Another Group of Kooks Calls for the End of World

[TimG]

http://www.onehundredmonths.org/

A good commentary on the cult of Malthus which has replaced Christianity among modern eco-activists:

http://www.climate-resistance.org/2011/05/eco-rapture.html

I find it ironic that so many on the left like to (rightly) redicule Christian doomsayers but are completely blind to the equivalent nutcases in the environmental movement.

Edited May 22, 2011 by TimG

[Michael Hardner]

I find it ironic that so many on the left like to (rightly) redicule Christian doomsayers but are completely blind to the equivalent nutcases in the environmental movement.

I don't understand that either. Surely there are nuts that make statements every day, so why did this person get so much attention ?

[TimG]

I don't understand that either. Surely there are nuts that make statements every day, so why did this person get so much attention ?

$100 million spent on advertising.

[scouterjim]

I don't understand that either. Surely there are nuts that make statements every day, so why did this person get so much attention ?

A radio program.

[MiddleClassCentrist]

http://www.onehundredmonths.org/

A good commentary on the cult of Malthus which has replaced Christianity among modern eco-activists:

http://www.climate-resistance.org/2011/05/eco-rapture.html

I find it ironic that so many on the left like to (rightly) redicule Christian doomsayers but are completely blind to the equivalent nutcases in the environmental movement.

To be purposefully blind, like many ideological people are to other options than their own, one would have to have heard of it before.

That just seems like one random blogger.

Climate change is real. The climate has always been changing and we do have our part in changing the climate but, It's not like we are going to wake up tomorrow to category 6 hurricanes.

[eyeball]

Another Group of Kooks Calls for the End of World Why do people take this stuff seriously?

Probably the same reason as the kooks who believe the Cornucopian fantasy that the human economy can grow without any limit on this planet whatsoever, a lack of basic critical thinking skills.

[TimG]

Probably the same reason as the kooks who believe the Cornucopian fantasy that the human economy can grow without any limit on this planet whatsoever, a lack of basic critical thinking skills.

A fully paid up member of the Cult of Malthus I see. Completely unwilling to acknowledge that your cult members have been predicting the end of the world for a century and it never seems to materialize because human ingenuity finds ways to deal with resource shortages.

[Sir Bandelot]

Probably the same reason as the kooks who believe the Cornucopian fantasy that the human economy can grow without any limit on this planet whatsoever

Oh you are cattivo!

I think the question of 'why' is intriguing. What kind of person wants to see the world come to an end. It's not simply a warning to these people, or something they're afraid of, but clearly they look forward to it. They hope it will happen, which I believe goes against the very scripture that warns about those who "await the day of the lord".

In the one article I read, a man drove his family thousands of miles to California to wait for the day. He was disappointed, he said because he thought that paradise or the post-apocalyptic world would be a better place than this one. That's what I think is the primary motivation to wish for the apocalypse- They believe that this world is evil and can no longer be redeemed, but that the apocalypse must come and that is the only way to make things right. Only a degenerate, self-loathing society would want to see its own end. Thus a popular tendency to want the apocalypse, is an indicator of the decline of a civilization!

[betsy]

http://www.onehundredmonths.org/

I find it ironic that so many on the left like to (rightly) redicule Christian doomsayers but are completely blind to the equivalent nutcases in the environmental movement.

Although the newspeople I see on tv (CTV/CBC) are not exactly doomsayers, I do notice how they go out of their way to make any disaster sound as "the worst one" - be it tornado/hurricane, flooding, volcano eruptions - to be experienced by a place/people.

Note: they seem to have given up with earthquakes though. They can't keep up....and it's harder to associate it with anything man-made.

Reason I brought this up here, I just got back from watching the news about the tornado in Missouri....and oh boy, did the news guy ever asked such leading questions, one after another - even though the person he's interviewing was giving the message that this kind of thing - tornadoes - is just an accepted part of life in their community - trying to get the guy to say it's the worst he's ever seen!

And he's not the only news guy doing this! And the way they really use this phrase "....the worst in...." and you expect to hear something so dramatic like a century, only to hear them say, ".....twenty years!"

I guess so they can tie it up with the environment issue!

Edited May 23, 2011 by betsy

[Michael Hardner]

I guess so they can tie it up with the environment issue!

Reading your post here, it does seem that there's an innate desire to warn people, or to spin cautionary tales.

[WIP]

http://www.onehundredmonths.org/

A good commentary on the cult of Malthus which has replaced Christianity among modern eco-activists:

http://www.climate-resistance.org/2011/05/eco-rapture.html

Nice try! But your analysis of doomsday cults is no better than your understanding of climate. This group is more closely compared with anti-nuclear activists who have the Doomsday Clock....which is the likely inspiration for their 100 month deadline, than with someone using obscure passages in the Bible to predict the end of the world.

