The BBC posted a surprising story this past weekend that has skeptics cheering and alarmists hopping mad.
Here’s the opener:
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
The headline?
What happened to global warming?
By Paul Hudson
Climate correspondent, BBC News
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.
They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?
During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.
Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the Sun.
But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.
The scientists’ main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.
And the results were clear. “Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity,” said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.
He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.
He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.
If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.
Read the complete story here at the BBC
I even felt tempted to update my blog over this…
http://ken-hall.blogspot.com/2009/10/bbc-foul-play.html
feel free to visit and comment.
Video of Paul Hudson.
Weather foils Isles of Scilly energy experiment
A world-first experiment to try and reduce energy use for the day on the Isles of Scilly was foiled after a turn in the weather caused participants to use more electricity.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6269718/Weather-foils-Isles-of-Scilly-energy-experiment.html
So many BBC weather presenters have highly relevant qualifications in subjects such as Drama and Commerce does anyone know if this Paul Hudson is similarly qualified?
I don’t put any faith in the BBC’s story. It’s business as usual at the Beeb at that means keeping the government happy so that the taxpayer keeps ponying up the TV licence fee. Just take a look at the shift that is occuring at Channel 4 after they were pushed into accepting they will have to be taxpayer funded too. When their “journalists” criticise bail outs you have to laugh.
Britain is quickly moving towards INGSOC and we need a British Tea Party that will throw the elites, the socialists and the greens out of power forever.
A bit of back-story.
In the UK the BBC is coming under huge pressure on many fronts. The accusation that the corporation has a left-wing bias is now widely experienced as true and many people are growing increasingly frustrated at having to pay a substantial amount of money each year (the ‘licence fee’) to finance an organisation which has a legal obligation to be unbiased. If they refuse to pay the BBC, they cannot legally own and use a television set – even though there are many other advert or subscription-financed TV stations a viewer can choose to watch.
The BBC has always done most of its recruiting through job-ads in the Guardian newspaper (the publication has a huge ‘Media’ section each week) – further validating accusations of left-wing bias at the corporation.
Clearly, a growing number of the UK population who have their needs met largely, or exclusively, by these non-BBC commercial stations are beginning to demand an end to the out-dated licence fee.
In the Spring of next year the UK will hold a general election. The ruling left-wing Labour party is at an all-time low in the opinion polls and widely expected to be obliterated after 12 years in power. The party – who won power back in 1997 with a campaign heavily featuring the song ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ – are issuing a series of desperate ‘straw-clutching’ alarmist stories (including, of course, the ‘CO2 Terrorises Your Infants’ ad mentioned on WUWT).
The Conservatives are expected to win the election, and the right-of-centre party has ‘made noises’ about its dissatisfaction with the BBC and the need to reign in the corporation. This will possibly include strengthening a legal requirement for the BBC to be politically unbiased, a requirement for it to broadcast far more intelligent programming (as it once did), and a severe cut-back in its size (possibly losing one or two digital channels and some of its burgeoning internet empire). There is also a growing demand for the hated licence fee to be shared across several UK broadcasters to rebalance competition as commercial stations struggle with a loss of adverting revenue to the internet.
In the run-up to the general election, the BBC will begin to see the writing on the wall. We can expect to see more articles like this AGW one published (or broadcast) as the corporation attempts to disguise its left-wing bias and save its skin under a Conservative government. The corporation is likely to be delighted that this article has attracted a lot of attention, and that may well have been its sole purpose. Of course, the BBC will continue spewing out its heavily alarmist (and dumbed-down) propaganda – but we shouldn’t be surprised (or too heartened) by the odd sensible article either.
“New” scares:
1. Choose any chemical, that is not healthy in major concentrations. Today’s analytical instruments are so good, that you can measure smallest concentrations of it in water/food/air etc.
“3 ppt of xy-Dioxyd found in the xx-river! Are our children safe?”
2. electromagnetic waves
“Scientists found out, that the signals emitted by our local radio-stations are evil electromagnetic waves! They are EVERYWHERE!
“Scientists found out, that the electromagnetic waves emitted by you train/trolley bus/tram are 10’000 stronger than those of you mobile! Is commuting still safe??”
