Christopher Booker’s Telegraph column used Willis Eschenbach’s recent Open Letter to Nature as the basis for the Sunday column:
Booker writes:
On Friday came the fullest and most expert dissection of the Nature paper so far, published on the Watts Up With That website by Willis Eschenbach, a very experienced computer modeller. His findings are devastating. After detailed analysis of the study’s multiple flaws, he sums up by accusing Nature of “trying to pass off the end-result of a long daisy-chain of specifically selected, untested, unverified, un-investigated computer models as valid, falsifiable, peer-reviewed science”.
Read Booker’s column here
Read Willis’ essay here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/24/nature-magazines-folie-a-deux-part-deux
See also:
The code of Nature: making authors part with their programs
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I think it’s this Eschenbach essay to which Booker refers
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/24/nature-magazines-folie-a-deux-part-deux/
Elections have consequences. So do models used to direct policy and nations.
Interesting using images of New Orleans (Floodplain basin). Of course, it was largely due to poorly placed/maintained levees which failed and, therefore, lead to the flooding in that area. Apparently, it was mostly the poor, lower, end of town which was most affected and no property now can be insured, even if they could afford it, in that area. So many properties, areas and what were communities, are now left to nature.
Also interesting the many stories in the MSM, both in New Zealand and Australia for me at that time, were touting “Katrina” as proof of AGW, and it will get worse. It hasn’t. Sill, sad for the people of the region. And too like Queensland (AU – Tropical cyclone prone zone) and Christchurch (NZ – Earthquake pone zone).
There is a trend there.
Of course you realize, this means war.
-Bugs Bunny
Christopher Booker has provided some further comments at the Bishop’s manse. See http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/2/26/booker-on-insurance.html
There is a ray of hope.
1) If these guys keep playing with their computer models they surely will, according to a warning received by most boys transitioning to manhood, go blind.
2) When they go blind they will be unable to look at their computer screens.
3) Then the game will be over?
Ok, its not a very scientific prediction. They may learn braile 🙂
And, anyway, why not compare like-with-like?
Err, haven’t you linked to the wrong essay by Willis? Surely you meant this one:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/20/nature-unleashes-a-flood-of-bad-science
Dear Moderators,
Willis’ essay was
Nature Magazine’s Folie à Deux, Part Deux
not
“An Open Letter to Bruce Alberts of Science Magazine”
If you can’t argue the science … redefine what science means so you can argue the “science”.
Willis passes to ball to Christopher Booker. Coach Anthony Watts signals a 3 point shot from the sidelines. Booker shoots. SCORE!! 3 points! But wait, Booker was fouled (mouthed) by RC! The independent thinker team of Willis has a chance to make it a 4 point play.
John
I keep seeing Hurricane Katrina being cited an an example of flooding which may or may not, dependant upon who is commenting, be caused by global warming. My understanding is that Katrina was a regular hurricane and that the flooding was a result of a breach in the poorly maintained sea defences.
Either I am mistaken or there is a lot of sloppy journalism out there.
Congrats Willis (and Anthony) – speaking tour in the UK coming up? “Infinite – and beyond!”
Booker’s column is always up to date and tries to include the latest provable climate science. He has written a couple of books, with Dr, Richard North, which are also good.
Once again, an excellent piece by Christopher Booker, which is in the printed edition of the Sunday Telegraph.
I read the ST every Sunday morning with a certain amount of trepidation, for I know Booker’s column is at the end. Very often it is filled with appalling things which often make me very angry, not really what I want on a quiet Sunday morning. He has done incredible work, reporting on the workings of the corrupt, anti-democratic and wasteful European Union and, of course, on the catastrophe of Mann-made global warming. He has also reported extensively on what can only be described as state-sanctioned child kidnapping operated by our police and social services, something that you might expect in Gaddafi’s Libya but not in our own democracy. It’s a national disgrace and I have the utmost respect for Booker.
Of course, we already knew that this study published in Nature is junk science and yet another disgrace for Britain. That graph is worth a hundred computer models (or Playstation models as Monckton would say).
