Via email press release:
A new paper at SPPI looks at the history of extreme weather events.
The on-going claims of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming have been ramped up again lately because of the opportunities presented by the heat wave in Russia and the floods in Pakistan, which are also being claimed as attributable to anthropogenic CO2. If the amount spent on global warming were to be diverted to mitigating and preventing the worst effects of natural disasters, then the desperate plight of the people of Pakistan would be relieved more quickly.
The paper can be downloaded here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/extreme_weather_extreme_claims.html
The Author, Dennis Ambler, concludes:
Extreme Weather – The Blame Game
The Aztecs had sophisticated irrigation systems and “astrolonomical” observatories, (apparently a mix of astrology and astronomy), to attempt to predict the weather and reservoirs. But the unseasonal frosts and cold, followed by severe, prolonged drought, may have taken them to the brink of collapse. Once the climate became more benign again, they praised their gods with human sacrifice.
“When rainfall and agriculture had resumed, the Aztecs responded by massively increasing the number of human sacrifices to their rain god Tlaloc. It is thought that hundreds of thousands of people were sacrificed.”
In the Little Ice Age, witchcraft was blamed for the devastating climate:
Fagan’s The Little Ice Age (Basic Books, 2000):
“Witchcraft accusations soared, as people accused their neighbors of fabricating bad weather…. Sixty-three women were burned to death as witches in the small town of Wisensteig in Germany in 1563 at a time of intense debate over the authority of God over the weather.”
“Almost invariably, a frenzy of prosecutions coincided with the coldest and most difficult years of the Little Ice Age, when people demanded the eradication of the witches they held responsible for their misfortunes.”
These days we don’t blame witchcraft for the weather, instead we blame it on our emissions of carbon dioxide, describing it as a pollutant that must be controlled by Government taxes and vilifying anyone who dares to challenge the orthodoxy.
We ignore thousands of years of climate evidence, in favour of an agenda based upon a century and a half of sometimes distorted and often-disputed temperature records, coming out of a known Little Ice Age and we call it “Science”.
Have we really left the Dark Ages behind?
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richard telford says:
September 30, 2010 at 2:09 am
Comparing science with burning witches and human sacrifice? This must mark a new high point in this site’s continued vilification of science and scientists. I know Watts didn’t write this vile slur, but by repeating it without comment, he shares some responsibility for it.
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Sis, alarmism and alarmists does not equate to science and scientists. If you were to read the entire PDF, you’d probably see through the hyperbole of “unprecedented climatic events”. Or, you can choose to be part of the modern witchcraft prosecuting movement. The choice is yours, but days for pretending the alarmism is science is long past.
I remember the fifties pretty well. When we had odd weather, the cause was clear- atomic bomb testing. People generally like things to stay the same. Change makes them uneasy.
Storms of a severe nature didn’t exist before there were movie cameras. Same way temps before satellites couldn’t have been warm.
If we sacrificed Gore, Mann, Hansen, Jones, Romm, Holdren, Monbiot, Black and a few others then climate variations may just be accepted as the norm.
richard telford says:
September 30, 2010 at 2:09 am
Comparing science with burning witches and human sacrifice? This must mark a new high point in this site’s continued vilification of science and scientists. I know Watts didn’t write this vile slur, but by repeating it without comment, he shares some responsibility for it.
No Richard, please quit with the disingenuous comments. No one has compared, or is comparing, “science” to burning witches and human sacrifice. We are comparing the STATE of so-called “climate science” to the burning of witches and human sacrifice. Is that really so hard to get? Is it so hard to understand that both are based on anti-scientific bulls**t?
“Vile Slur” my arse. You want slurs, you just listen to the crap that comes out of the mouths of the likes of Mann and Jones et al. You want slurs, just look at the damned Hockey Schtick and compare it with temp reconstructions with the tree-ring proxies taken out of the picture. You want slurs, read emails from crooked scientists using tricks to hide declines, destroying data and conspiring to get journal editors sacked. Or of course you could just continue to turn a blind eye to that behaviour and pretend that three “enquiries” have truly exonerated them.
“Have disaster losses increased due to anthropogenic climate change?”
