Catastrophe Denied

With a hat tip to Anthony Watts at Watts Up With That? here is a short video critique of catastrophic man-made global warming theory, based on presentation slides used in a series of public presentations and debates in late 2009 and early 2010.  The author is Warren Meyer, author of the web site climate-skeptic.com.

As Watts makes clear:

While the world has almost certainly warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age in the early 19th century, and while it is fairly clear that CO2 and other greenhouse gasses may be responsible for some of this warming, climate alarmists are grossly overestimating the sensitivity of climate to CO2, and thus overestimating future man-made warming.

While the theory of greenhouse gas warming is fairly well understood, most of the warming, and all of the catastrophe, in future forecasts actually comes from a second theory that the Earth’s climate system is dominated by strong positive feedbacks. This second theory is not at all settled and is at the heart of why climate models are greatly over-estimating future warming.

While it dates back over a year we have not linked to this before.  It’s well worth a watch, especially as it will make sense to laymen.

Two wrongs still don’t make it right

In the aftermath of the Oslo and Utoya mass murders the vicious and juvenile leftist attempt to smear anyone who is right of centre, by highlighting any political position that appears to have been shared by Anders Breivik, continues apace.

It was only a matter of time before some activist would dig through Breivik’s ‘manifesto’ to see if he held any views on climate change.  They have, and he did. Consequently, because Breivik is a ‘climate change denier’ believes that global warming is an eco-Marxist plot ‘to create a world government’ using the ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming scam’, anyone who shares that view is, by definition, in league with the evil, homocidal maniac.  In fact, the piece cross posted onto Grist.org apportions responsibility for Breivik’s views on the subject on ‘climate denial pundits’:

Inspired by climate denial pundits, right-wing Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik railed against global warming “enviro-communism” in his manifesto.

You can almost feel the author itching to make a connection between ‘deniers’ and the murderous attack itself.  The man who wrote this warped article is one Brad Johnson, editor of an electronic, Joe Romm cheerleading rag called ‘ThinkProgress Green‘. His hatred of anyone who dares question the hypothesis to which he subscribes is evident by the inflammatory rhetoric he employs throughout his labour of ego. Clearly the irony of this is lost on him, probably due to his mypoic, tribal, quasi-religous observance to left wing orthodoxy.  He kindly spells out his vested interests in leftist campaign groups to show where he is coming from:

Johnson is one of those big government loving, politicised, rent seeking ‘scientists’ who is so threatened by anyone highlighting flaws in the hypothesis he is wedded to he tries to invalidate them by labelling them climate change ‘deniers’.  He is completely wrong.

The issue is not whether the climate is changing, but what the cause is and to what extent mankind has any influence over it.  So vicious is Johnson’s assault it has prompted a remarkable comment from a somewhat unexpected quarter:

Ouch. While trying to draw parallels between a mass murderer and those who dispute the narrative on climate change, in a crass attempt to shame them into silence on the subject lest they be labelled Breivik sympathisers or allies, the distasteful Johnson has managed to fall foul of one of the people he would reasonably be expected to idolise.

However, in his comment, Richard Betts states that the ‘actual scientific evidence [for man made climate change] is pretty good’.  The problem with this assertion by Betts is that, like Johnson, he is completely wrong.

The ‘evidence’ for man made climate change that exists today is utterly flawed, fact.   There is still no proof whatsoever of causation, fact. The climate models upon which the whole climate change industry is based have singularly failed to predict the hiatus in warming over the last 15 years and as the Climategate emails made clear, the politicised scientists irresponsibly and cynically pushing the hypothesis as fact can’t account for the lack of warming, fact.  Therefore the claim that mankind is to blame for the observed warming over the decades remains nothing more than a theory. Fact.

Johnson’s piece is the latest in what will be a long line of similar hatchet jobs that seek to make right thinking people feel guilty for their views and opinions.  Over at EU Referendum, Richard ruminates on this with an excellent piece that puts matters into context and shows up the shallow nature of those seeking to exploit the situation for political gain.

Now is not the time to be cowed into silence. The only person responsible for the actions of Anders Breivik is Anders Breivik.  Just because he shared some of the views of a large number of other people on a number of issues does not make the views wrong.  What was wrong was his reaction to them.  Opponents of big government, the EU, climate change orthodoxy, et all have nothing to be ashamed of.  Keep presenting evidence that exposes failings in the narrative that misleads the public.

