UPDATE2: “404 Page not found” now at the BBC for this video on Monday Feb16th. It seems they’ve pulled it. Too much “negative feedback” I suppose. Readers be on the alert for any retractions.
UPDATE: BBC Can’t even get their reporting correct. The reporter in this video report that accompanies the web article says that “The fear is that increased global warming could set off what’s called negative feedback…..” and that now we are in “scenarios unexplored by the models”. No kidding, it’s that bad. For those of you that don’t know, some alarmists claim that “negative climate feedback is as real as the Easter Bunny, which is what makes this BBC factual error so hilarious.
Readers please let the BBC know that they have no idea what they are talking about. Just click here. – Anthony
Click above to watch the BBC video
Guest post by Steven Goddard
On Wednesday, normally stalwart UK global warming promoter – The Guardian, ran this remarkable headline, which was also covered here on WUWT:
‘Apocalyptic climate predictions’ mislead the public, say experts’
The Met Office Hadley Centre, one of the most prestigious research facilities in the world, says recent “apocalyptic predictions” about Arctic ice melt and soaring temperatures are as bad as claims that global warming does not exist. Such statements, however well-intentioned, distort the science and could undermine efforts to tackle carbon emissions, it says.
Undaunted and defiant, their comrades in global warming arms at the BBC, chose this as the lead story for Sunday morning:
‘Global warming ‘underestimated’
The severity of global warming over the next century will be much worse than previously believed, a leading climate scientist has warned.
….
“We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we’ve considered seriously in climate policy,” he said. Prof Field said the 2007 report, which predicted temperature rises between 1.1C and 6.4C over the next century, seriously underestimated the scale of the problem. “
BBC employs the old standby icon - a polar bear
Prof Field said rising temperatures could thaw Arctic permafrost
One fatal flaw with the BBC story is that Chris Field is not a climate scientist, as they claimed. He is actually a Professor of Biology in an Ecology Department. So how does the BBC choose their headlines? In matters of global warming, apparently the apocalyptic words of one American ecologist overrule those of the UK’s own government climate scientists at The Met Office. Chris Field clearly does not have any credentials to be making the climate claims the BBC reported. This looks more and more like a Shakespearean comedy every day.For them all together; which maintained so politica state of evil that they will not admit any goodpart to intermingle with them.William Shakespeare – from ‘Much Ado About Nothing’
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Tom in Florida
February 15, 2009 5:11 am
Now that the U S Congress has passed the most massive redistrubution of wealth in history we will see more and more of these scare stories as everyone starts to grab for their share of the money. Years ago I was friendly with a blood research scientist at Yale U. in New Haven Ct who once told me this secret, “Sometimes you must contradict yourself in order to justify additional funding for more research”.
And while I am not saying that this is a common practice, I have always been sceptical of any researchers “latest findings” since.
Well if good old Auntie Beeb admitted that it was all a con then the various presenters – because they aren’t journalists anymore – wouldn’t be able to jet off – oh the irony – to various parts of the world at the tax payers expense to show us the rising sea level in various beautiful, sunny beach resorts, or get trips of a lifetime to the poles.
EW
February 15, 2009 5:27 am
OMG, two weeks ago I just managed to get that “12 days of global warming” song out of my head and thanks (NOT) to your showing the polar bear photo it is back again!
:-\
Steven Goddard
February 15, 2009 5:37 am
Running climate models does not make you a climate scientist. That claim is analogous to saying that President Obama use of a Blackberry makes him an electrical engineer.
If you want to become a BBC “climate scientist,” you can download key portions of a climate model here. http://rtweb.aer.com/rrtm_frame.html
Running the model and tweaking the input files will make you qualified to be the subject of the BBC’s lead story tomorrow, as long as claim Armageddon.
President Carter used to call himself a “nuculur engineer” because he served in the Navy on a nuclear submarine.
Bill Illis
February 15, 2009 5:38 am
Actually, GHG numbers are slightly below the IPCC’s scenario right now.
