Unfortunately, some misuse science. Some of their intentions, are far from benevolent. They see science as a mechanism for political power and control. There is great danger from those who would use science for political control over us.

How do they do this? They instill, and then continuously magnify, fear. Fear is the most effective instrument of totalitarian control.

Chet Richards, physicist,

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/science_in_an_age_of_fear.html

Monday 7 April 2014

A parent reacts to his children's 'flimsy', 'one-sided' education on global warming.

In 2011, a concerned parent, Seth Forman, was so disturbed by the superficial and one-sided education his children were getting in the United States about climate that he decided to assemble a set of bullet-points to explain 'Why I am a Global-Warming Skeptic (and You Should Be)'.  Notice that he does not dispute that global warming has occurred in the 20th Century - he is clearly using the term 'Global-Warming', as many do, as a shorthand for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW).

I reproduce some of it here as an illustrative example of what parents can do without having a scientific background themselves.  Forman is a university professor in government and public policy, and a writer on various political and historical topics (http://www.mrformansplanet.com/index_files/Page358.htm).

He has clearly studied readily available materials, and prepared his own notes on the history of this particular eco-scare, then highlighting some of the controversies associated with it beginning with the Climategate revelations of 2009, before finishing with some 14 points to substantiate challenging the standard 'global warming narrative'.  He has the talents and skills of an established academic researcher and writer, but he is a layman as far as climate science is concerned.  But since that science has penetrated into public policy, and associated proselytising has penetrated into schools, he has sufficient cause to make his own examination of the issues involved.

Imagine what an organised group of parents could achieve, over say 12 months, if they set out to do the same.  Imagine how well they then be able to protect their own children, and perhaps others as well,  from inadequate teaching on climate matters, and from the numerous scare stories that have been promoted for decades now.

Extracts from his article: 
(bold typeface added by me in the first paragraph)

'I live in a wonderful suburban community on Long Island. My three children attend the excellent public schools in our district. As the two oldest children have made their way through middle school, though, I've been bothered by the rather flimsy instruction they've received on the subject of "global warming." Despite widespread divergence among scientists and reports of questionable scholarship in landmark global warming studies, my children (and, presumably, their classmates and millions of other young students) have been taught a standard, one-sided view of "global warming." Both my 14 year-old daughter and 11 year-old son have been shown Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth in sixth grade, but have been given nothing to suggest that some of the information in the movie is either controversial or misleading. So I've decided to put together this bullet point compendium of information discussing the current status of the "global warming" debate.