There is more tosh in the same mould here.

Can’t they just try to get the weather forecast right?

And so the propaganda continues:

The Met Office has teamed up with Rapanui, an eco-fashion company.

The Met Office eco clothing collection is made from organic cotton in an ethical, wind powered factory and features a range of weather related designs inspired by the imagery, science and history of the Met Office.

Mart Drake-Knight co-founder of Rapanui said:
“The Met Office is the international authority on climate change research, as well as being our national weather service that provides weather forecasts that we can trust and rely on.”

Perhaps Mr Drake-Knight should be more mindful of the Trade Descriptions Act when spouting assertions like that in PR puff pieces for the Met Office.  There was once a time when a meteorological office would focus on, you know, just getting the weather forecast right.  But just doing the weather is not so important when thar’s gold to be had in that there climate change activism…

Joe Bastardi examines NASA’s temperature record

It’s good to see Joe Bastardi continuing to share his thoughts via his Weatherbell.com blog.  Today Big Joe presents a very simple case as to why anyone with an open mind would not swallow the idea that man is causing out of control doomsday warming.

When comparing NASA’s temperature graph with that of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) there is a noticeable difference in the warming curve over the last 40 years.  What Bastardi sees is a levelling off in temperature rise over the last 15 years, during which time he reminds us that atmospheric CO2 has increased by around 8%.

But then he begs a question to which the warmists still have no rational answer:

If there is feedback, where is it, and cant the warming be attributed to the oceans, the flattening to the fact there is only so much you can warm the earth before it fights back.  Which goes right to the heart of my perfectly logical, though most certainly debatable theory, that with the oceans cooling, we will cool back to where we were in the 70s by the time we get to 2030.

Yes, as Joe says it is only a theory.  But then, so is everything we are told about anthropogenic global warming (AGW).  There is simply no evidence to support the hypothesis.  Guesswork, reason and correlation are evident, but there is insufficient evidence to state with absolute factual certainty that mankind and not nature has caused the planet to warm.

There is certainly not sufficient evidence to justify the hyperbole and doom laden prophecies, let alone the billions of pounds of our tax revenues being wasted on scandalous faux projects and gimmicks to ‘fight climate change’.

Another fishy climate change story lovingly told by BBC/Guardian

We hear lots of politicians speak of ‘opportunism’ by their opponents, but opportunism is not limited to the political class. Environmentalists also never fail to take full advantage of any opportunity to further an agenda – particularly when the agenda concerns climate change.

Listening to BBC Five Live Drive this evening I was left laughing out loud as my climate change bullshit meter was sent off the scale by the story of a rare fish – the vendace – being transported in containers carried by llama to a new location in an attempt to stop them dying out. As I listened I was thinking ‘Is this going to turn out to be tonight’s dose of climate change propaganda?’ and moments later it proved to be so as the story reflected a piece on the BBC Cumbria website which explained:

But the Environment Agency said the species needed to be protected from the warming effects of climate change and its impact on rivers and lakes.

You really could not make this crap up, but clearly the Environment Agency can.  There must be another bid for government funding in preparation.  Now, some of you might be thinking that ridiculing this nonsense is a tad unfair.  But you see the BBC has shot itself in the foot and cut the legs from under the Environment Agency by linking to an almost identical story from just five years ago.  However that previous story gave very different reasons for the move of the vendace fry:

The move was prompted by fears that poor water quality and pollution could wipe them out.

Of climate change there was not even a hint of a mention.  But of course it’s a very different story today. For a start, we have an opportunist political non entity in the form of Lord Chris Smith sitting as Chairman of the Environment Agency and he knows how to set and pursue an agenda.

When the latest chapter of this vendace story first emerged a couple of months ago in the Guardian a reference was made to the vendace in Bassenthwaite dying out back in 1991 due to ‘agricultural pollution, increased sediment and the illegal introduction of new fish species’.  The story went on to say that:

Hopes that the small herring-like fish could be reintroduced once Bassenthwaite had been restored to health have now been abandoned because of predictions of rises in future water temperatures.

Presumably the pollution has gone, the sediment has disappeared and the new fish species that had been introduced have all been caught and deported.  But interestingly there is no mention if that is the case so we don’t know.  Instead the opportunity to force feed readers and listeners with another tale of environmental meltdown due to climate change (which they still insist is caused by humans despite an absence of proof) is seized with both hands and played for all it’s worth.

