Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
If the year were 1965 AND this were the Soviet Union AND he was writing in Pravda AND CAGW was required Party Line THEN I would understand Justin Gillis’ latest piece in the New York Times.
Justin Gillis, New York Times’ Environmental journalist, has been at it again attempting to shore up the Great Global Warming cause in his latest “opinion column” somehow erroneously placed in the Science News section of the International New York Times online at:
I’d like to really lay into Mr. Gillis for this bit of party-line propaganda, but he says so little that it would be difficult to do so.
He correctly points out that one cold winter does not mean that the world has not warmed up since the Little Ice Age — which is mostly what all those graphs that the NY Times used to put in Mr. Gillis’ articles about Global Warming would show, rising temperatures since 1850 or so. Neither Mr. Gillis nor the NY Times’ editors ever seemed inclined to mark the graphs showing the period from about 1975-2000 as being the part in which the IPCC believes the AGW signal began to be seen.
All readers here know why Justin Gillis no longer includes global temperature graphs in his articles. They tell a different story than his words — the world is a little warmer than it was during the Little Ice Age – thank God or your Lucky Stars — opinions vary – but not quite as warm as the Medieval Warm Period.
He points out as well that Alaska, which most people think of as the cold part of America, has been warmer lately, and that California – the state of my birth and childhood — has been having yet another drought — those in my lifetime alone being 1958-59, 1961, 1977, 1986-91, 2001-02, 2006-07.
Here’s Mr. Gillis’ winning hard-science punch line:
“Though the case is as yet unproven, a handful of scientists think the 50-degree temperatures in London and the frigid weather in Minneapolis might be a consequence of climate change.”
Wait for it now…it gets better:
“Fortunately, we are not stuck with human perception alone. Nowadays we have sophisticated thermometers scattered all over the place. On land, aboard boats, attached to satellites, floating in the ocean — wherever we put them, they are telling us a pretty consistent story.
No matter how cold it got in Wisconsin last week, the world really is warming up.”
I’m sorry, but I’ve just got to wonder who he thinks pops out and reads the thermometers “attached to satellites” and what temperature readings they get out there in space. Maybe Josh could do a cartoon of Gillis checking one for us.
The link on “warming up” goes to the three-year out-of-date — up to 2011– BEST Results paper (published in the very first issue of the journal GIGS: An Overview). You have to be pretty sharp to see it, with the way the material is presented, but, of course, the paper confirms the then-so-far 14-year hiatus in Global Warming.
The main point is: Why is Justin Gillis writing such an article in the NY Times? There is no news in it. His concluding sentence is blatantly incorrect. It contains little journalistic effort, other than finding some scientist that will say something warmish without mentioning the hiatus or the pause. He couldn’t mention the IPCC because they have admitted the pause and can’t explain it, yet he presses on in spite of them. The NY Times editors have been fairly calm on the CAGW issue lately, so it is unlikely they are pressuring him to write such tripe, in fact, they recently closed the Environmental Desk altogether. The NY Times is one of the world’s “newspapers of record” and should be above this sort of sloppiness.
[If there are any secret sympathizers on staff at the Times, weigh in in the comments. The moderators here at WUWT know how to reach me privately, I am intensely curious as to why and how such a piece could be published.]
MODERATION NOTE: I will reply to appropriate comments on journalism, the NY Times, propaganda and its uses in modern society, and the sloppy weather we are having in Florida this week.
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All the Stalinists have not left the NYTs:
http://reason.com/blog/2014/02/11/stalin-apologists-lingered-on-at-the-new
A sophisticated thermometer on a satellite? Tell me more! Gives a whole new meaning to remote sensing…
Such a temperature fluctuations in the stratosphere predict the long winter.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/10mb9065.gif
A journalist of the NY Times Magazine who wrote a book on energy policy that neglected nuclear according to Amazon.com reviews has a very broad readership as the main climate alarmist on the BoingBoing.net blog:
“Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy.”
http://boingboing.net/author/maggie_koerth_baker
The link lists her blog articles there too.
Activists are fond of getting skeptics banned there since they are easily outnumbered with complaints. Site cofounder and 3D printing hype guru Cory Doctorow enjoys bashing skeptics too by equating them to young Earth creationists. I hope skeptics here take more note of this aging youth culture crowd who still command the attention of the urban tech demographic who have failed to delve into the Gorey details of climate alarm. There are a handful of climate bullies in their comments, rather unsophisticated ones, full of condescension over substance.
– Michaël Crichton, 2003. Aliens Cause Global Warming
I predict the thermometer on the satellite will read something around 2 or 3 Kelvin. You know, unless they forgot the screen or put in in front of the satellite exhaust pipe….Maybe with all the junk up there we have to correct for the UHI effect as well… hmmmm….
Shore up, not ashore up!
In the UK, the Met Office & BBC have been desperately trying to hint that our recent wet &windy weather, is more than slightly, probably. maybe, consistent with Global Warming! Whilst pointing out there’s no clear evidence either way, really.
We’re having sloppy weather? I hadn’t noticed.
You mean because it’s been rather rainy for the dry season, I guess. I don’t know about this week, where I am. This week hasn’t been that wet, but recent weeks have been.
Slightly off topic, but still to do with journalism, James Delingpole’s excellent Daily Telegraph blog has sadly come to an end. Maybe someone already posted about this yesterday. A true anti-AGW campaigner who will be sorly missed.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100259449/farewell-knights-of-delingpole-and-thank-you-trolls/#disqus_thread
A certain weariness has crept into the Warmist rhetoric.
Not that long ago, at the turn of the century, they out did one another with ever bolder predictions of catastrophe and their audiences hung on every fatal proclamation, longing for doom…addicted to that great Millenarian event that would – no, that MUST, result in the transformation of the world.
