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Climate Alarmists are Really the Ones in Denial About Climate Change

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I have previously remarked on the “Goldilocks” mindset that seems to pervade climate change alarmism.  When it comes to climate we can be certain about one thing — it has been changing constantly for all of history.  Sometimes it has been much warmer than it is now, and sometimes it has been much colder.  Yet central to the climate alarmist narrative is the notion that there was some Goldilocks “just right” moment from which we are currently diverging and our job is to make it stop.

Robert Tracinski comments on this phenomenon here:

 

The problem is that drought is normal in California. It’s normal on a year-to-year basis:Most years are dry, and the state has always relied on the occasional wet year to refill its reservoirs. It’s even more normal on a historical time scale. Estimates of rainfall going back thousands of years showrecurring multi-century megadroughts. It’s the relatively wet twentieth century that is abnormal.

megadry90

It’s telling that environmentalists describe themselves as being in fear of “climate change,” because they are actually believers in climate stasis: the conviction that all aspects of the natural world ought to remain exactly as they were in 1970, forever. But the climate has always been changing, and viewing drought in California as abnormal or unnatural is itself an example of “climate change denial.”

Comments
Global warming happens. Ice ages happen. Why? It now seems that the main forces that cause this are huge, cyclic and beyond our control. For example, the gravitational force of other planets cause the shape of the Earth’s orbit around the sun to go back and forth between being more circular and more elliptical over a 100,000 year cycle. There are two other cycles. These powerful natural forces have intervals over long periods of time. Whatever impact the activity of humanity has on climate change, it is negligible in comparison to these powerful natural forces. What is certain is that the climate will change dramatically regardless of the activity or inactivity of humanity. These powerful cyclic forces are the Milankovitch Cycles:Eccentricity is, simply, the variations in the shape of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun (0 to 5 percent ellipticity) on a cycle of about 100,000 years. — Obliquity (axial tilt) is the inclination of the Earth’s axis in relation to its plane of orbit around the Sun. Oscillations in the degree of Earth’s axial tilt occur on a periodicity of 41,000 years from 21.5 to 24.5 degrees. — Precession is the Earth’s slow wobble as it spins on axis, and has a periodicity of 23,000 years. For more information about these cycles, see: http://www.indiana.edu/~geol105/images/gaia_chapter_4/milankovitch.htm For an explanation of how it was determined that the Milankovitch cycles powerfully affect climate change, see: http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/03_1.shtml An excerpt:
When Fourier analysis was applied to deep-sea records in 1975, it emerged that the oxygen-isotope series contained strong cycles with periods near 100,000 years, 41,000 years, and 23,000 years. These are precisely the periods expected if Earth’s orbital elements (eccentricity, obliquity, and precession) govern ice-age climates, as proposed by Milankovitch Theory. Thus, there could be no more doubt that orbital elements had to be considered as important drivers of climate on long time scales.
Governmental imposition of regulations directing the activity of humanity in order to prevent climate change makes as much sense as would regulations intended to prevent the tides, as though governmental authority can override the force of gravity and change the rise and fall of sea levels.harry
July 30, 2016
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For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, here is Leonard Nimoy (with scary music) in 1978 warning us: "Climate experts believe the next ice age is on its way. According to recent evidence, it could come sooner than anyone had expected." Replace "the next ice age" with "catastrophic global warming" throughout the video and it sounds exactly like the current panic. When confronted with this, global warming enthusiasts say "Oh, we didn't really believe that then, but you can trust us now. Be very afraid -- and send us money!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kGB5MMIAVAsagebrush gardener
July 30, 2016
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Global Cooling much more lethal than Warming. As a child of the 70's I'm getting scared. Again. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/07/02/are-scientists-preparing-for-a-flipflop-back-to-global-cooling-predictions/ppolish
July 29, 2016
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The Global Warming hoax is ENTIRELY about money and power. The players want money (e.g., continuing government grants to tinker yet again with their personal computer simulations that cannot correctly "post-dict" the known data for the 20th century) right now. But if they get Power, as they came damn close to in Europe, then the money rolls in for ever without any new playing pretend. That is, there will no longer be ANY need to "make stuff up to support it". But then ALL of the goals of Leftists are like that: a "panel of eminent experts" (each approved by the Leftists) will tell us what we are required to believe about everything.mahuna
July 29, 2016
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Just as with Evolution, Climate Change is all about commitment the political/social narrative, and then making stuff up to support it. Andrewasauber
July 29, 2016
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Barry, one of the things that first caused me to think seriously about the implications of the naturalist drift in science was the way in which it tends to lead to conclusions that contradict either logic or evidence (but that apparently doesn't much matter so long as a thesis is fully naturalist.) Logic: For example, evolutionary psychology attempts to account for how people tip at restaurants with reference to things that happened in the Pleistocene era. If that's true, it's an argument against evolution, not for it. But don't count on any tenured prof noticing that fact. Evidence: The same people who insist that evolution is a random, directionless process believe in a pristine environment state to which everything should be expected to conform. Also, just for example, recent unfounded claims that chimpanzees are entering the the Stone Age, they seem to be based on a determinist theory of evolution, but Darwinists hold evolution to be directionless. Explain? For sure, the alarmists' index time is 1970 - the last time people took those people seriously as a free choice. Now they have increasingly oppressive legal powers.News
July 29, 2016
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