Bishop Hill has spotted the remarkable similarity between the takedown of a high flying academic in the field of psychology and that of Steve McIntyre and the Hockey Stick debunking.

The only difference being one is a hero to the Guardian, the other a miserable oddball trouble maker…..the BBC’s dreaded ‘Blogger’…..

Unfortunately, while his grasp of maths was strong enough to see the problem, it wasn’t sufficiently firm to be able to mount an academic takedown of Fredrickson’s and Losada’s work…..he decided to seek the help of an academic mathematician. Not just any academic mathematician either, but one who had made a name for himself by puncturing the bogus use of maths and science in another discipline…. Alan Sokal.
 

[Note this next bit…..scientists careers and bank balances depending on a good write up…slaps on the back from fellow scientists, ‘peer review’, no doubt reciprocated….and of course this would entail closing down criticism as well perhaps]

Sokal did a little research and was amazed at the standing the Fredrickson and Losada paper enjoyed. “I don’t know what the figures are in psychology but I know that in physics having 350 citations is a big deal,” he says. “Look on Google you get something like 27,000 hits. This theory is not just big in academia, there’s a whole industry of coaching and it intersects with business and business schools. There’s a lot of money in it.”

The paper mounted a devastating case against the maths employed by Fredrickson and Losada, who were offered the chance to respond in the same online issue of American Psychologist. Losada declined and has thus far failed to defend his input in any public forum. But Fredrickson did write a reply, which, putting a positive spin on things, she titled Updated Thinking on Positivity Ratios.

[Here they note the ‘wishful thinking’….a scientist will find what he is looking for…by happily ignoring inconvenient other ‘things’ that contradict his exciting new theory]

What you do in science is you make a statement of what you think will happen and then run the experiment and see if it matches it. What you don’t do is pick up a bunch of data and start reading tea leaves. Because you can always find something. If you don’t have much data you shouldn’t go round theorising. Something orange is going to happen to you today, says the astrology chart. Sure enough, you’ll notice if an orange bicycle goes by you.”

I imagine the exact same thing goes on in climate science…the CRU emails proving that inconvenient science was blocked from publications…..and not just climate science…

In 2008 Physicist Lee Smolin’s book ‘The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science and What Comes Next’ was published.

What he had to say about the way science worked and how ideas and theories were produced and then supported regardless of reality was a stinging rebuke to those people who jump on a bandwagon and base their career and funding on the ‘truth’ of that idea….if the idea is discredited so are they, and the funding dries up…..

Here is what he says about String Theory and its proponents….

‘….with a cry of joy, most of these scientists seized on string theory as the answer.  But their enthusiasm was such that they came to think not that it might be the answer, but that it must be.  They formed themselves into a cult.  Dissenters and apostates were not just scorned, they were denied posts in universities.  Einstein the thinker could not now get a job in any leading physics department.  For any young physicist, it was easiest simply to suppress one‘s doubts and go with the stringies.’

Sounds familiar.

The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of happiness
The astonishing story of Nick Brown, the British man who began a part-time psychology course in his 50s – and ended up taking on America’s academic establishment

The Complex Dynamics of Wishful Thinking.

Unfortunately, while his grasp of maths was strong enough to see the problem, it wasn’t sufficiently firm to be able to mount an academic takedown of Fredrickson’s and Losada’s work…..he decided to seek the help of an academic mathematician. Not just any academic mathematician either, but one who had made a name for himself by puncturing the bogus use of maths and science in another discipline…. Alan Sokal.

Sokal did a little research and was amazed at the standing the Fredrickson and Losada paper enjoyed. “I don’t know what the figures are in psychology but I know that in physics having 350 citations is a big deal,” he says. “Look on Google you get something like 27,000 hits. This theory is not just big in academia, there’s a whole industry of coaching and it intersects with business and business schools. There’s a lot of money in it.”