The History
1. Global warming is when near surface and water temperatures on earth rise. Scientists believe there are many factors involved in the earth's temperature changes, many of which are natural and have little or nothing to do with human activity (e.g. atmospheric processes like clouds and precipitation systems, the variability associated with phenomena like El Nino and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation). But an approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit increase in average temperatures over the last 100 years has put the focus of scientists and funding agencies on "greenhouse gases" (carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrous oxide, and methane), some of which are emitted by humans. These gases can trap heat and light from the sun in the earth's atmosphere, which increases the temperature.
2. The claim that the earth is warming, that the warming is due to man's emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), and that continued emissions will lead to catastrophe gained major media attention during the hearings of then-U.S. Senator Al Gore's Committee on Science, Technology and Space in 1988. At those hearings Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies James Hansen claimed with" 99 percent certainty" that temperatures were rising due to a human-influenced "greenhouse effect."
...
[the article provides 4 more points under this heading]
The Controversy
1. In mid-November of 2009 there appeared a file on the internet containing thousands of emails and other documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain (CRU). The CRU supplied many of the authors for the IPCC reports. The file was quickly authenticated and provided unambiguous evidence that the CRU and associated research scientists throughout the world engaged in the unethical suppression of information and opposing viewpoints, data manipulation, and collusion. This event has become known as "climategate."
2. Climategate has mushroomed into a crisis affecting an entire scientific discipline. At the heart of this crisis is the "hockey stick" graph produced by Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State University, a co-conspirator in the leaked emails. After being given data by another scientist showing a mid-to-late 20th century decline in temperatures, Mann responded in a September 22, 1999 email to the CRU, that it was a "problem and a potential distraction/detraction." So Mann deleted the embarrassing post-1960 portion of the data. The CRU's director Phil Jones applauded Mann's deceptions in an e-mail in which he crowed over "Mike's Nature trick," which also included a "method" of flat lining the medieval "warming period."
3. An independent study by a team of mathematicians was requested by the U.S. congress and headed by Dr. Edward J. Wegman. The Wegman study thoroughly discredited the Mann "hockey stick" research because of invalid use of statistical techniques and found that the conclusions by Mann could not be supported.
...
[there are 6 more points under this heading in the article]
Scientific Data That Challenges the Global Warming Narrative
1. CO2 is a benign gas essential to life, occurring in past eras at five times present levels. Changes in atmospheric CO2 do not correlate with human emissions of CO2, the latter being entirely trivial in the global balance. Oceans are the primary contributors of CO2 in the atmosphere.
2. According to Larry Bell, a professor at the University of Houston and the author of Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax, the abnormally high temperatures experienced on earth in the last century has been going on for 15,000 to 18,000 years, a life-friendly period known as an interglacial cycle, long before man-made inventions of agriculture, smokestacks, and SUVs.
3. Prof. Bell explains that temperatures are probably about the same today as during a "Roman Warm Period" slightly more than 2,000 years ago, and much warmer than the "Dark Ages" that followed. They are cooler than the "Medieval Warm Period" about 1,000 years ago when Eric the Red and his Icelandic Viking tribe settled on grasslands of Greenland's southwestern coast, and much warmer than about 400 years ago when the Northern Hemisphere plunged into depths of a "Little Ice Age."
4. According to Robert B. Laughlin, co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics: climate change over geologic time is something the earth has done "on its own without asking anyone's permission or explaining itself." Glacial episodes have occurred "at regular intervals of 100,000 years," always "a slow, steady cooling followed by abrupt warming back to conditions similar to today's."
5. The past century witnessed two distinct warming periods, one occurred from 1900-1945, and another from 1975-1998. About half of that total warming occurred before the mid-1940s. Recordsfrom land stations and ships indicate that the global mean surface temperature warmed by about 0.9 Fahrenheit since 1880*. These records indicate a near level trend in temperatures from 1880 to about 1910, a rise to 1945, a slight decline to about 1975, and a rise to 1998.
6. While CO2 levels have continued to rise, there hasn't been statistically significant warming since 1998.
...
[there are 8 more points under this heading in the article]'
*Comment. 0.9F looks to be on the low side.  The EPA site linked to by the author talks of modern warming at about 1.4F per century.  Perhaps the author meant to write 0.9C.  See: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/weather-climate/temperature.html
The article is linked to in my first paragraph, but here is the link again for convenience:

Wednesday 2 April 2014

Climate-Anxious Children - can parents, and caring teachers, help correct the harm done by climate alarm materials?

Pic: Brighter Futures
'Collectively, anxiety conditions are the most common mental disorders in children. Moreover, they often persist throughout life, causing significant distress and interfering significantly with social life and achievement both during the child’s formative years and later in adulthood. '

The quote is from a mental health researcher, Kathy Griffiths


There is considerable evidence that many children suffer from anxiety about climate change.  The plausibility of that seems obvious given the dreadful materials, in books , websites, and curricula aimed at children, and in some cases aimed at scaring them into being political activists.

Who will help children cope with climate alarmism, and help protect them from those who, wittingly or otherwise, are acting as recruiting sergeants?  

The best candidates are surely their parents, aided whenever possible by sympathetic teachers.

The pioneering book Facts, Not Fear by Sanera and Shaw, shows how easy it is to de-fuse so many eco-alarms, not just the climate one.  Their approach is simply one of helping children see the bigger picture, and not the narrow-minded, highly-selective view pushed at them by propagandists.





I stumbled across an illustration of this today, on the blog of a teacher in London.  His post is entitled

How Not to Teach Climate Change


Here is an extract from it (I have added the emboldening):

'Last week I substitute-taught a Year 5 class that was learning about climate change. One of our pre-planned activities was to continue making posters about “good gases and bad gases”. I immediately noted that every student had slapped carbon dioxide (CO2) in the “bad gas” column.
I quizzed the class, and discovered that they had been taught the following line of thinking.
  1. Carbon dioxide is a harmful and poisonous gas.
  2. Nearly all daily human activity – turning on lights, jumping in a car, using an electrical device etc. – creates carbon dioxide.
They had no idea of the following:
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is a natural constituent of the atmosphere… 
Carbon dioxide is by far the most important (organic compound) for the sustainability of the biosphere (the whole of life on Earth).
Without CO2 the life of photosynthetic organisms and animals would be impossible, given that CO2 provides the basis for the synthesis of organic compounds that provide nutrients for plants and animals. Biology Cabinet
Just think about that for a second.
Imagine you’re a naive child, and your teacher tells you that your every daily action creates poisonous gases that destroy the planet.
I was shocked, and quickly set the record straight by informing them that CO2 is actually essential for life on earth; it feeds plants, and it is a crucial ingredient in their, and in every other living creature’s, bodies. I added that scientists think it may be warming up our planet, but they’re still not 100% sure.* These facts came much to their surprise and relief. '
[Hat-tip: it was from his post that I obtained the link to the mental healthcare quote which I used earlier]

What to do about it?

