Ooh. Here’s a bit of a backdown. Skeptics must be getting to The Guardian. Smile.
Mocking skeptics and calling them deniers has somehow failed to win them over, so the Guardian is trying a slightly new tack. This time they pretend to be balanced, and post up a list of “Myths to explode” from both sides of the debate. But don’t bring the ear-muffs, or the ambulances — these bombs are pussy-foot puff balls. The air-drops on alarmist camps are so convoluted they manage to support The Big Fear Campaign even as they try (gently-bentley!) to reign in a few excesses of the believers — don’t mention human extinction, and do remember the world has been hotter before, right? On skeptical “myths”, nothing has changed but at least they’ve stopped the namecalling (Bravo!). But it’s hard for author Hannah Devlin — she even serves up a new myth to try to squash an old one. The rate of global warming is apparently “unprecedented”, as in one-degree-in-a-century has never ever happened before, not once. How likely is that we could know the rate of global temperature swings to a tenth of a degree back in the days of dinosaurs and at continuous unbroken resolution of 100 year intervals?
The headline “Climate change: the big myths that need to be exploded” is the usual hyperbolic fluff. Nothing even pops, let alone goes bang. Five myths here are overdone alarmist claims, and three are skeptical talking points.
It’s good to see The Guardian say that “it’s Hotter than Ever” is a myth. So will they stop using “hotter than ever” headlines? Probably not. At no point do they admit that skeptics were right all along, or that The Guardian itself is happy to leave its reader with a “hotter than ever” message. How about some intellectual honesty, anyone? Instead, on this first myth, Hannah Devlin quietly sweeps the Guardian’s own history under the rug, and shifts the goals. “Hotter than ever” is wrong. Oh yessity, but really, that never mattered, and what matters is the rate of warming. Digging their hole deeper, she goes on to interview a professor who swears the rate now is “unprecedented”, as if we could measure the decadal rates of warming 50 million years ago. Good luck with that one. We’ll just quote Phil Jones — the current rate of warming is the same as in the 1870s when CO2 was perfect.
Devlin seems to believe that the Sun is nothing more than a ball of light. To try to kill off the skeptical idea that the sun might have something to do with the weather on Earth she discusses solar irradiance like there is no other possible way the sun could influence our climate. Forget charged particles, magnetic fields, spectral changes, who cares? UV, IR, it’s all the same. If Devlin read skeptical blogs, she might have thought up some hard questions for Jo Haigh. But then she’d be a real journalist (and she wouldn’t fit in at The Guardian).
Take the article as a backhanded tacit acknowledgment that skeptics have some points that are not going to go away by simply denying them. On the plus side, this is a more mature article than the Guardian normally manages, there is no “denier” namecalling, though there is no honesty about how skeptics have been right over and over.
As a bit of sci-masochist I bothered to unpack each myth one by one. Sorry. But here they are:
Myth 1. THE EARTH IS WARMER NOW THAN IT HAS EVER BEEN
The Guardian finally acknowledges, years too late, that skeptics may have a point (not that they say it). Yes, the climate has been hotter in the past. But this doesn’t matter (they say) because the warming rate now is faster than ever. This is called “shifting the goal posts”. Global panickers have argued all along that the absolute temperature matters. Now they pretend it doesn’t and shift it to “rates”? Here’s the new fantasy goal:
“It’s not how much the temperature has gone up – that’s only around 1C over the past 100 years,” says professor Adam Scaife of the Met Office. “What’s unprecedented is the rate of change.”
Scaife’s comment is bizarre. They are talking about the rate of warming over the last 30 or 100 years, and comparing it to a time 50 million years ago. There is no rational person on Earth who would claim to know the rate of warming to a tenth of a degree between, say, the year 50 million BC, and 49.9999 BC. They can claim it is “unprecedented” but we don’t have the proxies, there is no data with anything remotely like that time or temperature resolution. Though, conveniently, we actually know when the unprecedented rate was last precedented, and we don’t have to go back to the Eocene, but just to 1870. The decadal rate of change in the 1980s (the peak rate) was the same as in the 1870s (*Both were 0.16 C per decade). The “unprecedented” label, which doesn’t apply for the last 50 million years, doesn’t even apply for the last 150.
Myth 2. CHANGES IN THE SUN’S ACTIVITY CAUSE WARMING
The entire argument posted on the Guardian to show the Sun does not cause climate change is (a) because “scientists don’t think so” and (b) because total solar irradiance doesn’t change enough to explain the climate.
(a) is argument from authority, and wrong. Many scientists do think the sun causes changes in our climate, but they aren’t (and won’t be) employed by the Bureau of Met, nor interviewed by the Pravda-Guardian. There are hundreds of papers for the last 200 years that suggest links between solar factors and the climate.
(b) is argument from ignorance. The Sun emits more than just light. Jo Haigh, the atmospheric physicist they quote, should know better. Climate models don’t include solar magnetic, solar wind, cosmic rays, or changes in the solar spectrum, and other solar forces. A scientist can’t rule out things which has barely been studied, nor use models that assume these factors don’t matter to conclude that they “don’t matter”.
Myth 3. WE WILL BE WORSE OFF IF TEMPERATURES KEEP RISING
Skeptics have been pointing out for years that more people die due to cold weather, and in winter, than due to hot-spells and rising summer temperatures. Instead of saying that skeptics were right (they were), Devlin picks a couple of studies, waffles about details, and muddies the points that matter. Give her a half-point for at least including a useful quote: .“I think that focusing only on the negative aspects of climate change can risk scientific credibility,” Spiegelhalter says. If only he’d told the Hadley Met Centre, NOAA, the CSIRO and The Guardian that ten years ago.
What we know is that deaths during hot spells are often the people who would have died soon anyway, as mortality rates often fall after the hot spell is over. Deaths due to cold snaps are not like that. We also know that even in hot locations, more people die in winter.
As far as crops go, we know for a fact that more CO2 will generate more crops and higher yields. The extra carbohydrate slightly dilutes protein and other essential nutrients, but as I calculated, for all the lost protein in rice, we just need to feed people an extra chick-pea. Problem solved. Can we discuss real problems instead?
Myth 4. EXTREME WEATHER IS CAUSED BY CLIMATE CHANGE
Here, Devlin smacks alarmist’s connecting floods, storms and disasters to climate change, but she’s slapping them on the wrist with a limp $100 bill. Oh, the pain.
The lame defence of the shameless politicization of noise in “storms” is to pretend that saying it has a “hint of a signal” is somehow respectable science. She turns again to Professor Adam Scaife. He has this idea that climate models, which are unable to predict anything useful, are able to somehow calculate meaningful odds of events. He says: “It’s all about the risk of certain events changing. You can say that a specific type of event is more likely.” Yes, you can say that, but not if you are being scientific.
Myth 5. ANTARCTIC SEA ICE IS DECREASING
Again, this is a a backhanded acknowledgment that the skeptics the Guardian mocks and calls “deniers” elsewhere were right, and that the Antarctic Sea Ice growth is a problem for the experts who predicted the, ahem, opposite.
She reassures the readers that really it’s not so much a paradox because:
- Scientists say it isn’t.
- We can’t measure the thickness of the ice there and it might be shrinking still, we just don’t know.
- Slightly more ice is disappearing from the North pole. (So?)
- It could be due to the ozone layer hole.
- The trend might reverse.
Dear Guardian readers, remember this is what 95% certainty looks like. Quick, let’s wreck western economies and build a global bureaucracy!
Myth 6. ARCTIC SEA ICE SEEMS TO BE RECOVERING
The Guardian’s favourite experts said the Arctic ice would disappear. Skeptics said it was cyclical.
Instead of admitting the experts were wrong, Devlin declares it’s a myth that the Arctic Sea “seems” to be recovering. Why? Because the scientists who were wrong say its “probably temporary” and five years is too short to say anything about the climate — except when we talk about one bad storm, one hot season, one flood, or heat-wave week, right?
Myth 7. THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS ON WARMING
Ah, the mythical-myth the global worriers want to believe more than any other. It’s a myth that consensus matters. It’s a fact that there is no consensus among scientists. To be sure, there is a consensus of certified climate experts, but no consensus at all among scientists at large. The certified experts have failed utterly to convince the broad masses of people trained in the scientific method. Surveys show that half of meteorologists and two thirds of engineers and geologists don’t find the carbon-catastrophe at all believeable. There is no survey, anywhere, that interviews all scientists, there are mostly just fallacious, inept rehashes of surveys that asks people-who-get-grants-to-study-a-crisis what they think of that crisis.
The inaccurate fogging of the terms “climate scientist” and “scientist” is misleading. But who cares about accurate English, it’s only the fate of the world at stake right?
