Monday
Feb172014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Sceptics are right
Feb 17, 2014 Climate: Sceptics Climate: WG2 Matt Ridley has a powerful column in the Times today, arguing that sceptics are right:
There is no evidence, Mr Miliband, Lord Stern and others, that our floods and storms are related to climate change
In the old days we would have drowned a witch to stop the floods. These days the Green Party, Greenpeace and Ed Miliband demand we purge the climate sceptics. No insult is too strong for sceptics these days: they are “wilfully ignorant” (Ed Davey), “headless chickens” (the Prince of Wales) or “flat-earthers” (Lord Krebs), with “diplomas in idiocy” (one of my fellow Times columnists).
Cue outraged letters from Bob Ward and Lord Deben.
Reader Comments (21)
Since Matt Ridley has put down nothing but the true facts, it is not obvious in what way Ward and Deben could express their outrage. However, I don't suppose the facts will get in the way of any outraged responses.
On reflection, I think I would slightly disagree with the statement that sceptics "have made little difference to policy". I can't think of any policies that sceptics have had any effect on. I would be interested if someone could find any.
The BBC/Guardian/Met Office axis of evil are making hay while the rain falls. For a few years we have had bitterly cold winters, and you haven't heard a peep out of them about their bête noire. They KNOW this wet mild winter is just a blip, which is why they are going hell for leather in this short few weeks, trying to link every weather related item to their personal demon.
It's desperate. And it will backfire on them, because we are busy collecting tomorrows "Vinerisms" right here, right now. They are going to come back to bite you Slingo et al. Just sayin.
Yeah, but Northern Rock! (cue Ectopic Man).
I'm always fascinated by the idiots like Krebs who reach for the nearest insult they can find regardless of whether it makes any sense.
Does he not know that the Flat Earth Society is fully signed up to the AGW scam?
Like Nurse's comparison in that "demolition" of Delingpole where he accused his anti-science "deniers" of being the ones who went around trashing GM crops.
But, hey guys! You wouldn't want the truth to get in the way of your ambition to rule the world, would you?
Letter from the spin-doctor Bob Ward complaining about sceptics using evidence as opposed to crap models? How unusual.
A letter from the long-time believer Lord deben who has no scientific qualifications what so ever and seems to have financial connections to the renewable industry, good job he is a government adviser.
There was also the claim/prediction/projection iirc that the warming would be at the poles which would reduce the temperature difference between them and the tropics and lead to less storminess.
I suppose a theory and observation separated by pi radians is *consistent with* climate science.
The alarmists aren't even morally right, not only because blaming the wrong cause means the correct solution will never get done but because their preferred course of action makes things even worse for everyone.
steveta_uk, you are unjust. Entropic Man is above ad hom. Did you perhaps mean Chandra?
Maybe this cold winter is related to the comeback of sea ice in the Arctic. I am not suggesting we are anywhere near the end of the Holocene or even that Little Ice Age Mark 2 is on its way.
What this new paper suggests is that there is a persistence relationship between ice in the Arctic and cold lobes of the polar vortex reaching south into both North America and Eurasia.
Interdependence of the growth of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets during the last glaciation: the role of atmospheric circulation.
http://www.clim-past.net/10/345/2014/cp-10-345-2014.html
Another well balanced article by Matt Ridley, containing solid references to official opinion. Unfortunately, the likes of Miliband, Stern
, Debden and HRH don't read such articles. If they did they would ignore them.
Time for a "Slingout Slingo" campaign? Along with a "Dump Deben/Davey" drive.
Just like the Dramagreens are saying should happen to Ministers who express doubts about the green's wilder flights of sptttle-flecked fancy.
By the rules of projection we can now safely assume that warmists are wilfully ignorant headless chickens, flat-earthers with diplomas in idiocy.
On an unrelated note, any news on the present and future of the Slingo-Collins partnership? From what I have heard, their mental gymnastics will make them automatically qualify for figure skating at Pyeongchang 2018.
