fundet via No Trix Zone

Lüning starts by reminding the listeners that geology is key to understanding the past, which in turn can help us to better understand the present and provide valuable clues of what to expect in the future.

The German geologist is a specialist in the geology of Africa. The scientitific literature shows that the Sahara was green a mere 6000 years ago, and his slide at the 0:45 mark show remnants of that time.

Remnants of a green Sahara, 6000 years ago.

Back then, in the mid Holocene, it was 1 – 2°C warmer than it is today and the Sahara was teeming with wildlife.

At the 2:20 mark Lüning shows a slide of cave painting, in the middle of the Sahara, depicting wildlife seen at the time:

Cave paintings of wildlife in the middle of the Sahara.

The changes over the Holocener period clearly are greater than what we are seeing today and are due to natural flcutucations, primarily solar activity. Lüning adds at the 3:40 mark:

This is a geological context that unfortunately is lost on many people like physicists who believe their formulae more than they believe the true facts.”

Greenland is cooling

At the 4:10 mark Lüning brings up the Axforf paper of 2013, which shows Greenland was “2 – 3°C warmer 6000 to 4000 years ago than it is today” and that the ice survived.

At the 5:00 mark he presents a 2013 paper by Lecavalier et al showing that Greenland has cooled 2.5°C over the last 8000 years.

Greenland has cooled 2.5°C over the last 8000 years.

On his slide Lüning writes:

Despite the thousands of years of continuous warmth, the dramatic ice collapse never occurred.”

At the 6:00 mark Lüning shows a chart from Bob Carter, also showing nothing unusual is happening, Co2 playing only a minor role.

At the 7:30 mark Lüning brings up the IPCC 1990 millennium temperature chart that distinctly shows a warmer Medieval Warm Period and a little ice age. At the 8:30 various hockey sticks are shown, which Lüning describes as “incorrect”. “Even Michael Mann had to admit that he had exaggerated”.

- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2014/06/29/german-geologist-ipcc-models-a-failure-have-no-chance-of-success-sees-possible-0-2c-of-cooling-by-2020/#sthash.qWW5V44G.dpuf

Frederikshavn byråd har givet tilladelse til prøveboringer af skiffergas. Og det er man ikke glade for på venstrefløjen, hvor Modkraft argumenterede således

Et af hovedproblemerne ved udvindingen af skifergas er, at der i udvindingsprocessen er et udslip af metan til atmosfæren på mellem 3-7 %.

Metan er 20-30 gange mere potent end CO2 i forhold til den globale opvarmning.

Den nyeste rapport fra IPCC, FN’s klimapanel, har netop slået fast, at metangasser er endnu værre end først antaget.

Derudover viser erfaringerne fra andre lande, at udvindingen af skifergas kan føre til forurening af grundvand, ødelæggelse af miljø og lokalsamfund, og at udvinding af skifergas desuden fjerner fokus fra den nødvendige omstilling fra fossiler til vedvarende energiformer.

Udvinding af skifergas kræver ekstreme mængder af ferskvand, kemikalier, og vil desuden generere en massiv lastbilstrafik.

Ved kommerciel udvinding af skifergas vil der være brug for højt specialiseret arbejdskraft, der sandsynligvis vil komme fra Frankrig, derudover skal der bruges et antal lastbilchauffører.

Om den arbejdskraft vil blive hentet lokalt, er et åbent spørgsmål.

Da den globale temperatur ikke er steget de seneste 17 år kan man glemme hele klimaargumentet og i stedet bekymre sig om nærmiljøet. Faktisk er skiffergas bedre for CO2 regnskabet end de grønne løsninger argumenterer Lomborg i Forbes

Compare this to the fact that all the wind turbines and solar panels in the world reduce CO? emissions, at a maximum, by 275 Mt. In other words, the US shale gas revolution has by itself reduced global emissions more than all the well-intentioned solar and wind in the world.

Men der er også gode grunde til at udvinde skiffergas - også selv om det vil betyde fracking

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Europe gets just 1.3 percent of its energy from renewables like solar and wind, whereas it gets about 75 percent from fossil fuels and most of the remainder from nuclear. Even an extremely optimistic scenario from the IEA suggests that by 2035, Europe will only be able to generate 8 percent of its energy from these renewables. Focusing on them is simply populism without realism.

Moreover, subsidizing ever more green energy is becoming unaffordable. Spain is already paying more in subsidies to wind and solar than they spend on their higher education, making a dramatic increase exceedingly unlikely. But perhaps the best illustration comes from Germany, the EU’s largest economy with the biggest focus on renewables.

Last year alone, German consumers subsidized renewable energies to the tune of $27 billion, contributing to an inflation-adjusted 80 percent rise in household electricity prices since 2000. Yet the intermittency of renewables has increased the country’s reliance on fossil fuels since the nuclear phase-out of 2011. As Spiegel pointed out: “Consumer advocates and aid organizations say the breaking point has already been reached. Today, more than 300,000 households a year are seeing their power shut off because of unpaid bills.” Economic models for Europe show that the current climate policies will cost an excruciating $280 billion annually.

Og det gider ingen i længden påstår finansmanden Per Wimmer i Information. Han advarer om at statsstøtte til den grønne energisektor har skabt en boble der vil briste når de politiske vinde skifter

»Jeg tror ikke på, at den politiske eller folkelige opbakning er der for evigt. Jeg tror stadig, at folk gerne vil have grøn energi, det vil jeg også gerne, men der er en meget bedre måde at gøre det på, hvor vi får mere smæk for skillingen.«

Når opbakningen forsvinder, så vil boblen briste. For hvis støtten fjernes fra en række af de vedvarende energiformer, for eksempel vindenergi i Danmark, så vil projekterne ikke længere være rentable.

Og så står man med en masse projekter, der økonomisk er kollapstruede. Og er projekterne ikke rentable, men må lukkes ned, så står man også uden grønne energikilder, fordi man ikke satsede på de kommercielt rentable projekter.

– Forudsætningen for, at boblen brister, er, at der kommer et oprør mod støtten. Hvordan kan du vide, at det kommer?

»På et eller andet tidspunkt er der en, der siger, at nu gider jeg ikke tage hånden i lommen mere,« siger Per Wimmer.

Men der er et andet og endnu vigtigere argument for skiffergas og andre realistiske energiformer, nemlig forsyningssikkerhed. Den grønne bølge er både urentabel og utilstrækkelig og vi har i Vesten for længe forladt os på ondsindede og fjendtlige magter til at forsyne os med energi, noget som de til stadighed bruger til afpresning. For at fastholde Vesten som marked og indflydelsesfære har Rusland og Opec landene en interesse i at støtte de organisationer, der vil bremse fremskridtet

Så vi kan lade den tidligere KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov forklare hvorledes man benytter sig af frie samfunds nyttige idioter og forrædere

Daily Mail skriver at det videnskabelig tidsskrift Environmental Research Letters har forkastet en videnskabelig artikel fordi den såede tvivl om der herskende konsensus om menneskets katastrofale indflydelse på klimaet

Professor Lennart Bengtsson, a research fellow at the University of Reading and one of five authors of the study, said he suspected that intolerance of dissenting views on climate science was preventing his paper from being published.

‘The problem we now have in the climate community is that some scientists are mixing up their scientific role with that of a climate activist,’ he told the Times.

Prof Bengtsson’s paper suggests that the Earth’s environment might be much less sensitive to greenhouse gases than previously thought.

If he and his four co-authors are correct, it would mean that carbon dioxide and other pollutants are having a far less severe impact on climate than green activists would have us believe.

The research, if made public, would be a huge challenge to the finding of the UN’s Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that the global average temperature would rise by up to 4.5C if greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were allowed to double.

The paper suggested that the climate might be less sensitive to greenhouse gases than had been claimed by the IPCC in its report last September, and recommended that more work be carried out ‘to reduce the underlying uncertainty’.

The five contributing scientists submitted the paper to Environmental Research Letters – a highly regarded journal – but were told it had been rejected. A scientist asked by the journal to assess the paper under the peer review process reportedly wrote: ‘It is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of “errors” and worse from the climate sceptics media side.’

Prof Bengtsson, 79, said it was ‘utterly unacceptable’ to advise against publishing a paper on the political grounds.

He said: ‘It is an indication of how science is gradually being influenced by political views. The reality hasn’t been keeping up with the [computer] models.

Bengtson tiltrådte den uafhængige tænketank Global Warming Policy Foundation, stiftet af den tidligere Thatcher minister Nigel Lawson. Tænketanken er i opposition til FNs Klimapanels konsensus og det har givet voldsomme reaktioner fra andre klimaforskere - en tysk fysiker kaldte det ligefrem et medlemskab af Ku Klux Klan. Og den slags var for voldsomt for den gamle mand, der trak sit medlemskab af tilbage, kunne man ligeledes læse i Daily Mail

In his resignation letter, published on the think-tank’s website, he wrote: ‘If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety.

‘I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life.

‘Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.

‘I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy.

Lord Lawson, the former Tory Chancellor condemned the behaviour as ‘appalling’ and said the reference to ‘McCarthyism’ was ‘fully warranted’.

Judith Curry fandt det sørgeligt, med dette seneste eksempel på at klimakonsensus forsvarer position med en mobbekultur

I deeply regret that any scientist, particularly such a distinguished scientist as Bengsston, has had to put up with these attacks.  This past week, we have seen numerous important and enlightening statements made by Bengtsson about the state of climate science and policy, and science and society is richer for this.  We have also seen a disgraceful display of Climate McCarthyism by climate scientists, which has the potential to do as much harm to climate science as did the Climategate emails.

Rupert Darwall er ganske enig i McCathyisme sammenligning, men konkluderer anderledes Ghandisk i National Review at det er tegn på sammenbrud

Especially significant was a tweet from Gavin Schmidt, a leading climate modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute, who for many years worked alongside James Hansen. “Groups perceived to be acting in bad faith should not be surprised that they are toxic within the science community,” Schmidt tweeted. “Changing that requires that they not act in bad faith and not be seen to be acting in bad faith.”

Evidently the right to practice and discuss climate science should be subject to a faith test. It is an extraordinarily revealing development. Fears about unbelievers’ polluting the discourse, as some academics put it, illustrate the weakness of climate science: The evidence for harmful anthropogenic global warming is not strong enough to stand up for itself.

