Friday
Mar222013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill The futile gesture of Earth Hour
Mar 22, 2013 Greens Like the Saturnalia, Earth Hour comes round once a year, bringing with it back-to-front thinking, upside-down reasoning and many ripe opportunities for ridicule.
Bjorn Lomborg is more seriously minded of course, and his take on the annual switch-off is here. There is a related video.
Reader Comments (65)
I think it is important that all the Greenie numpties that celebrate Earth Hour take care to get as close as possible to the original concept. (OK, they might pass on murdering their girlfriends).
But it is no good just turning off the electricity!
And no, you can't rely on your fossil fuel charged laptop battery to keep entertained.
Especially, it is no good relying on all the fossil fuel generated heat stored in the structure of your house or apartment. Get all those doors and windows wide open!
If you cheat, Gaia will know! And cry!
@Phillip Bratby
I misunderstood, I thought it was a download from the BBC; HitchHikers Guide it is then. It doesn't seem five minutes since it was serialised on the radio. Radio 4? Or was it still the Home Service then ;-)
Thanks once again Sandy
SandyS: The original version with the voice of Peter Jones (I think it was) was the best.
As I recall it was 1977, we didn't have a telly and I happened to tune in to R4 for the first episode.
I met Douglas Adams once. He we very tall.
" In Bali they have a festival called Nyepi where no lights or fire can be used in the hours of darkness and all day you must be at home, making no noise, using no machinery. ...
...
Mar 22, 2013 at 1:54 PM | Messenger"
Interesting ... we used to have in effect various laws, up until 1985, that were termed "Blue Laws". These laws restricted, among other things*, the sale of liquor and cars on Sunday. This was an after-affect from the strict Baptist influence seen in this part of the south, ostensibly to allow church-attendance and rest to take place on the Sabbath.
1985 Chicago Trib story about the Texas Blue Law changes:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1985-08-26/news/8502250721_1_blue-law-repeal-texas-families
.
* It included housewares (pots and pans, washing machines and other non-consumable household goods) basically anything but foodstuffs and groceries, and car dealerships could only be open one day over a weekend. Car dealerships in the state continue to operate under 'blue-law' prohibitions.On Sundays, Texans are allowed to purchase beer and wine from 12 noon to 9 p.m. It is also legal to purchase liquor by the drink at restaurants and bars, but not by the bottle. Additionally, the laws allowed "Retailers [to] ... sell hammers and screwdrivers but not nails or screws." as arbitrary as they were.
Your Grace
I beg leave to inform you that Alder Towers proudly flies the Sceptic Flag tonight and is Illuminated like a Christmas Tree. Let it cast the Probing Light of Truth and Wisdom into the Darkness of Superstition and Mindless Alarm.
Long Live Rationality!
God Save His Grace
I Remain, Sir, Your Humble Servant
LA
My Lord Bishop,
Suffering from severe golf withdrawal symptoms due to this winter weather,
we celebrated Giaa hour with maximum lumens.
Being at a loose end I did a bit of alliteration - its a pentastich. If its off topic, never mind, just put it in file 13.
March 2013
With the Beast from the east not yet ceased,
Will he roar like a lion all March through;
Will he still growl and rage
In the coming ice age
Which is long overdue.
In snow drift and blow long ago,
Before global warming invented;
T'was long lasting and thick
A real cruel Nature Trick
No readings tormented.
We can now see it's a Travesty,
That we can't account for no warming;
The computers all say
'twill return any day
Like "experts" are warning.
All governments say that we must pay,
For all our past sins of Emission;
This Mann-a from heaven
Will only just leven
The dough for the mission.
People die eating pie in the sky,
As they pay for Idol windmills;
Cutting down C02
Subsidise CRU
At the trough full of swills.
With tempreature flat - Watts Up With That?
Now the Team has a new Hockey Stick;
It's passed Pal Review
Scientific Voodoo
With a phallic uptick.
The Met Office's brochure (linked by Marion at 2:44) answers its own question as follows on page 12:
And that's it about the accuracy of models. A claim of reliability without reference to the fact that models (a)vary in sensitivity by about a factor of 2; (b)have been observed (on average) to over-estimate warming trends; (c)are apparently considerably worse at predicting rainfall trends; (d)are not known to be able to predict over decades. [Tuning so that models can approximately replicate historical patterns is a necessary but not sufficient condition.] I realize that this is a brochure not a scientific paper, but it just comes off as if they're selling new! improved! climate model -- sure to work on your toughest climate problems. Surely they could have included reasonable qualifiers. It's over-selling such as this which creates mistrust.
Also, on page 4 they show a misleading graph, similar to one later found in a Met Office briefing. This graph mis-represents Figure 6.10b of AR4 WG1 by plotting the range of central estimates for some reconstructions of past temperature, calling it the "range of temperatures from natural records", ignoring the uncertainties of said reconstructions. IIRC, Richard Betts said he would have the error corrected, but apparently he has failed to go back in time to fix this 2009 brochure. Having just watched a Doctor Who episode, it's not hard, Richard -- just find yourself a police box, fiddle with a few levers and knobs, and with a wheezing sound you're in the past. Simple, really.