It’s the ‘shark-bite’ syndrome: the number of reported shark attacks seems to rise after a shark-related death. Journalists need to be aware this bias (if they care) and try to be more objective.
Yes, easier said than done.
“John Marshall says:
September 30, 2010 at 2:20 am
Human memory is short and selective. More alarmist ‘research’ is reported every day. the latest is the loss of 20% of all plant species due to habitat loss. ”
Interesting, and true. Here in Australia, I listened to a news article about extinct species. Apparently, some ~120 species (Plants, animals etc etc) recorded to be extinct in the past, have, magically, been found alive in a recent report!!!
I mean, this change is just too changeable. Can we not install a tax to re-instate some stability?
michel says:
September 30, 2010 at 4:07 am
Brilliantly put! None of us should lose sight of the fact that scepticism is a vital tool for science and the truth. If a hypothesis can stand a good kicking it’s likely to be a good hypothesis. If it requires the efforts of a massive political / quasi religious movement resorting to a propaganda war to prop it up, it is likely there is something wrong with it.
A few comments to add, which I posted on another website, which relates to climate science and history.
Most of the history of the world has been about exploiting uncertainties for power. Nations go to war based on it. Religions and ideologies arise from the fear of it, and totalitarian regimes attempt to wipe it from the face of the earth.
Exploiting uncertanties in climate is nothing new to the 20-21st centuries. Most of the ancient religions stumbled on the idea that you can exploit the fear and uncertainties regarding projected climate/weather (floods, droughts etc) for power.
Why were humans were ever sacrified to a Sun God?. It is essentially about replacing uncertainty of future climate with a false certainty about future climate, whilst at the same time eliminating dissent -either real dissedents or simply ‘potential’ dissedents- by a formalised ritual tradition.
Sound too extreme? Thousands of people per year were sacrificed in Central and South America (notably-in areas prone to climate swings and El Nino-La Nina) to serve a political structure based on fear and uncertainty surrounding climate. Spanish conquistadors found 100’s of thousands of skulls sacrificed simply for the sake of exploiting fear of climate and climate projections, and to eliminate dissent, and doubt, of a political system built on false climate certainties.
In the common case of sacrificing young female virgins, this also served the purposes of male patriarchy, but it was ultimately and largely for reasons of personal and class-based power. Nothing more.
Climate scientists are not going to fool skeptics with this possible recent revival of an old-age trick-denying and using uncertainty in the Earth’s climate and weather as a means to social control.
One should never ‘cast aside’ one’s ‘doubt of climate science’; such is the road to ideology, blind faith, and false certainty as a means to social power and control. The Aztecs and Mayans discovered it, and now some 21st century ‘scientists’ have discovered it.
If you think this view is extreme, take a look at human history, or ask anyone who has actually lived under a totalitarian regime. They don’t take their scepticism lightly.
Jacob Bronowksi was very clear in his conclusions about human history in his infamous ‘Ascent of Man’ series and book; if history teaches us anything, its that people should never be too sure of themselves.
In my study of history, it is always power and fortune involved, no matter how “primitive” the belief system. “Follow the money” is our more modern version of follow the elites, usually the battle between different groups of elites as the pickin’s get slimmer, and slimmer, and slimmer. No different with AGW. Here it is the new global money and political powers versus the Post-WWII groups who developed affluence and advocated a modicum of democracy and the scientific method. Of course the new global powers includes the newly enriched nemeses of the affluent P-WWII groups (communism and islam).
I used to follow the evolutionary game called tic-tac-toe. No one could beat the “cooperative” perspective — always cooperate until wronged, then punish, then return to cooperation. Exclude those who refuse to cooperate. Strategy after strategy failed to stop the cooperators…..until….alliances of multiple anti-coooperating entities viciously targeted the cooperaters. The cooperaters lost. I think we need a heads-up along many fronts. Non-cooperaters will not quit; they must be vanquished.
Thanks to Anthony, Dennis Ambler, and SPPI. Extreme weather, extreme anything, is simply the Earth rearranging herself, like she has done for a few billion years. We are travelers on chaos. Lucky when we get a smooth ride. We need to work like never before to keep it as smooth (and cooperative) as humanly possible.
