Timothy Birdnow

Coincidences do happen in life, but when they happen in politics one should be very wary; more than likely they were engineered to serve a purpose.

In a huge coincidence, the Democrats, led by "crazy eyes" Alexandria Ocasio-cortez, have put forth a blueprint for socialism under the banner of a "Green New Deal" They are calling for, among other things, the elimination of air travel, forcing America to use 100% "renewable" energy, meaning wind and solar, while at the same time "transitioning away from nuclear power", the only non-emitting energy source we have (wind and solar still require the emissions of greenhouse gases as they have to be backed up with traditional coal or gas fired plants). She wants to minimize meat eating, and reduce cow flatulence (I guess she will be feeding Beano to the herds.) She wants other things, too, such as a guaranteed job, universal health care, family leave, etc. In other words, this is her jolly green socialist wet dream. Kind of a Soylent Green dream, if you ask me.

Even the very liberal Washington Post called it unworkable.

BTW - Occluded Cortex had a FAQ page that mentioned such goodies as guaranteed income for "those unwilling to work" but she has since taken it down and claimed it was a "fake". Strange; it appeared on her own website ...

But isn't it a coincidence that this massive policy initiative - created out of thin air by a woman whose IQ is barely larger than her waist size - should come just as Americans attitudes towards Global Warming, ooh, I mean "Climate Change", should suddenly take a hard left turn?

Yes indeed; just in time to promote her cause, the good people at PEW come out with a poll suggesting Americans - and the world - are far more concerned about Global Warming than we all previously thought.

From the Reuters story: BERLIN, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Climate change is the top security concern in a poll conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, followed by Islamist terrorism and cyber attacks while respondents in a growing number of countries worried about the power and influence of the United States.

In 13 of 26 countries, people listed climate change as the top global threat, with the Islamic State militant group topping the list in eight and cyber attacks in four, the non-profit, non-partisan Pew Research Center said in its report.

Worries about climate change have increased sharply since 2013, with double-digit percentage point increases seen in countries including the United States, Mexico, France, Britain, South Africa and Kenya, according to the poll of 27,612 people conducted between May and August, 2018.

North Korea's nuclear programme and the global economy were also significant concerns, while respondents in Poland named Russian power and influence as the top threat.

The largest shift in sentiment centred on the United States, it said, with a median of 45 percent of people naming U.S. power and influence as a threat in 2018, up from 25 percent in 2013, when Barack Obama was U.S. president.

End excerpt.

Interesting; there has been a major shift with no real reason for it. These same people who elected Donald Trump just a little over two years ago now reject him utterly on this and want something down!

Right.

Just a few years back things were different. Only 48% of all Americans believed in global warming just three years ago. Now we are told the world is overwhelming embracing this as a top cause. And that largely hadn't changed from 2014:

Temperatures may keep rising, yet public opinion has held steady: Most Americans have only low levels of concern about climate change, a new poll by Gallup finds.

Just 34 percent of adults said they worried "a great deal” about "global warming,” about the same as last year. Meanwhile, 35 percent said they felt the same way about "climate change,” just a 2 percentage points more than last year.

"A major challenge facing scientists and organizations that view global warming as a major threat to humanity is that average citizens express so little concern about the issue,” Gallup said.

End excerpt.

In 2014 the public concern was just 34% according to a Gallup poll.

So what has changed since then? Was it people really did believe Obama stopped the rise of sea levels, as he so arrogantly claimed he would? Or is it people believe things really are worse now, in this hyper-partisan environment? Or is this a load of hot air?

My bet is on the latter; if it were an issue Mr. Trump's approval ratings would be in the twenties. They aren't; people support him. Coal miners support him. Factory workers support him. These are the people most affected by the climate change hysteria.

But wait! There's more!

According to the Pew poll, The countries most concerned with climate change, accoring to PEW, are the developing world - any surprise, since these are the regions where a.people are less educated and will believe what is told to them and b. they stand to make out through redistribution of wealth efforts.]

Indeed, the places least educated and most likely to get freebies out of this are the ones most concerned. Why is that?

That's because we are planning to set up a worldwide welfare program. Not content with having destroyed the working black family, the kindly liberals now want to destroy the deserving poor in Africa, in the barrios in Central and South America, etc. They will do precisely to them what they did to America's working poor families, addict them to government welfare programs and then force their bit in the mouths, eventually to saddle and ride them.

It starts with the freebie, just as drug addiction starts with the free sample from the nice man outside of the school house.

There's more to this, too; how were these questions asked, and what methodology was employed? PEW has been a huge backer of Global Warming theory for a long time. It matters, too. For example, this Altnet piece, while arguing FOR AGW alarmism, actually makes the case that much of the polling isn't worth a hill of beans (don't eat that! You'll get gas and AOC will have to insert a stopper!)

From the article:

For example, the 2018 National Survey on Energy and Environment poll, conducted by the University of Michigan and Muhlenberg College, asked respondents about their support for various versions of carbon taxes that differed in how the tax money would be used. Forty-eight percent of respondents said they supported a generic carbon tax, where no information about how the money would be spent was provided. Even more said they would support a revenue-neutral tax, where tax money is returned to citizens in the form of lower taxes or a dividend, or a tax that funds renewable energy projects.

