We Think, Therefore It Is

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We Think the Earth is warming, Therefore it is a man made disaster.

It is incredible to think that the only journalist with any integrity in the climate debate at the BBC is not Harrabin, Shukman or McGrath but Sheila Fogarty.

She has been the one asking the awkward questions about the much hyped ‘ocean warming’ explanation for the ‘pause’.

Harrabin et al should hang their heads in shame.

On Friday Fogarty was raising those questions though still coming down on the side of the ‘settled science’ as any good BBC employee should.

However she is still holding the fort now…and holding Harrabin himself to account when he breezily asserts ocean warming is the cause of the pause. (Any coincidence this line of thought suddenly became popular shortly after Harrabin’s old mucker and AGW propagandist Richard Black joined the ocean research side of things?)

Today on her show at around 13:55 Fogarty, presumably reading from the script provided by the environment journos, said…‘Whilst they have been protecting us from climate change we’ve been taking them (the oceans) for granted.’

Harrabin then came in and told us that :

‘We’ve been dumping our problems into the oceans’ and that ‘global warming has paused on land but the oceans have continued to warm and we’re not going to get away with it forever.’

Fogarty jumped in with a ‘hang on….is that true?’ question making Harrabin squirm and come up with a fudge of an answer.

Very amusing.

But essentially that is the problem with the whole IPCC process…whatever you believe, whether global warming is happening, whether it is man made or not, the presentation of the IPCC’s case must make you doubt that case.

It seems more based on hope and hype, faith that events will prove them right in the end….let’s face it, they’ve just ‘discovered’ third world cooking fires produce soot, and they have no idea how much aerosols effect the climate, never mind explaining the ‘pause’.

There are so many inconsistencies and contradictions, so many obvious lies, so many obvious claims based purely on speculation, hypothesis, guess work and wishful thinking, like Harrabin’s dodgy assertion above, that you cannot possibly support the IPCC’s claims, still less the resultant, enormously expensive political action based upon them.

The post below takes a look not only at some of the BBC’s coverage but also those contradictions and claims made in bad faith by the Science fraternity.

It’s a long one so get yourself a big mug of something and pull up a sandbag.

 

 

 

The BBC liberally plastered its news bulletins after the IPCC release of its latest report with repeated assertions that we could suffer what it predicts would be a catastrophic 5° C rise in global temperature and a sea level rise of 1metre by 2100 even though these are the absolute, and unlikely, maximums…and all the while completely ignoring the massive increase in ice in the Arctic this year.

When they propagate such alarmist scenarios in order to scare people into accepting the ‘science’ is it any wonder the BBC is the least trusted news provider…..and unfortunately, perhaps paradoxically, the most utilised as a source for news…

 

More than half of people in the UK regard the BBC as their single most important source of news, according to new figures released by media regulator Ofcom

The report said television remained by far the most important platform for news, used by 78% of adults against 40% who read newspapers, 35% who turn to the radio and 32% who look to the Internet.

The BBC website remains the most popular online destination, used by 52% of people who go online, against 19% of people who use Facebook and 10% who turned to Twitter for online news updates.

In total, 53% of people regarded one of the BBC’s news outlets, across TV, radio and online, as their most important source of news.

But while BBC TV was regarded as important, its viewers scored it marginally lower in terms of accuracy and reliability, and trustworthiness, than viewers of Sky News.

Asked whether it was impartial and unbiased, and offered a range of opinions, BBC TV scored less highly (among their respective viewers) than Sky News, ITV and Channel 4 News.　

In the Guardian Will Hutton attempted a pre-emptive and emotive strike on the Sceptics who might find fault with the IPCC report:

To fight climate change, we must trust scientific truth and collective action

Sceptics will rubbish a new report on climate change, dismissing calls for governmental action. Don’t be swayed

BBC attempts to broadcast its findings in as impartial way as possible will be portrayed as yet more evidence of BBC bias, even though the BBC will pack its coverage with lots of sceptical voices, notwithstanding their marginalisation by world science, to try to cover its back.

