Anthony Watts:
An interesting new word came up this week on Twitter thanks to Hillary Rosner.
Word o’week: peccatogenic. “Attributing disasters, including… bad weather and famine, to human misconduct” (sex, gambling, dancing etc)
— Hillary Rosner (@hillaryrosner) June 12, 2013
It would seem to be a derivative of the word pecadillo:
I think this is the perfect word to describe many of the disingenuous activists like Al Gore, Joe Romm, Brad Johnson, Mayor Bloomberg, and Bill McKibben who see “human caused bad weather” in every cloud, and try mightily to make others believe the same.
To an extent, they are successful, just as others are able to fool people into crusades to find bigfoot, scan the skies for aliens, or take cover from imagined chemicals raining from the sky in ordinary jet exhaust contrails.
The peccatogenesists want us to believe that our supposed “misconduct” against Gaia, such as emitting to much CO2 over an imaginary “safe” level of 350 parts per million, or failing to care enough about an imaginary temperature target of 2°C which climatologist Phil Jones says was plucked out of thin air is the cause of bad weather.
Now, per that belief, any weather event that can somehow remotely be linked to global warming is used as a propaganda tool by the peccatogenesists, except of course, when that event doesn’t, in which case it’s “just weather”. For example, thousands of new record lowsget nary a mention, but when there are a string of record highs, it’s just another example of human caused DOOM even though it can be shown later that its just another weather pattern.
And then there’s severe weather. Yesterday, the great Al Gore declared that his views are being hindered by scientists. Politico reports:
Former Vice President Al Gore lamented today that scientists “will not let us link record-breaking” tornadoes in Oklahoma and elsewhere to climate change because of inadequate record keeping on the twisters.
Oh, the horror! It reminds me of the terrible mistreatment James Hansen claimed he got at the hands of NASA during the Bush era when they wouldn’t let him make unfounded claims.
Of course, some politicians like NYC Mayor
GloombergBloomberg don’t let pesky science or mathematics get in the way of a crusade, and embrace peccatogenics as a vehicle for hope and change:
That’s a terrific new word.
Obama has also turned this word upside down to create his ”leading from behind,” policy of never doing anything.
We heard Panetta say it this way: we didn’t do anything because we didn’t have ALL the facts on Benghazi.
We heard Chuck Hagel when asked if Obama’s red line on chemical weapons used by Assad on his own people in Libya had been crossed, said, “We need all the facts.”
We heard Obama say it this way in TV today : we must not do anything unless we have ALL the facts about chemical weapon usage by Assad in Libya.
A definition of a ”leader,” is a person capable of making decisive acts based on incomplete information….then accepting the plaudits or the blame depending on how it turns out.
Obama’s data mining of all Americans (except the Muslim ones) stinks of this.
Even the Germans (who created such a fine photo op for Obama pre-his 2008 election that he ”won” the Nobel Peace Prize ) are calling his data mining a Stasi tactic!