The paper mounted a devastating case against the maths employed by Fredrickson and Losada, who were offered the chance to respond in the same online issue of American Psychologist. Losada declined and has thus far failed to defend his input in any public forum. But Fredrickson did write a reply, which, putting a positive spin on things, she titled Updated Thinking on Positivity Ratios.
What you do in science is you make a statement of what you think will happen and then run the experiment and see if it matches it. What you don’t do is pick up a bunch of data and start reading tea leaves. Because you can always find something. If you don’t have much data you shouldn’t go round theorising. Something orange is going to happen to you today, says the astrology chart. Sure enough, you’ll notice if an orange bicycle goes by you.”

‘BBC staff ignored up to 1,000 attacks on children by predatory DJ Jimmy Savile’ according to new damning report lifting the lid on entire scandal

This is the most interesting comment from the Daily Mail article:

Liz Dux, a lawyer from Slater & Gordon, who is representing 74 of Savile’s victims, added: ‘This will not be a what-the-BBC-want sort of report.’

The report will ‘ go right to the heart of how Savile was able to get away with the most heinous of crimes under the very noses of BBC staff for more than 40 years.’

It may not be what they want but you can bet the first thing the BBC say is that in the round the report backs the BBC which dealt with the situation appropriately. The BBC made mistakes but we have learnt from them and now we must move on.

David Cameron ‘feeds fears of Christian persecution’, former Archbishop of Canterbury says

 Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has attacked David Cameron for doing more than any other recent political leader to feed Christian anxieties that they are part of a persecuted minority.

Guess nothing has changed.

Hugely disappointed in Farage for having succumbed to media pressure to dump his Christian councillor…..having had his ban on the man speaking to the media flouted.

Farage is happy to be sticking two fingers up at the politically correct when he thinks it makes him look good…such as when drinking beer or smoking but when it really counts he has made his excuses and ducked out.

Why would Farage ban the man from speaking to the media and expressing what are his beliefs based upon Christian teachings (and Muslim)?

Does this mean no Christian can now serve in government or in the Public Sector?

Has Cameron introduced, ironically, a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell‘ policy for Christians?

You can serve but keep quiet about your beliefs.

The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service.

The BBC interviewed Tory Michael Fallon this morning asking him about the state of UKIP….why ask him, is he likely to give a sensible answer?

There is clearly a much deeper issue here than party political abuse.

Rather than the state of UKIP shouldn’t the real question be about attitudes of the two faced politicians like Fallon and Cameron along with the media that ‘persecute’ Christians…whilst of course not daring to say anything about Islam.

Is not a question about the status of Christianity in Britain far more a relevant question…especially perhaps on a Sunday?

Are the Tories saying all Christians are ‘fruitcakes’?

A  senior Conservative minister who is tipped to the party’s next chairman warned there are still “fruitcakes” in the UK Independence Party.

Speaking about the state of Ukip on the BBC’s Sunday Politics Show (1 hour  9 mins), Michael Fallon, a business minister, said the comments showed that “there clearly are one or two fruitcakes still around there”.

This lot will have to go then…..

The Lords Spiritual

26 bishops of the Church of England sit in the House of Lords. Known as the Lords Spiritual, they read prayers at the start of each daily meeting and play a full and active role in the life and work of the Upper House.

Who Reads Prayers?

A senior bishop (Lord Spiritual) who sits in the Lords reads the prayers at the beginning of each sitting.

What might a prayer say?

Our Father, which art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come.

Thy will be done, in earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

Hmmm…‘Thy will be done, in earth as it is in Heaven’….presumably the Will as expressed in the Bible.

Presumably those Bishops all believe in Christianity and all its teachings….are they also ‘fruitcakes’?

What about this bloke?

David Cameron: “We are a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so”

David Cameron on Jesus, pancakes and Sunday mornings

David Cameron has described his faith as “not a bad handbook” for life but admitted he is unwilling to follow the example of Jesus to give all his possessions to the poor.

“I’m a Christian and I’m an active member of the Church of England, and like all Christians I think I sometimes struggle with some of the sayings and some of the instructions.

Perhaps, as said, the BBC should be challenging Cameron and Co on the hypocritical smear that Christians, UKIP Christians that is,  are ‘fruitcakes’….the BBC is more than happy to ring fence Islam and actively defend it……why no such ‘protection’ for Christians?

The BBC is having all too much fun poking a stick at UKIP…as usual.

