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Exploiting Human Misery and Distorting the Science: An environmentalist’s critique of “Years of Living Dangerously”


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exploiting-human-misery-and-distorting-the-science-an-environmentalists-critique-of-years-of-living-dangerouslyWatts Up With That?:

Anthony Watts

April 14, 2014

 

Guest essay by Jim Steele, Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University

 

In “Years of Living Dangerously” Hollywood’s Don Cheadle partners with Christian climate scientist Katharine Heyhoe to convince fellow Christians that they should trust the climate scientists who blame the misery brought by a Texas drought on rising CO2. Indeed in times of natural climate calamities, people suffer and become insecure as they confront nature’s awesome power.

 

Unfortunately that is when charlatans exploit their misery, making it truly a time of living dangerously. Quick interviews with ranchers who still believe the drought was caused naturally or by God was a feeble attempt to suggest it is religion that has blinded ranchers to the purported “science” of catastrophic climate change. Instead the documentary evoked memories of the 1956 movie “The Rainmaker.” Rancher Noah Curry tells Burt Lancaster (who is playing the Bill Starbuck the rainmaker), “We don’t believe in rainmakers!” Lancaster snaps back, “What do you believe in mistah? Dyin’ cattle?” Cheadle and Heyhoe were employing the age old rainmaker’s trick of exploiting natural catastrophes and human misery. I have documented similar ploys here, here, here, here and here.

 

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The NOAA’s models did suggest that perhaps 20% could be blamed on human caused climate change but researchers warned:

 

“There are various difficulties in interpreting such an analysis and assessing its relevance to understanding observations. First, no summertime warming over Texas in the long historical record has been detected, and we emphasized in this paper that the CMIP5 model-simulated Texas warming over the last century is inconsistent with observations…based on CMIP5 experiments, these estimates of changes in event probability drawn solely from CMIP5 must be viewed with great caution.1 [emphasis added]

 

Instead of driving to west Texas, Cheadle merely had to look at the Plainview TX temperature trends found online from the US Historical Climate Network to confirm that had been no climate warming.

 

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Apr 6, 2014

Hollywood celebrities and respected journalists span the globe to explore the issues of climate change and cover intimate stories of human triumph and tragedy. Watch new episodes Sundays at 10PM ET/PT, only on SHOWTIME.


It's the biggest story of our time. Hollywood's brightest stars and today's most respected journalists explore the issues of climate change and bring you intimate accounts of triumph and tragedy. YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY takes you directly to the heart of the matter in this awe-inspiring and cinematic documentary series event from Executive Producers James Cameron, Jerry Weintraub and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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Shades of...

State of Fear
Michael Crichton
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On Evaporation, the Scientific Battle Rages
John Hinderaker
4/15/14

Since they lose pretty much every argument, the global warming fraudsters try to tell us that the science is settled, and we should all just shut up. In fact, however, debates over various aspects of climate science are constantly raging. This one is a great example: “Major Errors Apparent in Climate Model Evaporation Estimates.”

 

But first, let’s set the stage. It is generally accepted that ceteris paribus, increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will tend to increase global temperatures, slightly. The problem–from the warmists’ standpoint–is that the increase is trivial, 1 degree C tops. So the only way the alarmists can create frightening scenarios is by hypothesizing positive feedback effects that will increase that one degree to six or seven. It is easy to devise a model that incorporates extravagant feedback assumptions, and therefore will kick out scary predictions. Fantasy in, fantasy out.

 

In fact, there is a vigorous debate about feedbacks: What are they? Are they positive or negative? If positive (or negative), what is their magnitude? Science does not yet give us the answers to these questions. So the debate goes on. This analysis suggests that the alarmists’ models have failed to deal properly with evaporation, and that may account for the fact that they have proved to be wildly inaccurate. It is instructive to read the entire post, and then the comments. Having done so, contemplate the liberals’ hysterical insistence that the debate is over. In fact, as any rational observer can see, the debate has barely begun:

 

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Earth Daze

John Stossel

Apr 16, 2014

 

"The heavens reek, the waters below are foul ... we are in a crisis of survival." That's how Walter Cronkite and CBS hyped the first Earth Day, back in 1970. Somehow we've survived since then, and most of life got better, although I never hear that from the worrywarts.

 

Of course, some things got better because of government: We passed environmental rules that got most of the filth out of the air and sewage out of lakes and rivers. Great -- but now we're told that we're in big trouble because greenhouse gases cause global warming. I mean, climate change.

 

"Crop yields are down, deaths from heat are up," says the Los Angeles Times. The "Worst Is Yet to Come," warns The New York Times. This hype is not new. Alarmists always fool the gullible media. They once fooled me.

 

A few years back, we were going to be killed by global cooling , overpopulation, pesticide residues, West Nile virus, bird flu, Y2K, cellphone radiation, mad cow disease, etc. Now it's global warming.

 

(Snip)

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YearsOfLivingDangerously.jpg

You Are Feeling Guilty....Guilty...Guilty.

 

No, I'm not. And who is that old guy in the earring?

 

 

 

Hans Solo....Indiana Jones....

Evidently for a man wearing an ear ring shows You Care.

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Years of Living Dangerously Silent on Palm Oil’s Use As a Biofuel
Greg Pollowitz
April 21, 2014

Last night was the second episode of the global-warming-alarmist propaganda, James Cameron–produced Years of Living Dangerously.

 

One of the storylines from last night, which continued over from episode one, was Harrison Ford taking on the palm oil industry in Indonesia. Ford and the documentary focused on the use of palm oil in food while ignoring the use of palm oil as a green, environmentally approved biodiesel fuel. Ford does take discuss corruption in Indonesia, but by ignoring “green” biodiesel and it’s growing importance to Indonesia’s economy, he misleads viewers. It’s the demand for biodiesel that analysts now say is the driving force in the palm oil market:

 

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At some point we need to stop using food for gasoline. Years of Living Dangerously had a chance to advance this message and didn’t, out of what looks to be a desire to protect the environmental movement as a whole and to make the complex story of global warming as simple as possible.

 

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