Category: Climate Change

Climate Change

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Bait & Switch Big Picture Climate Change

Rising Trend

Here’s a general knowledge test for Climate Change deniers, ahem, self-styled “sceptics” : what does the graph above represent ? Is it global temperatures since 2006 ? Is it upper tropospheric temperatures ? Is it the Northern Hemisphere sea temperature in summer ? What could it be ?

Well, no, actually. If you click on the image you will find out the answer, and it’s definitely a rising trend, regardless of the dips along the way.

Funnily enough, it looks remarkably like the NASA GISS graph since 2006 :-

It’s no good pointing at one cold, snowless Vancouver winter or even one hot New York summer and saying that that determines the trend of global temperatures. You have to sample the data for a longer period, and globallly, and at all heights above the surface, and at all depths in the ocean.

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Climate Change Media Public Relations

James Delingpole : “Little Wart”

It pains me to report that the American Energy Secretary thinks that James Delingpole’s favourite e-mail scandal is a “little wart”.

That’s “pains” as in “doubles me up in stitches, laughing” :-

https://climateprogress.org/2010/02/18/scienceenergy-secretary-steven-chu-interview-financial-times-ipcc-climategate/

https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a71cf176-1bff-11df-a5e1-00144feab49a,s01=1.html

“…The public polls go up and down on this, with Climategate and all these other things. But if you step back and dispassionately look at it, this is a little wart on the overall amount of information. It’s a little bump…”

To think that James Delingpole will be forever connected to the epithet of “little wart” is highly amusing, in the extreme.

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Climate Change Emissions Impossible

Drax Backtracks

Proof that you can’t leave anything up to market forces or goodwill :-

https://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7032738.ece

“February 19, 2010 : Drax power plant suspends plan to replace coal with greener fuel : Ben Webster, Environment Editor : Britain’s biggest power station has suspended its plan to replace coal with greener fuel, leaving the Government little chance of meeting its target for renewable energy. Drax, in North Yorkshire, which produces enough electricity for six million homes, is withdrawing a pledge to cut CO2 emissions by 3.5 million tonnes a year, or 17.5 per cent…”

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Big Picture Climate Change Meltdown Screaming Panic The Data

Slow-Moving Meltdown Catastrophe

The IPCC is out of date. No, really, the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report from the IPCC is now way out of date :-

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-02/ul-plr021710.php

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Bait & Switch Climate Change Media Public Relations

The Media Cannot Be Trusted

When the BBC’s Roger Harrabin arranged a set of questions recently for Phil Jones, the unjustly smeared head of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), I just wish he had asked for advice from an expert on countering Climate Change denier tactics before answering :-

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8511670.stm

The questions made my Public Relations nerves twitch with embarrassment for Phil Jones. The trajectory of events was entirely predictable.

A friend or colleague with experience of having to face down the Climate Change deniers would have strongly advised Phil Jones to answer the questions with extreme care, especially the first one, and demand that anyone who quoted his answer quote him in full, in context.

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Climate Change Emissions Impossible

Are We Willing To Risk It ?

It transpires that Carbon Dioxide levels during some of the “hot house” periods of Earth history may have been relatively low.

Is it possible that hellish conditions could emerge from having a concentration of 1,000 ppm of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere ?

Some projections have residual airborne levels of Fossil Fuel and deforestation emissions reaching that kind of count by the year 2100.

Are we willing to risk it ?

Continue reading “Are We Willing To Risk It ?”
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Bad Science Bait & Switch Climate Change Media Non-Science Public Relations Social Change The Data

The World Warms Up

The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center in their monthly “State of the Climate”, state :-

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/index.php

“Selected Global Highlights for January 2010 : The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January 2010 was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F). This is the fourth warmest January on record…”

How can this be ? The newspapers have been saying that Global Warming is just a confused scare story, or perhaps a tax-begging scam, or a bunch of self-important technologists on a gravy train creating false alarm to justify their funding streams – nothing to worry about. And of course, we can believe the mainstream Media implicitly. There are rules about the quality and accuracy of reporting.

