Excerpts:
Ever more risibly desperate become the efforts of the believers in global warming to hold the line for their religion, after the battering it was given last winter by all those scandals surrounding the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
One familiar technique they use is to attribute to global warming almost any unusual weather event anywhere in the world. Last week, for instance, it was reported that Russia has recently been experiencing its hottest temperatures and longest drought for 130 years. The head of the Russian branch of WWF, the environmental pressure group, was inevitably quick to cite this as evidence of climate change, claiming that in future “such climate abnormalities will only become more frequent”. He didn’t explain what might have caused the similar hot weather 130 years ago.
The paragraphs above are from Christopher Booker in his Telegraph column. He also cites a recent WUWT post, among others.
h/t to Richard North of EU Referendum
“Sometimes i forget that 130 years seems like a long time for Americans.”
The last year-and-a-half seems like a long time for this American.
DirkH says:
July 25, 2010 at 7:59 pm
Sorry. Sometimes i forget that 130 years seems like a long time for Americans.
================================
LOL. Right you are, Dirk on that point.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Congrats to everyone in regards to the opinion piece. The message is slowly,(sometimes excruciatingly slow) getting out. This is just one small measure of progress. After reading some of the comments there, I chuckled at something I don’t believe I’ve read or heard before. Watermelon—-green on the outside, red on the inside.
Compare the funding received by a handful of think-tanks to the hundreds of billions of dollars lavished on those who speak for the other side by governments, foundations, multinational corporations, even Big Oil, and the warmists are winning hands down. But only financially: they are not winning the argument.
Money can’t buy them love. 😉
Tom in Texas says:July 25, 2010 at 8:17 pm
“Sometimes i forget that 130 years seems like a long time for Americans.”
The last year-and-a-half seems like a long time for this American.
Amen.
Robert Morris says:
July 25, 2010 at 7:43 pm
So just when did the Russian temps begin for that area?
My guess is that this piece of Phil Jones CRU99 data will shed some light on Russian Temperature measurement capabilitites:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/Sitka.GIF
175 yrs minimum would be my guess.
Hmm… I could be wrong but it sounds like more Déjà vu. Weren’t they reporting similar claims that Russia had been experiencing its hottest temperatures and longest drought back about 2000? And desperately seeking swelter?
Because I remember wondering how that happened in Russia while we were getting so much rain in the states after Eyjafjallajökull.
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=1702-02=
An intrusion beneath the south flank from July-December 1999 was accompanied by increased seismic activity and was constrained by tilt measurements, GPS-geodesy and InSAR.
There was some of the same Katla-mongering back then, I remember searching and finding that the connection between Eyjafjallajökull and Katla is really not very solid.
I seem to recall a lot of people were thinking AGW was bs, only to switch back sides again after it got really hot and dry again following the solar cycle 23 max(s). Anybody else seem to recall that?
The recent bitter winter in the south has by and large been ignored by the media which as a rule loves natural disasters, their corporate bread’N’butter if you will.
I wonder why? Much of the MSM is fed by a few agencies such as AP and reuters and they have been the source of many ridiculous scare stories over the years, now there is very little interest in reporting the disasters to the wider public because it contradicts the AGW narrative.
What this shows is just how much news is withheld on political grounds, a censorship of reality to serve a political narrative and if it were not for the net and blogs we would be by and large in the dark about whats really going on in the wider world. The AGW establishment must hate the new media like poison because it is destroying their carefully constructed narrative.
The AGW establishment must hate the new media like poison because it is destroying their carefully constructed narrative.
===============
With a JournoList, Hope and Change is possible… Too bad it’s false hope… Too bad it’s regressive Change.
http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=29858
The Journolist Conspirators
See any recognizable names?
Every night it’s clear you can feel the heat loss. Every night it’s cloudy you can feel the lack of heat loss. In day time when it’s cloudy you can feel the lack of heat gain at surface level, when it’s not cloudy you can feel the heat from the sun hitting you. The big difference in every situation is the clouds. They are all that matters and all that ever will. Go outside and prove it for yourself, it’s the only experiment that matters
Dave N (July 25, 2010 at 7:40 pm) says:
“Nice try Mattb, but:
“Mr. Kokorin believes that the only way to improve the situation is to weaken human impact on climate, boost economic energy efficiency and reduce environmentally unfriendly emissions”
If that isn’t attributing the problem to “climate change”, what is?”
Sorry Dave that attributes future increases in warmth to “climate change”, not the current weather event. He is using a current weather event to highlight what the future impacts of climate change will be… he is NOT saying the current weather event is caused by “climate change”.
Andrew W says: “Booker dismisses an individual weather events as proof of ACC, which is fair enough, but then hypocritically sights an individual weather event 130 years ago as proof against ACC.
Ridiculous.”
No, that is your assumption. Booker points out the faulty logic of the warmists:
(1) Almost any hot weather event is said to be “proof” of the AGW theory while extreme cold events are ignored in silence (that is not only lack of logic but hypocrisy).
(2) The “unprecedented” and “…can not be explained by natural causes” slogans of the warmists of course makes it fun to ask what caused the very same phenomenon before the industrial age/CO2 rise?
Booker’s point is the lack of logic and consistency in their weather related “arguing” in favour of the theory. Booker does not have a theory to prove – warmists do…
Mr Lynn says:
July 25, 2010 at 6:27 pm
The photo accompanying Mr. Booker’s article on the web site (full width), captioned “Herding cattle in Chile as South America suffers one of its coldest winters for years,” is really quite impressive—looks almost like a painting:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7908604/Desperate-days-for-the-warmists.html
I don’t know, it looks pretty real to me. Unlike certain really quite impressive warmist propagandist photos that look almost like they’ve been photoshopped.
and some are even yellow on the inside
Mattb says:
July 25, 2010 at 10:20 pm
Dave N (July 25, 2010 at 7:40 pm) says:
Sorry Dave that attributes future increases in warmth to “climate change”, not the current weather event. He is using a current weather event to highlight what the future impacts of climate change will be… he is NOT saying the current weather event is caused by “climate change”.
