Bishop Hill Piledriver
George Monbiot is upset that nobody has criticised the private weather forecasting firms for getting the long-range forecasts wrong.
The Met Office, like the BBC, is the subject of intense tabloid hostility, because it refuses to accept the consensus in the rightwing press that man-made climate change is a myth. Perversely, it prefers to rely on data. The incompetence of the Met Office and the superior skills of other forecasters are now part of the litany of climate change denial. Weather forecasting, in the hands of the press, has become a political science.
This has prompted a must-read analysis of Monbiot's history of politicisation of the weather from Climate Resistance's Ben Pile, including a timely reminder of Monbiot's hilarious argument that last winter's freeze was caused by global warming.
It's hard not to recall Monbiot's fulminations about libertarian astroturfing, an argument he advanced while helping to run the Campaign Against Climate Change - an astroturfing organisation.
He's some guy, that Monbiot.
Bishop Hill
Barry Woods notes that Monbiot's article uses the d-word:
That sleighbell winter? It's all part of climate change denial
Which is unfortunate, as they had said they were no longer going to use this offensive terminology.
Reader Comments (42)
Bish,
those being paid to write for the MSM seem to be stark raving mad. as someone who has only ever voted for leftwing parties, including Green, can u imagine how angry i get when the MSM ALWAYS tries to make the issue a rightwing conspiracy?
2 Dec: Minneapolis Star Tribune: James P. Lenfestey: The state of fear at the new year
The anti-climate-change crowd refuses to yield to the evidence…
I wondered where she (Republican gubernatorial aspirant Sue Jeffers ) got this nonsense, so I checked her website. There she promotes links to the Republican Party, the Tea Party, and a site called “Minnesotans for Climate Change,” which is linked regularly to Wattsupwiththat.com. Mystery solved — mad Anthony Watts is a major source for the misinformation she dumps on her listeners.
Watts is an anti-climate-science blogger with a background in television meteorology, not climate science. His mocking assertions have provided no end of fuel for climate-change “skeptics,” particularly his misguided alarms about records showing an upward trend in global temperatures…
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/otherviews/136455378.html
i give Monbiot credit for at least including "manmade" in his piece, but it's high time all advocates are forced to argue on behalf of their initial cause, "manmade global warming", and stop playing with the language, as well as the science.
Apart from Delingpole and Booker, I had not noticed any consensus in the right wing press (do two investigative reporters make a consensus?). Has Louise Grey suddenly changed sides without my noticing it?
@Phillip, people like George do not want a free press. Control the message.
To equate criticism of publicly funded with private commercial bodies shows that a free press is a danger to them.
Moonbat makes me sick. Some think him a litmus for change, as though endowed with some supernatural quality. To me he looks intensely partisan, a great player to the gallery, a bit thick and narrowly read.
Oh, and a typical London Pom desirous of dinner party approbation in Islington.
His pieces are usually devoid of citation (or dependent on websites with ironic names like Real Climate or Skeptical Science). They usually consist of assertions, dramatic (and false) counterpoint, with a dash of condescension.
He's been a successful columnist for years at The Grauniad. That, very simply, is all anyone needs to know.
Exactly what are we supposed to be denying?
Do we deny that the climate is never stable and constant, but always changes, always has and always will? No.
Do we deny that that climatically, the earth appears to be in the realm of a multitude of different cycles? No.
Do we deny that glacials are separated by interglacials, and within each there are periods of cooler or warmer climate? No.
Do we deny that the planet has been warming by virtue of the fact that we have been progressing through the latest interglacial, the Holocene? No.
Do we deny that, this being the case, it seems logical that the next glacial is on it's way and we are in the autumn of the Holocene? No.
Do we deny that CO2 has any effect on the climate? No, with reservations.
Do we deny that CO2 emitted by humanity has any effect on the climate, No, but with even more reservations.
Do we deny that trying to reduce this trace gas, this essential, life giving gas, is going to stop the next glaciation, and save the planet? Most emphatically, YES!
Jan 3, 2012 at 9:03 AM | pat:
Sorry Pat, it must be an age thing and lack of comprehension but I have parsed your comment umpteen times and cannot for the life of me get the sense of the point you are making. I'm pretty sure you left out a whole load of " " from your comment...
Do we deny that CO2 emitted by humanity has any effect on the climate? YES
(I love a good argument) Happy New Year!
You have to laugh, a really loud belly laugh.