[...]

flects problems in survey design. Some surveys ask respondents about their support for climate policy only, without placing it in the broader policy context. In isolation, respondents might express strong concern about climate change. But when surveys include other policy priorities – such as jobs, health care and national security – respondents often relegate climate policy to a much lower position on their agenda.

Some climate surveys are also susceptible to the issues of question order effect and anchoring, where responses on earlier questions influence answers to subsequent questions.

For example, the 2018 National Survey on Energy and Environment poll, conducted by the University of Michigan and Muhlenberg College, asked respondents about their support for various versions of carbon taxes that differed in how the tax money would be used. Forty-eight percent of respondents said they supported a generic carbon tax, where no information about how the money would be spent was provided. Even more said they would support a revenue-neutral tax, where tax money is returned to citizens in the form of lower taxes or a dividend, or a tax that funds renewable energy projects.

In all cases, the responses were anchored to the level of support for a generic tax; the support for a specific tax probably would be higher, not lower than that 48 percent. If the survey hadn’t first asked about a generic tax, then the recorded support for different versions of the carbon tax might have been lower.

Furthermore, the order of response categories influences the level of support. When response categories start with positive values, like "strongly support,” the level of support tends to be higher then if response categories started with negative values, like "strongly oppose.” So, when a pollster first asks if a person strongly supports a policy, the results could come out differently than if they ask the exact same question, but reverse the order of possible

End excerpt.

How many people will say this is hokum to a phone pollster these days? It has become a pc thing, a matter of "good people believe it" just as "good people" separate their trash, or support generic "rights" of trans people. It's a feel-good response that is designed to make the pollster think well of the individual. Does it really mean they care about this?

Ever heard of the Wilder aka Bradley Effect? People tell pollsters what they want to hear sometimes. While this was especially true where race is concerned, it is equally true where other modern taboos are concerned. Certainly environmental issues could cause a Wilder Effect of their own.

here and here for more on the problems with polls, or at least the problems in the 2016 election cycle. The polls got it monumentally wrong then, but now we should believe them over a scheme to fundamentally alter our entire civilization to fix a chimera problem?

And it IS a chimera. There has been no warming since late in the decade before the last. There is no tropical tropospheric "hot spot" as the models predict. Ice levels are not falling at the polls. We do not see a "warmer, wetter world" as the models predict. None of this is true.

But, but, but...there's 97% consensus of scientists that say so! Nope.

In point of fact, John Cook, the fellow who fabricated the "consensus" myth, send out

Bear in mind, what Cook (and Nancy Oreskes before him) did was examine papers by people who are writing about global warming; hardly a way to learn what science in general supports. And also bear in mind that so many of these people are under pressure to support the establishment position. Just ask Joanne Simpson, former NASA scientist, who only came out against Global Warming after she retired.

Here is a fine refutation of the Cook study. From the article:

Cook and co selected some 12,000 papers from the scientific literature to test whether these papers support the hypothesis that humans played a substantial role in the observed warming of the Earth. 12,000 is a strange number. The climate literature is much larger. The number of papers on the detection and attribution of climate change is much, much smaller.

Cook’s sample is not representative. Any conclusion they draw is not about "the literature” but rather about the papers they happened to find.

Most of the papers they studied are not about climate change and its causes, but many were taken as evidence nonetheless. Papers on carbon taxes naturally assume that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming – but assumptions are not conclusions. Cook’s claim of an increasing consensus over time is entirely due to an increase of the number of irrelevant papers that Cook and co mistook for evidence.

The abstracts of the 12,000 papers were rated, twice, by 24 volunteers. Twelve rapidly dropped out, leaving an enormous task for the rest. This shows. There are patterns in the data that suggest that raters may have fallen asleep with their nose on the keyboard. In July 2013, Mr Cook claimed to have data that showed this is not the case. In May 2014, he claimed that data never existed.

The data is also ridden with error. By Cook’s own calculations, 7% of the ratings are wrong. Spot checks suggest a much larger number of errors, up to one-third.

Cook tried to validate the results by having authors rate their own papers. In almost two out of three cases, the author disagreed with Cook’s team about the message of the paper in question.

Attempts to obtain Cook’s data for independent verification have been in vain. Cook sometimes claims that the raters are interviewees who are entitled to privacy – but the raters were never asked any personal detail. At other times, Cook claims that the raters are not interviewees but interviewers.

The 97% consensus paper rests on yet another claim: the raters are incidental, it is the rated papers that matter. If you measure temperature, you make sure that your thermometers are all properly and consistently calibrated. Unfortunately, although he does have the data, Cook does not test whether the raters judge the same paper in the same way.

End excerpt.

And what does consensus have to do with science anyway? There was a consensus that the Earth was the center of the universe at one time. There was a consensus that light was propagated by an unseen "ether". There was a consensus that life forms did not change. There was a consensus that atoms could not be divided. We now know all of this to be untrue. Nature isn't dependent on our ideas, contrary to what post-modernists think.

Read the whole ridiculous "Green New Deal" summary here.

At any rate, the timing of this is strangely coincidental.  In politics - and Climate Change is as political as it gets - there are no coincidental events. This is part of a broader effort.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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