The A1B scenario in which GHG concentrations continue the existing trends into the future and which leads to the commonly quoted +3.0C temperatures by 2100 can be seen here. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/ghgases/GHGs.IPCC.A1B.txt
CO2 is about 1 ppm behind. Methane is 40 ppb behind (recent uptick makes it hard to tell). N2O is about 25 ppb behind. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi_2008.fig2.png
So generally, the GHG growth rates are in fact lower than projected by the IPCC. Hansen’s recent 2008 temperature summary report even acknowledged this fact.
It’s not the Negative Feedback I’m worried about, it’s that – gulp – according to Dr James Henson writing in today’s Observer: “Coal-Fired power stations are death factories”:
Steven Goddard
February 15, 2009 5:46 am
During the bitter cold this winter in the UK, there was almost no wind and the sun was too low in the sky to be useful for solar power. If not for the “evil” coal burning power plants, many thousands would have frozen or starved to death – and the economy would have gone into complete collapse.
The BBC is a bit out of touch with reality. “Only two things are infinite – the universe and human stupidity. And I’m not so sure about the former.”
Albert Einstein
It’s very easy to send a comment to the BBC about their climate confusion. Just click here.
Barbara
February 15, 2009 5:56 am
Slightly O/T (or is it?) but Nassim Taleb, author of “Black Swan’ (who correctly foresaw the economic debacle) put together in that work a group of mental ‘follies’ which end up in slanted thinking and distorted conclusions:
1.Confirmation bias (a tendency to reaffirm beliefs, rather than contradict them)
2.Narrative fallacy (a weakness for compelling stories)
3.Silent evidence (a failure to account for what we don’t see)
4.Ludic fallacy (a willingness to oversimplify, or take games/models too seriously)
5.Epistemic arrogance (a habit of overestimating our knowledge and underestimating our ignorance).
Hmmm, now what does that remind me of?
Steven Goddard
February 15, 2009 5:56 am
Roger Knight,
You believe that someone who works for the IPCC and is not even a climate scientist, is qualified to go to the press and unilaterally say that the IPCC climate predictions are incorrect?
That would imply that the IPCC process, documentation, accountability and standards are worthless. He may have his own opinion, but that hardly qualifies him to speak for the body of climatologists.
In my last piece I asked the question Whom could they (The Met Office) be referring to in this passage: “scientific colleagues and journalists who exaggerate the effects of global warming?”
Now we know.
Christopher Wood
February 15, 2009 6:10 am
As ever more scientist and climatologists, some of whom worked for the IPPC, turn away from MMGW the claims of the believers grew ever more shrill and hysterical.
The question is, however, why on earth are reports of this nature made public. They emanate from one person, no evidence or peer review is supplied yet this report appears in most of the MSM.
Why has there been no report, that I am aware of, that Russia has recently released detailed analysis of ice cores dating back 430000 years. These show conclusively that an ice age occurs every 12000 years and that subsequent heating is followed by an increase in CO2 800 years later. The graph is reproduced in Wikipedia under
MattN
February 15, 2009 6:25 am
Shakespearean comedy? I’m just hoping it doesn’t turn into a Greek tragedy…
Steven Goddard
February 15, 2009 6:25 am
Barbara,
Completely OT, but related to your post about the “economic debacle.” One very large company I work for was having it’s most profitable year ever in 2008, until two weeks after the US political conventions – when there was a huge run on the money markets.
Food for thought.
The AGW cycle was particularly brutal yesterday, I saw several articles which claimed warming was extending beyond even climate model predictions. I made my own prediction several months ago, a cooler planet wouldn’t slow the rhetoric, it will actually increase it. Not too big a stretch I realize but it seems to be coming true.
—-
I invited an engineer to do a guest post on the Air Vent regarding the AWS reconstruction of Antarctica. The original version of the Nature paper relies heavily on the peninsula stations which are grouped next to each other. By simply re-gridding the data according to area and rerunning the calculations the slope of the result changed dramatically. http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/aws-gridded-reconstruction/
AllenM
February 15, 2009 6:38 am
The BBC is not alone, FoxNews.com has a picture of a red sunset over smoke stacks for their report on an increasing rate of CO2.
