“We’ve had a complete unchallenged view of the climate change deniers. I think we need to have rather more balance in the debate, particularly when we saw a recent analysis of 12,000 scientific papers…and of the scientists who expressed a view – these were climate change papers – of the scientists who expressed a view 97 per cent said that climate change was happening and that it was human-made activity”. ( UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Davey, 2013)
“97 percent of climate scientists have confirmed that climate change is happening, and that human activity is responsible.” (Former Secretary of State John Kerry, 2014)
“Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous”. (Barack Obama tweet, 2011)
Let me be clear at the outset here that two days ago I posted for the third day in a row, and that after that WordPress emailed me to say that I was on fire, and keep it up! So yesterday I posted for the fourth day in a row, and WordPress got even more excited in another email. So today I am posting a fifth article, and perhaps then WordPress will have an orgasm.
This post is not new information, but I like getting those emails.
An essential feature of propaganda, as Jacques Ellul wrote in his book of that name, is to tell the truth. Lying is not necessary, and can in fact harm a propaganda campaign if it is exposed. The truth is shaded enough, varied enough, that a lie can be packaged inside truth. Generally, liars use statistics for that purpose, but shaded language works too.
So it is strange above that Davey, Kerry and Obama are all engaged in outright lying. Of course, when our news media is wall-to-wall propaganda, they are not exposed as the liars they are, and so pretty much get away with it.
Two elements of the Climate Change scam that drive me buggy are Michael Mann’s hockey stick, and the supposed “97% Consensus” among scientists. Each was crafted for impact, and to be used by high profile people to enable them to engage in high profile lies.
It is easy to see with Mann that he forced his conclusion. He must have been ordered from above to produce a scientific sounding report that would claim that our planet is in a dangerous state of warming coinciding with the industrial revolution. Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick debunked Mann in a 2005 paper (Hockey sticks, principal components, and spurious significance), concluding that Mann had structured his research in such a way that any data fed into it would produce a hockey stick! Mann to this day carries on as if he had engaged in honest science.
The 97% consensus came from John Cook, a research fellow at the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University in Melbourne. It is clear from emails hacked from his website, Skeptical Science, that he intended in advance of any actual study that he was looking for a way to make a splash.
“It’s essential that the public understands that there’s a scientific consensus on AGW. So Jim Powell, Dana and I have been working on something over the last few months that we hope will have a game changing impact on the public perception of consensus.”
Well, yeah, so he says in advance of having any actual results. What Cook did is science fraud at the worst, and incredibly sloppy research at the best. He surveyed 11,944 scientific papers from 1991 to 2021, and found that 4,011 expressed some position on warming, and that 97% agreed that “humans are the primary cause of recent global warming.” It was, like the hockey stick, a lie with a purpose, to allow climate change fanatics a tool to use when lying in public. It did the same for Davey, Kerry and Obama, giving them a cudgel to use to beat down any opposition to the Climate Change Hoax.
A better survey of Cook’s 4,011 papers found that only 65 of them agreed with the conclusion put forth and attributed to 97%. That is, by my calculations, 1.62%. This means that Cook’s 97% number was not just a lie, but a whopper.***
But it does not matter. It achieved its purpose. I was reading a LOOT (Lies of Our Times, aka WIkipedia) article on Anthony Watts over the weekend. Of course, LOOT lambasts him, and even doubles down on the 97%, saying that it is now 100%! [Another purpose of the fake “consensus” is to allow warmists to refuse to debate skeptics, saying “The Science is settled.”]
Nearly all actively publishing climate scientists (97–100%) say humans are causing climate change.[4][5] Surveys of the scientific literature are another way to measure scientific consensus. A 2019 review of scientific papers found the consensus on the cause of climate change to be at 100%,[2] and a 2021 study concluded that over 99% of scientific papers agree on the human cause of climate change.[3] The small percentage of papers that disagreed with the consensus either cannot be replicated or contain errors.[6]
Astonishing, it is. Ellul must be spinning in his grave. He said that propaganda does not need to lie to be effective. These people are liars of epic proportions, and made more so by the wall of media surrounding them not allowing public criticism.