George, sneaky thief of the truth that he is, is trying to have it both ways, initially he was part of the great consensus, 97% of scientists and the IPCC, with every humanities faculty in every western university [and or] under the sun - had decided in their infinite wisdom - that, AGW was undeniable and glory, did the world kneel before George and his cronies.
Well, the world can only be fooled some of the time and some of us were not fooled at all, thus the roles are reversed.
Now that the tide has turned, realism, cynicism and pure science has shown up the supposition of: MMCO2 = runaway global warming. George, bruised but preposterously unbowed, he has retreated into his bastion, now they [George and his claque] are the defenders of the truth [how the world rejoices], embattled by the evil right wing Tory press [what?] and in their redoubt, they rewrite history [again] - no change there then - eh George??
There's no denying it George.
Interesting comments from 'pat'.
What appears to be happening is that the warmists are are being forced back to their bedrock which is that something must be happening to climate and we're right.
Wrong: the new Phlogiston of 'back radiation' mixed with the new Lysenkoism has had its day and is now being ritually slaughtered, bit by bit ,like the rogue Colonel is Apocalypse Now.
Those of my age will remember the theme tune The End by the Doors.
Is this the same "George" who spat his dummy out with the first release of the emails?
@mydogsgotnonose... Only Genesis references are allowed on this site.
Thanks to Leo Hickman for the following Guardian link, about the use of language, denial, etc..
It is good to see that by the Guardian's definition, I do NOT know a single Denier....
I wonder if George Monbiot agrees with that Guardian definition..
Guardian extract:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/climate-change-scepticism-style-guide
"I'm reluctant to lay down strict rules in such a sensitive area, at least before taking further soundings both within the Guardian and among our readers. But some tentative conclusions:
• Rather than opening itself to the charge of denigrating people for their beliefs, a fair newspaper should always try to address what it is that people are sceptical about or deny.
• The term sceptics covers those who argue that climate change is exaggerated, or not caused by human activity.
• If someone really does think that climate change is not happening – that the world is not warming – then it seems fair enough to call them a denier (and I'd love them to explain to me why comma butterflies are flying north to Scotland, for the first time in history, as fast as their jagged little wings will take them).
--------------------------
It is a total straw man argument, a denier is someone that denies that climate change has happened at all, be it, natural or man made. I don't KNOW anybody that thinks this!!!!
----------------
yet the Guardian, has a George Monbiot photo hall of deniers shame... None of whom, are deniers by the Guardian's own definition....
Guardain: Monbiots Top Ten Climate Change Deniers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/mar/06/climate-change-deniers-top-10
thus, Monbiot is using politicised rhetoric to stifle any debate.
The Moonbat is a poseur, driven by having gone to a school which because it is middle of the road Common Entrance marks is not renowned for being academic, desperately trying to create new bandwagons to lead.
I love the idea that a butterfly expanding its range is per se evidence of global warming.
I'm not at all sure that polygonia c-album is capable of telling the difference between an average temperature of 14.5C and one of 15.1C. I certainly can't.
Is it possible that the increased level of CO2 over the last 200 years has led to a more robust habitat or that land use changes over the last 20-30 years have had a similar effect?
I think I would like the opinion of a lepidopterist.
"I love the idea that a butterfly expanding its range is per se evidence of global warming"
Mike, when the Scottish butterfly flaps its wings it could cause climate chaos on a planetary scale. Geddit? (A woman once called me a lepidopterist, or at least I think that's what she said.....).
Now, I must stop wasting time and start work.
Climate science is awash with proxies. When someone calls me a denier I merely take it as a proxy, a metric of their own stupidity and that the confidence levels are narrow.
I recently attended a local government meeting on how climate change would affect our council area. On stage a Uni sociologist and two NGO types. I managed to get in three questions before I was gagged.
1. How is the temperature at the north pole measured? What is its temporal variation and how is it ground truthed? (we have an obsession with the Arctic down here, no doubt you are obsessed with Antartica up north).
2. Did the MWP exhibit higher global temperatures than now? If not, how can you demonstrate it? If so, what caused it.
3. Why do you think that people become ever so slightly jaundiced when they are told that global warming causes both droughts and floods in Australia?
No answers other than piffle about "the consensus". Afterwards one of the NGO types approached me, said as her opening gambit that I was a "denier" and asked for my scientific qualifications. I told her and asked for hers. "I'm a lawyer who works on climate change issues". QED. End of story. With that she turned on her scrapers and flounced off.
