Live From Heartland Climate Conference, Wrap Up

Profound thanks

I cannot say enough about the generosity of my benefactor, who not only footed the bill for my trip, but wined and dined and rummed our Secret Society most luxuriously. I had a small taste of how (dead broke) Hillary Clinton must regularly feel. A forty-eight hour prince. I am deeply grateful.

I am also still recovering. Hence the tardiness of this post.

Weather weenie

Ever hear that term before? Describes—most lovingly, of course—the kind of guy who has memorized storms in the same way a baseball fanatic can name the batting averages, number of home runs, and ERAs of the lineup of the 1957 Detroit Tigers. And the 1956, and 1955, and, well, you get it.

Joe Bastardi, growing up, used to have posters of hurricanes on his walls. He still knows their names, 500 mb thicknesses, minimum pressures, wind speeds, landfalls, and everything else you would never think anybody could remember. And he can rattle them off faster than the EPA can create new regulations.

Does it really matter to the public, dear reader, that the USA is suffering a paucity of these tropical storms? And that this scarcity repeats itself over just about any climatological or oceanographic characteristic of importance? Tornadoes are down. Sea level isn’t doing squat. Ice is icier. Droughts, especially considering those had before rampaging global warming took over, are down and less severe. The maximum maximum temperatures were seen long ago (#2 was in Death Valley, good old USA, back in the 20s or 30s). Even polar bears are back full blast eating cute seals—and each other (nasty animals, really).

But what does everybody who doesn’t bother to think think? That we are spiraling down, down, down to the gloomy depths.

Who says advertising does’t work? You denier.

This just in

One of my favorite sessions was with everybody’s favorite villain Marc Morano, Steve Goddard (going by his real name), and Russell Cook. How blogs can help; that sort of thing. Shout out to machinist and Cajun musician Greg Olsen, who very wisely read a certain statistics book.

Goddard has newspaper clippings from all over the world from as far back as the mid nineteenth century showing that hysteria is an old and ever-present acquaintance. First the world was going to end in ice, then in fire, then back to ice, and sometimes both at once. Something always had to be done.

The lesson is that lessons are never learned; therefore, we can expect that when this scare ends it will rapidly be replaced by another.

Sustainability

Sam Karnick’s opinion (he’s from Heartland) is that the environmentalists have learned at least one lesson. Global Warming was too specific. It made definite predictions: the world will hot up. And when it didn’t, as it hasn’t, it became obvious that the scare must die.

Thus the trick is not to be specific. Thus sustainability.

What a wonderful word! Beautifully unspecific and utterly without content. Don’t do that, that’s not sustainable. Our manufacturing process is based on sustainability principles. Sustainable Pittsburgh’s Green Workplace Challenge.

Everything is at once sustainable and unsustainable. You will never know when you are guilty of unsustainability. Just think of the layers and layers of bureaucracy that will be required to inform you!

We had here a contest for the next environmental scare, but I hereby cancel that and award the banner to Karnick. Sustainability is bound to be a winner.

Am I blue?

Saw a trailer for a new film called Blue by Jeff King. Proof complete that Reagan was right was he said the eight scariest words in the English language are “I’m an environmentalist and I’m here to help.” Or something.

Do just a little harm

Best story was how Lord Monckton punked one of the UN climate conferences. He slipped into an empty seat (Burma’s/Myanmar’s) just as the chairman asked if anybody representing a group had any comments. So his Lordship pushed the button for his mike and said he represented the Asian Coastal Cooperative Institute (or something; made up on the spot) and told the audience that seeing there had been no global warming for over sixteen years and that all the predictions had been a bust, and that it would be cheaper and more efficient to adapt to any warming rather than try to prevent it, shouldn’t we reexamine our priorities? Response from the chair? Not a valid participant. Brave, brave.

And speaking of his Lordship, here he is speaking. Quite a performance—as usual. (The entire video is worth watching, but if you’re in a hurry, LM starts at around 32 minutes in.) Careful watchers will recognize some of the names.

His best line? The Greens are too Yellow to admit they’re Red. Or maybe the joke starting at around 33 minutes. Or maybe the joke starting at 38 minutes. Or the curious picture at 1:01:00.

Conference surprises

How good Willis Eschenbach looks in a suit. Ouch! How three Craigs ended up in one session (Craig Loehle, Craig Idso, Craig Rucker). What are the chances of that? (Regular readers had better be able to answer, or else.) How many people forget or skip over Dwight Eisenhower’s equation (which Cato’s Pat Michael’s recalled for us) Science + Big government money = Bad news. How coincidences are everywhere. Roy Spencer and his wife grew up in “The Soo”, which is Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, where I was stationed as a weather forecaster for the NWS back in ’93.

Pony up

If you do like these conferences, and wish them to continue, and you are deep of pockets, do as Joe Bast suggested and slide them a few.

More to come

This has only been a precis. Here’s a link to all the talks, which were recorded.

I haven’t been blogging on global warming as much as I did four or five years ago, but that’s because it takes a lot of time, and it was my idea that people were caring less. And people are caring less. But the power hungry are not. Our dear leader is but one example of many (though the poor soul’s intellectual capabilities do not allow him to rise above the level of sarcastic cliché).

But circumstances might soon allow me to return to this line of query. Stay tuned.

Update

Total amount gambled: $0.00.