Christmas Greetings

J S Bach wrote some pretty good music!  His Christmas Oratorio has added to the joy and beauty of this time of year.

Also a time of good cheer!

Here's to 2019.  May it be a great year for the sharing of
rational analyses of climate variation, and may that lead to
better informed teachers and children everywhere.

COP24 Climate Alarm PR idea: Let's Try Anxious Children instead of Polar Bears or Hockey Sticks

Pic: KIARA WORTH/IISD/ENB

This picture on the left was used as the lead image in a BBC news item reporting on key results from the COP24 meeting in Poland this month.  It shows children roped-in to convey the latest 'only x time units left' climate alarm message.  One of a long list, some of which are recalled in a recent article on WUWT.

But back to the BBC.  Their author notes 'One of the most striking things about this conference of the parties was the presence of energised young people in far greater numbers than I have ever seen them at a COP before.', and goes on to conclude his piece with a photo and a quote from the troubled Swedish schoolgirl who has been presented as the leader of school 'strikes' to promote climate alarm.

What I take to be an official blog/site for COP24 is also big on children: check out this video on how they were used in the opening ceremony:

Indeed, there was a section of the conference explicitly for getting children involved in producing recommendations:

'This Friday, December 14th, during the Climate Change Conference

COP24 in Katowice, young Polish delegates will take part in a discussion

panel entitled “No climate for young generation…”, organized by UNICEF

Poland and The UNEP/GRID-Warsaw Centre.'

'Representatives of the young generation from different regions

of Poland will meet at the event of the Polish Presidency at the

COP24 to jointly debate issues related to climate change. 25

delegates, supported by experts, will discuss the most

 important challenges in selected areas ...'

'...At the end of the meeting young people will write recommendations

regarding urgent actions in the field of climate protection... '

The intellectual and/or moral poverty of climate alarm

campaigners has been easy to illustrate for years.  This
latest COP parade adds to the pile.  As more and more
adults are able to tackle, refute, and object to the specious
and hyperbolic claims of those seek to raise alarm over our
impact on climate variation, it makes sense for campaigners
to increase their already substantial attention on children -
not only to brainwash them for future use, but also to use
them now as levers on political power. 

How about a conference on how to help children cope with
and recover from the climate alarmism foisted upon them?

How about recommendations to help adults who have been
harmed by such alarm during their school years?

Let us not forget that the case for alarm over our impact on

climate is a frail and unsatisfactory one.  It may have a place
in academic discussions, but it does not have anything like
enough substance to be used for important decision-making.
Professor Nir Shaviv summarised this neatly the other day
in an address to the German parliament (emboldening by me):

'Three minutes is not a lot of time, so let me be brief. I’ll start 
with something that might shock you. There is no evidence 
that CO2 has a large effect on climate. 

'The two arguments  used by the IPCC to so called “prove” 
that humans are the main cause of global warming, and 
which implies that climate sensitivity is high, are that: 
a) 20th century warming is unprecedented, and 
b) there is nothing else to explain the warming.  
These arguments are faulty.'

Note added 19 Dec 2018. See the Shaviv link above for more

details of his position. I would also recommend the NIPCC reports 

as excellent sources of more information on rational rather than

ideological perspectives on climate variation.  The summary version

of their latest report is a good place to start.

Note added 20 Dec 2018.  The Global Warming Policy Foundation
(GWPF) has just published a note concerning some of the shoddiness
in the recent IPCC report.  Here are the concluding paragraphs:

'The SR1.5 report represents a very significant departure from
previous IPCC reports in the direction of increased alarm regarding
global warming, particularly as compared with the Fifth Assessment.

No rigorous justification for this departure has been provided.
In reality, since the Fifth Assessment considerable evidence has
accumulated suggesting that global warming is more of a long-term
threat than a planetary emergency.

This evidence consists mainly of observational results suggesting
lower climate sensitivity (i.e. less warming in response to any given
increase in greenhouse gas concentrations) and results indicating a
greater contribution from natural variability to explaining observed
global temperature trends.

The IPCC has not passed on this evidence to policymakers in its
SR1.5 report. The report has also not passed on to policymakers
some very important information published by climate modellers
since the last IPCC assessment report regarding the empirical tuning
of climate models to achieve desired results.

The failure of previous IPCC reports to document the models’ tuning
procedures has been described by these modellers as a ‘lack of
transparency’. The projections of future warming published by the
IPCC are completely dependent on the reliability of these models.
In view of these deficiencies, the SR1.5 report does not merit being
regarded by policymakers as a scientifically rigorous document.