Oh well, never mind and she did have a pretty decent set of knockers.
Roger
You do that. I need your tax money for my pension. :-)Perhaps Monbiot is right to claim that private weather forecasting companies get less criticism over mistakes than does the Met Office. If, however, the customers of a private weather forecasting company are dissatisfied with its predictions they can take their business elsewhere. We are all (in the UK anyway), through our taxes, customers of the Met Office and that won't change even if British taxpayers are dissatisfied with the Met Office's work.
Jan 3, 2012 at 10:00 AM | Old Goat
As is known (yes, I'm usually chided for saying what everybody knows), there's lots of genera and species of 'deniers'.
Lomborg, for instance, is branded a sceptic (must be the family), but he swallows the CAGW conjecture wholesale (genus? Tribe?). Instead, he says that we can't do a thing about it and we'd better spend the money in useful things (species?). From there up, there's all sorts of sceptics and lukewarmers. One thing is certain: climate does change.
Maybe a taxonomy of sceptics would be interesting. Climatosceptology. We could start our own new journal.
@ Roger
when the Scottish butterfly flaps its wings it could cause climate chaos on a planetary scale.
I'm aware that you're not meaning this to be taken literally, but this particular example of chaotic systems has always seemed to me to be totally bogus (in the John Major sense, not the Bill and Ted sense).
If a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil really could cause a tsunami in Japan (or whatever), wouldn't that also have to mean that someone bumping into me on the Tube could cause you to have a heart attack?
@ Josualdo
Such a taxonomy has been attempted before - see http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/1/6/climate-cuttings-48.html for instance.
The ecofascists will refuse to concede that such a taxonomy exists. On the ecofascist side there is exactly one permissible view, and if you don't hold it, then you're a denier. Lomborg is a good example of this. It is this intolerance for any plurality of view that marks ecofascism out as a leftist movement.
J4R
And to pursue it one step further, this is the reason why CAGW is political and not scientific.
Lomborg is a good example: he accepts the CAGW meme but claims there is nothing that can be done about it. (Actually I'm not sure to what extent he accepts the 'catastrophic' bit but that's not important).
The eco-fascists or eco-Luddites or enviro-mentalists do not by and large accept the 'catastrophic' bit — if they really, really did they would not live the lifestyle they do — but want us all to do something about it.
It's not a great leap of deduction then to conclude that global warming is only an excuse for something else and long experience tells us that the ultimate aim is "world domination" or something very akin to it.
Where is James Bond when you need him?
George Monbiot is the very epitome of hypocrisy. I well recall an article he wrote accusing sceptics of astroturfing. Yet as one comment from Peter Jackson (with a very impressive 2678 recommendations) pointed out -
"Every day, I receive an email from the Campaign Against Climate Change, an organisation of which George Monbiot is honorary president. This email provides links to articles and blogposts sceptical about anthropogenic global warming, and encourages opponents to post critical comments.
The signup page for this astroturfing operation is here"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/dec/13/astroturf-libertarians-internet-democracy
All I can say is that George has rather a short memory. This is the MO that predicted a warm winter, followed by a barbecue summer, and then another warm winter, none of which came to pass. It then folded its arms and announced that long-range forecasting was too difficult, but could not resist predicting a cold winter this time, presumably on the belated realisation that the warming had stopped.
IIRC, Piers Corbyn predicted the last two cold winters several months in advance, and got some of the specific dates almost exactly right, using about a millionth of the resources.
"...One day we'll return here, when the Moonbat child sings again..."
“lepidopterist”
Those of you as old as me, or at least with a penchant for old films, may remember Professor Jimmy Edwards proclaiming to a sceptical audience that ‘Lepidoptera’ was derived from the Greek for butter, lepi and fly, doptera.
It fixed it in my mind, anyway.
Lomborg is a good example: he accepts the CAGW meme but claims there is nothing that can be done about it. (Actually I'm not sure to what extent he accepts the 'catastrophic' bit but that's not important).
He accepts the case for man made global warming but thinks that other problems have a higher priority. eg. we should spend our money solving Sub Saharan Malaria rather than to mitigate AGW.
J4R,
Please do not bump into anyone on the tube! With my smoking, drinking and red meat diet I am too vulnerable to take chances, and I need to pay my taxes for Mike's pension.
But you make an interesting point about the "butterfly effect". As a physicist, I know that if I cause a single extra molecule of CO2 to be added to the atmosphere it will have an effect. What measurable effect will it have - SFA.
