      at around 3400m is exactly the same as measured in dozens of of other locations at sea level.

    2. Regarding comment#416,the bloke in your link,Myrrh, claims that a light ray from the sun strikes stratospheric ozone at_exactly_the same time that it strikes the planet’s surface,while claiming that the whole ozone/ozone hole thing is,yep,you guessed it,another fraud….he claims that the ozone hole can’t affect NZ because the hole is too far south for the sun to angle its light onto you!

      Please don’t keep posting this sort of nonsense.

  125. This can help in working out why all this already falsified (proved false by bog standard science) information on CO2 still promoted as if is true, the story of the ‘ozone hole’

    http://www.ourcivilisation.com/ozone/king.htm

    Never underestimate the power of vested interests if money can be made out of something or when there’s a better cheaper alternative, much noticed in pharmaceutical industry, underestimate the power of propaganda against it. We’ve reached absurdly wonderfully lucrative heights here with carbon credits, not even having to produce anything to sell, we can now sell not producing something and trade it as if it’s a commodity..

    1. This stuff is truly astounding. Come in Eric Idle, with the “Universe” song. I can scarcely believe the level of the idiocy that is perpetrated by illiterates and cynics.

        1. I cannot understand why you (collective) are pandering to his fantasies, it wont be long before he starts to tells us how he has proven Einstein was completely wrong.

  126. RedLogix It doesn’t seem to matter how much the flaws in the science and the skullduggery of those manipulating it are pointed out, there’s a generation who’ve had it taught to them as if it’s real; and so actual reality is confined to those who need to know and work with gases and such. For the rest of you, it seems an abominable shame that so many have lost the sense of the the Carbon Life Cycle in our lives and don’t even understand the air we walk through and breathe and in which we have our being comes to us from carbon dioxide and plants.

    You said “So logically if the CO2 is not ‘well mixed’ in the atmosphere, and it’s not sitting in a dense layer at the bottom because the plants all got it.. then where is it? All gone?”

    What do understand by the word ‘cycle’? It’s being continually produced and used for life and how it came to be in the first place, by the movements of the earth, volcanoes erupting above ground and below the seas, tectonic plates shifting. The first oxygen in the atmosphere came to be made out of that carbon dioxide, the transformers of this developed into the plant life you see all around you and continue giving us the oxygen we need for life from the plants that recycle it in using it for their own growth in photosynthesis. They also breathe it in at night and breathe out carbon dioxide, when they rot down after their lives are over they produce more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. It’s our essential food in the Carbon Life Cycle of which we are a part. Plants grow better when there are higher amounts than we have now, under a certain level all plant life would die. We need it. It comes down in the rain, air as wind distributes it, it always comes down to the ground where plants can eat it. They have evolved to eat it from the ground up, the stomata which take it in is on the underside of their leaves, but water lilies have their stomata on the top of the leaf. That’s scientific observation. Connection.

    Carbon dioxide is essential to our body, we are 18% carbon, the rest mainly water in oxygen and hydrogen. It is essential to keep the PH balance in our blood, it is essential for breathing, (the amount monitored and if too high we are forced to breathe, that’s why holding one’s breath is so difficult), without a sufficient amount of it in our bodies we would die. We need it at the level we live.

    “In 1904 Danish physiologist Christian Bohr described what is now known as the Bohr effect. Simply put, CO2 causes the release of the oxygen from the hemoglobin to tissue in the body. If there is not enough CO2 in the blood the oxygen is not released and the cells experience oxygen starvation. In order to have enough CO2 in the blood there must be sufficient amount in the lungs. If there is a shortage of CO2 in the lungs, the bronchioles become inflamed (i.e., swollen and narrowed – as in asthma) to reduce CO2 loss during exhalation. A concentration of up to 6.5% CO2 in the lungs is healthy; less than 4% is life threatening. Please note that these percentages are significantly higher than the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere.”