The answer to the question of why is sinple, if it fits the template, print it, if not, it never happened. So the PRAVDA media does their job, prints it as written.
The hysteria and lies are becoming a web so tangled, that no one can figure it out anymore, including the ones generating the hysteria and lies.
What we know about Earth’s climate, you could write a book. What we don’t know would fill a library.
Paulus (05:47:37),
Thanx for that link to James Hansen’s astonishing rant. Hansen is becoming more and more shrill of late, and his apologist propaganda for China’s government gives them a free pass to continue building their coal-fired power plants.
China is currently building an average of 1 – 2 new coal burning power plants per week, and the Chinese government has announced that they intend to continue at this frenetic pace through at least 2024. But Hansen says:
The three countries most responsible, per capita, for filling the air with carbon dioxide from fossil fuels are the UK, the US and Germany, in that order.
China has surpassed every other country in emissions, but by saying “per capita,” Hansen makes it appear that China is not a problem in this regard, when the facts plainly contradict him. What has China given to James Hansen to let them off the hook with his word games?
Emissions by the U.S. have increased by only 9% over the past 17 years since most of the world signed the Kyoto Protocol; that is a much smaller increase than any other country. The U.S. and Great Britain emit much less CO2 than most of the countries that signed Kyoto, and less than one-fifth the rate of China’s emissions. Germany is also building dozens of new coal-fired power plants. They buy carbon offset indulgences and pass the cost on to their utility rate-payers, which results in an extremely high tax on German workers, but it does nothing whatever to reduce CO2 emissions.
So why does James Hansen give the Chinese government a totally free pass? Why is Hansen the Chinese government’s apologist? There is a reason for everything. Is James Hansen bought and paid for?
Hansen has taken upwards of a million dollars [that we know of] from “green” organizations and foundations that say exactly the same thing that Hansen is saying in this article. It appears that Hansen is for sale, and that he is using his prestigious position as head of NASA/GISS to personally enrich himself.
Maybe James Hansen truly believes what he says. If so, in order to deflect the inevitable charges of hypocrisy, he should resign from government employment, and speak out as a private citizen. IMHO, the reason he doesn’t do the right thing can be traced to his lust for money and prestige.
Ed MacAulay
February 15, 2009 7:00 am
Perhaps the AGW rabble thinks that a good offense is better than a defense.
So how much of the ramp up in news releases and comments is an attempt to preempt the upcoming conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute and any media publicity that will be generated by the International Conference on Climate Change in March.
Tom in Florida
February 15, 2009 7:04 am
Check out right side of the article where there is another article with a smoking factory drawing labeled:
“CLIMATE CHANGE
Animated guide: Find out how the greenhouse effect works and more… ”
It shows the “greenhouse effect” but fails to mention water vapor, shows only an animated CO2 molecule, implies CO2 and methane absorb most of the IR that is coming from the surface and indicates a linear progression of IR absorbtion by CO2.
It is a bold faced lie of omission and tantamount to fraud but probably sounds logical to the man on the street.
D. King
February 15, 2009 7:13 am
Again!
“Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!”
Sir Walter Scott
Pierre Gosselin
February 15, 2009 7:15 am
Quote from Climate Audit:
““Next time Hansens scenarios A,B,C are considered, we’re going to have to say earth has been exceeding scenario A then. The fact that the current temperature is on and descending below the line for scenario C, we’re left with the conclusion these models have no predictive power whatsoever.”
anonymous, no. 69 http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5232
Pierre Gosselin
February 15, 2009 7:16 am
Again, if greenhouse gases are exploding, then why is the temperature dropping?
What does that say about the models?
Now that the U S Congress has passed the most massive redistrubution of wealth in history we will see more and more of these scare stories as everyone starts to grab for their share of the money. Years ago I was friendly with a blood research scientist at Yale U. in New Haven Ct who once told me this secret, “Sometimes you must contradict yourself in order to justify additional funding for more research”.
And while I am not saying that this is a common practice, I have always been sceptical of any researchers “latest findings” since.
Well if good old Auntie Beeb admitted that it was all a con then the various presenters – because they aren’t journalists anymore – wouldn’t be able to jet off – oh the irony – to various parts of the world at the tax payers expense to show us the rising sea level in various beautiful, sunny beach resorts, or get trips of a lifetime to the poles.
