Climate Scaremongering Antidote: Fisking fearful, false, and facile alarmism in the mass media

Viscount Monckton has done sterling work in this area over the years.  This new piece is available in pdf from the SPPI website (http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/q2010_was_the_warmest_year_on_recordq.html ) and is a response to a specious article in The Australian earlier this month.  Eco-journalist-campaigners have been organising themselves to produce just this sort of stuff in response to public indifference or even hostility to their previous efforts to save the planet (e.g. http://earthjournalism.net/about-us ).  Their apparent aim is to proselytise rather than investigate; they want to win more compliance to the policies dreamt of by CO2 plotters and patsies alike rather than deepen or broaden our grasp of the issues.

Here is an extract:

'Michael Steketee, writing in The Australian in January 2011, echoed the BBC (whose journalists’ pension fund is heavily weighted towards “green” “investments”) and other climate-extremist vested interests in claiming that 2010 was the warmest year on record worldwide. Mr. Steketee’s short article makes two dozen questionable assertions, which either require heavy qualification or are downright false. His assertions will be printed in bold face: the truth will appear in Roman face.

1. BASED ON PRELIMINARY DATA TO NOVEMBER 30, SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES AROUND AUSTRALIA WERE THE WARMEST ON RECORD LAST YEAR, AS WERE THOSE FOR THE PAST DECADE.
The record only began ten decades ago. As for sea temperatures, they are less significant for analyzing “global warming” than estimated total ocean heat content. A recent paper by Professors David Douglass and Robert Knox of Rochester University, New York, has established that – contrary to various climate-extremist assertions – there has been no net accumulation of “missing energy” in the form of heat in the oceans worldwide in the six years since ocean heat content was first reliably measured by the 3000 automated ARGO bathythermographs in 2003. This finding implies that the amount of warming we can expect from even quite a large increase in CO2 concentration is far less than the IPCC and other climate-extremist groups maintain.

2. THE WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANISATION SAYS THE YEAR TO THE END OF OCTOBER WAS THE WARMEST SINCE INSTRUMENTAL CLIMATE RECORDS STARTED IN 1850 – 0.55 C° ABOVE THE 1961-90 AVERAGE OF 14 C°.
It is easy to cherry-pick periods of less than a calendar year and say they establish a new record. The cherry-picking of the first nine months of 2010 is particularly unacceptable, since that period was dominated by a substantial El Niño Southern Oscillation, a sudden alteration in the pattern of ocean currents worldwide that leads to warmer weather for several months all round the world. The last few months of the year, carefully excluded from Mr. Steketee’s statement, showed the beginnings of a La Niña event, which tends largely to reverse the effect of its preceding El Niño and make the world cooler. Indeed, the calendar year from January to December 2010, according to the reliable RSS and UAH satellite records, was not the warmest on record. Besides, what is important is how fast the world is warming. In fact, the rate of warming from 1975-2001, at 0.16 C° per decade, was the fastest rate to be sustained for more than a decade in the 160-year record, but exactly the same rate occurred from 1860-1880 and again from 1910-1940, when we could not possibly have had anything to do with it. Since late 2001 there has been virtually no “global warming” at all.'

The remaining 22 pieces of sophistry addressed are:

3. THE LAST DECADE ALSO WAS THE WARMEST ON RECORD.


4. THE WORLD IS NOT COOLER COMPARED TO 1998.


5. THE TRENDS HAPPEN TO FOLLOW CLOSELY THE PREDICTIONS OVER THE PAST 40 YEARS OF TEMPERATURE RISES RESULTING FROM INCREASED GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS.


6. MOST SCIENTISTS AGREE THAT DOUBLING THE CARBON DIOXIDE IN THE ATMOSPHERE IS LIKELY TO LEAD TO WARMING OF 2-3 C°.

7. WARMING OF 2-3 C° RISKS SIGNIFICANT ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC DAMAGE.


8. GREENHOUSE GAS CONCENTRATIONS ROSE BY 27.5% FROM 1990-2009.


9. ARCTIC SEA ICE SHRANK TO ITS THIRD-LOWEST AREA IN THE SATELLITE RECORDS, OFFSET ONLY SLIGHTLY BY GROWTH IN ANTARCTIC SEA ICE.


10. GLOBAL SNOW COVER IS FALLING, INFERENTIALLY BECAUSE OF MAN’S INFLUENCE.
I
11. GLOBAL SEA LEVELS ARE RISING, INFERENTIALLY BECAUSE OF MAN’S INFLUENCE.