Inadvertently Schmidt’s tweet demonstrates how far climate science has crossed the boundary deep into pseudo-science. Karl Popper observed of the trio of pseudo-sciences prevalent in 1920s Vienna that their followers could explain why non-believers rejected their manifest truths. For Marxists, it was because of their class interests. For subscribers to Freudian psychoanalysis and Alfred Adler’s psychology, non-belief was evidence of unanalyzed repressions crying out for treatment. So it is with climate science. Only the pure of heart should be allowed an opinion on it.

Science regresses if it becomes intolerant of criticism.

Jeg er enig med Darwall, men det har jeg været længe uden at noget er brudt sammen. Marc Morano har samlet et par af det mobberi der længe har været standard

NASA’s James Hansen has called for trials of climate skeptics in 2008 for “high crimes against humanity.” Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lashed out at skeptics in 2007, declaring “This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors” In 2009, RFK, Jr. also called coal companies “criminal enterprises” and declared CEO’s ‘should be in jail… for all of eternity.”

In June 2009, former Clinton Administration official Joe Romm defended a comment on his Climate Progress website warning skeptics would be strangled in their beds. “An entire generation will soon be ready to strangle you and your kind while you sleep in your beds,” stated the remarks, which Romm defended by calling them “not a threat, but a prediction.”

In 2006, the eco-magazine Grist called for Nuremberg-Style trials for skeptics. In 2008, Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki called for government leaders skeptical of global warming to be thrown “into jail.” In 2007, The Weather Channel’s climate expert called for withholding certification of skeptical meteorologists.

A 2008 report found that ‘climate blasphemy’ is replacing traditional religious blasphemy. In addition, a July 2007 Senate report detailed how skeptical scientists have faced threats and intimidation.

In 2007, then EPA Chief Vowed to Probe E-mail Threatening to ‘Destroy’ Career of Climate Skeptic and dissenters of warming fears have been called ‘Climate Criminals’ who are committing ‘Terracide’ (killing of Planet Earth) (July 25, 2007) In addition, in May 2009, Climate Depot Was Banned in Louisiana! See: State official sought to ‘shut down’ climate skeptic’s testimony at hearing.

Below are many more examples of the threats, name calling and intimidation skeptics have faced in recent times.

November 12, 2007: UN official warns ignoring warming would be ‘criminally irresponsible’ Excerpt: The U.N.’s top climate official warned policymakers and scientists trying to hammer out a landmark report on climate change that ignoring the urgency of global warming would be “criminally irresponsible.” Yvo de Boer’s comments came at the opening of a weeklong conference that will complete a concise guide on the state of global warming and what can be done to stop the Earth from overheating.

September 29. 2007: VA State Climatologist skeptical of global warming loses job after clash with Governor: ‘I was told that I could not speak in public’ Excerpt: Michaels has argued that the climate is becoming warmer but that the consequences will not be as dire as others have predicted. Gov. Kaine had warned. Michaels not to use his official title in discussing his views. “I resigned as Virginia state climatologist because I was told that I could not speak in public on my area of expertise, global warming, as state climatologist,” Michaels said in a statement this week provided by the libertarian Cato Institute, where he has been a fellow since 1992. “It was impossible to maintain academic freedom with this speech restriction.” (LINK)

Skeptical State Climatologist in Oregon has title threatened by Governor (February 8, 2007) Excerpt: “[State Climatologist George Taylor] does not believe human activities are the main cause of global climate change…So the [Oregon] governor wants to take that title from Taylor and make it a position that he would appoint. In an exclusive interview with KGW-TV, Governor Ted Kulongoski confirmed he wants to take that title from Taylor.

Skeptical State Climatologist in Delaware silenced by Governor (May 2, 2007) Excerpt: Legates is a state climatologist in Delaware, and he teaches at the university. He`s not part of the mythical climate consensus. In fact, Legates believes that we oversimplify climate by just blaming greenhouse gases. One day he received a letter from the governor, saying his views do not concur with those of the administration, so if he wants to speak out, it must be as an individual, not as a state climatologist. So essentially, you can have the title of state climatologist unless he`s talking about his views on climate?

October 28, 2008: License to dissent: ‘Internet should be nationalized as a public utility’ to combat global warming skepticism – Australian Herald Sun – Excerpt: British journalism lecturer and warming alarmist Alex Lockwood says my blog is a menace to the planet. Skeptical bloggers like me need bringing into line, and Lockwood tells a journalism seminar of some options: There is clearly a need for research into the ways in which climate skepticism online is free to contest scientific fact. But there is enough here already to put forward some of the ideas in circulation. One of the founders of the Internet Vint Cerf, and lead for Google’s Internet for Everyone project, made a recent suggestion that the Internet should be nationalized as a public utility. As tech policy blogger Jim Harper argues, “giving power over the Internet to well-heeled interests and self-interested politicians” is, and I quote, “a bad idea.” Or in the UK every new online publication could be required to register with the recently announced Internet watchdog…

November 5, 2008: UK Scientist: ‘BBC SHUNNED ME FOR DENYING CLIMATE CHANGE’ – UK Daily Express

Excerpt: FOR YEARS David Bellamy was one of the best known faces on TV. A respected botanist and the author of 35 books, he had presented around 400 programmes over the years and was appreciated by audiences for his boundless enthusiasm. Yet for more than 10 years he has been out of the limelight, shunned by bosses at the BBC where he made his name, as well as fellow scientists and environmentalists. His crime? Bellamy says he doesn’t believe in man-made global warming. Here he reveals why – and the price he has paid for not toeing the orthodox line on climate change.

U.N. official says it’s ‘completely immoral’ to doubt global warming fears (May 10, 2007)

Excerpt: UN special climate envoy Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland declared “it’s completely immoral, even, to question” the UN’s scientific “consensus.”

Alligevel har jeg trods den langsomme udvikling, med sprække på sprække i klimapanelets panser en tiltro til at deres imperium braser sammen. Ja, det går meget langsommere end mine klimadebat modeller har forudset, men min tiltro til deres prognoser er kun stigende.

Bloggen Realclimate er det nærmste man kommer et uofficielt talsrør for FNs Klimapanel. Dens formål er at forklare klimavidenskab for en apatisk offentlighed og er stiftet af og består af nogle af klimapanelets mest centrale klimaforskere og de mest advokerende for menneskets uheldige indflydelse på klimaet som ishockeystavgrafens skaber Michael Mann og klimamodeløren Gavin A Schmidt. Så niveauet er derefter

Does global warming make extreme weather events worse? Here is the #1 flawed reasoning you will have seen about this question: it is the classic confusion between absence of evidence and evidence for absence of an effect of global warming on extreme weather events. Sounds complicated? It isn’t. I’ll first explain it in simple terms and then give some real-life examples.

The two most fundamental properties of extreme events are that they are rare (by definition) and highly random. These two aspects (together with limitations in the data we have) make it very hard to demonstrate any significant changes. And they make it very easy to find all sorts of statistics that do not show an effect of global warming – even if it exists and is quite large.

(…)

While statistical studies on extremes are plagued by signal-to-noise issues and only give unequivocal results in a few cases with good data (like for temperature extremes), we have another, more useful source of information: physics. For example, basic physics means that rising temperatures will drive sea levels up, as is in fact observed. Higher sea level to start from will clearly make a storm surge (like that of the storms Sandy and Haiyan) run up higher. By adding 1+1 we therefore know that sea-level rise is increasing the damage from storm surges – probably decades before this can be statistically proven with observational data.

Så altså, hvis vi antager at klimaet ikke opfører sig som et komplekst og dynamisk system så behøver vi slet ikke empiri for at bevise vores teorier. Teorierne står i deres egen ret og er deres eget bevis. Det kunne de jo godt have sagt inden de hævede deres løn for at beskære træer og programmere dyre computermodeller. Som illustration på deres cirkellogik kommer de med dette fornemme eksempel

Imagine you’re in a sleazy, smoky pub and a stranger offers you a game of dice, for serious money. You’ve been warned and have reason to suspect they’re using a loaded dice here that rolls a six twice as often as normal. But the stranger says: “Look here, I’ll show you: this is a perfectly normal dice!” And he rolls it a dozen times. There are two sixes in those twelve trials – as you’d expect on average in a normal dice. Are you convinced all is normal?

You shouldn’t be, because this experiment is simply inconclusive. It shows no evidence for the dice being loaded, but neither does it provide real evidence against your prior suspicion that the dice is loaded. There is a good chance for this outcome even if the dice is massively loaded (i.e. with 1 in 3 chance to roll a six). On average you’d expect 4 sixes then, but 2 is not uncommon either. With normal dice, the chance to get exactly two sixes in this experiment is 30%, with the loaded dice it is 13%[i]. From twelve tries you simply don’t have enough data to tell.

Så altså, den videnskabelige tilgang er at stole på en blanding af rygter og ens instinkter frem for eksperimenter. Problemet med klimaet, som et eksperiment, er, at man kun har det ene og intet at sammenligne med. Hvis denne beværtning er symbolet på verden, hvorfor opfatter man den så som snudsket fremfor normal? Åh, det er antagelsen om virkelighedens korrumperede ulidelighed og den bliver kun bekræftet af empiriens afkræftelse.

Nick Cohen har et herligt rablende indlæg i Guardian. Klimabenægterne, der beskrives som “cultish fanatics“, drevet af et af had til venstrefløjsere og sympati for markedskræfter har nemlig vundet kampen om klimaet stik mod al fornuft

The Royal Society, the Royal Institution, Nasa, the US National Academy of Sciences, the US Geological Survey, the IPCC and the national science bodies of 30 or so other countries have said that man-made climate change is on the march. A survey of 2,000 peer-reviewed papers on global warming published in the last 20 years found that 97% said that humans were causing it.

