Tag: global warming

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Accountability ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Listen to the Warm

Greta

I like publicity stunts as much as the next activist. But haven’t we had enough of the whole Greta Thunberg bit yet?

On Wednesday, the 16-​year-​old Swede provided testimony on an apt stage, let us grant her that — the U.S. House of Representatives’ foreign affairs subcommittee joint hearing on the global youth climate change movement. 

She didn’t prepare any remarks, though. She merely “attached” the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming “as her testimony.” Her rationale? “I don’t want you to listen to me, I want you to listen to the scientists.” And “to unite behind science.”

You know, for “real action.”

It was what happened right after she demanded “real action,” though, where the stark reality of the situation became clear: a grown man in a suit, elected to Congress, asked, “Could you expand on why it’s so important to listen to the science?”

And then the non-​scientist spoke … not very expansively.

 Forget that science qua science isn’t to be “listened to,” it is to be engaged in, with conjectures, research and refutations. (There was nothing like that at the hearing.) Forget also that the science is increasingly less clear on the severity of what warming we see. Remember only that an elected official used a girl to imbue a text (the IPCC report) with moral legitimacy, dubbing it “best available ‘united science’” — the better to push an unargued-​for massive coercive government intervention into the life of our civilization.

Is no adult in the room ashamed of what they are doing … exploiting a cute youngster to subvert rationality?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Greta

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Hurricane Apophenia

apophenia

While Hurricane Dorian lumbered towards America, Axios unleashed a rumor: President Trump had wondered about “nuking” hurricanes in their early stages. 

Sounds goofy, I know. Many used the rumor to question Trump’s intelligence, prudence, and sanity, but fretting about a mere rumor at length might give us reason to question our intelligence, prudence and sanity.

Before the hurricane hit the Bahamas, Reason magazine made the logical point about how useful “price gouging” would be for dealing with a disaster like Dorian. Then came the hit, which, ABC reports, was quite devastating: “Hurricane Dorian kills at least 5 in the Bahamas; US coastline braces for impact.”

While others prepare for the worst, we on the sidelines merely wonder, could Dorian be a sign of global warming?

It is hard not to think that thought.

But Tony Heller of RealClimateScience​.com cautions us against leaping to this cause for that effect. “Coolest January-​August On Record In The US,” Heller headlines his piece providing graphs showing how amazingly un-warm it has been in our half-​a-​hemisphere so far this year.

There is no honest way to associate this storm with “global warming” or even climate change.

As real climate scientists know. Still, linking bad weather to the much-​pushed Big Story Of Our Time is almost … irresistible.

Part of this is apophenia: our brains find patterns even where they do not exist.

Yet I sometimes wonder whether this weather-​climate mistake isn’t being programed into us by insiders with an agenda.

But that might be mere apophenia, too. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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apophenia

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Greener Pastures

CO2, Carbon DiOxide, green, greenhouse, warming, climate,

There is climate change going on. And some of it is attributable to increasing levels of Carbon dioxide (CO2). 

It is uncontroversial and quite politically convenient to say that — despite Al Gore’s infamous propaganda positing climate change dogma as An Inconvenient Truth. The worldwide “green” movement to “fight climate change” has been supported by trillions of tax dollars and the eager, lip-​smacking glee of major media mavens as they trot out story after improbable story, linking every storm, warm spell, cold spell, and summer ice melt to “man-​made global warming.”

But there is no real “settled science” as non-​scientists like to term the case for anthropogenic global warming, because there are

  1. troubles with the temperature data, 
  2. difficulties separating weather events from climatic trends, 
  3. problems identifying CO2 level variations as the cause of climate change rather than as a result,
  4. a certain amount of dunderheadedness using a statistical construct of “average global temperature” to track actual trends, and 

so much more. But we do know about one extremely positive effect of increasing atmospheric carbon: it makes the deserts bloom.

Or, at least, greener.

Six years ago a study of satellite data concluded that arid regions have gone greener. Increased atmospheric CO2 levels makes photosynthesis more efficient, allowing plants to use less water, thereby creating more leaves.