Anything and everything has some kind of climate change connotation attached to it in order to condition us into accepting the hype and swallowing every self serving and costly measure that will be foisted upon us by those with financial and ideological interests in providing us with ‘solutions’ that combat this faux threat.  This is just the latest piece of spin in that long litany of propaganda.

The war on CO2, updated 2050 Pathways Analysis launched

The propaganda onslaught continues apace today with the launch of ‘The 2050 Pathways Debate: having an energy-literate conversation about the UK’s options to 2050’ by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

Chris ‘Luhnatic’ Huhne published a written statement in the Commons yesterday announcing the launch of this online event:

‘The 2050 Pathways Debate: having an energy-literate conversation about the UK’s options to 2050.’ Leading climate and energy experts will use the 2050 pathways calculator to present their personal view of how the UK can reduce its emissions by at least 80% by 2050, ahead of the online debate being opened to the wider public.

The obvious problem here is the starting point.  It has been decided that human caused CO2 emissions – a mere 5% of total CO2 emissions globally – is changing our climate.  There is no evidence, there is no proof, just a theory.  But rather than focus on further scientific investigation in the face of a rapidly growing counter consensus that questions the premise of CO2 induced climate change, huge sums of our money are pumped into tackling what looks more and more like a non existant problem using propaganda such as the My2050 site. As always, the target of choice are the young and impressionable:

This user-friendly version of the analysis is aimed at a youth audience and we plan to engage schools and colleges in using it to raise awareness of the issues.

The more you repeat the mantra, the more likely they will accept what they are told as fact without question. Without evidence or proof this propaganda constitutes a fraud being perpetrated against the public. It is a form of brainwashing building upon the appeal to authority of scientists whose flawed and corrupted methods have been exposed but remain unmolested by government, and the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) whose reputation lies in tatters after a string of errors and known distortions.

What we are seeing is a shameless effort to take advantage of many youngsters only getting their knowledge from school.  By not encouraging them to think, challenge and question and instead providing them with a false starting point on this subject, our politicians are betraying at least a generation and corrupting their education.  This should be an international scandal, but who is making a stand?

The Independent censored comment from climate scientist

A letter to the online editor of The Independent exposes a selective censorship of comments that are deemed to be embarrassing for that paper’s staff – in this case the science editor, Steve Connor.

Following publication of the email exchange between Connor and the eminent scientist Professor Freeman Dyson, covered by this blog, a climate scientist, Terri Jackson, submitted a comment that countered several of the assertions made by Connor.  The strength of feeling is clear from the introduction in the letter:

Dear Mr King

As a climate scientist I am writing personally to you as the online editor to strongly object to the blocking of my comments regarding the conversation by your science editor Mr Connor with Professor Dyson. My comments sent last night were phrased in very reasonable and temperature language and highlighted the serious and very misleading mistakes given by Mr Connor.

You can read Terri Jackson’s letter in full on Climate Realists, in which Jackson refutes a number of Connor’s central arguments used in an attempt to coax Dyson into attacking the theory of AGW.  Like Dyson, Jackson has little time for the bias in the Independent’s reporting of climate science matters, and says:

Is the Independent on a political crusade? It is high time that you started to report the facts, that human based carbon dioxide in the atmosphere poses no climate threat and that the majority of graduate scientists do not accept this unproven theory regardless of what certain scientific institutions may say.

It’s pretty uncompromising stuff.  The Independent’s decision to block the original criticism of Connor from wider view by the public demonstrates it’s lack of objectivity and impartiality.  Like all other media, it puts its own agenda above serving the interests of the public. The Independent – you might be, but it isn’t.

Prof Freeman Dyson rousts Indy churnalist

Let’s see the Met Office fall over themselves to link to this piece by Steve Connor in the Independent. Or do they only do that when he writes puff pieces for them when they’re under pressure?  They should be pleased because Connor is firmly on message and gives them another mention in this article.

Titled ‘Letters to a heretic: An email conversation with climate change sceptic Professor Freeman Dyson‘, Connor’s piece could just as easily be a piece by Prof Dyson called ‘Responses to a scientific illiterate: An object lesson in biased media and ignorance‘.  For despite being a science editor Connor seems remarkably one dimensional and out of his depth.