The homepage, which you linked states that:"we could be beyond our climate's tipping point," by the time of the deadline. That's not a chronological prediction, and the truth could be just as easily that our climate is already beyond the tipping point - based on recent events, such as increased methane levels in the atmosphere; the mild Arctic winters and warm summers that are increasing the rate of sea ice loss; the dramatic increase in all sorts of severe weather globally, whether it be the record tornadoes in the U.S., record flooding on the Mississippi and the Assiniboine out west, coinciding with the record droughts in China, Western Europe and West Texas...just on the other side of where record rainfalls are being experienced; and here's a prediction for you: the accelerating rate of increase in atmospheric Co2, which as of April 9, was above 393 ppm. will be over 400 by the start of 2016!

There are valid reasons based on clear evidence that the entire planet's climate is changing in a way that will be bad for our civilization...especially high yield agriculture, and the deluded fools are the ones with their heads in the sand who want to ignore the storm that is already happening around us, and pretend we can just go on continuing the same crap for the indefinite future. The only thing 100 Months may be wrong about is that there are still ways to prevent the climate-forcing changes that are going to make weather an even more exciting topic in the future.

Some of the clowns on the climate change denial side, like Bjorn Lomborg, have framed an argument around the theme that changing our gas-guzzling way of life is just too hard, and we need to "adapt" to climate change of the future. Well, it sure as hell looks like these assholes have had their way, and we will all have to adapt to extreme weather, and doubling or tripling of food prices very soon. The reductions in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions look like they are going to come the hard way: because of declining and increasingly expensive oil to develop, and a collapsing world economy....enjoy deniers....you're getting exactly what you asked for!

I find it ironic that so many on the left like to (rightly) redicule Christian doomsayers but are completely blind to the equivalent nutcases in the environmental movement.

It's easy to ridicule sources such as the one you provided, since he inspired your analogy that green activism is equivalent to doomsday cults, by mocking Harold Camping for most of the piece, and then going back 40 years to deride Paul Ehrlich for concluding that population breaking point would happen by the late 70's. The only reason why Ehrlich wasn't right, is because Green Revolution hybrid plants were just being introduced into Mexico, India and Indonesia during that time. Even the biologist who created the Green Revolution...died recently, I forget the name...stated that his improvements to agriculture were just a stopgap measure to buy time, and not a permanent solution to the World's population problems. He still considered the need to bring down population levels as essential...which unfortunately were abandoned by many Third World nations on the advice of their religious leaders in the 80's. The U.N. has had to revise it's numbers upward in a report earlier this year that I commented on last month. NO matter what this clown blogger you discovered thinks about the "Cult of Malthus", Malthus is still correct that unchecked population growth is exponential, while food availability is arithmetical. It's also worth noting that looking through his blog, this anti-ecology blogger does not directly address any climate issues during the entire month so far. He complains about politics, pop culture, and someone designing tiny houses....but there's nothing dealing with the climate issue....and that puts him right in the pack of fellow climate deniers who have as much to say about science as creationists do on the same subject.

[WIP]

And he's not the only news guy doing this! And the way they really use this phrase "....the worst in...." and you expect to hear something so dramatic like a century, only to hear them say, ".....twenty years!"

I guess so they can tie it up with the environment issue!

The American Meteorological Society does not want to take a position on climate change, and meteorologists themselves are just as likely to be on the denial side as the general public...if not more so! A likely reason is because their training is focused on explaining weather changes in terms of regular, cyclic activity, and they are still following a premise started in the early 60's, that understanding and predicting weather is just a matter of knowledge, and gaining more knowledge of weather systems would enable more accurate and longer term predictions.

I noticed too that one of the TV meteorologists looked rattled in a brief video clip; and I think it may have something to do with how quick and unexpected the tornadoes developed in certain areas. And, when it comes to the records - whether it be record temps, droughts, rainfalls, snowfalls, floods, tornadoes etc. - the local weatherman seems to be more inclined to brush off the new record as an anomaly or just something made to be broken, like the record for the 100 m sprint, than consider that it is part of a pattern of increasingly unstable weather that is not going to go back to the regular, dependable weather cycles that we enjoyed for several decades!

[Michael Hardner]

WIP,

The homepage, which you linked states that:"we could be beyond our climate's tipping point," by the time of the deadline. That's not a chronological prediction, and the truth could be just as easily that our climate is already beyond the tipping point - based on recent events, such as increased methane levels in the atmosphere; the mild Arctic winters and warm summers that are increasing the rate of sea ice loss; the dramatic increase in all sorts of severe weather globally, whether it be the record tornadoes in the U.S., record flooding on the Mississippi and the Assiniboine out west, coinciding with the record droughts in China, Western Europe and West Texas...just on the other side of where record rainfalls are being experienced; and here's a prediction for you: the accelerating rate of increase in atmospheric Co2, which as of April 9, was above 393 ppm. will be over 400 by the start of 2016!