There is much recent scientific evidence, not referred to in the report,
to support a more considered mitigation strategy than the extreme
measures proposed in the report. Meanwhile, the worthy goals discussed
in the report, such as sustainable development, poverty eradication
and reducing inequalities, should be pursued on their own merits
and not made dependent on unsettled climate science.'

The note was written by Prof J R Bates.

(' Professor J. Ray Bates is Adjunct Professor of Meteorology in the Meteorology

and Climate Centre at University College Dublin. He was formerly Professor of

Meteorology at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and a Senior

Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre. In his early career he was

Head of Research at the Irish Meteorological Service.)

Climate Cartoons by Josh, International Treasure

While the rise of climate alarmism and its intrusion into politics, education, and the mass media is a dismal event that would strain anyone's faith in mankind's ability to cope with propaganda and fear-mongering, there are some consolations to be found in the works of people who stand opposed to the flow of nonsense, hyperbole, and half-baked 'science'. 

One example is the Cartoons by Josh.  His work highlights the conceits, the arrogance, the foolishness and worse of the climate scaremongerers, and it does so with huge amounts of charm, and even compassion for these destructive and ill-informed people.

Josh's Calendar for 2019 is now shipping.  When the climate madness subsides into some kind of academic obscurity, and if there is a big effort to understand the collective madness of the CO2 Scare, then these cartoons will be, as they say, collectors' items.  I'm certainly going to keep all my copies of past and future calendars as a kind of poor man's collection, one which I hope will be of interest to show just how the whole costly charade was seen through by some as it happened.  We were not all duped.  We did not all jump on the bandwagon be it for fame or for fortune or merely to get a glow from 'saving the planet'.  Plus the cartoons are also just plain funny.  Raising a smile or even a laugh in the midst of the madness is quite an achievement.  Thank you, Josh.

Climate Panic Puzzle Partly Pinned Down

The astonishing, and depressing, success of the climate alarmism 'movement' has long been a puzzle to me.  The explanation of it may well take decades to settle down on a widely agreed version, not least since so many academic disciplines are involved, and many not so academic drives to gain power and wealth are there too.

But a puzzle well-described is a puzzle more likely to be solved.  On the science sides of the puzzle, the role of the so-called climate scientists has been evocatively captured by a chap called Smolin looking at another field that shares with climate studies a severe shortage of good or adequate data*.  Here are his observations as presented by the oceanographer Carl Munsch (hat-tip Judith Curry):

From one point of view, scientific communities without adequate data have a distinct advantage: one can construct interesting and exciting stories and rationalizations with little or no risk of observational refutation. Colorful, sometimes charismatic, characters come to dominate the field, constructing their interpretations of a few intriguing, but indefinite observations that appeal to their followers, and which eventually emerge as “textbook truths.”

Consider the following characteristics ascribed to one particular, notoriously data-poor, field (Smolin, 2006), as having:

1. Tremendous self confidence, leading to a sense of entitlement and of belonging to an elite community of experts.

2. An unusually monolithic community, with a strong sense of consensus, whether driven by the evidence or not, and an unusual uniformity of views on open questions. These views seem related to the existence of a hierarchical structure in which the ideas of a few leaders dictate the viewpoint, strategy, and direction of the field.

3. In some cases a sense of identification with the group, akin to identification with a religious faith or political platform.

4. A strong sense of the boundary between the group and other experts.

5. A disregard for and disinterest in the ideas, opinions, and work of experts who are not part of the group, and a preference for talking only with other members of the community.

6. A tendency to interpret evidence optimistically, to believe exaggerated or incorrect statements of results and to disregard the possibility that the theory might be wrong. This is coupled with a tendency to believe results are true because they are ’widely believed,’ even if one has not checked (or even seen) the proof oneself.

7. A lack of appreciation for the extent to which a research program ought to involve risk.

Smolin (2006) was writing about string theory in physics. Nonetheless, observers of the paleoclimate scene might recognize some common characteristics. 

Note that string-theory is part of theoretical physics, a field noted for having a high proportion of very bright scientists.  Contrast that with the field of climate science, noted for being a somewhat ramshackle collection of often self-identified 'experts' from fields not known for high intellectual challenges such as geography, computer coding, weather forecasting, and planetary science.

The task of helping those who have been through the school system over the last 30 years, and those entering it soon, will be made easier the more insight we have into the causes of the Climate Panic.  Helping with what?  With the dismal, destructive, degrading, distorting world view that mankind is doomed thanks to industrial progress and the associated production of carbon dioxide.  There is not a shred of convincing evidence or argument for that view, but it seems widely adopted in political, media, and academic circles.

