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Reader Comments (49)
Good luck. Hope it all goes well for you. Will you be letting your fans know how it went?
Ditto
Well there is little doubt but that the IPCC has replenished the sceptical armoury
so you should be fully equiped to go into battle if necessary.
Good luck.
Good whilst its quiet good excuse for an open thread Friday
Bob Geldof in the Telegragh today "mankind will be extinct within 15 years due to Climate Change "
Bit like Bob Geldofs music career for the last 30 years.
Wonder if hes got an opinion on Red Eds Dead Red Dad.
Here's that Geldorf story.
and from GWPF a bit of a tiff between Osborne and Davey and there is mention of the trougher king Deben
http://www.thegwpf.org/uk-government-deadlocked-post-2020-climate-policy/
However, Sir Bob then disappeared down a philosophical route that baffled most of the audience, many of whom do not count English as a first language. “The ordinary trouble of ordinary days doesn't seem to matter much,” he sighed. “We are in the great existential age of our humanity. We somehow feel we've missed something's that’s greater than ourselves and we don't know what it is or how to find it.”
Sounds like the lyrics of one of his most pretentious songs.
Break a leg Bish!
Good news Bish. The more people who hear the sceptic viewpoint the better.
Re the Geldof thing, I wonder why people like him think that that kind of hysteria helps? Casual examination of the science shows no such thing or even anything close. Common sense should rule it out since it's 25 years after Hansen did his infamous alarmist speech and over a decade since there was any warming at all. How much climate deterioration has Geldof experienced in his entire life? If I was a warmist I’d wonder if some oil company way paying celebrities to make greenies look like mumbling idiots.
And does the hypocrisy of talking about CO2 reduction to a crowd of Africans not ring any bells, or did Sir Bob walk there? It’s not like he could explain how to cut CO2 because he’s clearly never tried it. I seriously start to wonder if CAGW appeals to the chronically dumb.
I can't remember who wrote this (not me, thanks if it was you), but the AR5 '95% confidence' figure reminded me of it:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Right, and they were 95% certain that in the 1970s that we were heading for an ice age, or in the ’80s they were 95% certain that we were headed for much of the world being under water by now.
Their own words:
“If present trends continue, the world will be about eleven degrees colder by the year 2000.” -Kenneth Watt, Earth Day 1970
“Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.” -Noel Brown, ex UNEP Director, 1989
“[in twenty years {2008}] the West Side Highway [and thus much of Manhattan] will be under water.” -James Hansen, 1988, NASA
"[Inaction will cause]… by the turn of the century [2000], an ecological catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust.” -Mustafa Tolba, 1982, ex Executive Director of the UN Environment Program
As someone said:
Enough with the never ending predictions of doom already!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
And a good place to spread the word! I do hope the Bish gets his message over. Will be interesting if he and can report back on the other presentations. I have always had this niggling thought that AGW being classed as "irrefutable settled science" is a message that received a very "warm" welcome from the insurance industry.
International Underwriting Association International Underwriting Association
"Catastrophe Modelling Catastrophe Risk Management 2013 Friday 4th October 2013"
"Global warming: better than we thought?"
Andrew Montford, Writer, commentator, global warming sceptic
Here
Unthreaded ........................
Here we have "The Ecologist" spitting feathers about the impact of wind farms on raptors and how the RSPB has worked with its partners to have a law passed prohibiting the construction of wind farms. How ironic that the law has been passed in Bulgaria and not the UK. Where is the RSPB when you need the organisation to be paying attention to our own backyard? Oops - I forgot, they support windmills in the UK....................
http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/1862176/the_hidden_conservation_costs_of_renewable_energy.html
Quote
Though a move to sustainable forms of energy is an ecological necessity, its implementation functions like any other industry. Renewable energy companies are drawn to these remote areas because land is cheap, human habitation scarce and natural resources plentiful. The burden of tighter environmental regulations is, invariably, easily got around, as the environmental impact assessments (EAIs) are paid for by the renewable companies themselves. As Marina Cazacu from BirdLife International says, “the quality of EIAs is very variable. In many cases they just repeat what the company tells them - stating that there is no conflict between the development and the surrounding environment.”