3. Internet
“Experts found out, that governement can’t manipulate citizens so easily like before. Is anarchy impending?”
… genetic engineering…nano-particles…….radioactivity….etc. etc.
Sample the AGW-MSM agit-prop here*: Child abuse. AGW debauchs youth.
…-
*”Bronwyn wrote an essay that pointed out it’s worth saving the Earth, because it’s the only planet with chocolate.”
“Bronwyn, who was flown to Toronto last week for a ceremony to mark the start of the panel’s work.”
“Chocolate makes Earth worth saving
So says Bronwyn Heighton, Green Kid
Bronwyn Heighton’s fingernails match the way she lives: green.
And not in a subtle way.
The Grade 5 Beaverbank Monarch Drive Elementary School student is one of 10 children between eight and 13 selected to be on the Sunlight Green Clean Kids panel, and she’s the only one in Atlantic Canada.
Bronwyn learned recycling from her parents and said her father is so vigilant he only produces one bag of garbage a month.
“I want to save the environment a lot, because we don’t want to be living in a dump,” the 10-year-old said Saturday.
She recently added a couple of more household items to her list of what not to put in the garbage.
“Tin foil and Saran wrap are recyclable. The weirdest thing I know that you can compost is hair. I don’t know why, but you can.”
Bronwyn wrote an essay that pointed out it’s worth saving the Earth, because it’s the only planet with chocolate.
She also included the rhyme she taught her mother to help her keep straight on what goes in the garbage and what can be recycled.
“One and two go in the blue,” she said, pointing out the number two embossed on the bottom of a milk jug.”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1147013.html
“After all, 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the sun?”
Where does the other 2% come from? Any ideas?
The stage set for a US Time magazine cover with the headline “Is Global Warming Dead?” What would go on the cover? The blank Sun? the recent unpleasantness in the plains and northwest?
What a great use of the idiomatic and cliche’ phrase – “What on earth is going on”
Temperatures records mean nothing . How much TIME, how many hours, with a given temperature and insolation is what counts.
As it has been shown, here in WUWT, during the LIA there were high temperature summers however of short duration, and long winters. This is what counts.
A summer with standard length and with many cloudy days it is also quite different as a cloudless summer.
It is instructive to note that they talk about sceptics, but never once mention the giant Steve McIntyre. He shall never be named!
They do, however, mention Piers Corbyn, who has some of his own controversial ideas. if these prove to be wrong, they can tar the whole movement with one brush.
Note that they carefully avoid mentioning that:
– the BBC did not report that global warming had stopped for 10 years
– there is anything wrong with any of the science behind global warming
– the ‘sceptics’ have provided ANY input into the science. To read the BBC, you would think the sceptics just say ‘we don’t believe it..’
This story is setting Piers Corbyn up to be the hero if global warming is proven wrong!!
Here in lies the problem. While CO2 does not appear to be the cause of warming over the last 150 years we have very little in the way of evidence as to what has caused the warming in the last 150 years.
It is this vacuum of evidence that has allowed the green movement to grab a hold of something that should only be a scientific discussion and turn it into a propaganda piece.
They had been unchallenged for almost 20 years and now finally when real scientists are asking the question as to what is causing the increase in temperature they get sacked because the propagandists have taken over and been elected.
Yet while there are theories as to the temperature change the system is so complex that it is hard to show that global warming is not caused by CO2 because nothing else fits as elegantly in the minds of the masses.
Not only that but next year may be indeed a warmer year for the northern hemisphere because of the La Nina developing… which is going to bite because even though it will only be a natural variation lots of people are going to grab hold and say “see we told you so” For skeptics of CO2 induced warming we need a couple of decades of cooling to say that for alarmists they only need one warm year in that time to prove everything that we have said is wrong.
Sad but true…
I just heard from BBC Radio 2 that the BBC story has had 1 million hits since it was posted.
Impressive.
Suppose that, as I strongly suspect, the CO2 theory is rubbish. Suppose further that a new theory is offered that seems more plausible. With what climate record should its predictions be compared? Antony and his army have shown that ground station measurements are probably riddled with bias. The sea surface temperature record is a joke. Chunks of the raw records have apparently been discarded. The satellite record is short. The proxy records are, at least in part, silly and, some of them, dishonest. After a couple of decades of Global Warming ballyhoo, there’s not even a “robust” temperature record available for comparison with models. What a pathetically inadequate outcome for such a large expenditure.
