Full speed for an alarmism week

7 December, 2009 by

Nice Bristols

Nice Bristols*

The other thing that we should expect in the next 11 days is full on climate hysteria, with apocalyptic predictions, everything “happening faster, bigger, badder than we thought”. But now we can take it all with a pinch of salt, since in this post-CRU world, we give our climate scientists even less leeway than they had before. The latest scare is that the climate is “more sensitive than previously thought” to CO2, so we need even deeper, harsher, bigger and badder cuts.

From our “The Science is Settled” department:

In the long term, the Earth’s temperature may be 30-50 per cent more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than has previously been estimated, reports a new study published in Nature Geoscience this week.

The results show that components of the Earth’s climate system that vary over long timescales – such as land-ice and vegetation – have an important effect on this temperature sensitivity, but these factors are often neglected in current climate models.

Dr Dan Lunt, from the University of Bristol, and colleagues compared results from a global climate model to temperature reconstructions of the Earth’s environment three million years ago when global temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations were relatively high. The temperature reconstructions were derived using data from three-million-year-old sediments on the ocean floor.

Lunt said, “We found that, given the concentrations of carbon dioxide prevailing three million years ago, the model originally predicted a significantly smaller temperature increase than that indicated by the reconstructions. This led us to review what was missing from the model.”

But, but, but… our models are perfect, aren’t they? They must be – the planet is about to spend trillions of dollars based on their output. But not to worry. Results of climate research never say “it’s not as bad as we thought” or “we may have overestimated this.” What are the chances of every piece of research always saying it’s worse? And of course, the inevitable call to action:

Alan Haywood, a co-author on the study from the University of Leeds, said “If we want to avoid dangerous climate change, this high sensitivity of the Earth to carbon dioxide should be taken into account when defining targets for the long-term stabilisation of atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations”.

This is all about feedbacks of course. The actual warming effect of a doubling of CO2 is virtually nothing, but the models rely on fudge factors in the feedbacks in order to make the models fit what has already happened in the past. However, because this leads to huge positive feedbacks, temperature projections go through the roof for a modest increase in CO2. The fact is that no climate scientist understands the feedbacks, because there are still thousands of unknowns or unquantifiables (despite Kevin Rudd and Gordon Brown telling us all “the science is settled”), which means the models don’t either, and the results are close to worthless.

Read it here.

*Cockney rhyming slang: Bristol Cities – t*tties.

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Lemmings: 56 of world's moonbat media print the same editorial

7 December, 2009 by

Pious nonsense

Pious nonsense

Even The Age doesn’t fall for it, sensibly preferring to rely on its own views rather than cutting and pasting other editors’ nonsense. And nonsense it most certainly is, written by the most lefty and greeny of the world’s newspapers, the UK Guardian. Full of pious platitudes and vacuous statements, it is a painful read:

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record [“on record” being since about 1850, conveniently ignoring the MWP and the Roman warm period – Ed], the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage [Haven’t read the CRU emails yet, then? – Ed]. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries [yes, exactly, without any help from humans – Ed], has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

“Taming” the climate? Really? Good luck with that! And then there is the inevitable rush towards global socialism, and the accompanying scaling back of Western economies:

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions.

…

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

And in doing so, it will condemn billions of people in developing countries to a life of misery and poverty. Finally, the predictable, tired and hackneyed “green energy myth”:

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

As if renewables can replace fossil fuels in the next 20 or even 50 years! It’s nothing short of a joke. And the biggest joke of all is that all of this will be pointless. The effect of CO2 emissions on the climate is so small that all the trillions of dollars that will be wasted as a result of any Copenhagen Treaty will make not an iota of difference. Just like Kyoto made no difference either. The climate will do what the climate will do, and there ain’t nothing we can do about it.

Pious climate nonsense.

Read it here.