After investigating, scientists also found no evidence that papers with a sceptical slant were being systematically rejected by journals.
Which investigation was that I wonder — one of the Climategate whitewashes? Is that why Devlin doesn’t cite it?
But wait til you see this:
The strength of the consensus appears not to have been conveyed to the public.
After twenty years of relentless propaganda and headline after headline about the “Consensus”, Devlin expects people to believe that just repeating it for the 800th time will finally convince the public? The truth is that 57% of people just don’t believe that climate experts know what they are talking about.
UPDATE: Only 43% of climate scientists agree with the IPCC “95%” certain claims that man-made CO2 is the major driver of climate change.
Myth 8. HUMANS FACE EXTINCTION AS CLIMATE CHANGE INTENSIFIES
In the weakest possible way Devlin is saying (between the lines) that it might not be good idea for believers to wax loquacious about the death of humanity. It’s more like PR instructions for fellow fanatics than anything we could call reporting.
Though apparently calling humans “hard-to-kill weeds” is a perfect alternative: extinction is out, human-weeds are “in”.
“The entire argument posted on the Guardian to show the Sun does not cause climate change is (a) because “scientists don’t think so…”
James Hansen agreed…
“As we shall see, the small forces that drove millennial climate changes are now overwhelmed by human forcings.”
Hansen et al., 2003 Columbia U. report
…before he disagreed…
“The longevity of the recent protracted solar minimum, at least two years longer than prior minima of the satellite era, makes that solar minimum potentially a potent force for cooling,” Hansen and his co-authors said.”
Hansen et al., “Earth’s energy imbalance and implications”, 2011 Columbia U. report.
There’s the settling of something.
453
James Hansen is the Al Sharpton of climate science.
OK, let us take stock of the matter… We don’t have any idea of what the ‘perfect’ T (T being global average temperature) actually is for life… human, animal or vegetables or fruits. Depending on the selected intervals and the span of the intervals you can come up with all kinds of temps. Personally, I want more cows and oranges. Can we ‘tune’ the warmer mystic’s solution to AGW to this outcome?
NOW!!! What about the rate of change of T? That being, T-dot, you know… dT/dt, where t is time. Again… what is the ‘best’ rate of change? What is the acceptable interval that defines this ‘best’ rate of change? And, while we are at it… what exactly does ‘best’ actually entail? What does ‘best’ actually mean to a warmer mystic? Examination of historical data should yield an answer.
OK… now we need to know what variables go into determining dT/dt? It aint CO2 that is the major forcing mechanism. Historical data shows that.
I propose that we put all the pro-AGW warmer mystics in a room and not let them out until these issues are settled.
I think we can all agree on one conclusion proved by all the warmer mystic climate science… that being that climate is much more complex than warmer mystics can comprehend.
Damned warmer mystics are worse than lawyers. Or philosophers for that matter.
100
Found this interesting….referencing Theodor Landscheidt and Carl Smith.
https://landscheidt.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/a-guide-to-understanding-the-solar-powerwave/
10
“EXTREME WEATHER IS CAUSED BY CLIMATE CHANGE”
James Hansen was a big promoter of tropical storms energized by enhanced warming, particularly so at both poles…
“In the August 1989 issue of Popular Science, James Hansen said that “a model of the effects of warming on the oceans showed that increased evaporation would generate more vigorous convective currents in the atmosphere. The result: storms 40 to 50 percent more energetic than present ones, with monster hurricanes hurling winds of 225 mph.”
…before he concluded that tropical storms are energized by enhanced cooling at the poles…
“…high latitude cooling would increase latitudinal temperature gradients, thus driving powerful cyclonic storms.”
James Hansen, blog paper, 12/26/2012
But that means the high latitude warming Hansen had predicted for decades, which decreases latitudinal temperature gradients, actually mitigates powerful cyclonic storms.
Or something.
383
yes, whenever the real world contradicts my predictions, reality is only temporary…I am going to be very firm on that point from now on
30
Nothings really changed at the Guardian/Sunday Observer. All salutes to the UN, with alarmist ‘climate change’ junk pseudo-science, mixed with anti-business, pro-intervention diatribes from lefties and communists.
Just hold your nose and look at this page of the Guardian website and see these stories –
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Polar meltdown sees us on an icy road to disaster
The Antarctic’s glaciers are in retreat, risking a catastrophic rise in sea levels. Glacier expert Andy Smith is one of the team trying to prevent a meltdown by braving this frozen wasteland
Published: 7:30 AM
Yep Andy Smith “braved” looking at a natural phenomena to find only a part of the Pine Island Glacier is melting!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The lukewarmers don’t deny climate change. But they say the outlook’s fine
Published: 9:03 AM Tamsin Edwards.
IMO An opinion piece that informs the reader that ‘climate science’ is not settled or even fully quantified. — TM
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Jane Goodall: why I fear for the apes as climate change intensifies
The primatologist says change is happening too fast for evolutionary adaptation to save some species…
IMO Feel bad guilt-trip piece design for what it is – a begging bowl for money and power — TM.
“Which is more important, putting pressure on governments or empowering local communities?
The second is more likely to be successful. … Even if one politician is pretty tough and makes strong emission capping regulations, if there is an election and he is gone somebody else can overturn them. And the big corporations, the vested interest groups, are so powerful and their links with governments are so strong that one gets a little jaded.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kofi Annan: ‘We must challenge climate-change sceptics who deny the facts’
” have repeatedly stressed that climate change is a global and all-encompassing threat to life, to our water and food supplies, to our health, security, prosperity and stability. It should be given highest priority. … The Millennium Development Goal 6, for example, focuses on reversing the incidence of malaria, but a warmer climate would alter the areas where mosquitos can breed, thus exposing new human populations to the disease.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Environmental scientist Heidi Cullen on the role of oceans in climate change
The chief scientist for the non-profit environmental organisation, Climate Central, shares her main fears…
“Are there politicians you feel should be taking a stronger lead?
I think Australia has a lot of work to do. It is by far one of the most vulnerable [countries] when it comes to the impacts of climate change in terms of things like heat impact, wildfires, drought and I know that within Australia the scientific community is working very, very hard for folks to understand that vulnerability.Once again leadership is so critical
She’s lecturing you or what? — TM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Harewood on the shocking results of drought in Kenya
Published: 10:30 AM
Yep ‘climate change’ again!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lily Cole on climate change: why does money trump long-term thinking?
Published: 10:30 AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Moose mortality: scientists try to explain mystery of animals’ decline
Published: 8:30 AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Extreme weather and rising seas are already global threats. This will only intensify
Published: 7:30 AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
COP 21: UN climate change conference | Paris
Observer Tech Monthly climate change special
Extreme weather and rising seas are already global threats. This will only intensify
World leaders will meet in Paris this year to try to reach a deal to cut carbon emissions. Failure could be catastrophic. We explore the facts, myths and opinions around global warming, starting with an expert view and a survey of the British public by Opinium/the Observer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
231
Oh dear, how sad. They’re all so worried about the Pine Island Glacier which is melting at 46bn tonnes of fresh water per year.
Unprecedented! A whole 15 millimeters per century or three inches.
And the cause of this catastrophic rise in sea level, is, according to the £7.4m project
Well, fancy that. There is no mention, at all, of the upstream volcano erupting under the ice.
I think the British taxpayer should be demanding their money back. It’s a lot of hot air about nothing.
171
“Unprecedented! A whole 15 millimeters per century or three inches.”
Unless I’m misreading this 15mm is just under 5 eighths of an inch. Where did 3″ come from? That’s about 75mm.
Just wondering 🙂
Ron
R-COO- K+
50
True. A slip of the keyboard.
5.9 inches.
10
Hi Sophocles,
The Guardian writers need an education on “Liquid Hot Magma” – Perhaps Dr Evil could help them out.
To paraphrase Bill Clintons 1992 campaign for US President – “Its the Magma, stupid”.
30
The BIG problem with the Guardian’s report here (indeed just about all their reports) is the total lack of perspective in the report.
Given that “Antarctica is the highest, driest, coldest, windiest and brightest of the seven continents. It is roughly the size of the United States and Mexico combined and is almost completely covered by a layer of ice that averages more than one mile in thickness, but is nearly three miles thick in places. This ice accumulated over millions of years through snowfall. Presently, the Antarctic ice sheet contains 90% of the ice on Earth. The total surface area is about 14.2 million sq km (about 5.5 million sq mls) in summer, much larger then the continental United States, approximately twice the size of Australia, and fifty times the size of the UK.”
That said, Pine Island is smaller than the tip of the Texas Panhandle, smaller than Tasmania. Yet these people judge what happens there to be a fair assessment for the whole of this massive continent.
Give me a break!