Der er med andre ord, “no scientific debate” om den snarlige katastrofe: “Man-made global warming and the man-made mass extinction of species define this hot, bloody and (let us hope) brief epoch in the world’s history“, ”The evidence for man-made global warming is as final as the evidence of Auschwitz.“

Faktisk er der en debat helt inde i kernen af FNs konsensus, som man forleden kunne læse om i ellers så klima alarmistiske Economist. De 15-17 års manglende opvarmning af atmosfæren, der, uanfægtet af usikkerhed, er døbt “the Pause”, bortforklares ved antagelser om ekstra partikler i atmosfæren især fra øget vulkanaktivitet, lavere sol-aktivitet og at oceanerne diskret har optaget den ekstra varme fra atmosfæren. Et enestående sammenfald af omstændigher der tegner et falsk billede af normalitet. Som Economist formulerer det, så er ‘pausen’ gået fra at være uforklarlig til at være overforklaret

Der er heller ikke, som Cohen eller er overbevist om, den store frygt hos klimapanelet for at lidt bedre vejr vil føre til “mass extinction” - dyr og planter er sejere end som så.

Den officielle ‘pause’ var altså uforudset, der hersker uenighed om dens årsager, hvilket vil sige at der ikke eksisterer et nagelfast konsensus om klimaet og konsekvenserne af en global opvarmning er alligevel ikke problematiske. Alligevel mener Cohen at det er skeptikerne der lider af ‘kognitiv dissonans’…

…a condition first defined by Leon Festinger and his colleagues in the 1950s . They examined a cult that had attached itself to a Chicago housewife called Dorothy Martin. She convinced her followers to resign from their jobs and sell their possessions because a great flood was to engulf the earth on 21 December 1954. They would be the only survivors. Aliens in a flying saucer would swoop down and save the chosen few.

When 21 December came and went, and the Earth carried on as before, the group did not despair. Martin announced that the aliens had sent her a message saying that they had decided at the last minute not to flood the planet after all. Her followers believed her. They had given up so much for their faith that they would believe anything rather than admit their sacrifices had been pointless.

Og hvis det skulle forholde sig så ironisk, at det er Cohen selv, der lider af kognitiv dissonans, så ville det jo også forklare, hvorfor han heller ikke kan se det ironiske i at lancere en konspirationsteori, som forklaring på andres konspirationsteorier

Rightwing billionaires in the United States and the oil companies have spent fortunes on blocking action on climate change. A part of the answer may therefore be that conservative politicians in London, Washington and Canberra are doing their richest supporters’ bidding. There’s truth in the bribery hypothesis. In my own little world of journalism, I have seen rightwing hacks realise the financial potential of denial and turn from reasonable men and women into beetle-browed conspiracy theorists.

Bjørn Lomborg beskriver i National Post den stadige modstand mod genmodificerede afgrøder trods deres påviselige og dundrende succes for den fattigste del af verden

Too often, we let emotion crowd out the facts of a news story. We base our opinions on the most attention-generating headlines, and deeply held convictions are shaped by only a few highly publicized stories. Recently, I was at a major New England university discussing the state of the world when we touched on nutrition. I made the point that the Green Revolution from the 1970s was a technological solution which has reaped huge benefits for both mankind and the environment.

First a bit of history: Spearheaded by Norman Borlaug, the Green Revolution found ways to make the yield of staple crops much higher, so we could grow much more food on the same agricultural land. The Green Revolution made food cheaper, and allowed countries like India to shift from imminent starvation to surplus food production. Higher yields also reaped environmental benefits, as there was less need to cut down forests and intrude on nature. For his work, Borlaug earned the nickname “The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives” and was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize.

And yet, at this discussion, a college professor remarked that is was debatable whether the Green Revolution had been an overall good for India, since “there are so many suicides.”

I The Libetarian Republic angriber Devaid Gerale ligeledes modstanderne af GMO

Golden rice, a genetically engineered rice which is rich in beta carotene, was developed to help curb vitamin A deficiency in the third world, and has been shown as effective as beta carotene in oil at providing vitamin A. If policy or activism regarding genetically modified foods were to be based on the anti-science fear-mongering of people like Bill Nye, it would hinder efforts to stave off the ailments caused by micronutrient deficiency in the third world.

According to statistics compiled by UNICEF, this includes 1-2 million deaths annually of children 1-4 years old that could be averted by improved vitamin A nutritive.

Greenpeace activists have vandalized testing sites for this potentially life saving genetically modified rice.  Tons of genetically modified beets have been torched. Greenpeace has also broken into a CSIRO experimental farm in Australia to destroy genetically modified wheat, and anti-GMO activists in Hawaii cut down genetically modified papaya trees during debates about whether or not they would be banned in the state.

This is the same Greenpeace, by the way, which cites the broad and overwhelming scientific consensus that exists on the subject of climate change in support of their environmentalist views.  Science, it seems, only matters when the conclusion is agreeable.

Men Jerale er ingen Lomborg. “Science denial is not exclusive to right wing fundamentalists” hedder hans overskrift og han spørger derfor om venstrefløjens videnskabsbenægtelse i virkeligheden er værre end højrefløjens? Som præmis slås det naturligvis fast at “critics like Chris Mooney were quick to point out, correctly, that science denial is predominantly right-wing” og Gerale eksemplificerer

“Fox News has been criticized for [“false balance,”] because their coverage of climate science greatly over-represents those who disagree with anthropogenic global warming theory while there is a strong consensus among climate scientists that the theory is correct.  As it happens, there is a similarly strong scientific consensus on the safety of genetically modified foods, but Laci conveniently ignores it for the sake of manufactured controversy– and she’s not alone.

Videnskab er for mange en lille ny gud som man føler sig forpligtet til at besværge. Der er dem der er for eller imod guden og det indbefatter ikke blot accepten af gudens status, men af den rette lære. Og ingen er højere i afgørelsen af den rette lære end de ældste, vogternes råd, kleresiet. Og når man ikke er stærk i troen og ikke er stærk i skriften udskammer man derfor de vantro og kætterne i autoritetens navn. For hvis man virkeligt troede, hvis man virkeligt kendte skriften så ville man ikke henvise til det om ikke blasfemiske så uvidenskabelige ord ‘konsensus’ når man afgjorde, hvad der er videnskab, hvad der er ikke er videnskab og hvad der direkte er benægtelse.

For Jerale og mange med ham er videnskab ikke en proces, en stringent metode, til at kvalificere, kvantificere og teoretisere, men blot et samfund af repræsentanter, nemlig videnskabsmændene flest og prominentest. Et noget så uvidenskabeligt ord som konsensus, der betyder en overenskomst, en forhandlet enighed, som eksempelvis Samarbejdspolitikken, forveksles derfor med en ‘videnskabelig sandhed’. Og når konsensus samler sig om en teori så bliver denne teori derfor til selve videnskaben. At betvivle en teori som mange er tilslutter sig er at benægte videnskaben - at forsværge guden.

Forskellen på klimadebatten og GMO debatten er forskellen på hvor konsensus placerer sig mellem empiri og teori. For både GMO og klimadebatten rejser der sig nogle naturlige og forståelige bekymringer for, hvad der kan ske når vi så direkte manipulerer med henholdsvis ‘livets byggesten’ og atmosfærens kemiske sammensætning. Men afgørelsen om hvad der er videnskabeligt afgøres af data kontra teori. Hvis vi skal tro Lomborg og Gerale peger alle undersøgelser på at man endnu ikke har fundet negative konsekvenser af GMO og det underminerer kritikernes frygt. For klimavidenskaben er der ligeledes ingen undersøgelser der peger på at mennesket har eller er ved at ændre klimaet bemærkelsesværdigt. Temperaturen er ikke steget de seneste 17 år og den temperaturstigning vi har haft fra 70′erne til 1998 har været nærmest tro kopier af temperaturstigningerne 1860-1880 og 1910-1940, begge anerkendt som uden menneskelig indflydelse og alle tre tilsammen med en 30-årig periode mellem sig. Alligevel samler konsensus sig i tilfældet imod de videnskabeligt indsamlede data og holder fast i angsten for fremtiden genereret af selvskabte computerspådomme.

Flertal er ikke bevis og teori er ikke sandhed. Et hvilket som helst samfund, også det af videnskabsmænd, er sårbart overfor menneskets fejlbarlighed. Der er således tyrkisk konsensus om at benægte det armenske folkedrab. Det gør det ikke sandt.

Måske bliver man ikke sindsyg direkte, men Global Warming.org fortæller at Marijuana øger den globale opvarmning

A new study by Evan Mills of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory finds that indoor Cannabis production has a very large carbon footprint.

Reporter Colin Sullivan summarizes the study, titled “Energy Up in Smoke,” in yesterday’s E&E News (subscription required):

AGRICULTURE: Pot growers inhale 1% of U.S. electricity, exhale GHGs of 3M cars — study (04/11/2011)

Colin Sullivan, E&E reporter
Indoor marijuana cultivation consumes enough electricity to power 2 million average-sized U.S. homes, which corresponds to about 1 percent of national power consumption, according to a study by a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Researcher Evan Mills’ study notes that cannabis production has largely shifted indoors, especially in California, where medical marijuana growers use high-intensity lights usually reserved for operating rooms that are 500 times more powerful that a standard reading lamp.

Og global opvarmning fører til sindlidelser fortæller CFACT

When it comes to global warming, melting ice caps and scorching heat waves often top the list of big worries. But now, just the act of worrying itself is allegedly becoming a new consequence of dreaded climate change. One new form of anguish is for survivors of extreme weather events – which kind of makes sense – but there’s apparently a special mental burden being carried by climate activists who one psychiatrist says are suffering from anticipatory anxiety and pre-traumatic stress disorder. Supposedly adding to the problem is that politicians aren’t doing enough to address their climate concerns, causing them to feel vulnerable and probably just not well understood.

Det betyder ifølge Discover Magazine at børn ikke kan sove for vrangforestillinger

Not long ago my wife and I went out to dinner at a restaurant with another couple, who, like us, have two boys. The conversation inevitably turned to our kids, school, family stuff. Their older son made the transition this year to junior high school. I asked how this was going. Pretty well, the mother said, except he had recently become anxious and wasn’t sleeping well. “He’s worried about climate change,” she said. “It’s keeping him up at night.”

Shortly after that outing, my wife and I had dinner with another couple. Again, the conversation revolved around our kids. (They have a 13-year old son and an 11-year old daughter). Their teenage boy, I learned, was also having anxiety and sleep issues. “He’s become obsessed with climate change,” the father told me. “He thinks the world is doomed.”

At politkere og embedsmænd begynder at konfabulere, som Responding To Climate Change fortæller

A UN climate meeting in Bonn’s bright World Conference Centre this week saw the usual tussle between the climate negotiators who are trying, each in their own way, to secure a deal designed to put a stop to climate change.

