Bishop Hill Dull
Jan 12, 2011 Economics Your humble host has spent the last hour trawling the web for interesting global warming snippets with which to regale you this morning...with a complete lack of success. Perhaps global warming has been cancelled for today.
Perhaps it's just me though - it's snowing outside and having not seen green for two months I'm a bit fed up of it.
In the meantime, here's something that pricked my interest on my internet travels - a posting on the Spectator site reporting on a talk given by an economist of the Austrian school. The subject was the reasons for the economic crash. What struck me was not only how odd it is to see an MSM publication addressing heavy topics like Austrian economics, but also how many of the Spectator's readers had responded with comments. There seems to be a real interest, although whether driven by "we aren't taken in by the blame-the-bankers narrative" or just a desire for more demanding material, I can't say.
Reader Comments (61)
Maybe the floods in Australia are a factor? It must be a hot potato for the warmists, who effectively cancelled the building of dams that would have prevented them...
The Australian floods are quite remarkable, the contrast between the predictions that emerge from AGW based forecasts and what a look at history would lead you to. These things, like our winters, are long tailed distributions, and if you start out with any view that things have changed, you can always find a period to confirm your belief. The trouble is, there is reversion to the mean, and when it comes, and your predictions are based on nothing better than prejudice, people die.
Its not just in the UK that we need to get climate politics out of forecasts on which real decisions affecting stuff like flood prevention, salt and grit stocks, insulation, all that stuff will be based. We have to put a stop to wishful thinking masquerading as forecasts, because its just too expensive.
Same applies to the great wakeup call from the total failure of windpower generation in the last cold spell. Get the fantasy out of policy!
Autonomous mind suggests that there is a deeper role for Roger Harrabin in the current spat between the MET the BBC and the government
What sparks particular interest about this story is the continued intimate involvement of the BBC’s Roger Harrabin. Far from reporting the story impartially, there is more than a suggestion that Harrabin is actively engaged in formulating it in conjunction with the Met Office. It was Harrabin who in the Radio Times (subsequently reported by the Telegraph and Daily Mail) broke the story that a cold winter forecast had been submitted to the Cabinet Office – but interesting there was no story on the BBC’s own website about it at the time. Harrabin effectively became a spokesman for the Met Office with that piece and notably, as highlighted on this blog, his use of language was clearly an attempt to influence the story and portray the Met Office as an unfairly maligned party.
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/met-office-smokescreen-confusion-or-conspiracy/
Well read the comments on this... had me chuckling...
I can't forgive Mark Kennedy's betrayal of activists
Activists? I have no problem with activism, it is a slice of society's pie. BUT they give activists a bad name. These are just people playing, and not liking it when reality strikes.
And I learnt a new urban phrase: crusty jugglers. As in "You are a bunch of spoilt rich crusty jugglers...".
How about this snippet....http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com/2011/01/ipcc-correct-table-102.html
An apt steve Mosher comment over on Judith Curry's blog.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/11/politics-of-climate-expertise-part-ii/#more-1904
'If I see something published in GRL I look for the data and code. If I can’t get the data and the code, I’m really not obligated to give the article any weight whatsoever. It’s just an advertisement for science, not the science itself.
Same with an article from E&E. For me there is a very simple threshold. If the world is at stake, how hard is it to supply your data and your code?
And if you’re unwilling to do that, then how serious is the climate change problem.?'
If that is coming out of a "think tank" it's worse than I thought.
The impending issue is deflation, of the huge global economic bubble created by deregulation and massive credit expansion (Thatcher/Regan era). This all started when Alan Wicker was all over the TV with barclaycard, it just expanded into global "normality" and into the global mortgage and every other global market.
We will only see real inflation after the bubble deflates, though it will look like inflation as commodity prices come down slower than the value of cash, so will look like they're increasing. The issue is one of velocity of money.
For an alternative view I highly recommend the Nicole Foss Presentation "A Century of Challenges"
Audio of the presentation can be found free here. (about 80mins)
http://sheffield.indymedia.org.uk/2010/06/453356.html
there is also a Q&A session for another hour, this was recorded in the UK so is more relevant here.
Nicole Blogs as 'Stoneliegh" with a writing partner at http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/ the gist of her presentation can be found in the essays there too.
I recommend watching the presentation if you are not familiar with the material as the graphs can be quite instructive, it is available streamed from the blog site (pay),
Bish if you pay to watch the presentation streamed (link on the blog) I'll pay for it via your tip jar, as I encourage discussion on this very important subject.