121
It amazes me how the Guardian, a global warming propaganda tabloid, could be so inefficient. They could have saved a lot of time and effort if they would have simply wrote the article about the times when that climate prognosticators were right. The article would have had a chance for gaining entry into the Guinness book as the shortest list in the world!
412
New article for the Guardian. Large image of the Grim Reaper. Below text “This is what Co2 will grow” Short an to the point for all alarmists.
41
In your cynicism, you seem to have overlooked the salient fact that the Grauniad is heroically standing up against the might of Big Tree, those vested interests who thrive on CO2, even as this Killer Chemical Cocktail of Death (pages 15, 16, 23 and 47) eradicates not only [insert percentage here] of known species, But Maybe As Much As[shall we go for 97% (Alan and George really like that one)?] of Even Unknown Ones, at a steadily advancing rate.
OK, the Grawnathon is but a tiddler, in the field of newspaper publishing, but at least it’s fighting back against Big Tree, by chopping the life-destroying monsters down and turning them into pulp.
And don’t let anyone tell you that the Gradyawn isn’t made from pure, unadulterated pulp.
Because it is. (Right. If anyone needs me, I’ll be filing my Cayman Islands tax return.)
122
The only people in the UK who take the Guardian seriously are those who should never be otaken seriously. A motley collection of second rate academics, third rate politicians and overpaid BBC executives.
The newspaper has no real following, loses bucket loads of cash and would not survive in the real world without its generous sponsor. Its sole purpose these days is to advertise non-jobs in the public sector, such as: “an assistant to the assistant’s assistant of the chairperson of the works committee on Serbo-Croat integration in a post-modernist society. – salary of £32,137 per annum.
Guardian journalists are almost exclusively recruited from the equivalent of BSc (Calcutta) – failed – classes from the planet Zarg 2. In the UK, comments in the Guardian are not something to be taken seriously if you want to be taken seriously. Their journalists define the concept of ‘watermelons.’
Bottom line: A Guardian comment is not something worthy of comment unless you are unfortunate to live in one of those People’s Republics their journalists so much admire.
232
@Peter Miller
Given the “quality” of much warmist “science” even somebody who attempted a science degree might be an improvement in some areas..
Provided that they aren’t a Cook.
91
Jo, though I’m not a scientist or an authority, though I haven’t posted here before, I am compelled to with this article to say keep going: You are my go to source for gathering info and reading how to dismantle the alarmist/believers propaganda. You’re obviously a threat for that to which I say, keep up the great work!
Thank you! – Jo
130
Mind you Nic, I wouldn’t say Jo is out to dismantle anything, like many of us Jo was duped initially by the green “it couldn’t hurt if” message but quickly determined for herself that the message was built on a lie, and DOES hurt. Just ask one of the grannies that died last winter unable to afford heating… oops well maybe you can’t!
Jo in my opinion just wants the truth, she wants to not be lied to, oh and as a fellow science addict the reparation of the integrity of science would be a nice side effect.
If someone were actually able to show the she was actually wrong, and empirically show that 1. Warming is unequivocally manmade, 1b. It will warm a lot, 2. Warming and high CO2 is dangerous, 3. Mitigation is affordable then Jo like myself would probably shift opinions. The problem is that noone can actually do that except in the virtual reallity of a computer model, so until disproven the null hypothesis that warming is substantially natural and carbon taxes are ridiculously ineffective stand unassailed.
50
Jo, I look at this as good news. Although the Guardian sticks to the anthropogenic global warming assumption, at least they seem frightened enough to try and seem reasonable to their readers.
This article acknowledges there are many people who are not buying the AGW because they have not been convinced–there goes the 97% consensus.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention and rebutting their weak/incorrect arguments.
Rally around the flag, hurrah, yes hurrah! Looks like a wall of the anthropogenic global warming fortress is crumbling!
Press on with due diligence in pursuit of the truth. Thanks to Jo, WUWT, etc. for their fine work.
281
The Guardian is now flip-flopping all over the place. They must have realised they are losing it. It will mean nothing ghough until they sack their rabid Warmist acolytes, Dana, Abrams, Redfearn & what’s the other one called? Not Moonbat, who has become a bit of an institution & synonymous with the Guardisn but the others have no inherent value.
141
Yes, Leonard, I think it is a sign that they recognize their past technique of ignore and mock is not working and the “peak scare” has been overdone.
70
Hi Jo, could it simply be that economic reality is catching up with them. Have they started to realise that perhaps more than a few of their devout readership do have critical insight and are not somewhere to the left of Russell Brand?. After all, they can’t save the world if they can’t pay their bills. I’ve discussed this with some of my more lefty mates and they are definitely wavering. I know that they go straight to the Guardian in the mornings for their daily fix so something must be happening. For me there would be a MYTH No 9: The Guardian is a great source of impartial and objective information.
20
Speaking of the sun not being just a ball of light, what is the status of David’s solar-climate model?
80
Don B,
You can read the latest update to Dr. Evans’s Solar Climate Model here.
Abe
10
“It’s not how much the temperature has gone up – that’s only around 1C over the past 100 years,” says professor Adam Scaife of the Met Office. “What’s unprecedented is the rate of change.”
What is “1C over the past 100 years” if not a rate of change?
40
Impressive man must that Adam Scaife be! He must be thousands of years old, travelling through the ages with his data, bundled under his arm. A deity no less.
00
Good heavens Ceetee, the warmistas have stumped up the readies to employ the services of a Time Lord to give a data injection to their insolvent hypothesis??????
In the words of John Patrick McEnroe, “You can’t be serious!!!!!”
00
The Guardian backing out?, they’ve been backing out clangers like these for years now without disposal, there’s a pile of evidence hard to ignore and the neighbors are complaining!
71
Yonniestone,
Clanger. New word for me, that. Looked it up. Basically two meanings. A mistake or blunder. The loud shriek or cry of a bird.
So here’s my two cents.
Sure. When you look at the article based on the actual scientific peer reviewed papers, mistakes abound. Factual mistakes. Mistakes by error of omission. Overstatement/exageration. In that sense, it’s a Clanger with a capital ‘C’.
But I’ve come to the conclusion that from their point of view, (The Guardian’s that is), this was intended to be a clanger by the second definition. This is obviously them proclaiming, “Look everyone! We’re being balanced in our reporting! We dare to present both sides! We’re even willing to admit to a few past mistakes!
But now look at the timing of this article. Less than a week before an election. On a Sunday when the greatest number of people will have a chance to read it. An obvious attempt to sway the UNDECIDEDS! It ‘Clangs’ allright.
Like you said, (in paraphrase), “The garbage keeps piling up and I smell a rat!”
Abe
00
The elastic attachment to reality can only stretch so far before:
a. it gains so much length that the sheeple threaten to become people.
b. snaps and the disconnect is complete.
The Gruniad is desperate to remain relevant and rational in the week of the UK election. It’s usual climate hysteria will return to normal programming once the electoral hiatus is over.
Meanwhile, having admitted that the climate has been hotter in the past they now need to explain that.
112
Manfred,
Might be something in that UK election insight.
One week out and current polling has:
Conservative and Labor at about 33% each.
UKIP at 13%
Green down to 5%.
130
The Gruniad has been forced to join the stage make-up department as they run out of green foundation?
Poor dears.
Their eco-
maxismmyopia guarantees an end result known colloquially as ‘the pantomime look’.132
James
From what I read , Climate Change as an issue has not figured much at all in the UK election campaign and many of the “luvvies” are very worried about this. Maybe it is hitting home that AGW isn’t important to average voter.
This is exactly the same as what occurred in the NZ election late last year. It was hardly mentioned, despite the Green Party trying hard to make it an issue –it just didn’t get the traction.
110
Manfred & Ross,
Seems like the Guardian overshot the credibility envelope and is desperate to gain relevance.
50
“Seems like the Guardian overshot the credibility envelope and is desperate to gain relevance.”
It would be nice to think so, but I’ll believe that when the beebyanka, the broadcasting wing of the Groanoid, displays any such self-awareness. There’s no sign, so far, that that will ever happen.
80
Leopards don’t change their spots anymore than The Gruniad is about to divest itself of its Green eco-marxist frappe loving, armchair bound self-embracing intelligentsia. No siree, they’re simply trying very hard to mollify their exclusive stance to appear more inclusive, this time of the luke-warmers. It’s as many bums on seats for the election as possible.
The over riding focus remains winter in Paris.
80
Further to my comments regarding the Gruniad, today’s London Telegraph states the following headline.
I rest my case. The Gruniad are peddling the usual smoke and mirrors — predictable.
They betray themselves at every turn.
20
Cook is doing an AMA on Reddit.
