Political

"Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen" – the truth behind the quote

Storm clouds - Photo by Anandu Vinod on Unsplash

The quote “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen” is widely attributed by climate change sceptics to scientist Sir John Houghton, a man who played a key role in founding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC).

If the quote were true, then it would be a pretty damning one.

But it isn’t – as The Independent has demonstrated.

Almost everyone using this “quote” is simply recycling the quote from others, and when the newspaper tried to track down its original source they found that the quote doesn’t exist anywhere in the book claimed.

It’s also notable in The Independent report that when queried about why they use a quote that wasn’t actually made, climate change sceptics either dodged the question or didn’t reply. Now, if they asked a scientist a question about climate change who dodged the issue or refused to respond, I wonder how some of them would react…

UPDATE: John Houghton has a letter in The Observer taking Benny Peiser to task for using the fake quote.

19 responses to “"Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen" – the truth behind the quote”

  1. There are interesting parallels between this and the 2035 glacier claim which, it turns out, was founded upon a series of citations which ultimately lead to a speculative quote in New Scientist. When the IPCC fall victim to groupthink, they are pillioried and undergo a major crisis; when their critics do the same thing, they merely shrug their shoulders and move onto the next smear.

  2. Skeptics?
    It’s quoted in the Stern report, which claims it’s a quote from Houghton’s book Global Warming, The Complete Briefing.
    If anything it proves that Stern did’t check the sources. So a new

    “STERNGATE: Stern Report puts alarmistic words in mouth of Sir Houghton.”

  3. Hans: I’ve just done a search through an electronic copy of the Stern report and can’t find the quote anywhere in it. Can you give me the page number or other reference?

  4. These comments were much more damaging.

    http://www.peopleforwesternheritage.com/PFWHRMAdditionalQuotes.htm

    “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.”
    – Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution

    “The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.”
    – UN Commission on Global Governance report

    “Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced – a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.”
    – UN Agenda 21

  5. Kyle: are those quotes really “much more damaging”? Take the last one: it’s saying there is a big problem that will require widespread work to fix. What’s damaging about saying that?

    I’m also a bit puzzled by the first quote, which you give as being from the Club of Rome. I’ve searched through online copies of that document and it doesn’t come up as being anywhere in them, e.g. http://ia311021.us.archive.org/3/items/TheFirstGlobalRevolution/TheFirstGlobalRevolution_text.pdf

    Have you got a page reference or can you point me at a version with this quote in it?

  6. Kyle: thanks for the comments, though you leave me a bit confused.

    Your first link is to a piece that doesn’t contain the words which John Houghton has denied saying.

    Your second link says the Club of Rome quote is found on p.75 and then provides a link to a version of the book … which doesn’t contain p.75. Looking at a version which does actually contain p.75, isn’t the “we” talking about humanity in general – i.e. it is a comment on people in general rather than the laying out of a conspiracy?

  7. A proponent of anthro-caused warming recommended a list of scientists I could learn from. I googled them.

    Richard Leakey: If you Google the exact phrase: “Professor Richard Leakey” you will find him in this book: Marxism and Environmental Crises by David Layfield.
    _________________________________________________

    James Lovelock: “Perhaps one day the children we shall share with Gaia will peacefully co-operate with the great mammals of the ocean and use whale power to travel faster and faster in the mind, as horse power once carried us over the ground.”
    Gaia A new look at life on Earth, by James Lovelock (1979) http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/gaia.htm
    Mr. Lovelock hopes that one day we will share with Gaia, peacefully cooperating with and using whales to travel as we once did with horses.

    ___________________________
    Johan Rockstrom, cited in “A Failed System: The World Crisis of Capitalist Globalization and its Impact on China” by John Bellamy Foster http://www.oid-ido.org/article.php3?id_article=808
    “In addressing capitalism as a failed system I have focused first on the deepening economic crisis. But this is not the worst of the world’s problems. The greatest peril is the growing threat of planetary ecological collapse. Here the danger is much greater than in the case of the world economy”
    __________________________________________________

    I am not a conspiracy theorist. But I see a pattern here.

    I believe that we ARE what we read.

    Readers of history books understand these ideas: pietas, fides, gravitas, dignitas, constantia. (These virtues were interwoven into the Roman education system.) Some people still read these ideas: Forgotten Gems http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=60&Itemid=262

    Readers who love science fiction understand utopian ideas. (These are the ideas interwoven into our current culture.)

    See “Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction” by Mark Bould
    Product Description: Science fiction and socialism have always had a close relationship….

    I’m sorry I did not notice you are a UK author. But the hours I’ve put in on this have convinced me that most Brits and Americans don’t want more socialism. There is an angry crowd waiting for our next elections. Global warmists will not do well.

  8. * Mikhail Gorbachev, Former President of the Soviet Union, member of the Club of Rome

    “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”

    When people like Gorbachev and Maurice Strong et al, are on record with quotes like this, how do you think they are going to achieve it? Does it strike you as odd that the fertility rate in the West has been in steady decline for decades, yet it is not concidered a crisis what so ever?

    I enjoy wiki’s Malthusian explanation:

    “Another school of thought argues that all these factors are a natural outgrowth of a Malthusian attempt to restore a population balance that was upset earlier. The revolution in hygiene and medicine that caused death rates to plummet during the twentieth century did not see a corresponding fall in birth rates until a couple of generations later. The Malthusians argue that modern low birth rates are a natural reaction to counteract this imbalance…”

    Soilent Green.

