Category: Climate Change

Climate Change

Untidy Minds #3 : Janet Daley

Post author By Jo
Post date December 3, 2009
No Comments on Untidy Minds #3 : Janet Daley

We’ve had Oxbridge Classics and Language graduates denying Global Warming in the Press in the last couple of weeks; now we’re on to the political commentators.

Why Global Warming Science is a matter for adversarial politics, you know Left and Right, liberal and conservative, I don’t know.

Global Climate Change is affecting us all, and pretty much the same steps will need to be taken by whichever party is in power, in whichever country. It doesn’t really have a political flavour. It’s not a matter of choice, or choice of policy. Climate Change policy is not based on political ideology.

Tags Climate Change, denial, denier, Global Warming, Journalist, sceptic, skeptic

Climate Change Protest & Survive Public Relations

Show Us Your Emails

Now, I believe in fairness, fair play and being a good sort, a good sport.

And so for that reason, I’ve been toying with the idea of suggesting that if you’ve been in email contact with a Climate Change denier, and you think the information exchanged would be interesting to others, to post that email correspondence here in a comment.

Truth is, I’m intrigued to know what Climate Change deniers (or “sceptics”) say to each other in private correspondence, and how it is that they have managed to coordinate over the “Climategate” affair when they are in different countries. I’m guessing it’s all been done by email, of course, so I would be interested to read what they’ve been saying to each other.

Tags Climate Change, Climategate, denial, denier, sceptic, skeptic

Bad Science Climate Change Non-Science

Untidy Minds #2 : Melanie Phillips

Post author By Jo
Post date November 29, 2009
No Comments on Untidy Minds #2 : Melanie Phillips

Melanie Phillips is a journalist with an Oxford education in the English language, according to Wikipedia :-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Phillips

She is also a Global Warming denier. I use the word “denier” literally, not emotively, because she denies the facts on Global Warming. If she were to express doubt about Climate Change science, then there would be some wiggle room to allow calling her a “sceptic”. But as it is, she denies it. Outright. Watch, and be amazed ! :-

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/8382037.stm

Tags Climate Change, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, denial, denier, sceptic, skeptic

Climate Change Political Nightmare Protest & Survive Social Change Unutterably Useless Utter Futility Vote Loser

White Supremacist’s Revenge

Post author By Jo
Post date November 29, 2009
No Comments on White Supremacist’s Revenge

Super-double irony : Nick Griffin, the anti-immigration right-wing nationalist is going to the Copenhagen Climate Talks as a representative of the European Union, where, no doubt, he will probably attempt to exact a white supremacist’s revenge – throwing whatever spanners (wrenches) he can in the works to stop a global deal to protect the poor and vulnerable from Climate Change :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/29/nick-griffin-bnp-copenhagen-summit

“…Griffin, who was elected to the European parliament in June, confirmed last night that he would attend as the representative of the parliament’s environmental committee. World leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, are hoping to forge a new global agreement to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. Without such a deal, scientists warn that world temperatures will increase by more than 2C by the end of the century, triggering ice cap melting, sea-level rises, widespread flooding, the spread of deserts and devastating storms. In a speech in the parliament last week, Griffin denounced those who warn of the consequences of climate change as “cranks”. He said they had reached “an Orwellian consensus” that was “based not on scientific agreement, but on bullying, censorship and fraudulent statistics. The anti-western intellectual cranks of the left suffered a collective breakdown when communism collapsed. Climate change is their new theology… But the heretics will have a voice in Copenhagen and the truth will out. Climate change is being used to impose an anti-human utopia as deadly as anything conceived by Stalin or Mao.” Griffin will be one of 15 representatives chosen to speak on behalf of the EU in Copenhagen…”

I agree with inclusion and tolerance, but this is a step too far ! Griffin’s agenda and purpose seems to consist entirely of exclusion, intolerance, might-is-right, anti-science and inequality. I don’t know how he can represent the European Union in any way…He might as well wear a Ku Klux Klan outfit for all the anti-democratic flames he carries around inside him.

I doth protest.

Tags Climate Change, denial, denier, fascism, nationalism, sceptic, skeptic, white supremacist

Bad Science Climate Change Non-Science The Data

Untidy Minds #1 : Richard Lindzen

Post author By Jo
Post date November 29, 2009
1 Comment on Untidy Minds #1 : Richard Lindzen

I must admit : even though I try to read widely, there are some things I miss. I’ve just become aware of a research paper that was published in Geophysical Research Letters in August 2009 :-

https://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf

Tags Climate Change Science, denial, denier, sceptic, skeptic

Climate Change

What Do I Know ?

