Extreme weather the witchcraft of the 21st century

13 January, 2010 by

Another climate sceptic gets what's coming…

Frank Furedi, writing in The Australian, correctly compares the hysteria of climate alarmists today to the paranoia of witch-hunters of the Medieval:

The term extreme weather speaks for itself and has become the new normal. “Extreme weather on the rise,” warns the website of the Australian Weather Channel. It communicates a sense of helplessness: “But our emergency response teams are under stress” so “who is going to help you”? This is a rhetorical question.

Extreme weather is not so much a scientific as a cultural metaphor that expresses the anxieties of our time. The conceptual linkage of weather with extreme symbolises a growing tendency to endow natural phenomena with moral meaning.

We can no longer accept that sometimes harsh climatic conditions just happen. As in ancient times when superstition reigned, we interpret bad weather as a symptom of divine displeasure.

Today unexpected weather conditions are blamed on the impact of human beings on the environment. In medieval times unusual climatic episodes were seen as the handiwork of wicked demonic forces. Witchcraft was used to account for virtually every misfortune and unpleasant act. It was the climatic change brought by the so-called Little Ice Age in the 16th century that led to a resurgence of witch-hunting in Europe. From 1380 onwards, accusations of magic and weather-making increased dramatically in inquisitorial trials.

The resurgence of witch-hunting in the late 16th century was influenced by the belief that witches possessed demonic powers that could manipulate the climate in order to undermine the welfare and health of the communities in which they lived.

Throughout history people have sought to blame unusual climatic conditions on demonic forces. What the association of witchcraft with weather-making accomplished was to mobilise people’s fears against the evil forces of heretics and non-believers. Scaremongering about witchcraft promoted the idea that its demonic powers could literally dominate nature. Father Friedrich Spee, a Jesuit critic of witch-hunting, noted sarcastically that “God and nature no longer do anything; witches, everything”. But such beliefs were no joke. A late winter in the province of Treves in the 15th century led to more than 100 people being burned at the stake.

Since burning witches leaves a big carbon footprint, we are likely to find more environmentally friendly ways of punishing those who transgress society’s confusing moral boundaries.

Read it here.

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BBC to be investigated over climate science bias

7 January, 2010 by

BBC: impartial climate reporting

And not a moment too soon. The Daily Mail reports that the BBC Trust, the broadcaster’s governing body, has launched a major review of its science coverage after complaints about bias, especially on climate matters:

The BBC Trust today announced it would carry out the probe into the ‘accuracy and impartiality’ of its output in this increasingly controversial area.

The review comes after repeated criticism of the broadcaster’s handling of green issues. It has been accused of acting like a cheerleader for the theory that climate change is a man-made phenomenon.

Critics have claimed that it has not fairly represented the views of sceptics of the widely-held belief that humans are responsible for environmental changes such as global warming.

…

Last year a leading climate change sceptic claimed his views had been deliberately misrepresented by the BBC.

Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, said he had been made to look like a ‘potty peer’ on a TV programme that ‘was a one-sided polemic for the new religion of global warming’.

In 2007 the then editor of Newsnight hit out at the BBC’s stance on climate change.

Peter Barron said it was ‘not the corporation’s job to save the planet’. His comments were backed up by other senior news executives who feared the BBC was ‘leading’ the audience, rather than giving them ‘information’.

Mr Barron had claimed the BBC had gone beyond its remit by planning an entire day of programmes dedicated to highlighting environmental fears.

His comments had come after the broadcaster had already been accused of not being objective on green issues and of handing over the airwaves to campaigners. In 2007 it had devoted a whole day of programming to the Live Earth concerts.

I wouldn’t hold your breath (except to reduce your carbon footprint, of course).

Read it here. (h/t Climate Realists)

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UK: Times adverts on "climate change" inaccurate

7 January, 2010 by

Wrong.

Last year, The Times ran a series of advertisements showing a ship passing through icy waters and claiming:

“Climate change has allowed the Northeast Passage to be used as a commercial shipping route for the first time.”