This has been the case all along the Dobrogea flyway, the busy migratory route that carries Lesser Spotted Eagles, Sakor Falcons, Reed Breasted Geese and many others through Romania, Bulgaria and down to the Bosphorus straights in Turkey. Large swathes of the route are protected by Natura 2000 sites, but this hasn’t stopped the planning of over 5,000 wind turbines in the region, 752 of which fall directly within the Romanian protected sites, while hundreds more are already up and running in Bulgarian sites. The impact on the passing birds, many of which are already endangered, could be devastating. It has been seen before in Spain and California where, over time, collisions with turbines has bought the populations of larger birds, that have typically long life spans and low reproductive rates, down to critical levels.
But, unanimously, the proposals for the wind farms came backed by EIA reports testifying that minimal conflict arises between the turbines and the natural environment. The ministries for environment of both Romania and Bulgaria were quick to accept these reports on face value, eager not to lose the custom of this well subsidized and rapidly growing industry.
Opposition has fallen to individuals and NGOs, working to provide alternative EIAs on limited funding and against a ticking clock; once the turbines are up, they are not coming down.
Milvus Group a Romanian ornithological and environmental protection organization, has staged camps over the last two years to count the number of Raptors that would be impacted directly by the turbines. The evidence is conclusive; proposed turbines at sites across the country unequivocally contravene European environmental guidelines. But this is not enough. The report must then go through the Romanian Environmental Agency and, if accepted, on to the European Commission. If it gets this far, the legal process is slow and, invariably, too late.
This is what happened in Bulgaria where, in November last year, the Government finally capitulated under the pressure put on it by the RSPB and its Bulgarian partners, and passed a law prohibiting the construction of wind farms and solar parks in all Bulgarian Natura 2000 sites. “It’s a fantastic result for us” says Daniel Pullan from the RSPB, “but it comes too late”; the bulk of proposed wind farms are already up and running.
Unquote
Sounds like somebody in government forgot to pass over the RSPB payola: that would never happen here.
Well, I was going to comment on the Bishop's thread here, then I thought I mitre's well not after all ....
Ken, that sounds like a Freudian gymslip or a word association football test cricket.
I've just noticed that the Guardian is running a story on Lewandowsky's paper 'The Role of Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science'.
It's been published in PLOS ONE.
One has to wonder who would be stupid enough to review and then pass this paper as worth publication.
I think the Guardian is stupid enough. It makes you wonder what it is they think they are guarding.
Guardian - Lew Paper: Did you read the comments???????? Frightening. I think I must be living in a different universe.
Geoff has been discussing the Lew paper referred to in that Guardian article for the last couple of days here:
http://geoffchambers.wordpress.com/
Well worth reading.
Bob Ward foaming and ranting about sceptics in the Guardian. Criticising BBC for bias, even.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/04/global-warming-sceptics-discredit-ipcc
I've just noticed that the Guardian is running a story on Lewandowsky's paper 'The Role of Conspiracist Ideation and Worldviews in Predicting Rejection of Science'.
It's been published in PLOS ONE.
One has to wonder who would be stupid enough to review and then pass this paper as worth publication.
Oct 4, 2013 at 3:22 PM | Swiss Bob
=================================================================================
The surprise is that it took so long.
Apologies, Radical Rodent, deleted you in error as well as the troll . Here is your entry again.
Geldof is following a typical pattern of millenarialist fantasies. The problem you have is that if you prophecy doom too far out no-one will worry. The end of the world, the second coming, and Rapture are certain to occur in 2150. Wake me up in 2120 then. On the other hand, as the Jehovah's Witnesses repeatedly found from about 1850 onwards, if you prophecy the end times a few years from now, people do take action, they stop worrying about getting their hair cut or improving their houses, because who cares. But then it doesn't happen.