Jim- re "Blue laws" : here in Scotland, Adolph Salmond has decreed that the Scots may not buy booze before 10am in the morning. Exactly how he and the powers-that-be think that that will deter hardened drinkers (which apparently is the intention of the law) is a mystery. So people drop the children off at school at 8.45am and go to the supermarket, but then have to make a separate trip another time to top up on wine, if they want it, because they have finished shopping before 10am.
Did anybody mention lunatics and asylums?
Blue laws because they result in blue language.
Comment on Booker's article on windmills etc, H/T Motorwaydrifter
"Grid demand at 8.29 pm - 43.68 gw. Demand at 8.34 pm - 43.49 gw.Well, that's the planet saved then.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.c...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9949571/Its-payback-time-for-our-insane-energy-policy.html#dsq-comments
Mar 24, 2013 at 3:56 AM | HaroldW
Having just watched a Doctor Who episode, it's not hard, Richard -- just find yourself a police box, fiddle with a few levers and knobs, and with a wheezing sound you're in the past. Simple, really.
The problem here is that RB is entertainingly gullible and I fear that he will take your advice on board and rush out to try and find one. Perhaps I can help.
There used to be police boxes in Exeter, but they are probably all gone now.
There was a police box on the Exe Bridge in 1924, but this bridge was demolished shortly after the South Bridge was completed in 1972, also in North Street but that has all changed now.
However, all is not lost, there is one in London.
The next time RB goes up to the Royal Jelly Society to reassure the numpties there, the best place to find it is just outside Earls Court tube station entrance - but watch out for the CCTV camera!
Re: Mar 24, 2013 at 3:56 AM | HaroldW
Perhaps, HaroldW, you should rather be asking why they omitted the flatlining obvious in their recent 'decadal' forecast in the 'temperatures observed' line in the graph that was produced in 2009 despite more than a decade of these temps!!!
And interesting that RB is sticking to his 4 degrees C temperature increase by the end of the century - see the 2009 graph for perspective!!! (6th slide down or Page 04) It seems the 'climate model predictions' just keep on getting steeper and steeper!!!
http://people.virginia.edu/~rtg2t/future/gcc/UK.Met.quick_guide.pdf
Marion, I disagree that the MO has any case to answer to for its display of recent temperatures in that brochure. In the long-term graph on page 4, the recent pause is just visible as a slight change in slope at the top of the instrumental temperatures curve; as that chart presents a filtered temperature that tends to temper the pause. In the chart on page 15, which shows recent temperatures, the pause is more clearly visible.
And while the chart on page 4 shows a ~3 K increase above pre-industrial by 2100, that is for a "medium-high" scenario. (Turns out to be AR4's A1B.) However, a similar graph (see p.19 of this briefing by Dr Slingo) shows four such scenarios, and the A2 scenario does project to about a 4 K increase.* Hence I think Dr Betts can point to this as a plausible path; and he has described it (IIRC) as an "extreme case". I (and apparently you as well) think it highly unlikely, given more recent information about climate sensitivity; but the AR5 suite of models have much the same sensitivity as the AR4 set.
*the presence of the 4 scenario curves in the "Slingo" chart explains the otherwise puzzling "scenario-independent" applied to the 2K-above-preindustrial point in the brochure's graph, which shows only one scenario. It's also interesting that the Slingo graphic correctly attributes the projections to the IPCC, while the brochure calls it "Met Office prediction". On the other hand, the brochure correctly labels the time axis as 700-2100; the Slingo version incorrectly dates the left side as 1000 CE.
Re: Mar 24, 2013 at 12:28 PM | HaroldW
"Marion, I disagree that the MO has any case to answer to for its display of recent temperatures in that brochure."
Then we shall agree to disagree HaroldW.
The whole tone of that brochure, both the language and graphs chosen was designed to push a political message in the run-up to the UN's Copenhagen talks.
This was a brochure entitled "Warming, Climate Change - the facts"
On the very first page is the statement -
"It's now clear that man-made greenhouse gases are causing climate change. The rate of change began as significant, has become alarming and is simply unsustainable in the long-term"
And just exactly where is the evidence for this...
Marion -
I fully agree on the tone of the MO brochure, which is equal to that of a WWF pamphlet; I was just disputing that particular complaint about temperature history.
Above, I point out the (imo, unjustified) lack of qualifications to the model projections. However, besides the tone (which is hard to quantify, but "I know it when I see it"), my strongest complaint would be the statement on page 2, and pull-quoted on page 1: "Even if global temperatures rise by only 2 °C, 20-30% of species could face extinction." I admit to have no scholarly papers to contradict this assertion, but it seems so completely at odds with the fact that terrestrial life developed under, and survives, diurnal and seasonal cycles so much greater than that.
In fact, the MO are exaggerating the IPCC's conclusion. The AR4 WG2 Summary for Policy-Makers states, "Approximately 20-30% of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average temperature exceed 1.5-2.5°C." And assess that as having "medium confidence." The MO extends this to *all* species, and change "likely to be at increased risk of extinction" to "could face extinction". It would do the WWF proud.