I have generally found chaos theory to be completely useless. For example, in aerodynamics it can not predict the onset of turbulence. In climate modelling "scientists" go to extraordinary lenghts to model "back radiation" phenomena, whilst virtually ignoring conductive and convective effects (as well as phase changes of dihydrogen monoxide). As convective effects involve turbulent flow they can not be properly modelled. And, incidentally, climate models can neither be verified nor validated.
For over a hundred years the gas laws and the laws of thermodynamics have held us in good stead. These, when applied to the Earth (insolation, rotation, gravity and bulk atmospheric chemistry) tell us all that we need to know:
What measurable difference does anthropogenic CO2 (a small fraction of the 0.04% in the atmosphere) have on the climate of the planet? - SFA
Rant over.
TDK
Then I am in excellent company. I have making the same argument about malaria and clean water and sanitation and polio and ...... for several years.
If we spent more time and effort and money doing what we can do and wasted less time and effort and money on paying attention to the eco-idiots who keep demanding we do things that we cannot do and they know we cannot do simply because they have a very limited understanding of how the world works, then said world would be a better place.
We could start with cheap energy and I don't care if it pumps more CO2 into the atmosphere because it will make us all better off and long before CO2 levels reach a point where they are dangerous to human beings we will have solved the next energy problem because we will have the time and the will and (above all) the wealth to devote ourselves to that quest.
And if CO2 turns out to be a problem — which it hasn't done yet except in the musings of Greenies and the models of climatologists and their useful idiots — we will no doubt find an acceptable way of solving that problem as well.
As mankind has done successfully for millenia. As someone pointed out the other day (yet again): the Stone Age did not come to an end because we ran out of stones and the same applies to the Iron Age and the Bronze Age and will also to the Oil Age.
UNLESS we allow the eco-fools and the panic merchants to impoverish us to the extent that we are no longer able to devote the time and resources to research what needs to be researched.
The inevitable result of allowing Greenies (especially the Moonbat) their own way will be to exacerbate any problems we may have. These idiots are emphatically not part of the solution to what may face the future of mankind.
Roger
"What measurable difference does anthropogenic CO2 (a small fraction of the 0.04% in the atmosphere) have on the climate of the planet? - SFA"
In a nutshell.
http://www.southwestscotland-butterflies.org.uk/species/butterflies/comma.shtml
Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
"As someone pointed out the other day (yet again): the Stone Age did not come to an end because we ran out of stones and the same applies to the Iron Age and the Bronze Age and will also to the Oil Age."
Totally and utterly OT, but I've read a suggestion that the Bronze age DID end cos we ran out of it, or at least, disruption to trade routes created a tin shortage. (Apparently, there's some mystery to why it ended - as, using methods available at the time, iron was no better than high quality bronze, but was much more difficult to work - hence the guy pounding away at an anvil.) I thought it was an interesting thought - though it may not be the consensus view.
James - I recall seeing a flint working in Suffolk and IIRR there are claims that there were trade routes in flint too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimes_Graves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9th_millennium_BC
Monboit is the King of the d-word he was trying has hard as he could to create links between AGW skeptics and Holocaust deniers and long with a whole load of other childish insults, like linking people who fly to pedophiles , back in the 'good old days' for the AGW faithful . He is little more than school yard bully that CIF allows to attack who he likes ,how he likes and they hid behind the mods when the going gets rough . I can't see any reason to cut him any slack , especially has his proved he cuts none for others .
Found in the comments at Guardian of all places, probably where 10:10 and Katie Hahoe get their 300,000 figure from;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/9224943
the estimated 300,000 people a year already dying as a result of AGW
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/29/1
The 300,000 people referred to are alive and living in poverty due to funds being diverted from poverty relief to climate change mitigation. The Global Humanitarian Forum, which invented the figure of 300,000 deaths, is unfortunately deceased, havig been killed by ridicule when it was pointed out that its report was pure fantasy
James Evans @ Jan 3, 2012 at 5:34 PM
Interesting, one butterfly doth not augur the onset of catastrophic man made climate change but George thinks it does.