Sorry to hear about the continuing snow in Scotland. Down in Devon we have some real warming. It is 11degC, wet and everywhere is very green - haven't seen any white stuff for three days now. We've gone from -15degC to +11degC in a couple of weeks.
Also 11degC here in Nth County Dublin. I intend doing my Autumn/Winter 2010 garden tidying up today
If you wanna live in northern climes.....
Peter
Nothing going on about climate change? What about this story, all over the BBC yesterday, stated with total certainty (but not covered by other stations for some reason):
"New scheme launched for 'bleached and dying' coral life"
"Conservationists led by scientists from the Zoological Society of London have launched a new drive to save some of the world's most endangered corals."
"The most dire predictions suggest that tropical coral reefs will be all but extinct within the next half a century, with rising sea temperatures posing the greatest threat."
AUSTRIAN economics -- read the post.
@ Ian Preddy
Dellors has a good post on Coral.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100071425/everything-dead-by-tomorrow-warns-zoological-society-of-london/
I do like the story about Bryan Leyland, a retired engineer from New Zealand, who predicted correctly that before the end of 2010, there would be significant global cooling. His tools were a laptop, Excel, one research paper and SOI index data.
Mr Leyland made a further prediction that global cooling will continue well into 2011.
Could it be that 2011 will end up as one of the coldest years ever recorded?
It could happen that Mr Leyland will end up trumping the entire meteorological and climate industry.
on GWPF under heading BBC REality Check, Coal takes the strain:
On BBC Look North on Friday I reported that during the recent intense cold weather, it's been our traditional coal and gas fired power stations that have been working flat out to keep our homes and businesses warm.
And for the third winter running, the intense cold has gone hand in hand with periods of little or no wind. This should come as no surprise since prolonged cold is invariably associated with areas of high pressure.
Peak demand also comes during summer heat waves - as we all turn on our air conditioning units - again usually associated with areas of high pressure, with little or no wind.
Peter Walsh
Perhaps global warming has been cancelled for today.
I heard on the R3 news this morning, that some institute of mechanical engineers has produced a study that shows some issues "even more" serious than global warming, eg storage of food for poor people. They recommend that money be spent developing new technology to solve this. I wonder what type of engineer would be best suited for this task....
Here at the tropical seaside of one of Hong Kong's islands it is certainly making a good start to be the coldest. It hasn't made it above 8C all day and even the max at the urban heat island (and warmist stronghold) of HK Observatory has remained 4C below the mean min for this period.
If anyone's bored enough to need their mood lifting:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-tech-tribute-eiffel-tower.html
"Looking to the future, the experiments show the tower's sensitivity to higher temperatures, so global warming is likely to become a bigger source of concern in decades to come."
the last sentence from the summary:
We should not ask what pricked the bubble, but what inflated it in the first place. The Austrian school is, for me anyway, one way of looking at this very important question.
I fear we are all discussing the symptoms, not the disease. I watched this a few years ago and am yet to be convinced that the fundamental problem is not the fractional reserve system:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2550156453790090544#
(47 minutes, well worth watching, and you will never see it on the BBC or CNN etc.)
sorry - that's not very clear, what I meant to write was: "I am yet to be convinced that the fractional reserve system is not the fundamental problem"
Well, I guess it's not really OT on this thread... But I listened to Radio 4 this morning and there was this chap from The Institute of Mechanical Engineers that was talking about their latest research into poplulation growth in 2075!!!!
Just to be sure, here it is:
http://www.imeche.org/news/archives/11-01-12/Population_Explosion_Can_the_Planet_Cope.aspx
The opening words are just great:
"A groundbreaking Population report (Wed 12 January) by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) has revealed the world is hurtling towards population overload placing billions at risk of hunger, thirst and slum conditions...Unless the engineering solutions highlighted in the report are urgently implemented then the projected 2.5 billion more people on earth by the end of this Century (currently there is 6.9 billion) will crush the earth’s resources."
I guess engineers have been coerced as well ;).
Sorry to hear about the continuing snow in Scotland. Down in Devon we have some real warming. It is 11degC, wet and everywhere is very green - haven't seen any white stuff for three days now. We've gone from -15degC to +11degC in a couple of weeks.
Jan 12, 2011 at 8:46 AM | Phillip Bratby
Also 11degC here in Nth County Dublin. I intend doing my Autumn/Winter 2010 garden tidying up today
If you wanna live in northern climes.....
Peter
Jan 12, 2011 at 9:14 AM | RETEPHSLAW
Which just confirms the cold weather was despite the Warm Gulff Steam not because it has weakened or gone away.
There is also Met Office blog which offers support to Steve Connor's latest piece in the Independent about the story from 10 years now made famous, " Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past".
