climate change

It seems the world is going to be hoodwinked again by those pushing the global warming scam, this time for another 30 years.

And the most discouraging thing about it is: the sane people, those who know CO₂ isn’t a significant cause of planetary warming, are showing all the signs of being suckered by the deception yet again.

Roger Pielke Jr’s blog reports on a leaked copy of the IPCC Extremes Report. The show-stopper centrepiece of the leaked report is:

"Uncertainty in the sign of projected changes in climate extremes over the coming two to three decades is relatively large because climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variability".

That, of course, makes a complete mockery of the entire global warming theory. Remember that the theory’s only “evidence” is the computer models, which, it is said, cannot account for the late 20^th century warming by the mere effects of natural climate variability. And yet, now, after 13 years of flat temperatures, they predict that we could be in for another 30 — 43 years in all! of flat temperatures due to natural variability masking the rise due to CO₂-induced warming. Wow! CO₂ must be a pretty poor warming agent if, as anthropogenic CO₂ emissions rage ahead, temperatures can remain flat for 43 years.

The truth, of course, is that all this makes no sense whatever. If natural variability can cause 43 years of flat temps while CO₂ races upwards, then it could also have caused the late 20^th century warming without any help from CO₂.

A long article has been released with many quotes from the core group of global warming alarmist 'scientists'. Why do I quote that word? - because so far none of them have told us, the intelligent public, a full, proper, scientifically argued case giving evidence of four things:

1. dangerous,
2. human-emitted,
3. carbon-dioxide-caused,
4. global warming is taking place.

In other words, there are four propositions that must all be substantiated with credible evidence before a scientific theory exists that there is anything to fear from carbon dioxide. My take on the status of these four is: (1) is certainly false, (2) uncertain, (3) most likely largely false, and (4) most likely true, but not as large as it has been represented. But this post is not about the correctness of the theory, but the more basic question whether it is a scientific theory at all.

I think most people know of the concept that scientific theories must be falsifiable. There are a lot of subtleties around that idea that need not concern us now, but we can use it as a rough test for good science. Remember, good science doesn't have to be correct - a theory proposed, tested properly, and rejected for making incorrect predictions is still an exercise in good science, even if it failed to come up with an advance. And contrariwise, a wild guess shoved down people's throats by force without any attempt to test against reality is bad science, even if by some chance the guess happened to be correct.

So we see that the question of whether this is good science is not the same as the question whether it is correct (although the two are obviously related).

So how does the CAGW theory stack up?

The New York Times published a 'map' of 'organised climate change denial', which is supposed to be 'winning' because of the deep pockets and superior organisation of the hidden movers and shakers in the fossil fuel industry. As I showed before, the Australian fossil fuel industry alone is funding the climate alarmists to the tune of a billion dollars. I would be very much surprised if Andrew C. Revkin, author of the latest piece of work at NYT, can identify even a tenth of that much money spent worldwide on the skeptic side of the argument. In other words, pot - kettle - black.

But in the comments, this neat summary of the whole scare appeared:

They Burned a Child for Global Warming

This is one of the most disgraceful doings I could ever hope not to have needed to write about. A violent attack by troops evicted villagers from their homes and burned them to the ground, without even taking the elementary precaution to see if the homes were empty, let alone allow the villagers to remove their property before the attack. As it happened, a sick child in one home was burned to death. But don't worry, as the New York Times put it:

But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming.

Oh so that's all right then: it was for a "good cause". Others have written about this terrible tragedy, and I can't better their efforts, so let me try to widen the discussion to get at the root cause of why it was possible for this to happen at all.

The Australian tells us "ENVIRONMENTALIST and former Australian of the Year Tim Flannery has been appointed to a newly-created position as Australia's climate commissioner."

Unlike many who disagree with the global warming hoax, I do have respect for Tim Flannery. That doesn't mean that on "climate change" he isn't dead wrong. After a month of weather devastation in which everything that was predicted by the warmists about Australia's future climate was directly contradicted by actual events, one would have imagined the government would spend our money on helping the victims rather than appointing a brand new useless committee.