Are NOAA sure they’ve checked that their thermometers are calibrated properly ? It all seems rather worrying that such a large American Science agency should be claiming that January 2010 was so warm when there has been all that snow and rain and ice about. The Media tried to point out this bad weather, but the scientists just carried on measuring high temperatures.

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Bad Science Climate Change Media Non-Science

The Faily Mail : Not To Be Trusted ?

It looks like the Daily Maul has messed up sufficiently this time to get a dishonourable mention on three major web logs (not including this one here, because this one is not a major web log).

You would have thought that after the poor coverage of Climate Change Science over the last couple of years and the disparaging put-downs by everyone from David King to George Monbiot that the newspapers would have realised by now that they need some proper, factual reporting from people qualified to do so. But not a shred of it.

My, my, how the newspapers are wasting our time and creating social division in spats between citizens around the watercooler and the schoolyard gate !

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Climate Change

Cowardy, Cowardy Custard

I received the following in one of my e-mail Inboxes, which, as you can imagine, I was tempted to completely ignore.

To be honest, I’m baffled why this fellow thinks I’m the right person to answer a bunch of Global Warming denier arguments that have had endless rebuttals already.

My advice to Climate Change sceptics everywhere : read the Climate Change Science before asking overly sceptical questions, then you won’t need to ask them.

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Climate Change Media

That Way, Media Lies

Oh, you know the Press. It’s “statistically significant” to claim that they are always trying to set light to a story and make a conflagration of enormous preposterous proportions.

They’ve been at it again this weekend. You know, just when I thought we might have crawled our way through the burning embers of Climategate’s hellish hatred and made it out to the true sunshine of love and admiration for Phil Jones, back bounce the Daily Maul and the Daily Terrorgraph with apparent “misinterpretations of the facts”.

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Climate Change Media Public Relations Social Change The Data

The BBC : Relatively Scary

Take any subject you like, terrorism, bird flu, street crime, elder abuse, credit fraud, political corruption, and the BBC will give you a serious, in-depth and highly concerned feature article with professional photographs and solid headlines.

Everything, that is, apart from Global Warming.

Why is Climate Change so unscary for the BBC ?

Every other problem in the known universe is worthy of gravitas and graveyard intonation, but not Climate Change Science and the implications it has as risk to life, health, wealth and general contentment.

What could be going wrong ? Why the non-long faces when it comes to the most serious risks facing mankind since the Black Death ?

Why does Global Warming get “relativist” treatment when everything else gets the full shadowy-figure-in-a-cloak-with-a-scythe ?

Continue reading “The BBC : Relatively Scary”
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Bad Science Bait & Switch Big Picture Climate Change Media Non-Science Public Relations

Climategate Public Relations Fiasco

“Look”, said my telephone correspondent, “lots of people with influence know, deep down, that Climategate is just political, not real. The spin doesn’t disprove the science.”

“I know,” I acquiesced, “but it is still important what the public thinks, and this series of minor scandals, some completely baseless, and blown out of all proportion, needs some kind of comeback.”

Warming to my theme, I burbled on, “We can’t leave it hanging in the air like this. You never know when you will next meet a disparaging sceptic, who belligerently, senselessly, obstructs the good you are doing. And this crowd could influence the next Government…”

“OK then”, caved my buddy on the line, “what do you propose ?”

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Climate Change Public Relations Voluntary Behaviour Change

Boris Johnson Does Climate Change

It’s hard not to adore the man : all that blond hair and buffoonery, concealing a fairly intelligent personality, although he does have an unfortunate taste in Deputy Mayors :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/22/boris-deputy-resigns

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Bad Science Big Picture Climate Change Media Non-Science

The Guardian : Intellectually Bankrupt ?