Interesting quotes from the blog are these;
"The headline used 10 years ago was “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”, but I can assure you that no self respecting climate scientist would ever make such a bold statement, not today or ten years ago."
........but as been noted by GWPF this runs counter to what Met Office climate scientists have said in the recent past, and I quote, "Dr Peter Stott who in February 2009 said: "Despite the cold winter this year, the trend to milder and wetter winters is expected to continue, with snow and frost becoming less of a feature in the future. The famously cold winter of 1962/63 is now expected to occur about once every 1,000 years or more, compared with approximately every 100 to 200 years before 1850.""
Further we have the Met Office blog stating, "The bottom line is that snow was and still is never going to vanish from our weather, although how often we see snow may well change. Snow and cold are part of the natural variability of our changing day-to-day weather.
This again runs counter to what Julia Slingo the Met Office's Chief Scientist was reported as stating in the Independent by none other than Steve Connor in a story headlined as "The UK may be cold, but it's still a warm world, says Met Office chief ", namely the probable cause of the recent cold weather was, "the diminishing Arctic sea ice may be influencing a change in the weather patterns that are still not understood"
These statements highlight the current confusion within the Met Office hierarchy when confronted by three cold winters in a row and their inability to predict them. Ever since the onset of this period of severe cold weather the Met Office have been digging a hole for themselves and have been unable or unwilling to stop digging.
Finally, there is the throwaway line from Julia Slingo from Steve Connor's story "The UK may be cold, but it's still a warm world, says Met Office chief ", namely, "This is not a global event".
Here is a person who is in denial of global natural events and variability, the cold weather that has affected Europe, North America, China and India, and the onset of La Nina. You would think that no self respecting climate scientist would behave in such a way - it looks like you would wrong to think so.
Just had a fright. Taking the dog out for the morning walk and was stopped by a man in local council van marked 'Environmental Enforcement'. I thought the Eco-Stasi had arrived but he was just checking I had means of collecting the anticipated dog poo! (I had).
Breath of fresh air:
You have hit the nail squarely on the head. The climate is driven by the oceans, not the atmosphere. When the wind is from the SW and blowing from the Atlantic Ocean, we have mild, wet conditions; when the wind is from the NE and blowing from the Arctic Ocean we have cold conditions. It's nothing to do with CO2 in the air.
There is a report from the Institute of Mechanical Engineering this morning which claims that we're all doomed because the population's going to reach 9.5 billion by 2075.
Prime mover appears to be one Dr Tim Fox, whose remit at the IME is "to lead the environment theme" (http://www.imeche.org/knowledge/industries/energy-environment-and-sustainability/news/environment-theme). He appears to be a parti pris warmist, based on his assertion at the above link that
The global scientific community working in the field of meteorology and climate science has now largely reached a consensus view that the world’s climate is changing and that the effects of human activity are a component in the driving of that change.
Clearly news hasn't reached him that the graduate student whose work this claim relies on actually processed all the meterorologists out in order to get to a "consensus", which was based on 75 (of 10,000) people's opinion on two questions that didn't mention CO2.
I haven't read the report yet, so I won't comment on the logically-dodgy pottings of it that I have read. I do wonder, though, how one would square a belief that 6 billion people must cut CO2 emissions now with a separate belief that in 75 years' time there will be 60% more of us anyway? To do so surely makes Michael Crichton's point - that effective emissions cuts are impossible, and that what's being advocated short of these will have no effect.
The question no warmist seems able to answer is how we know what technology, population, and energy price changes will occur over the next 100 years. Without knowing those, you cannot possibly model CO2 emissions. All these must be implied in the scenario assumptions, but it appears impossible to get anyone to say what the assumptions would be in real world terms - what, for example, the price of energy will be in 100 years' time under their high, low, and normal scenarios.
My morning achievement. I've made it to Grauniad pre-moderation. I guess when they finally disappear behind a paywall, the CiFers can talk happily amongst themselves.
@Atomic
Please remember that the Guardian lost nearly 40 million quid in the last financial year. It is their "business" model. The Guardian is an alternate reality. They cannot actually afford to to go behind a pay wall. Because then it would be 40 million quid wasted on the "chosen few".
Whenever the Guardian questions motives and funding (including this site) or uses FGS Bob Ward as a surrogate, then that is easy to do when you can p*ss money away like the Guardian can.
The Indie is being spectacularly disingenuous IMO. The original article quoted Dr Viner thus:
"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.
So the headline, "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past" seems a pretty fair paraphrase. Or was it a misquotation..?
