By Joseph Kellard
Daily Tech reports the following:
“Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.”
Read the complete article here:
www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm
Objectivist blogger Ergo asks in regard to this report on the record cold temperatures throughout the world: “So, is it time to return to the global cooling hysteria of the 1970s?”
No, for the environmentalists, it is time now to turn to “climate change” hysteria. It is exactly their anticipation of this natural cyclical trend — between years/decades of general warming followed by years/decades of general cooling — that has made the greens switch to calling our alleged weather crisis “global warming” to the completely elastic term “climate change.” Environmentalists have denied that this is a natural trend, and that doesn't matter anyway: when they’re proven wrong they can just switch the terms of the debate.
When the world was generally cooling during the 1970s, the green hysteria was that Industrial Man was returning us to a new Ice Age, one that would mean mass death for many people the world over, particularly those in the coldest climes. In the 1980s, when their predictions failed to materialize and global temps began to rise, the greens turned to a new hysteria, “global warming,” and propagandized it with pictures of Mother Earth going up in flames — i.e., an inferno courtesy of Industrial Man.
Now that the cycle of cooling is apparently on again, the greens — having anticipated its return — have reverted to calling our supposed weather crisis “climate change.” It’s a transparent means of keeping themselves from getting trapped in the narrow boxes of using specific words such as “cooling” and “warming" to describe these man-made crises. They recognize the corner they’ve painted themselves in and have reverted to calling these natural climate fluctuations “change.” What a nice, broad, flexible word that can be bent to mean anything at any time! If the global climate trend is starting to return back to cooling, once again, this is no problem for the greens. They’ll just call it “climate change” ” — i.e., shifts in weather patterns. The term “climate change” allows them the flexibility to make any changes in the weather appear as if they are unnatural, chaotic and, of course, due to Industrial Man.
We cannot let the environmentalist get away with this shift from the narrow, specific term “global warming” to “climate change.” We have to remind the environmentalists that an Ice Age did not occur after their hysterical cries of “global cooling” in the 1970s, that the earth did not fry after their cries of “global warming” the past few decades, that the weather has always and always will “change," and that "climate changes" is meaningless term.
Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.
Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.
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5 comments:
No, for the environmentalists, it is time now to turn to “climate change” hysteria. It is exactly their anticipation of this natural cyclical trend — between years/decades of general warming followed by years/decades of general cooling — that has made the greens switch to calling our alleged weather crisis “global warming” to the completely elastic term “climate change.”
Joseph, are you sure of this accusation--that the switch in terms was adopted for the purpose of taking into account cyclical changes?
Working from memory of news reports alone, I would suggest another possibility to consider if I were investigating this further: The climatologists (not just the environmentalists) were concerned that the media were focusing too much on one element of climate--temperature ("warming")--and not enough on other, supposedly destructive elements such as supposed decreased rainfall, rising ocean levels, stronger winds, and so forth. So, they broadened the term--from "warming" to "climate"-- to subsume all those supposed horrors that were coming.
Only a detailed investigation of the historical record and careful inference could establish the motive behind the terminological change. I urge caution in attributing motives without strong proof.
Hello Burgess,
Thank you for your comment on my post. I don’t know for certain why environmentalists’ have switched to using the term “climate change” instead of “global warming.” But what is certain is that the greens are aware of the scientists who, in countering their claims of catastrophic man-made global warming, underscore the cyclical changes of general warming and cooling, whether on the micro level (about every two to four decades) or the macro level. Regarding the latter, for example, they certainly know of, and even condemn, books such as “Unstoppable Global Warming,” in which its authors claim the recent warming is driven by a 1,500 year solar cycle.
The global-warming scare mongers have been at it now since the mid-1980s, i.e., signally that the 20-year warming cycle is coming to an end. Prior to this, the greens tried to exploit as catastrophic the trend of global cooling during the 1970s. Moreover, over the past few years, increasingly more reports are coming out about the next cycle of global cooling. As one example, I recall reading, around 2005 or ’06, about both Russian and Chinese scientists noting the start of this trend. Certainly the greens have been anticipating this cyclical change, and, in order not to box themselves into the narrow claim of “warming,” they have gradually and subtly switched to using the term “climate change”—to incorporate any weather pattern, particularly if it is or can be painted as an aberration, as something alarming and catastrophic.