Image Credit : David Archer

There’s been a spate of general ignorance in parts of the Press of late – people pleading the Fifth Amendment – claiming they don’t know enough about Global Warming, so they can’t possibly be expected to utter expertise or erudite commentary (which could get them into deep water). And yet they end up making a judgment anyway, or quoting Climate Change deniers without checking their facts. Here’s a few snippets :-

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/columnists/article-1231024/STEPHEN-GLOVER-I-know-truth-climate-change-I-recognise-trickery-slippery-excuses-I-them.html

“…My own response is to assume both sides are capable of twisting the facts. This is not based on scientific knowledge of climate change, since like almost everyone else I don’t have any…”

Tags Climate Change, denial, denier, education, sceptic, skeptic

Climate Change

Mini Hockey Sticks

Michael Mann’s giant Hockey Stick is backed up by a lot of other reasearch, from proxies to glaciers. Everything appears to be going up :-

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/

I’d like here to introduce you to two Mini Hockey Sticks that correlate strongly with the evidence from Michael Mann.

Tags Climate Change Science

Big Picture Climate Change Energy Revival Peace not War Peak Oil Pet Peeves Renewable Resource Solar Sunrise Wind of Fortune

OPEC Compensation

You can bet your bottom petrodollar that there will be some bailouts at Copenhagen.

There will be the obvious benefactors, in the form of the Mitigation and Adaptation Fund, which will be set up to get money flowing from the industrialised countries to the developing countries, to enable the developing countries to buy technologies from the industrialised countries, to save the developing countries from Global Warming.

But behind the headlines, there will be some other deals being cut, in fact, one in particular may already have been sliced, judging by this article (OPEC = Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) :-

https://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article6926219.ece

Tags Climate Change, Energy, Oil, Solar power, Wind Power

Bad Science Bait & Switch Climate Change Non-Science Obamawatch Political Nightmare Public Relations Social Change The Data Toxic Hazard Unutterably Useless

Climategate : Too Tired To Resist ?

Post author By Jo
Post date November 27, 2009
3 Comments on Climategate : Too Tired To Resist ?

George Monbiot has written another post on his The Guardian weblog, anxiously chewing his own lips to bloody shreds with the stress of the Climategate situation :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/nov/25/monbiot-climate-leak-crisis-response

“Pretending the climate email leak isn’t a crisis won’t make it go away : Climate sceptics have lied, obscured and cheated for years. That’s why we climate rationalists must uphold the highest standards of science : Posted by George Monbiot : Wednesday 25 November 2009 : I have seldom felt so alone. Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. The emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, they say, are a storm in a tea cup, no big deal, exaggerated out of all recognition. It is true that climate change deniers have made wild claims which the material can’t possibly support (the end of global warming, the death of climate science). But it is also true that the emails are very damaging. The response of the greens and most of the scientists I know is profoundly ironic, as we spend so much of our time confronting other people’s denial. Pretending that this isn’t a real crisis isn’t going to make it go away. Nor is an attempt to justify the emails with technicalities. We’ll be able to get past this only by grasping reality, apologising where appropriate and demonstrating that it cannot happen again. It is true that much of what has been revealed could be explained as the usual cut and thrust of the peer review process, exacerbated by the extraordinary pressure the scientists were facing from a denial industry determined to crush them…”

Look, George love, we’d like to do something useful, but the problem is one of sheer exhaustion. People are tired of the relentless waves of hysteria and mania coming from the “denial community”. Nothing we say makes them stop, not even for one second. On and on they moan and clatter and hammer.

Tags Climate Change, denial, denier, sceptic, skeptic

Bad Science Climate Change Non-Science Public Relations Social Change

I Kiss You, James Delingpole

Post author By Jo
Post date November 27, 2009
3 Comments on I Kiss You, James Delingpole

Sometimes I just want to run and plant a big, fat kiss on your boyish little brow, James Delingpole. Or pat your head in a more appropriately respectful, yet somehow patronising fashion.

For time and time again you prove to me that you do not know what you are talking about, squashing your own arguments flat as a pancake.

Here you prove that you (a) do not know how to do investigative journalism and are (b) quite prepared to repeat verbatim, gaffe by gaffe, what other people write :-

https://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017977/climategate-the-scandal-spreads-the-plot-thickens-the-shame-deepens/

If you were only to skim and skate the Internet for a few minutes more, you could find out that there is an perfectly reasonable explanation for the “Kiwi Korrections” :-

https://hot-topic.co.nz/nz-sceptics-lie-about-temp-records-try-to-smear-top-scientist/

Of course, since you have not been trained as a scientist, you will probably find yourself unable to fully appreciate how perfectly ridiculous you could appear in some eyes.