Last year The Spectator ran a lead story on the shaky foundations of global warming. It has gone quiet on the issue since then. I sometimes wonder if this is deliberate because they do not want to embarrass the Coalition government. Cameron and Clegg are declared warmists; arch warmist Huhne is entrenched in the Department of Energy and Climate Change; Hilton is installed in No 10.
In this context the Harrabin-BBC/Met Office/Cabinet Office spat about who said what when and to whom and who kept quiet about it ("it" being the forecast of a cold winter) is curious indeed. You would think they would all sing from the same hymn sheet. In some respects they still do - such as the near daily dose of BBC warmist propaganda from the likes of Mr Shukman and the re-iterated ministerial praise of windmills during the visit of China`s Vice President. So what is going on? This offers a fertile field for conspiracy theorists. From the little I know it seems that thinking on climate change may have progressed from "the science is settled" to being "controversial". It may just be a storm in a tea cup. On the other hand it could develop into a perfect political storm with all kinds of unexpected and uncertain ramifications.
@ Jiminy £40 million a year? That's over £100k a day. No wonder they can't afford to employ any journalists with scientific or numeracy skills.
@lapogus... that is an operating loss of 40 million just on the Guardian paper, not on the group as a whole... some feat... what their actual costs are I do not know...
@ Jiminy - yes, I've read on a few blogs that it is the profits from Autocar (or Autotrader?) which they use to keep the Guardian going. Some irony there. I always find the numerous adverts and features for holidays in long haul destinations a touch hypocritical also.
Re BBC and Met-Gate.
Looks like the BBC's mission to trash the Cameron Coalition at every turn outranks their eco-mission.
None of them comes out of this well.
Was it Roger Harribin I heard on R4 this morning talking about the IMechE report? It was interesting in that his main point was that the press release material supplied by the reports publishers was 'alarmist' and not supported by the more careful nuances of the report itself. I found it odd listening to him getting behind the 'spin'; I wish he (and all other journos) would do more of it.
@ Jiminy Cricket
"Please remember that the Guardian lost nearly 40 million quid in the last financial year. It is their "business" model. The Guardian is an alternate reality. They cannot actually afford to to go behind a pay wall. Because then it would be 40 million quid wasted on the "chosen few"."
Indeed, The Guardian isn't properly a business, they are kept afloat by AutoTrader and the purpose is to disseminate a message. So there's no point at all in them going behind a paywall.
@Lapogus Careful, that film is "homework" on a Permaculture Design Course ;¬)
How about some Colbert?
More on Australia, courtesy of Reuters
Climate change causes droughts in Australia, climate change causes floods in Australia…
Reuters today:
Scientists see climate change link to Australian floods
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70B1XF20110112
Reuters 3 years ago:
Australia drought is climate change warning: UK
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSPEK15498020070427
So the gist of the Spectator article seems to be that some inflation is good and it's the financial institutions and/or Federal Reserves job to balance inflation. So while now bankers are claiming they are not at fault for the tranches upon tranches of Mortgage Back Securities and bad loans upon bad loans, they are now taking the credit for fixing the problem....which may be correct. Hard to say.
This bit by This American Life was interesting in explaining the Feds role in down to earth terms. Act Two.
Having just left the bar after watching the floods and Brisbane getting hammered I supposed the last thing they want to think about is finance!
The oceans have had their revenge on the Antipodean government, it just remains for them to admit it!
As for the Guardian....I look forward to seeing Monbiot and the rest claiming the social!
Perhaps a smidgen of good news will brighten your day amidst the snowy wastes?
"2010 in review: The year climate coverage 'fell off the map.' "
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2011/01/climate-coverage
Pointman
Bishop,
Please could I refer you and all the contributors and readers here to Greenie Watch. There is a very amusing 6.29 min cartoon spoof on our favourite subject.
Very amusing
Peter Walsh
Better still, here is the link
Peter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cdxaxJNs15s
Ah - the Australian floods... I knew the connection with 'global warming' was coming (patagon reports - courtesy of Reuters)...
Cue the AGW cry: 'The earth is only thirty years old and these are the worst floods EVAH...'
Except 1974
Except 1961
Except 1924
Except 1893
Except 1890
Except 1844
Except 1841
and so on...
I live in Brisbane on high ground. Brisbane is flooding and up to 20,000 properties will be under water by tomorrow. Our major dam is at 190% capacity and they had to release 600,000 megalitres yesterday to just keep it at that. 75% of Queensland has been declared a flood disaster area and that is roughly half a million square kilometres. This is not a disaster anywhere near the order of magnitude of the Boxing Day tsunami or the Haiti earthquake. However people have died and more bodies will be found when search and rescue can find them. They have been swept away.
