Sunday
Feb162014
by 
Josh
Josh Comic Climate - Josh 259
Feb 16, 2014 Josh 
Inspired by Emily Shuckburgh's recent performance at the Climate Change Committee AR5 hearing and with reference to Lauren Cooper (hilarious video), one of Catherine Tate's comic characters.
Reader Comments (21)
More joy! I'd thought of the verbose juvenile delinquent girl in little Britain when I saw Ms Shuckburgh in action in that hearing. It is a crude form of sophistry, with relentless chatter thrown in to dismay the interlocutor. But the video you link to is even better, and your cartoon manages without sound and movement to capture so much of it. Thanks Josh. Some people add to life when you meet them or come across their work. Others subtract from it. You add. She subtracts.
Wonderful. I was reminded of Baroness Bryony when I saw her, (the hand waving), but you've caught her in a still life. Shrugburgh!
Expect an about turn from Mat Collins tomorrow according to his twitterfeed.
https://twitter.com/mat_collins
Nice one.
O/T, but this one was good too: Cooper and Blair
Best thing he did in office. If only he'd stuck to acting, he's pretty good!
@ Paul
Yep, it seems the re-education process is already underway.
Meanwhile over at the Guardian there's a Comment piece demanding sceptics 'put up or shut up', and finally engage in a debate once and for all.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/16/climate-change-deniers-put-up-or-shut-up
I posted that every single time sceptics actually get to debate, they thrash alarmists hands down. My post on an article demanding a debate was censored into oblivion before it was even allowed to see the light of day. That's what they do: close down debate.
Paul: there's no need for an "about turn" from Mat Collins - or, Cheshirered, for his "re-education". Here's how the BBC reported Dame Julia:
There's nothing in what the MoS reports Collins to have said that conflicts with such an anodyne view.But now compare her statement to Miliband's:
Never mind Collins, Slingo's position doesn't remotely support Miliband.Robin: Absolutely right. It's the yawning gap between Miliband and Slingo that needs to be exposed, again and again. (And Josh is doing his bit on that, it has to be said.) The whole of the CAGW debacle has been built on such dissembling, where prominent scientists fail to correct politicians who come up with ludicrous and unfounded alarmism to justify costly and useless policies that have already been enacted. That game has to stop in the UK and fast - ideally through Cameron and the Tories grasping the nettle and telling things as they are. Step forward Peter Lilley and Owen Paterson?
Both Milliband and Sligo are postulating that atmospheric CO2 of 398ppm "causes" these weather events by , according to "consensus" , causing the temperature to be higher. The temperature record shows no increase since CO2 was 370ppm in 1997 so, presumably, 370ppm is also sufficient to cause these extremes! What are the chances of a "successful" outcome of Ed's climate change act in mitigating extreme events. What are the "links" that the "evidence"
suggests exists with the CO2 level without the heat.
Mat Collins does deny the link as long as the storms are attributed to the jet stream, but tomorrow he will clarify.
I bet the threat of being "cheshirered" has made him cheesed off.
@diogenese2: there is near zero CO2-AGW. The real AGW was from the aerosols of Asian industrialisation, and it levelled off about 15 years' ago. We are now into solar global cooling, hence the intense jet stream and storms.
It has to be said that she was forced to prevaricate to duck the question put to her by Lilley. To answer honestly would be career suicide, to deny the faith.
Can anyone help - should it be skeptiphobia, skeptophobia, or perhaps skepticophobia?
I like the middle one, although it plays rough with both Latin and Greek roots. Or perhaps skeptomania?
I particularly like the idea of institutional skeptophobia - although I am reminded of the Flanders & Swann song about the elephant resting home.
"climate change was causing the storms and floods"
An uncharacteristically clear statement by Mr Milibean. He's painted himself into a corner now!
@Cheshirered
Henry Porter in that Guardian article displays that typical ignorance of what sceptics actually believe that makes it clear he hasn't fully considered this subject:
The strawman debating style may be convincing to Guardian readers, but to anyone who has read more widely, it suggests either dishonesty - in falsely presenting the other side's position - or that he just doesn't know what he is talking about.
Who the heck is Emily Shrugburgh?
Jimmy: There may be some clues from May 2011, when someone of approximately that name made a friendly appearance on this blog.
The Guardian has a headline about how climate change is going to lead to drought which is going to stop our power stations working. I posted this, but it will soon be censored. I am thinking of starting a site where people can post guardian censored comments.
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Global warming is an amazing phenomenon. One is so glad we found out about it because it explains so much that was incomprehensible in the past.
All the various extreme weather events that came in at us across the Atlantic to our dismay and horror, well, at last we know why. Its because of Global Warming. Sometimes this warming produces hot summers. Sometimes it produces cold ones. Sometimes warm winters. Sometimes cold ones.
Sometimes it produces floods. Sometimes it produces droughts.
Global warming is so powerful that it can even do all of these things while it is paused. In fact, its one of the few things that can carry on at an accelerating rate while being paused. Your car cannot do that. If you pause it, its speed will not pick up, will it?
Well Global Warming can do it. The measured temperatures can stop increasing, but Global Warming is proceeding at a faster rate than ever before.
We should be most grateful to all the many tens of thousands of dedicated scientists who have discovered this amazing phenomenon, and confronted with the present floods we should just stop denying that they are due to it, we should stop wittering on about dredging, and get on and build some more wind turbines. That is the only effective measure we can take against Global Warming.
And the great thing is that it does not just stop the floods. It stops all kinds of weather we don't like - floods, droughts, too hot, too cold. Get to it!
Feb 17, 2014 at 5:28 AM | Registered Commenter Richard Drake.
Thanks Richard. I'm a bit out of touch with things in the UK these days.
To me the most disgraceful aspect of Shucksburgh's appearance in the HOP last week, was not her obfuscation and refusal to answer Lilley's confidence question, but her assertion that winds had no bearing on the annual decline of Arctic sea ice. This was either total ignorance of her subject, or malfeasance.
e.g. NASA: Arctic sea ice retreated due to 2007 winds not temperature: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html
NSIDC - Summer 2007 wind-blown sea-ice down Fram Strait - animation.
correction - the animation is not just summer 2007, but 1982 to 2007 inclusive.
Very good, Josh, very good!
Climate change can be manifested in (amongst a variety of phenomena) a succession of violent storms - unless, that is, such events, although rare, are not unprecedented for the region and for the time of year.