Bishop Hill Disaster! Calamity! Horror, shock and awe!
Jan 22, 2013 Climate: WG2 As if in glorious harmony with President Obama's renewed interest in climate change, a couple of articles have appeared selling the "AGW leads to weather extremes" story.
At The Conversation, the Australian website for activist academics, there is an article by Harry Blutstein of the School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning at RMIT University.
Hurricane Sandy may or may not be a direct result of climate change, but what is certain is that the incidence of extreme climate events is increasing.
Such events are predicted by climate models, according to the IPCC, which has warned that “a changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration, and timing of extreme weather and climate events, and can result in unprecedented extreme weather and climate events”.
I think the claim that extreme climate events are increasing is not one that is supported by the evidence. The article goes on report on that rather dodgy Munich Re report on extremes that appeared at the back end of last year.
Meanwhile the New York Times is in full fire-and brimstone mode:
More than a 2-degree increase should be unimaginable. Yet to stop at 2 degrees, global emissions have to peak in 2016. The Carbon Tracker organization has examined fossil-fuel investments around the world (including 1,200 new coal plants) and determined that they would lead to a 6-degree world. A recent World Bank report indicates the bank cannot fulfill its development mission in a 4-degree world. Given what we know about planetary biology, 2 degrees seems nightmarish as it is.
Anyone would think they had something to sell.
Reader Comments (36)
You know Gaia tends to not play along with the AGW lots claims, 2013 could well be a year of duds in "extreme" weather event's and we would be getting told that the non "extreme" weather was in line with predictions.
Problem is for those stressing about coal, is that 2/3rds of those coal power stations plannned are in China and India....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/picture/2012/nov/20/which-countries-most-coal-power?intcmp=239
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/20/coal-plants-world-resources-institute
And most of the other third are Non-Kyoto countries aswell
except for a Germany and POland, which is streessing Bryony Worthington..
Energy reality is actching up with the world. greens ares till handwaving, and shouting abuse at the messengers (ie at Prof Dieter Helm - Economist - The Carbon Crunch)
Wow. So many falsehoods in such a small article. Is it a new record?
As the estimable Dr Pielke would say: Bullshit.
Not so much selling as begging for money. From the end of the article
The writing is very sub-par.
They just can't resist trotting this twaddle out, can they..?
There is a Harry Blutstein who describes hinself as a " freelance journalist and author".
http://harryblutstein.com/
He appears to be only an adjunct professor who had workd for the EPA
Can't see why anyone would read his work.
Harumph - hyperbole overdrive there sir:-)
Reading the NYT.................."Carbon tracker organization" and "A recent World Bank report indicates" what utter guff - do they actually pay journos to write this sad, sanctimonious bilge? Or, do enviro' students/greenpeace activists send in essays which are then sent to print?
According to the insurance industry, costs will go up in the future due to climate change.
Therefore, they need to raise rates now, in order to cover those higher expenses in the future.
What mechanisms have they proposed to refund those extra premiums if climate change doesn't end up costing them more money?
Oh - they haven't? Fancy that.
Time to trot out the newspaper circulation figures for the UK to show that print media is dieing a quick death.
http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/1154699/NEWSPAPER-ABCs-Interactive-national-figures-September-2012/
It'll warm your cockles to know that second to last is the Gaudy, last place is no more snow Independant. The Political Elite with their tame media may think they can news speak the public but their getting tierd and bored of these hacks.
And from 2010 the numbers just don't seem to add up? http://www.guardian.co.uk/advertising/demographic-profile-of-guardian-readers
The irony is that Blutstein's claim that "what is certain is that the incidence of extreme climate events is increasing" is directly contradicted by the IPCC SREX document he links to in the next sentence!
On extreme events, the SREX says "There is low confidence in any observed long-term (i.e., 40 years or more) increases in tropical cyclone activity", and "There is medium confidence that some regions of the world have experienced more intense and longer droughts", and nothing certain at all.
Paul, when do facts get in the way of a 'good' story
When you see an alarmist uncritically praising a big business concern because it just so happens to have signed up to their alarmism then I think you can almost always say you've spotted a hypocrite.
After reading that Harry Blutstein paean to the Insurance industry I thought it would be fun to see what he had to say about bankers, and while it is not scientific the top hit for Harry Blutstein bankers is this example:
Two Faced Bankers
That opinion may be fair enough but it seems inconsistent that while bankers are seen by him as money grubbers only responsible to their shareholders, on the other hand, the big international insurers are uncritically hailed as pure of heart and bastions of good intent when they say that premiums are only rising because of the inevitability of coming climate change extremes.
Just another hypocrite, the drivelling field is full of them.
In the build-up to the Rio conference last June, we were all encouraged to “connect the dots” between CO2 in the atmosphere and incidents of extreme weather around the world. The claim is that rising CO2 is causing global warming, and that global warming causes more extreme weather (floods, droughts, heat waves, cold snaps, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.). This claim has been repeated so often that many people accept it without any examination of the logic and facts supporting it.
First, it should be noted that all statistical measures of extreme weather show that such incidents have not been increasing with the rise in temperature apparently observed in the last part of the 20th century. Our awareness of such events is greatly heightened by modern media and hype, but in fact warming has not produced more extreme weather.
The claim is also contrary to global warming theory, which asserts that temperatures should rise more in polar and mid-tropical regions than near the equator. Since storms are the result of temperature differences, greater warming of cold regions should reduce frequency and severity of storms, and in fact that has been the observation.
Now that the warming has halted since 1998, we may well see cooler, rather than warmer temperatures in the future. In that event, the arctic may well become colder, and extreme weather increase as a result. But the change will be due to global cooling, not warming, and will be in spite of any increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. So, warming does not drive extreme weather, either in theory or in fact—that connection is disproved.