Tactics of diplomacy were varied, as negotiators both coaxed and conflicted with other countries as they tried to win the rest of the world around to their own way of thinking. But Yeb Sano, the lead negotiator from the Philippines, is the only one makes his point through fasting.

It is an unusual approach, but Sano believes it is effective, making him a better operator when it comes to  driving forward progress on the UN’s  climate treaty, which needs all the help it can get if it is going to be signed off by a 2015 deadline.

“When we look at this convoluted process called the climate negotiations, which has been running for more than two decades now, a lot of things we discuss here are things that will really test your patience,” he tells RTCC.

“Fasting allows you to understand where others come from and lead you to solutions that would go beyond the confines of what is written, what is conventional.

“That goes with the notion of dealing with climate change not by sticking with the traditional positions countries take, but finding common ground that addresses the problem in a way that respects not legal context, but the human moral context.”

Warsaw

Fasting each month is now a ritual for Sano, who goes without food for two days. On the first of each month, he fasts as part of a wider movement among environmental activists—united on Twitter with the hashtag #FastForTheClimate.

On the thirteenth, he undertakes a personal fast to remind himself of the catastrophic super-typhoon that hit the Philippines in November last year.

Og akademikere kvæles i egen galde i tidsskrifter som The Conversation

More deaths can already be attributed to climate change than the L’Aquila earthquake and we can be certain that deaths from climate change will continue to rise with global warming. Nonetheless, climate denial remains a serious deterrent against meaningful political action in the very countries most responsible for the crisis.

Climate denial funding

We have good reason to consider the funding of climate denial to be criminally and morally negligent. The charge of criminal and moral negligence ought to extend to all activities of the climate deniers who receive funding as part of a sustained campaign to undermine the public’s understanding of scientific consensus.

Criminal negligence is normally understood to result from failures to avoid reasonably foreseeable harms, or the threat of harms to public safety, consequent of certain activities. Those funding climate denial campaigns can reasonably predict the public’s diminished ability to respond to climate change as a result of their behaviour. Indeed, public uncertainty regarding climate science, and the resulting failure to respond to climate change, is the intentional aim of politically and financially motivated denialists.

Så læg piben til side, verden er skør nok endda.

Ord former vores tanker. Ja, vi kan kun tænke gennem sprog som Vygotsky og Piaget kom frem til uafhængigt af hinanden (De kunne også have læst Biblens I begyndelsen var ordet… afsnit). Og derfor er det også vigtigt for enhver politisk og religiøs bevægelse at forme ord og sprog og vendinger, som tjener sagen bedst.

For klimadagsordenen startede man med udtrykket Global Opvarmning, da teorien var og er at den ekstra CO2 vi udleder i atmosfæren har drastisk indvirkning på drivhuseffekten som øger den globale temperatur. Egentlig effekt har CO2 så ikke haft alligevel indtil videre, hvilket er meget over tiden. Det er jo en bet at have et udtryk for noget der ikke sker. Og som det derfor er blevet pinligere at tale virkeligheden midt imod ændrer man sit sprog.

Det nye ord blev klimaforandringer, hvor det nye for de progressive pludselig blev en trussel, mens det sædvanlige og derfor reaktionære nu var at foretrække. Det var i det mindste en positiv forandring. Ordet var godt så langt at alt kunne fyldes i det da klimaet er foranderligt. Hvorfor lade sig trække ned i regnskabets sump af videnskabelige udsagn når intetsigende ord opflammer journalister og politikere?

Men fordi klimaforandringer lyder lige så meget som en mulighed som en trussel hos almindeligt og rettænkende mennesker måtte man finde på noget mere presserende. Klimaforstyrrelser blev derfor lanceret for en 5 års tid siden, men slog ikke igennem fordi det havde ikke det catchy ekstra der fik det til at rulle godt ud af munden. Og man kunne let risikere at skulle stå til regnskab for, hvad en forstyrrelse var eller ikke var. Var en særlig mild vinter en forstyrrelse?

Så derfor har man prøvet at få gang i ekstremt vejr. Det kan man bruge hver gang vejret er ekstremt og det er det jo altid et eller andet sted. En storm, tørke, skybrud, hedebølge, selv snevejr og frost, alt kan komme i mangler, ekstreme mængder og varierende intensitet fra tid til anden. Det er catchy og det kan bruges hver gang folk plages mest så der er automatisk signalindlæring. Men desværre skal også dette underkastes regnskabet (vejret er ikke mere ekstremt end for 30 år siden, tværtimod) og man skal forklare hvorfor vejr og klima alligevel hænger sammen efter at have brugt 20 år på at forklare at vejr og klima ikke hænger sammen når folk har ironiseret over at skulle skovle sne.

Denne navneleg er påtvunget af naturen der nu på 17. år ikke har ladet den globale temperatur stige. At temperaturen ikke stiger vil sige at der ikke er global opvarmning. Når der ikke er global opvarmning forandrer klimaet sig ikke (udover det sædvanlige), når klimaet ikke forandrer sig er der ingen forstyrrelser og ekstremt vejr er kun naturligt, som det altid har været. Det er altså blot din påklædning der er forkert.

Sagt på en anden måde så er teorien om mennesket drastiske påvirkning af klimaet gennem udledning af CO2 forkert. Men den udgør en karriere for mange journalister, forskere, politikere, foreninger der i skøn forening sponserer opbygningen og vedligeholdelsen af en industri af forældet og dyr industri af vind, vand og solfangere som har taget arbejdere og ingeniører ud af arbejdsstyrken og forvandlet dem til lige så relevante fagfolk som bødkere. Og alle disse økonomisk belastende arbejdspladser går tabt, hvis ikke skatteborgeren betaler lidt mere hele tiden.

Og så er det at man ikke kan sige at vi tog fejl og vi lige har sænket den økonomiske vækst med 1%/år og brugt tid og ressourcer på at løse pseudo problemer i stedet for reelle problemer. Så derfor opfinder man et nyt begreb, nemlig mysteriet om den manglende varme. Nature skriver

The biggest mystery in climate science today may have begun, unbeknownst to anybody at the time, with a subtle weakening of the tropical trade winds blowing across the Pacific Ocean in late 1997. These winds normally push sun-baked water towards Indonesia. When they slackened, the warm water sloshed back towards South America, resulting in a spectacular example of a phenomenon known as El Niño. Average global temperatures hit a record high in 1998 — and then the warming stalled.

For several years, scientists wrote off the stall as noise in the climate system: the natural variations in the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere that drive warm or cool spells around the globe. But the pause has persisted, sparking a minor crisis of confidence in the field. Although there have been jumps and dips, average atmospheric temperatures have risen little since 1998, in seeming defiance of projections of climate models and the ever-increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. Climate sceptics have seized on the temperature trends as evidence that global warming has ground to a halt. Climate scientists, meanwhile, know that heat must still be building up somewhere in the climate system, but they have struggled to explain where it is going, if not into the atmosphere. Some have begun to wonder whether there is something amiss in their models.

Now, as the global-warming hiatus enters its sixteenth year, scientists are at last making headway in the case of the missing heat. Some have pointed to the Sun, volcanoes and even pollution from China as potential culprits, but recent studies suggest that the oceans are key to explaining the anomaly. The latest suspect is the El Niño of 1997–98, which pumped prodigious quantities of heat out of the oceans and into the atmosphere — perhaps enough to tip the equatorial Pacific into a prolonged cold state that has suppressed global temperatures ever since.

Den manglende varme kan kun være manglende hvis den skulle have været der, som teorien siger at den skal være. Normalt og før staterne satte sig på forskningen og skabte en usund alliance mellem viden og politik ville man blot konstatere at der ikke var kommet nogen ekstra varme og at teorien derfor var forkert eller blæst ud af proportion. En simpel sammenligning mellem teoriens forudsigelser og empiriens dom.

Man taler i samme forståelse også om pause i den globale opvarmning. Altså mener man at temperaturen vil vende tilbage. Ingen kan forklare, hvorfor varmen gemmer sig eller hvor den gemmer sig, men ingen lader sig slå ud af det helt uventede og behandler virkeligheden som et kuriosum til den teori, hvorom ingen tvivl hersker.

Gud er måske død, men religioner trives. Måske det var bedst om Ordet var blevet hos Gud.

“for husholdningerne udgør [energiafgifterne] ikke noget større problem“, fortalte en eller anden Helveg, der er klimaminister til Nynne Bjerre i DR2’s Deadline, da han skulle forklare, hvorfor Vismændene tager fejl i at underkende effekten af den særlige danske CO2 reduktion, når vi alligevel er en del af EU’s kvotesystem. Som Jyllands-Posten summerer vismændene op

….den netop offentliggjorte rapport fra Det Miljøøkonomiske Råd, (…) er det hidtil mest ætsende opgør med årtiers dansk energipolitik.

»Anvendelse af vedvarende energi som vindmøller, halm og træpiller er generelt dyrere end fossile brændsler, selv når der tages højde for CO2-afgifter og kvotekrav ved udledning af CO2,« fastslår Det Miljøøkonomiske Råd.

Danmark er forpligtet til at honorere EU’s klima- og energipolitik, men en »fortsat overmålopfyldelse koster velstand«, påpeger vismændene. Skarpere kan det ikke siges.

Danmark fører en dybt forfejlet energipolitik, der har påført danskerne verdens højeste energipriser og ifølge Det Miljøøkonomiske Råd forværret konkurrenceevnen og reduceret velstanden, simpelthen fordi danskerne må aflevere milliarder i energiafgifter og dermed berøves forbrugsmuligheder uden at have fået noget håndgribeligt til gengæld.

Ikke nok med det: Den CO2, som danskerne måske sparer, kan sælges som CO2-kvoter til andre europæiske lande, der bruger den til at etablere nye kulfyrede kraftværker – og Europas kulforbrug er i disse år stigende.

Selv hvis alle tilskud til nye vindmøller samt direkte tilskud til solenergi, biogas og biomasse i el-produktionen ophører, som vismændene anbefaler, vil Danmark i 2020 »være meget tæt på« at leve op til EU’s krav om en andel af vedvarende energi på 30 pct.