So Bob has given a 15 year timescale for the end times, neatly illustrating the appropriation of religious forms by the AGW movement, but his problem is going to be that we will still be here. If you read the accounts by believers when they realised the day after that the world did not end, you find a mixture of two things. One is various forms of denial - the prediction was right but the date wrong, the prediction never meant that, the prediction was never made. The other is very real distress and dismay and personal crisis and loss of faith.
Usually, as with the JW, the core group retains their faith and is even strengthened by the failure of the prophecy. The signs are that this will happen here. For Dana, for instance, the IPCC models have been confirmed. Read the Guardian comments. The main problem is that its warmer than ever but the evil deniers keep manipulating the media into false balance, thus fooling everyone.
Yes, it will get more extreme and fanatical before it gets better.
Michel "it will get more extreme and fanatical before it gets better."
I fear you are correct.
Geldof, eh? And don't mention that other pretentious tosser Bono...
Thank you, Jimmy H, for giving me the first belly laugh of the day.
Jimmy - speaking of Bono, that reminds me of what Robin Williams said when asked what was the funniest heckle he had heard.
It was at a U2 concert at Glasgow, and between songs, and Bono started doing his Jesus bit about the problems in the developing world, and clapping his hands hands every second or so, and then said, "every time I clap my hands, another child dies in Africa..."
at which point an astute heckler shouted out: "well stop clapping your fucking hands then".
Bishop Hill (Oct 5, 2013 at 8:02 AM):
Meh... It’s not as if I had anything earth-shattering to impart. I generally only post to remind you that I am reading. I prefer to post on sites where I can raise hackles and generate some argument, but many of those have now black-balled me. Perhaps I should start playing Devil’s Advocate on this site.
RR,
I've been put on pre-moderation at the Guardian for posting extracts from the SPM they didn't like!
I have managed to find the Lew paper mentioned article above. As for its scientific arguments: “…sixth lowest level on the satellite record…” As the satellite records began in 1979, when we all acknowledge it was cooler, why is that no surprise? (That is then extrapolated to 1,000 years, which should be no surprise.)
Zak Martin, FeatureCreature1 and auskermit provide some spirited arguments but, generally, the comments do make for depressing reading. As an addendum, I have heard that one prominent AGW sceptic is Buzz Aldrin; does this imply that he knows the Moon landings were fake?
For one with little to offer, I can be very talkative… I was thinking of posting this on the Guardian site (and other sites – e.g. SkS), but can’t be a@@@d registering (if you are registered, and feel it might be worthwhile, feel free to copy):
You would be surprised as to how much scepticism we all show. Or, perhaps I should say, how little. There will be many “facts” that you accept without querying it – call it intuition, if you will, but the given “fact” seems right. For example, you will have accepted that the Earth orbits the Sun without demanding proof that it does so, let alone peer-reviewed papers about it. You probably accept that the blue whale is the largest living creature the Earth has ever seen: what proof have you demanded? What peer-reviewed paper? Indeed, what evidence do you have that blue whales actually exist? Oh, you’ve seen pictures. Not only pictures, but moving pictures! Well, I have seen pictures and films of dinosaurs and giant apes, of push-me-pull-yous and talking horses, of spaceships and light-sabres; are you now going to tell me that these do not exist? Keep your tale consistent, please!
Alright, some of you may include those two examples in your own sphere of study, but consider your acceptance of facts given to you about the many other disciplines, all expanding in area and depth, of study; do you question every fact given? Do you investigate every news report fed to you? You might claim that you look at many different views of the story before reaching your own conclusion; if you truly believe that, you are most likely seriously deluding yourself. In most cases, it was heard on the BBC, so it must be true. Talk to a rabbi, a monk, a Catholic priest, a Methodist preacher, a C of E vicar, and a Jehovah’s Witness, and all will assure you of the existence of God; will 6 different views make you a believer? In all probability, your own intuition (possibly backed by the teachings of one other person) means you believe God is just a sky-fairy, yet your “in-depth” research was probably a quick skim through the Bible; so what? You know it’s rubbish, so why bother doing more?