Matt, you’ve missed Kokorin’s little words “weaken human impact on climate” and added your own “highlight what the future impacts of climate change will be“.
All the evidence says that (a) human impact is at most tiny and even that is questionable, when you’ve really dealt with UHI and station problems, and realized that CO2’s GHG effect is already saturated and compensated by water vapour (b) we don’t know what the climate will be like in the future. Currently it’s cooling overall from the high point of 1998. But it’s been warmer before, in the Medieval Warm Period, even warmer in the Roman Warm Period, and even warmer in the Holocene before that. Oh, (c) humans benefit, overall, from warmer times. And that’s to say nothing of the factions who stand to benefit from scaring everyone. Click my name for fuller discussion of the basic science and what’s been skewed. But first, clear your mind of preconceptions that “all” the official science “must” be right, and prepare to look for yourself and lose your current friends. Tough. But possible. As many here can testify. It all depends on how much you care about truth.
Mattb says:
July 25, 2010 at 10:20 pm
Dave N (July 25, 2010 at 7:40 pm) says:
“Nice try Mattb, but:
“Mr. Kokorin believes that the only way to improve the situation is to weaken human impact on climate, boost economic energy efficiency and reduce environmentally unfriendly emissions”
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear Matt. You read like a warmist. You know only too well that being WWF he was relating this event to ‘climate change’. This is WWF for christ’s sake.
Hmm.. “weaken human impact”… those words don’t even occur in the Booker article now I look closer Lucy.
Don’t create a smokescreen with your links, just address the fact that nowhere in the Booker article does anyone from Russia’s WWF attribute the current heat to climate change. The quote is “in future “such climate abnormalities will only become more frequent””
Honestly, this isn’t that hard. I know such attribution comments have been made by some in the past, but not in this case. Surely it is not difficult to accept that Booker is telling porky-pies on this occasion, without taking that as an affront to your skeptical views on climate change. If you follow this thread and still think I’m wrong… then I must say it does not exactly give me great faith that you are a good judge of the far more complex field of climate change.
More likely, having now read your blog and life story, it appears likely that you’ve never really made a science based call in your life, and you used to blindly follow the warmists without really knowing what was going on, and now you follow skeptics without really knowing what is going on.
OT: Hey, the SST is now officially colder than in 2008:
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
Booker is merely high-lighting the silly ratchet reporting styile. Worst storm in 20 years, worst floods for 50 years, etc etc. The warmists style is to simply claim that individual weather events cannot be attributed to AGW,(eg Met Office Uk) then proceed to point out that the weather exprieed is eactly what they would expect from AGW! I mean to say, pop on to the MO website & look at the forecasts, some areas will experience dryer climate, some area will experience wetter climate, some areas will experience hotter climate, some areas will experience cooler climate. With crystal ball gazing like that anyone could become a millionaire! Of course they never actually point out which areas will expeience what.
apologies for spelling mistakes!
““such climate abnormalities will only become more frequent” means exactly that, nothing more and nothing less.”
Absolutely. Except that it is a rhetorical trick. It is of the same type of rhetorical trick as “when did you last beat your wife?”. The implication being that an event must have happened in the past that is to be concerned about, but in the same sentence moving the focus on to the future. You are left with the feeling that the future event must be linked to the event in the past, but actually no proof that that was intended.
The warmist propaganda machine is well-trained. They know all the tricks of the trade. It is a movement that advances itself purely by propaganda with no evidence at all to support it.
There are many such rhetorical tricks, and they are known as “logical fallaices”. You need to be trained to use them well. Those that use them in their communication with the rest of us, rather than standing on the power of their own argument, betray their need to pollute our thinking and our belief systems with lies and half-truths. They are trained to brainwash us. You might ask by whom and for what purpose.
Here is a fantastic aid to knowing about logical fallacies. Watch out for them. When they are used deliberately, the person using them is trying to distract you from the truth, and the power of your own argument. Politicians and people playing with politics use them all the time:-
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/taxonomy.html
a current comment of mine at
http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.com
and previous musings on the subject
MattB, what is your problem? Are you a “denier” of sorts? 😉
Read this article:
http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/07/18/12667465.html
It is 100% clear that head of WWF Russia attributes the present draught in Russia to AGW. In fact, I will qoute it here: “”I think that the heat we are suffering from now as well as very low temperatures we had this winter, are hydrometeorological tendencies that are equally harmful for us as they both were caused by human impact on weather and greenhouse effect which has grown stronger in the past 30-40 years. Besides, if 15 years ago we registered only 150-200 negative climate alterations, now we are facing 350-400, mainly storms, hurricanes, floods, heavy snowfalls, which are all very harmful. By the way, abnormally high temperature causes so-called heat storms,” said Alexey Kokorin.”
Got it?
Matt says “(in the future) such climate abnormalities will only become more frequent”.
How? I have seen the magic-statistics hockey sticks showing that climate abnormalities are increasing. The 30’s are smoothed out or given a little extra blip, but today’s abnormalities, heat and drought, are nothing like the 30’s. When I ask how, I want to know how “climate change” from CO2 changes the weather to make events like the 30’s more frequent. What I read about the theory of “climate change” from CO2, it will do the opposite by increasing heat at the poles and not much elsewhere.
It was quite something to be in CCCP Leningrad, formerly Stalingrad, just prior to ‘perestroika ‘ in ’89.