What a picture - by Richard... Saturday, December 05, 2009

What a picture - by Richard... Saturday, December 05, 2009

Nice one from Old Rightie.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

Clutching at straws - by Richard...

It is tempting to see all this [Climategate, etc] as a rise in sceptical thinking as the world contemplates the economic consequences of massive cuts in its carbon emissions, says James Randerson in tomorrow's Observer.

But that is too simplistic, says Bob Ward, communications and policy director at the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, which is headed by Lord Stern. "I don't think there's been a rise in scepticism," he says. "All that's happening is that the sceptics are now down to a small enough group that they are able to band together and gloss over their differences."

So you get a "spin doctor" working for an arch-warmist to pronounce on whether "climate scepticism" is increasing. And he says "no". Well, there's a surprise! 

Then we get Dr Adam Corner, "an expert in the psychology of climate change at Cardiff University." He tells us that the climate sceptic arguments are very attractive to the person on the street. "[The sceptics] offer an escape route from the conclusion that things are going to have to change," he says. 

An idea that challenges government intervention into how we eat, how we travel and where we go on holiday is bound to find fertile ground. "There's a challenge for the environmental movement to not present [climate change arguments] in that way," he adds. 

They really are clutching at straws.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

All by themselves - by Richard...

"Climategate has tarnished the image of climate research, but hasn't undermined its substance," says Sharon Begley in the current edition of Newsweek.

She is right, after a fashion. You cannot undermine something which has no foundations. So what "Climategate" has done is simply bring the lack of substance to public attention. The so-called scientists undermined the science all by themselves.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

They catch up - by Richard...

... eventually. The glaciers are not about to disappear. We picked that up on Wednesday fromPajamasmedia blog.

This is about the misreporting by the IPCC in its 2007 report of glacier loss by 2035, instead of the actual figure of 2350. We now learn though that the IPCC relied on three documents to arrive at 2035 as the "outer year" for shrinkage of glaciers. 

They are: a 2005 World Wide Fund for Nature report on glaciers; a 1996 Unesco document on hydrology; and a 1999 news report in New Scientist. Hilariously - if that is what turns you on - none of these documents have been peer reviewed, which is what the IPCC is mandated to be doing. 

Murari Lal, a "climate expert" who was one of the leading authors of the 2007 IPCC report, denied it had its facts wrong about melting Himalayan glaciers. But he admitted the report relied on non-peer reviewed - or "unpublished" - documents when assessing the status of the glaciers.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

Not enough - by Richard...

The Met Office is to publish some of the data it uses to analyse climate change after allegations that researchers have manipulated the evidence supporting manmade global warming, says The Observer.

This is to happen next week, when information collected by more than 1,000 weather stations from across the world will be released. It will be available on the Met Office website. A spokesman declares that the office had "every confidence" in the data, which "would show that global temperatures had warmed up over the past 150 years."

However, while that is a start, it is by no means good enough. As recorded by Anthony Watts in his surface station project and set out in detail in his interim report, most of the US weather recording stations are substandard.

He and his team found that 89 percent of the stations surveyed – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements and were likely to be reporting higher or rising temperatures because they were badly sited.

Further, changes in the technology of temperature stations over time also has caused them to report a false warming trend while adjustments to the data by both NOAA and another government agency, NASA, caused recent temperatures to look even higher.

The conclusion, Watts says, is inescapable: The US temperature record is unreliable. The errors in the record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature of 0.7º C (about 1.2º F) during the twentieth century. Consequently, this record should not be cited as evidence of any trend in temperature that may have occurred across the U.S. during the past century. 

Since the US record is thought to be "the best in the world," he adds, "it follows that the global database is likely similarly compromised and unreliable."

Now, for the Met Office data to be of any value, it must also release information as to the standard of the sites from which they were obtained. Then, it is up to CRU to explain which of the temperatures they actually used, and what "adjustments" were applied, both to the original records and to the processed data, in order to produce their global temperature data.

Anything short of that and one might get the impression that this exercise was simply cosmetic, aimed at confusing rather than clarifying the current controversy. And we wouldn't want that to happen would we?

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

McKitrick - by Richard...

Ross McKitrick was just on Channel 4 News a couple of days ago. We missed it, but the video is on Bishop Hill.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

The Scarygraph view - by Richard...

The air has been thick with pejorative cries of "warmist" and "denier" ... But ... we have gone beyond this argument ... the governments of most countries in the world now accept the consensus, we are told. And so, as many as 100 world leaders will gather in Copenhagen – not to argue about the reality of global warming, but to decide what to do about it ...

So it's all settled then?

Funnily enough, Heffer doesn't think so. He is a firm "thermosceptic" Of the warmists, he asks: "Nutters, anarchists, anti-capitalists, fanatics, absolutists: why are these people taken seriously?"

Why indeed!

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

That remark - by Richard...

See part two - 2 minutes 36 seconds. (Courtesy Daily Politics) 

And now a commentary from Marc Morano to go with the event.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

Who do they think they are? - by Richard...