You wrote: “The climatologists (not just the environmentalists) were concerned that the media were focusing too much on one element of climate--temperature (‘warming’)--and not enough on other, supposedly destructive elements such as supposed decreased rainfall, rising ocean levels, stronger winds, and so forth. So, they broadened the term--from ‘warming’ to ‘climate’-- to subsume all those supposed horrors that were coming.”
I agree, but I think a key point is that environmentalists specifically claim that rising *temperatures* are the cause of these other factors, such as droughts and hurricanes. They claim, for example, that man-made catastrophic global warming is causing more frequent and fiercer hurricanes. The *temperatures* are the cause; the other climactic factors, such as droughts and hurricanes, are the effect. Knowing that periodic cooling is coming, they are motivated to switch the emphasis off of the temperatures, specifically warming, and bundle all forms of weather, even record colds spells and snow falls, under “change.” This package deal allows the greens to broaden their claims of catastrophic weather to any actual or made-up aberrations in the weather.
Perhaps I could have performed a detailed investigation into the origins of the term “climate change,” to see who created it and, if possible, I could have tried to discover their reasons for this switch. But the reasons I’ve given above are enough for me to believe that I am right about the greens’ deceptive switch from “warming” to “change.” Moreover, environmentalists often hide their true motives through deceptive means—specifically, deceptive methodologies on a host of issues and claims that never came true, or were proven (by a proper methodology) to be nothing but fear-mongering. These include their claims of “population bombs” that were supposed to bring about food scarcities and hundreds of thousands of deaths, their DDT scare that has lead to millions dead, their claims of exhausted natural resources, the claims that power lines-electromagnetic fields cause cancer (now its cell phone antennas), etc. Some greens have outright admitted that they manipulate facts or outright lied in order to prop up and perpetuate a particular cause.
The environmentalists movement is based on a host of misrepresentations, manipulation of facts and outright lies, and their motives for switching to “climate change” are just another form of their will to deceive and extinguish Industrial Man.
The warmists weren't successful the second round (remember the
"global cooling" scare of decades ago?) to convince everyone
that the warmist perception of reality was true. Now they're in
the third round, attempting to adapt reality to their perceptions.
>
The Arctic isn't the only thing that oscillates. It's the
climate changers' metaphysics and epistemology. And all the
propaganda about global warming has been chucked into the
nearest memory holes.
This is "science" governed by a political agenda, and the motives of the "climate changers" are transparent. Notice how quickly the "global warming" line was dropped after the tireless efforts of Lord Monckton and other "skeptics." The whole theory was discredited. Would "scientists" who were absolutely certain of their hypotheses and the truth of their assertions so quickly change their tune? What happened to all those hockey sticks? They've been garaged or stored in the attic for a better day.
The warmists weren't successful the second round (remember the
"global cooling" scare of decades ago?) to convince everyone
that the warmist perception of reality was true. Now they're in
the third round, attempting to adapt reality to their perceptions.
>
The Arctic isn't the only thing that oscillates. It's the
climate changers' metaphysics and epistemology. And all the
propaganda about global warming has been chucked into the
nearest memory holes.
This is "science" governed by a political agenda, and the motives of the "climate changers" are transparent. Notice how quickly the "global warming" line was dropped after the tireless efforts of Lord Monckton and other "skeptics." The whole theory was discredited. Would "scientists" who were absolutely certain of their hypotheses and the truth of their assertions so quickly change their tune? What happened to all those hockey sticks? They've been garaged or stored in the attic for a better day. Ed
The warmists weren't successful the second round (remember the
"global cooling" scare of decades ago?) to convince everyone
that the warmist perception of reality was true. Now they're in
the third round, attempting to adapt reality to their perceptions.
>
The Arctic isn't the only thing that oscillates. It's the
climate changers' metaphysics and epistemology. And all the
propaganda about global warming has been chucked into the
nearest memory holes.
This is "science" governed by a political agenda, and the motives of the "climate changers" are transparent. Notice how quickly the "global warming" line was dropped after the tireless efforts of Lord Monckton and other "skeptics." The whole theory was discredited. Would "scientists" who were absolutely certain of their hypotheses and the truth of their assertions so quickly change their tune? What happened to all those hockey sticks? They've been garaged or stored in the attic for a better day. Ed
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