The best Connor can summon up is the appeal to authority, and he does so right off the bat in his by-line as he refers to Dyson as one of the few true intellectuals to be so dismissive of the global-warming consensus. From the outset Dyson set out his very high level rationale for AGW scepticism when explained (paragraph bulleted for ease of reading):

• First, the computer models are very good at solving the equations of fluid dynamics but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very poorly.
• Second, we do not know whether the recent changes in climate are on balance doing more harm than good. The strongest warming is in cold places like Greenland. More people die from cold in winter than die from heat in summer.
• Third, there are many other causes of climate change besides human activities, as we know from studying the past.
• Fourth, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is strongly coupled with other carbon reservoirs in the biosphere, vegetation and top-soil, which are as large or larger. It is misleading to consider only the atmosphere and ocean, as the climate models do, and ignore the other reservoirs.
• Fifth, the biological effects of CO2 in the atmosphere are beneficial, both to food crops and to natural vegetation. The biological effects are better known and probably more important than the climatic effects.
• Sixth, summing up the other five reasons, the climate of the earth is an immensely complicated system and nobody is close to understanding it.

But despite this explanation, Connor persists with what Dyson labels as the ‘party line’ focusing on what he sees as narrow technical issues, the premise of which he doesn’t accept.  So Connor, lost for an angle of attack to discredit Dyson, returns to his appeal to authority when he churns out:

So I guess my question would be, what if you are wrong? What if all the other scientists connected with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UK Met Office, NASA, NOAA, the World Meteorological Organisation, and just about every reputable university and institute doing research on climate science, happen to be right? Isn’t it a bit risky for me and the rest of the general public to dismiss this vast canon of climate science as just “fuss” about global warming when all I’ve got to go on is a minority opinion?

This was written despite earlier references in the email exchange to Alfred Wegener (theory of continental drift) with Dyson having already pointed out that there was even a consensus against Wegener among a small group of experts.  Connor clearly cannot square with the notion of a small number of outstanding scientists disagreeing with the pack. When will Connor ever ask himself and readers, what if the consensus he is so desperate to endorse happen to be wrong?  History is littered with examples of consensus opinion and ‘evidence’ being undermined by actualite.

In Dyson’s response to Connor, he reasonably writes the following:

Of course I am not expecting you to agree with me. The most I expect is that you might listen to what I am saying. I am saying that all predictions concerning climate are highly uncertain. On the other hand, the remedies proposed by the experts are enormously costly and damaging, especially to China and other developing countries. On a smaller scale, we have seen great harm done to poor people around the world by the conversion of maize from a food crop to an energy crop. This harm resulted directly from the political alliance between American farmers and global-warming politicians. Unfortunately the global warming hysteria, as I see it, is driven by politics more than by science. If it happens that I am wrong and the climate experts are right, it is still true that the remedies are far worse than the disease that they claim to cure.

Then follows the equivalent of the punch that Ali never gave Foreman…

I wish that The Independent would live up to its name and present a less one-sided view of the issues.

Connor indulges himself with another lengthy dose of pseudo-intellectual nonsense attacking what he believes to have been the varying arguments of the sceptics, before a clearly bored and unimpressed Dyson extracts himself from the exchange with this telling and penetrating summation that should give those who accept at face value all they read in the media pause for thought:

Your last message just repeats the same old party line that we have many good reasons to distrust. You complain that people who are sceptical about the party line do not agree about other things. Why should we agree? The whole point of science is to encourage disagreement and keep an open mind. That is why I blame The Independent for seriously misleading your readers. You give them the party line and discourage them from disagreeing.

With all due respect, I say good-bye and express the hope that you will one day join the sceptics. Scepticism is as important for a good journalist as it is for a good scientist.

Freeman Dyson has shown that Steve Connor is a case study in the modern media phenomenon that investigative journalist Nick Davies has apparently labelled ‘churnalism’ – which is when journalists are ‘reduced to passive processors of whatever material comes their way’ (referenced earlier by Ockham’s Razor).  In other words we don’t have journalists rather we have churnalists, mere cut and paste merchants who spew out press releases as news without any attempt at critical examination and questioning of the content.

It is another example of why we cannot trust the modern news media and how the public is ill served by these over rated churnos.

Overheating Britain revisited

It was nearly three years ago that the global warming hype was running riot in the Independent. The Environment Editor, Michael McCarthy published a piece in April 2007 that began:

The possibility is growing that Britain in 2007 may experience a summer of unheard-of high temperatures, with the thermometer even reaching 40C, or 104F,a level never recorded in history.