He has not responded to anything that is “hard”
http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/34tcge/science_ama_series_i_am_john_cook_climate_change/cqxyt25
20
The quote is the first line from the Hannah Devlin article.
So the threat is still there, and just as scary as before!
What wild claims from both sides of the divide?
All the wilfred claims come from the alarmists.
Here are some facts.
I read the article and did not find any facts, just speculation and opinion.
111
Pressed send instead of preview.:-(
Maybe there is someone called Wilfred who makes wild claims.
60
The Guardian is in the pay of Big Smug.
80
Is this Pine Island Glacier the same one that is near all those funny looking mountains with big holes in the middle.
171
I do recall the British Antarctic Survey finding a sub-glacial ash layer the size of Wales near Pine Island Glacier. Still warm as toast down there…but it’s considered impolite to mention that (or Greenland’s magma) in mixed company. You do get the odd glaciologist whispering about glacier flow being accelerated by volcanic activity, but they’re made to shut up soon enough. Manners, please!
201
Most of these myths result from making or accepting assumptions and then trying to find evidence, or opinions of proclaimed authorities, to back up the assumption, which looks to me to be what “consensus” science is.
An example is the assumption that the rate of change is unprecedented. Is it unprecedented? It would be better to ask some basic questions first before assuming the answer.
A first question may be: Is the rate of change and amount of change outside the range of natural variation? To answer that one must first establish what the range of natural variation is based on reliable evidence and so forth.
121
Jo
O/T but – some Ontario myths coming home to roost
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2015/05/wynneing-23.html#comments
00
Why do livestock sit under a group of trees in the shade? Something to do with the heating effect of the sun isn’t it!
70
Correlation doesn’t necessarily prove causation, but I think you maybe onto something.
50
Good point. Re: correlation and causation, perhaps we could set up a study to find by how much the world is warmed by animals sitting in the shade. There must be someone in government who could get us the funding for this – dare I say it? – radical idea.
10
It is a radical idea, nevertheless your theory has legs and is worth a shot.
00
Guardian readers need to be talked down to, reassured, in the manner of kindergarten kiddies even down to the pretty pictures.
92
Here’s Phil Jones 2010 interview with the BBC and this is point A. This just proves that the warming rates since 1860 have been the same. Or within 0.01c per decade. The two rates before 1950 ( IPCC’s impact for co2 warming ) are the same as 1975 to 1998.
A – Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I’ve assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.
Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).
I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.
So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.
Here are the trends and significances for each period:
Period Length Trend
(Degrees C per decade) Significance
1860-1880 21 0.163 Yes
1910-1940 31 0.15 Yes
1975-1998 24 0.166 Yes
1975-2009 35 0.161 Yes
40
Which puts paid to the nonsense we continually hear about “the rate of warming” accelerating, or being unprecendented or any other such guff.
00
Is this another, very quiet, maybe reluctant acknowledgement of opposition. (It’s towards the end of the article.) Even if we are all very well funded… I wish.
From our ABC, some scientists in the Antarctic have discovered a 2.8 degree warming, described as “significant”, but omit the “from” and “to” numbers. Might they be -50 to -47.2 perhaps”?
ABC Just In
But overall I detect a faint thaw.
Cheers,
Dave B
31
Is this it?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-05/scientists-in-antarctica-investigate-effect-of-climate-change/6430000
00
G’day Ted,
Sort of. The but the temperature reference seems to have morphed into a glacier comment. And No, I didn’t keep a copy, thinking the link was sufficient. Sorry.
Cheers,
Dave B
00
Hello again,
The Justin item was originally posted “about four hours ago” and updated “about two hours ago”, i.e. just before you tried it.
Is this an example of cause and effect do you think? Is the ABC sufficiently sensitive to change one of their reports on the basis of a comment on Jo’s site?
Cheers,
Dave B
00
Oops. I have made a big mistake. Sorry.
My responses above, at 21.1.1 and 21.1.2 are the result of my failure to see the sentence containing the “2.8 degrees” in Ted’s link. So:
1. My apologies to the ABC as my assertion that they had changed the article is wrong;
2. My apologies to Jo and you all for making that mistake; and
3. My answer to Ted should have been “Yes”, that was the link.
Humble pie for dinner tonight,
Dave B
20
Here is a factual article from Lomborg in the WSJ in February. I’ve posted this before but this should end all the nonsense about an increase in extreme events for all time.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/the-alarming-thing-about-climate.html
And here are the facts about deaths from NATURAL disasters in the earlier 20th century and today. That fall of 97% today is remarkable and so are the other points he makes about so called CAGW.
Here is lomborg’s quote———————-
“This is important because if we want to help the poor people who are most threatened by natural disasters, we have to recognize that it is less about cutting carbon emissions than it is about pulling them out of poverty.
The best way to see this is to look at the world’s deaths from natural disasters over time. In the Oxford University database for death rates from floods, extreme temperatures, droughts and storms, the average in the first part of last century was more than 13 dead every year per 100,000 people. Since then the death rates have dropped 97% to a new low in the 2010s of 0.38 per 100,000 people.
The dramatic decline is mostly due to economic development that helps nations withstand catastrophes. If you’re rich like Florida, a major hurricane might cause plenty of damage to expensive buildings, but it kills few people and causes a temporary dent in economic output. If a similar hurricane hits a poorer country like the Philippines or Guatemala, it kills many more and can devastate the economy.”
Dr Goklany’s work backs up Lomborg claims.
And he states at the end of the article that the huge decline in death rates is because of the extended use of fossil fuels.
IOW if you want a more prosperous and safer way of life make sure you use more fossil fuels. And he is an IPCC author as well.
http://www.thegwpf.com/indur-m-goklany-global-death-toll-from-extreme-weather-events-declining/
61
But Neville the AGW crowd are on all out attack on Lomborg recently
( not just the Australians worried about his new setup at UWA).
Bob Ward ( Grantham Institute) and co are knocking him for advocating standard environmental issues like clean water and cheap electricity for African nations
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/5/3/creating-distance.html
I really think these guys are being or feel they are being pushed into a corner –hence the more outrageous comments.
70
Myth 6. ARCTIC SEA ICE SEEMS TO BE RECOVERING
Quite so, this is a myth.
There is a man-made reason why arctic ice is disappearing. I have the evidence:
“The ice has become a highly valued commodity for making Iceberg vodka and mineral water.
The 12,000-year-old water contained within the icebergs, that have broken off from glaciers further north in Greenland, can pay big dividends to those who have the skill and bravery to hunt them down. And it is becoming a booming business in this corner of Canada.”
(dailytelegraph.com)
(hic!)
50
Of course, any jokes about recovering alcoholics must be left to the master, Rodney Dangerfield, @1.25 minutes.
30
When models are right ‘off the wall’,
And predictions don’t happen at all,
Then alarmist forecasters,
And their media masters,
Are due an embarrassing fall.
200
I thought I should post this important study again.
Just reading this Calvo et al 2007 study. This just highlights the nonsense peddled by the MSM, extremists and most govts around the world.
http://people.rses.anu.edu.au/dedeckker_p/pubs/12.pdf
The study found that temps over SE OZ are 2c cooler today than at anytime during the last 12,000 years. Prof De Deckker was part of this study and they used his Murray Canyons core work to find that as the temps cooled to the present day this area has seen a reduction in rainfall as well.
For how much longer can this CAGW con and fraud persist? Of course the PAGES 2K study found that Antarctica was warmer than today from 141AD to 1250AD and a 30 year warmer spike from 1671 to 1700.
70
Thanks Neville. I like that paper!
30
Jo. Reign in? That should be rein in, as with a horse.
A common error these days. It seems everybody has forgotten the horse.
40
“certified climate experts”.
Who certified them?
60
Well, they are certainly certifiable …
60
We did!
00
Following the Climategate e-mail debacle and the Copenhagen debacle at the end of 2009, somewhere on the blogs a commenter posted a reference to a study of the media which unfortunately I never kept and can’t find today, showing that it took about 7 years for most of the media to make a major turnabout and reversal in any long duration, hard held editorial direction and policy.
That would take us into about 2016 or 2017 before we could definitely say that a major shift and a reversal in the MSM’s attitudes towards the so called climate catastrophe meme was evident and well under way.
Which makes sense as over the longer period Editors along with their pet predilections are likely to have moved on, the reporters are likely to have both moved on and perhaps developed a somewhat more nuanced view of a subject compared with their original still wet behind the ears early reporting stance.
And their readers will have indicated in no uncertain terms, their changing attitudes to editorial policy and ideology through both the Letters to the Editor’s column and through their purchasing levels of the news sheets.