See how easy it was!  Here is a man who has compassion for the children, and enough knowledge to realise very quickly what a dangerously limited view they have of CO2.  A few simple facts seem to have helped dispel at least some of their fear.  Well done that man!  

This is one of the kinds of intervention suggested by Sanera and Shaw, and it seems to me that it could be accomplished by parents as well.  But first, those parents need to get themselves reasonably well-informed.  They will need to look beyond biased-outlets such as the BBC or most of the rest of the mass media, such as the UK's Guardian or Independent newspapers.  

A discussion-group that met regularly could invite expert speakers, and do online research to gather scientific results and informed opinions on any issue.  Has your child been told that a polar bear will die unless you switch off your lights and stop using the car so often?  It won't take long to discover that the bears are doing quite well, and that nothing extraordinary has been happening to Arctic sea ice, which has long been known to be highly variable.  Or that rising seas will swamp their coastal cities?  A quick check should show that there has been no great acceleration of the slow rise in sea levels which has been going on long before our CO2 could have had an impact, and that the plausible projected levels this century will readily be coped with. It is not hard, but some persistence is required to sift through the torrents of alarmist-conformism that will be encountered.

Friday 21 March 2014

Occam’s Broom and the stink of ‘97% of Climate Scientists’

‘The molecular biologist Sidney Brenner recently invented a delicious play on Occam’s Razor, introducing the new term Occam’s Broom, to describe the process in which inconvenient facts are whisked under the rug by intellectually dishonest champions of one theory or another…The practice is particularly insidious when used by propagandists who direct their efforts at the lay public …their carefully crafted accounts can be quite convincing simply because the lay reader can’t see what isn’t there.’                            Source: Daniel C Dennett



This Broom is so widely used in climate-scare propagandising that it could be the basis of a book about that dark art.  I want to focus on just one of the displays of it and that is the mis-use of the statistic '97% of climate scientists'.  To mix the metaphor, here is a source of one foul smell that no amount of brushing can remove.  It is the smell of deliberate deceit repeated over and over again.

As we shall see, the 97% figure, or ones like it, come from very unsatisfactory sources, and are not at all what they are sometimes made out to be, often by innuendo, insinuation, or juxtaposition.  The deceit occurs when the audience is encouraged to conclude that the 97% agree that there is a dreadful crisis associated with our CO2 emissions, and that draconic interventions by governments are all but immediately required if we are to survive the imminent catastrophe. 

In reality, the figure generally means, where meaning can be found in the studies which have produced it, that a non-random selection of people or papers contains around 97% of items supporting the twin notions that we affect climate with our CO2 emissions and that there has been overall global warming during the 20th century to which we have contributed.  

Note there is nothing intrinsically alarming about either of these notions because they are unquantified.  Some scientists believe for example that our impacts on the climate system have been too small to detect so far using global measures such as mean temperature, and may well remain so even if ambient CO2 levels continue to increase this century.

Here is a prominent example of 'propagandists directing their efforts at the lay public', published in the Wall Street Journal in 2012:

'The world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible. Impacts are already apparent and will increase. Reducing future impacts will require significant reductions in emissions of heat-trapping gases.  Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused.  It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses’
I have put the key phrase in bold to help it stand out.  Notice the tone of the surrounding text.  This is the insidious part.  It would seem, would it not, that this 97% of scientists hold that 'humans are primarily responsible', that 'significant reductions of heat-trapping gases' are required, and it would be 'reckless' to 'ignore the enormous risks'.  That is crisis talk.  We do not know how many scientists, or what proportion of them, believe there is such a crisis.  The 97% is not that figure, nor indeed has it been shown to be the proportion who agree that all of climate change is human caused (another insidious insinuation in the above quote).

Here is a more straightforward usage on a NASA site, one which might well be widely referenced by schoolteachers, pupils, and the authors of school materials:

'Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities.'

We also have this notorious tweet from the office of the US President, Barack Obama in 2013:

‘Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.’
Anthony Watts described the tweet quite simply as a lie: 
Here’s the genesis of the lie. When you take a result of 32.6% of all papers that accept AGW, ignoring the 66% that don’t, and twist that into 97%, excluding any mention of that original value in your media reports, there’s nothing else to call it – a lie of presidential proportions.’