But not mine. All of a sudden I just love and adore you, for you have presented me with a golden gift with which I could dismiss your rantings as frustrated twaddle, egged on by a wunch of cynics.

Except I wouldn’t. I’m way too nice.

Tags Climate Change, denial, denier, sceptic, skeptic

Climate Change

Copenhagen Diagnosis : We’re In The Doo-Doos

Post author By Jo
Post date November 25, 2009
No Comments on Copenhagen Diagnosis : We’re In The Doo-Doos

Some days are sunny, funny, bright days, with laughter, humour and merry whistling and chortling. But always I come back to humming and mumbling this little tune : “we’re in the doo-doos”, sung of course, to the Gold Diggers film song of 1933, substituting the word “money”.

We are in deep, steaming, reeking piles of muck with Climate Change. There’s no two ways about it. It’s pure, unadulterated, fetid crappola :-

https://www.copenhagendiagnosis.org

Well, at least the Sixth and possibly final Great Extinction of Life on Earth will make some great compost, just in case anything survives that needs feeding.

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/copenhagen/

https://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/copenhagen_diagnosis.php

https://www.desmogblog.com/state-climate-much-worse-predicted

Tags Climate Change, Copenhagen, Copenhagen Diagnosis, Extinction, Global Warming

Climate Change Political Nightmare Public Relations

Right Before Your Eyes

If you care to actually spend 10 seconds looking at the NASA GISS “Blob Chart” (see link above), you will easily detect a continually warming trend. Yes, there are dips and climbs. Yes, there is variability. No, Global Warming did not stop in 1998.

This very easy-reading level of visual information, apparently, is not good enough to convince Janet Daley that Global Warming is happening. She just can’t make it out amongst all the noise, probably coming from the Climate Change Deniers.

Whether she knows it or not, she is not telling the truth.

Tags Climate Change, denial, denier, Global Warming, sceptic, skeptic

Climate Change Public Relations Social Change

The “Completely Evil Institute”

Post author By Jo
Post date November 25, 2009
No Comments on The “Completely Evil Institute”

What on Earth motivates the Competitive Enterprise Institute ? It can’t be the Free Spirit of Free Enterprise. I mean, what organisation sincerely devoted to the principles of honest, open competition would employ the weight of the litigation process to make their arguments for them ? And against a weblogger ? For moderating the weblog ? You are joking ? No, I’m not :-

https://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/competitive_enterprise_institu.php

“Competitive Enterprise Institute intends to sue blogger over moderation policy : Posted on: November 25, 2009 1:59 AM, by Tim Lambert : Gavin Schmidt has done a wonderful job at RealClimate patiently explaining the context of the stolen emails. He’s made it perfectly clear that the claims of scientific malpractice are without foundation. He must be doing a really good job, because the Competitive Enterprise Institute intends to sue him…”

This should get thrown out of court at the earliest possible second. It is patently ridiculous. If Climate Change skeptics/sceptics want Free Speech, they can run their own, privately-funded weblog. Oh yes. They already do. Several. Large corporations/companies are still outsourcing their resistance to Carbon Control via third parties for a handsome remuneration. Maybe somebody should sue Big Business for repeated, outsourced, attempts to cloud, delay and deny Climate Change science ?

Tags Climate Change, denial, denier, sceptic, skeptic

Climate Change

Climategate : Phil Jones Stays Put

Post author By Jo
Post date November 25, 2009
2 Comments on Climategate : Phil Jones Stays Put

Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) is staying put.

He’s come out loud and proud, defending himself, his Science and his institution, and he’s being backed up by his boss, too :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/24/climate-professor-leaked-emails-uea

Meanwhile…the Scientific American magazine uncovers a genuine cover-up in Climate Science :-

https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=climate-change-cover-up-you-better-2009-11-24

“Nov 24, 2009 : Climate change cover-up? You better believe it : By David Biello…”

Tags Climate Change, denial, Deniers, Sceptics, Skeptics

Bait & Switch Big Picture Carbon Commodities Climate Change Emissions Impossible Media Political Nightmare Protest & Survive Public Relations Social Change

Doing Business at Copenhagen

Post author By Jo
Post date November 24, 2009
No Comments on Doing Business at Copenhagen

The Daily Telegraph seems most keen that the business sector should be at the Copenhagen Climate Change negotiations :-

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/kamal-ahmed/6605608/Copenhagen-Climate-Change-summit-do-businesses-need-to-be-there.html