 

‘Packed with sceptical voices’? Well not so far…one or two given a couple of minutes, the BBC journalists certainly don’t show a shred of interest in questioning the orthodoxy, and are more likely than not to promote it.

Thomas Stocker, co-chair of the IPCC working group producing the AR5 report said:

‘We’re not here to make headlines but we’re here for the science.’

But of course, the politics and headlines, that’s precisely what they are here for…the point of the summary was to guide government policy…it’s in the title… ‘A Summary For Policymakers.’

The BBC wasted no time in making the IPCC headline news, in fact they turned over 5live for a day to the ‘reporting’ of the summary.

But when you start looking, thinking and comparing what they say with what is happening in reality what is being reported as fact just doesn’t make sense.

There are many apparent, to a layman’s eye, contradictions in the ‘science’, contradictions and quite obvious fabrications to make the science fit the desired policies.

The Climate Change bandwagon based on bad Maths?

We are told that the scientists are being open and transparent with their data…but it seems that they still don’t like questions that ask how they calculated their alarming predictions.

The Met. Office has refused to answer questions raised in the House of Lords about a figure upon which the whole basis of the IPCC’s venture is based…that the world has warmed by 0.85° C in just over 130 years and that this is ‘serious’ and indicates man made influence.

If that figure is wrong and the risk assessment based upon that is wrong…then the whole thing is a charade based upon a lie…no wonder the Met. Office doesn’t want to answer any questions.

Here is the Met. Office’s reply when asked to explain their data:

Via Bishop Hill

‘As indicated in a previous Written Answer given … to the noble Lord on 14 January 2013 (Official Report, col. WA110), it is the role of the scientific community to assess and decide between various methods for studying global temperature time series. It is also for the scientific community to publish the findings of such work, in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.’

Thus, in the opinion of the Met Office, Parliament has no right to ask scientific questions of government scientists.

But perhaps they should be made to answer for some are questioning their conclusion:

‘The model used by HM Government should be rejected, in favor of the driftless model. With the driftless model, however, the rise in temperatures since 1880 is not significant. In other words, the correct Answer to the Question (HL3050) might be No.’

But just how reliable is the IPCC?

We’re constantly directed to understand that its findings are the result of hundreds of the finest scientific minds coming together, without sleep, examining, inspecting, evaluating and rigorously testing the science.

That might not be the whole truth…for example we know that the false claims that the Himalayas would disappear by 2035 were taken from a WWF tract….Spiked magazine investigates further:

‘…there’s the idea that the IPCC report is the product of the world’s top experts. But in reality, knowing a subject well is not nearly as important, it seems, as having a face that fits. So, leading IPCC contributors sometimes do not even have PhDs in their subjects, never mind being world-class experts, while other researchers in charge of chapters had expertise in a completely different area to the one they were working on. Meanwhile, the nature of the review process means that when leading experts are critical, they can safely be ignored by chapter authors.

In March 2010, Laframboise decided to take on the task of working out just how many references in the 2007 report were to non-peer-reviewed sources. With the help of volunteers from her blog readership, her audit found that 30 per cent of the references were from newspaper and magazine articles, unpublished masters theses, reports produced by green groups and even press releases.

Laframboise lists 78 people involved with the IPCC who are also members of WWF’s parallel climate panel. Of these, 23 are IPCC co-ordinating lead authors – the people in charge of individual chapters of the reports. ‘Ladies and gentlemen’, she writes, ‘the IPCC has been infiltrated.’

The BBC however isn’t interested in questioning the orthodoxy

…it never has been as this email from BBC man Alex Kirby shows, Alex Kirby who was very, very close with Phil Jones et al at the CRU:

So nice and cosy was the relationship that in 2004, Mr Kirby wrote to Phil Jones (email 4894) in the build up to COP-10:

Yes, glad you stopped this — I was sent it too, and decided to spike it without more ado as pure stream-of-consciousness rubbish. I can well understand your unhappiness at our running the other piece. But we are constantly being savaged by the loonies for not giving them any coverage at all, especially as you say with the COP in the offing, and being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them say something. I hope though that the weight of our coverage makes it clear that we think they are talking through their hats.