I do not put myself above you on this issue; I admit that I am as lazy as you, and accept most facts as given; even if it is contrary to my own intuition, I may not question it. Why should I verify every little point in life? Most of it will have little impact upon me, so why bother? Even if I feel the fact might not be correct and needs to be checked, I accept that any research of it might be just to verify my own intuition; I could be wrong in my conclusions – confirmation bias, in other words.
As for global warming/climate change: climates are changing; climates have changed in the past, and always will. Thankfully, the Earth has warmed since the little ice age, in the middle of the 17th century; if it hadn’t, we would still be in the middle of an ice age, and could be behind ploughs pulled by oxen, and dropping dead, aged thirty, from one (or all) of many now-conquered diseases (unless free-market thinking is not linked with global warming). The rise in temperatures has been beneficial, overall, so far, and there seems to be nothing suggesting that any further rise will bring about doom and catastrophe – except from the mouths of the likes of the IPCC and Bob Geldof, and the many with vested interests in “renewable” energies. All the evidence I have seen suggests that it is part of a vast, as-yet poorly understood cycle of warming and cooling, and has little to do with the increasing levels of a gaseous chemical in the atmosphere, a gas that is a minor component of the atmosphere, yet is important to all life on the planet. Humans might have some effect upon the cycle, as will all living things on the planet, and, while the human influence will be larger than most others, it has yet to be proven that it is significant.
Geldof, eh? And don't mention that other pretentious tosser Bono...
Oct 5, 2013 at 9:33 AM | Unregistered CommenterJimmy Haigh
I'm afraid the pretentious little tosser has been know as bonehead around here for a very long time. Neither of educated above primary school level but think themselves geniuses.
Radical Rodent
Links to the Guardian article, the new LewPaper, and Lew’s FAQs to the paper are all at
http://geoffchambers.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/stephan-is-at-it-again-part-one/
Thanks Laurie Childs for the plug. Sorry I wasn’t around to participate in the discussion, but I was busy moving house.
One of the bores about living near the Mediterranean is having to quit the beach-side house and move back to the suburbs at the end of every summer. The sea was quite rough yesterday, and I was watching the bulldozers piling the sand up into dunes to protect against storms as they do every year, and thinking: “Have they read the new IPCC report I wonder? I hope they’ve remembered to add those extra three millimetres”.
RR,
I've been put on pre-moderation at the Guardian for posting extracts from the SPM they didn't like!
Oct 5, 2013 at 12:07 PM | Swiss Bob
==============================================================================
I gather that things have eased up at CiF as there are now so many sceptics posting there. Times was I had my account deactivated simply for linking to a perfectly good article at Watts which rebutted the CiF article.
A man dies and goes to heaven. On arrival at the Pearly Gates he is met by St Peter. Now St Peter is normally pretty busy and doesn't usually do the paperwork himself, but this guy is a fisherman, so they have something in common and get chatting. After chatting a while, they see a chap walking past them. He's dressed in black clothing, leather trousers, leather jacket and is wearing these very unusual wrap around glasses. The man thinks he recognises him, but he hadn't realised this person might be dead. So, not wanting to seem rude, he asks St Peter "that guy who just walked past, I thought I recognised him - its the clothes. Was he a rock star?"
St Peter looks at him and he replies: "Oh him...no, that's God. He thinks he's Bono".
Jeremy Poynton & Swiss Bob: I have to admit that there were more sceptics commenting than I mentioned, which was quite cheering. Perhaps the “denialists” (a.k.a. people with their heads screwed on correctly) are “winning” (i.e. recognising truth when it bops them on the nose)!
Thinkingscientist: careful, you don’t want to upset Bono, suggesting such a nobody is imitating him!
