Mini Ice-Age Is On The Way, Newcastle Astrophysicist Predicts
In this newsletter:
1) Antarctic Has Been Cooling For Almost 20 Years, Scientists Confirm
The Australian, 21 July 2016
2) Mini Ice-Age Is On The Way, Newcastle Astrophysicist Predicts
Newcastle Chronicle, 13 July 2016
3) Nigel Lawson: UK Climate Targets Are ‘No Good To Anybody’, Pushing Up Energy Bills
Daily Express, 20 July 2016
4) When Sea Ice Expands It’s Due To Nature, When It Melts It’s Due To Humans
National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, 4 July 2016
5) La Niña Is Coming: The Earth Is Cooling
No Tricks Zone, 20 July 2016
6) Geoff Chambers: Sociology Of Climate Catastrophism
Climate Scepticism, 20 July 2016
The Australian, 21 July 2016
2) Mini Ice-Age Is On The Way, Newcastle Astrophysicist Predicts
Newcastle Chronicle, 13 July 2016
3) Nigel Lawson: UK Climate Targets Are ‘No Good To Anybody’, Pushing Up Energy Bills
Daily Express, 20 July 2016
4) When Sea Ice Expands It’s Due To Nature, When It Melts It’s Due To Humans
National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, 4 July 2016
5) La Niña Is Coming: The Earth Is Cooling
No Tricks Zone, 20 July 2016
6) Geoff Chambers: Sociology Of Climate Catastrophism
Climate Scepticism, 20 July 2016
Full details:
1) Antarctic Has Been Cooling For Almost 20 Years, Scientists Confirm
The Australian, 21 July 2016
Graham Lloyd
The Antarctic Peninsula, regarded as a “global warming hot spot”, has been cooling for almost 20 years.
The Antarctic Peninsula has cooled (blue line) since 1998 — Robert Mulvaney/British Antarctic Survey
Natural variability was responsible both for the decades-long warming since the 1950s and more recent cooling, according to research published today in Nature.
The research, led by John Turner from the British Antarctic Survey, said while the start of Antarctic Peninsula cooling in 1998 had coincided with the so-called “global warming hiatus”, the two were not connected.
Scientists were quick to declare the results of the Turner et al paper, which covered 1 per cent of the Antarctic continent, did not negate a long-term warming because of man-made climate change.
Rather, they said, the ozone hole, changing wind patterns and natural variability had masked the long-term warming trend.
“Climate model projections forced with medium emission scenarios indicate the emergence of a large anthropogenic regional warming signal, comparable in magnitude to the late-20th-century peninsula warming, during the latter part of the current century,” the Turner research concluded.
In addition, temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula remained higher than measured during the middle of the 20th century, so glaciers were still retreating in the Antarctic region.
Nonetheless, the findings have put into sharp relief the long-term cycles of natural variability in an area popularised in the climate change narrative by dramatic images of calving ice sheets and retreating glaciers.
Prior to the paper’s publication, science media organisations around the world were ready with quotes from climate scientists to ensure the Turner paper was not misinterpreted.
Full story
2) Mini Ice-Age Is On The Way, Newcastle Astrophysicist Predicts
Newcastle Chronicle, 13 July 2016
Peter McCusker
Solar expert Valentina Zharkova warns that the earth is about to be affected by a solar event that will see temperatures plunge
This damp and cold summer may be a sign of things to come with the earth poised to enter a 30-year mini ice-age which may freeze the Tyne, says a world-leading Newcastle academic. Peter McCusker reports.
The sun is in good shape and has a ‘healthy heartbeat’ which will last at least another five billion years, says Prof Valentina Zharkova, of Northumbria University.
Ms Zharkova, a professor in the department of mathematics, physics and electrical engineering, says this regular heartbeat of the sun is subject to predictable fluctuations of its magnetic field, and over the next few years as it enters a lull temperatures, here on earth, will plummet.
This time last year Prof Zharkova announced she had discovered a key solar event which determines magnetic field variations over time.
And she ‘confidently’ predicts we will be heading to another ‘Solar Grand Minima’ in solar cycle 25, beginning in 2020 and lasting until 2053.
During the last such event on the sun between 1645 and 1715 – and known as the Maunder Minimum – people skated on a frozen Thames as the average temperature in England fell by almost 2°C.
Prof Zharkova believes the cool summer we are currently experiencing is a precursor of things to come.