Unfortunately, it isn’t true, as The Register points out:

In fact, the North East Passage opened in 1934, and was opened to overseas traffic after the fall of the Soviet Union. Modern technology, specifically radar, has permitted a safer passage in recent years.

The UK Advertising Standards Authority received 29 complaints, and slapped down The Times, which agreed to change the wording:

“Climate change has allowed the Northeast passage to be more accessible as a viable commercial shipping route.”

Just another in a long line of examples of climate change spin, and a rare occasion on which it has been actually called out.

Read it here.

PS. This was an informal ruling, so unfortunately there is no adjudication on the ASA web site (although you can find the details here, under the Informal Resolved Cases tab)

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UK: Record snow "doesn't undermine global warming science"

6 January, 2010 by

Brass monkeys

Just this morning I wondered how long it would be before some rent-a-quote scientist would come out and say that the record snow in the UK (plus record cold elsewhere in the Northern hemisphere) could not be used to question the religion of “global warming”. Well, it’s taken just a few hours:

Stephen Dorling, of the University of East Anglia’s school of environmental sciences, said it was not surprising the cold period raised questions over climate change – but the snowy weather should not be used as evidence against it.

He said: ”It’s no surprise that people look out of their window at the snow and find it hard to rationalise what’s going on with the longer term trend.”

But he said it was wrong to focus on single events – whether they were cold snaps or heat waves – which were the product of natural variability.

Instead they should look at the underlying, longer term trends for the climate which were more ”robust” evidence of the changes which are happening.

Dr Dorling said: ”There is no doubt we will continue to have unusually warm and unusually cold Decembers and Januarys but it will be superimposed on what the background climate is doing.” (source)

It cuts both ways: if record cold and snow don’t negate global warming theory (which they obviously don’t), then heatwaves and droughts don’t support it either. So I wait with bated breath for The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age to run the following headlines in the next hot spell: “Don’t jump to conclusions: heatwave does not prove global warming theory”, or “Drought ‘entirely consistent’ with global cooling, says scientist.” I think I’ll be waiting a very, very long time…

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BoM: 2009 "second hottest year on record"

5 January, 2010 by

Good news for doom mongers

The warmenistas will love this – oh, well, can’t begrudge them a bit of fun – it’s been a shocking year for the poor blighters. The Bureau has come out and labelled 2009 the second hottest year on record:

“2009 ends Australia’s warmest decade on record, with a decadal mean temperature anomaly of +0.48C (above the 1961-90 average),” the Bureau of Meterology said.

“In Australia, each decade since the 1940s has been warmer than the preceding decade. In contrast, decadal temperature variations during the first few decades of Australia’s climate record do not display any specific trend. This suggests an apparent shift in Australia’s climate from one characterised by natural variability to one increasingly characterised also by a trend to warmer temperatures.”

In a statement, the bureau also noted that the World Meteorological Organisation stated that 2009 is expected to be the globe’s fifth warmest year on record (about 0.44C above the 1961-90 average).

And the moronic Peter “Where’s Penny” Garrett leaps on it as evidence of “global warming”:

Environment Minister Peter Garrett said today the finding that Australia’s annual mean temperature for 2009 was 0.9C above the 1961-90 average exposed Tony Abbott’s false climate change claim that global warming has stopped.

“This false and misleading claim is today shown to be completely at odds with the rigorous scientific findings of the independent experts at the Bureau of Meteorology,” Mr Garrett said.

“This is the latest Abbott climate-change clanger to be exposed by the independent experts and once again shows why Mr Abbott cannot be trusted when it comes to climate change.”

Mr Garrett said the weather records underlined the need for a carbon pollution reduction scheme to reduce global warming. (source)

Where’s Penny again? Where’s Kevin? When those two aren’t around, it’s left to the pea-brained rock-star to deal with climate matters. So what does this actually say? It actually says that the surface temperature in Australia is the second highest since 1850 [Update: actually, since 1910, which makes it even less relevant]. Big freaking deal. The planet was at the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850, so guess what, it’s getting warmer.