Og Jyllands-Posten konkluderer videre at lytte til Helveg Petersen, som han leder an i den massive kritik af fagfolkene er “som at lytte til talsmanden for en nyreligiøs bevægelse“. Nynne Bjerre’s tilgang i Deadline var da også at få Helveg til at indrømme at han havde taget et politisk standpunkt, der kostede urimeligt med knapper. Men som Helveg arrogant afviste at gå ind på vismændenes præmisser indrømmede han ufrivilligt alligevel den barske virkeligheds penge og ressourcespild

Vi vil gerne i tyve halvtreds være helt fri af fossile brændstoffer. Hvis ikke vi laver noget teknologiudvikling, hvis ikke vi går igang allerede nu med at udfase den sorte energi, jamen så når vi simpelthen ikke vores mål og det vil klimaet ikke kunne holde til.

(…)

[Vismændene] er nærmest ude i et halsløst ærinde når de siger at vi bare skal stoppe for støtte og udbygningen af havvindmølleparkerne osv. Tænk på alle de arbejdspladser der er derude lige nu, som er bygget på omkring denne her grønne økonomi, som både eksporterer, men som søreme også producerer til Danmark.

Støtte er radikalt slang for statsstøtte. Bjerre indskød listigt at det vel ikke alt sammen afhang af statsstøtte og Helveg gik hovmodigt lige i fælden helt uanfægtet af realiteternes betydning

Den teknologiudvikling der har ført til alle de arbejdspladser vi har i dag, den er eksportdrevet, men den er simpelthen kommet fordi vi selv har haft et hjemmemarked. Det er klart at i en kort periode, der ville du kunne klare dig uden et.. noget udvikling på hjemmemarkedet. Men den teknologi og den industri vi har fået bygget op i Danmark, den er jo et produkt af en 30-årig satsning - hvis du holder op så begynder det straks at forvitre.

Hjemmemarked er også radikalt slang for statsstøtte. Og 30 års støtte er radikalt slang for helt afhængighed af statsstøtte.

Det scenarie der ville opstå, hvis man gjorde som [vismændene] forslår og fra den ene dag til den anden holdt op med at støtte vedvarende energi… det ville være et blodbad af arbejdspladser ud over det ganske land.

(…)

Den branche vi har opbygget samlet set omkring grøn teknologi fylder nu 11% af vores eksport.

Her indskød Bjerre at det også var medregnet succesprodukter som Grundfoss Varmepumper og fortsatte sit pres på at få ministeren til at indrømme modsætningen mellem hans politiske ønsker og de økonomiske realiteter. Men det rystede ikke Helveg, der lyriks fortsatte “For mig er det en fornøjelse at vi gør begge dele, at vi opbygger en teknologisk styrkeposition med mange gode arbejdspladser samtidig med at vi baner vejen for at få gjort noget ved klimaet“.

Religiøst motiveret pengespild er muligvis en radikal fornøjelse, men på et tidspunkt vil belastningen for husholdningerne kræve en Thatcher der tager opgøret med de forældede industriers privilegier. Og det vil gå ud over ganske mange arbejdere i det ganske land, hvis ekspertise vil være så relevant som bødkernes.

“Klimakrisen var kendt - nu skal den betales” fortæller en overskrift i Information

Advarslen var ikke ny. Det nye i 2012 var, at den kom fra den britiske regering selv: »Risikoen for oversvømmelser forventes at stige væsentligt overalt i Storbritannien«, og antallet af briter berørt af oversvømmelser vil vokse til 3,6 millioner i midten af dette århundrede, skrev eksperter fra Miljø-, Fødevare- og Landbrugsministeriet (Defra) i den første vidtspændende klimaforandrings-risikovurdering for Storbritannien nogensinde.

Øverst på listen over de 700 risici, rapporten opremser, ligger flere oversvømmelser, og eksperterne vurderer, at prisen for det efterfølgende oprydningsarbejde, genopbygning og kompensation vil stige fra 1,3 mia. pund om året i 2012 (12 mia. kr., red.) til mellem 2,1 og 12 mia. pund i 2080 (mellem 19 og 109 mia. kr., red.).

Oversvømmelserne vil i fremtiden i højere grad »ramme folks hjem, sårbare samfundsgruppers velvære, kritiske infrastruktursystemers funktion (…) og skabe kaos for en lang række erhverv lokaliseret i flodsletterne«, vurderer eksperterne.

To år senere er advarslen blevet til virkelighed, efter det, chefforsker Julia Slingo fra det britiske Met Office kalder for »den mest ekstraordinære regnvejrsperiode i 248 år«.

»Vi har optegnelser, der går tilbage til 1766, og vi har aldrig set noget lignende,« siger Slingo til hjemmesiden Climate Progress.

Efter ugevis af regn- og stormvejr var der i går stadig udstedt 16 såkaldte severe flood warnings- der indikerer risiko for tab af menneskeliv – og hundredvis af mindre alvorlige advarsler. Flere end 600 hjem vurderes i øjeblikket at være oversvømmede, og næsten 1.000 personer er blevet evakueret, efter at Themsen i nogle områder steg til det højeste niveau i 60 år.

Sådan er det med religon, man ser varsler på dommedag overalt. Men vejr og klima er ikke det samme og den globale opvarmning der skete for 17 år siden , har ikke resulteret i mere ekstremt vejr. Daily Mail kan fortælle at at den gode Julia Slingo har fået et kun alt for velvilligt korps af mikrofonholdere i ind og udland til at danse hendes regndans

One of the Met Office’s most senior experts yesterday made a dramatic intervention in the climate change debate by insisting there is no link between the storms that have battered Britain and global warming.

Mat Collins, a Professor in climate systems at Exeter University, said the storms have been driven by the jet stream – the high-speed current of air that girdles the globe – which has been ‘stuck’ further south than usual.

Professor Collins told The Mail on Sunday: ‘There is no evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is outside our knowledge.’

His statement carries particular significance because he is an internationally acknowledged expert on climate computer models and forecasts, and his university post is jointly funded by the Met Office.

Prof Collins is also a senior adviser – a ‘co-ordinating lead author’ – for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His statement appears to contradict Met Office chief scientist Dame Julia Slingo.

Last weekend, she said ‘all  the evidence suggests that climate change has a role to  play’ in the storms.

Dans, dans og regnen falder ned

Pia Olsen Dyhr kom med den overraskende meldning at “SF skal gå efter regeringsmagten” til TV2 få dage efter at SF blev knust under det, som nogen engang har kaldt “magtens tunge åg”. Men også Ole Sohn har det svært med hukommelsen (eller er det realiteterne?) når han til Jyllands-Posten, som forklaring på hans nye medlemsskab hos Socialdemokratiet, påstår at han har ændret sig

“Vi lever i en anden verden, end vi gjorde i 70′erne, en globaliseret verden,” siger den tidligere SF’er med tydelig henvisning til sin tid i DKP, Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti, før han blev folkesocialist. Sohn uddyber:

“Derfor er det jo klart, at man ikke kan bruge de svar, som man gav i 70′erne på de udfordringer, som vi står overfor i 10′erne. Alene dét gør, at der skal findes nye svar. Så det er både Verden, der forandrer sig - og mennesker.”

Det vil sige at Sohn ikke fortryder sin kommunistiske fortid. Kommunismen passede faktisk på 70′ernes problemer. Der var et behov for at Danmark blev til en sovjetisk lydstat. Vi valgte så desværre en inferiør vej. Så nu er løsningen “et 10-årigt skattestop med tilhørende løntilbageholdenhed foruden en overførelse af sparede midler fra den offentlige sektor til skatte- og afgiftslettelser for virksomhederne“. Dette kunne vi have undgået, hvis blot vi i 70′erne eller senest 80′erne havde kørt dissidenter væk på ladvogne en gang for alle. Ak, ja.

Politiken mindede læserne om at vores nye udenrigsminister Martin Lidegaard i   samskriv med den nu tidligere udviklingsminister Christian Friis Bach i en kronik i Politiken for ti år siden foreslog at man nedlagde Udenrigministeriet

I stedet bør Danmark satse på en fælles europæisk udenrigspolitik, lød det opsigtsvækkende budskab.

LÆS KRONIKKENFarvel til dansk udenrigspolitik

»Vi glemmer at tage det næste og logiske skridt. Nemlig at nedlægge det danske udenrigsministerium, som vi har kendt det. Hvis Danmark, som et lille land, for alvor skal tage konsekvensen af den globale virkelighed, kræver det et radikalt opgør med den udenrigs- og forsvarspolitik, som vi har kendt«, skrev de to radikale politikere.

»Vi i Danmark - og i de andre EU-lande - må sige farvel til den nationale udenrigspolitik, som vi har kendt den. Fastholder alle EU-lande deres egen udenrigspolitik, fortsætter den europæiske udenrigspolitik med at være en kulisse uden indhold, der aldrig vil kunne skabe en blød europæisk balance til verdens hårdeste supermagt, USA«, lød det videre.

Vi er for små til at hævde vores egen stemme i den store verden, mente Lidegaard og hans radikale kammersjuk altså således, dengang i de ideologisk frigjorte oppositionsdage. Ja, det er ganske ironisk og tak til Politiken for dette mind om vores politkeres opportunistiske idealer. Men ironien er nu alligevel lidt forsinket. Bach plejede allerede som udviklingsminister ideen om at skønt Danmark var for lille til at være Danmark var Danmark alligevel rigelig stor nok til at redde den 3. Verden. Og ligeledes Lidegaard der som klimaminister hævdede at det globale klima kunne reddes af Danmarks mægtighed. Og det mener de to radikalere vel stadig? Og radikale, det er de; nationalt selvhad hånd i hånd med storhedsvanvid.

Ikke helt fra ugen der gik, men et guldkorn fra Thor Möger. I dag mandag udkommer bogen ‘Den Hemmelige Socialdemokrat’ hvor man kan læse artige ting, bl.a at Sass Larsen sammen med Thor Möger kaldte Helle Thorning Schmidt Barbie-Helle bag hendes ryg. Og det er spændende læsning i sig selv. Men mere beskrivende for vort land og vor tid og de, der regulerer vores adfærd gennem statsapparatet…

En historie, der ligger i fortiden, men som stadig peger forud, er den om SFs Thor Möger, der i sin som kampagnekoordinator bliver opsøgt af en gruppe studerende, der vil høre om partiets inklusion af græsrødder. Han svarer, at folk skal have oplevelsen af at blive taget med på råd. Hvortil han tilføjer:

»Men gu’ gør de da røv. Vi styrer det hele og får det til at se ud, som om folk har noget at sige.«

Hvilket nemlig giver en fin overgang til EU. Her har man fået kvababbelse over at den menige Schweiziske befolkning frækt har stemt sig til et håb om at få indvandringen under national kontrol. Fra Snaphanen

I interviewet med Tages-Anzeiger har Andreas Schwab også andre interessante ting at sige, som samlet set tegner et tydeligt billede af, hvilke metoder man vil tage i brug mod national-stater, der modsætter sig deres egen aflivnning.