* Noted added 07 Oct 2018.  The Climategate Revelations (esp. the HarryReadMe file - details here) pointed to shoddy data and shoddier data management.  Now John McLean has dug into the manure to expose more data quality problems, and in more detail:  http://joannenova.com.au/2018/10/first-audit-of-global-temperature-data-finds-freezing-tropical-islands-boiling-towns-boats-on-land/
'“I was aghast to find that nothing was done to remove absurd values… the whole approach to the dataset’s create is careless and amateur, about the standard of a first-year university student.”
– John McLean

His report is available here for $8: https://robert-boyle-publishing.com/product/audit-of-the-hadcrut4-global-temperature-dataset-mclean-2018/

Warmism 2 is upon us - a new wave of scaremongering around CO2 to sustain the 'golden shower of research grant money'

JR writes:

'The evolution of global warming theory

I have not seen any explicit comment on this but it seems that there has been a large change over the years in what Warmists try to scare us with. There has been a Warmism 1 and a Warmism 2.

Warmism 1 is the Warmism of Al Gore, with sea level rises of 20 feet drowning most coastal cities. That was certainly scary and warranting of urgent action. But it was most implausible. 96% of the earth's glacial ice is in Antarctica and even at the continental margins the temperature there is many degrees below zero. So a few degrees of temperature rise might melt some sea ice but nothing more would happen. Melting sea ice cannot raise the sea level.  So where was the required great volume of water going to come from? Mars?

Warmism 1 had another fault as well. It assumed a most implausible effect of clouds. It said that warming would be gradual until the cloud cover became much more extensive than it now is. And there is no doubt that a warmer world WOULD have more clouds as more water evaporated off the oceans.

But Warmism 1 at that point made two great theoretical leaps. They said that the increased cloud cover would warm the earth when clouds in fact normally cool the earth by blocking out the sun. But let's glide over that point and accept their assumption that clouds would warm us. The Warmist at that point makes another great leap. He says that at some point a "tipping point" would be reached so that warming would suddenly accelerate and we would really roast.

Normally, when scientists try to predict the future they make a straight line extrapolation from existing trends. But Warmism 1 aborts that.  Because of the tipping point, the past is no longer a guide to the future. Things will get a lot hotter very suddenly. They will get much hotter than they would under a normal extrapolation from the past. So while scientific prediction of the future is possible in some instances  -- by looking carefully at the past -- Warmism 1 abandons that and makes a prophecy based purely on speculation.

I have tried to tell the story of Warmism 1 as straight as I can but I think its implausibilities are nonetheless obviously gross. And, although it has never been formally abandoned by anyone, it has quietly faded away from most Warmist discourse. It is, for example, years since I have heard anything of the tipping point. 

So Warmism 1 has been replaced by Warmism 2.

Warmism 2 is much less fantastical. It has reverted to the normal scientific method of predicting the future by extrapolations from the past. There is no Deus ex machina that causes warming to suddenly leap. It hypothesizes a steady process of warming at some specified rate. But finding that rate is the issue. Vast guesses about what CO2 does are used to get a rate.

Different authors assume different rates and the actuality always seems to be less than any predicted rate. So the accepted rate of warming has trended steadily down in the face of all the predictive failures.  So under Warmism 2 we will have a temperature rise of only about 2 degrees Celsius and a consequent rise in sea levels of inches, not the yards predicted by Al Gore.

But that is rather boring. It is hard to frighten people with just a few inches of sea level rise so a whole new industry has arisen which says that the few degrees of predicted warming will lead to catastrophic weather events -- hurricanes etc. But even that is a dead end as dramatic weather events considered overall do not seem to be increasing and may even be decreasing.

So Warmism has in a way disappeared up its own back passage. It no longer has any pretence of science behind its warnings of doom. It is merely an example of telling a big enough lie often enough so that less informed people will believe it. And while it continues to give scientists a golden shower of research grant money, the myth will be maintained -- JR.'

'JR' is John Ray, an astute Australian commentator on the climate alarm scandal.  His 'Greenie Watch' blog postings are invaluable.  The above text was posted there on 2nd April, 2018.  See: http://antigreen.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/the-evolution-of-global-warming-theory.html#links

Note added 3 April 2018.  For useful background on the gestation of part of Warmism 2, see: http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/04/climate-change-trial/