But I didn’t know that two of the co-authors work for Risk Management Solutions, a company that works in insurance. It’s also a company that uses global warming alarmism to boost its profits. With this in mind, there may be a case for financial fraud as well as scientific fraud.
Chris
Of course, let’s not forget the observational evidence of “rotting ice” that global warming explorers, Catlin Arctic Survey, found in 2009.
The annual farcical scientific adventure to find the evidence for global warming in the Arctic is sponsored by …Catlin Group.
“Catlin Group Limited is an international specialty property and casualty insurer and re-insurer, writing more than 30 classes of business. Catlin operates through six underwriting hubs, serving the largest insurance markets around the globe.”
Catlin Group’s mottos is Underwriting Ambition. Maybe all those global warming catastrophists might want to file a claim for their lost credibility.
They’ve got another one coming up soon. http://www.catlin.com/cgl/about_us/arctic_survey_2011/
If you cannot wait to have fun, why not read about the previous expeditions while you’re at WUWT. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/15/top-ten-reasons-why-i-think-catlin-arctic-ice-survey-data-cant-be-trusted/
From a link posted by Christopher Booker at Bishop Hill:-
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000 Nature_DLohmann_0211.pdf
Surely, the only proper course of action is that Nature, or the authors, withraw this horribly flawed paper. It is not a question of being pro or anti CAGW, it is a question of adherence to the scientific method. In this case the question can be answered by anyone with a resonable understanding of science.
If the paper is withdrawn all concerned could walk away with integrity.
Mediterranean will rise by more than half a metre by end of century
By m.p. – Feb 24, 2011 – 6:53 PM
A study by the Spanish Oceanography Institute shows the rate of increase has doubled since the turn of the century
The level of the Mediterranean Sea will rise by up to 60 cms by the end of this century, according to a study carried out by the IEO, the Spanish Oceanography Institute.
The study shows the impact of climate change on the body of water from 1943 until 2008, El Mundo reports.
The level has already increased by 20 cms since the 19th Century, and the study, ‘Climatic change in the Spanish Mediterranean’, has shown that the rate of increase has doubled since the turn of the century and is now, in the 21st Century, at 3mm a year.
The sea is also more saline and its temperature has risen.
Increased salinity comes from lack of rain and from reservoirs and dams which are reducing the flow of fresh river water into the sea.
Sea temperatures of surface waters are rising by around 0.5 degrees a year, with two major contributory effects – the melting of the polar ice caps and contaminant gas emissions in the atmosphere.
http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_29369.shtml
I live in Barcelona about 100 meter above sea level
I think Katrina is a good example – the question is: would we lower the future impact of such hurricanes and avoid “Katrina’s” in the future if we do one of the following:
a) don’t drive SUVs any more, have warm water & electricity only when the wind blows and the sun shines
b) build the dam that was prevented by “save our wetlands” initiative
I just love the distinction made by Pall P. et al between the so called ill-posed question
i.e. “Now look here plebs, you don’t know what you’re talking about” and the politically correct well-posed question
Sophistry such as this should not go unrewarded.
Christopher Booker is the only journalist in the UK as far as I can see who writes a column consistently against the bogus science of global warming. Why he hasn’t got the sack yet for reducing the circulation of the Sunday Telegraph is beyond me.
The Mediterranean is a remnant ocean being crushed by the passage of Africa into Europe. It is tectonically highly active, with rapid rates of uplift and subsidence. Historically the Mediterranean been completely dry or flooded. Sea level in the Mediterranean is driven by geology.
Robert Stevenson says:
February 27, 2011 at 4:33 am
You haven’t read James Delingpole then?
Are you sure that’s what the study said? It sounds very unlikely. Perhaps a decimal point was misplaced.
I don’t know about Booker “reducing the circulation” of the Telegraph.
If I would see his article’s header at the newsstand, I would certainly buy the paper — something I very rarely do.
So, maybe it’s not Booker but the Green Church choir singing one and the same nauseating song all over the Land of Big Brother that “reduces the circulation.”