From the beginning of 2010 to 2015 it is now five years on and already MSM outlets like The Australian and some others have moved a long way towards a far more nuanced and skeptical stance towards the whole of the deeply dictatorial and authoritiarian climate scientist dictated and greens enforced policies that are doing so much damage to the economies and social structures of so many western nations including Australia.
So the fact that the The Guardian is shifting it’s stance ever so slightly, probably something that is yet to be proven as a longer term trend, is not particularly surprising as it is well within the seven years that have been suggested as the time span for the MSM to make a major change of course in editorial policy and promoted ideology.
“Promoted ideology” of course being the outcome and something that has evolved as the MSM in recent years has moved from the straight reporting of the news of the day to a heavy dose of various opinion pieces which are promoted and forced down the MSM perusing public’s throat for 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Most such MSM opinion pieces are usually proven to be plain wrong or just badly researched and bounded and distorted by the ideology and beliefs of the particular opinion piece writer and / or spruiker in the case of TV and radio.
Take away the MSM’s blanket coverage reporting of any and every tittle and dot of news from the high status illuminati of every description down to the local university floor sweeper which is about the level of much of the scientific pronouncements from so many of what are purported to be scientists that supposedly supports the concept of a catastrophic climate warming, then with little or no outlet for further personal aggrandisement as a climate expert , all those self promoters will either fade away or have to very substantially shift camp in their pronouncements.
Considering the undoubted arrogance of many of these current climate catastrophe self promoters there simply won’t be any further outlets of any significance for them to keep promoting what by then will be their increasingly irrelevant climate catastrophe cultist’s beliefs.
And their record of continuous predictions of future, always future catastrophic climate events that never eventuate will be of such a bad odour as to destroy what little respect they may have left in the public’s eyes which would further exclude them from having any further access to the public through a changing and by then, a steadily evolving in outlook MSM.
All this will take time as so many have to admit even to themselves that they were wrong and then to admit it publicly through their changing approach to climate research, particularly amongst the high status political scientists at the peak organisations of their discipline.
Some of those of course will never change.
For them as has been said elsewhere, Science advances one funeral at a time.
And so will fade away into the dustbin of history yet another of the almost uncountable Movements that have appeared down through the ages of Man, all of which their proponents and supporters believed were going to change the world and shape it in their own image as the world that was perfect in all it’s details and that would survive and persist down through the Ages yet to come.
Of such is the arrogance of Man!
150
Nice piece, thanks ROM.
The Babylonian edifice of modeled climate encapsulates the delusion of grandeur perfectly. Controlling the weather by controlling people is as deluded as it gets.
10
The most important myth is missing, namely that reducing carbon (CO2) will reduce temperature.
That lowering CO2 is highly unlikely to reduce the temperature of the atmosphere follows from the lack of significant warming over the past 18 years while the atmospheric CO2 has continued to increase in concentration. The lack of correlation between temperature and CO2 concentration indicates that CO2 is not the “rate limiting controller” of temperature.
If it is not the chief controller, then reducing CO2 will not reduce temperature and the effort, in time and money to reduce CO2 is wasted.
All the effort to produce power from wind turbines thus is simply “Tilting at windmills”.
110
You have to reach back into history to see how King Cnut(Canute) handled the Gaurdian and their friends.
The sky is falling is a very old political problem. Newspapers sell scares. We had it in Melbourne in the 1860s with “The Russians are coming” and very British crowds of frightened people went to the beaches with axes and shovels. This led to the Crimean war and smart politicians raised a lot of money to build a string of forts around the country to repel the Russians, but they were used instead, fifty years later, to fire on the ships of Queen Victoria’s oldest Grandson. He was also fighting his first cousin, Czar Nicholas. The war of the cousins.
Anyway the facts are that yes, the world appeared to heat suddenly in the 80’s and 90’s by 0.5C, exactly at the formation of the IPCC in 1988. Strangely not before and not since.
So instantly concluding this due to the steady increase in CO2, perhaps someone would look at the short warming and see if it was real? Real scientists would first look closely at the instruments to see if there was any change and yes, they were all changed during this time from mechanical to electronic, from a resolution of 0.5C to 0.01C. Quelle surprise!
Yes, if you project the sudden +0.5C in ten years across a century as the carbon alarmists insist, you do get +5C. Too bad it is not true and less true every year. In another 20 years of waiting, it will be 0.5C over 50 years and so 1C over the century but the journalists will have retired. Even Tim Flannery will be heading for 80, still living on the beach.
Man does not control the planet’s temperature. A ridiculous concept. Take it from Cnut.
121
It is important that you do not miss-spell Cnut!
90
When I refer to climate alarmists then I am afraid that it is all of the rest of you that are mis-spelling Cnut.
60
Or refer to warmists as a bunch.
20
King Cnut did not get is feet wet, as recorded in legend, because his throne was mounted on a Cnu.
Well cnown fact, that.
40
Does the spell checker offer another spelling option?
30
Hive gout a spelling checker it cam with my pee see …
10
Ur pee see is funked bro…..
10
Another common spelling is Knud
00
Wow, so many suffering from Climate Change Induced Combination Dyslexia/Tourettes.
30
What is Disrettes/Tourexia?
00
TdeF @ #24
“Man does not control the planet’s temperature. A ridiculous concept.”
Umm!
He mightn’t control the real temperature but he can sure make it look a lot different in quite a lot of ways.
151 Degrees Of Fudging…Energy Physicist Unveils NOAA’s “Massive Rewrite” Of Maine Climate History
.
Swiss Weekly Calls Temperature Rise A “Propaganda Trick” (Not A Trend) …”We Are Making A Warming”!
____
A quote from somewhere long forgotten!
“When you can show me you can control a volcano then come back and we will discuss how to control the global climate“
160
Guardian! accurate reporting!
the sub-heading:
– The threat to our planet and the lives of billions of people – not to mention big business” –
which could just as reasonably be:
– CAGW policies a threat to the lives of billions and big business –
***keep your eye on the main prize, because the CAGW- pushers surely do, and it’s the trillions in the pension funds. of course, the following headline could reasonably be: “Some pension funds are being gambled on risky CAGW ventures”:
28 April: Guardian: Karl Mathieson: Nearly half of top pension funds gambling on climate change
Index produced by thinktank shows just under 50% of investors take no measures to protect assets from expected climate-related market shifts
The Asset Owners Disclosure Project’s (AODP) annual index of 500 of the largest global asset owners found that 232 of them had done little or nothing to protect their investments from the financial upheavals predicted due to climate change…
He said these asset owners were gambling that nothing would be done to curtail the burning of fossil fuels.
“They’re betting around 20-1 that either the fossil fuel company influence will last forever or that their fund managers will bail them out of a crisis – but that didn’t work too well during the last systemic crisis did it?” he said…
The index found only 1.4% of asset owners had reduced their carbon intensity from the previous year and just 2% have a target for reducing the carbon risk for next year.
UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said the index was an invaluable tool for encouraging pension fund to finance the shift toward a low carbon economy.
***“Pensions funds and the multi-trillion dollar assets they manage have a pivotal role to play in this transformation”…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/28/pension-funds-climate-change-fossil-fuels
50
The Guardian’s portrayal of the future
I like to read the news to see what is happening in the World, especially to see what future important events I should pencil in on my calendar.
when I read the Guardian, admittedly only since lunchtime today, I have noticed that the writers are big fans of CAGW.
Despite all the doom and gloom, the Guardian assures me that their scientifically trained journalist has it on good authority that several life changes are possible , but I have to make them by next year , in order to avert catastrophe.
Unfortunately I am busy this year and next, and as a person who lives 1000 miles inland, 20 minutes from a snow covered mountain range , right next to a really hot desert, where the seasonal temperature change is -10C to 39C , I have to say , that I am not sure how much more of a life change I can make.
110
Someone should quietly tell Ms Devlin what a ‘fact’ actually is, as opposed to opinions, suppositions, projections, guesses, hunches, models, agency advice, social causes, and vested interests etc.
90
It’s all about the prekautionary principle for your own good of course.
20
sealevel rise and fall is simpler to tally over centuries because the major seas move basically together up and down over time, as compared to the complexities of measuring air temperatures across the planet over centuries. what do sealevels show?
here is a simple graph to read: href=”http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_09/slr.jpg”>
here is another:
i do not know what “unprecedented” means to one person and to another, but the scientific numbers for the last 170 centuries or so in terms of meters rising of the sealevel is not very tricky and not very deceptive and not very political.
30
Very interesting graph. It looks very much as if we have reached a plateau. With Antartica at -50C, a few degrees of warming do not matter. Everywhere but Greenland melts each summer including most of the Arctic ice, Siberia, Norway, Canada and the seas do not rise. +40 to+80C Global Warming every year, but still no problem? The drowning of the world is another ridiculous fantasy.