Lifting the Rug

The notion of an overwhelming consensus in support of alarm is generally traced to one or other of 4 studies:

All 4 have been severely criticised.  
For example, re the Oreskes study of a set of papers she located from the years 1993 to 2003, the theoretical physicist Lubos Motl was not impressed and supports Benny Peiser's view: 'In light of the data presented above (evidence that can be easily verified), Science should withdraw Oreskes' study and its results in order to prevent any further damage to the integrity of science.'  A medical researcher, Klaus-Martin Schulte also took a critical look at Oreskes' methods, and using them on more recent papers, published between 2004 and 2007 he found:  'Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category  (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis.  This is no "consensus."'
Doran and Zimmerman's work was essentially a student project given an elevation and prominence which it did not, to put it mildly, deserve. In an attempted census of some 10,000 targets, only about 3,000 responded, and of these a subset of about 77 was singled-out to produce the 97% statistic since 75 of them agreed with quite innocuous, but carelessly worded, statements about climate to the effect that it has been warming recently, and humans could have contributed to it in a 'significant' way.  WUWT has relevant links.
Anderegg at al has been described as 'having so many defects it should never have been published' (see source of this observation and other criticisms in this post by Tom Harris.  Roger Pielke Sr. noted that the paper illustrates 'how far we have gone from the appropriate scientific process.'
Cook et al has also been shredded by informed commentators, appalled at what they found in it.  It actually contradicts what it is purporting to show, as noted by Brandon Shollenberger: 'This study done by John Cook and others, praised by the President of the United States, found more scientific publications whose abstracts reject global warming than say humans are primarily to blame for it.  The “consensus” they’re promoting says it is more likely humans have a negligible impact on the planet’s warming than a large one.’    Marcel Crok was a little harsher, he provides chapter and verse to show why the Cook et al paper is both 'meaningless and misleading'.  Christopher Monckton finds that 0.3% 'consensus' is more convincing than 97% using the Cook et al data, and he also has useful, and critical, insights on the other source papers.*
Andrew Montford has written a brief and very accessible overview of some of the shortcoming of the last three papers.  He points out that their  ' results add up to little more than “carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas” and “mankind affects the climate.” These are propositions that almost everybody in the climate debate accepts; ‘  He has also published a trenchant analysis of the Cook et al paper ins this GWPF note.  In it he quotes Mike Hulme, by no means a climate sceptic, writing 'The [Cook et al.] article is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed.   It obscures the complexities of the climate issue and it is a sign of the desperately poor level of public and policy debate in this country that the energy minister should cite it.'
Let me end with the words of commentator Barry Woods on the WUWT blog:: '.. I would like to put aside any criticism of the methodology or conclusions the scientists behind the Doran, Anderegg or any other similar paper make, and reserve my strongest criticism to others that misrepresent them, or go much further than the conclusions. My strongest criticism is not for those politicians, environmentalists, journalists or scientists, that use the soundbite of ’97% of scientists’ in complete ignorance of its source, or do not check the citation for themselves ...No, I reserve my strongest criticism for those activist scientist that know full well the source of the ’97% of scientists’ soundbite and use it anyway, ... and then use it to imply that there is some consensus of future dangerous or catastrophic risk, or that certain policies that must be taken, because of this consensus.'
I think Barry is right.  Irresponsible people can deploy Occam's Broom on this as much as they like, but the rotten smell of their '97%' insinuations will not go away.  Their rug has been lifted on that one.  In due course, I hope this particular deception will be removed from materials aimed at schoolchildren.  In the meantime, teachers and pupils alike can express their disdain by holding their noses as and when they come across it.
* Note added 26 March 2014. I forgot to mention the important study published by Legates in 2013 about the Cook et al. nonsense.  A useful report on it can be found here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/03/cooks-97-consensus-disproven-by-a-new-paper-showing-major-math-errors/  Extract: 'Dr Legates said: “It is astonishing that any journal could have published a paper claiming a 97% climate consensus when on the authors’ own analysis the true consensus was well below 1%." '  

Note added 14 March 2017.  The corrupted-by-campaigners organisation NASA has long had a 97% claim up on its website.  Here is a report on just how shonky their reference to support it is: https://realclimatescience.com/2017/03/massive-fraud-at-nasa-climate/
'If you actually click on the reference, you quickly realize that the claim is fraudulent. '
Further Reading
(1) The NIPCC 2013 report 'Climate Change Reconsidered II' is a good source of counter-arguments linked to the scientific literature and taking a contrary position to that promoted by the IPCC leadership.
(2) The Popular Technology website has compiled a list of over 1,350 'peer-reviewed papers supporting skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW alarm'. 