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UK Met Office to re-examine and release 160 years of data

6 December, 2009 by

Releasing data

Releasing data

Will this be the start of a flood of data releases from organisations desperate not to be tarred with the CRU brush, I wonder? How many fudge factors will they find in the Met Office code?

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.

The Met Office database is one of three main sources of temperature data analysis on which the UN’s main climate change science body relies for its assessment that global warming is a serious danger to the world. This assessment is the basis for next week’s climate change talks in Copenhagen aimed at cutting CO2 emissions.

But this paragraph is the most amazing, and, given my previous post, not at all surprising:

The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics. (source)

Yep, that’s right. Move along. Nothing to see here. Don’t want the sceptics looking at the data, they might find something wrong with it! Sadly for the oafish Gordon Brown, the Met Office has in fact gone one step further, and will release the data into the public arena:

The Met Office has announced plans to release, early next week, station temperature records for over one thousand of the stations that make up the global land surface temperature record.

…

This subset is not a new global temperature record and it does not replace the HadCRUT, NASA GISS and NCDC global temperature records, all of which have been fully peer reviewed. We are confident this subset will show that global average land temperatures have risen over the last 150 years. [Well of course it will. We all know temperatures have risen in that period. What it doesn’t prove is man-made warming – Ed]

This subset release will continue the policy of putting as much of the station temperature record as possible into the public domain.

We intend that as soon as possible we will also publish the specific computer code that aggregates the individual station temperatures into the global land temperature record.

As soon as we have all permissions in place we will release the remaining station records – around 5000 in total – that make up the full land temperature record. We are dependant on international approvals to enable this final step and cannot guarantee that we will get permission from all data owners. (source)

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UK PM Gordon Brown: "We know the science."

6 December, 2009 by

Dumb and dumber

Dumb and dumber

Gordon Brown isn’t the sharpest tool in the bag, but he’s resorting to ever more desperate hyperbole in the lead up to Copenhagen. And he clearly hasn’t read the CRU exchanges either:

BRITISH Prime Minister Gordon Brown has led a chorus of condemnation against ”flat-earth” climate change sceptics who have tried to derail the Copenhagen summit by casting doubt on the evidence for global warming.

Sceptics in the UK and US have moved to capitalise on a series of hacked emails from climate change scientists at the University of East Anglia, England, claiming they show attempts to hide information that does not support the case for human activity causing rising temperatures.

On the eve of the Copenhagen summit, Saudi Arabia and Republican members of the US Congress have used the emails to claim the need for urgent action to cut carbon emissions has been undermined.

But on Friday Mr Brown, UK Environment Secretary Ed Miliband, and Ed Markey, co-author of the US climate change bill, joined forces to condemn the sceptics.

”With only days to go before Copenhagen we mustn’t be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics,’‘ Mr Brown said. ”We know the science. We know what we must do. We must now act and close the 5 billion-tonne gap. That will seal the deal.”

According to the British Government adviser Sir Nicholas Stern, 10 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions must be taken out of the atmosphere by 2020. So far agreement is in place for only half that amount.

Mr Miliband gave his most damning assessment of the sceptics yet, describing them as ”dangerous and deceitful”. He said: ”The approach of the climate saboteurs is to misuse data and mislead people. The sceptics are playing politics with science in a dangerous and deceitful manner. The evidence is clear and the time we have to act is short. To abandon this process now would lead to misery and catastrophe for millions.”

All of this would be hilarious, if it weren’t so serious. Here we have the prime minister of the UK, who hasn’t a clue about the scientific method, calling those who correctly question scientific data “flat earthers” – and Ed Miliband calling them “deceitful”. It’s nothing short of astonishing, and rather ironic given the deceit clearly going on in the AGW science community.

The reality is that Brown and Miliband are gullible fools, who believe anything and everything the IPCC, and all its scientists, tell them.

Read it here.