Adding to the hype, inevitably, was the Met Office and Climategate central – the University of East Anglia’s CRU.  McCarthy reminded readers at the time:

The Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, in a joint forecast with the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, has already suggested that 2007 will be the hottest year ever recorded globally.

A year after McCarthy’s breathless article and with poorer weather evident a now sleeping blog, The Daily Brute, wondered what had become of McCarthy’s speculation.  It seems rarely does a year go by when the Met Office and the propagandists at CRU are not declaring that we could experience the warmest year on record.  Indeed, they have already declared that 2010 (12th coldest year in the UK in the last 100 years) was a statistical tie with 2005 as the warmest year globally even though a substantial percentage of the globe does not have surface temperature stations.

The obvious thing to conclude here is that while Britain’s lower temperature must have played some part in dragging global temperatures down in 2010, freak conditions such as the intense heatwave in Russia must have had the effect of dragging them up. So it’s a misnomer to conclude that ‘global’ temperatures have risen.  The UK is part of the globe and the temperature here has fallen.  Indeed in many places temperatures were lower and in others warmer.  But the impression given by the climate hysterics is a uniform increase the world over, which is nonsense.

Despite this we can expect more McCarthyesque idiocy in the media fuelled by the money grubbers at CRU and the Met Office as their fixation with CO2 blinds them to the more powerful drivers such as oceanic behaviour and solar influence.

Climate idiocy and money grubbing continues

The EurActiv website leads with a story that ‘Flood studies bring climate change lawsuits a step closer’:

A leading climate professor says that new evidence which further reinforces the connection between global warming and extreme rainfalls is “extremely important” in setting out a methodology which could one day be used to sue fossil fuel companies for climate damage.

So we have this latest piece of alarmism about the floods in the UK in 2000, despite climate scientists who believe in AGW admitting after the floods in 2007 that there is no established link at all – and they said so in the British house journal of climate propaganda.

This is nothing more than a continuation of ‘computer model’ games.  If the model doesn’t give you the result you want, then you simply change the parameters and make adjustments until it does. Hey presto you then declare that the model ‘proves’ the finding you set out to achieve.  Then as your bandwagon trundles along people like Professor Carlo Jaeger of the Potsdam University for Climate Impact Research, whose funding depends on the existence of a problem to tackle, leaps aboard and provides media with scare story momentum. There’s nothing quite like vested interest, is there?

If as Nature magazine, home of the false claim that 40% of the Amazon was at risk of climate change in the Amazongate saga, contends:

There is no doubt that humans are altering the climate

perhaps they will be kind enough to provide the irrefutable evidence that no climate scientist possesses, that converts the man made global warming theory into a concrete certainty.  Maybe they should fairly reflect their propagandist behaviour by renaming themselves Climate Pravda.

Not education, propaganda

Since Mind Jr arrived home from school this afternoon I have been stewing with barely concealed anger.  For within minutes of getting in, a very earnest Junior sat down Mrs Mind and myself and solemnly announced that we would no longer eat red meat in our household.

The inevitable question ‘why?’ resulted in a detailed explanation concerning today’s Geography lesson.  It was there Junior was informed that red meat should not be eaten any more than once per week, we were told, because any frequency beyond that will kill us all with strokes or heart attacks – and in any case it contributes to global warming.

Conscious of the need to help develop Junior’s critical thinking capability, I asked her why she thought this message had been shared in the lesson.  She opined that the class had been taught this because it is good for us.  And right there was the heart of the matter.  No discussion about it in class, no contrary view presented, no balance to the message, just a binary condition of good v bad and that we must listen to what the ‘experts’ say.  So what we have is a curriculum item check box, duly ticked, relying on an appeal to authority with theory presented as fact and a class of 13-14-yr-olds duly brainwashed with the partial and biased opinions of the political class that formed the syllabus.

In Geography this week and in Science last week, the class had been fed the party line on global warming and health.  I probed further to see just how much they had been taught.

• Which greenhouse gas is present in the atmosphere in highest concentration?  Methane.  Wrong, I explained. Had she been told about water vapour?  There had been no mention of it.

• How much CO2 is there in the atmosphere?  That wasn’t covered either, so I explained it was 385 parts per million.  She was stunned.