What doesn’t it say?

  • It doesn’t prove any link with CO2 emissions, so Garrett’s link to the CPRS is total nonsense
  • It doesn’t say that the satellite record shows far less warming (almost none) since 2001 (see below)
  • It doesn’t say the planet has been warmer previously – it has, many times – nor that the rate of warming is anything unusual.

In fact, Dr Roy Spencer has just posted the December anomaly from UAH:

Dr Spencer comments thus:

While the large amount of year-to-year variability in global temperatures seen in the above plot makes it difficult to provide meaningful statements about long-term temperature trends in the context of global warming, the running 25-month average suggests there has been no net warming in the last 11 years or so. (source)

Which would you trust? Satellite data, or thermometer records that are fudged and “adjusted” and “homogenized” by the likes of CRU?

UPDATE at 3 pm: And of course, every two-bit rag, newsletter and gossip sheet in Australia is now running the story. Stuffed full of alarmists, the editorial offices have had a pretty tough time, what with the climate not co-operating, and Climategate. But now they can breathe a collective sigh of relief as a big, copper-bottomed scare story finally breaks (except it isn’t if you actually stopped for five seconds to think about it).

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Christopher Booker: Met Office gives us the warmist weather

3 January, 2010 by

Alarmism

Christopher Booker lifts the lid on the alarmism at the UK Met Office:

The reason the Met Office so persistently gets its seasonal forecasts wrong is that it has been hi-jacked from the role for which we pay it nearly £200 million a year, to become one of the world’s major propaganda engines for the belief in man-made global warming. Over the past three years, it has become a laughing stock for forecasts which are invariably wrong in the same direction.

The year 2007, it predicted, would be “the warmest ever” – just before global tempratures plunged by more than the entire net warming of the 20th century, Three years running it predicted warmer than average winters – as large parts of the northern hemisphere endured record cold and snowfalls. Last year’s “barbecue summer” was the third time running that predictions of a summer drier and warmer than average prefaced weeks of rain and cold. Last week the Met Office was again predicting that 2010 will be the “warmest year” on record, while Europe and the US look to be facing further weeks of intense cold.

What is not generally realised is that the UK Met Office has been, since 1990, at the very centre of the campaign to convince the world that it faces catastrophe through global warming. (Its website now proclaims it to be “the Met Office for Weather and Climate Change”.) Its then-director, Dr John Houghton, was the single most influential figure in setting up the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the chief driver of climate alarmism. Its Hadley Centre for Climate Change, along with the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU), was put in charge of the most prestigious of the four official global temperature records. In line with IPCC theory, its computers were programmed to predict that, as CO2 levels rose, temperatures would inevitably follow. From 1990 to 2007, the Department of the Environment gave the Met Office no less than £146 million for its “climate predictions programme”.

Read it here.

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Idiotic Comment of the Day: Clover Moore

1 January, 2010 by

If in doubt, say nowt

Sydney’s batty “Lord” mayor spoils the New Year celebrations by hijacking them to preach about climate change. It’s just so last year:

“I think it’s an incredibly important message. As I said last night, Aboriginal people believe that each year you awaken the spirit of the land, the sea, the sky and the people,” Ms Moore told reporters.

“I believe that at this time there is no more important message because we are facing catastrophic climate change and we indeed need to awaken our spirit to take action to address global warming.”

The celebrations were carbon neutral, Ms Moore said. (source)

Big freaking deal. Thanks for ruining people’s enjoyment of the New Year. Now go away.

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Animals "on the run" from climate change

24 December, 2009 by

At least he'll be OK…

The UK Telegraph used to be a serious newspaper, but, as I have mentioned before, it’s now more like a broadsheet version of Hello. In fact, Private Eye always refers to it as the Daily Hellograph. Despite Climategate, they still parrot any old press release that lands on the “climate change desk” and this story is no exception. From our old friend, Chris Field (see here, and here), we have a lovely alarmist Christmas present:

Plants and animals will need to move at an average rate of a quarter of a mile a year to escape climate change over the course of this century, according to scientists.