Steven Schuman says:
September 30, 2010 at 5:07 am
I remember the fifties pretty well. When we had odd weather, the cause was clear- atomic bomb testing. People generally like things to stay the same. Change makes them uneasy.”
Yes, and I remember in the early 70’s my grandmother was convinced that the extreme and odd weather was due to NASA punching holes in the atmosphere with rocket launches.
One thing you can draw from this article (and the history of the world) is that climate changes; always has and always will. Most of us who believe that increasing CO2 will not create a climate crisis, recognize that the current changes are predominantly natural. Those who believe that the current changes are all man-made, must start with the assumption that natural climate is ‘stable’.
The real ‘climate change deniers’ are those who believe in near stability of the natural climate and that all current climate change must be man-made. AGW crisis skeptics are anything but climate change deniers.
I think it is a symptom of a personality disorder to project ones own problems onto those who confront you.
OT but NH ice now passing 2005 levels. the recovery is one of the fastest´s ever?
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
With SST falling etc I think we can safely now surmise that AGW will be buried 2011
If the establishemnt science was never challenged, we’d still be living in caves, hitting our loved ones over the head with our clubs, & talking in grunts! We’d still be putting leeches on our bodies to cure a whole bunch of ills. We’d still be denying heavier that air flight. We’d make no more scientific discoveries after the end of the 19th C. We’d have no theory of relativity. We’d never have invented penecillin. We’d know nothing of DNA. We’d still be claiming stomach ulcers were caused by eating too much spicey food & being overstressed. The list is endless becasue of challenges to establishment science!
Somewhat OT – BBC mildish propagandist science programme “Bang Goes the Theory” last night told the story of Earths seasons & its axial tilt. It stated as a fact, that a sister planet of Earths collided with it forming the moon & causing the Earth’s tilt! Is this established fact or just another theory? Anyone?
richard telford says:
September 30, 2010 at 2:09 am
Comparing science with burning witches and human sacrifice?
I think the system ate my last post.
*********************
By letting the crazies speak for them the true scientists have earned the distrust of the sane people.
Al Gore goes to the US congress and demands reparations for people freezing to death in Peru that is crazy. People say Al isn’t a scientist and they are right but the true scientists by silence give consent to his nonsense.
All extreme weather events become “weirding” weather and thus caused by CO2. If that isn’t witchcraft what is it ? By their spinelessness the true scientists allow the crazies to speak for them. Until they get a voice of reason I will continue to distrust them.
Al Gore goes to the US congress and demands reparations for people freezing to death in Peru that is crazy. People say Al isn’t a scientist and they are right but the true scientists by silence give consent to his nonsense.
All extreme weather events become “weirding” weather and thus caused by CO2. If that isn’t witchcraft what is it ? By their spinelessness the true scientists allow the crazies to speak for them. Until they get a voice of reason I will continue to distrust them.
By letting the crazies speak for them the true scientists have earned the distrust of the sane people.
Extreme events are usually caused by blocking events – prolonged flow of warm, cold, dry or wet air masses into one region. NOAA keeps a record of blocking since 1948, but alas, there is no tendency:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/csi/moscow2010/images/hovm_days_obs.jul-aug.jpg
Atmospheric blocking happens regardless whether it is summer or winter, cold or warm, so several tenths of degree higher global average can not have any effect; otherwise, summers with high average temperature would be full of extremes, and winters with no extremes at all, which is not the case. Recent cold winter in South America was also caused by blocking, allowing prolonged ingress of cold Antarctic air deep into the continent, and global warming can be hardly blamed, since it happened during the winter.
The simple way to analyze alleged rise of extremes in given area is to observe the changes in standard deviation in daily precipitation or temperature. More extremes would lead to rise of their SD. I tested the hypothesis for Hurbanovo meteorological station (Slovakia) with daily data available via the KNMI website since 1950.
Daily standard deviation for temperature per decade:
http://i54.tinypic.com/2m45478.jpg
Daily standard deviation for precipitation per decade:
http://i55.tinypic.com/2m7dyth.jpg
There is no trend in standard deviation, e.g. alleged bigger fluctuations in temperature/precipitation are not happening.