More on flooding, false claims and likely causes.....
So Foul a Day and the Jet Stream
I note His Grace asked Deben on Twitter if he wanted a debate with Matt Ridley. The silence was deafening. The word chicken comes to mind.
We have reached stage 2 in the Kubler-Ross 5 stages of grief model. First Denial, when they laughed at us, and told us we were poor fools to be questioning their magnificence. Now its Anger, as the reality begins to set in, and they feel the need to fight (almost literally) for their lost cause. Then will come Bargaining, as they try to keep the money flowing to the various bodies and groups. 'We need more time to understand the changes happening. We aren't sure whats going on. Just give us more money and we'll work it out'. Followed by Depression - what will be the point of sitting in an office trying to 'prove' Global Warming is happening when you only have to look outside the window to see it isn't, and no-one listens to you in government any more? And finally Acceptance - most likely after they have safely retired and have secured the long coveted pension.
I wonder what Fred the Shred's view on the matter is?
Sceptics may be right but few are listening. From the Guardian today we hear that "the floods are the evidence we need".
"Oliver Dudok Van Heel, director of Aldersgate Group, a UK alliance of sustainability leaders from business, politics and society, said that with the political sands shifting, there is a real opportunity for companies to respond more proactively.
Pointing to estimates of a £14bn hit to the UK economy from the recent flooding, he said: "What I am hoping for is a reversal of the post Copenhagen gloom, which led to a lack of political and business leadership. The floods are the evidence we need that the problems we face are current and real and will get worse and worse."
‘Irrationality’ is what scares me – for, seemingly, obvious reasons. (in such a world I would fail to exist). The ‘anti-psychiatrists’ had a problem with all those stupid pseudo-scientific ‘diagnoses’ that ‘institutionalised’ us, so they decided, if the so called ‘patients’ weren’t mad, then the ‘world’ must be. Both sides were wrong, of course. For, what is always very difficult, when you see how ‘self-serving’, dishonest and down-right chip-on-their-shoulder nasty some ‘must’ be, is not to bite off ones tongue and never be able to speak! For calmness, rationality, a ‘cool tongue’ is what we need. A still voice. But also a Shelley, a means to be, also, rational and passionate. A rational anger.
Climate models that are based on the completely false physics that radiation from a colder atmosphere can actually help the Sun in raising the temperature of Earth’s surface are a complete fiction. It cannot do so. Physicists will tell you (if you even bother to ask a specialist in thermodynamics like myself) that such radiation undergoes what they call “pseudo scattering” in which it is immediately re-emitted in a resonating process, without any of its electro-magnetic energy being converted to thermal energy. This provides some of the electro-magnetic energy in the SB calculation for the warmer surface, and thus slows radiative cooling, but it can have no effect on molecules colliding at the interface and transferring thermal energy by conduction and evaporative cooling.
But none of this is what really determines planetary surface temperatures anyway. The base of the Uranus nominal troposphere is hotter than Earth, and yet it receives no direct solar radiation worth mentioning.
Valid physics can be used to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that a gravitationally-induced temperature gradient will always evolve spontaneously in a vertical plane in any solid, liquid or gas that is exposed to a gravitational field. This happens at the molecular level where molecules swap kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy when in free flight between collisions. No one has correctly rebutted this, and wires outside cylinders also develop thermal gradients so no perpetual motion can occur.
There is a predetermined thermal profile in Earth’s atmosphere caused by gravity which, without water vapour or greenhouse gases, would intersect the surface in the vicinity of 25C, but then water vapour reduces the gradient (due to inter-molecular radiation, not the release of latent heat) and we end up with a mean of about 15C.
It is natural cycles, probably regulated by planetary orbits, which are the primary determinants of climate. That’s why it’s not carbon dioxide after all.
"Diplomas in Idiocy"
What novel ideas Rupert's people have!
I'm sincerly flattered that Matt's colleague should peruse my list of idiotic diploma mills