Oh how times have changed, the audience has moved on, the auditorium is empty now and full of shadows.
But every now and then on dark and stormy nights you can hear hear a faint ghostly echo of those heady days…garbled, half lost in the static….
Cue Justin Gillis.
Science is not about pictures, it is about propositions structured by logic.
@ur momisugly Adam Gallon,
They always try but have been imho rather reticent about just coming out & saying it, almost like the elephant in the room. The problem they have is when they trot out “records”, you know the good old, “worst for 20/50/75/100 years” just pick the appropriate number! Although their immense arrogance makes them look down upon everyone else in the view that we can’t work it out that it’e happened before! Their just of language is silly too. Weather presenter Ms Powel I think it was, when asked to explain the inclement weather by the lunchtime news reader only the other day, (emphasis mine) said “It’s ALL to do with the Jet-Stream, we ALL know about the Jet-Stream, BUT for those who don’t, it’s a fast flowing ribbon of air at high altitude……….”! Even they don’t think about the language they use at times. It’s just plain stupid! Of course the Wet Office play the politics game, when confronted with a direct question from the usual on message biased if not technically ignorant media, they seem to play the “plausible deniability” card, e.g. “No single weather event can be attributed to Climate Change, but yes this is the sort of event that we expect to see more of in the future!”. The good old “No it isn’t but yes it is” message! Lenin & Goebells would be oh so proud of their progeny, & more than a little jealous of the total control of language! Yes our weather is the result of CLIMATE CHANGE, but there appears no credible evidence that Human’s are responsible for it! We have to all intense & purposes, an august body of self-appointed experts, making pronouncements about weather & climate, with no formal secondary independent review system, that ignores contrary evidence opposing their singular stance! Ip se dixit?
For those of us illiterate armchair scientists, I had to look up what 2-3 Kelvin actually was in Celsius and Fahrenheit as stated it would be the temperature in space.
1 Kelvin is Minus – 272.15 Celsius and minus 457.87 Fahrenheit. I think that might be pretty damn cold as no human would survive that without artificial heating assistance.
Whats unusual about 50 degree temperatures in London in February?
Apart from the usual slap downs we can use it would be a good idea for Gillis to contact NASA with regard to the concerns they and the Solar Physicists have about the Sun. Magnetic field issues, polarity changes not as expected and a drop in Sunspots….scary stuff. It’s the first stage of real Climate Change and its scary stuff.
The resident Geographer, Rob Gell, who writes for the ABC Environmental web site is Justin Gillis evil twin: http://pindanpost.com/2014/02/12/teacher-condemned-to-repeating-history/
It’s an epidemic, Tasmanian Peter Boyer jumps the shark: http://pindanpost.com/2014/02/13/another-illiterate-shyster-jumps-the-shark/ Via Andrew Bolt … we’re all doomed
Adam Gallon says @ur momisugly February 13, 2014 at 12:47 am
Adam, I think, maybe, that probably you’re right – well, 50/50, say. 🙂 Radio 4 TODAY prog was at it again this morning trying to ‘debate’ whether CC was responsible for all the flooding in the UK. As the ‘debate’ started out with an initial caveat of “probably (it is CC)” what followed was all BS.
“Though the case is as yet unproven, a handful of scientists think the 50-degree temperatures in London and the frigid weather in Minneapolis might be a consequence of climate change.”
Or it COULD be the consequence of natural variability!
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/200YearsofTemperatureSatelliteThermometerandProxy_zpsd17a97c0.gif
I gave up on the NYT long before CAWG hit the scene. I’m surprised anyone is surprised at the nonsense they publish considering it’s been going on for decades and on a laundry list of subjects.
The right to stupidity is absolute in a free society. In China “The Great Leap Forward” is still hotly debated at the highest levels. Altough its critics have a 40 year record of economic achievement to point to the debate continues.
I agree with others who have posted that there will not be a moment of surrender in the present struggle. To many personal and institutional reputations have been put on the line for that. Doing the right thing is its own reward and often that’s the only reward. Seeing the liked of Gillis off is a bonus.
A nice article – particularly as I just commented about the “science advisers” in the UK government having very much the communist role of “enforcing the party line”.
But the key to your article is here: “in fact, they recently closed the Environmental Desk altogether.” It is happening all over the place and not just on in the Environment as recently I found out the Glasgow Herald would not publish any of our material – because it had just got rid of its only science correspondent.
In the UK two papers specialised in promoting the global warming scare: the Independent (closing) and the Guardian (will close at present rate of decline within a few years).
The more a paper specialises in “global warming”, environment and even “science”, … the faster they are going to the wall.
And why? Because people are now reading articles like yours in the CNM (citizen news media) on the internet and not articles like there’s in the DNM (Dinosaur news media).
These journalists are on the verge of extinction! Soon we will have to open special game reserves for them.
ren says:
February 13, 2014 at 12:25 am
Such a temperature fluctuations in the stratosphere predict the long winter.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/10mb9065.gif
========================
As did the Farmers Almanac.
“Whats unusual about 50 degree temperatures in London in February?”
Nothing. From my childhood in London it was just as likely to be 50 degrees in February as in January, June or October. Northern Europe weather in a small maritime nation is very unpredictable (and always was). Though I must say British weather changed when the brits joined the EU but now seems to be back where it was in the fifties Shades ot the winter of ’47!!!.
As for CAGW; seems to be slowly passing away. The new crisis slowly emerging from the wings is “the sixth extinction” – attributed of course to CO2……
“Though the case is as yet unproven, a handful of scientists think the 50-degree temperatures in London and the frigid weather in Minneapolis might be a consequence of climate change.”
A ‘handful’? Not 97%? Is the number of Scientists that fit in your hand akin to the number of Angels that can dance on the head of a pin?