Interviewer: Men Schweizerne står da ikke alene. Også indenfor EU er der forlængst blevet sat spørgsmålstegn ved den frie bevægelighed.

Andreas Schwab: Det er ikke en Europæisk debat, det er kun i enkelte medlems-lande. Der er dog også hos os politikere og partier, som kun vil have fordelene ved EU, uden at ville acceptere de ting som nogen-gange er lidt vanskelige…

Interviewer: Men, helt ærligt, hvis der var en lignende afsteming i EU-landene ville den få samme resultat.

Andreas Schwab: Naturligvis findes fristelserne alle vegne. Men politik begynder nu engang med at se virkeligheden i øjnene. Der er gode grunde til at disse spørgsmål ikke stilles til borgerne i andre lande. Resultaterne er kun et øjebliksbillede. Når Schweizerne indser at EU ikke vil forhandle, ændrer de holdning…

Det er sikkert de samme gode grunde til at medierne ikke reagerer på udtalelser som disse. God arbejdsuge!

Greenpeace’s juleklimaeventyr

Men, men, men, før man nu falder i dilemmaet om man selv skal aflyse forbrugerfesten julen af frygt for at julemanden gør det eller køre hårdt på en sidste gang og lade Santa møde Mandiba, så ser naturen ud til at give lidt respit skriver Paul Homewood

Teorien om CO2 drevne klimaforandringer er teorien om alting viser det sig.

Calamity Calling: How climate change is helping Al Qaeda from GlobalPost on Vimeo.

Spiked Online skriver om dommedagsprofeterne, der falder over hinanden i håbet om at næste uvejr vil indvarsle Jordens undergang.

Let’s hear it for science! The UK Met Office was issuing warnings days ago about a storm that would sweep across the Atlantic and hit the UK on Sunday and Monday. Before the storm even existed. But if the storm was a great piece of forecasting, you didn’t need a supercomputer to predict the reaction to the storm’s approach.

From the first inkling that the country was going to be hit by unusually strong winds and heavy rain, the nation’s panicmongers went into overdrive. There were days of repeated warnings about just how bad it was going to be - with lots of allusions to the ‘Great Storm’ of 1987 (itself only a ‘great storm’ in a country that doesn’t really do big storms). This week’s storm was christened ‘St Jude’ (the patron saint of lost causes) by a Weather Channel forecaster, and the name quickly became common currency. The UK prime minister, David Cameron, made great play of holding an ‘emergency meeting’ to make sure the country was ready. Train operators decided to institute blanket cancellations of services across the south of England. At every stage, we were told to ‘be prepared’.

The result, however, was by and large a damp squib.

Tyfonen ”Haiyan” var dog meget mere end a damp squib. Og dommedagsprofeterne kom da også ud i stort tal for at smede mens ligene endu var varme. Jyllands-Posten skrev f.eks under overskriften “En forsmag på fremtiden“

Tyfonen ”Haiyan”, der har dræbt over 10.000 mennesker, fordrevet andre 478.000 fra deres hjem og berørt i alt 4,5 mio., kan være en forsmag på, hvad der er i vente i et varmere klima. Tyfonen er formentlig den kraftigste, der nogensinde er registreret, og ifølge klimaforskere tyder meget på, at det hænger sammen med den globale opvarmning.

»Der er ingen tvivl om, at dette er en konsekvens af, at det bliver varmere på kloden,« lyder det fra klimaforsker Sebastian Mernild fra Center for Scientific Studies i Valdivia i Chile.

Filipinernes klimakommisær, ja, der er sådan en alle vegne, erklærede at han vil sultestrejke “indtil et meningsfuldt mål er i sigte“, men kun så længe han var i Polen, hvor der lige nu er klimakonference.

“For alle jer der stadig benægter, at klimaforandringer er virkelighed; Jeg udfordrer jer til at komme ned fra jeres gyldne tårn og væk fra lænestolens komfort,” lød det.“

God tur hjem og velbekomme. Noget mere nuanceret kunne man læse på Climate Central, der i overskriften “A hint of what’s to come?” trods alt satte et spørgsmålstegn ved hvad fremtiden byder.

…there is more consensus about the stormier future than there is about the present. The researchers also urged caution in attributing Haiyan’s strength to global warming, given the lack of evidence that manmade global warming has had any detectable influence on Western Pacific typhoons, let alone tropical cyclones in general (an umbrella term that includes typhoons and hurricanes).

Brian McNoldy, a a senior research associate at the University of Miami, told Climate Central that, “While Haiyan was absolutely amazing, it’s not alone. It’s in an elite company of a handful of other tropical cyclones scattered across the decades and across the world.”

McNoldy downplayed global warming’s role in helping to fuel Super Typhoon Haiyan, saying, “We don’t get to pick and choose which storms are enhanced by a warmer climate and which ones aren’t, so this was just as subject to this year’s climate as the numerous others that weren’t so impressive. Extremely intense tropical cyclones are rare, but have always been a part of nature — we don’t need to find an excuse for them.”

Gabe Vecchi, a research oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said that if global warming altered Haiyan, it did not do so to a significant extent. “I expect that the contribution of global warming to Haiyan’s extreme intensity is likely to have been small, relative to other factors like weather fluctuations and climate variability.”

Climate research has not yet provided a clear picture of how global warming is altering tropical cyclones around the world.

(…)

The most recent IPCC report said: “Globally, there is low confidence in attribution of changes in tropical cyclone activity to human influence.” The IPCC found that insufficient observational evidence, a lack of understanding regarding the physical connection between manmade climate change and tropical storms, and considerable disagreement between studies justified downplaying any detectable changes in tropical cyclones due to global warming.

Og grunden til at “ there is more consensus about the stormier future than there is about the present” er fordi der er et konsensus om at forlade sig på computermodeller. Virkelighedens observationer viser nemlig ikke at have synderlig sammenhæng mellem tyfoner og stigende gennemsnitstemperatur, som Bjørn Lomborg skrev på Facebook

Yet, even *after* Haiyan, the Accumulated Cyclone Energy of all cyclones in the Western North Pacific is below normal (99%, http://models.weatherbell.com/tropical.php). The global ACE is at 74%.

As you can see in the graph below, both Northern Hemisphere ACE and global ACE are at the lowest since the 1970s.

Yes, there are ferocious cyclones in the world, as they always have been. But first, you can’t argue that global warming is making them worse, when the indicators are *lower*.

Second, claiming that CO? cuts is the way to tackle cyclone damages is simply immoral. Even if we cut emissions dramatically, it will have only little impact in 50-100 years. If you want to help places like Tacloban and the Philippines, it is all about adaptation.

Og klima og vejr er to forskellige størrelser, som vi ofte bliver belært om. Den tyske meterolog fortæller ifølge No Tricks Zone

What’s climate change got to do with it?

As always: immediately after an event is observed on the planet that supposedly ’had never happened before’, a discussion about the cause breaks out. And once again the discussion turns to the term: ‘climate change’.

‘Haiyan was one of the most powerful typhoons ever observed’ – at first that sounds very suspenseful, but an important small piece of information gets left out, namely: ‘Since weather records started being kept’.  And when it comes to tropical storms, regular weather records have been kept only for a few decades! When we speak of the strongest storm of ‘all time’, this ‘all-time’ is not even 100 years long.

The earth is really already more than 100 years old, and we don’t know at all what natural catastrophes occurred 500 or 1000 years ago - and we also don’t know which tropical storms took place.

For many ‘climate expert’ this recent event is a feeding frenzy that allows them to pound the drums of ‘evil climate change’. And here not a single one of these ladies and gentlemen are able to show that such storms never existed over the past hundreds of years, let alone that this storm is connected to a man-made climate change.

What came out of the mouths of climate experts after the last cold winters had gripped Central Europe?:

‘A few colder-than-normal winters are in no way any indication of a trend change when it comes to climate change.’ Well, using that logic, how is a single large typhoon then supposed to confirm climate change? A truly fascinating thought process!

De mange dødsfald er desværre heller ingen nyhed og de skyldes som så ofte før at de berørte samfund ikke har haft ressourcerne til at beskytte sig imod naturens luner fortæller Washington Post

If this death toll estimate holds up, however, it wouldn’t even put Haiyan in the top 35 deadliest tropical cyclones on record.

The story behind the destructiveness of Haiyan rings true of most powerful cyclones that occur in this region of the world: 33 of the 35 deadliest tropical cyclones on record have occurred in southern or southeastern Asia – due to a confluence of meteorology, geography, population density, poverty and government.

In the case of Super Typhoon Haiyan, Tacloban city and its 220,000 inhabitants are located at the tip of a funnel-shaped bay in the Leyte Gulf. The center of Haiyan’s eye brushed just a few miles south of Tacloban, putting the city right in the strongest part of the storm’s right-front quadrant. This unfortunate location along Haiyan’s track led to Tacloban receiving the brunt of the storm’s Category 5-equivalent winds, destroying “up to 80%” of the city’s buildings.

Så den filipinske klimakommisær burde måske hellere bruge sine ressourcer på at bygge sit land op så det bliver i stand til at tåle sin egen natur, frem for at sultestrejke.

Man kan ikke ligefrem kalde et nyt konsensus eller et paradigmeskift indenfor klimaforskning, men de stemmer, der taler for Solens afgørende indflydelse på temperaturen er blevet stærkere og flere. Og de giver ikke meget for den menneskeskabte globale opvarmning. Medierne taler stadig om at al isen kan smelte med en havspejlsstigning på imponerende 66 meter til følge og at klodens opvarmning vil gøre ubehagelige dyr som slanger store som busser, mens gode dyr som heste små som katte. Men tag roligt jeres hest på skødet, ingen kæmpeslange vil trække jer under dybet lidt nord for Næstved. Den globale opvarmning udvikler sig så langt fra de skrækhistorier, der sælger så mange aviser og vindmøller. Daily Mail skriver f.eks. at de 17 år, der er gået uden at den globale temperatur er steget kan meget vel vare indtil 2030′erne

A paper in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics – by Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr Marcia Wyatt – amounts to a stunning challenge to climate science orthodoxy.