(3) For a very recent exposure of Occam's Broom being deployed by IPCC scientists see :

IPCC Scientists Knew Data and Science Inadequacies Contradicted Certainties Presented to Media, Public and Politicians, But Remained Silent

Note added 10 May 2014  A further refutation of the Cook-junk is about to be published as a journal note.  More details here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/10/john-cooks-97-consensus-claim-is-about-to-go-pear-shaped/ )
Note added 4 Sep 2014  More devastating analysis of the Cook et junk:
'This all tells us:

1) They blatantly, cavalierly, and repeatedly violated the methods they claimed in their paper, methods that are crucial to the validity of a subjective rater study – maintaining blindness to the authors of papers they rated, and conducting their ratings independently. This destroyed the validity of an already invalid study – more coherently, it destroyed the validity of the study if we assumed it was valid to begin with.

2) These people were not in a scientific mood. They had none of the integrity, neutrality, and discipline to be subjective raters on such a study. We could've confidently predicted this outcome in advance, given that they're political activists on the subject of their ratings, had an enormous conflict of interest with respect to the results, and the design appointed them subjective raters of written work, placing them in the position to deliver the results they so fervently sought. Just that fact – the basic design – invalidates the study and makes it unpublishable. We can't go around being this dumb. This is ridiculous, letting this kind of junk into a scientific journal. It's a disgrace.'
Note added 16 Sep 2014    Andrew Montford has written a report on the Cook et al.travesty - one of the sources of '97%'.  He concludes the consensus they produce is 'virtually meaningless'.  
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2014/09/Warming-consensus-and-it-critics1.pdf

Note added 21 Dec 2014  Popular Technology have listed their top 97 articles refuting the '97% consensus':  http://www.populartechnology.net/2014/12/97-articles-refuting-97-consensus.html  They note, 'The following is a list of 97 articles that refute Cook's (poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed) 97% "consensus" study. The fact that anyone continues to bring up such soundly debunked nonsense like Cook's study is an embarrassment to science.'
Note added 18 May 2015.  The '97%' nonsense is still being used, presumably because the propaganda benefits are many.  Here Ross McKitrick shows once again how shoddy it is: http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/climate-change-consensus-among-the-misinformed-is-not-worth-much
Note added 13 August 2015.
Here is a 2014 article by James Delingpole which provides some useful insights into the tawdry methods and motivation of Cook et al:  http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/09/08/obama-s-97-percent-climate-consensus-debunked-demolished-staked-through-the-heart/

Here is an August 2015 post by the MEP Roger Helmer (hat tip Climate Science) noting that a somewhat more respectable (but imho still very unsatisfactory) survey in which less than 50% of respondents took the IPCC party line:  https://rogerhelmermep.wordpress.com/2015/08/02/new-study-destroys-that-97-of-scientists-claim-or-not-as-the-case-may-be/
Details of that survey can be obtained here: http://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/climate-science-survey-questions-and-responses

Note added 23 March 2016.
Anthony Watts: 'I don’t like to use the word “fraud”, and I can’t recall if I’ve ever used it in a title. In this case it is warranted. Brandon Shollenberger writes of a new book, The Climate Wars: How the Consensus is Enforced, that proves without a doubt that John Cook and his “Skeptical Science” team are nothing but a gang of “say anything” activists, and that the much repeated “97% consensus” is indeed nothing more than a manufactured outcome.'
See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/12/the-cook-97-consensus-paper-exposed-by-new-book-for-the-fraud-that-it-really-is/

Note added 23 October 2018.
Three cheers!  The President of the USA speaks sense on climate, and in particular recognises there is substantial disagreement on the topic amongst scientists: 
See: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/23/president-trump-thinks-scientists-are-split-on-climate-change-hes-right-dana-nuccitelli-is-wrong/

Note added 19 February 2019.
They are still at it re this 97% nonsense.  It is yet more evidence that alarmists don't read, don't think, don't care about anything other than their own gurus and sacred slogans!  But this piece also includes a useful rejoinder:
http://www.cfact.org/2019/02/17/32717/

Note added 25 Sep 2019
Here is a good, and still highly relevant, essay on the 97% mythology:
https://www.tfp.org/the-cynical-myth-of-a-global-warming-consensus/
It is quite astonishing how this nonsensical claim is still widely used by the zealots - like crazed fanatics, they ignore reality as they rant and rave at us.