For over 400 years people have associated such cooler periods with reduced sun spot activity on the sun’s surface.
Prof Zharkova and her team postulate from their observations of the whole sun that sun spots on the solar surface are caused by the movement of a pair of background magnetic waves across its interior and surface, in both hemispheres.
The magnetic waves start their journey from opposite hemispheres and when they interact with each other on this journey sun spots develop.
The intensity and number of sun spots depends on the amplitude of the magnetic waves when they cross.
We are now entering a period where the sun’s pair of magnetic waves will cross at low amplitudes, beginning with solar cycle 25 in 2020.
And in solar cycle 26, beginning in 2031, we may enter a period of little, or no sunspot activity – and much cooler temperatures – as the pair of magnetic waves fail to cross at any point as they will remain fully separated in the opposite hemispheres of the sun.
Prof Zharkova and her colleagues have been able to simulate this on computer models allowing them to predict future cycles for the next millennium.
Prof Zharkova says her research is ‘the first serious prediction of a reduction of solar activity and upcoming Maunder Minimum that might affect human lives’. [...]
Full story
3) Nigel Lawson: UK Climate Targets Are ‘No Good To Anybody’, Pushing Up Energy Bills
Daily Express, 20 July 2016
Nick Gutteridge
Lord Lawson of Blaby said a drive to cut CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 had done “no good to anybody” and was pushing up bills for cash-strapped working households.
Lord Lawson has blasted Britain’s unilateral climate change targets
And he hailed Theresa May’s decision to scrap the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) in her Cabinet reshuffle, describing the move as “the end of a miserable chapter”.
But the ex-Chancellor became embroiled in a bitter spat with his former Tory colleague Lord Deben who, in a scathing rebuke recalled “the poor did not feature large” in his budgets.
Lord Lawson – the father of celebrity chef Nigella – ran the Treasury between 1983 and 1989 under Margaret Thatcher’s government.
He became embroiled in the war with Lord Deben, a former Secretary of State for the Environment under John Major, during a debate about Britain’s green policies in the Lords.
The blunt exchange came as peers discussed the setting of the Fifth Carbon Budget which aims to cut emissions by 57 per cent by 2032, based on 1990 levels.
Lord Lawson, who founded the climate sceptic pressure group Global Warming Policy Forum, warned the Climate Change Act was “an act of manifest self-harm and acute self harm, bearing particularly hard on the poorest amongst us and British industry and does no good to anybody”.
And praising the new Prime Minister Theresa May, he said: “She has made an excellent beginning with the abolition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
“That is not going to transform everything overnight but it is clearly a step in the right direction.”
Lord Lawson, who is also a former energy secretary, claimed the reduction in UK carbon emissions had been achieved by energy intensive industries moving abroad.
He said: “So this boasting about the United Kingdom’s reduction in global emissions is completely meaningless.”
Full story
4) When Sea Ice Expands It’s Due To Nature, When It Melts It’s Due To Humans
National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, 4 July 2016
The recent trend of increasing Antarctic sea ice extent — seemingly at odds with climate model projections — can largely be explained by a natural climate fluctuation, according to a new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
On Sept. 19, 2014, the five-day average of Antarctic sea ice extent exceeded 20 million square kilometers (about 7.7 million square miles) for the first time since 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The red line shows the average maximum extent from 1979-2014. (Image courtesy NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Cindy Starr)
The study offers evidence that the negative phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), which is characterized by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific, has created favorable conditions for additional Antarctic sea ice growth since 2000.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, may resolve a longstanding mystery: Why is Antarctic sea ice expanding when climate change is causing the world to warm?
The study’s authors also suggest that sea ice may begin to shrink as the IPO switches to a positive phase.
“The climate we experience during any given decade is some combination of naturally occurring variability and the planet’s response to increasing greenhouse gases,” said NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, lead author of the study. “It’s never all one or the other, but the combination, that is important to understand.”
Full post
5) La Niña Is Coming: The Earth Is Cooling
No Tricks Zone, 20 July 2016
The warming El Niño weather phenomenon has been history since June 2016. The cool La Niña started in mid July 2016.