50
SLR is of less importance at the moment, but ocean temperatures are important.
The other day I saw a graph from Tisdale showing the southern ocean is growing cooler as Antarctic sea ice continues to expand.
Here we see that the north Atlantic has been growing cooler and David Archibald feels vindicated.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/clip_image0061.jpg
10
And the unadjusted temperatures off New Hamshire.
https://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/screenhunter_362-apr-23-06-16.gif
10
I always wonder why people insist in putting a least squares trend line through data. There is no reason to suppose that there is a trend line unless there is a theory. With a wider dataset, the trend could be anything at all and what is there is possibly as much a flat line as not, given the size of the variation. So it is with Global Warming. It is far from certain that there is a warming, more that people see what they expect to see and what they want to see.
00
One of my partners – the Geologist and Geoengineer, points out that movement of the Earth’s crust, has more of a significant impact on sea level than expansion of the water, or melting ice.
Both land and sea respond to the gravitational forces imposed by the sun, and the moon, and to a lesser extent the planets. What we think of as solid ground, is actually floating on a sea of magma, that responds to the solar tides.
40
I have often wondered about this Rereke, and whether this should be part of the entire discipline of climatology, if it had a mind to consider…
10
Ceetee & Rereke Whakaaro
Quite right — apart from the observed Sun’s affect on the volume of our atmosphere , the Sun is affected by planetary motion (Google Scholar — pick a paper).
So the idea that the motion of the moon, Sun, and planets have effects on our climate and geology is not such an outlandish idea.
00
I am currently working through the Denial 101 course run by
Prof. Dr. Sir John Cook. B.Sc. M.Sc. Ph.D. DKHD. POQ. etc
I will be able to give you an AUTHORITATIVE answer to all these questions soon.
110
Really? Can you get a DKHD? Course work only or field work or an honorary qualification?
50
Actually – I think you’ll find it’s John Cook. B.Sc.
10
???
3 May: Independent: Adam Withnall: Britain may be forced to ration the internet, expert warns, as web use could consume 100% of nation’s power supply by 2035
Experts said we were close to “filling up” the nation’s network of optical fibres for the first time ever, with the demands of popular video-streaming websites like YouTube and Netflix putting an unprecedented strain on communications infrastructure.
Industry figures will be meeting at London’s Royal Society later this month to discuss the impending “capacity crunch” facing Britain’s internet companies, and experts said that with devices such as PCs and TVs included, internet transmission already accounts for between 8 and 16 per cent of Britain’s power…
Andrew Ellis, professor of optical communications at Aston University, said rationing internet use or charging more so that more cables can be installed may need to be considered. Unless action is taken, optical fibres could reach their limit within eight years…
Prof Ellis said the major telecom operators alone account for national energy consumption equivalent to the output of three nuclear power stations…
The Royal Society conference is to take place on 11 May, and Andrew Lord, head of optical access at BT, told the Sunday Times that new cable put down now would already be filled within “a year or two… which is far too short”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/britain-may-be-forced-to-ration-the-internet-expert-warns-as-web-use-could-consume-100-of-nations-power-supply-by-2035-10222638.html
30
Just another of those things to add to the ABSOLUTE requirement for 24/7/365 power.
The longer I live that absolute Base Load requirement just keeps on growing.
When you have two thirds of every watt of power being generated required for the full 24 hours of every day, the more you realise that there IS only one tried and true method of supplying that level of power.
That will only ever be seen when they start turning them off, and the Country just grinds to a halt.
Then they won’t be able to build them fast enough.
Tony.
120
well, the times they are a’changin…
Of course, this is pretty much all d#$%$rs like Lindzen have ever said.
40
Oops, forgot the scare quotes around d#$%$rs…
00
Its nice to see Australians are more cool, along with our cousins in the US.
10
I went to your quote “lukewamers don’t deny climate change but they say that the outlook’s fine”, an article in the Guardian by Tamsin Edwards.
I don’t know much about Tamsin Edwards, but Bishop Hill thinks that she is a breath of fresh air.
Courtesy of Tamsin I read this:
So I am happy that she does not call us d#$@%s, but take note; the true sceptics are mainly in the US and Australia!
So I will agree that I am unconvinced that CO2 has a greenhouse warming effect, and so are many readers of this blog. Even the reasonable lukewarmers cannot produce any meaningful evidence in support of the greenhouse theory (absorbtion and emission spectra are insufficient evidence).
30
Fortunately the imagination run-riot, that we know as greenhouse global-warmering changety-climatery carbon-touchety-feelery, is primarily a figment affecting the less immune or competent element of the English speaking minority on the planet. I’m sure that if we could rid the world of smallpox I’m confident that if science data is scrupulously and consistently applied, as our guide to sanity, that we can patiently and methodically defeat and eliminate this enfeebling pox on the English cultural conglomeration of BS.
There is of course the distinct possibility that climatey-changery is merely a pokey-outy symptom of an underlaying advanced decay of reason, logic and scientific method, altogether. In which case the collective imagination of humanity has probably caught and analogue of terminal rabbis and can no longer restrain or control itself, hence may have to be put down, for the sake of the children. We would all like to hope this is not so, that the Western thoughosphere is curable and can fully recover, in time, the full use of its science faculties. But I think we must face the tragic possibility that it has possibly disrupted the internal imagination function via a self-induced spread of its own endemic brain pox, which has stimulated and perverted the imagination regulation mechanism to such toxic outcome, that reason is all but done for, and the human brain may in fact be on its last legs.
No one wants to say that, or face this forlorn possibility, but at this time we must. Increasingly it appears that the human brain per-sec, as a collective organ of the species in the more dubious areas of human speculative cogitations, may in fact have given up the ghost, and all that is rattling around are the misfiring figments of unmoderated imaginings, as the death-rattle of an ailing and destroyed imaginosphere, of what has imaginatively be termed, in recent years, “the advanced world”.
If this is in fact the case, we should not be all that surprised. For if the advanced ones of the publicly-funded imaginosphere hyper-bubble version of reality, were going to insisting in the face of all contrary data to fabricate a pure flight of fancy its was inevitable that the human brain would in some way begin to subtly rot, decay and fold in on itself until it took the form of an unwanted intellectual banana fritter.
At some point this was always going to occur and humanity would come unstuck, and that just this type of wild blundering crack pipe dream, that we see expressed as climatey-changery imaginospherical hypergobshitery, that is fronting up as a day temp worker replacement for actual science, which called in and said it was feeling a bit ill and is not coming in until further notice.
If so, we can’t reasonably expect a full recovery, or even much improvement as it is likely the former mechanism for moderating and regulating the imaginosphere and holding its apparition-bubble in check, appears to have already been degraded and atrophied away to effectively nothing, within the more feeble public institutes and academies. Thus such a mechanism necessary to unwind and restrain the galloping fantasy of imagination, as climatey-changery, probably no longer even exists.
Hence the science zombie horde has eaten its own brain first.
Alternatively they just don’t have a clue, and do not know that they don’t have a clue, thus feel compelled to mouth assertions they know almost but not quite everything, and really should be listened in all matters, despite any clear reason why one would.
In which case virtually nothing has changed and we’re probably going to be fine, we only need a global emergency airdrop of a few billion packets of ear plugs.
10
Who would have preferred us to have stayed Homo Erectus forever?
00
Being Homo Recumbere is much more fun.
20
I suppose some prefer to be Homo Erectus, not that there’s anything wrong with that…..
20
If Guardian readers will believe those myths, then they’ll believe that the CIty of Paris is dismantling the Eiffel Tower to make way for a 12 MW wind turbine in the centre of the city.
Anything that is “sufficiently technical”; where “sufficient” is beyond the ken of the reader/listener; is accepted on the basis of who is uttering the words.
60
such a promising headline! but, as with all things CAGW, not quite what it seems:
4 May: The Conversation: A call for greater diversity of thought in environmental studies courses
by Matthew Nesbit, Associate Professor of Communication at Northeastern University
Disclosure: Matthew Nisbet’s research on climate change politics and communication has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Nathan Cummings Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation. He has worked with a diversity of environmental organizations and groups including the Breakthrough Institute which is mentioned in this column.
Motivated by her experience, in the recent study, Ho and Eric Kennedy (a doctoral student at Arizona State University) analyzed 22 syllabi from introductory environmental studies courses taught at top-ranked North American research universities and liberal arts colleges. They recorded course descriptions, objectives, activities, and readings according to specific themes, topics, and perspectives.