Delingpole’s article (not written by him) was incorrect in many aspects. Certainly more dams should have been built even if they might have put pressure on the rare lesser spotted tadpole in the catchment area. The Greens of course and local landowners put an end to that and will continue to do so as long as the Greens exist. However more dams wouldn’t have stopped the current severe floods unless an unrealistic number had been built. They may have saved some properties but the rivers do need to flow.
Eventually the waters will recede, bodies will be buried, clean-ups will commence, money will be paid out or borrowed and people will start again. Strangely however, Australian climate scientists have been noticeably absent in the media during these floods. Not on television, newspaper or radio. Not a peep. They were queuing up to get their earnest dials on TV after the hot summer and tragic deaths of the Victorian bushfires. Solemn looks, hand clasping, oh dear, if you’d only listened to us. Of course, they’d predicted this warming and were more than happy to tell us about it.
So have their precipitation predictions had anything to do with their recent camera shyness? Possibly. Here’s Prof Tim Flannery in New Scientist in 2007 –
Here’s Dr David Jones from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in 2008 –
Note the precision in the probabilities. Very impressive. However, Dr Jones unfortunately appears to suffer from xenophobia. Here’s a communication from Prof Phil Jones (for it is he) gleefully relating in a Climategate email about our Dr David Jones –
So Global Warming causes droughts up until a week ago. No doubt they are working on a paper that proves that Global Warming can cause a flood now and then. A peer reviewed article in Nature will appear soon. Data freely available on request except of course to “anyone who has dealings with CA”. That’s the way science is done after all.
Seriously, these two have failed. Failed completely, utterly and abysmally with their climate predictions. After these terrible events abate, these people should be put in front of some sort of panel and held to account for their predictions and asked why they were so wrong. It won’t happen of course but why should anyone give two squirts of guinea pigs piss about their predictions for the future?
Am I pissed off about this? Yes, I am.
But at least a Nobel laureate is on top of it all –
FFS
@Atomic
'I've made it to Grauniad pre-moderation. I guess when they finally disappear behind a paywall, the CiFers can talk happily amongst themselves'
Just one final push and you can be banned altogether and join our growing band of dissenters.
An easy way is to misspell Moonbat's name. There may be others.
And by the time they get behind that paywall, it will be just Commissar Randerson discussing the end of the world with himself. More like the end of his continued employment as his readership disappears completely from all having been banned.
Grant B - $100 donation on its way to the Australian Red Cross
Here’s Dr David Jones from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in 2008 –
IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent… “Perhaps we should call it our new climate,” said the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones. January 4, 2008
The only uncertainty now was whether the changing pattern was “85 per cent, 95 per cent or 100 per cent the result of the enhanced greenhouse effect”
David Jones today:
""We've always had El Ninos and we've had natural variability but the background which is now operating is different," said David Jones, head of climate monitoring and prediction at the Australia Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne.
"The first thing we can say with La Nina and El Nino is it is now happening in a hotter world," he told Reuters, adding that meant more evaporation from land and oceans, more moisture in the atmosphere and stronger weather patterns.
"So the El Nino droughts would be expected to be exacerbated and also La Nina floods because rainfall would be exacerbated," he said, though adding it would be some years before any climate change impact on both phenomena might become clear."
David Jones believes that not only will Australia will get drier in a warming world it will also get wetter as well. How much does this guy get paid?
Slightly surprised that no one on the climate blogs, that I've noticed, has picked up on a very relevant development in medical research.
"Chivvied along by the UK's biggest charity, the Wellcome Trust, science funders from across the industrial world issued a joint statement that essentially said they expect the data generated by studies they fund to be shared. "
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/11/medical-research-data-sharing
Ironically this is welcomed by The Guardian.
I would have thought that funders of climate research will find it hard to justify not following suit if this development is successful. They would find it hard to argue that medical research is trivial even compared to the climate.
It is amazing how the UK's Met Office and the Australian BoM are getting their knickers twisted over the severe weather affecting both countries.
The Met Office now believes that in a warming world the UK will experience both less cold winters and more cold winters.
The Met Office also believes that in a warming world the UK will experience both less snowy and more snowy winters.
Australia's BoM believe that in a warming world Australia will both become drier and wetter.
These organisations are in danger of creating a climate paradox in this debate on climate change by making such contradictory statements in public. It will fuel public cynicism.
Does anyone know what "the enhanced greenhouse effect" is compared to an ordinary "greenhouse effect"?