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Rant0matic 21: Baby it’s [going to get] cold outside.


Yes, today,ClubOrlov types for me in great detail about “Avoiding the Coming Ice Age.”

Cyclical phenomena are the easiest to predict accurately. The prediction industry got its start many thousands of years ago, when priests and shamans started gazing up at the stars and the planets and lining up rocks to sight them in. They used the information they gained through their stargazing to accurately predict the best times to plant crops or go fishing. People were duly impressed by such feats and thought that this was some sort of magic. Sometimes they stayed impressed for thousands of years. In Ancient Egypt, for instance, they believed that the Nile wouldn’t flood and irrigate their fields unless the Pharaoh performed his rituals and mated with his sister to produce the next Pharaoh. That, by the way, is called “magical thinking,” and in some ways it continues to this day. In the United States, for instance, people believe that if the Federal Reserve chairman continues to perform his rituals their country won’t default on its debt and the money will flow forever…

AB testing of climate theories will definitively show that people will prefer theories that confidently predict global warming and associated calamities rather than those that predict more of the same or don’t predict anything in particular. But such testing may not even be necessary. Back in the 1970s climate theory predicted that the next ice age could start any year now, but that theory fell by the wayside some time ago. It just didn’t catch the public imagination the same way as global warming. Ice Ages is kid’s stuff about an acorn-obsessed squirrel named Scrat, whereas global warming is an adult, heroic genre that includes Mad Max and Waterworld. …

Ice age avoidance seems like a wonderful new priority. Climate scientists will still get to scare the shit out of everyone—enough to keep the grant money flowing—plus they’ll make themselves popular with all the people who are currently shivering from the cold and are finding their global warming message unimpressive. Of course, this is just a prediction based on my personal theory, so they should try AB testing it first.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Ray December 4, 2019, 9:30 AM

    What amuses me is that the same people predicting we were doomed by global cooling in the 1970s did a 180 degree pivot and in the 1980s were predicting we were doomed by global warming. In effect they were saying, sure we were full of BS the 1970s, but this time we are right.

  • Winter_IS_coming! December 4, 2019, 9:37 AM

    Well, if consistent patterns mean anything,(see: Milankovitch cycles) then we are certainly heading into another long ice age SOON and there is no way to stop it. Of course, “soon” could mean the serious cooling begins in 2 years or in another 2000.

    Invest in insulation, and property with sunny southern slopes!

  • ghostsniper December 4, 2019, 11:56 AM

    Nyet, it’s still in the 30’s round these parts, the good stuff doesn’t happen until Feb.
    Look up: Maunder Minimum if you dare

  • James ONeil December 4, 2019, 12:20 PM

    Well, I’m ready for it. If I can’t sell my beach front property, here in North Pole, Alaska, when global warming destroys the world as we know it, I’ve got a great deal for you when the ice age hits: For some reason, during the last ice age, this valley was free of glaciation, a place where woolly mammoths, sabertooth tigers, camels, and beaver four foot tall at the shoulder. flourished and frolicked. Big beaver, nope, I’m not gonna insert a Storm Large song joke here.

  • Auntie Analogue December 4, 2019, 1:02 PM

    Time for warm outerwear. Make mine . . . mink.