The daily anomalies in sea surface temperatures (SSTA) in the main Niño region 3.4 are now updated. In mid July it is in the La Niña zone at -0.74°K:
The plot above shows the daily SSTA with respect to the international climate mean of 1981-2010 in the main Niño region 3.4 with data from NOAA/CDAS (Climate Data Assimilation System). The SSTA reached and dipped below the -0.5°K mark in mid July. The latest value was -0.74°K (July 19, 2016). Source: www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/.
The following chart shows the current La Niña extending from the coast of Peru to the international dateline (180°):
The cold La Niña (blue at the equator) is shown developing. Source: www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/.
After a record warm February 2016 with an anomaly of +0.83°K using the unaltered UAH satellite data, the global temperature of the lower troposphere centered at 1500 meters fell by 0.49 K in June to +0.34°K, see the following chart:
UAH chart depicting monthly lower troposphere temperature anomaly (blue curve), along the 13-month smoothed moving average (red curve). Original text: “This gives a 2-month temperature fall of -0.37 deg. C, which is the second largest in the 37+ year satellite record…the largest was -0.43 deg. C in Feb. 1988. In the tropics, there was a record fast 2-month cooling of -0.56 deg. C, just edging out -0.55 deg. C in June 1998 (also an El Nino weakening year).“ Source: UAH Global Temperature Update for June 2016: +0.34 deg. C.
Finally, after months of disagreement, the major ENSO models are now almost in full agreement that La Niña conditions will start to take hold this summer, now that there is already a deviation of -0.7°K. See: http://www.bom.gov.au/Pacific-Ocean.
Full post
6) Geoff Chambers: Sociology Of Climate Catastrophism
Climate Scepticism, 20 July 2016
Belief in climate catastrophism is a social phenomenon, and requires an explanation in terms of the social sciences.
This article is part of an occasional series exploring the possibility (or rather the necessity) of a sociological analysis of climate catastrophism. Others can be found at https://geoffchambers.wordpress.com/category/sociology-of-climate-change/
It argues 1) that the key criterion for identifying the social class which has propelled climate catastrophism to centre stage (the green blob; the chattering classes, Guardianistas, the “right on” generation – define them how you will) is university education and 2) an explanation is required of how such a weak (woolly, vague, unconvincing) idea as environmentalism (“we live on a fragile planet”; “we need to recycle/conserve/cycle to work to prevent the sixth great extinction” etc.) has conquered the world. Both ideas I have lifted from the work of Emmanuel Todd, a French historian and demographer I have often referred to in different posts. I’ve added an appendix describing Todd’s work, which is of great interest outside the narrow bounds of an analysis of climate catastrophism.
Belief in climate catastrophism is a social phenomenon, and requires an explanation in terms of the social sciences. There are a number of interesting psychological theories around – in fact every climate sceptic seems to have one. But while a psychological analysis may explain why certain people choose to be environmentalists, it can never explain how environmentalism – and in particular its most acute form, climate catastrophism – came to conquer the world; how, in other words, belief in climate catastrophism managed to attain a critical mass that permitted it to impose itself as a consensus belief, or ideology. Only a sociological explanation can do that. And a sociological explanation must account for a unique event – the rise of climate catastrophism – in terms of unique, or at least rarely repeated, social phenomena.
It’s easy enough to identify the social group which has most fervently adopted the climate catastrophism ideology. It’s the university-educated, upper-middle-class intelligentsia:- metropolitain; left-liberal; more likely to be humanities graduates than scientists; often working in academia, the media, or in related professions involved in the collection and exchange of information of all sorts. The libertarian social theorist Thomas Sowell in his book “Intellectuals and Society” defines “idea workers” as “people whose occupations deal primarily with ideas (writers, historians, academics, etc.) [and who] usually consider themselves as “anointed”, or as endowed with superior intellect or insight with which to guide the masses and those who have authority over them.”[Wiki]
I’ve often mentioned the work of the French historian Emmanuel Todd and its usefulness for understanding the catastrophist phenomenon (though he has never, to my knowledge, mentioned environment policy in his numerous comments on current politics).
One of his major achievements is to have convincingly demonstrated the close correlation between political revolutions and the attainment of universal literacy: in 16th century Germany at the time of the Protestant Reform; in England in the 17th century, announcing the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution; in France in the late 18th and in Russia in the early 20th century. His demonstration that literacy, rather than economic exploitation, is the prime cause of social upheaval destroys a major pillar of Marxism, but it also confirms Marx’s fundamental insight about the importance of class struggle in the evolution of society.