• How much atmospheric CO2 is produced by humans and how much by nature?  Most of it from humans she said.  No, only around 5% with the rest coming from nature.  Now she was bewildered.  Her next comment summed everything up when she said, cutting out red meat won’t make much difference then.

As for the dietry aspects, had there been any discussion of the effects of sugary carbohydrates, the benefits of the complex carbs and the relatively benign influence of proteins such as meat?  Clearly that was too much to hope for, nothing of the sort had been covered.

It is simply unacceptable that our children are being plied with propaganda in this way.  This is not an education, it is an indoctrination constructed by special interest groups.  Rarely have the lyrics of Pink Floyd been more appropriate, leave them kids alone.

Is art the climate change equaliser?

A story headline in the New York Times last Friday saw Jeremy Lovell report that ‘Climate Change Skeptics Out-Dramatize Believers in London’. The article opens thus:

LONDON — Two plays about climate change hit the London stage this month, one airing the views of the convinced and the other, those of the skeptical. Both treat their subject in completely different dramatic ways, but one succeeds, while the other fails dismally.

There then follows a short summary of the warmist hectoring production ‘Greenland’ showing at the National Theatre, and the AGW sceptic drama ‘The Heretic’ showing at the Royal Court Theatre in Chelsea.  It’s a surprising piece that suggests the sceptical message in ‘The Heretic’ bridges the gap between real life and art and succeeds where ‘Greenland’ fails.

In the absence of media balance on the subject of climate change it is interesting that performance art seems to be playing a role in levelling the playing field and getting the sceptic narrative past the warmist groupthink.

Is Met Office trying to hide inconvenient temperature records?

On the excellent Watts Up With That blog, reader Steve Rosser writes:

…the UK Met Office website, it’s undergoing a refresh at the moment and the CET link seems to have been mysteriously cut.  It used to be readily accessible via the UK Climate summaries page, see below, however this link now redirects you to a global temperature page instead.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/2010/

Thinking it may be a genuine mistake I e-mailed an enquiry and received a very polite response redirecting me to find it via the obscure link below.  It’s hard to argue that this location provides a sufficiently high profile for such an august dataset..

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/people/david-parker

It may be that the original link will reinstated over the next few days in which case this is a non story.  However, it looks suspicously like they are taking the focus away from the CET as after 2010 it’s showing an embarrasing disinclination to follow the AGW orthodoxy (+0.4 deg C since 1780).  To do so would be a betrayal of their lack of impartiality which I’d personally find very disappointing.  It would also send a message that rather than face-up and make the case for 2010 being a rogue year for UK temperatures they’d rather brush the whole thing under the carpet. I hope I’m wrong.

Purely by coincidence (if you believe in that sort of thing) as Anthony Watts points out, this ‘presentation of the data’ as the Met Office would put it follows the Central England Temperature Record getting a lot of attention of late. Watts relays what Joe D’Aleo at ICECAP pointed out recently (emphasis his):

The Central England Temperature record is one of the longest continuous temperature record in the world extending back to the Little Ice age in 1659. December 2010 was the coldest December in 120 years with an average of -0.7C just short of the record of -0.8C recorded in December 1890 and the Second Coldest December Temperature in the entire record (352 years).

Given such actions, some people might conclude that the Met Office is deliberately pushing records that fit with a pre-determined agenda, rather than long standing records that put recorded temperature into its much wider context.  Decide for youself. Meanwhile we will watch to see if the link is restored to its original, less obscure place.

Is the Met Office becoming irrelevant?

A strange question perhaps, considering the considerable political influence the Met Office has within political circles when it comes to energy and climate policy.  But certainly one worth asking following a comment by Northern Ireland’s Regional Development Minister last month.

On the topic of burst water pipes and the sevehttps://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpre supply problems affecting thousands of people in Northern Ireland over the Christmas period, the Belfast Telegraph reported on 19th January:

Forecasts of another seven years of the extreme winter that triggered the burst pipes crisis in Northern Ireland may force changes to how water is plumbed into homes, the regional development minister has warned.

Conor Murphy, facing questions from his Stormont scrutiny committee on the Christmas emergency, said some meteorologists believed the region had entered a weather cycle that would see successive deep freezes.

In the face of that, Mr Murphy said the Executive may have to look at changing building regulations to ensure that water pipes are buried deeper and insulated better.