@Jan 3, 2012 at 6:00 PM
As to the demise of the Bronze age era, a lot of factors, climate was one I think.................. and Hekla possibly the cause. Thus, post a major eruption, poor climate and cold wet weather affecting crop yields which causes; disease, starvation and then the inevitable raids and wars, ransacking of towns and terrible disruption. Therefore, all that destruction did probably presage the collapse of the Bronze [Circa1200 BC] age cultural and industrial centres in the eastern Mediterranean. And of course, the consequent disruption to trade links and routes.................no good Bronze weapons [did the Hittite forges and smithies 'corner' the market? -maybe] on the market, cometh the Iron smiths of the north....... fascinating................but it's all doubtful conjecture.
"I love the idea that a butterfly expanding its range is per se evidence of global warming.
I'm not at all sure that polygonia c-album is capable of telling the difference between an average temperature of 14.5C and one of 15.1C."
Me too. Of course the really interesting thing is that these butterflies can measure the Global average temperature. How else could they be sure that it was climate change and not some local variation?
We struggle to do that with thousands of sensors, satellites and scientists etc. How much cleverer must the average butterfly be?
If, on the other hand, they are reacting to a local variation then AGW, surely, is not the cause.
Extrapolating, is this not true for all species, including jelly fish, Scottish sheep, coral reefs and Mann's trees? If they cannot determine a global average temperature how can they react to it?
"Which is unfortunate, as they had said they were no longer going to use this offensive terminology."
But who believed them? You know how to tell if a Greenie is lying? HIs/her lips are moving.
@Mike Jackson
And if you add this "evidence" to that which I heard on local CBC radio this morning, to the effect that the hummingbird count - a mere few miles away from me (and come to think of it I was rather surprised to see some outside my window a few days ago!) - is a sure sign of "global warming", we're obviously doomed!
Between such a dismal realization - and the prospect of having to spend most of my day reinstalling all my apps on an XP box [that I don't want to surrender] that indecently decided not to reboot 'cuz it couldn't find the NTLDR on the afternoon of New Years eve - it was enough to make me want to go back to bed and stay there ;-)
Hilary Ostrov
Perhaps you should do as I do -- enjoy the butterflies and hummingbirds and relish the warm weather their little wing beats herald.
And as for the NTLDR issue, I learned years ago to buy a USB mounted HD and routinely clone my boot disk to it with ACRONIS or a similar utility. That way you simply swap in the new disk without spending a day surrounded by application installation DVDs and CDs.
Alternatively, a dram of a good single malt Scotch might help.
Actually I do all three. Does wonders for the blood pressure, it does. :)
@Don Pablo de la Sierra
Now you tell me! So where were you when I needed this advice (particularly the bit about the single malt Scotch!)?
But thanks :-)
I had a giggle at these two posts, one from a sceptic and seems to me to be entirely pleasant in its tone....
"CheshireRed
2 January 2012 08:54PM
After all these 20 odd years of Climate-change doom, can you avail us George of what, precisely, has actually gone catastrophically wrong as a proven consequence of 0.004% of earth's atmosphere being CO2?
Have ocean levels really been rising above the 150 year norm? Nope.
Have the oceans been warming recently - you know, inline with the significant increase of human-emitted CO2 that's causing all the fuss? Erm, the Argo bouys - all 3,000 of them, say not.
Ok, what about surface temperatures on the 30% of earth that isn't covered in water; rocketing temperatures then? Er, no again. Nothing for years, despite that increase in CO2.
Ok, then what about proof of the theory that CO2 drives temperatures, surely you have that? Hold on, it appears not, as report after report after report clearly and unambiguously shows temperatures rise, followed by CO2 increases later. You're theory of CO2 causing excess warming is flat-out upside-down on its arse wrong.
I could mention the lack of observed evidence to support positive feedbacks (which are crucial to your AGW alarmist stance) the rebound of Arctic ice, the 30-year satellite record Antarctic ice extent, the explosion of polar bear numbers or the clear corruption of the IPCC, and the acknowledged manipulation and 'adjustments' of climate data, but you know what, that's just going too far.
A knock-out is a knock-out is a knock-out.
AGW has failed. It is a busted, failed, exposed as fraudulent flush. And no, I'm not paid by Big Oil, I'm just using my own eyes to see what is so obvious, yet you George, will not.
Happy New Year, fella."
And then the reply from Moonbat;
"GeorgeMonbiot
2 January 2012 09:02PM
Response to CheshireRed, 2 January 2012 08:54PM
I'm sure you've missed out some discredited zombie myths from this catalogue, but I can't immediately think of any."
And these cultists have the gaul to say that its climate sceptics that are stinking up the debate with their course, rude, insensitivity! :)
Mailman