Bono and his half Billion.
Got a much better Accountant than Sting.
Did you know?
Bono has a venomous spider named after him. - Aptostichus bonoi. Supposedly it is an endangered species due to its rarity. It is described on the basis of only one male and one female type specimens; the male is the holotype and is presumed to have been collected from a pitfall trap, while the female is the paratype and was presumably caught live in her burrow. The species is known only from an area of Joshua Tree National Park called Covington Flat, which is the type locality. Its informal name is 'Bono's Joshua Tree trapdoor spider'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptostichus_bonoi
There is also the 'Angelina Jolie trapdoor spider' of the same genus, but she is more common, (not endangered) it is said.
Addendum. In the 'Angelina Jolie trapdoor spider' the females legs are smooth but the males legs are hairy.
Mark Knopfler has a Late Cretaceous dinosaur from Madagascar named after him, Masiakasaurus knopfleri. The front teeth of M. knopfleri projected forward instead of straight down.
I don't know if he felt honoured or insulted.
Jamspid, DNFTT. You are missing an important point – for the alarmist, if a weather event can be used as proof of the oncoming catastrophe, it is valid and does not need peer review; if it can be used to refute the catastrophe, it is just weather, and needs to be peer reviewed to destruction. This can be seen in the insistence that 30 years are required to show a trend – but only if it contradicts the cherished theories, as it ignores that the previous warming (“proof!”) stopped after 23 years. Oh, and the 30 years' cooling prior to the warming can be ignored, too.
Radical Rodent
You cant check everything, unless you have endless man-years to devote to it. I told my classes to check what they could. If it matched what they had been told, be more confident of other information from the same source. If there was disagrrement, be less confident.
Words can be useful channel markers. If something is "clearly" true, it probably isnt. "Rebuttal" is another doublespeak. If someone claims "proof" in a scientific context, be equally dubious.There's no such animal.
There are ways of checking some things. Consider Earth's motion. Most amateur astronomers keep a running mental map of the posiion of the planets. Ask my brother "Where's Jupiter? "and he will point towards it in 3D, which often means pointing down through the body of the Earth. Heliocentricity works well for him. He integrates the Earth's rotation, orbital motion and the planets' motions in his head, from long practice. You might also talk to NASA. Their orbital mechanics work remarkably well.
Even the Earth's rotation was not finally pinned down until the Foucault Pendulum.
http://www.calacademy.org/products/pendulum/
This is one you can try at home.
I once built a Foucault pendulum with a first form class. We hung a 5-gallon water container down a 3 storey stairwell and it worked, holding its plane of swing as the Earth moved around it. Somewhere out there are 28 erstwhile science pupils who know from their own direct experience that the Earth rotates.
In the context of climate change a few things are checkable. Set up a weather station and crosscheck against your nearest published site. Buy an infrared thermometer and point it skywards on a clear night to detect the DWLWIR. Ask your local geological society about raised beaches, erratics and glacial features to help confirm sea level changes and glacial cycles.
Geldof just announced in Sept. he is going to ride a private rocket into outer space. It must be one of the new Prius spaceships.
Or maybe it's just "carbon limits for thee but not for me"
http://www.inquisitr.com/945773/bob-geldof-to-become-first-irishman-in-space/
The best thing sceptics can do with CIF is simply stay away from it. By posting there one gives the free floating hysteria and anger a target permitting its expression. The quicker it turns into an echo chamber the better.
Someone said in a recent thread that the real problem for the Guardian CIF commenters and columnists is that they need the sceptics. They need them when it comes to voting and the implementation of their desired UK policies.
This is a political need. There is a personal need. They also need people to argue with. Shouting into the air does not meet the need for the expression of anger. They desperately need people to shout at. Don't go there. Would you find it amusing to go into a room filled with monomaniacs on the subject of vaccination? Or evolution? Why go to CIF then, its the same kind of obsessive monomania acting as a vehicle for a bunch of guys with anger management problems.