Monday 17 March 2014

Driven demented by fear, a mother thinks of setting herself alight to draw attention to the (missing) global warming crisis

Here is a woman who looks young enough to have been exposed to climate alarm propaganda throughout her school and college years.  Children get frightened by that, and some may never grow out of it as they get older.  She may well be one of them:

Climate Mom
In an article (hat-tip Climate Depot) on an Oregon news-site, she explains:

'A Tunisian man set himself on fire in 2010 and sparked an international movement. Don’t tell my family, but I’ve considered that route. I mean, wouldn’t any parent sacrifice a kidney, lung or life for her child? Imagine the headline: “Soccer mom desperate to save children’s future self-immolates.”'





On her own blog (linked to below the pic), she displays this banner:





This may represent a delayed success of sorts for the climate alarm campaigners.  Some of them, including for example UNESCO and also Pachauri of the IPCC, want children to be little political activists.  First they scare'em then they snare'em.  Well, this woman got so scared she thought of killing herself for the sake of her children.  I'd say she was snared as well.  Let us hope for her sake, and her children's, that she calms down a lot more and starts to develop a calmer perspective on climate variation and its various causes.

PS Another example, from 2013.  Here is a father from the other side of the States: 'When Ian Kim imagines the world his 7-year-old daughter will be living in 20 years from now, he says, it keeps him up at night. Images of ever more frequent super storms like Sandy, along with rising seas, or drought and heat waves wreaking havoc with crops haunt his waking hours.  “It’s a huge worry for me,” said Kim, a self-described environmental and social justice activist. “On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a 10.” '  Once you are such an activist, you do need a good crisis to keep you going, even it is largely in his own mind.

Saturday 8 March 2014

For the Climate Classroom Wall: two plots, two revelations - nought for the comfort of climate alarm campaigners

The valiant viscount, Christopher Monckton draws attention to this plot, and writes 'This graph is highly topical. It is right up to date. Remote Sensing Systems, Inc. (RSS) is one of the two satellite-based datasets (the other is the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH). And RSS is one of the five standard global temperature datasets, which include the two satellite datasets and the three terrestrial datasets – Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS); the Hadley Centre/CRU dataset, version 4 (HadCRUT4); and the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). As this month, RSS is usually the first to report, and its latest monthly value, for February 2014, became available just hours ago. '

































From the invaluable C3 website, which notes 'Scientists associated with the UN's IPCC predicted that the huge consumer/industrial emissions of the modern era would cause not only "unprecedented" global warming but also dangerous "runaway" warming, which would then produce "tipping point" climate change.
The climate science consensus today is that these speculative climate forecasts, based on flawed computer models, did not happen and expert analysis of the gold-standard of temperature datasets (the UK's global HadCRUT4) confirms it.
As this adjacent chart reveals, modern warming increases over the last 60 years don't even match the warming increases of the prior 60-year period, when earlier human emissions were just a fraction of contemporary amounts.'



Tuesday 4 March 2014

Pushing Climate Deception and Fear at Children - two US organisations carry on the despicable practice

EPA Video Contest Teaches Budding Child-Activists to Worry About 'Climate Change' 

This is the title of an article by Susan Solomon on the CNS News website (click the title to go there).

The article continues:

"(CNSNews.com) - The Environmental Protection Agency is co-sponsoring a "climate change video contest" that asks students, ages 11-14:" Why do you care about climate change?" And: "How are you reducing carbon pollution or preparing for the impacts of climate change?"


Students are advised to "be cool" and "be creative" in explaining "how climate change affects you, your family, friends, and community, now or in the future" -- and what they are doing to "prepare for a changing climate."
The Obama administration frequently uses video contests or "challenges" to advance its liberal viewpoint on a variety of issues, and this is no exception.
The climate-change videos may be up to two minutes long, and the top three winning entries will get prizes that can only be described as environmentally correct:
The first-place winner gets a solar-paneled backpack, which charges electronic devices; the second place prize is a "pulse jump rope" that generates enough energy to charge cell phones; and the third place prize is a "Soccket Soccer Ball," which turns kinetic energy from play into electrical energy that can be used to power small devices.
The prizes were selected and purchased by the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF), which is co-sponsoring the video contest with the EPA.
NEEF says students should read its "facts" on climate change before getting started on their videos.
Those "facts" include the following statements:
-- The signs of climate change are all around us (higher temperatures, wilder weather, rising sea level, more droughts, changing rain and snow patterns).
-- The climate you will inherit as adults will be different from your parents’ and grandparents’ climate.
-- Reducing carbon pollution, and preparing for the changes that are already underway, is key to solving climate change and reducing the risks we face in the future.
-- A major way carbon pollution gets into the atmosphere is when people burn coal, oil, and natural gas for energy."
See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/epa-video-contest-teaches-budding-child-activists-worry-about-climate#sthash.ybnmpob4.dpuf


