A doubly whammy this week as Gaia author Lovelock rails against windfarms and environmentalists, and climate sensitivity has been scaled back. From Dr. Benny Peiser at The GWPF:
Global warming is likely to be less extreme than claimed, researchers said yesterday. The most likely temperature rise will be 1.9C (3.4F) compared with the 3.5C predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Norwegian study says earlier predictions were based on rapid warming in the Nineties. But Oslo University’s department of geosciences included data since 2000 when temperature rises “levelled off nearly completely”. –John Ingham, Daily Express, 26 January 2013
The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the Nineties. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity. We are most likely witnessing natural fluctuations in the climate system – changes that can occur over several decades – and which are coming on top of a long-term warming. —-Professor Terje Berntsen, University of Oslo, 24 January 2013
These results are truly sensational. If confirmed by other studies, this could have far-reaching impacts on efforts to achieve the political targets for climate. –Caroline Leck, Stockholm University, 25 January 2013
This research confirms what we have been saying all along. The global warming standstill of the last 16 years is having a dramatic effect on climate models and predictions. The Met Office should now reassess its own, flawed computer models and tone down the alarmist pronouncements which are no longer trustworthy. –The Global Warming Policy Foundation, Daily Express, 26 January 2013
Even the previous IPCC imminent doom scenario completely failed to produce any serious action. With the recent gradual scientific acceptance – even among scientists who have spent their whole lives studying the subject – that global warming is simply much less significant than had been thought, the chance of anyone caring enough to take action is now even lower. — Lewis Page, The Register, 25 January 2013
I am James Lovelock, scientist and author, known as the originator of Gaia theory, a view of the Earth that sees it as a self-regulating entity that keeps the surface environment always fit for life… I am an environmentalist and founder member of the Greens but I bow my head in shame at the thought that our original good intentions should have been so misunderstood and misapplied. We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs. We need take care that the spinning windmills do not become like the statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilisation. – Bishop Hill, James Lovelock, 12 December 2012 (in a letter noted by Phillip Bratby)
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Related articles
- Team of Ex-NASA Scientists Concludes No Imminent Threat from Man-Made CO2 (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Yet another study shows lower climate sensitivity (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Environmental backpedalling picks up pace (dailymaverick.co.za)
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“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.”
– Barack Obama
Stonyground says:
Is climate change alarmism slowly coming unravelled at last? I always thought that it would in the end, but I was having doubts about whether I would live long enough to see it.
The windmills around our way spend an awful lot of their time not spinning.
The Great Walk-back is beginning.
Climate chenge is not a problem, it is natural and will continue after man has gone from the planet.
Good news! Even though we said two years ago that we needed to act within a year or all is lost, new research indicates we still have time. But we must act THIS YEAR or all is lost!!!
What can one say?
In Hebrew there is a saying: Where repenters stand, even the righteous will not.
James Lovelock’s letter is a testament to the childish naivety of the environmental movement. He, as a result of a boyhood cycle ride ride through what he saw as an idyllic countryside, built an entire theory of life on Earth. He entirely missed the awful life and working conditions of the average farm labourer in the 1930’s, the low level food production resultant on this ‘idyll’. He may moan about ‘agri-businesses’ despoiling the countryside but ignores the immeasurable benefit they have brought world-wide by the production of cheap food through the Green Revolution of the 1960’s. Now, years later, he looks down from his ivory tower and realises that he might have done things differently. What arrogance. He, as so many in the field, believed that he, and he alone, knew what was best for everyone else. This is still the overarching attitude of environmentalists every where, that they know best, and the rest of us had better keep in line. They are Statists to a man/woman better suited to life in the USSR of the 1950’s.
I’m reminded of Monckton’s Christmas post. When “a rat” has abondoned ship because they’ve opened their eyes, let them in in lifeboat.
Are they willing to admit all this warming isn’t caused by CO2 yet? There’s been 16 years with no meaningful warming while CO2 has been going up unchecked.
Once they realize CO2 is a 3rd-order forcing, there’s no reason to justify even a 3.4F increase in temperature–at least due to CO2.
No wonder Gore is preparing his financial life boat. SS CAGW the ship he is captain of has hit the iceberg of reality. While Mann and Hansen are still in the engine room stoking the boilers.
Hmmmm, haven’t seen anything about this in the norwegian media.
Now, why am I not surprised…..
When it comes to climate modeling, the long trends seem to always be more of the most recent 20 year trend and linear extrapolation out 100 years even though the recent history (150 years) is a 30 year ramp, followed by a 30 year plateau with a decline just before the next ramp up. Will we panic about the next ice age when the AMO goes cold in 15 years?
There is too much invested in this subject: too much money, power over money, and power over people. To many of the movers and shakers that have their fingers in the pie will ride alarmism into the ground and call for and achieve the public shaming and destruction of anything or anyone in their power who gainsays the great AGW lie. Oh, and you will continue to get to pay for it. Enjoy.
I’d just like to share a few reflections on climate change, with reference to my part of NSW, since NSW has recently been used as a poster-child for CAGW. Remember how we were ablaze last week? There are still risks in some parts, but Oz has just done what it does best: it just changed its climate again.
I note with all this rain that’s tumbling down that nobody predicted it a couple of weeks back. I certainly did not predict it. Chance of a major flood here over the weekend? I’ll predict it, and if it doesn’t happen I’ll just say I never said it or that my comments have been taken out of context or…but you guys know the drill.