I would like to bring before the court of public opinion some evidence that indicates that the leadership at The Guardian newspaper could be said to have become partially intellectually bankrupt.

Specimen A

Simon Hoggart pronounces on Climate Change Science despite not knowing a thing about it. I do not understand how this piece of writing was published, as it contains a number of inaccuracies.

https://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/feb/06/climate-change-simon-hoggarts-week

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Bait & Switch Climate Change

We Love You, Phil Jones

Phil Jones, we are a small, but growing, group, who just want you to know that we love you, respect you, and we think you should not only keep your job, but be awarded an honour for bravery in the face of a huge and nasty smear campaign.

Pay no attention to The Guardian newspaper. They just want to sell more newspapers, and they’ve worked out that giving off an insouciant whiff of Climate Change scepticism is edgy and popular, so they’re playing the field. It’s a dubious game in my view.

Don’t listen to George Monbiot either. He called for your resignation not once, but twice, adding to your woes. He really shouldn’t have. He should have had more respect for your mental condition. He’s been most unfair.

The “liberal” Media trying to take the high moral ground on Science is fine if they know what they’re talking about; but for journalists to mete judgement on scientists is not valid, when the journalists have no clue as to the context in which scientists are forced to work, and no proper appreciation of what the Science means.

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Climate Change Contraction & Convergence Emissions Impossible Zero Net

Wishful Thinktanking

[qt:https://www.tangentfilms.com/SternPoznan.mp4 https://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Graphics/ContractionAndConvergence.jpg 480 240]

After the accusations and counter-accusations of the attribution of blame, can we at least start moving on from who was responsible for the failure to obtain a global treaty at the United Nations Climate Change UNFCCC conference in Copenhagen in December 2009 ?

None of us have a complete awareness of the ideas and thoughts of others. International negotiations are bound to be limited by lack of knowledge and understanding, clashes of personality and conflicts of national, social and corporate interests.

It is important, however, to try to comprehend the starting points, the foundational ideology, of those we are attempting to negotiate with.

Here it is very important to keep our feet on the floor and our ears to the walls. Why exactly, did the AOSIS, the Small Island States bloc reject the Copenhagen Accord ? Why did the elite group of nations that signed the Copenhagen Accord dismiss the AOSIS and their demands for 350 ppm atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Why was China so resistant to the Copenhagen Accord ? Could it have anything do to with their fears of economic loss ?

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Advancing Africa Big Picture Climate Change Eating & Drinking

Leave Africa Alone

Today’s news is that the pastoral life in Africa is sustainable, even with a certain amount of Climate Change :-

https://www.iied.org/climate-change/key-issues/drylands/african-livestock-can-triumph-face-climate-change

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Behaviour Changeling Big Picture Carbon Rationing Climate Change Eating & Drinking Low Carbon Life Marvellous Wonderful Peak Energy Peak Oil Pet Peeves Social Change Voluntary Behaviour Change

Little Chicken

Now’s the right time to talk about gardening. Not just any old gardening, no. I mean food gardening, urban farming, home cropping, edible landscape-type gardening.

Now is the time to be thinking about enriching your soil for your next bumper harvest.

Get your resilience genes working !

https://www.londonwaste.co.uk/media/Compost%20Bag%20Leaflet_May09.pdf

OR

https://www.islington.gov.uk/Environment/RubbishAndRecycling/recycling_new/hrrc/compost_offer_HRRC.asp

Get into Transition mode !

In Transition 1.0 from Transition Towns on Vimeo.

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Bait & Switch Big Picture Carbon Commodities Climate Change Emissions Impossible Energy Revival Genetic Muddyfixation Peak Energy Peak Oil Pet Peeves Public Relations

In The Belly Of The BP

I was warned. And it’s true. BP are so protective of their company image that they live in denial. I should know. I’ve been inside the belly of the beast and spoken to one of their head sustainability honchos. Who had a total disconnect about the risks of Fossil Fuel depletion.