Now, more than ever we need to be highly suspicious of disaster mongering by the MSM. They're not dishonest about it, however they can highlight the worst situations and be rewarded for it with ratings.

(By 'we' I mean the good posters here at MLW, including me.)

Luckily, the web allows us to see the studies at the source of the MSM reports. I went to my science source, to point me towards a paper on Tropical Storms, and came up with this definitive review of studies from 2010:

Whether the characteristics of tropical cyclones have changed or will change in a warming climate — and if so, how — has been the subject of considerable investigation, often with conflicting results. Large amplitude fluctuations in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones greatly complicate both the detection of long-term trends and their attribution to rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Trend detection is further impeded by substantial limitations in the availability and quality of global historical records of tropical cyclones. Therefore, it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone activity have exceeded the variability expected from natural causes.

So, we don't know if warming is changing changes in these storms.

However, future projections based on theory and high-resolution dynamical models consistently indicate that greenhouse warming will cause the globally averaged intensity of tropical cyclones to shift towards stronger storms, with intensity increases of 2–11% by 2100. Existing modelling studies also consistently project decreases in the globally averaged frequency of tropical cyclones, by 6–34%. Balanced against this, higher resolution modelling studies typically project substantial increases in the frequency of the most intense cyclones, and increases of the order of 20% in the precipitation rate within 100 km of the storm centre. For all cyclone parameters, projected changes for individual basins show large variations between different modelling studies.

So - models predict FEWER storms, but those that happen will be 2-11% more intense, by the end of the century. A 10% increase in windspeed results in 60% increase in damage.

Also, we're in a natural phase of heightened hurricane activity.

[Saipan]

Only a degenerate, self-loathing society would want to see its own end.

Maybe they just want to say Hi to Allah and hump the 77 virgins

[betsy]

Maybe they just want to say Hi to Allah and hump the 77 virgins

I keep reading about the 77 virgins....

Btw, did they specify what kinds of virgins these 77 are? Human virgins?

A martyr wannabe should make sure. What if they're camels?

Edited May 23, 2011 by betsy

[TimG]

The only reason why Ehrlich wasn't right, is because Green Revolution hybrid plants were just being introduced into Mexico, India and Indonesia during that time.

In other words - he was WRONG. And just like Camping, Ehrlich went back to his books and predicted that apocalypse was only delayed. He will be proven wrong again because the human race has a capacity to adapt that far outstrips the imaginations of cultists like you and Ehrlich.

If there is one thing that unites the doom mongers no matter what the details of their beliefs it is how they hate the idea that they could be living in a time which will be completely forgotten in 100 years. The doom mongers hope for disaster because it makes them feel they are living in a unique era.

Fortunately, most people don't have the character deficit that turns them into doomsday cultists but they have a unhealthy fascination with them. That is why people like Camping and Ehrlich still get so much media coverage despite having such a poor track records.

[lukin]

Tree hugging eco-tards have been predicting the end of the world for years. Is Camping a tree hugger?

[eyeball]

A fully paid up member of the Cult of Malthus I see.

Along with being a hug-a-rapist as you'd have us all believe.

What is it with your capacity for leaping to such knee-jerk assumptions in the face of a little doubt about the things you leap for?

[TimG]

Along with being a hug-a-rapist as you'd have us all believe.

If you don't like the description you could try to explain why your desired policies actually do impose a level of punishment on criminals that reflects society's revulsion towards the crime committed. So far all you have said is that punishment has no place in the justice system. For that reason, 'hug a rapist' is a fair description of your position. Edited May 24, 2011 by TimG

[eyeball]

If you don't like the description you could try to explain why your desired policies actually do impose a level of punishment on criminals that reflects society's revulsion towards the crime committed.

Polices, of mine...where?

So far all you have said is that punishment has no place in the justice system. For that reason, 'hug a rapist' is a fair description of your position.

What I said is that vengeance has no place our justice system. If that makes me a hug-a-rapist it probably makes Jesus one too, and you're right I ain't no Christian. Neither was Jesus come to think of it.

As for the Cult of Malthus and my status as a paid-up member, you pulled that out your arse too didn't you?

[jbg]

I find it ironic that so many on the left like to (rightly) redicule Christian doomsayers but are completely blind to the equivalent nutcases in the environmental movement.

More of those "nut cases" are in fact fraudulent profiteers, such as Al Gore. His own liftestyle belies his own statements about climate rapture.

[TimG]

What I said is that vengeance has no place our justice system. If that makes me a hug-a-rapist it probably makes Jesus one too

I won't speculate on what Jesus would or would not do. But it is good to see that that you acknowledge that you simply don't give a damn about justice.

As for the Cult of Malthus and my status as a paid-up member, you pulled that out your arse too didn't you?