Once the ‘Summary for Policy Makers’ was released we then had a long line of scientists and commentators queuing up to promote the IPCC’s line on the BBC…which readily swallowed everything they said and faithfully regurgitated it almost without question.

Here is one statement that is meant to support that line, but which means nothing on its own:

We (Met Office) run computers with and without CO2 forcings….and when we include CO2 in the model, temperatures rise.

Of course they rise…..because they programme the computers to do that!

The IPCC are proclaiming increased confidence in their models, without explaining why they have increased confidence, (in the AR4 Summary for Policymakers, the IPCC admitted that the reported 90% confidence was simply based on “expert judgment” i.e. conjecture.) and all just at a time when the discrepancies between their models and realtime observations increase…..in other words they can’t explain the ‘Pause’.

Here is their ‘evidence’ related to us by a scientist on the radio that the world is warming and it is caused by man:

‘…evidence from the last 15 years… the, the warming ocean, the retreating snow and ice, the changing rainfall patterns, the continuing sea-level rise, and this evidence is so strong, of the dominant role of human influence on the climate system.’

That might be evidence of some changes in climate but it in no way indicates the cause.

But what is real is the pause (and they don‘t know the cause of that either)…the IPCC  grudgingly admits there is a pause, Phil Jones in 2005 admitted it, but also gave a clue why many possibly sceptical scientists stay silent:

“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”

 

Thomas Stock tried to wriggle out of the importance of the ‘Pause’ by claiming that a climate relevant period would be 30 years….in other words 15 or more years is not statistically significant.

 

Well in 2009 Professor Phil Jones of the CRU told us:

‘Bottom line: the no upward trend has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’

I guess they are worried…but only because their careers, reputations and multi-million dollar grants are at risk if global warming is proven to be wrong.

 

So far there is no proof that it is CO2 that is the culprit, or the main culprit, causing any climate change.

Phil Jones admitted that temperatures show a rise 800 years before CO2 rises….so is the rise in CO2 now in fact a result of warming caused by something else?…Jones et al say whatever…a rise in CO2 even if caused by something else will produce undesirable ‘feedback’ and cause more warming.

The IPCC tells us that CO2 is at the highest level for 800,000 years, it has risen 40% since the 1950’s, and that there is a lag of 25 years between CO2 being emitted and its resultant effects.

They also tell us that CO2 is enormously powerful….one scientist, from the Met. Office I think, boasted that he had been asked by a government minister why CO2, if it was in such small quantities in the atmosphere, was so important?…he said well, if I sprinkled a tiny amount of arsenic on your dinner you would soon find out just how powerful a tiny amount is.

Well…if CO2 has risen a massive 40% why is it that temperatures have risen a mere 0.85° C since 1880 and have now stalled?

They tell us that it is a linear relationship…..the BBC’s Matt McGrath  pushing the point backed up by the Met. Office‘s Peter Stott: ‘….and it is a clear linear relationship, so that the more you pump into the atmosphere, the more the temperature goes up, its… in a very complex system it is as simple as that?’

Stott: ‘There is this very clear linear relationship between the overall emissions of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, and the global temperature rise, so the more we emit, the more the temperature increases.’

Well that is clearly not the case here, maybe in the science lab but not in real life…..both with the small scale of temperature rise compared to large, relatively, emissions of CO2, and the ‘Pause’ at a time when CO2 has reached its highest level for 800,000 years.

Clearly no linear relationship in real life.

And what of that ‘highest level of CO2 in 800,000 years’?

The IPCC now admits that the Medieval Warm Period, did exist, thank you very much.

 

Continental-scale surface temperature reconstructions show, with high confidence, multidecadal periods during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (year 950 to 1250) that were in some regions as warm as in the late 20th century.

 

How does the IPCC avoid the rather difficult problem, the inconvenient fact of global warming  1000 years ago, that the earth warmed to the same degree it has now, and all without the Industrial Revolution and the benefit of massive quantities of CO2?

The IPCC tells us it was warm but only in parts…unlike the earth now.

These regional warm periods did not occur as coherently across regions as the warming in the late 20th century.