Of the 22 syllabi assessed, less than half explicitly mentioned the importance of critical thinking or exposing students to competing perspectives. Only 10 made any reference to the fact that even among those advocating for action to address a problem like climate change, there are competing narratives about the major societal challenges, the possible technological solutions, and the political strategies needed…
***To more formally assess the diversity of perspectives offered about climate change, Kennedy and Ho applied a typology that I developed in a 2014 paper categorizing key differences among three distinct groups of public intellectuals arguing for action on the issue (see table, below)…
***Kennedy and Ho are clear that they are not recommending that environmental studies courses “teach false or manufactured controversies (ie, climate change denial) nor abdicate a responsibility to study and articulate concerns about environmental impacts.”
Instead, their analysis underscores why environmental studies courses should explicitly “acknowledge the existence of diverse perspectives on environmental issues, and balance perspectives and discourses with critical counterpoints.” This should include teaching about “the use and misuse of science in political debates not only in the context of climate denial, but also as it applies to evaluating possible strategies or energy options.”
http://theconversation.com/a-call-for-greater-diversity-of-thought-in-environmental-studies-courses-39983
i couldn’t read the third goup in Nisbet’s graph til i clicked on his link “2014 paper”. however, Gore, Sachs & Stern are in his second group described as “Smart Growth Reformers”! so wasn’t suprised when i discovered the names in group 3:
The third group, Ecomodernists, argue for embracing the power of human ingenuity and creativity to manage the risks of climate change…
Examples of contemporary public intellectuals writing in this tradition include U.S. entrepreneur and author Stewart Brand, Kings College London (UK) scientist Mike Hulme, University of Colorado-Boulder (U.S.) political scientist Roger Pielke Jr, Oxford University (UK) anthropologist Steve Rayner, Breakthrough Institute (U.S.) cofounders Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, and The New York Times’ (U.S.) environmental writer ***Andrew Revkin.
The good Bish (Adrew Montford) and ***Andrew Revkin pop up in the comments, with Montford being duly insulted, of course.
10
basically, Nisbet is an advocate for the nuclear industry, it would seem:
Feb 2015: TalkNuclear: CNA (Canadian Nuclear Association) 2015
Matthew C. Nisbet, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Affiliate Associate Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University.
He is a Senior Editor at Oxford University Press’ Research Encyclopedia Climate Science and “The Age of Us” columnist at The Conversation…
Nisbet has recently focused on shattering some of the myths about the challenges facing climate change advocates.
“One of the things that remain one of the common explanations of why we have inaction on climate change is that the mainstream media continues to engage in false balance about the fundamentals of climate science,” he explains. “In part I think this explanation is no longer true.
“What we know from research over time is that false balance remained a problem in the early 2000s and the late 1990s.” He says false balance disappeared in the mainstream media by 2007.
But false balance remains in outlets in U.S. political talk radio, Fox News and the conservative blogosphere, but people who use those sources of media are already have doubts about climate change and this serves as just a reinforcing factor.
He also questions the myth that environmental groups are being outspent by big business.
***Nisbet’s research found that in 2009 environmental groups brought in $1.7 billion in revenues with $390 million spent on climate and energy advocacy, while conservative think tanks and groups brought in $900 million in revenues and spent $240 million on climate and energy advocacy.
“To say that environmental groups are massively underfunded or they face a spending disadvantage against their long standing opponents in conservative think tanks, industry associations and advocacy groups is a false argument.”
Dr. Nisbet is among the featured speakers at CNA2015.
http://talknuclear.ca/tag/matthew-nisbet/
March 2015: TheEnergyCollective: Suzanne Waldman: Nuclear Communication
When I tell people I research nuclear communication, they almost invariably say one thing: “now there is an industry that could communicate better.”
It’s a realization coming home to the nuclear industry itself. Last week I had the privilege of attending the Canadian Nuclear Association’s annual industry conference. The need for nuclear players to use communication more effectively was a constant refrain.
Here’s a sector that supplies carbon-free nuclear energy that is cheap to operate once constructed, unsurpassingly reliable, managed with unparalleled safety, with an extremely small environmental footprint relative to other energy sources…
In the meantime, there was a sense at the conference that the nuclear industry should be developing communication strategies to nudge a cultural shift amongst the public along at least one of two lines.
The first line is towards greater public pragmatism.
***Matthew Nisbet, Professor of Communication and Public Policy at Northeastern University, talked about his research showing that when climate change is framed as a public health issue, the cultural resistance that dogs it becomes diffused. That the public health benefits of nuclear power ought similarly to be foregrounded was an idea that percolated throughout the conference.
As James Hansen pointed out in his talk, outdoor air pollution, largely associated with coal, kills approximately 10,000 people daily through respiratory and other illnesses…
In Matthew Nisbet’s words, climate policy is falling short in part because policy-makers are mired in “soft energy path” solutions and averse to “hard energy path” solutions that would make a bigger dent…
http://theenergycollective.com/swaldmansympaticoca/2199926/nuclear-communication
Profile: Suzanne Waldman: PhD Student, Carleton University. Suzanne researches public dialogues on energy and risk, with a particular focus on how citizens can become informed enough to motivate good policy decisions in the current era of energy dynamism and climate urgency.
the pro-nuclear website of the writer, Suzanne Waldman
http://www.suzannewaldman.net/index.html
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what a woman:
5 May: Womensagenda: Meet the woman leading the charge on solving climate change
By Lucia Osborne-Crowley
A large Sydney audience will tonight hear from the woman leading the charge on solving one of the world’s most pressing issues – climate change.
Decorated diplomat, speaker, climate change expert and executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres will speak about the problems the global community faces in relation to climate change and the role women can play in the solution.
Figueres, as the UN’s climate chief, has been given the task of creating a new agreement on how the international community can combat the onset of global warming, and she will direct the construction of a new global treaty ahead of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Paris in December.
Solving climate change is no mean feat – but if anyone has the expertise, knowledge and skills to make it happen, it is Christiana Figueres…
A Costa Rican native, she then moved to Washington D.C and studied for a Certification in Organisational Development at Georgetown University.
She entered the climate science space in 1994, when she was appointed Director of the Technical Secretariat of the Renewable Energy in the Americas, and soon after was appointed the executive director of the Centre for Sustainable Development in the Americas in 1995…
In between these various roles requiring her to come up with innovative solutions to pressing global problems, Figueres has also found the time to lecture at some of the world’s top universities, including Yale, Georgetown and John Hopkins…
Figueres is making a special visit to Australia to talk climate change solutions, and she is speaking at a publicforum on the issue at the Sydney Theatre Company on the evening of Tuesday, May 5.
The event is co-hosted by women’s climate change activist group 1 Million Women and global climate change organisation 350.org. The two organisations will discuss with Figueres the key innovations needed to push forward tangible solutions to climate change.
“Bringing together the nations of the world to agree a global climate change treaty is one of the most demanding and defining roles ever undertaken,” said 350.org CEO, Blair Palese…
1 Million Women CEO Natalie Isaacs, said that Australians leaders can learn valuable lessons from a forward-thinkingclimate change expert like Figueres and that Australia can use these lessons to take its rightful place as a world leader on this issue…
http://www.womensagenda.com.au/talking-about/top-stories/meet-the-woman-leading-the-charge-on-solving-climate-change/201505055703
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the old MSM trick. alarmed environmental GROUPS consists of WWF’s Kellie.
plus ABC tries to play up brown coal usage & play down the fact coal generates 75% of our electricity:
5 May: ABC AM: End of carbon tax drives brown coal use increase
MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: New data shows brown coal use in electricity production has surged to its highest level in three years…
High emission brown coal now constitutes up to a quarter of the coal used to generate electricity in Australia’s largest energy market – the most since 2012…
MICHAEL EDWARDS ABC: Brown coal produces 50 per cent more emissions than black coal, but it’s also one of cheapest ways to produce electricity. And since the middle of last year, around the same time as the end of the carbon tax, its use has been on the rise.
HUGH SADDLER: Brown coal generation has just continued to climb steadily, as it has been doing since June of last year.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: Coal generates 75 per cent of that electricity and the figures from April indicate that brown coal now constitutes 24 per cent of that amount…
MICHAEL EDWARDS: Environmental ***groups are alarmed but not surprised.
Kellie Caught is the manager for Climate Change for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)…
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2015/s4229505.htm
BZE has a scary new warning:
5 May: SMH: Peter Martin: Australia faces risk of systemic economic crisis without carbon action, study finds
Prepared by National Institute of Economic and Industry Research with Beyond Zero Emissions the study suggests that as the world becomes more carbon constrained, punitive measures could be imposed on nations not pulling their weight…
It says a systemic crisis is one triggered by an exchange rate crisis that cuts GDP by 10 to 25 per cent from peak to trough. It can take three to eight years for GDP to be return to its previous level. There have been 60 such crises since 1970…
http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/australia-faces-risk-of-systemic-economic-crisis-without-carbon-action-study-finds-20150505-ggtvsv.html
NIEIR website: The National Institute of Economic and Industry Research grew out of the Econometric Forecasting Project established at the Melbourne University Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research in 1974.