No. It is an accurate description for someone who blindly adhers to the notion that the human was is headed for a crash because "something has got give". You have no evidence to support your claims. It is nothing but a religious belief for you.

[WIP]

WIP,

Now, more than ever we need to be highly suspicious of disaster mongering by the MSM. They're not dishonest about it, however they can highlight the worst situations and be rewarded for it with ratings.

(By 'we' I mean the good posters here at MLW, including me.)

Michael! Take your patronizing moderate bullshit act and your unreferenced "science" source that only deals with tropical storms and shove em where the sun don't shine! It's a simple rule of thumb -- every one degree increase in global temperature adds a 7% increase to moisture carried in the atmosphere. More energy + more water vapour = more severe storms; it's as simple as that.

Most shocking, states a new Met Office report, is

global warming will start to “emerge as a force that everyone on planet Earth will have to reckon with, with the storms in America as a clear indicator that global weather patterns are out of control and extremely dangerous.”

Research by the famed United Kingdom Weather Service, that’s nicknamed “The Met Office,” predicts much of North America and Europe will remain cold and snowy into the New Year.

In turn, the GWPF has dire warnings for all people with its forecasts for 2011.

“There will be parts of the world where life as we know it will be impacted to the point where it no longer will be safe to live.

Weather patterns have changed to the point where no human can be fully safe from the results of global warming that, unfortunately, will only get worse,” states the GWPF report following recent winter storm bashing of Europe and the U.S.

http://www.huliq.com/10282/weather-outside-frightful-worldwide-getting-worse-new-year

Given that atmospheric water-holding capacity is expected to increase roughly exponentially with temperature—and that atmospheric water content is increasing in accord with this theoretical expectation6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11—it has been suggested that human-influenced global warming may be partly responsible for increases in heavy precipitation3, 5, 7. Because of the limited availability of daily observations, however, most previous studies have examined only the potential detectability of changes in extreme precipitation through model–model comparisons12, 13, 14, 15. Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases

have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas.

These results are based on a comparison of observed and multi-model simulated changes in extreme precipitation over the latter half of the twentieth century analysed with an optimal fingerprinting technique.

Changes in extreme precipitation projected by models, and thus the impacts of future changes in extreme precipitation, may be underestimated because models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy precipitation with warming

16.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09763.html

[lukin]

Michael! Take your patronizing moderate bullshit act and your unreferenced "science" source that only deals with tropical storms and shove em where the sun don't shine! It's a simple rule of thumb -- every one degree increase in global temperature adds a 7% increase to moisture carried in the atmosphere. More energy + more water vapour = more severe storms; it's as simple as that.

Most shocking, states a new Met Office report, is

global warming will start to “emerge as a force that everyone on planet Earth will have to reckon with, with the storms in America as a clear indicator that global weather patterns are out of control and extremely dangerous.”

Research by the famed United Kingdom Weather Service, that’s nicknamed “The Met Office,” predicts much of North America and Europe will remain cold and snowy into the New Year.

In turn, the GWPF has dire warnings for all people with its forecasts for 2011.

“There will be parts of the world where life as we know it will be impacted to the point where it no longer will be safe to live.

Weather patterns have changed to the point where no human can be fully safe from the results of global warming that, unfortunately, will only get worse,” states the GWPF report following recent winter storm bashing of Europe and the U.S.

http://www.huliq.com/10282/weather-outside-frightful-worldwide-getting-worse-new-year

Given that atmospheric water-holding capacity is expected to increase roughly exponentially with temperature—and that atmospheric water content is increasing in accord with this theoretical expectation6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11—it has been suggested that human-influenced global warming may be partly responsible for increases in heavy precipitation3, 5, 7. Because of the limited availability of daily observations, however, most previous studies have examined only the potential detectability of changes in extreme precipitation through model–model comparisons12, 13, 14, 15. Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases

have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas.

These results are based on a comparison of observed and multi-model simulated changes in extreme precipitation over the latter half of the twentieth century analysed with an optimal fingerprinting technique.

Changes in extreme precipitation projected by models, and thus the impacts of future changes in extreme precipitation, may be underestimated because models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy precipitation with warming

16.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09763.html

OOOOOOOOOOOOOO I'm scared.

[Michael Hardner]

Michael! Take your patronizing moderate bullshit act and your unreferenced "science" source that only deals with tropical storms and shove em where the sun don't shine! It's a simple rule of thumb -- every one degree increase in global temperature adds a 7% increase to moisture carried in the atmosphere. More energy + more water vapour = more severe storms; it's as simple as that.

Sorry, WIP - I forgot to add my link.

Nature.com

Consider it sourced.

I don't think my position is an 'act'. The MSM overstates things constantly, and it's our job to talk about what is real. I'm not sure why that upsets you so - certainly you wouldn't allow your opponents to cite anti-warming MSM hyperbole.