OMG, two weeks ago I just managed to get that “12 days of global warming” song out of my head and thanks (NOT) to your showing the polar bear photo it is back again!
:-\
Running climate models does not make you a climate scientist. That claim is analogous to saying that President Obama use of a Blackberry makes him an electrical engineer.
If you want to become a BBC “climate scientist,” you can download key portions of a climate model here.
http://rtweb.aer.com/rrtm_frame.html
Running the model and tweaking the input files will make you qualified to be the subject of the BBC’s lead story tomorrow, as long as claim Armageddon.
President Carter used to call himself a “nuculur engineer” because he served in the Navy on a nuclear submarine.
Actually, GHG numbers are slightly below the IPCC’s scenario right now.
The A1B scenario in which GHG concentrations continue the existing trends into the future and which leads to the commonly quoted +3.0C temperatures by 2100 can be seen here.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/ghgases/GHGs.IPCC.A1B.txt
CO2 is about 1 ppm behind. Methane is 40 ppb behind (recent uptick makes it hard to tell). N2O is about 25 ppb behind.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi_2008.fig2.png
So generally, the GHG growth rates are in fact lower than projected by the IPCC. Hansen’s recent 2008 temperature summary report even acknowledged this fact.
Sorry, posted a frame link. Here is a functional link to the GCM radiation code.
http://rtweb.aer.com/rrtmg_sw_download.html
http://rtweb.aer.com/rrtmg_lw_download.html
It’s not the Negative Feedback I’m worried about, it’s that – gulp – according to Dr James Henson writing in today’s Observer: “Coal-Fired power stations are death factories”:
During the bitter cold this winter in the UK, there was almost no wind and the sun was too low in the sky to be useful for solar power. If not for the “evil” coal burning power plants, many thousands would have frozen or starved to death – and the economy would have gone into complete collapse.
The BBC is a bit out of touch with reality.
“Only two things are infinite – the universe and human stupidity. And I’m not so sure about the former.”
Albert Einstein
Sorry – screwed up the link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/15/james-hansen-power-plants-coal
And his name. It should, of course, be Dr James Hansen.
It’s very easy to send a comment to the BBC about their climate confusion. Just click here.
Slightly O/T (or is it?) but Nassim Taleb, author of “Black Swan’ (who correctly foresaw the economic debacle) put together in that work a group of mental ‘follies’ which end up in slanted thinking and distorted conclusions:
1.Confirmation bias (a tendency to reaffirm beliefs, rather than contradict them)
2.Narrative fallacy (a weakness for compelling stories)
3.Silent evidence (a failure to account for what we don’t see)
4.Ludic fallacy (a willingness to oversimplify, or take games/models too seriously)
5.Epistemic arrogance (a habit of overestimating our knowledge and underestimating our ignorance).
Hmmm, now what does that remind me of?
Roger Knight,
You believe that someone who works for the IPCC and is not even a climate scientist, is qualified to go to the press and unilaterally say that the IPCC climate predictions are incorrect?
That would imply that the IPCC process, documentation, accountability and standards are worthless. He may have his own opinion, but that hardly qualifies him to speak for the body of climatologists.
In my last piece I asked the question Whom could they (The Met Office) be referring to in this passage: “scientific colleagues and journalists who exaggerate the effects of global warming?”
Now we know.
As ever more scientist and climatologists, some of whom worked for the IPPC, turn away from MMGW the claims of the believers grew ever more shrill and hysterical.
The question is, however, why on earth are reports of this nature made public. They emanate from one person, no evidence or peer review is supplied yet this report appears in most of the MSM.
Why has there been no report, that I am aware of, that Russia has recently released detailed analysis of ice cores dating back 430000 years. These show conclusively that an ice age occurs every 12000 years and that subsequent heating is followed by an increase in CO2 800 years later. The graph is reproduced in Wikipedia under
Shakespearean comedy? I’m just hoping it doesn’t turn into a Greek tragedy…
Barbara,
Completely OT, but related to your post about the “economic debacle.” One very large company I work for was having it’s most profitable year ever in 2008, until two weeks after the US political conventions – when there was a huge run on the money markets.