Carrying on from the last post where I suggest the BBC is merely regurgitating the climate change lobby’s press releases you can see a particularly blatant example of that in their reporting of the ‘Anthropocene Era’.

It is a newly coined phrase to describe the era in which man’s influence on the planet changed it…for the worse.

Climate lobbyists would like to claim it began 200 years ago with industrialisation or even as late as the 1940’s….but more honest scientists would put man’s influence thousands of years before that:

Many scientists are now using the term and the Geological Society of America entitled its 2011 annual meeting: Archean to Anthropocene: The past is the key to the future. The Anthropocene has no precise start date, but based on atmospheric evidence may be considered to start with the Industrial Revolution (late eighteenth century).

Other scientists link the new term to earlier events, such as the rise of agriculture and the Neolithic Revolution (around 12,000 years BP).  Evidence of relative human impact such as the growing human influence on land use, ecosystems, biodiversity, and species extinction is controversial; some scientists believe the human impact has significantly changed (or halted) the growth of biodiversity. 

Those arguing for earlier dates posit that the proposed Anthropocene may have begun as early as 14,000 to 15,000 years before present, based on lithospheric evidence; this has led other scientists to suggest that “the onset of the Anthropocene should be extended back many thousand years”; this would be closely synchronous with the current term, Holocene.

This BBC report allows the scientist promoting the theory to swiftly dismiss the claim that the era began with man’s development of agriculture (deforestation and domestication of cattle etc) and places it firmly in modern times…

Anthropocene: Have humans created a new geological age?

That’s bad enough but what of this?…..

The Anthropocene: Welcome to the Age of Modern Man

It’s on the BBC’s international site so you (me at least) have to access it using a proxy server like this:

Hide My Ass

Insert this:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120209-welcome-to-the-age-of-modern-man/all

Who is the reporter?

One Gaia Vince….no, that’s her real name.

She also did a radio 4 series on this which you can hear here.

It is an extraordinarily alarmist portrayal of the future:

Climate Apocalypse…mass extinction…on a scale comparable to worst event in history such as the dinosaurs.  

And the main causes…fossil fuels….domestication of animals…cows, sheep, pigs, goats etc and modern science inventing synthetic nitrogen which is flooding the natural ecosystem which has powered the mass rise in population (rampant materialsim plundering the world’s resources) whilst also poisoning the natural environment.

Cities roar and blaze with the energy of fossil fuels….but not for long…millions of years from now the fossil record will show…global seas levels rose…mighty cities were abandoned, others  drowned as the sea invaded. 

Hair shirt time!

Gaia Vince has worked for Nature, still does in fact…the science publication which is the gatekeeper for the climate change lobby….so if her name didn’t give you an inkling of what her beliefs might be there’s plenty of other evidence….

‘I am the opinion, analysis and features editor for the journal Nature Climate Change, which publishes the latest research in the field. I also write for a variety of different outlets, including the BBC, The Guardian, New Scientist, Australian Geographic, Science, Seed, and I do pieces for radio. Before I set off on this journey, I was the news editor of the science journal Nature.’

Here she isn’t reporting but advocating for the global warming alarmists….

‘Progress on addressing the most critical global challenges, such as climate change, has reached a farcical level in which time spent arguing over punctuation and grammar of lengthy documents have stymied any real action on greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, global warming has increased, with the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere already hitting 400 parts per million in the Arctic, and new data show that the rate of climate change could be even faster than thought.’

Presumably that’s all being pumped out to and targeted at the ‘developing world’…encouraging them to parcel out the blame..and where there’s blame there’s a claim.

Nice to know our license fee is paying for climate propaganda designed to put us in the stocks, destroy industry and impoverish us.

I think the core of what the environmental 
movement has done is it has taken sin, guilt and fear 
from religion and has used those very strongly. The 
problem is that in good religion – if I can put it that 
way – that is always combined with a sense of hope, a 
sense of liberational salvation and a sense of personal 
responsibility but not the kind of responsibility that 
makes you feel you are a victim of the weight of your 
sins and guilt.