They’ve pulled most of our temp records, though our hottest January would have been between 1910 and 1919, because, except for August, all our monthly heat records were set in that decade. (August was hottest in 1946.)
Our rainfall records still stand. Now, you would think – would you not? – that the appallingly dry December just past would have been the driest “ever”. Not even close: we had our driest December in 1938. Our wettest was in 1970.
Anyone doubting the reality of climate change (ie most people who bang on about Climate Change) should consider how we emerged from the 1890s into that poxy Federation Drought. Our wettest January was in 1895. Our driest was in 1900. But nearly all our worst drought months, like all our worst heat months, lie way back in the past. They don’t tell you that, do they? Oh well, since it’s a matter of public record, maybe they don’t feel they have to.
I notice that there’s been talk of 1939, after the smashing of one of those “ever” records recently, in Sydney. Would you believe that in 1939 not one drop of rain fell here in the month of February, supposedly the wettest time of year? Ten years before that we had our wettest month of any on record: in February 1929 a whopping 882.5 mm!
Our driest year on record was in 1902. (Sydney’s was 1888). You would think that legendary 1950 would have to have been the wettest, but, in fact, more than two and a quarter metres of rain was dumped on us in 1963.
What can I say? Climate change!
I am so proud of the sceptical bloggers, scientists, politicians etc. who have stood up against the well funded Great Global Warming Scam. When this fraud ends, let’s hope it serves as a lesson to scientists and the public about the meaninglessness of consensus. The only thing that matters is being right.
Latitude says:
January 26, 2013 at 7:18 am
“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.”
– Barack Obama
It was Rahm Emanuel, former Chief-of-Staff for Obama’s first administration that said, You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. For Obama AGW is just a lever to create bigger government.
Kudos to Lovelock for finally seeing the light. I live for the day that Micky “Nobel Prize-winner” Mann bows his head in shame for what he has done. Of course, that will also be the day that pigs sprout wings and Hades becomes a place where skating would be possible (if there were any skates).
Lovelock is eclectic in his discourse. And so he has not, in the cited letter, backed down scientifically from his claims of scientific certainty in the alarming dangers from fossil fuels.
In that cited Lovelock letter we also have this. Lovelock says,
He ‘a priori” asserts based on claims of scientific certainty that there are alarming ‘dangerous’ effects from burning fossil fuels.
I see no sign in his letter of him backing down from his long held claims about the alarming dangers of fossil fuels. Nor do I see him admitting any significant change in his belief that there is a well established consensus about the scientific certainty of the alarming danger of fossil fuels.
Again, he is eclectic. So one needs to pick out the various messages separately.
John
Could it be that the alarmists are just lowering the sticker price?
I do not mean to insult anyone with my question. I ask it in hopes that someone who has the time and expertise will investigate the several articles and wager an educated guess as to whether the lower number on climate sensitivity is the result of better science.
mosomoso says:
January 26, 2013 at 7:53 am (Edit)
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Thanks for that mosomoso, that is the kind of information that everybody should get. Our weather is ordinary and even when it varies it varies in an ordinary way.
James Lovelock wote:
I like it. Anyone have a 300′ moai banner we could put on a turbine tower? How about totem poles?
James Flour
So true. In short it is time for sane organizations (501s) to start a serious push back campaign. The money is to great and like the toxic paper that circled the globe in 2007 and 08 they have created an artificial market that trades on the stock exchanges (you would think leaders would be smarter than this – trading air for god sake). The ego’s in the scientific arena and academia are to big to simply admit they were wrong. The narcissists (politicians) like the President and many others worldwide would never admit to their stupidity. Imagine any of the famous names standing up and saying I got it wrong (like Leonardo DiC…..) Couple that with the money involved and you will realize they will never in their lifetime admit they made a mistake. This is why we need to counter with TV ads web campaigns etc. changing minds one person at a time. Like the toxic and fake paper (CDs) in 07 and 08 that collapsed the world markets we need to stall and reverse the AGW scam before it balloons further out of control. Clearly our leaders will not so they need to be kicked out of office, honest brokers if possible put in, and ENRON type investigation need to be forced on all of the organizations that propogated this fraud. Media, academia, politicians, and companies a like. They need to return the ill gotten profits back to the people. I mean fair is fair right Mr President.
It really isn’t surprising that Lovelock has recanted about CAGW since it is logically inconsistent with his Gaia hypothesis. The Gaia hypothesis posits that the earth is an inherently stable, self-regulating entity which necessarily means that negative feedbacks predominate. CAGW, on the other hand, is premised on Earth’s climate being inherently unstable with positive feedbacks being prevalent.
You can believe in one or the other, but only a fool could simultaneously believe in Gaia and CAGW.
That “rapid warming in 90ties” was just few tenths of degree from the bottom of Pinatubo cooling to 1997/98 super El Nino, and climatologists happily pulling this line to the year 2100. This is what climatology is doing: prolonging a limited trend 100 years forward. All that “lower sensitivity, 1,9deg C per doubling” trash talk is again just trend wanking, just less steep.
beesaman says:
January 26, 2013 at 7:43 am
No wonder Gore is preparing his financial life boat. SS CAGW the ship he is captain of has hit the iceberg of reality. While Mann and Hansen are still in the engine room stoking the boilers.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes Al Gore’s sell out was a major signal that the exodus was about to get underway. If you have stock in Wind or Solar dump it NOW!
Whether Obummer actually notices he is at the tail end of line getting off a sinking ship is another story.