It is also not proven that rising CO2 causes global warming. In the last 15 years, CO2 has continued to rise, while temperature measures have been flat. Historically, ice cores show that changes in CO2 follow temperature changes, and not the other way around.
The dots do not connect as claimed.
Blutstein's linked-in profiles don't mention RMIT. Is his disclosure statement accurate?
"Such events are predicted by climate models, according to the IPCC, which has warned that “a changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, ...... "
So, IPCC does NOT predict an increase in frequency then.
But note how the British Scientific community that Julia Slingo, using taxpayers time and money, had sign a petition defending the CRU are staying schtum and letting this nonsense go out unchallenged..
Does anybody have any actual evidence of a weather event of any kind which has taken place since the claimed onset of CO2 AGW which has been unprecedented in the pre-AGW record? Any kind at all? Perhaps someone with better statistics skills than I can quantify this, but would we not expect in a situation of unprecedented warming outside of natural variation that there would be bound to be unprecedented events? IMHO the "extreme weather" claim falls on that point alone, there are no new absolute records, and there must be if it were true.
This highlights a totally unexploited genre of "communication" avaible to arlamists:
I suspect that this is response to an article on the Watts Up With That? (a site that seems to be a particular thorn in the side of climate extremists): http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/21/2012-ranks-54th-in-extreme-weather-events/. Apparently, 2012 ranked 54th of extreme weather events (the clue being in the title) in the last 100 years. Of course, this information can be twisted to mean – ta-da! – that it was the TOP year in 46 years! Quite frightening, really.
He's just shaking the gourds and pointing the bones that Al Gore unearthed in the museum at Divinity School. Insofar as that is racist, I deplore me. Nature is surer but slower than these rascals with their silver tongues and daggers.
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This morning as I was driving through the country lanes into town it was -5, as got into town it was -3.
The 2 degree rise was truly nightmarish....it's just the shape of things to come.
As an aside - I have to say top marks to the teenage girl I saw cycling through the snow, whilst simultaneously smoking a cigarette and talking on a mobile phone, it was a wonder to behold. While humanity is that ingenious it'll take more than a 2 degree change in temperature to see us off!
If the AMO has peaked, get ready for a lot of extremes. Of cold.
Face the bitter front
In concert with brittle friends.
Bicycling lassie.
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"As an aside - I have to say top marks to the teenage girl I saw cycling through the snow, whilst simultaneously smoking a cigarette and talking on a mobile phone, it was a wonder to behold. While humanity is that ingenious it'll take more than a 2 degree change in temperature to see us off!"
Jan 22, 2013 at 3:14 PM | Buck
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In New York a few years back, we witnessed a young woman of impeccable NY chic, walking down the pavement with a mobile device in each hand, both being keyed into. Only in New York. Also, in Bristol some years ago, wandering across the park from the pub, to go and watch Bristol City play, and slowing to watch one of the local football league games that take place in said park; a mobile phone goes off, and one team's winger reaches into his shorts' pockets, and barrels off down the wing whilst conversing on it.
Times have changed...
I am no scientist, God knows, and still find electricity magical beyond words. This video, however, I found rather alarming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vb9R0x_0NQ
Off topic but in reply to my FOI
The BBC contested an FOI request by Mr Tony Newbery for details of attendees
at the BBC's 2006 Climate Change - the Challenge to Broadcasting seminar.
Please disclose all the expenses incurred by the BBC in contesting the FOI
request, including legal advice, barrister's fees, court fees..etc.
The BBC says their legal costs were £ 18,665 plus VAT £4,091
6 degrees? Does he say by when? That is really a prediction for the books, should join the famous Independent piece about snow in the UK becoming a rare and amazing event. Right.
The World Bank? The World Bank? FFS, what do a bunch of "bankers" know about science, they seem to know SFA about economics judging by the state of the global economy! Bankers indeed! Whatever next, was it not Lehman Brothers who 4 years ago published a couple of reports based on Gorean science & Hansenesque fantasies about the state of the global climate by 2100 yet they couldn't foretell their own financial demise 12 months ahead! Bankers indeed! :-s!
@Alan
I'm sure you meant a wunch of ...... Oh, never mind.
cirby at 12:57pm
I think you are being a bit unfair there - there is considerable cost in unblocking a frozen WC!!!! /sarc off
Leopard:
When you see an alarmist uncritically praising a big business concern because it just so happens to have signed up to their alarmism then I think you can almost always say you've spotted a hypocrite.
But these stitchbrains are running an
environmentalprotection racket.Unlike the Krays, their method is to slag off those who don't pay, and laud those that do.
Alan the Brit, I think the idea may be that bankers are now seen by the public as more trustworthy than climate scientists.
@ michel Jan 22, 2013 at 4:59 PM
"6 degrees? Does he say by when? That is really a prediction for the books, should join the famous Independent piece about snow in the UK becoming a rare and amazing event. Right."
The UK's DECC, on its "Facts about climate change", predicts:
Average global temperatures may rise between 1.1°C and 6.4°C above 1990 levels by the end of this century.
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/tackling/explaining/explaining.aspx
The train at platform 9 3/4 is the 12:55 gravy train to the promised land of unlimited funding. Would all passengers please deposit their decency, honesty and integrity in the bins provided before boarding.
I've just read all the comments...Bicycling Kim in top gear again!
I really thought the low point of the day's news was Attenborough flying his Malthusian colours in the DT.
Sad bugger.
Buck - yep - they truly do have amazing powers, these teenage cyclists...
Seen during the summer in Cambridge - young chap in a hoodie (hood up - it was about 25C - so no peripheral vision) - no hands - on his mobile - cycling straight through a red light...
Now, you and me would have been hit by a car, right..?