In an aside somewhere on the decline of the French Socialist Party Todd highlights one of the unintended consequences of advances in education. Whereas the attainment of universal literacy naturally reinforces egalitarian tendencies in society – leading, if not always to democracy, at least to nominal respect for the Common Man – the advent of mass tertiary education has the opposite effect.
For most of the 20th century university education was the reserve of a tiny élite, highly concentrated in the professions (law, medicine, academia..) Though they undoubtedly exercised disproportionate influence, as does any élite group, whether in Parliament, in their clubs and learned societies, or in the letter page of the Times, they were too few and isolated to be able to ignore entirely the opinions of their less educated fellow citizens, particularly as the latter included a large number of people (in industry, finance, the armed services, the media, as well as in the organised working class) who were obviously their intellectual equals.
Full post
The Australian, 21 July 2016
Graham Lloyd
The Antarctic Peninsula, regarded as a “global warming hot spot”, has been cooling for almost 20 years.
The Antarctic Peninsula has cooled (blue line) since 1998 — Robert Mulvaney/British Antarctic Survey
Natural variability was responsible both for the decades-long warming since the 1950s and more recent cooling, according to research published today in Nature.
The research, led by John Turner from the British Antarctic Survey, said while the start of Antarctic Peninsula cooling in 1998 had coincided with the so-called “global warming hiatus”, the two were not connected.
Scientists were quick to declare the results of the Turner et al paper, which covered 1 per cent of the Antarctic continent, did not negate a long-term warming because of man-made climate change.
Rather, they said, the ozone hole, changing wind patterns and natural variability had masked the long-term warming trend.
“Climate model projections forced with medium emission scenarios indicate the emergence of a large anthropogenic regional warming signal, comparable in magnitude to the late-20th-century peninsula warming, during the latter part of the current century,” the Turner research concluded.
In addition, temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula remained higher than measured during the middle of the 20th century, so glaciers were still retreating in the Antarctic region.
Nonetheless, the findings have put into sharp relief the long-term cycles of natural variability in an area popularised in the climate change narrative by dramatic images of calving ice sheets and retreating glaciers.
Prior to the paper’s publication, science media organisations around the world were ready with quotes from climate scientists to ensure the Turner paper was not misinterpreted.
Full story
2) Mini Ice-Age Is On The Way, Newcastle Astrophysicist Predicts
Newcastle Chronicle, 13 July 2016
Peter McCusker
Solar expert Valentina Zharkova warns that the earth is about to be affected by a solar event that will see temperatures plunge
This damp and cold summer may be a sign of things to come with the earth poised to enter a 30-year mini ice-age which may freeze the Tyne, says a world-leading Newcastle academic. Peter McCusker reports.
The sun is in good shape and has a ‘healthy heartbeat’ which will last at least another five billion years, says Prof Valentina Zharkova, of Northumbria University.
Ms Zharkova, a professor in the department of mathematics, physics and electrical engineering, says this regular heartbeat of the sun is subject to predictable fluctuations of its magnetic field, and over the next few years as it enters a lull temperatures, here on earth, will plummet.
This time last year Prof Zharkova announced she had discovered a key solar event which determines magnetic field variations over time.
And she ‘confidently’ predicts we will be heading to another ‘Solar Grand Minima’ in solar cycle 25, beginning in 2020 and lasting until 2053.
During the last such event on the sun between 1645 and 1715 – and known as the Maunder Minimum – people skated on a frozen Thames as the average temperature in England fell by almost 2°C.
Prof Zharkova believes the cool summer we are currently experiencing is a precursor of things to come.
For over 400 years people have associated such cooler periods with reduced sun spot activity on the sun’s surface.
Prof Zharkova and her team postulate from their observations of the whole sun that sun spots on the solar surface are caused by the movement of a pair of background magnetic waves across its interior and surface, in both hemispheres.
The magnetic waves start their journey from opposite hemispheres and when they interact with each other on this journey sun spots develop.
The intensity and number of sun spots depends on the amplitude of the magnetic waves when they cross.
We are now entering a period where the sun’s pair of magnetic waves will cross at low amplitudes, beginning with solar cycle 25 in 2020.
And in solar cycle 26, beginning in 2031, we may enter a period of little, or no sunspot activity – and much cooler temperatures – as the pair of magnetic waves fail to cross at any point as they will remain fully separated in the opposite hemispheres of the sun.