Earlier this year, however, Forbes reported that a NASA study had just demonstrated that expanded agriculture and silviculture in India and China were responsible for most of that greening — but if you compare the Forbes article with the original paper, the CO2 contribution persists. 

Atmospheric carbon is plant food, so to speak, and without it, life on the planet would die.

An awkward truth?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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CO2, Carbon DiOxide, green, greenhouse, warming, climate,

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general freedom media and media people nannyism too much government

When Push Comes to Nudge

Ireland, global warming, authoritarian, totalitarian, control, climate,

Ireland’s prime minister — or “Taoiseach” — is enthusiastic. “Speaking at the launch of the Climate Action Plan in Grangegorman today,” the Independent reported last week, “Mr [Leo Eric] Varadkar said the government would establish a Climate Action Delivery Board in the Department of the Taoiseach to oversee its implementation.”

The plan will deeply affect “almost every aspect” of Irish life. “The Government plans to force petrol and diesel cars off our roads,” the Independent elaborates, “introduce new buildings regulations and change the school curriculum in a bid to counteract climate change.”

Though the scope of the effort is breathtaking, Mr. Varadkar pretends he is being oh-​so-​humble and cautious, “nudging” citizens rather than going for a “coercive” approach.

Typical politician’s whopper, of course. Higher taxes on fuel and plastics, banning oil and gas boilers in new buildings, forcing private cars off city roads — this is all force.

Pretending otherwise is something akin to a Big Lie.

And all in service to the cause of reducing “greenhouse gas emissions by two per cent a year each year for the next ten years.”

Varadkar says he is doing it for the young and at the behest of the young … who have been propagandized to believe “that the world will be destroyed in a climate apocalypse.”

Well, the Taoiseach didn’t use the word “propagandized,” and insists that disaster is “not inevitable, it can be stopped, action can be taken.”

But Ireland’s contribution to the planet’s “greenhouse gases” is negligible. If all the Irish held their breaths and keeled over for the cause, they wouldn’t make a carbon dioxide burp of a difference.

It is a power grab. Not anything like a “nudge.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

Ireland, global warming, authoritarian, totalitarian, control, climate,

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Green New Extremism

Bernie Sanders, climate change, global warming, extremism

Citation is here.

And here.

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Accountability general freedom individual achievement Popular

Settling the Science

climate, global warming, climate change, science, mistake

A paper in the august science journal Nature,* on the oceans’ “thermal inertia” and the ominous temperature rise therein, has been corrected. But not before the BBC (and other media outlets) ballyhooed the results in the usual “climate change”/“global warming” narrative: “Climate change: Oceans ‘soaking up more heat than estimated’” (Nov. 1).

The paper’s initial new (and alarming) estimate, however, proved wrong.

Over at Real Climate, one of the co-​authors clarified the changes that had to be made: “The revised uncertainties preclude drawing any strong conclusions with respect to climate sensitivity or carbon budgets … but they still lend support for the implications of the recent upwards revisions in” … well, I will let you make sense of it.

I am not a climate scientist, nor do I pretend to be one on the Internet.

What is important to note is that the “strong conclusions” reported on were found to be groundless. 

Mistakes were made.

How were those mistakes identified?

They were caught at the ClimateEtc. — not an “august science journal” — published online at judithcurry​.com.**

Nic Lewis, the astute blogger, identified a major source of the inaccuracy in the original paper as having arisen “primarily because of the inappropriate assumption of a zero error in 1991.”

We have just witnessed science in action — the public testing of published findings.

“The bad news,” Dr. Roy Spencer reminds us on his Global Warming blog, “is that the peer review process, presumably involving credentialed climate scientists” — note the dig — failed to catch the error “before publication.”

The crucial science happened afterwards, online. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “Quantification of ocean heat uptake from changes in atmospheric O2 and CO2 composition,” by L. Resplandy, R. F. Keeling, et al.

** I have had occasion to mention climate scientist Judith Curry in the past.

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