The best thing for CIF would be for it to be left as a soundproofed padded room for the faithful to shout at each other in.
I do think that commenting at the Guardian gives the paper a false reputation for popularity and brings in adversising revenue. On the other hand I hate to see warmist comments go unchallenged.
@ TinyCO2 0923
In the past, people would pay to enter a lunatic asylum and watch the inmates. Nowadays, we can go to CiF at no cost. It's a source of continual amusement, but in questionable taste.
EM -
But even if my nearest Met Office local weather station is currently accurate, how do I know that past measurements haven't been incorrectly adjusted to make them look colder, as appears to have happened in many places around the world. e.g.:
GISS - Reykjavik -
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/giss-make-the-past-colder-in-reykjavik/
GISS / USHCN - USA - http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/data-tampering-at-ushcngiss/
GISS - Alice Springs - http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/an-adjustment-like-alice/ and http://www.real-science.com/hansen-tampering-down-under-too
GISS - Arctic - http://www.real-science.com/new-giss-data-set-heating-arctic
GISTEMP and GHCN v3 – two stations illustrated GCHN Dublin Airport - http://oneillp.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/gistemp-and-ghcn-v3-two-stations-illustrated/
And just to check for myself, when I had a look myself at the GISS / USHCN data for a number of north-west Atlantic stations a couple of years ago, I found inexplicable downward adjustments to 1930s temperatures in the data for Lerwick, (Shetland), Dublin Airport, and Bodo in Norway. Funny that, considering that to compensate for UHI they should have adjusted the other way. So after the mismanagement by NOAA/USHCN and Hansen, the GISS dataset it is evidently untrustworthy. As there isn't really much of a divergence from HADcrut4 (they do share 80% of the data?) this also raises questions about the validity of Hadcrut3 and 4.
As I fly around the world I see disasters waiting to happen all over the planet.
When I'm driven by limousine from the VIP lounge to my five star hotel with my following entourage I see disasters waiting to happen everywhere.
Whenever I have the time I quietly contemplate, in one of my six mansions dotted around the place, the impending disasters about to happen?
I've said it before there is nothing worse than a sanctimonious hypocrite.
Remember that CiF as with most such things will have a large number of lurkers many of whom will not be as fixed in their views as the warmist commenters, so it is useful to make them aware that there is an alternative view.
EM:
I take it this was before health and safety stepped in…
Thank you for your information but, for some reason, I do feel faintly patronised. I was not asking how to prove or demonstrate the validity of given facts, merely pointing out how we all accept facts without questioning them. Your experiment with the Foucault pendulum does not prove that the Earth rotates; that that explanation is perhaps the most rational reason for why the pendulum swings as it does does not preclude the possibility that there could be another reason. The now commonly-accepted idea of the Earth spinning on its axis and orbiting about the Sun is the most rational of all explanations, so we all intuitively accept it; we do not demand proof. It is the same with so many other things in life, most of which are not, nor ever can be, as complex as the Earth’s atmosphere, its climate system and the driving forces upon it. Many aspects of the atmosphere have been acceptably explained, and we do not clamour for proof – the clouds are made of water, and lightning is static electricity being just two that I bet no-one here has done anything other than accept as true, as an intuitive acceptance. Many of the “science is settled” ideas jar with our intuition, so we are more sceptical, and ask for more conclusive evidence other than, “Because it does!” (which was the general response on almost all sites to my question about how can 0.04% of the atmosphere “absorb” so much IR it can dangerously heat the atmosphere, an idea that rattles my personal intuition). In maintaining a healthy scientific scepticism, scientists have become, for not the first time in scientific history, effectively classified as heretics, to be vilified and reviled; to be conveniently clubbed together, despite the many levels of scepticism, and labelled “deniers”, in a forlorn attempt to link in some subconscious level with one of the more horrific chapters of human history.
The parallels between AGW alarmists and some of the more rabid religious cults has become, of themselves, rather alarming.