What makes the comment interesting is this response to a Freedom of Information request submitted by Autonomous Mind (using an alias), enquiring which Meterologists provided this advice and requesting a copy of the advice that was provided to the Minister enabling him to make his assertion.

The response from the NI Department for Regional Development (click to enlarge) is telling:

This shows that for all his multitude of failings, Conor Murphy is listening to what meteorologists other than the Met Office are saying about changes to our weather that contradict the Met Office line of ever increasing warming. Not only that, they are using what they have listened to in official evidence to government committees.

A very small example maybe, but marginalising the Met Office in this way – intentionally or otherwise – represents a visible crack in the climate consensus that has consistently told us mankind is changing the climate, making the world warmer and the result will be warmer and wetter winters.  The structures are weakening.

HRH The Prince of Wales

The Prince of Wales has again delved into the realm of spin and distortion as he took another opportunity to criticise AGW sceptics.  This time it was in a speech at one of his favourite institutions, the European Parliament (Hat tip: EU Referendum).

After offering some very reasonable observations about the destruction of rainforests, Charles enjoined environmentalists to stop honestly describing the things they want people to stop doing and pointing out that living environmentally-friendly lives means giving up all that makes life worthwhile.

Instead His Royal Highness wants the environmentalists to sell their view of an eco utopia by engaging in spin in the manner of his new initiative called Start, which aims to promote the benefits of supposedly sustainable living.  He is quite open about using PR and marketing techniques to hide the unpalatable truth and focusing on an illusory and contrived vision, as he made clear saying:

“As one advertising executive put it to me, we are ‘making it cool to use less stuff’.

Achieving the environmentalists’ outcome still requires people to give up things that make life enjoyable and worthwhile.  But of course, it is much easier for fabulously wealthy people like Charles, who will still enjoy the trappings of a fantastically privileged and taxpayer funded life of patronage and comfort.  A man whose call for such a vision would have a dramatic negative impact on ordinary people for whom day to day living involves accounting for every last penny and making daily choices such as paying a bill or having something more nutritious than value beans and chips for dinner.  But what else can we expect from a man whose only ambition in life, apart from becoming King, was to be Camilla’s tampon and whose world includes taking a white leather toilet seat with him wherever he travels.

Then it was on to delivering this swipe at AGW sceptics in typically idiotic and cack handed fashion:

I have to say, this process has not exactly been helped by the corrosive effect on public opinion of those climate change sceptics who deny the vast body of scientific evidence that shows beyond any reasonable doubt that global warming has been exacerbated by human industrialised activity. […]

[…] I would ask how these people are going to face their grandchildren and admit to them that they failed their future.

I wonder, will such people be held accountable at the end of the day for the absolute refusal to countenance a precautionary approach? For this plays a most reckless game of roulette with the future inheritance of those who come after us.

Question. If as Charles claims the evidence shows ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’ that mankind is stoking global warming, why on earth is he criticising people for refusing to countenance a ‘precautionary approach’? With all due respect, how can we take seriously someone who makes such contradictory comments within moments of each other?

Actually, stuff the respect.  Respect is something that should be earned and the only thing Charles is earning is my enduring contempt.  Small wonder so many people want the Monarchy to skip a generation because the prospect of this doddery old fool being King is just so disturbing.  No qualification other than an accident of birth has provided him with a platform and all he does is spout ideological nonsense from a strange world that is divorced from the real one.

Warming wolverines

According to National Geographic, a new study shows that climate change might endanger wolverines in the mainland U.S. by eliminating springtime snow and significantly increasing summer temperatures.

Was it not only weeks ago that climate scientists were telling us that global warming will actually lead to more snow, (after spending years telling us the opposite)?  But perhaps the flaw in the argument stems from the source of the study’s findings:

Using advanced climate simulations running on an NCAR supercomputer, Peacock analyzed three possible future scenarios for the U.S. Northwest based on low, medium-low, and high greenhouse gas emissions.

The model showed that present-day wolverine habitat would have no snow cover during many springs after 2050 in both the high scenario, in which greenhouse gas levels continue to rise unabated, and the medium-low scenario, in which emissions rise slightly until 2040 and decline sharply toward the end of the century.

Gotta love those computer models.

Quote of the Day

Taken from the comment thread on Watts Up With That…

Can anyone name anything that climate science in its current CO2 obsessed existance has done that has actually made things better (besides their budgets)?