For species in flatter, low-lying regions such as deserts, grasslands, and coastal areas, the pace of the retreat could exceed more than half a mile a year, it is claimed.

Creatures and plants only able to tolerate a narrow range of temperatures will be most vulnerable, said the researchers.

Those unable to match the migration speeds needed to escape the effects of global warming could vanish into extinction.

Plants in almost a third of the habitats studied were thought to fall into this category, the scientists reported in the journal Nature.

Author Dr Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, California, said animals will be forced to migrate while many plants will die out.

“Expressed as velocities, climate-change projections connect directly to survival prospects for plants and animals. These are the conditions that will set the stage, whether species move or cope in place,” he said. (source)

Yawn. We’ve had enough of alarmism. We’re not listening any more. Climate change scientists need to rebuild their shattered credibility before we will take anything they say seriously again.

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Indoctrination Alert: Build-a-Bear uses "climate change" in Christmas video

23 December, 2009 by

Ella: starred in An Inconvenient Truth, and now at Build-a-Bears worldwide

How a major retailer can shoot itself in the foot at Christmas, in three easy stages:

Stage One: indoctrinate thousands of children innocently visiting the B-a-B website with cute story about Santa which just happens to mention that the ice at the North Pole is melting because of the changing climate (transcript and comments from biggovernment.com):

Here’s an excerpt (1:07-2:22):

Girl Elf: Santa, it’s gone!

Papa Elf: It’s gone, It’s gone!

Santa: What’s gone?

Girl Elf: Tell ‘em, Dad!

Papa Elf: The North Peak.

Santa: A mountain? A mountain’s gone? How is that possible?

Ella the polar bear: Santa, sir, that’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re here. The ice is melting!

Santa: Yes, my dear, we know, the climate is changing. There’s bound to be a little melting.

Ella: It’s worse than that, Santa, a lot worse! At the rate it’s melting, the North Pole will be gone by Christmas!”

Santa: My, my…all of this gone by next Christmas? I don’t think so.

Ella: No sir, not next Christmas, this Christmas! The day after tomorrow!

And this is merely the tip of the dialogue iceberg, if you’ll forgive me for putting it that way … Children of the world can look forward to priceless exchanges such as, “Oh my! Where will the polar bears live?” and my personal fave: “Where will the elves live?”

I suspect you’d like to think it can’t get any worse than that. Thus, it pains me to tell you that animated characters actually break into a discussion of satellite photos and that Mrs. Claus conducts a rather unscientific experiment involving ice cubes.

Stage two: receive sackloads of complaints about subliminal indoctrination of children.

Stage three: pull the video and publish a grovelling apology on your web site:

Our intention with the Polar Bear story was to inspire children, through the voices of our animal characters, to make a difference in their own individual ways. We did not intend to politicize the topic of global climate change or offend anyone in any way. The webisodes concluded this week with Santa successfully leaving on his journey to deliver gifts around the world. The webisodes will no longer be available on the site.

Doesn’t matter what you intended, Ms Clark, the fact is, you did.

Read the full gory story at Watts Up With That (and watch the video too, if you can “bear” it).

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Wikipedia: Don't trust it on climate

21 December, 2009 by

Don't go there

Why? Because over 5000 articles have been tampered with by UK Green Party activist William Connolley so that they all neatly fit in with the IPCC agenda (bit like the temperature records, really):

Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information source the world has ever known – Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003, just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world’s most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement. (source – h/w WUWT)

WUWT is now reporting that Connolley has been ditched by Wikipedia. However, are you starting to detect a theme here? Anything to do with the alleged “consensus” has to be doctored, tampered with, fiddled or manipulated in order to keep it afloat. Hardly the sign of “settled science”.

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