Friday
Sep022011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Haunting the back issues
Sep 2, 2011 Climate: WG2 Climate: WG3 Barry Woods is doing an excellent impression of the now-silent-again Haunting the Library. Barry has been trawling back issues of the newspapers for global warming predictions and has come up with this:
The UK is to be hit by regular malaria outbreaks, fatal heatwaves and contaminated drinking water within five years because of global warming, the Government has warned the NHS.
It warns that there is a high likelihood of a major heatwave, leading to as many as 10,000 deaths, hitting the UK by 2012.
Following a major consultation with climate change scientists, the Government is issuing official advice to hospitals, care homes and institutions for dealing with rising temperatures, increased flooding, gales and other major weather events.
Reader Comments (19)
And if you actually bother to read the article, you can see it says that the chance of a severe heatwave, in the South East of England by 2012, is 1 in 40.
Further perusal, shows that most of the sensationalism in Andrew's header, comes from, er, Andrew.
Anyone have links to the advice for local government and business for winter time preparation now that it is September?
Six years ago, the United Nations issued a dramatic warning that the world would have to cope with 50 million climate refugees by 2010. But now that those migration flows have failed to materialize, the UN has distanced itself from the forecasts. On the contrary, populations are growing in the regions that had been identified as environmental danger zones.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,757713,00.html
@ZDB
The sensational text is lifted directly from the article - the title and first paragraphs, the author of which was Rosa Prince, not Andrew.
And your reference to a 1 in 40 risk? That's the whole point, scarey headlines and political decisions are made on such minimal risk, by people who themselves rarely 'bother to read the article'.
AGW scepticism is led by the very people who actually bother to read and investigate the detail.
Re:
trollZedIf you read the article then you would have also read
What is sensationalist about "Haunting the back issues"?
BTW, I attended the 'clandestine' Fred Singer meeting in Brussels (well just outside due to censorship) yesterday evening. About 25 attendees in what seemed to be a solicitor's office in a quiet backstreet. A lot of white hair, but there were a young man and lady aged around 20. I thought maybe they were Greenpeace spies, but they joined in enthusiastically in the applause. Singer was interesting, and great to see, but I think not much new for most of us. Some good examples of some 'slight of hand' presentation of the data and statistics by IPCC. Second talk by Swedish academic Claes Johnson was interesting. Main new idea for me was the argument that greenhouse gases can not re-radiate heat back to the Earth surface. Black box radiation theory (and experiment) shows that a cooler body can not radiate heat to a warmer body. I think they were filiming a live stream for the internet, but not sure it would have come over too well. Singer was not using slides much of the time, and the overall format was very informal.
Maybe those not understanding how headline statistics are being misused to scare the hell out of us for ulterior motives should take a look at what Prof Spiegelhalter has to say.
http://understandinguncertainty.org/
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.
(Alex Pope)
I thought we had all agreed not to feed the troll?
Hey Zed, you missed this bit:
"However, fewer old people are expected to die each year from cold, as climate change leads to warmer winters."
And when did mystic Prof. Bob Maynard of the Health Protection Agency divine these ludicrous predictions? Er, February 2008.
In the unlikely event he's on performance-related pay then we're be expecting a refund.
@TerryS and Oakwood and SNTF
Please see Peter Walsh at 10.35am on post "Stripping the Land Bare" for advisory response to trolling.
And please try it.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate, with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
Re oakwood 8.15AM
A thought experiment about radiation: Body A, hotter and Body B, cooler, more or less adjacent, clear weather in between. Total radiation from A per unit two dimensional angle is ‘a’, likewise from B is ‘b’. And let’s say ‘a’ > ‘b’.
Surely in climate science, if you are doing sums, what matters is ‘a’ – ‘b’? If you count all the radiation from A then you must count all the radiation from B, so what is left is ‘a’-‘b’ going from A to B. You cannot say A radiates ‘a’ and ‘b’, being cooler, does not radiate. Cheat. (Does this actually happen in the complexities of academic research? By mistake?) If you like, you could say A, being hotter, radiates ‘a’-‘b’ and B does not radiate. Bit wobbly, perhaps, but OK.
0 or 10 out of 10? No multi-syllabic words please.
The article in The Telegraph is based on a report from the UK Department of Health. The full report is available via
http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_080702
Contributors to the report are listed on p.7 of the pdf, and include Myles Allen.
I have not read the 124-page report. The Executive Summary, though, states that “tick-borne diseases are likely to become more common in the UK, but this will be more likely to be due to changes in land use and leisure activities than to climate change”.
Messenger: I have posted on this a few times, and thanks for the link to Peter's excellent post.
It bears restatement: the troll adds nothing to any discussion, and the only way to deal with her (short of unmasking, if anyone has any ideas) is to send her to Coventry. The reason I had not seen Peter's post was that when I came to the thread I thought "uh oh, 40 odd posts, must be troll attack, skip this one".
Each and every reply to a troll represents the troll successfully masquerading as a sentient and reasonable human wishing to join in a rational discussion, and is a win for the troll and a loss for the site. Posters are manipulated by their own courtesy, desire to educate and willingness to engage in reasoned argument. The troll has none of these qualities, and in fact as we have all seen has no reasoned arguments at all, just ad hom, obfuscation, denial and green propaganda. Her intention is to disrupt and prevent discussion and in this she succeeds brilliantly, which is why she keeps coming back.
Yet again I urge everybody, Bish included, to starve the troll for the sake of the site.
Re: Messenger
I missed that comment, thanks for pointing it out.
ZDB are you also known as Ms Ward of Truro?
Bishop,
I see The Troll is winning. I don't know about others, but I'm getting fed up. Is it not time to take the steps suggested by Peter Walsh and myself, banishing The Troll to its own thread?
Phil D, very well said. I have also starting ignoring threads where the number of comments exceeds around 20 as it's pretty well certain to be due to ZDB or Hengist destroying any hope of sensible conversation. Such a shame.
The trolls will not win if we ignore them. Don't let them try and ruin this blog. Don't address them any more.
Well, who does feed the troll? I am sure that the troll is fed by an organisation. Perhaps it's a joint effort on behalf of all those who benefit from the largesse provided to so many by the AGW gravytrain. Paid for by all of us. Every time a troll appears, let us just ask - WHO IS PAYING YOU? What unscrupulous robber baron driving the AGW scaremongering do you serve?