________
*** Meanwhile, the Global Warming Petition Project, which LOOT says might be flawed (!!!) claims 31,487 signatures claiming that CO2 is not our enemy and that there is no scientific evidence that CO2 is a danger to humans or the atmosphere. Of these, 9,029 are PhDs. Even if overstated by a factor or two, that is, if half of the credentials are phony or unrelated to climate science, it still puts the 97% project in the tank.
Piece of Mindful 
Climate change, technically, IS man made, as man lied it into existance.
The concepts of viruses and dinosaurs and outer space and allopathic medicine are likewise birthed into an invisible agreed-upon reality, intergenerationally and exclusively through the mind of man, forcing those of us who resist the programming to forever suffer fools in a true virtual reality that, in fact, does not physically exist.
“Believe me out of it.”
“In the beginning was the Word.”
“The map is not the territory.”
“The menu is not the meal.”
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Valid point.
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By the way, I really like the image that appears next to your posting name. Am I close that it is a Mormon representation of Jesus, white and European? I could be way off, and posting an image in WordPress is time consuming. But I will do so for the hell of it in yet another post, six days in a row!
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I reckon that’s an image of a man-made made man. Perhaps more man.
Does WordPress encourage rest on the seventh day?
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I am going for the record … I just have to find out what it is. And anyway I did not receive an email from them today. Do you think maybe they were just shining on me a little bit … you know, like being insincere? Not that such a thing ever happens.
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Huh?
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I am familiar with “the wink.” As I see it, they made several of Jackie’s outfits before that day, as she left the scene long before the supposed incident. Some were blood stained, this one not. Long before the day, a private gathering was held in what appears to be the confines of a jet aircraft, and a headless mannequin was in place wearing one of the duplicate outfits. They had time to do some darkroom work, and Jackie’s head was pasted on the mannequin. She was not there. It was a photo shoot, and everyone there, sworn to secrecy (or else) knew the game.
There was no need for a swearing in, as LBJ automatically succeeded JFK, and certainly no call to roust out a new widow who had just seen her husband’s head blown to bits. Fake, fake, fake.,
Hence, the wink.
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I recently stumbled about this interesting video summarizing some aspects of the technologies like deaths numbers caused by them.
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upon, I stumbled upon.
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Related. Arctic Ice at a 12 year high.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/08/13/doomsday-climate-predictions-meltdown-arctic-sea-ice-extent-reaches-12-year-mid-august-high/
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Rested on the 7th day.
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I never have understood how people can talk nonstop.
Just shut up already.
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Apparently the big new bill that just passed, which includes a lot of climate related measures, is not all it’s cracked up to be (from the POV of the anti-carbon crowd.)
NakedCapitalism reposted an article showing that the credit for EV manufacturers/ buyers, much touted in the press, has so many limitations it’s unlikely to be claimed very often. It has stringent guidelines the vehicles must meet, such as the sourcing of their battery components, and most manufacturers don’t (and likely can’t) meet the requirements.
I think they said Joe Manchin put this in there (or his character did so), at the behest of whatever “fossil fuel” interests he serves. I just find it interesting that despite all the “climate change” hype, there is this slow-walking under the radar. Only noted in some smaller alt media outlets.
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I remember, sort of, the bit you cite from Ellul about preferring to use facts in propaganda – to avoid being called out, or to appear as an untrustworthy source. It had to do with competing propagandas as well, I think – say some enemy population had their own propaganda, plus your Voice of America or whatever – then you would not want to get caught out in a flagrant lie. Which the enemy would amplify and harp on.
In the US, of course we have several competing propagandas (and while the strings may ultimately all go back to the same source, I suspect that at lower levels they do represent different factions/ interests.) The main two, I would say, are the mainstream “consensus”/ official dogma, represented by government, NYT, NPR, CNN, and most big outlets. The secondary one, the “alternative” of sorts, is the “conservative” media of talk radio, Fox News, various websites and influencers, etc.
So in this case, the lie you cite would go unchallenged in the primary propaganda, and the correction you cite might be reported in the secondary propaganda. I don’t actually remember if Ellul said facts were only a requirement in the case of warring propagandas, but it does seem that in this case, if an audience has access to both and only views/trusts one of them, then that source can say whatever it likes with impunity.