Future generations will certainly think people of today have gone cold stark raving loony. "Nature" used to be a highly respected scientific journal. Their recent behaviour in the "climate change" arena has trashed their reputation, possibly for good.

Wattsupwiththat brings us the news that Nature is about to put out a special journal to be called "Nature Climate Change". About the list of climate blogs Nature acknowledges, Anthony Watts writes:

I note RealClimate, Climate Progress, Stoat (William Connolley of Wiki fame), and even the paid Hoggan public relations firm “DeSmog Blog” are listed.

I reckon that skeptical sites like WUWT don’t rate with Nature, even though we have more traffic and reach than those blogs. I suppose that speaks to the tone of this new journal before it is even published.

What caught my notice, though, was this little gem in "Nature's" instructions to authors:

Found on Youtube...

As reported on CFACT, attendees to the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico were fooled into signing a petition to ban water.

And, Oh Yes, also to reduce the U.S. GDP by 6%.

I have been asked, do I really think there is something 'religious' about all this. And my answer is Yes. But unlike many climate realists, I do not think this is limited to a few nutty eco-religionists. The "eco" part of it is just a subset - a big subset right now, for sure, but just a subset - of a malign influence in human affairs that goes back at least as far as the French revolution.

The idea, in a nutshell, is that "There must be a group to hate". From Robespierre to Marx, to Lenin and Stalin, to modern feminism and racial identity theory, this key, evil idea is resurrected after each failure and produces a new round of misery and death, but in the resurrection it comes with a new 'talking point'. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, economic and class warfare was exposed for the hateful nonsense it is, and freedom-loving people insisting on democracy and the right to own property. So the 'believers' quietly ceased talking economics and concentrated on their other irons in the fire: the evils of the male half of humanity, and on the evils of whites as compared with everyone else on Earth. Meanwhile they had dreamed up a new one: evil human industrial activity harming all the other living creatures.

For the first time ever in Brisbane's climate record, the city has had an entire Spring season without a single temperature over 30C. Brisbane temperature records go back to around 1900.

It is now the last day of Spring and the temperature hit 26.8C at 3p.m. Now it is 5p.m. and the temperature has fallen to 24.7C. Although the final day of Spring has some seven hours to go, short of a volcano erupting in the Brisbane River, a new cold record has been set. September + October + November 2010: zero days above 30C.

By way of comparison, in October 2009 there were four days above 30C. In November 2009 there were 13 days above 30C, for a total of 17 days in all, or over a quarter of days of those months. Four of these exceeded 34C. Sorry, no September 2009 data: for some reason known best only to themselves, Australia's Bureau of Meteorology website doesn't have any daily data that ancient, being, apparently, unable to pop down to the local Harvey Norman and spring $100 for a new terabyte disc drive. Whether the September 2009 data is censored, deleted, or stored on floppies will remain one of those inscrutable cosmic mysteries.

But good news! They have a new "high-quality" data set suitable, they say, for climate change research. Here's a sample, the "Annual Maximum Temperature" for Brisbane Aero - presumably the airport. Maybe someone can enlighten me what these numbers are meant to be, because they certainly aren't Brisbane maximum temperatures which, as any Brisbanite knows, go infallibly way into the 30s every summer:

An incisive comment posted by peter_dtm in answer to a typically naive GW piece at the Telegraph:

Comment by peter_dtm:

Another ecofascist telling us what they know we believe

and as wrong as they always are.

how to put this in a way you can understand - bearing in mind that there are MILLIONS of people (including scientists; engineers; financiers and even some politicians) who do not BELIEVE in CAGW. If you trouble yourself to read the blogs like WUWT and other assorted 'denialist' sites you would discover a vast range of thoughts - and very little belief. And lots of demands for being shown the SCIENCE behind the hypothesis.

I believe that most people consider the ecofacists to be the ones in denial.

1. The climate changes
2. It always has
3. Man affects the climate
4. CO2 and other gases stop the earth freezing
5. CO2 and other gases stop the earth overheating
6. The atmosphere (and therefore the climate) is a complex system.
7. If you build a model with parameter x as a key variable; than varying parameter x will change the model as this is what the model is designed to do.
8. The climate is so complex we do not have even a first order approximation of how it works.