We have had a rather rainy year so far, total precipitation already reached average annual limit. Local climatologists are torn between two doom predictions, one saying that global warming will turn our country (Central Europe) to savanna soon, and at the same time, that warming will mean more rain. It somehow does not matter, that these two theories contradict themselves. But again, there is no relation between our summer temperatures and precipitation:
http://www.shmu.sk/File/ExtraFiles/KMIS/clanky/Hurbanovo_T_R_korelacia.png
(1880-2010 correlation between summer temp. and precip. for Hurbanovo station)
“We ignore thousands of years of climate evidence”
So I’m guessing he hasn’t seen any Global temperature reconstructions.
I think we need to amend George Santana’s famous aphorism to: “Those that fail to remember their past and understand it, are doomed to repeat it.” Me, I am leaving the office in a few minutes to go and visit some ±500 my old limestone outcrops, that are contain huge fossil assemblages. I need to remember.
Bruce Cobb,
—Cherry picking part of a sentence, and attacking it as a straw man? Classy.
Here’s the entire sentence:
“We ignore thousands of years of climate evidence, in favour of an agenda based upon a century and a half of sometimes distorted and often-disputed temperature records, coming out of a known Little Ice Age and we call it “Science”.”—-
What? Classy? How is stating the whole sentence change that it is an incorrect look at the reasons for the increased temperature anomaly over the past 30-40 years? The point being that looking at recent temperature rise and saying that we are “recovering” or “coming out” of the LIA has no scientific backing whatsoever. It is still a tag line no matter what sentence you place it in.
—-It has to do with the temperature records (which have been skewed, by the way), and in particular, the “hockey stick”, —-
We are talking about blaming the LIA for “recovery” for recent warming. Nothing to do with hockey sticks.
—-which not only conveniently erases the MWP, —-
Then why is it that every reconstruction has a MWP in it? Just because it is not as pronounced as you think it should be (I assume based on proxies I don’t know about) that doesn’t mean it was “erased”. All the reconstructions I’ve seen over the last 5 years are in agreement with each other.
Maybe you want to read the NAS conclusion. And I know what the prevailing thoughts are here on the “hockey stick” No need to fill me on the evil scientists and their incessant need to steal tax money by getting grants to research the climate change that isn’t happening, that is caused by the sun, and that non-problem of climate change that isn’t happening and is caused by the sun should be fixed by the free market.
—-conveniently shows the ramp up of temperatures since when?—-
As are the temperature reconstructions of the last 30 years in agreement, including Dr. Spencer’s. The “ramp up” likely due to the fact that you are looking at charts that show 1000-2000 year intervals. The proxies do not show the same increase as the instrumental record. That is what is different.
stephan says:
September 30, 2010 at 6:53 am
“OT but NH ice now passing 2005 levels. the recovery is one of the fastests ever?
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
With SST falling etc I think we can safely now surmise that AGW will be buried 2011″
I’m sure we’ll see a press release from NSIDC about this in 3…2…1…[cue crickets chirping].
Or…we’ll now start seeing stories on how ALL skiing will be gone in 3 years due to global warming unless we all cut our energy use by 95% (government labs and academia excluded, of course).
As the global temperature stubbornly fails to keep up with “Hockey Stick” projections then a new scare tactic is required.
Blame any unusual weather event in AGW.
The Pakistan Floods and Russian heat wave were caused by a blocked jet stream in the stratosphere.
No credible scientist has dared to link these events to increased CO2
However a quick blame game and move on to next scare story seems to pass for so called “climate science”/
Agree with those who see the non-development agenda of the greens as
a way of population control
As I have said- the gnawing fear of Greenies is healthy, happy dark-skinned people…
Chris in Queensland,
“Humans, the slowest learners on the planet.”
Would you please point to any organism on the planet that has learned anything??
kuhnkat says:
September 30, 2010 at 8:30 am
Would you please point to any organism on the planet that has learned anything??
Actually, octopi are pretty smart at figuring things out. Bonobo apes can teach each other new tricks, according to studies. Oh, and housecats have figured out how to be pampered in return for not doing much of anything at all. 🙂