ROWLATT: I don’t have a problem with people 
campaigning for those other agendas for their vision 
of a better society – for me the problem comes if the 
fear of the consequences of climate change is used as 
cover to smuggle in other objectives for social and 
political change. That’s because many people already 
have a sense that there’ s something suspicious about 
the campaign to tackle global warming; they 
instinctively distrust the science and if they feel that 
the solutions people are proposing are less to do with 
carbon than pushing through a hidden agenda that 
will only serve to confirm their scepticism.

Apparently the Romans are responsible for global warming.

The alarmist side of the climate change debate has long tried to deny or downplay the Medieval Warm Period…it wasn’t always like that…..

This is from the ‘esteemed’ science publication ‘Nature’ in 1999:

Holocene periodicity in North Atlantic climate and deep-ocean flow south of Iceland

The documented history of climate change in northern Europe over the past few millennia is marked by the alternation of cooler and warmer periods. At present we are still recovering from a time of colder climate known as the Little Ice Age, centred at 400 yr BP, which, in our record, coincides with reduced ISOW flow intensity .

Modern values are comparable to the last warm interval in European history, known as the Mediaeval Warm Period, which peaked at different times in various regions surrounding the North Atlantic basin between 750 and 1,050 yr BP (AD900 to1250).

 The climatic history in the few millennia before the Mediaeval Warm Period is less clear, but Europe appears to have enjoyed a warmer spell at 2,000 yr BP, also referred to as the Roman Warm Period, followed by cooling and glacier advance in the Dark Ages (AD500 to 1000). In our record, a peak in deep-current speed centred at 1,850 yr BP(AD100) coincides with the Roman Warm Period.

The main concern for future climate must be that a possible increase in melting of the Greenland ice sheet resulting from anthropogenically induced atmospheric warming may reach a critical level where the ‘conveyor belt’ will flip to its early Holocene operational mode. The resulting perturbations could conceivably result in climate extremes exceeding those of the Little Ice Age for northern Europe.

Without such perturbations, the climate looks likely to be warm for several hundred years

So the climate is the same as the Medieval Warm Period…..and the Roman Warm Period was as warm.

And there definitely was a Medieval Warm Period, long denied by the climate lobby, which the IPCC has now admitted itself in AR5.

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.

Shame it took them so long to admit this when ‘science’ clearly knew long ago….politics and the desire to force ‘Global Warming’ upon us meant they had to hide the rise in temperature…..but note that tricky get out clause ‘in some regions’.

When forced to admit the presence of the Medieval Warm Period the lobbyists came up with cunning ploy….first, it didn’t exist, then it may have existed but was not as warm as today….now it may have been as warm as today but only have been in insignificant regions…..

Here Harrabin and Professor Phil Jones equivocate about the existence of the MWP….

Professor Jones himself is candid about the uncertainties. He stands by the view that humans are most likely to be warming the planet but admits there have been two similar periods of recent warming and confirms that we don’t yet know enough to be sure if the Medieval Warm Period was global and if it was warmer than today.

And again in their question and answer session:

Harrabin: There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?

Jones: There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.

The question of whether global warming was ‘global’ or not is merely a ploy to get around the inconvenient fact that Jones and the climate lobby will have to admit to a Medieval Warm Period at all….it says ‘OK there might have been just as much warming but it was regional…and therefore not global and therefore not comparable to today’

The trouble with that is that as you can see from the 1999 article, which states that global warming could produce an ice age in Europe, climate change does not bring an even temperature rise….The IPCC itself tells us that global warming will not produce a world which has an equal rise in temperature evenly distributed across the globe….the recent IPCC AR5 told us that warming may divert the Gulf Stream and we will freeze in the UK.

Aahhh…hold everything….

New scientific evidence claims a slowdown in the Gulf Stream will mean Britain will get HOTTER, not colder as previously thought

I swear they said the science was settled!

But believe or not in global warming…& that’s not the point…the point is the hiding or downplaying of the MWP by climate change advocates, and the Roman period which hardly rates a mention….more politics than science.