Wikipedia: Beyond Zero Emissions released the Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan in July 2010, a research collaboration between Beyond Zero Emissions and the University of Melbourne Energy Research Institute…
The group gives presentations, runs a discussion group and has two weekly radio shows on 3CR interviewing celebrity guests on climate science and global warming solutions. Interviewees have included: James Hansen, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Wieslaw Maslowski, Ken Caldeira, David Karoly, David Mills, Richard Heinberg, Arnold Goldman, S. David Freeman, Bill McKibben and Tim Flannery.
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***Hansen says fossil fuel prices have to be priced high enough to make them “honest”.
try some honesty yourself Mr. Hansen:
5 May: SMH: Peter Hannam: Paris 2015: Two degrees warming a ‘prescription for disaster’ says top climate scientist James Hansen
The aim to limit global warming to two degrees of pre-industrial levels is “crazy” and “a prescription for disaster”, according to a long-time NASA climate scientist.
The paleo-climate record shows sea-levels were six to eight metres higher than current levels when global temperatures were less than two degrees warmer than they are now, Professor James Hansen, formerly head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and now at Columbia University in New York, said.
“It’s crazy to think that 2 degrees celsius is a safe limit,” Professor Hansen told RN Breakfast on ABC Radio on Tuesday, adding that this would lock in several metres of sea-level rise by the middle of the century…
“The consequences are almost unthinkable. It would mean that all coastal cities would become dysfunctional,” he told ABC Radio…
***Professor Hansen said fossil fuel prices had to be priced high enough to make them “honest”.
Nuclear energy will need to play a big role in creating “carbon-free electricity” because non-hydro renewable energy – which now accounts for just 3 per cent of total supplies – would not be able to be ramped up fast enough, he said…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/paris-2015-two-degrees-warming-a-prescription-for-disaster-says-top-climate-scientist-james-hansen-20150504-ggu33w.html
AUDIO: 5 May: ABC Breakfast: Two degrees of global warming is not ‘safe’: Hansen
Overnight, more than 40 national nuclear societies from around the world have signed a Nuclear for Climate declaration.
Meeting at the 2015 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants in Nice, France, the declaration commits the nuclear societies to limiting global warming to two degrees by 2050…
But top US climate scientist James Hansen says the goal is a ‘nonsense’, and the world is on the wrong track thinking that two degrees of warming is ‘safe’.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/two-degrees-of-global-warming-is-not-safe/6444698
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It was also Hansen that got everyone gazing foolishly at the Arctic ice as if it means anything.
Arguing from ignorance he asserted that the (magical) warming from the CO2 increased atmosphere would show up here first.
Complete fantasy from a known Greenie that has advocated political solution over scientific investigations.
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That man is an out and out crank, there is so much wrong in that statement.
Even the IPCC worst case scenario predicts only about 20cm by 2050.
BTW over 50% of The Netherlands is below sea level — up to 7 meters in part.
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The Guardian’s divestment campaign at 180,000 for a mere petition doesn’t seem to be doing that well, in spite of the amount of front-and-central advertising (including full-page pop-ups) dedicated to it. In 2012 Rusbridger said that the environment side of the Guardian was about 2.4 million users per month growing at 20% per year, so I’d think for all this effort and for the potential size of the audience, 180k would be a disappointment for something so free of personal commitment. Do you think the whole thing has been overCooked?
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Thanks for those provocative numbers sam. – Jo
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Via the guardian …
5 May, 2007:
UN scientists warn time is running out to tackle global warming
But there could be as little as eight years left to avoid a dangerous global average rise of 2C or more.
Time’s up!
. . .
Just how wrong does a 97% Global Warming prediction need be?
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handjive, Dé jå vu or is it perhaps Dé jå vu. Need to change the record, theres a scratch in this one.
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Just to keep things in perspective: The Guardian, a national broadsheet, is now selling less than 200,000 copies of itself per day in the UK (most them going straight to the BBC). It’s a fading title in a newspaper environment vastly reduced by the advent of the internet. That the Guardian sticks to its guns on CAGW comes as no surprise (no less a surprise than, say, it declaring itself in favour of a Labour Government in our General Election on May 7th). The Guardian is seen by many here in the UK as nothing less than the BBC’s in-house newsletter: it parrots the Corporation on almost everything, but especially on CAGW. Common Purpose folk stick together, naturally; they all went to the same meaningless university courses, they all share the same hypocritical views on everything from immigration, the EU to CAGW and the Church of the Holy Consensus.
Incidentally, I note with no surprise whatsoever, that there is no commenting allowed on the Guardian page carrying the propaganda piece Jo links us to in The Guardian. This must be what liberal marxists mean by ‘debate’.
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History of Antarctic Sea Ice by models.
‘The minimum over the pre-industrial period occurred during the years AD 1250 – 1500. The sea-surface temperature in the Southern Ocean lags the conditions in the Northern Hemisphere, where the simulated temperatures reach a maximum in the model during the 11 and 12th centuries.
‘Such a lag is due to the long memory of the ocean associated with the storage and transport of temperature anomalies at great depth. Between AD 1250 and 1500 the simulated Antarctic ice area was similar to that at the end of the 20th century.’
Goosse and Renssen 2004
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They’re at it again today with the latest in a line of scare pieces on the ‘melting’ Antarctic. The headline screams melting, the story alludes to ’15 meters’ of sea level rise, but only when the reader digs around for themselves will they find any such ‘melting’ would take hundreds of years, if it ever happened at all.
They’re absolutely pathetic exaggerations that are so far adrift from reality it’s akin to lying.
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google “extreme weather” and click “news” & u get well over a million results.
how best for a CAGW sceptic to write an accurate rebuttal? suggestions would be welcomed.
5 May: CBC: A lesson in flash floods, big tornadoes and preparing for extreme weather
Coulson: We’re due for more flash flooding, more lightning, and more snow
Those under 30 years old will have no idea that fatal tornadoes are not uncommon in Ontario. Geoff Coulson, Environment Canada’s Warning Preparedness Meteorologist, knows that the province is due for “the big one,” noting the F4 tornado is well overdue.
About 15 years overdue.
“On May 31, 1985, there were 13 tornadoes across southwest and south-central Ontario, two of those events were rated as F4 events,” said Coulson, who led a weather preparedness seminar for Hamilton emergency services, city workers and school board delegates. “We have not seen the like in terms of an event that intense since that time, and we feel that we are, intact, overdue for a tornado of that intensity in Ontario.”
We’re also due for more flash flooding, more lightning, and yes, more snow as a result of climate change. Those won’t come in May, which is as far as Coulson would give a forecast for…
Of the tips, many were common sense. Here are a few:…READ ON
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/a-lesson-in-flash-floods-big-tornadoes-and-preparing-for-extreme-weather-1.3060779
below is a an example of how CAGW advocates attempt to defend the “extreme weather” meme.
critiques would be appreciated.
30 April: FactCheck.org: The Extreme Weather-Warming Connection
FactCheck is a Project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center
Rep. Lamar Smith made several incorrect claims in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece regarding connections between climate change and severe weather.
Smith wrote that a connection between worsening storms and climate change has been “widely debunked,” and that the United Nations doesn’t believe that warming is related to “more severe weather disasters.” Both claims are incorrect. There is some evidence linking climate change to worsening hurricanes, droughts and other disasters.
He mentioned an oft-repeated claim that there has been a “lack of global warming over the past 15 years.” Though the rate of warming has slowed, the world does indeed continue to warm, and cherry-picked data underlie the claims that warming has stopped.
Smith quoted an InterAcademy Council report as saying the U.N.’s climate reports had “significant shortcomings in each major step” of the U.N.’s assessment process. That’s misleading. The report found that though there is certainly room for improvement, the U.N.’s process has been “successful overall.”
http://www.factcheck.org/2015/04/the-extreme-weather-warming-connection/
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btw the FactCheck/Extreme Weather piece i just posted is lengthy, so it would be necessary to read it all in order to critique it.
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Regarding the first myth about the Earth being warmer than it has ever been, the write
There is no hard evidence to prove that through observation, and it would be hard to prove that through reconstruction. In fact, it seems that most of the flips in climate during the Holocene have come on rather fast. It did not take thousands of years for the Little Ice Age to develop, nor thousands for the Medieval Warm Period to develop. Nor the other warm periods, such as the Roman Warm Period. Both of which were warmer than today.
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It looks more like The Guardian is the myth needing to be exploded. 😉
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