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Climate madness from "Lord" Stern

3 December, 2009 by

Stern: Bonkers

Stern: Bonkers

Just to remind us all that the defeat of the ETS will not stop the bandwagon of global warming alarmism, Lord Stern (he of the woefully flawed Stern Report of 2006 – read pages 24 – 29 Lawrence Solomon’s The Deniers for the full story of just how woeful it is) has weighed in with yet more hysterics:

The Copenhagen summit is the world’s last chance to save the planet from “catastrophic” global warming, according to a major study led by Lord Stern of Brentford, the country’s leading authority on climate change.

Without an international agreement to limit global warming, temperatures are likely to rise by 9F (5C) by the end of the century – triggering mass migration, warfare and world hunger, according to the report.

Stern’s an economist. If he’s the UK’s leading authority on climate, heaven help the UK. And clearly there’s no vested interest, because he has no interest in any climate change organisation… no, wait:

Lord Stern, who is now chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, said world leaders at Copenhagen must agree to cut emissions while also providing a “global” fund to help poor countries of at least £30 billion per annum by 2015 and rising to £120 billion during the 2020s. (source)

Must keep the bandwagon rolling, to keep the paycheques rolling in. And if that wasn’t enough, Stern then goes on to produce a detailed and cogent rebuttal of climate change sceptic arguments… well, guess what, no he doesn’t – he calls them “muddled” instead (‘cos that’s a bit easier):

“This is evidence that is overwhelming, from all sources, that’s the kind of climate science we’re talking about,” he said.

“I think it is very important that those with any kind of views on the science or economics have their say – that does not mean that unscientific muddle also has the right to be recognised as searing insight.”

He added: “If they are muddled and confused, they do not have the right to be described as anything other than muddled and confused.” (source)

I’m literally blown away by the power of that argument from the UK’s “leading climate authority on climate change”. I’m sure you are too.

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UK: Australia's ETS defeat "threatens Copenhagen"

3 December, 2009 by

Sunk - by the Aussies!

Sunk - by the Aussies!

It’s the gift that keeps on giving! News of the ETS defeat has spread far and wide. Not only have we sunk the domestic ETS, but the UK Telegraph reports that our actions might scupper any remaining vestiges of a chance of a deal at Copenhagen:

Australia has dealt a major blow to any international deal on climate change ahead of the Copenhagen summit by failing to introduce new laws to control pollution.

The carbon trading bill, which has been rejected by parliament, would have set up one of the world’s biggest “cap and trade” markets.

The scheme works by limiting the amount of greenhouse gases industry can produce and forcing them to pay money for any extra emissions by trading with other companies.

But the Australian Senate, that is already deeply divided over the science of climate change, voted down the new legislation.

It is not only damaging to Kevin Rudd, the country’s Prime Minister, but could scupper efforts to control greenhouse gases on a wider scale at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen later this month.

Mr Rudd was seen as a leading advocate of tackling climate change on the world stage and was on his way back from a meeting with President Obama on the issue when news of the defeat came through.

…

Frank Jotzo, an Australian National University expert on international climate change negotiations, said the failure of Australia to introduce legislation will make developing countries less likely to agree to cut their own emissions.

“It’s not like the talks will stall because of the lack of an Australian emissions trading scheme,” he said. “But if the legislation had been passed, that would have sent a very positive signal internationally and, in particular, to developing countries.”

I am looking forward to Rudd’s forlorn entrance to Copenhagen – empty handed.

Read it here.

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Head-pop at UK Guardian over Australia's "deniers"

2 December, 2009 by

Moonbats

Gullible

Why oh why oh why can’t the “deniers” just stop asking awkward questions, and just trust us?

I mean, we global warming scientists always tell the truth, don’t we? Our scientific ethics are as pure as the driven snow. We never exaggerate and peddle scare stories just to get a good headline, we never fudge and fiddle data to make it fit a pre-conceived agenda, we never destroy original observations so they can never be checked, and we are always completely transparent about our scientific methods, happy to comply with each and every FOI request that we receive.