Mulling over current events, it seems we are moving into a new era of politics, where politicians have completely abandoned the pretence that they have any respect for their voters.

On the back of Gordon Brown's dismissal of "...behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics" – who probably account for 55 percent of more of the electorate - one recalls David Cameron's labelling of the eurosceptic vote in April 2006 as "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly".

And then they complain that we don't vote for them? Who are the deluded souls now?

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

Those deluded souls - by Richard...

And so, the considered opinion of The Independent is that "Climategate" is a "distraction".

But it agrees that the accusations "have to be addressed seriously", and not only "because they open the way for those deluded souls who still deny there is a man-made aspect to global warming to press their case with extra vigour." The real concern is that "the selectively published emails threaten to undermine public trust in the good faith of climate scientists."

No concern, then, that the "climate scientists" might be a bunch of self-serving crooks?

And my, aren't the warmists being free with their compliments? From "assholes" to "...behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics" and outright "criminals", us “deniers” have now become "deluded fools".

They really don't like us, do they? I think we’ll have to stop being so nice to them.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

Three years to wait? - by Richard...

The Met Office, we are told, plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data "after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails."

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012 ... by which time, we will be very firmly and obviously in the grip of the cooling cycle which has already started. So, are they going to delay the Copenhagen slugfest until the results are in? And what happened to "the science is settled"? Come to think of it, why are they checking at all when the science is robust?

The government, incidentally, is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics. It is a bit late for that - the genie is already out of the bottle.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

Permission to doubt - by Richard...

What, in effect, "Climategate" has done is give "permission" for people to doubt the climate change orthodoxy. American Thinker needed no such encouragement, but it does mean that its questioning of the accuracy of CO2 data collection will perhaps get a larger readership than otherwise it might have done.

Problems in the collection of atmospheric CO2 data parallel other absurdities in the global warming fraud, it says. The US NOAA openly admits to producing a CO2 record which "contains no actual data." NOAA temperature stations sited in ways that artificially inflate temperatures have been exposed over the past two years. CO2 observatories have similar flaws. Two of the five NOAA "baseline" stations are downwind from erupting volcanoes. All five are subject to localized or regional CO2 sources.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

Not enough support? - by Richard...

The shock announcement of the mothballing of the Redcar Corus steel plant – with the loss of 1,700 jobs - hasThe Times reporting the chief executive of the firm tearing into the government.

This is Kirby Adams, who complains that Whitehall, while trying to restore Britain’s financial sector to health, had failed to do enough for the manufacturing and construction sectors in which Corus's customers operated. According to the newspaper, though, Adams "admits" that it would have been very difficult for the government to support the firm directly "due to EU rules on state subsidies." 

However, this did not seem to be a problem for the company's IJmuiden steelworks in the Netherlands, purchased in 1999 when it took over the Dutch company Koninklijke Hoogovens. Only at the end of last month did the company announce a €20 million project to build a "ground-breaking new pilot plant", with €15 million funding from the EU and the balance from the Dutch government.

The 60,000 tpa Hisarna pilot plant will harness a new process that makes possible the production of liquid iron from virgin raw materials in just a single step, eliminating two of the three production steps required in blast furnace iron making, thus making the plant one of the most efficient in the world.

That, of course, leaves the Redcar plant out on a limb, saddled with the increasing costs stemming from EU and UK rules aimed at reducing life-giving carbon dioxide emissions, making the plant overly expensive to run and thus uncompetitive against the hi-tech Dutch plant and the rest of the plants owned by the parent group, India's Tata Steel.

The claimed reason for the closure of the Redcar plant is " over-capacity" in the industry, with Tara producing more than 28 million tons a year, employing approximately 80,000 workers across four continents. Strangely, though, that problem does not apply to the Indian plants (one pictured).

There, the industry is set to expand from its 2007 base of 53.10 million tons to produce 124.06 million of steel a year by 2011-12 and nearly 293 million tons annually by 2020.

Massive investment is required to see this expansion through, but as new plants will replace units with higher emissions per ton of steel produced – although more emissions than comparable European plants – they will qualify for "Clean Development Mechanism" funding, plus "green" loans and grants which Mr Brown is so kindly set to offer at the Copenhagen summit.

So, while the Redcar plant workers, and all workers from the suppliers and service enterprises, can celebrate their job-free status for Christmas, they can at least be comforted by the fact that EU funds – to which they have contributed – will keep their Dutch colleagues in work, while Mr Brown's largess will be set to employ ever larger numbers of Indian workers, all in the name of saving the planet.

Much of that will come out of Mr Brown's £800 million annual splending spree, on top of the £800 million annual aid we give to India to relieve "poverty" (thus enabling India to maintain a standing army of 1.2 million men - to say nothing of its space programme).

Nevertheless, all is not lost. Corus will be keeping some men on, to handle imported Dutch and Indian steel, while Mr Brown has assured the redundant workers that: "There are things like training support which we can offer." Perhaps they can all become home insulation installers.