Prof Zharkova and her colleagues have been able to simulate this on computer models allowing them to predict future cycles for the next millennium.
Prof Zharkova says her research is ‘the first serious prediction of a reduction of solar activity and upcoming Maunder Minimum that might affect human lives’. [...]
Full story
3) Nigel Lawson: UK Climate Targets Are ‘No Good To Anybody’, Pushing Up Energy Bills
Daily Express, 20 July 2016
Nick Gutteridge
Lord Lawson of Blaby said a drive to cut CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 had done “no good to anybody” and was pushing up bills for cash-strapped working households.
Lord Lawson has blasted Britain’s unilateral climate change targets
And he hailed Theresa May’s decision to scrap the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) in her Cabinet reshuffle, describing the move as “the end of a miserable chapter”.
But the ex-Chancellor became embroiled in a bitter spat with his former Tory colleague Lord Deben who, in a scathing rebuke recalled “the poor did not feature large” in his budgets.
Lord Lawson – the father of celebrity chef Nigella – ran the Treasury between 1983 and 1989 under Margaret Thatcher’s government.
He became embroiled in the war with Lord Deben, a former Secretary of State for the Environment under John Major, during a debate about Britain’s green policies in the Lords.
The blunt exchange came as peers discussed the setting of the Fifth Carbon Budget which aims to cut emissions by 57 per cent by 2032, based on 1990 levels.
Lord Lawson, who founded the climate sceptic pressure group Global Warming Policy Forum, warned the Climate Change Act was “an act of manifest self-harm and acute self harm, bearing particularly hard on the poorest amongst us and British industry and does no good to anybody”.
And praising the new Prime Minister Theresa May, he said: “She has made an excellent beginning with the abolition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
“That is not going to transform everything overnight but it is clearly a step in the right direction.”
Lord Lawson, who is also a former energy secretary, claimed the reduction in UK carbon emissions had been achieved by energy intensive industries moving abroad.
He said: “So this boasting about the United Kingdom’s reduction in global emissions is completely meaningless.”
Full story
4) When Sea Ice Expands It’s Due To Nature, When It Melts It’s Due To Humans
National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, 4 July 2016
The recent trend of increasing Antarctic sea ice extent — seemingly at odds with climate model projections — can largely be explained by a natural climate fluctuation, according to a new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
On Sept. 19, 2014, the five-day average of Antarctic sea ice extent exceeded 20 million square kilometers (about 7.7 million square miles) for the first time since 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The red line shows the average maximum extent from 1979-2014. (Image courtesy NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Cindy Starr)
The study offers evidence that the negative phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), which is characterized by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific, has created favorable conditions for additional Antarctic sea ice growth since 2000.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, may resolve a longstanding mystery: Why is Antarctic sea ice expanding when climate change is causing the world to warm?
The study’s authors also suggest that sea ice may begin to shrink as the IPO switches to a positive phase.
“The climate we experience during any given decade is some combination of naturally occurring variability and the planet’s response to increasing greenhouse gases,” said NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, lead author of the study. “It’s never all one or the other, but the combination, that is important to understand.”
Full post
5) La Niña Is Coming: The Earth Is Cooling
No Tricks Zone, 20 July 2016
The warming El Niño weather phenomenon has been history since June 2016. The cool La Niña started in mid July 2016.
The daily anomalies in sea surface temperatures (SSTA) in the main Niño region 3.4 are now updated. In mid July it is in the La Niña zone at -0.74°K:
The plot above shows the daily SSTA with respect to the international climate mean of 1981-2010 in the main Niño region 3.4 with data from NOAA/CDAS (Climate Data Assimilation System). The SSTA reached and dipped below the -0.5°K mark in mid July. The latest value was -0.74°K (July 19, 2016). Source: www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/.
The following chart shows the current La Niña extending from the coast of Peru to the international dateline (180°):
The cold La Niña (blue at the equator) is shown developing. Source: www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/.
After a record warm February 2016 with an anomaly of +0.83°K using the unaltered UAH satellite data, the global temperature of the lower troposphere centered at 1500 meters fell by 0.49 K in June to +0.34°K, see the following chart:
UAH chart depicting monthly lower troposphere temperature anomaly (blue curve), along the 13-month smoothed moving average (red curve). Original text: “This gives a 2-month temperature fall of -0.37 deg. C, which is the second largest in the 37+ year satellite record…the largest was -0.43 deg. C in Feb. 1988. In the tropics, there was a record fast 2-month cooling of -0.56 deg. C, just edging out -0.55 deg. C in June 1998 (also an El Nino weakening year).“ Source: UAH Global Temperature Update for June 2016: +0.34 deg. C.