But wait…the climate lobby have an explanation/excuse for both warm periods…they too were man made…forest clearance and burning of the wood created methane emissions that warmed the planet:

From WUWT:

Greenland ice cores over the last 2 millennia and find that the carbon isotopic composition underwent pronounced centennial-scale variations between 200 BC and 1600 AD without clear corresponding changes in CH₄ mixing ratios. The long-term CH₄ increase observed over this period is accompanied by a small overall δ¹³C decrease. Two-box model calculations suggest that the long-term CH₄ increase can only be explained by an increase in emissions from biogenic sources. The centennial-scale variations in isotope ratios must be primarily due to changes in biomass burning, which are correlated with both natural climate variability including the Medieval Climate Anomaly, and with changes in human population, land-use and important events in history.

So forget the MWP and the RWP as evidence that these warm periods are just ‘natural variation’ and that the modern warming could be the result of similar natural processes…they were man made and so you have nothing to undermine today’s claims …so that pulls the rug from under your argument…doesn’t it!

Still…if that were true…that it was forest clearance and biomass burning that warmed the planet….

Who are the worst offenders for forest clearance in modern times?  Africa and South America…the Tropical regions in particular.

Modern climate change coincides perfectly with the growth of developing nation’s populations, and subsequent land clearance…not to mention everyone needs a cooking fire and heating.

So who is to blame…the ‘West’ or the developing world?

Perhaps the BBC should be asking more wide ranging questions as to who is to blame instead of pumping out a ‘Marxist’ narrative of history which goes something like this:…’The West’s Industrialisation caused Global warming which is caused by increasing levels of CO2, the developing world is suffering the most from global warming…therefore the West must pay them lots of money.’

Africa seeks climate change cash

Ministers from 10 African countries have met in Ethiopia to try to agree a common position on climate change, months before a crucial UN meeting. They were expected to renew demands for billions of dollars in compensation for Africa because of damage caused by global warming. And they are likely to ask rich nations to cut emissions by 40% by 2012. African nations are among the lightest polluters but analysts say they will suffer the most from climate change.

The BBC were rather dishonestly using flooding in the Somerset Levels to promote the idea that we are suffering from extreme weather brought on by global warming….the floods were very unusual we were told.

Which is odd because their own description of the Levels says this:

This unique landscape is one of the lowest, flattest areas in the country. In ancient times it was known as the summerlands… because it was too wet to use in the winter… and it is thought this is where the county of Somerset got its name.

The Parrett Catchment Flood Management Plan tells us that, of course, climate change is one factor, but that other elements play an important role in aggravating the flooding.

‘The oldest man living does not remember such great floods and so much water. Everything beyond Bridgwater is like a sea.’ 1809

The catchment has a history of flood risk, generally due to the high rainfall that can lead to extensive flooding of the river valleys.

Much of the flooding is due to….a combination of surface water, fluvial and sewer problems.  Recent flooding has been strongly driven by local surface water problems, exacerbated by some farming practices which have increased field run-off locally.

Certainly where I live small changes to drainage, digging out the ditches and changes in how fields are managed has a dramatic effect on whether there is flooding.  This year there has been no flooding in the usual locations….that’s despite fairly constant rain.

We are always told by Harrabin and Co that it isn’t a problem of the amount of rain but that it will now fall in intense bursts due to climate change:

‘The issue is the way it falls in sudden bursts not the amount of rain.‘

However…it always flooded before with the ‘regular’ type of rainfall…and that is the rain we’ve been having recently…so climate change hasn’t been the cause of  massive ‘intense bursts’ round here.

By coincidence WUWT has posted something on coverage of this very subject today:

Flooding In The Somerset Levels – A Case Study

As can be seen, although December rainfall was higher than average, it was not abnormally so. I have also included the November map, to show that that month was around or below average for Somerset, so there is no evidence of a long term build up of water.

The graph makes clear that last month’s rainfall was not unusual in any way. Since 1910, it ranks as the 19th wettest, in other words a once every 5 year event. The rain in December does not even compare with years such as 1934, when 307mm was recorded. In fact, it is noticeable that all of the really wet Decembers occurred prior to 1970.

One of the quotes we get highlighted is that ‘the rainfall is unusual…two years of floods in a row’.…but from the graph above you can see that two years in a row of heavy rain is not unusual long term.