12. MUNICH RE SAYS 2010 SAW THE SECOND-HIGHEST NUMBER OF NATURAL CATASTROPHES SINCE 1980, 90% OF THEM WEATHER-RELATED.


13. THE TEMPERATURE OF 46.4 C° IN MELBOURNE ONE SATURDAY IN 2010 WAS MORE THAN 3 C° ABOVE THE PREVIOUS HIGHEST FOR FEBRUARY.


14. IN MOSCOW, JULY 2010 WAS MORE THAN 2 C° ABOVE THE PREVIOUS TEMPERATURE RECORD, AND TEMPERATURE ON 29 JULY WAS 38.2 C°.


15. THE HEATWAVE AND FOREST FIRES IN CENTRAL RUSSIA KILLED AT LEAST 56,000, MAKING IT THE WORST NATURAL DISASTER IN RUSSIA’S HISTORY.


16. IN PAKISTAN, 1769 WERE KILLED IN THE COUNTRY’S WORST-EVER FLOODS.


17. THE HURRICANE SEASON IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC WAS ONE OF THE MOST SEVERE IN THE LAST CENTURY.


18. EVEN CAUTIOUS SCIENTISTS TEND TO SAY WE CAN BLAME MANMADE CLIMATE CHANGE.


19. CLIMATE CHANGE HAS CONTRIBUTED TO THE 20% DECLINE IN RAINFALL IN PARTS OF SOUTHERN AUSTRALIA OVER THE PAST 40 YEARS.


20. THERE IS STRONG EVIDENCE THAT “GLOBAL WARMING” MADE THE BUSH-FIRES AROUND MELBOURNE WORSE.


21. THERE HAS BEEN A SUCCESSION OF EXTRAORDINARY HEATWAVES, WITH BIG JUMPS IN RECORD TEMPERATURES, STARTING IN EUROPE IN 2003 AND CONTINUING ALL AROUND THE WORLD, CULMINATING IN RUSSIA LAST YEAR. MORE THAN 17 COUNTRIES BROKE THEIR MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE RECORDS IN 2010, AND “YOU REALLY HAVE TO STRAIN CREDIBILITY TO SAY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CLIMATE CHANGE.”


22. FOR 20 YEARS MORE HOT-WEATHER THAN COLD-WEATHER TEMPERATURE RECORDS HAVE BEEN SET.


23. EVEN IF GREENHOUSE-GAS EMISSIONS WERE TO STABILIZE AT LITTLE MORE THAN TODAY’S LEVELS, 2 C° OF FURTHER WARMING WILL OCCUR – FOUR TIMES THE INCREASE OVER THE PAST 30 YEARS.

24. ADAPTATION TO THE CONSEQUENCES OF “GLOBAL WARMING” WILL GET MORE DIFFICULT THE LONGER WE DELAY.


There is every chance that each and every one of these will be repeated one way or another by other 'eco-journalists' hellbent on their campaigning.  How many are already in school textbooks or other educational media? 

Hat-tip: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/09/monckton-skewers-steketee/

Note added 10 Jan 2010: Steketee makes a pretty feeble reply to Monckton here:  http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/mike-steketees-response-to-christopher-monckton/story-e6frg6xf-1225985171179  His arguments are mostly to the effect that the sources he quotes uncritically in his piece (e.g. WMO) are not him, yet he used them in support of his alarmism.  At best he is naively relaying misleading information, while refusing any responsibility for doing so.

Later on the 10th: Australian Climate Madness plots a middle course, and thinks Monckton over-reacted in some of the points: http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2011/01/moncktons-own-goal/

Late on the 11th: Monckton responds to ACM.  Truly Steketee is in over his head, and ACM blundered too ('So, Simon-from-Sydney, take some trouble to get your facts right before you accuse me of scoring an own goal. You say you don’t think I should have responded to Steketee’s nonsense at all: however, it is precisely because he and his ilk have been peddling trashy, largely truth-free extremism for years that so many feeble-minded governments have bought into the climate scare. Sometimes it is necessary to hit back with the facts, even if those who got them wrong then complain - quite inappropriately - that they were "misrepresented". – Monckton of Brenchley'): http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2011/01/lord-monckton-responds-to-acm/

Climate Scaremongering Antidote: poking fun at the CO2 Plotters

Or, 'taking the piss', as it is more vulgarly put.  There certainly is plenty of scope for it.  Here is a beauty:

Source: cartoonsbyjosh.com
Inspiration: comment posted by PB on Bishop Hill's site (http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/1/4/josh-64.html)

Now the speaker of the original line in the play (Richard III) was a bit of a conniving, scheming, nasty sort of a chap, and caused a great deal of harm.