BBC climate change propaganda onslaught continues

Tonight on BBC4 viewers will be treated the the latest piece of naked BBC propaganda masquerading as an open minded examination of climate change sceptics, called – imaginatively – Meet The Climate Sceptics.  The pro Greenpeace environmentalist and film maker Rupert Murray claims:

This is a story about the world of climate scepticism and my journey as I put aside my environmental beliefs, rid myself of any bias, and try to really understand why some people think that our carbon dioxide emissions are not a problem.

Right off the bat the default position Murray holds is that CO2 is a problem and causing changes to our climate.  As such he is clearly not putting aside his environmental beliefs and demonstrates he retains a bias.  His introduction is fallacious doublespeak and his intent is to lampoon people with highly selective and distorted representations.

Being the BBC they were incapable of commissioning someone with an open mind.  They had to use a film maker who exists within their circle, so naturally it had to be an environmentalist.  To describe this as a stitch up is an understatement.  The narrative is always one-way on the BBC and there is never an opportunity for a prominent member of the counter consensus to make a programme in this manner for broadcast.  It is blatant bias and it is outrageous that we taxpayers should be compelled to subsidise this campaign to brainwash, misinform and mislead people.

For more on this venal little programme there is commentary on EU Referendum, Dellers’ news blog, Biased BBC, Bishop Hill and Climate Resistance.

 

Rats in a sack

In an analysis of the Met Office and BBC’s role in the winter forecast fiasco, John O’Sullivan offers an interesting take on possible events behind the scenes:

A report by a top BBC environment journalist, Roger Harrabin, implied that the UK’s Coalition government might have blocked the so-called ‘secret cold winter’ forecast.  But is there more to this story than meets the eye and have dark forces in high places conspired to frame the veteran journalist?

The risk here is that heading off at a tangent into possible conspiracies and character assassination most foul diverts necessary focus from the taxpayer funded Met Office’s failure to issue a public forecast for the coldest early winter for more than 100 years.

For the millions of our tax pounds that are lavished on the Met Office we are entitled to something much better.  The fact is the Met Office claimed it warned of the extreme weather but the evidence now obtained shows it did not. Further it shows the quality and detail of the forecast is little better than what could be produced by examining chicken entrails.

BBC’s Richard Black resorts to deception and spin

The BBC’s official response to the report from the Science and Technology Select Committee, by Richard Black, provides us with confirmation of everything Peter Sissons writes in his book about the BBC propaganda on climate change.

Knowing, as all journalists do, that many people read the first few paragraphs of an article and often turn their attention to something else, Black gets the message he wants people to understand in nice and early.  If people take nothing else from the article they will get what Black wants them to see:

Inquiries into issues raised by 2009’s climate e-mail hack did have flaws, a committee of MPs concludes.

But despite questions over remits and omissions, they say it is time to make the changes needed and move on.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee does not find anything to challenge the prevailing view of human-induced global warming.

But it says data should be more open, and rules on how Freedom of Information (FoI) applies to science need reform.

Richard Black is a disgrace to journalism as the second and third paragraphs demonstrate. He is a cheap propagandist who is determined to push the man made global warming line in spite of any counter evidence.  The standing committee did not have a brief to look for anything that challenged ‘the prevailing view of human-induced global warming’.  Black deliberately put this in to make it appear as if they did and that the prevailing view has been validated.  The committee’s remit was to focus on how the Independent Climate Change E-mails Review (ICCER) and Scientific Appraisal Panel (SAP) did their job and addressed the issues raised.  Black knows this very well because he read the summary as used the final paragraph as central thrust of his story.

It is impossible to trust the BBC’s coverage.  Black is not impartial and he has long since abandoned journalistic ethics.  Instead one has to read more widely to understand the issues, such as this commentary by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Biased BBC is equally unimpressed by Black’s deliberate distortion.  Unsurprisingly, Bishop Hill’s brief early morning round up of coverage on the report shows that Black has taken exactly the same line as avowed AGW lobbyist, Nature.

That’s right Richard Black. Play it down, sweep it under the carpet, then carry on as if nothing happened. Erase if from the record, Consign it to the bin of history, Use it as your rationale for disregarding the serious question marks over CRU ever again. Reset the clock to year zero in order to continue your cheap propaganda effort, brainwashing of an unquestioning public and indulge your personal beliefs rather than the facts.