Nothing unusual on that graph either…if anything rain dropped off in the last decade.

Here is George Monbiot, slumming it in the Daily Mail…presumably this little bit of heresy didn’t get past the censors at the Green Guardian…..

Drowned by EU millions: Thought ‘extreme weather’ was to blame for the floods? Wrong. The real culprit is the European subsidies that pay UK farmers to destroy the very trees that soak up the storm

By George Monbiot

We all know what’s gone wrong, or we think we do:  not enough spending on flood defences. It’s true that government cuts have exposed thousands of homes to greater risk, but too little public spending is a small part of the problem.

It is dwarfed by another factor, overlooked in public discussion: too much public spending.

Vast amounts, running into billions, are spent every year on policies that make devastating floods inevitable. This is the story that has not been told, a story of destructive perversity.

Instead of a steady flow sustained around the year by trees in the hills, by sensitive farming methods, by rivers allowed to find their own course and their own level, to filter and hold back their waters through bends and braiding and obstructions, we get a cycle of flood and drought. We get filthy water and empty aquifers and huge insurance premiums and ruined carpets.

And all of it at public expense.

Flood and drought caused by bad land management?  And you thought it was global warming.

Wickedness in the World

 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypresswood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.

I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.

DID JESUS DIE?

DIRECTOR INTERVIEW…RICHARD DENTON

Friday 11 July 2003

BBC Four: Your central question is did Jesus die on the cross rather than did Jesus die at all.

Richard Denton: It is really.

BBC Four: You say that the resurrection and the literal truth of the Gospel have in the past been the cornerstone of Christianity.

RD: Exactly. And the idea that you can go on preaching this to the ordinary stupid faithful while not believing it yourself seemed to me truly offensive.

All those Christian ‘ordinary stupid faithful’ who believe.  What fools!!

BBC on 5Live yesterday were having a great laugh at this:

UKIP councillor blames storms and floods on gay marriage

A UKIP councillor has blamed the recent storms and heavy floods across Britain on the Government’s decision to legalise gay marriage.

David Silvester said the Prime Minister had acted “arrogantly against the Gospel”.

In a letter to his local paper he said he had warned David Cameron the legislation would result in “disaster”.

Curious they didn’t have a similar snook at this by the Rev. Dr. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Professor of Theology, Chicago Theological Seminary from a few days earlier:

Cold as Hell: The Chilling Effect of Global Warming

Hell is normally depicted as a “lake of fire,” as in Revelation 20:10. This week in the Midwest, however, Hell is likely to look more like lakes of ice, as dangerous cold from a polar vortex, brings “wind chills that could hit 50, 60 or even 70 below zero.”

The science of what is causing this current extreme cold is, in fact, complex, and research is ongoing.

But while the science of changes to the polar vortex and its relationship to global warming are complex, the Christian theology of our failure to protect the creation is not complex.

Simply put, the Christian theological argument must start with our sinful failure to take care of the creation, as God intends (Gen. 2:15). Instead, we are trashing the planet and changing its climate primarily through the fossil fuel emissions.

Sin against the creation abounds.

The climate is where the weird things are. You may not know the cause, but everybody knows the weather sure has gotten weird. Weird is threatening. Weird is scary.

And you should be scared.

In history, artists have portrayed scenes of the fiery Hell as very scary.

Today, there is a Hell coming toward us, but it is a frigid apocalypse, brought on by our own sinful disregard of the planet.

The future prospects are chilling.

So that’ll be Global Cooling then?

Christopher Booker also blames Cameron…for a different reason:

Flooding chaos is down to David Cameron, not climate change

The Environment Agency’s failure to dredge clogged-up rivers is causing floods

…emmm?…..

The BBC looks down on climate change ‘deniers’….dismissing them as unqualified ‘bloggers’…unlike English graduate Roger Harrabin who can speak authoritatively on climate science….being an English graduate presumably he knows how to write a convincing tale even if not in possession of all the facts.

It happened after bloggers seized on a Met Office paper revising downward its decadal global temperature projection for 2017.