I am surprised by the finding (you don’t give a source) that only a small minority of climate scientists agreed with Cook’s statement. I thought the field was much better controlled, ha. I’ve noted before that any given climate paper, however specialized the study, will tack on some obligatory boiler plate about the importance of their work to the overarching manmade climate change narrative. This is my impression of science and scientists, despite the repeated protestations I’ve seen them make about how much they love to argue and debunk each other, and how any questionable claims would quickly get called out. I’m more persuaded by the book Disciplined Minds, which shows in fair detail the mechanism by which all PhD’s are forced into a mold.
I wonder if they base their self image as daring iconoclasts on disputes over marginalia and trivia? They seem pretty accepting of whatever grand narratives they’re handed, as far as I can tell (of course they would say, “that’s because the Grand Narratives are correct!”)
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Adding… That source can say whatever it likes with impunity, but it may be creating a steadily growing number of the disaffected, who fall away and begin seeking out the secondary propaganda. This could, of course, be by design. The degree of brazen lies, and frequency, plus ability of the secondary propagandas to exploit them, would then determine the rate of attrition…
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This might go to Stephers’ point, which I only reluctantly begin to grasp, that for every propaganda thrust, there is also a counter-thrust made available, that is, for Climate Change, for instance, they give us the skeptics and all of the beautiful research and scholarship from Heartland to show that the original thrust is complete bullshit. I like to think that I have chosen the right side, and do not like thinking that I’ve been had, yet again.
Regarding Ellul, I have the book still, but find him unreadable. 20+ years ago I was enthralled. I have long lost any notes I made at first reading. However, I remember a footnote that was there regarding this point, that propaganda has to tell the truth, or that at least it needs a shell casing of truth to be effective***. Ellul mentioned the battle of El Alamein, the first won by the Allies in North Africa. It may or may not have really happened, as MM’s guest writer Lestrade may get around to some day. Ellul’s point was that the so-called “Desert Fox,” General Rommel, had been called back to Germany for meetings and stuff, and was not even there for the battle. However, for the Germans to make this public would have looked like flimsy excuse making, and so the matter was never disclosed.
*** This does not explain why, with Climate Change, the advocates are engaged in boldfaced junk science and lies, easily discerned by anyone who can look out a window and see nothing has changed.
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Yes, the concept of the controlled dialectic is endlessly resistant to our common sense understanding of how things are, or maybe ought to be. That CoronaCircus site had one of the best explanations I’ve seen of how it works, using covid as a case study. It would be nice if they or someone did a similar analysis of climate change propaganda – showing how both sides are being used to arrive at the final “synthesis.”
Personally I lean toward Stephers’ view that ClimateGate may be an op. A way to give the skeptics some powerful ammo, solidifying their supporters, inside their propaganda bubble, but spinning and dismissing it in the mass media propaganda.
(Is it possible though that it’s a real hack – maybe the different factions also have their own respective intel agents, and genuine factional operations against each other. Just as they fight each other ideologically.)
Ellul makes another claim that might be a way to split the difference between your views of Heartland et al and Stephers’. He says that pundits and propagandists are often drawn from the upper middle class, and are true believers – they believe their own schtick – they have to, to be effective and persuasive.
Now, maybe the skeptics are “right,” and arguing in good faith, but still being used by the higher level culture creators. They are hired for think tanks, media punditry, etc but kept in their sphere of influence. (Not to be too broad brush – others could still be outright agents playing roles, ready to smear and discredit their own side.)
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Re upper middle class – that seems to imply that they are not really “of the families” or the upper crust – they need a job, a salary – were raised in the myths of the culture and relate to the everyman – and could be smart, passionate ideologues, without necessarily worrying too much about being used in some larger dialectic process. Smart enough, especially, when their salary depends on not worrying about it…
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Anything, and everything, in tactical multiples, is employed to keep the masses from realizing they have been hypnotized, conditioned from birth, manipulated 24/7 and stand totally disinherited from everything in the universe Creator has provided, from land to their own soul/psyche. Serving the wrong master, right?
If one cannot imagine internment camps or reservations (as opposed to shallow, unmarked graves) for the .01% (oligarchs, global bankers and corporate CEOs, 33rd-degree masons, and other high-level sociopaths and psychopaths tugging on the puppet strings), then it can not be created. If we cannot imagine another living arrangement, surely this one will persist, as it has now for 5 – 6 centuries. Our imagination and creativity (unique, revolutionary thought and action) is feared and suppressed for this simple reason, IMO.
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