“Copenhagen Climate Change summit: do businesses need to be there? : The Copenhagen Climate Change summit is fast approaching. There’s going to be an army of negotiators in the Danish capital but do businesses need to be there? By Kamal Amed : Published: 19 Nov 2009 : …while there’s been an awful lot on the politics of Copenhagen…there has been relatively little on what the business sector is supposed to be saying or doing. Many big players are privately indicating that they need to be there for political reasons rather than business reasons and that the whole thing is, ahem, a load of hot air. Looking more broadly, […] there is a danger that the whole event becomes little more than a photo-opportunity…that might give us all time to consider exactly the business and finance sector is supposed to be doing to tackle climate change…”

Tags Business, Climate Change, Copenhagen, corporate, corporations, influence, lobbying, protest

Bait & Switch Climate Change Public Relations

Climategate : Don’t Jump, Phil Jones

Post author By Jo
Post date November 23, 2009
4 Comments on Climategate : Don’t Jump, Phil Jones

George Monbiot has called for the head of the Climatic Research Unit on a plate, but I don’t think Phil Jones should jump, myself :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/nov/23/global-warming-leaked-email-climate-scientists

“Global warming rigged? Here’s the email I’d need to see : The leaked exchanges are disturbing, but it would take a conspiracy of a very different order to justify sceptics’ claims : George Monbiot, guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 November 2009 : It’s no use pretending this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them. Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request. Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed…”

Phil Jones shouldn’t be pushed, either, in my view.

Phil Jones should be tasked with clearing up this mess, starting with rooting out and disciplining whoever made these e-mails public.

Stay in post, Phil, and get the job done !

Tags Climate Change, Climate Change Science, Climate Science, denial, denier, sceptic, skeptic

Bait & Switch Climate Change Public Relations

Climategate : Paul Hudson Knew

Post author By Jo
Post date November 23, 2009
4 Comments on Climategate : Paul Hudson Knew

This post is made about Paul Hudson, a BBC weatherman who penned an article sceptical about the Science of Climate Change, and promoting the perhaps pseudo-scientific views of Piers Corbyn, a weather forecaster, entitled “What happened to Global Warming” :-

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8299079.stm

Paul Hudson is also the author of a weblog post on “Climategate”, the “liberation” of years of e-mails from inside the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

I’m going to cut and paste the whole of his post here, because it contains information regarding the alleged crime that took place when the e-mails were removed from CRU.

Tags Climate Change, denial, denier, sceptic, skeptic

Bait & Switch Climate Change Public Relations

Scepticaemia : Blood Brotherhood Trouble

Post author By Jo
Post date November 23, 2009
1 Comment on Scepticaemia : Blood Brotherhood Trouble

Far be it from me to comment on a matter under criminal investigation… Oh, OK then, I will.

As some readers of this post will know, some time in the recent past, a person or persons unknown allegedly took some files from a computer server belonging to the CRU, the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

They may have been “hackers”, “stealing” the files. They may have fabricated them. That is a matter for the Police and authorities yet to decide. The files may have been taken/invented last week : another fact open to investigation.

These alleged files allegedly contained information and e-mails pertaining to work by Climate Change scientists spanning a number of years.

Tags Climate Change, denial, Deniers, Sceptics, Skeptics

Big Picture Burning Money Carbon Commodities Climate Change

Carbon Hunters

“Where there’s muck, there’s brass”, as some people in England say. Waste and pollution can be big moneymakers for some, as local and national government bodies strive to ensure a safe, clean environment for their citizens.

Dealing with Carbon pollution is, however, in a different league of Big Dirt than the municipal waste stream, litter picks and recycling efforts. It’s even in a much larger landscape than Energy supply infrastructure and global fuel distribution systems.

Carbon emissions are in everything we do, practically, from texting to flying; from cooking to holidaying; from home comfort to laundry.

We can have school poster competitions that influence dog walkers to clean up after their pooches and hounds, but it’s not going to be so easy to cut the Carbon from our entire civilisation.

Tags Carbon Credits, Carbon Finance, Carbon Markets, Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Global Warming

Climate Change The Data

In Hotter Water

You know how the weather is : one day blowy, next day rain. The air, the atmopshere, is full of shifting, changing things like clouds, winds and pressure systems. All cyclonic and swirling and driving and stormy.

But you know, the seas are quieter, more regular and reliable, the ocean is calm and steady, deep under the surface that gets whipped up by the winds and the hurricanes and typhoons.

You would expect the atmospheric temperatures to chop and change, just as they do on the ground. But out at sea, it’s a different matter. Slowly but surely, planetary heat imbalance would warm up the whole world ocean. Like cooking soup on the camp fire.

And to use a current meme-phrase : the data’s in. After people went to the enormous trouble of dropping thousands of floating observation stations all over the world’s oceans, the picture of what’s happening to heat in the water is becoming clearer by the day.

Tags Argo, Climate Change, Climate Science, Heat Content, Heat Uptake, Ocean, Oceans, Seas, World Ocean