“Oil and gas will remain the mainstay of the “Energy mix”. We’ve said that publicly…”

So they’re telling the world what to believe, are they ?

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Climate Change Political Nightmare Public Relations

Stop Climate Chaos – Ask the Climate Question

https://www.youtube.com/cop15

There is an unelected, shadowy organisation in the United Kingdom; a cultish community of thousands, and their minions, that plots to dictate the leadership of the whole world, starting with the minds of the central Government.

You’ll see them at work in the run-up to the General Election, possibly suspicious figures masquerading as angels of light in brightly coloured costumes and carrying jokey banners; meddling in democracy at every level – leafletting, holding meetings, putting posters in their front windows and holding consciousness-raising green-fests in their local Town Halls.

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Climate Change The Data

James Delingpole Trusts Known Obstructers

I think I might start using a new term : “Climate Obstructers”, people who make lots of challenges to the IPCC consensus, who have what seems to me to be an agenda to obstruct the course of Climate Change Science.

In his latest Web Log post, James Delingpole attracts attention to a “magisterial report” from Joseph D’Aleo (of web log ICECAP) and Anthony Watts (of web log WattsUpWithThat), which is actually a crock of shambolic fripperies, in my view :-

https://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100024023/global-warming-is-it-even-happening/
“Global Warming: is it even happening?”

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Bad Science Climate Change Media Non-Science Unutterably Useless Utter Futility

Earth Twinned With Venus

I think the group of artists proposing that Letterkenny, County Donegal, should be twinned with Mars, may have got their Climate Change facts a little twisted :-

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/foyle_and_west/8473116.stm

“Irish island twinned with Mars in climate change stunt : An island in County Donegal is to be twinned with Mars in order to raise awareness of climate change. A community near Letterkenny will be linked with an island outcrop on the Red planet. The unusual move was suggested by a group of artists asked by Donegal County Council to explore art’s role in addressing issues of global warming. The Council’s Public Arts Manager, Terri Duffy, said it would act as an “attention-grabbing wake-up call”. “I know it’s a bit ‘out there’ but it is taking a very serious look at the relationship of art and climate change. Some people feel the earth is becoming more Mars like due to the effects of global warming…”

Mars is rather cold, owing to the fact that it doesn’t really have much of an atmosphere and so doesn’t have the benefit of much in terms of the Greenhouse Effect :-

Continue reading “Earth Twinned With Venus”

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Climate Change Media

Hot Babes

The Daily Telegraph has done its usual editorial flip-floppy, fence-sitting nonsense : publishing a pretty decent article about the last decade being the hottest ever and using the photograph of a chica in a bathing suit to accompany it. Talk about gratuitous sexism ! (Yes, let’s talk about sexism in the Media, shall we ?) :-

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6944399/Past-decade-warmest-on-record-say-Nasa-scientists.html

How are we expected to take The Daily Telegraph seriously ?

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Bad Science Climate Change Media Non-Science Political Nightmare Public Relations The Data

Send a Sceptic to Siberia

Yawn. Yet another anti-Science web log page floats into my field of vision. It’s so…boring, trying to keep up with the Global Warming Deniers. I can barely keep awake. Here’s an example of the trite, and frankly, petulant genre :-

https://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023339/james-hansen-would-you-buy-a-used-temperature-data-set-from-this-man/

Actually, don’t bother reading it. It’s a waste of column inches.

If only the Climate Change Sceptics would just go away and let us get on with the gargantuan task of revitalising the Energy industry around sustainable technologies.

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Climate Change The Data

The Blob Chart’s Back !

The NASA GISS Blob Chart has just been completed to finish off 2009, and it’s red, raw and angry. Don’t see any yellow in 2009, just orange and red. Getting kind of hot lately, isn’t it ?

The Blob Chart is…the best communications tool since the telephone, by the way. So simple. So visual. So colourful. So unambiguous.