The debauchment/corruption of youth by the Red-Greens.
The message is bannered there; the message will not be repeated here.
Courtesy of Lizzy May (background here*).
Get a screenshot now.
http://youth.greenparty.ca/en/
Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_May
Warning: May has been caught editing wiki.
In the Sunday Times Ecosse supplement yesterday 11 Oct. “Why everything you think you know about Global Warming is WRONG” by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Piece over three pages and basically debunks the AGW and CO2 claims. Can’t find the piece on http://www.timesonline.co.uk but they quote a Nathan Myhrvold who debunks “An inconvenient truth” and states “The climate models are crude in space and they’re crude in time” “So there is an enormous amount of natural phenomena the can’t model” etc. Another chap quoted Ken Caldeira: “his research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight. For starters, as greenhouse gases go it’s not particularly efficient. ‘A doubling of CO2 traps less than 2% of the outgoing radiation emitted by the Earth’ he says”.
I think the important thing is that a prestige UK broadsheet such as The Sunday Times owned by News International is prepared to devote so much space to anti AGW views. The question is whether this is restricted to Scotland or other UK editions feature the same large article. I do think there are signs that perhaps anti AGW views may begin to shine through here and there. Hopefully it is only the beginning.
John Wright (01:49:28) :
There’s been plenty of talk about Piers Corbyn at this blog. There’s one name here in particular that seems to hate him. I’ll leave him unnamed. But he is a common commenter and some times poster here. Maybe some commenters here don’t like to bring up Piers Corbyn because this certain person will jump all over them relentlessly.
But, I agree with you. Piers Corbyn’s record of success speaks louder than his detractors. That is why I am glad to see his name in this article. Anyone can look in to the background of the names mentioned in the article and decide for themselves what to think of manmade global warming.
Ronaldo (01:09:57) :
The Daily Telegraph has picked up the story this morning.
Could you provide the link? 🙂
This story is still at the top of the front page at Drudge.
http://www.drudgereport.com/
Also the record cold right under it.
It is possible the BBC is reading the handwriting on the wall of the earth :
The winds are expected to blow up to 25 miles per hour, creating wind chill of up to 20 below for the Flathead and Mission valleys…
The winds are expected to blow up to 25 miles per hour, creating wind chill of up to 20 below for the Flathead and Mission valleys…
link :
http://www.montanasnewsstation.com/Global/story.asp?S=11295113
supercritical (01:29:26) :
How about an anti-scare?
Will this do :
America is not going to bleed its wealth importing fuel….Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically….natural gas reserves around the world have risen to 1.2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent, enough for 60 years’ supply….Britain’s shale reserves could replace declining North Sea output….reserves are much greater than supposed just three years ago and may meet global gas needs for generations….The breakthrough has been to combine 3-D seismic imaging with new technologies to free “tight gas” by smashing rocks, known as hydro-fracturing or “fracking” in the trade….
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/6299291/Energy-crisis-is-postponed-as-new-gas-rescues-the-world.html
I think more sane minds in the UK will start to speak up as they digest the latest Met Office climate forecast of 4C during the next 50 years or by 2060 [ or an average rate 0 .08 C/year
Using least square trend line slopes and HADCRUT 3 temperature data: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/last:120/plot/hadcrut3gl/last:120/trend
OBSERVED RATE OF CLIMATE CHANGE 1850- 2008 was 0.004 C/year [over158 years]
OBSERVED RATE OF CLIMATE CHANGE 1908-2008 was O.0075C/year [over 100 years
OBSERVED RATE OF CLIMATE CHANGE 1999-2009 was 0.0052C/year [over last 10 years]
The latest Met Office projected rate of temperature rise is
20 times faster than the trend of the last 158 years
10 times faster than the trend of the last 100 years
15 times faster than the trend of the last 10 years
Already the Telegraph ,Spectator and BBC are seeing through smoke and mirrors of global warming science.