Now back to the real world… The famously moonbattish Grauniad advocates censorship in order to ram through the global warming agenda. Only the title and the sub-heading are required:

Why do climate deniers hold sway in Australia?

If Australia does not silence its sceptics and reduce its emissions there is a real risk of the nation becoming uninhabitable.

Apart from the fact that “silencing sceptics” is the antithesis of the scientific method, reducing Australia’s emissions, by 5%, 10%, even 100%, will make not one iota of difference to the climate, local or global, and will have no bearing on whether the nation “becomes uninhabitable.”

Don’t forget that the opposite of “sceptical” is “gullible.”

Idiotic climate madness on an epic scale.

Read it here (h/t Climate Depot)

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Barking madness in UK: "GPs should offer climate change advice"

30 November, 2009 by

Bonkers: any psychiatrists around?

Bonkers: any psychiatrists around?

Away from the intrigue of the Liberal leadership contest, here’s a timely reminder that climate madness is alive and well all over the globe, and nowhere more so than in the UK:

Doctors should give patients advice on climate change, a leading body of medical experts has claimed.

The Climate and Health Council, a collaboration of worldwide health organisations including the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society of Medicine, believes there is a direct link between climate change and better health.

Their controversial plan would see GPs and nurses give out advice to their patients on how to lower their carbon footprint.

The Council believes that climate change “threatens to radically undermine the health of all peoples”.

It believes health professionals are ideally placed to promote change because “we have ethical responsibility…..as well as the capacity to influence people and our political representatives to take the necessary action”.

I can just imagine: “I’m sorry I can’t treat your chronic flatulence, but I suggest you purchase a boat-load of emissions permits instead.”

How about just letting medical professionals get on with their job – i.e. making sick people well again – instead of burdening them with pointless climate propaganda? That would be a novel idea.

Read it here, and see the Climate and Health Council website here.

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UK: Lord Lawson calls for public enquiry into CRU data "manipulation"

23 November, 2009 by

Lord Lawson

Lord Lawson

From the UK Telegraph:

Lord Lawson, the former chancellor, has called for an independent inquiry into claims that leading climate change scientists manipulated data to strengthen the case for man-made global warming.

Thousands of emails and documents stolen from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and posted online indicate that researchers massaged figures to mask the fact that world temperatures have been declining in recent years.

This morning Lord Lawson, who has reinvented himself as a prominent climate change sceptic since leaving front line politics, demanded that the apparent deception be fully investigated.

He claimed that the credibility of the university’s world-renowned Climatic Research Unit – and British science – were under threat.

“They should set up a public inquiry under someone who is totally respected and get to the truth,” he told the BBC Radio Four Today programme.

“If there’s an explanation for what’s going on they can make that explanation.”

Read it here.

UPDATE: Also check out Christopher Booker, writing in The Daily Mail here.

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UK mainstream media run CRU stories

21 November, 2009 by

At least a couple of the conservative papers are running with the Hadley story, brief details below:

Daily Mail:

Hackers ‘expose global warming con’: Sceptics claim that leaked emails reveal research centre massaged temperature data

By FIONA MACRAE

Last updated at 1:36 AM on 21st November 2009

One of the world’s leading climate change research centres has been accused of manipulating data on global warming after thousands of private emails and documents were leaked.

Hackers targeted the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and published the files, including some personal messages, on the internet.

Among the most damaging is one which appears to suggest using a ‘trick’ to massage years of temperature data to ‘hide the decline’.

Daily Telegraph:

Climate scientists accused of ‘manipulating global warming data’

Some of the world’s top climate scientists have been accused of manipulating data on global warming after hundreds of private emails were stolen by hackers and published online.

Published: 8:00AM GMT 21 Nov 2009

The material was taken from servers at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit – a world-renowned climate change research centre – before it was published on websites run by climate change sceptics.

It has been claimed that the emails show that scientists manipulated data to bolster their argument that global warming is genuine and is being caused by human actions.

More to follow, I hope.

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