Not only does it explain the unexpected pause, it suggests that the scientific majority – whose views are represented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – have underestimated the role of natural cycles and exaggerated that of greenhouse gases.

(…)

The pause means there has been no statistically significant increase in world average surface temperatures since the beginning of 1997, despite the models’ projection of a steeply rising trend.

According to Dr Hawkins, the divergence is now so great that the world’s climate is cooler than what the models collectively predicted with ‘five to 95 per cent certainty’.

Curry and Wyatt say they have identified a climatic ‘stadium wave’ – the phenomenon known in Britain as a Mexican wave,  in which the crowd at a stadium stand and sit so that a wave seems to circle the audience.

(…)

In similar fashion, a number of cycles in the temperature of air and oceans, and the level of Arctic ice, take place across the Northern hemisphere over decades. Curry and Wyatt say there is evidence of this going back at least 300 years.

According to Curry and Wyatt, the theory may explain both the warming pause and why the computer models did not forecast it.

It also means that a large proportion of the warming that did occur in the years before the pause was due not to greenhouse gas emissions, but to the same cyclical wave.

‘The stadium wave signal predicts that the current pause in global warming could extend into the 2030s,’ said Wyatt. This is in sharp contrast with the IPCC’s report, which predicts warming of between 0.3 and 0.7C by 2035.

Og BBC’s Paul Hudson interviewede Professor Mike Lockwood om en kommende Lille Istid (nok snarere Daltons minimum end Maunders)

Following analysis of the data, Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years.

He found 24 different occasions in the last 10,000 years when the sun was in exactly the same state as it is now - and the present decline is faster than any of those 24.

Based on his findings he’s raised the risk of a new Maunder minimum from less than 10% just a few years ago to 25-30%.

And a repeat of the Dalton solar minimum which occurred in the early 1800s, which also had its fair share of cold winters and poor summers, is, according to him, ‘more likely than not’ to happen.

He believes that we are already beginning to see a change in our climate - witness the colder winters and poor summers of recent years - and that over the next few decades there could be a slide to a new Maunder minimum.

It’s worth stressing that not every winter would be severe; nor would every summer be poor. But harsh winters and unsettled summers would become more frequent.

Professor Lockwood doesn’t hold back in his description of the potential impacts such a scenario would have in the UK.

He says such a change to our climate could have profound implications for energy policy and our transport infrastructure.

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.

Og i Cern fortsætter Jasper Kirkby med sit CLOUD projekt, der empirisk skal eftervise danske Svensmarks teori om kosmisk strålings effekt på skydækket

Så hav vintertøjet parat, vinteren kommer, som de siger igen og igen og igen i Game of Thrones.

I forrige uge henviste jeg til Nir Shavivs simple og informative graf over hvorlangt klimavidenskaben er kommet siden 1979 med at sige noget meningsfuldt om CO2’s indflydelse på atmosfærens temperatur. Grafen viser de forskellige FN rapporters usikkerhed ved en fordobling af CO2 i atmosfæren, fra mellem 1,5 til 4,5C.

Som man kan se er der efter mere end 30 år ikke kommet mere klarhed end den indledende rapport fra Charney rapporten. Denne mangel på forståelse forhindrer dog ingenlunde klimapanelet i at blive mere og mere overbevist om sin dommedagsforudsigelser, som Roy Spencer illustrerede med denne graf

Spagetti-kurverne er de mange klimamodeller, som FN’s klimapanel dels bruger som projektion for mulige fremtidsscenarier, dels som bevis for deres teori, da de bekræfter deres antagelser. Ja, man tror det er løgn, men cirkelslutninger går aldrig af mode. Som man vil bemærke er de alle for opadgående og afspejler altså alle den samme antagelse. I og med at virkeligheden ikke afspejler den opadgående tendens er det den nærliggende slutning at det er deres fælles antagelse, der er forkert, hvilket altså er teorien om CO2’s dramatiske indvirkning på temperaturen.

Den fede sorte kurve er gennemsnittet af de mange kurver, en afsindig kurve. Det er det, som James Delingpole kalder Dog S**t Yoghurt Fallacy, nemlig at hvis man har noget som er rent så blander man det ikke med lort. Det rene bliver ikke bare mindre rent, det bliver rent faktisk at sammenligne med lort. Hvis der er en af de mange grafer, som kan afspejle virkeligheden bliver et gennemsnit, hvor alle andre, der jo er forkerte qua de er anderledes end den rigtige, regnes med forkert.

De runde og trekantede felter afspejler henholdsvis ballonmålinger (måleinstrumenter, der er sendt op gennem atmosfæren med ballon) og satellit målinger.

Og slutteligt markerer de skrevne felter klimarapporternes udgivelse og den tiltro de har haft til deres teori. Og som man kan se er tiltroen til at temperaturen går op blevet stærkere jo længere tid der er gået, hvor temperaturen ikke er gået op.

Den ellers klimatro Berkeley forsker udi klimarelaterede emner Jane Long indrømmer også problemerne med FN’s klimamodellers evne til at forudsige klimaet ifølge Media Research Center

“We’ve gotten worse … We don’t know, any more, with any more precision. We know with less precision how much warming will occur for a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. That means we can say we want to reduce by 20 percent or 80 percent and therefore, we’ll keep it under two degrees. We don’t know that.”

She still advocated reducing carbon emissions and claimed it would help. Host Josh Zepps summed up her point saying, “the predictions are getting worse rather than better.” Long referred to the declining accuracy of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts. The left uses these models to aggressively attack opponents whom they insultingly label “climate deniers.”

Judith Curry spørger hvilke implikationer klimamodellernes diskrepans med virkeligheden skaber?

Panel b) indicates that the IPCC views the implications to be that some climate models have a CO2 sensitivity too high — they lower the black vertical bar (indicating the likely range from climate models) to account for this.  And they add the ad hoc red stippled range, which has a slightly lower slope and lowered range  that is consistent with the magnitude of the current model/obs discrepancy.  The implication seems that the expected warming over the last decade is lost, but future warming will continue at the expected (albeit slightly lower) pace.

The existence of disagreement between climate model predictions and observations doesn’t provide any insight in itself to why the disagreement exists, i.e. which aspect(s) of the model are inadequate, owing to the epistemic opacity of knowledge codified in complex models.

Hun citerer Matt Briggs der minder om at en teori der kun taler om muligheder (probabilistic) aldrig kan falsificeres, men at modellerne vil miste deres relevans som årtierne slægter på uden opvarmning. Og hvad skal så fodre vores angst

‘Det religiøse højre’ i USA, er en fast forklaringsmodel for hvorfor amerikanerne ikke kan komme til fornuft og indrette deres samfund efter europæisk forbillede. ‘Det religiøse højre’ udgør ofte en moralsk forkastelig vælgerbase for de mest upopulære republikanske præsidenter og den står i naturligt ledtod med ‘den jødiske/israelske lobby’, der gør mod Mellemøsten og verdensfreden, hvad ‘det religiøse højre’ gør mod USA. Men populære abstraktioner er intet at regne for den rene levendegørelse og tele-evangelister er selve billedet på amerikansk åndelig afstumpethed (selv om det er svært at stå for Jimmie Swaggert).

Men der religiøse er ikke isoleret til højre i USA. Det er lige så rigt repræsenteret til venstre og i Europa dominerer det religiøse netop til venstre. Men det religiøse venstre er en uerkendt religiøsitet thi de tror sig vaccineret i dyrkelse af gudløsheden. For det religiøse handler ikke om hvilken tro på det der ligger ud over det menneskeligt erkendtlige, men om man sorterer og manipulerer virkeligheden efter hvor godt den passer ind i den fortælling man antager som faktuel såvel som moralsk sandhed. Med Reagans ord handler det om man er bange for at se det man ser. Konklusionerne kan vi altid siden skændes om.

I forrige uge henviste jeg til Ezra Lavant, der gjorde sig kostelig på en af venstrefløjens store miljø-evangelister, canadiske David Suzuki og hans manglende viden om klimaet, som det blev eksponeret i et australsk debatprogram. Lavant forsøger i dette opfølgende show at gå en undvigende Suzuki på klingen, som han også opruller det ernorme økonomiske og moralske hykleri, der følger af den ukritiske tilbedelse af et selvbekræftende evangelium

Grafen herunder, der er udarbejdet af den israelske astrofysiker Nir Shaviv og som han kalder den kedeligste nogensinde, viser udviklingen i FN’s klimapanels vurdering af klimaet’s følsomhed eller sensitivitet om man vil. Klimaet’s følsomhed er, som udtrykket sig, hvor stærkt det reagerer på en påvirkning. Har klimaet således en høj følsomhed, som klimapanelet antager, vil en lille ændring i f.eks. atmosfærens indhold af CO2 have stor betydning. Omvendt, har klimaet en lille følsomhed kan man sagtens udlede store mængder CO2 uden at det gør en synderlig forskel.

Som man kan se på grafen, der går tilbage til før klimapanelet, til Charney rapporten’s glade dage i 1979, er der, bortset fra klimapanelets rapport fra 2007 (AR4) ikke sket en ændring af klimaforskningens konsensus om en gennemsnitlig temperaturstigning på mellem 1,5 og 4,5 grader, for hver gang CO2 indholdet i atmosfæren fordobles. Med alle de mia. af dollars man har hældt i klimaforskningen netop for at finde ud af klimaets følsomhed er man altså ikke nået et skridt videre efter mere end 30 års forskning.

One of the statements which wonderfully exemplifies the absurdity of the new report is this paragraph discussing the climate sensitivity in the summary for policy makers. They write:

“The equilibrium climate sensitivity quantifies the response of the climate system to constant radiative forcing on multi-century time scales. It is defined as the change in global mean surface temperature at equilibrium that is caused by a doubling of the atmospheric CO₂ concentration. Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C (high confidence), extremely unlikely less than 1°C (high confidence), and very unlikely greater than 6°C (medium confidence) 16. The lower temperature limit of the assessed likely range is thus less than the 2°C in the AR4, but the upper limit is the same. This assessment reflects improved understanding, the extended temperature record in the atmosphere and ocean, and new estimates of radiative forcing.”