The problem with that is they now tell us that though some regions of the world will warm, others, like the UK, will get colder.

So in other words there will be regional differences in temperature…just like the Medieval Warm Period…if that was indeed the case.

But they also tell us that 1983-2012 was likely the warmest 30 year period of the last 1400 years.

Now maybe my maths is not up to it but 1400 years would take you back to the year 613 AD…whilst the Medieval Warm Period was from 950-1250 AD…..a ‘multi-decadal warm period’ at the least surely….300 years by my maths.

So once again the MWP seems to have gone missing.

Ocean Warming

What of those claims, the legend that has become fact, that the oceans are soaking up the heat?

Seems all of a sudden doesn’t it?

Only last week we heard from the BBC that the oceans, as proved by studies of Clams, had been warming for a long time, at least 100 years.

So how come, how come, suddenly, in 1998, the oceans are supposed to have started sucking up even more heat at a much higher rate than before…so much so that suddenly, the global warming stops? What caused the oceans to do that?

Answer me that.

Answer me this…..

The IPCC tells us that from 1971 to 2010 60% of the energy increase went into the oceans. OK….1971 (we’ll ignore the warming for at least 100 years claim)..not 1998 as a start point….so why didn’t the ‘pause’ start in 1971?

Here’s another thing….they tell us that ocean heat content on the surface increased more slowly from 2003 to 2010 than from 1993 to 2002.

Yes that’s right…..More slowly

…..so the oceans have been taking up less heat, not more…..so …well…you ask the question.

There is also the misdirection by scientists and BBC journos…they say well, the pause, hiatus, or as the BBC prefer, slowdown in warming, started in 1998, or that is the period that the ‘sceptics’ choose to base their calculations on…this is wrong they tell us…because 1998 was the hottest year and so distorts the figures….anything cooler than that is not necessarily cooler…and could still be warming.

That of course is a misdirection… 1998 was a result of El Nino and was an unusual high because of it…but the 15 years following that have been flat regardless of the 1998 temperature….there is no escape from that….Prof. Phil Jones told us that 15 years was statistically significant…they are now trying to move the goalposts to suit the politics not the science.

 

But on what data had this ‘ocean warming’ been based?

Harrabin and his cohort of scientists have been saying that it is the deep ocean that has been absorbing the heat….but the IPCC tell us that it is the surface that absorbs by far the greatest amount…not only that but the IPCC’s Thomas Stock told us  (09:58) that the current warming hiatus could not be predicted because:

‘There are not sufficient observations of the uptake of heat, particularly into the deep ocean that could explain this hiatus.’

‘Likewise, we have insufficient data to establish a relationship between the causes of the warming….There is not enough published literature to allow us to study this.’

So no data.

But plenty of er, less than convincing facts from the BBC.

So there are some very major questions to be raised about the ‘facts’ presented to us by the IPCC and unquestioned by the BBC…Sheila Fogarty aside.

The IPCC has no proof that the oceans are absorbing the heat and yet the BBC has now started broadcasting it as fact, the IPCC cannot prove that CO2 is the cause of global warming, they cannot explain the ‘Pause’, they ignore the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period which completely destroys their argument, they do not explain the inconsistencies in the supposedly linear relationship between CO2 and temperatures rising when that doesn’t happen. They cannot explain why when CO2 levels are rising rapidly, at their highest level for 800,000 years temperatures are static.

At the end of the day it maybe that the earth is warming naturally as it continues to emerge from the last ice age….and that manmade particles from fires etc slowed that warming….and when clean air legislation was introduced those particles which reflected sunlight and kept us cool vanished…and the natural warming continued apace.

As they admit they have no idea how much effect aerosols have on temperature so you have to assume such a scenario hasn’t been properly investigated.

Ironically the reduction of fossil fuel burning and cleaning up of the air in order to reduce warming could in fact raise temperatures.

Well..maybe.  It’s an amusing thought.

Quite a few questions any good environmental journalist would like to get his teeth into…unless of course he supinely rolls over and has his stomach tickled by the IPCC like any good little lapdog would.