Food for thought.
The AGW cycle was particularly brutal yesterday, I saw several articles which claimed warming was extending beyond even climate model predictions. I made my own prediction several months ago, a cooler planet wouldn’t slow the rhetoric, it will actually increase it. Not too big a stretch I realize but it seems to be coming true.
—-
I invited an engineer to do a guest post on the Air Vent regarding the AWS reconstruction of Antarctica. The original version of the Nature paper relies heavily on the peninsula stations which are grouped next to each other. By simply re-gridding the data according to area and rerunning the calculations the slope of the result changed dramatically.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/aws-gridded-reconstruction/
The BBC is not alone, FoxNews.com has a picture of a red sunset over smoke stacks for their report on an increasing rate of CO2.
The answer to the question of why is sinple, if it fits the template, print it, if not, it never happened. So the PRAVDA media does their job, prints it as written.
The hysteria and lies are becoming a web so tangled, that no one can figure it out anymore, including the ones generating the hysteria and lies.
What we know about Earth’s climate, you could write a book. What we don’t know would fill a library.
Paulus (05:47:37),
Thanx for that link to James Hansen’s astonishing rant. Hansen is becoming more and more shrill of late, and his apologist propaganda for China’s government gives them a free pass to continue building their coal-fired power plants.
China is currently building an average of 1 – 2 new coal burning power plants per week, and the Chinese government has announced that they intend to continue at this frenetic pace through at least 2024. But Hansen says:
China has surpassed every other country in emissions, but by saying “per capita,” Hansen makes it appear that China is not a problem in this regard, when the facts plainly contradict him. What has China given to James Hansen to let them off the hook with his word games?
Emissions by the U.S. have increased by only 9% over the past 17 years since most of the world signed the Kyoto Protocol; that is a much smaller increase than any other country. The U.S. and Great Britain emit much less CO2 than most of the countries that signed Kyoto, and less than one-fifth the rate of China’s emissions. Germany is also building dozens of new coal-fired power plants. They buy carbon offset indulgences and pass the cost on to their utility rate-payers, which results in an extremely high tax on German workers, but it does nothing whatever to reduce CO2 emissions.
So why does James Hansen give the Chinese government a totally free pass? Why is Hansen the Chinese government’s apologist? There is a reason for everything. Is James Hansen bought and paid for?
Hansen has taken upwards of a million dollars [that we know of] from “green” organizations and foundations that say exactly the same thing that Hansen is saying in this article. It appears that Hansen is for sale, and that he is using his prestigious position as head of NASA/GISS to personally enrich himself.
Maybe James Hansen truly believes what he says. If so, in order to deflect the inevitable charges of hypocrisy, he should resign from government employment, and speak out as a private citizen. IMHO, the reason he doesn’t do the right thing can be traced to his lust for money and prestige.
Perhaps the AGW rabble thinks that a good offense is better than a defense.
So how much of the ramp up in news releases and comments is an attempt to preempt the upcoming conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute and any media publicity that will be generated by the International Conference on Climate Change in March.
Check out right side of the article where there is another article with a smoking factory drawing labeled:
“CLIMATE CHANGE
Animated guide: Find out how the greenhouse effect works and more… ”
It shows the “greenhouse effect” but fails to mention water vapor, shows only an animated CO2 molecule, implies CO2 and methane absorb most of the IR that is coming from the surface and indicates a linear progression of IR absorbtion by CO2.
It is a bold faced lie of omission and tantamount to fraud but probably sounds logical to the man on the street.
Again!
“Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!”
Sir Walter Scott
Quote from Climate Audit:
““Next time Hansens scenarios A,B,C are considered, we’re going to have to say earth has been exceeding scenario A then. The fact that the current temperature is on and descending below the line for scenario C, we’re left with the conclusion these models have no predictive power whatsoever.”
anonymous, no. 69
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5232
Again, if greenhouse gases are exploding, then why is the temperature dropping?
What does that say about the models?