Would the Bard have been inspired to do a play around some of the characters in the Great CO2 Plot?

Or, perhaps a Chaucer might have penned some Copenhagenury Tales?

Or can we still take a lighthearted view, despite the awful waste of spirit and resources due to the Plot, and think of it as material for a new Gilbert & Sullivan?

Climate Scaremongering Antidote: articulating a reality-based view of climate

Scaremongering using 'climate change' to win power and influence relies almost totally on the predictions of computer models widely agreed to be unfit for making predictions about climate. The articulation of a reality-based view of climate science and/or climate politics, one that puts computer models of climate in their place (and that place will be more like a toolbox than a pedestal) may help clarify the nature of computer-based climate scaremongering in our educational systems and elsewhere.  Here is one succinct shot at that which I came across recently, and which I reproduce in full with the permission of the author. He concludes that we should be more worried about the ignorance and influence of key promoters of the scaremongering:

'Should we be worried, very worried?

By Dr. Gordon Fulks
 
From near record high to near record low temperatures this November in the Pacific Northwest, from relatively warm ocean conditions and ‘dead zones’ to relatively cold ocean conditions and fabulous salmon runs off our Pacific Coast, from an unusually cold winter to an unusually hot summer in Russia, from near record low Arctic sea ice to near record high Antarctic sea ice, our climate displays wide variability. But an army of psychologists, journalists, and even scientists make sure that the warm swings they deem alarming get the greatest attention. These propagandists know that the selling of Global Warming is all about perception not reality.

If the data will not support their storyline for another UN climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, an army of data manipulators stand ready. They rework averages to show continued warming during the last decade when honest assessments show flat or slightly declining temperatures. Some can be relied upon to say that 2010 was the warmest year “ever,” when honest scientists say that the El Nino this year was very similar to 1998. Also, the recent warm period was not as warm as the previous Medieval Warm Period, something Alarmists deny ever existed.

The simple truth is that there is nothing unusual going on today, let alone anything related to human carbon dioxide emissions. Climate variations are expected on a planet with vast oceans and atmosphere that are never in complete equilibrium. Climate variations are expected with a Sun that varies slightly in total solar irradiance, varies more in x-ray and ultraviolet output, and varies substantially in magnetic irregularities which modulate galactic cosmic rays. Climate variations are also expected in a solar system with large planets like Jupiter that alter the earth’s orbit and produce the huge climate variations called Ice Ages.

But how is someone who never studied science going to figure out who is telling the truth?

Science is not what I say, just because I have a good education and long experience. It is all about honesty, logic, and evidence. The simplest solution is to look out the window. The British Met Office used its new $50 million super computer to predict a mild winter in Britain, 3.4 F warmer than last year. So far, the reality is record breaking cold, heavy snow, and paralyzing ice!

But what if the New York Times (NYT), President Obama, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC), Yale University, and the Oregonian all say to be worried, very worried?

Perhaps you should question their expertise. Thomas Freidman of the NYT frequently calls for action on climate change, but has no expertise and relies on a notorious propagandist. President Obama relies on scientists whom he funds to give him the answers he wants. The NAS is run to support government programs by an electrical engineer. He discovered that Global Warming is far more lucrative than electrical engineering. The UNIPCC is run by a railroad engineer who writes romance novels. Yale University promoters are really psychologists who want you to believe that they are climate experts when their real expertise is propaganda. The Oregonian relies on all the above. The interlocking relationships are highly incestuous, with vast conflicts of interest and/or little scientific expertise.

Among scientists, belief in Global Warming comes down to cold cash. Those who benefit most from government largesse (about $100 billion to date) are typically true believers, while independent scientists easily spot the scam. This creates a split based on age and experience. Young scientists like Juliane Fry of Reed College, who professed her belief in an Oregonian Op-Ed, are eager for fame, funding, and tenure, all of which are more likely if they support Global Warming. Older scientists like Richard Lindzen of MIT, perhaps the greatest meteorologist alive today, oppose climate hysteria. They built their fame on an approach now considered quaint: the Scientific Method.

Among Global Warming advocates there is occasional candor about their real goals. Christiana Figueres, the new executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said of the UN climate efforts: “This is the greatest societal and economic transformation that the world has ever seen.”

Global Warming is about politics not legitimate science. Ms. Figueres calls herself a “global climate change analyst.” Her formal education in climate science consists of Al Gore’s training program to promote “An Inconvenient Truth.”