Finally, after months of disagreement, the major ENSO models are now almost in full agreement that La Niña conditions will start to take hold this summer, now that there is already a deviation of -0.7°K. See: http://www.bom.gov.au/Pacific-Ocean.
Full post
6) Geoff Chambers: Sociology Of Climate Catastrophism
Climate Scepticism, 20 July 2016
Belief in climate catastrophism is a social phenomenon, and requires an explanation in terms of the social sciences.
This article is part of an occasional series exploring the possibility (or rather the necessity) of a sociological analysis of climate catastrophism. Others can be found at https://geoffchambers.wordpress.com/category/sociology-of-climate-change/
It argues 1) that the key criterion for identifying the social class which has propelled climate catastrophism to centre stage (the green blob; the chattering classes, Guardianistas, the “right on” generation – define them how you will) is university education and 2) an explanation is required of how such a weak (woolly, vague, unconvincing) idea as environmentalism (“we live on a fragile planet”; “we need to recycle/conserve/cycle to work to prevent the sixth great extinction” etc.) has conquered the world. Both ideas I have lifted from the work of Emmanuel Todd, a French historian and demographer I have often referred to in different posts. I’ve added an appendix describing Todd’s work, which is of great interest outside the narrow bounds of an analysis of climate catastrophism.
Belief in climate catastrophism is a social phenomenon, and requires an explanation in terms of the social sciences. There are a number of interesting psychological theories around – in fact every climate sceptic seems to have one. But while a psychological analysis may explain why certain people choose to be environmentalists, it can never explain how environmentalism – and in particular its most acute form, climate catastrophism – came to conquer the world; how, in other words, belief in climate catastrophism managed to attain a critical mass that permitted it to impose itself as a consensus belief, or ideology. Only a sociological explanation can do that. And a sociological explanation must account for a unique event – the rise of climate catastrophism – in terms of unique, or at least rarely repeated, social phenomena.
It’s easy enough to identify the social group which has most fervently adopted the climate catastrophism ideology. It’s the university-educated, upper-middle-class intelligentsia:- metropolitain; left-liberal; more likely to be humanities graduates than scientists; often working in academia, the media, or in related professions involved in the collection and exchange of information of all sorts. The libertarian social theorist Thomas Sowell in his book “Intellectuals and Society” defines “idea workers” as “people whose occupations deal primarily with ideas (writers, historians, academics, etc.) [and who] usually consider themselves as “anointed”, or as endowed with superior intellect or insight with which to guide the masses and those who have authority over them.”[Wiki]
I’ve often mentioned the work of the French historian Emmanuel Todd and its usefulness for understanding the catastrophist phenomenon (though he has never, to my knowledge, mentioned environment policy in his numerous comments on current politics).
One of his major achievements is to have convincingly demonstrated the close correlation between political revolutions and the attainment of universal literacy: in 16th century Germany at the time of the Protestant Reform; in England in the 17th century, announcing the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution; in France in the late 18th and in Russia in the early 20th century. His demonstration that literacy, rather than economic exploitation, is the prime cause of social upheaval destroys a major pillar of Marxism, but it also confirms Marx’s fundamental insight about the importance of class struggle in the evolution of society.
In an aside somewhere on the decline of the French Socialist Party Todd highlights one of the unintended consequences of advances in education. Whereas the attainment of universal literacy naturally reinforces egalitarian tendencies in society – leading, if not always to democracy, at least to nominal respect for the Common Man – the advent of mass tertiary education has the opposite effect.
For most of the 20th century university education was the reserve of a tiny élite, highly concentrated in the professions (law, medicine, academia..) Though they undoubtedly exercised disproportionate influence, as does any élite group, whether in Parliament, in their clubs and learned societies, or in the letter page of the Times, they were too few and isolated to be able to ignore entirely the opinions of their less educated fellow citizens, particularly as the latter included a large number of people (in industry, finance, the armed services, the media, as well as in the organised working class) who were obviously their intellectual equals.
Full post
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