  9. “It seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: That we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably will always exist to get people to love their servitude.”
    –English writer Aldous Huxley, speaking on behalf on the British Establishment.

    There’s no need for conspiracy theories when their own writings and words speak volumes. Yet most “lefties” are conditioned to think that they are kicking against the system (in some case’s they are, but in a controlled way), not realizing than we’re actually moving into a feudal type capitalist system, which has been blended with the communist system of strong governance. They call it commutarianism, the 3rd way (the whole public-private partnership in the U.K being a good example of this.)

    Global warming or climate change are some of their primary techniques of changing society – decided on thanks to the Club of Rome who were given the specific task of dreaming up a scenario which could be used to unite the world. Hence where the quote mentioned by Kyle comes in. CoR are an off shoot off, a specific arm of the One World Government, agenda. Well connected with all the usual “conspiracy buzzwords” like the Bilderburgers, Council of Foreign Relations. People should also look into the Royal Institute of International Affairs as well, and Cecil Rhodes. And yes, it is an agenda. I think the whole branding of “conspiracy theory” is a kin to the communists who called everything “bourgeoisie” when it didn’t fit their agenda. Or the right wing who branded everything under the sun “communist” while failing to realize that the big (tax except) foundations in Amerika were funding left wing groups – in order to lay the ground work to merge the U.S with the Soviet system (‘rule by council’). Please check out the Reece Committee.

    But ultimately people should be aware we are ruled by deception and to question everything. Those other writers Kyle mentioned, I am thinking specifically of James Lovelock, are nothing more than new age charlatans in my opinion. This idea that the world in a living organism called “Gaia”, I’ll admit, sounds really appealing. It’s almost like, how can this chap be a threat? Well in reality he’s not. But it’s more the mindset that it promotes, which goes hand in hand with the “sustainability” and “greening” agenda heavily promoted by the U.N, (which is essentially wolves in sheep’s clothing). But the new world order needs its new religion for the next generation. Debating the impact of this often doesn’t take into account the education system that is already in place in our schools, (i.e. they have it planned out) thanks to UNESCO. Real life example: My nephew coming home asking his daddy what it means a good global citizen.

    This is the new soviet system.

  10. Wow. We see why the deniers are so hard to reach. They ignore (or defend) blatant lies, then veer off into some la-la land where Aldous Huxley was in favor of oligarchs enslaving the masses. (I’m pretty sure graham completely misconstrued the context of the above quote.) No mention of science or anything real–just a lot of paranoid speculation about people with no connection to climate science.

  11. Hi, sorry if this reply is a little beleted, I don’t use the internet very much.

    First off, the word Denier has many political connotations with that of a “Holocaust Denier” (you know, those “extreme right wing nuts”). Denier – insinuates that all the science is settled – it’s just a matter of getting the backwards thinking, paranoid, right wing, luddite DENIER’s on board with the current “New Normal”. Smell which way the wind is blowing, people.

    Even the word “Skeptic” is slightly less demeaning. Denier is in a specific libel in its own right. It means the idea you have chosen to be heretical about is divine, excepted, universal (of course, it is a MUST BE for the power elites – have you looked into who devised carbon taxing? Those Enron boys know how to make ends meet… )

    As for the Huxley quote – you decide if I have taken it out of context or not. It is taken from a talk he gave to some young academics – consistent with his views of creating a world system and planned society. http://100777.com/node/812

    As for blatant lies; many of the IPCC reports who are used to peer review are actually non-scientific organizations with political agendas. They’ve been wrong on many occasions.

    What would you say about the fact that many of the key players of the IPPC first propagated the theory of Global Cooling? That was the back in the 70’s. The same people put books out, academic reports, made documentaries – trying to whip the general populus into a frenzy (for political change, not just cozy environmentalism). This idea morphed into Warming, and now it’s Climate Change. Guess what – climate has always changed.

    What I would put to you is: where is your evidence that all the fear and propaganda supported by these huge UN endorsed foundations, is NOT politically motivated? That the Club of Rome have NOTHING to do with the idea of bringing down the standard of living in the west, and enforcing world tax’s to private institutions which supersede their own governments sovereignty? This has already happened.

    Have you heard of Adenda 21? It’s being implemented right now. Some of the end goals are the complete eradication of private property. This is a very communist idea. But they have blended the systems so as to not disturb the public from their slumber. Yet suddenly people who work in offices all around the UK are having hiring “Carbon Footprint” experts and introducing systems to encouraging “dobbing in” of co-workers who didn’t re-cycle everything they could have… with little rewards of chocolate to sweeten the deal. There’s even incidents of cameras being used, by the public working on half of the authorities, to dob in people who aren’t “pulling their weight” for the environment. Producer/consumer philosophy is highly encouraged by the UN.

    What is being created, I personally (and many others out there) believe, is similar to blind patriotism, but to a (albeit, metaphysical) world system (which in actual fact is already here) in order to get us to love our slavery even further. Except this time, the love for the flag has been replaced by an agenda which wants us to consider ourselves a Global Citizen; with love for nature and mother earth. All sounds great on paper, but it’s the same techniques being used to create feelings of nationalism, except for a global agenda that most of us aren’t fully aware of (or more likely, deny!) This is an extension of globalization, which the left didn’t know how to fight because it’s so Internationalist that it actually doesn’t go against too many Neo-Liberal Capitalist tendencies.

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