That should worry everyone!


Gordon J. Fulks, Ph.D. lives in Corbett ... He holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago, Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research.'

A similar piece has also been published on OregonLive ( http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/12/climate_science_the_real_reaso_1.html). I came across it on ICECAP (http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate/P9/) from where a pdf version is available.

Poisoning the children's minds with climate scares: will that educational tide be on the turn in 2011?

We have seen an astonishing 40 years of scaremongering triggered by a few irresponsible scientists whose computer models became so vividly real for them that they abandoned basic adult responsibilities in their consequent public agitations.  After a brief dalliance with the possibility of the onset of the next glaciation, their efforts turned to warming, encouraged no doubt by the remarkable annual increases of CO2 recorded at Mona Loa.  They devised models to give CO2 a more important role in climate than observations and properly conducted historical reconstructions support.  The models do this by means of an hypothesised positive feedback involving water vapour, a feedback which is implausible from our knowledge of atmospheric history, and unconfirmed by recent observations, not least of air temperatures which fail to show the tropospheric 'hotspot' predicted by the models.  The 'settled science' of CO2 applies merely to its radiative properties, since the impact of these on the climate system is far from settled, with expert estimates ranging from an overall slight cooling, to a slight warming from projected increases in ambient CO2 over the next hundred years or so.  The apocalyptic stuff requires those computer models and their novel feedbacks.  Models which are mere toys in the face of the immense complexity of the system they refer to.  Models fit only to illustrate some aspects of speculations about the climate amongst relevant professionals, and not nearly good enough to warrant the widespread alarm they have been used to support.

It seems to me that adults, and in particular professionals, have a moral responsibility to avoid such scaremongering, and in particular to protect school-age children from it.  The temptations to pursue it for financial and political gain, or even for the pursuit of publicity and public attention as ends in themselves, are obvious and in part explain the enthusiastic adoption of climate scares by powerful individuals and organisations keen to grow in power and influence.  That they have dramatically succeeded in this is one of the most interesting features of the current scare, and one which is surely worthy of deep study in many disciplines if we are to have any hope of reducing our vulnerability to such exploitation.

While the media/political class chattering in and around climate will no doubt continue into the indefinite future, perhaps continuing the 20th century tradition of alternating, on an approximately 30 year cycle, between cold and hot dooms. (Certainly the recent cold weather over most of the northern temperature latitudes has seen more talk of ice ages, 'little' or otherwise.)  Or, the talk may become more nuanced, and less vulnerable to refutation, by deploying less specific threats such as 'climate change' or 'climate disruption', giving the agitators scope for pushing their 'cause' on the back of the inevitable excursions of weather events near or beyond previously recorded extremes.  Attempts have been made to make this particular spin, but their impact seems limited, presumably because of the huge prior success in promoting the warming motif.

The establishment (media, political classes, academia, governments, the EU, the UN, major NGOs and other multinational corporations) has bought wholeheartedly into climate alarm, some no doubt for genuine and honest reasons, based on trust in the pontifications of erstwhile respected bodies such as the Royal Societies of Edinburgh and London, or indeed of the once 'dull and dowdy' Met Office, now transformed with the help of a WWF activist into an important exponent of 'climatism'.  They make for a wealthy and powerful force driving and/or riding the tide of alarmist opinion about climate.  It might seem futile to resist it.

But what else can we do?  Will it self-destruct?  The case for alarm over human impacts on climate is so thin, so tenuous, that it seems doomed to collapse from its own absurdity.  The last year or so, from Climategate onwards, has seen much to encourage this view, aided and abetted by the wacky sense of humour of the weather gods who produced the Gore Effect so many times, and, now, another winter on the cold side over very extensive areas in the northern hemisphere.

Unfortunately the alarmist-virus is out and into the educational bloodstream, threatening to produce more and more demoralised and frightened children.  At the very least, we who look on appalled at its spread, can try to find and encourage antibodies wherever and whenever they appear.  To mix-in the earlier metaphor, the tide may be turned earlier in some places than in others.  Variability is, after all, all around us.

Christmas Greetings

A Merry Christmas to all people of goodwill everywhere, especially those special few who drop in here!

My apologies again for the light blogging.  My ambition for 2011 is to help find and promote antidotes for the poisonous alarm, and negative, destructive thinking deliberately injected into schools all over the world under the guise of 'environmentalism' by those using 'climate change' as the terror of choice to win attention and compliance from the young.

And, when it comes, a Happy New Year to one and all!