    From – http://www.iceagenow.com/CO2_essential_to_the_health_and_well-being_of_our_bodies.htm

    It is not a waste product, it is recycling into the air what we don’t need at that moment.

    http://www.livescience.com/health/090416-cl-human-body.html

    So you keep saying, that carbon dioxide will mix with the atmosphere. I’ve already asked for proof that it does so, because, separation of gases is a well established fact in real physical science because used in all kinds of industries. That’s why it is well known that methane rises to the ceiling in mines, it separates out and doesn’t mix again because it can’t. It can’t because it is lighter than the air molecules below it, it is bouyant. So likewise, carbon dioxide which is heavier than air sinks down through air because it displaces the lighter molecules, it cannot then rise up and mix. It takes another force to move it, wind, ventilation, etc. This is bog standard physical science. What you are saying is impossible. You can’t actually prove it, it goes against all observation.

    Remember, AGW arguments treat it as an ideal gas working to ideal gas laws which are not real, they are imaginary for an imagined gas, and cannot and do not describe the real CO2 in the real physical world.

    Air is not empty space, it is a gas. CO2 has volume, weight etc., the imaginary ideal gas does not. CO2 travels through air which is a gas, which has volume, weight etc., the ideal gas has none of a real gas’s properties and travels through empty space. You’re using out of context descriptions, which is why what you say is impossible in the real world of real gases.

    I posted a page of dry ice experiments, try them out.

    Re Mauna Loa – isn’t at sea level, it’s a rather large mountain.. It’s also the most active volcano in the world, on average going off every six years in the last 3000 years. And actually a huge mountain, because it begins on the sea floor.

    It is set in one of the world’s most active hot spots, continually creating new volcanoes from the sea bed. It is riddled with vents from all the volcanic activity on the Hawaiian islands which includes hundreds of earthquakes a year, all producing CO2 which dissolves in the warm waters and rises into the atmosphere to be moved by winds.

    The Keeling curve is a joke, he went there because he wanted to prove that man-made CO2 was creating warming! In less than two years of data gathering he declared it was a fact, he could see the trend… You make of that what you will, I don’t see anything of scientific integrity in his work, and his son continues to co-ordinate all the other so-called stations which surprise, surprise, all produce the same nonsense figures.

    Just don’t bother trying to get raw data from any of them.

    It’s not a subject I’m interested in discussing, there’s already a great amount on the scam that this is, but a couple of pages for your interest:

    Carbon dioxide on Keeling Curve has no correlation to temperatures
    http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/ccr.pdf
    Some history of the cherry picking.
    http://themigrantmind.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-synthetic-is-keeling-curve.html
    And one on Mauna Loa http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/maunaloa.html

    There are some fighting back to get sanity re-established in this, for example the New Zealand government has been forced to back down from calling the bogus temperature data, “official” – http://www.thegwpf.org/climategate/1658-legal-defeat-for-global-warming-in-kiwigate-scandal-.html

    I do hope you take some time to read the links I posted and to think about this, because the pr machine feeding the con has been going a while now and even being taught to children in schools everywhere. We’re in danger of losing all sense of the real world and how things really work, and the wonder of it all, for generations. I don’t have anything more to say on CO2 as a real gas, but we owe future generation better than to put them at the mercy of those who have the power to manipulate them and stop them thinking for themselves.

    Anyway, good luck to all you posting and reading here, and a special thanks to those who have taken the trouble to discuss this with me.

    Carbon Dioxide is Good for You

    Myrrh

  128. Stupendous ‘own-goal’ – congratulations for revealing the true nature of theocratic eco-terrorism.
    Resorting to fallacious ‘tu quoque’ anti-American argument does nothing to conceal the truth. Theocratic eco-terrorism ranks with all the other ‘ministry-of-we-know-best’ ‘-ism’s’ bent on crushing humanity. And what better way to start than exploding children? Condone this at your peril.

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