Now, have you noticed something strange? According to the AR4 report, the “likely equilibrium range of sensitivity” was 2.0 to 4.5°C per CO₂ doubling. According to the newer AR5 report, it is 1.5 to 4.5°C, i.e., the likely equilibrium sensitivity is now known less accurately. But they write:  “This assessment reflects improved understanding”. How ridiculous can you be?

Shaviv leverer det indlysende svar for alle jer, der holder af Popper og Kuhn eller blot logik. Hvis en teori i udgangspunktet er forkert, vil flere data, mere empiri, ikke føre til en præcisering fordi teori og virkelighed ikke stemmer overens - tværtimod. Er teorien derimod rigtig, vil mere indsamling af data, mere ophobning af empiri, føre til en præcisering, da teorien vil afspejle virkeligheden.

Det er næsten ubærligt så meget vrøvl, der bliver væltet ud med FNs Klimapanels længe og med spænding ventede ca. 7 årlige rapport blev offentliggjort i Stockholm, hvor de sidste formuleringer også var forhandlet på plads. Ja, forhandlet, men mere om det senere. Connie Hedegaard kom med den slidteste af slidte klicheer ifølge Danmarks Radio

- Den dag hvor alle forskere er 100 procent enige om at advare mod klimaforandringer, så er det for sent. Hvis din læge er 95 procent sikker på, at du har en alvorlig sygdom, vil du med det samme lede efter en kur.

- Hvorfor tage større risici, når det er vores planets helbred, der er på spil, spørger Connie Hedegaard.

Det er ubærligt at en jernbanekonstruktør fylder en klimakommisær med så mange dumheder at hun til sidst tror at planeten har et helbred. Men las os se på patientens tal

Patienten er så rask, som patienten altid har været, så hvorfor er lægerne så 95% enige om det modsatte? , hvad skal de have solgt (det er et retorisk spørgsmål). Judith Curry spekulerer også i de 95% sikkerhed, men hun havde den glæde at der faktisk var en journalist, der også undrede sig og spurgte hende

Yesterday, a reporter asked me how the IPCC came up with the 95% number.  Here is the exchange that I had with him:

Reporter: I’m hoping you can answer a question about the upcoming IPCC report. When the report states that scientists are “95 percent certain” that human activities are largely to cause for global warming, what does that mean? How is 95 percent calculated? What is the basis for it? And if the certainty rate has risen from 90 n 2007 to 95 percent now, does that mean that the likelihood of something is greater? Or that scientists are just more certain? And is there a difference?

.

JC: The 95% is basically expert judgment, it is a negotiated figure among the authors.  The increase from 90-95% means that they are more certain.  How they can justify this is beyond me.

.

Reporter: You mean they sit around and say, “How certain are you?” ”Oh, I feel about 95 percent certain. Michael over there at Penn State feels a little more certain. And Judy at Georgia Tech feels a little less. So, yeah, overall I’d say we’re about 95 percent certain.”  Please tell me it’s more rigorous than that.

.

JC: Well I wasn’t in the room, but last report they said 90%, and perhaps they felt it was appropriate or politic that they show progress and up it to 95%.

.

Reporter: So it really is as subjective as that?

.

JC: As far as I know, this is what goes on.  All this has never been documented.

.

JC conclusion: Well, I have no idea what goes on in the sausage factory.  95% – take it with a grain of salt (or a stiff whiskey).  That’s their story, and they’re sticking to it.  Uncertain T. Monster is not happy.

Donna Laframboise ved desværre godt hvad der foregår på pølsefabrikken kan man læse på No Frakking Concensus.

At the meeting, one sentence after another has been projected onto large screens. Diplomats, bureaucrats, and politicians from dozens of UN nations have haggled, horse traded, and negotiated. Eventually, phrasing that everyone can live with has been agreed upon. Then they’ve moved on to the next sentence.

The meeting is closed to the public. It is closed to the media. No minutes are kept.

(…)

In 2010, IPCC insiders answered a questionnaire sponsored by the InterAcademy Council (a collection of the world’s science academies). Their anonymized answers paint an unflattering picture of these meetings.

First, here are some general impressions. The remarks appearing below are all direct quotes:

I suspect that…anyone who has not been involved in this process would scarcely believe how this meeting is managed; the expense, the length of the sessions, and the apparent pickiness of some of the discussion would strike many as a very poor way to conduct international business. (p. 114)

this was an agonizing, frustrating process, as every sentence had to be wordsmithed on a screen in front of representatives of more than 100 governments, falling farther and farther beyond a realistic schedule by the hour. In Brussels in 2007, the process ran all night on the two final days. (p. 334)

…I have observed the behaviour of the delegations from individual countries which certainly reflects a completely different mindset than my own as a scientist. The political intrigues which appear to be well known on the international scene are popping up again and again… (p. 43, a few typos edited out)

In my experience the summary for policy makers tends to be more of a political process than one of scientific précis. (p. 278)

This is a pure political process… (p. 373)

De er 95% enige fordi de har forhandlet sig frem til at det vil de gerne være fordi det lyder federe end kun de oprindelige 90%, der tyede på en svag usikkerhed og knap så selvsmagende som 100% der lyder som skråsikkerhed. Der er altid fare på færde når din læge forlanger alle dine penge for at kurere dig for en sygdom ingen kan se eller mærke.

FN udkommer snart med sin 5. rapport (AR5) om verdens klima. Klimapanelets rapporter definerer klimavidenskabens konsensus og er blevet kaldt ‘guldstandarden’ indenfor klimavidenskaben. Følgeligt er definitionsretten også diktionsmagten, da ingen sand videnskabsmand kan gå op imod en guldstandard af et flertal af kollegaers opfattelse. Klimapanelets troværdighed bygger altså på denne cirkelslutning, hvor retten er hvad de mange siger og man har ret fordi man er mange. Et flertal kan ikke tage fejl thi da er konsensus ikke autoritet. Og man kan derfor ikke ændre sin oprindelige position skulle virkeligheden begynde at løbe fra den uden da at indrømme at et flertal kan tage fejl og således at opgive konsensus’ autoritet. Alt man kan er at skærpe, præcisere, perspektivere og detaljere på den oprindelige tese. Judith Curry skriver om det

The IPCC was seriously tarnished by the unauthorized release of emails from the University of East Anglia in November 2009, known as Climategate.  These emails revealed the ‘sausage making’ involved in the IPCC’s consensus building process, including denial of data access to individuals who wanted to audit their data processing and scientific results, interference in the peer review process to minimize the influence of skeptical criticisms, and manipulation of the media.  Climategate was quickly followed by the identification of an egregious error involving the melting of Himalayan glaciers.  These revelations were made much worse by the actual response of the IPCC to these issues. Then came the concerns about the behavior of the IPCC’s Director, Rachendra Pachauri, and investigations of the infiltration of green advocacy groups into the IPCC. All of this was occurring against a background of explicit advocacy and activism by IPCC leaders related to CO2 mitigation policies.

The IPCC does not seem to understand the cumulative impact of these events on the loss of trust in climate scientists and the IPCC process itself. The IPCC’s consensus building process relies heavily on expert judgment; if the public and the policy makers no longer trust these particular experts, then we can expect a very different dynamic to be in play with regards to the reception of the AR5 relative to the AR4.

But there is another more vexing dilemma facing the IPCC.  Since publication of the AR4, nature has thrown the IPCC a ‘curveball’ — there has been no significant increase in global average surface temperature for the past 15+ years.

Based upon early drafts of the AR5, the IPCC seemed prepared to dismiss the pause in warming as irrelevant ‘noise’ associated with natural variability. Under pressure, the IPCC now acknowledges the pause and admits that climate models failed to predict it. The IPCC has failed to convincingly explain the pause in terms of external radiative forcing from greenhouse gases, aerosols, solar or volcanic forcing; this leaves natural internal variability as the predominant candidate to explain the pause.  If the IPCC attributes to the pause to natural internal variability, then this begs the question as to what extent the warming between 1975 and 2000 can also be explained by natural internal variability.  Not to mention raising questions about the confidence that we should place in the IPCC’s projections of future climate change.

Nevertheless, the IPCC appears to be set to conclude that warming in the near future will resume in accord with climate model predictions.

Virkeligheden er ved at løbe fra klimapanelet og tilliden til dets autoritet falder. The Telegraph fortæller om absurde diskussioner om damage control

Several governments who fund the body have since complained about how the issue is tackled in the report.

Germany called for the reference to the slowdown to be deleted, saying a time span of 10-15 years was misleading in the context of climate change, which is measured over decades and centuries.

The US also urged the authors to include the “leading hypothesis” that the reduction in warming is linked to more heat being transferred to the deep ocean.

Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for any statistics. That year was exceptionally warm, so any graph showing global temperatures starting with 1998 looks flat, because most years since have been cooler.

While Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for sceptics.

Til det siger Dr Lubos Motl tørt

Quite generally, one could say that the American delegation prefers to publish the facts and supplement it with a (bogus) explanation while the European climate alarmists prefer downright censorship. This opinion is also supported by the comment in The Boston Globe that the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists And Anthony Watts’ Dogs is worried that people will be saying “look, the IPCC is silent about the lull” which would be even worse than for “the cause” than a confession that there’s been no warming for nearly two decades.

There just isn’t any competitive hypothesis about the lack of warming that would be compatible with the meme about a dangerously high (and all natural factors beating) warming trend caused by the anthropogenic man-made emissions. Everyone knows that no such explanation that one wouldn’t be ashamed of exists in the scientific literature which is why no one will recommend you any paper of this type. There just isn’t one. The leading interpretation of the absence of the warming is that the global warming hypothesis with the numbers that were dominant among the “concerned institutions” in the recent decade has been falsified by the observations. Too bad that politicians are trying to play painful and childish games to misinterpret the results of the scientific research, research that they claim to be listening to but research that they actually want to control so that it suits their political needs.

Som klimapanelets formand Rajendra Pachauri sagde ganske åbent i et interview med Times of India “Let’s face it, we are an intergovernmental body and our strength and acceptability of what we produce is largely because we are owned by governments.“