Which is why this is so amusing…especially as it is from Harrabin’s climate propagandist sidekick Dr Joe Smith:

‘It is handy that the Internet came along at precisely the same moment as
‘the greatest challenge facing humanity’.

The bloggers will save us all!

And here  again Smith is at odds with the scientific consensus

‘I’m puzzled why anyone would think that researchers want climate change to be true. Everyone I know working in this field would dearly love to discover that the conclusions almost every climate scientist’s work is pointing to are wrong. Climate change seems likely to bring significant waste and suffering, albeit highly unpredictable.’

Shame the infamous Professor Phil Jones from UEA’s CRU admitted he’d love the planet to fry….

‘I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences.‘

While some have argued that ebbs and flows in the Sun’s activity are driving the climate – overriding the effect of greenhouse gas emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that solar variation only makes a small contribution to the Earth’s climate.

How often have we been told that the sun plays little to no part in the planet’s climate?  It’s the CO2 stupid!

Wriggle room in the climate research labs:

Is our Sun falling silent?

“I’ve been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” says Richard Harrison, head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.

He shows me recent footage captured by spacecraft that have their sights trained on our star. The Sun is revealed in exquisite detail, but its face is strangely featureless.

“If you want to go back to see when the Sun was this inactive… you’ve got to go back about 100 years,” he says.

This solar lull is baffling scientists, because right now the Sun should be awash with activity.

The Sun’s activity may be falling faster than at any time in 10,000 years

It has reached its solar maximum, the point in its 11-year cycle where activity is at a peak.

Dr Green says: “There is a very strong hint that the Sun is acting in the same way now as it did in the run-up to the Maunder Minimum.”

“We estimate that within about 40 years or so there is a 10% to 20% – nearer 20% – probability that we’ll be back in Maunder Minimum conditions.”

The era of solar inactivity in the 17th Century coincided with a period of bitterly cold winters in Europe.

Londoners enjoyed frost fairs on the Thames after it froze over, snow cover across the continent increased, the Baltic Sea iced over – the conditions were so harsh, some describe it as a mini-Ice Age.

So could this regional change in Europe have a knock-on effect on for the rest of the world’s climate? And what are the implications for global warming?

“If we take all the science that we know relating to how the Sun emits heat and light and how that heat and light powers our climate system, and we look at the climate system globally, the difference that it makes even going back into Maunder Minimum conditions is very small.

Ah…hang on….a mini ice age…but it’s not really ‘significant’…it’s only  going to be in Europe….globally the effect is insignificant….curious how global warming in the Arctic region drives climate around the globe but a mini ice age in the Northern hemisphere has no effect on global climate….do you think they make the science up to suit their own prejudices?

Oh…hang on again……this from rebel weatherman Paul Hudson who curiously reported this exact story in October last year…..

Although the biggest impact of such solar driven change would be regional, like here in the UK and across Europe, there would be global implications too.

According to research conducted by Michael Mann in 2001, a vociferous advocate of man-made global warming, the Maunder minimum of the 1600s was estimated to have shaved 0.3C to 0.4C from global temperatures.

Though he adds:

It is worth stressing that most scientists believe long term global warming hasn’t gone away. Any global cooling caused by this natural phenomenon would ultimately be temporary, and if projections are correct, the long term warming caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would eventually swamp this solar-driven cooling.

But keep panicking….if you think you’re safe in a colder world think again:

BBC Laughter: Less warming may cause more damage

From BBC Radio’s Today program.

The BBC’s Roger Harrabin reports:

So it is possible that the climate would warm less than predicted, but the effects of the warming at a low level might be greater than predicted.

 

 

Good old Roger….would have made a great priest.

The scientists can’t agree…..regional or global…..

Large changes in solar ultraviolet radiation can indirectly affect climate……We conclude that changes in atmospheric circulation amplified the solar signal and caused abrupt climate change about 2,800 years ago, coincident with a grand solar minimum.

An influence of solar irradiance variations on Earth’s surface climate has been repeatedly suggested……If the updated measurements of solar ultraviolet irradiance are correct, low solar activity, as observed during recent years, drives cold winters in northern Europe and the United States, and mild winters over southern Europe and Canada, with little direct change in globally averaged temperature.