Even the good Professor Renwick tells a story of emergency.
UPDATE BELOW
The outlandish declaration of a climate emergency is short on substance — there’s no evidence for it.
It’s no surprise that the sponsors of this charade try to intimidate us with abusive language. They’re hoping we won’t question their proclamation.
But this pitiful attempt to dredge up publicity for the lifeless subject of global warming is a good opportunity to question the evidence for it. I’ve asked James Renwick for evidence so when he replies I’ll let you know what it is.
The dictionary defines emergency as “a serious, unexpected and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action.”
How does the climate qualify as an emergency? Short answer: it doesn’t.
First, the climate doesn’t exist as a separate entity. It’s an abstraction, created from decades or centuries of observations of sunshine, rain, temperature and all the other meteorological phenomena. Reality is weather, not climate. When you look out the window you don’t see the climate. So the climate, literally, does nothing. It’s a result, not a cause.
Climate arises over a long period of weather, somewhere around 30 years. If you’re told the climate has changed over the last five years, or ten, or fifteen, don’t believe it. Changes in the weather can’t be confirmed as changes to the climate in under 30 years, perhaps more. Shorter-lived changes are considered part of normal variability.
Second, the climate doesn’t kill or injure people, or destroy property. The weather does these things. Some activists claim that storms and hurricanes are increasing in number and violence, but the IPCC disagrees. It says no increases have occurred in about the last 70 years.
To be clear, though extreme weather events frequently kill, injure and destroy, they are not occurring any more often than before, nor are they stronger.
So this climate emergency is false because there’s no emergency — whether caused by an abstraction or anything else. Please continue mentioning this to newspaper editors, radio stations, other journalists and family and friends.
If you disagree, do please tell me why.
Update 30 July 2019
Dr Renwick disdained to reply. This was my mail to him on 19 July:
Hi James,
It’s a while now since I sent you a rough email that probably displeased you, but the new matter of a climate “emergency” has arisen and I’d like to ask for your help in understanding it.
Eventfinda are advertising your presentation in Nelson in August called “Climate Emergency”. What does it mean? What data does it rest on? What makes it an emergency?
If you’re not too busy I hope you can help.
Thanks,
Richard.
We must conclude that he either no longer considers me a suitable pen pal or has no evidence of an emergency. Either way, his loss.
Views: 182
“There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid”.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer seems to have identified the reason why “climate emergency” advocates are so hard to talk to. The stupidity of the blind acceptance of the CAGW/climate change/“Carbon Pollution” scam cannot be countered because…
‘Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
‘If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who lives in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
‘Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.
‘But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.’
Thank you, Staal. Most interesting, and though I’m happy with Bonhoeffer’s conclusion in his last two sentences I am unsure how he got there.
Hmmm!
Thank you for the thoughts on trying to fix ‘stupid’.
I have tried for many, many years to fix ‘stupid’, alas to no avail.
I have tried simple reasoning, facts, actual evidence, deep reasoning, logic, examples, talking through the consequences etc etc, all to no avail.
I think one of the most simple tenants for humanity is
“you can’t fix stupid’!
However, you can mount arguments with evidence and facts that others watching the ‘discussion’ who are not yet or quite so stupid as the protagonist, the observers are able to grasp the factual/ evidenced based logic and rational of the argument, while acknowledging the crass stupidity of the counter argument.
Good luck with analyzing the stupid affliction. A cure will be worth its weight in gold and winner of the Noble Prize in how to prevent stupidity.
Unfortunately, the longer this nonsense (now climate emergency) continues to feature in our daily press the more of our populations are being afflicted by the ‘stupid bug’ .
The writer is correct when stating ‘Against stupidity we are defenseless’, we need to find another way – more facts and evidence don’t seem to cut the mustard, perhaps more exposure of the scam that it is will help stem the tide of increasing stupidity in our populations.
Stupidity is akin to an infectious disease
Thanks, Bruce. This is brilliant. I was chuckling all the way through.
I spent the 2nd half of my working life teaching in high schools, primary schools and other institutions both in NZ and in the UK. Much of my time was spent in ‘attempting to fix stupid’ and this is largely successful with learners with an open mind who are prepared to learn, but does not work for those have developed an iron-clad belief system, no matter how many qualifications they are able to claim.
Sadly, Mr Renwick appears to belong to the latter group.
I tend to agree, Alexander, except that should Prof Renwick ‘learn’ how the climate really works, he will lose much of his hard-won reputation and even his job, which in his case bolsters his ‘belief system’. I don’t envy their position, which grows more perilous by the month.
Are you serious? Take a look at Prof. Renwick’s CV:
https://www.victoria.ac.nz/sgees/about/staff/staff-cvs/CV_James_Renwick.pdf
He understands how the climate works far better than you or I.
The stupidity is this instance is your cognitive bias of illusory superiority.
Simon,
Yes, I’ve seen it before, most impressive. Yet, never having shown evidence that our emissions cause dangerous warming, he demonstrates incompetent understanding of climate science and human nature. If you think he has shown evidence, I’d be delighted to hear what it is. Same goes for the IPCC.
According to Newshub, NZ will spend $1.9 billion a year giving our money away to someone else to solve this emergency. (sorry I can’t find the source article this morning) That’s $19 billion over 10 years to meet the demands of the Paris climate accord
They admit that all this money will flow offshore.
Remember that, when you can’t get treatment for that rare medical condition, or your tax bill seems very high, or your relatives are living in cars.
$1.9 billion a year urinated away on offshore carbon credits.
I really don’t know why we tolerate the retards in charge of this country
Yes Andy, and folk are now dying worldwide from climatista criminality, while their local agents insult us. They have been clearly identified as marxist would-be destroyers of Western Civilisation.
However, I agree we also need our sense of humour, which our foes lack, along with common sense. It will get much worse. Watch the Futures markets. Brett
Andy,
Thanks for this; I remember something similar myself but I don’t think I’ve mentioned it. There’s a Newshub story from January this year, fawning over Shaw’s climate policy, failing to question his assertions, his tremendous spending on our behalf, assertions from the Insurance Council of NZ, and even chipping in with a helpful comment of its own that “The overwhelming majority of climate scientists” say climate change is being caused by humans, which is tantamount to a bald-faced lie.
But I think the one you mean is probably this from 2017.
Newshub states:
You understand I don’t mean to quibble over a mere half a billion—I’m agreeing with you. Maybe it was a different story, but let us know.
Richard
I live in Australia, and I do not know what our annual cost will be to meet the Paris Agreement, but that figure for NZ seems incredibly high. Apparently, Australia spends about A$3M per day on the UN. I don’t know if Paris spending is independent from that or not. It is incredible that “We the People” are so largely left out of such monstrous decision making.
I did see a recent Newshub story that seemed quite critical of the amount of spend. The article stated that the information had been obtained via OIA and that the figure was $1.9 billion a year for 10 years.
Unfortunately I can’t find the article.
So either Newshub removed it for its criticism of the lovely new coalition, or it’s a mystery.
btw, you say:
But the people elected them, that’s democr… oh, no. They were appointed by Winston. He presses our patience.
RT, yes indeed. I remember when Winston was polling as most-desired for PM. Just kept his head down and worked as Treasurer until Jenny bumped Jim, and sacked Winston. Hence NZ 1st…. and now Jenny is known as a crook. Her Chinese 2nd hubby has been robbing our Swamp Kauri too, and jobs I helped create partly at my own expense for my fellow Northlanders were lost. PGF cost – about the same as one smallish Auckland tunnel to save them a few minutes.