Let us take a look at the 'four facts' in turn.  For the multiple points in the first, we shall compare them with conclusions reached from an analysis of peer-reviewed scientific papers compiled in the 2013 NIPCC report, Global Warming Reconsidered II, and in other works published since.  The reader is directed to this report, free to download using the links provided, in order to see the detailed arguments, data, and references to the scientific literature which buttress the statements I will reproduce below.

(1) The signs of climate change are all around us (higher temperatures, wilder weather, rising sea level, more droughts, changing rain and snowfall patterns).    

higher temperatures: It is widely accepted that there has been no appreciable rise in global mean temperature for nearly two decades, more than the lifetimes of the children being targeted.  This was preceded by an overall gentle warming over some 150 years, and upon which the rising CO2 levels have made no clear impact. In the NIPCC Report Chapter 4 (Section 4.1) we read 'Hundreds of peer-reviewed papers have presented evidence indicating temperatures of the past several decades are not unusual, unnatural, or unprecedented on a hemispheric or global scale.'

Spencer


  The children being targeted by this latest in a line of odious initiatives, are in the United States where 'all around' them, they have been enduring one of the coldest winters for 35 years as shown in the plot on the left.

Notice also from that plot that there is also no obvious rising trend, certainly not one that anyone could notice




wilder weather  The NIPCC REPORT reviews observations of extreme weather in Chapter 7 (section 7.7) and concludes 'There has been no significant increase in either the frequency or intensity of stormy weather in the modern era.'
A more recent paper in 2013  has in fact found evidence of a decrease in climate variability in modern times.  The rising financial costs of extreme weather events, on the other hand, is explained more by societal than by climate changes, as described in a new paper reported on here at WUWT.

rising sea level A general rise in sea level is reasonably well-established as a feature of the 20th century, but what is not remotely established is any link between sea-level rises in the 2nd half of that century and the rise of CO2 levels.  As the NIPCC report observes in Chapter 6, 'If the late 20th century global warming was as extreme as the IPCC claims it has been, why can it not be detected in sea-level data?'

more droughts   'Data presented in numerous peer-reviewed studies do not support the model-based claim [that] CO2-induced global warming is causing (or will cause) more frequent, more severe, and longer-lasting droughts.' Source: NIPCC Chapter 7, Section 7.4.1

changing rain and snow patterns 'General trends in precipitation are examined in Chapter 6 of this volume, where observational data indicate there is nothing unusual or unprecedented about recent precipitation events and trends in most regions.' Source: NIPCC Chapter 7, Section 7.6


(2) The climate you will inherit as adults will be different from your parents’ and grandparents’ climate.  This is a statement which has been true throughout our existence as a species.  It is a platitude.  It is of course being used here as a veiled threat to add to the sense of foreboding that the sponsoring organisations clearly wish to instil in the young.
(3) Reducing carbon pollution, and preparing for the changes that are already underway, is key to solving climate change and reducing the risks we face in the future. 
Well, it is of course not 'carbon pollution' they are mostly talking about here.  That term has been chosen because it makes for more effective propaganda that the correct term 'carbon dioxide'.  Would we refer to the release of water vapour to the air as 'hydrogen pollution'?  The water molecule is H2O.  The carbon dioxide molecule is CO2.  That piece of minor insidiousness aside, the idea that reducing CO2 levels is 'key to solving climate change' is nothing but fantasy.  The climate will change whether or not CO2 levels change.  Even if we had the ability to control CO2 levels - and it is far from obvious that we do - the idea that they provide a control-knob with which we select a climate of our choosing is absurd.  As for 'preparing for changes already underway'. it is also somewhat underhand.  Throughout our history we have sought to improve our ability to cope with climate variation, and we have actually become pretty good at it in the more industrialised countries.  
(4) A major way carbon pollution gets into the atmosphere is when people burn coal, oil, and natural gas for energy. 
When did 3 or 4 % of something become a 'major' part of it?  The general carbon cycle, which has CO2 as an important airborne carrier of carbon, is not particularly well-understood and measured.  The error bars on our estimates of various contributions and reservoirs in it are way larger than any plausible contribution from our industries.  That contribution is estimated as being about 3 or 4% of the total flux of carbon dioxide from all sources every year into the atmosphere.  In other words, a modest variation in emissions from the sea surface, or from tropical and subtropical vegetation could readily swamp our emissions in terms of magnitude. Once more, we see we are dealing with propagandists here.  The fact that our consumption of fossil fuels involves the release of CO2 to the atmosphere is not in doubt.  What is in doubt is how important that it compared with other contributions or sources of variation.  Some analysts argue that it is of negligible importance, attributing a more important role to sea-surface temperature variation.


This "climate change video contest" being sponsored in the USA by their EPA and NEEF organisations will serve no good purpose.  It is primarily a way for such organisations to judge the impact that their propaganda, and that of others intent on indoctrinating the young using climate scare materials, has had on this age group, 11-14 year olds.  What have the youngsters picked up on?  What has had most impact on them?  What new materials or spins would be most effective in increasing their fear and commitment, or rather those of the next waves of pupils?

It is not hard to refute or at least challenge the arrogant assurances of climate alarm campaigners.  Simple checks can do it, as shown above.  One day, perhaps it will be the pupils themselves who will do that in their own classrooms and homes, and thereby help put an end to the moral and intellectual abuse that they and their predecessors have been exposed to about climate and carbon dioxide.

Note added 07 Jan 2015.  In 2009: 'The Danish government in partnership with CNN just launched a new YouTube channel and a call for entries for individuals to "raise your voice" for climate change. The channel pulls together videos by celebrities, climate experts and concerned citizens. The best videos will be aired throughout the upcoming COP15 climate talks in Copenhagen this December.'
See: http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/computers/blogs/raise-your-voice-on-climate-change#ixzz3O80sjk8lHere is one such video shown in Copenhagen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkHfb2g7fMoDespicable or what? (hat-tip for reminding us of this piece of work: Climate Science )




Tuesday 25 February 2014

Wind-Subsidy Farms Cause Loss to Society - one result of the ill-informed panic about rising CO2 levels in the air.

Source
This is a picture to look at alongside the one in the previous post.  Is this a mum the youngsters want to swear abuse at about her pension? I think she might struggle to make any kind of sense of their banner: 'MUM AND DAD DID YOU KNOW YOUR PENSION IS &%$#+#-UP MY FUTURE?'

Daniel Greenfield (hat-tip Greeniewatch) writes

'8,000 people die in the UK every year due to what is being called "Fuel Poverty". Fuel Poverty is a trendy term for those who can't afford to heat their home because all the solar panels and windmills, the coal bans and the wars on fracking have made it too expensive for people not to freeze to death..

The left, which never misses a chance to blame profiteering for the failure of its policies, is staging "Die-Ins" outside energy companies to protect the real "Die-Ins" that they caused. But the real "Die-Ins" don't involve bored university students lying down on the concrete and posting the results to Tumblr. They end with the generation that saved Europe from Hitler dying in their own homes.'


In Germany, Pierre Gosselin writes 'Energy poverty is defined by the number of households that must pay more than 10% of their net income on energy. All told 6.9 million German households (every 6th household) finds itself in energy poverty, Spiegel writes.  Much of the rapid increase in energy prices is owing to Germany’s growth in expensive wind and solar energy. Ironically, despite more than 20% of Germany’s energy now being supplied by renewables, CO2 emissions have been rising just the same.  Spiegel calls the energy poverty rate “alarming”. However, when it comes to finding the cause for the runaway increase, the German Greens are blaming all the misery on the rising costs of oil and gas, and even hint that just more expensive, unreliable green energy is all that’s needed to get the costs back in line.'

Meanwhile, back in the UK:
Photo: ALAMY
'Onshore wind farms are being paid £30 million a year to sit idle during the windiest weather.
The payments are made because the cables which transmit power from the turbines to the National Grid cannot cope with the amount of electricity they produce during stormy conditions.'


Whether their blades are turning or not, these wind-subsidy farms are devices for transferring money from the bulk of the population to the relatively rich handful of owners and operators.  In exchange, the people get higher electricity bills, defaced landscapes, and lost opportunities in a less economically competent society.
These are not the greatest of the harms caused so far by the pushers of climate alarm, but they are nevertheless appreciable and getting worse by the month.  And the further harm that the pushers, and the children of the climate scare could cause scarcely bears thinking about, but think about it we must.