An old tale tells that swindlers sold a gullible emperor thin air, under the guise it were a suit of clothes invisible only to the profoundly stupid. None dared publicly doubt these authorities on anthropogenic wardrobe, fearing to appear dull as the veritable blade of a blunt hockey stick.
Finally it took a lowly, uncompromised child to state the obvious: the emperor was naked, exposed, commando; like the centerfold in a peer reviewed skin magazine for mole rats.
Perhaps the common sense of any observant child is exactly what the fawning entourage of global warming pretenders needs. Let’s give it a try.
Swallowed up by sea levels?
The earliest scare was that melting ice is inundating land masses, that a snorkel will soon become essential day wear–in addition to its traditional role as perhaps the most absurd sounding word in the English language. But here’s common sense:
factoid: sea levels are rising at a whopping 3mm per year
…if that, after data jiggering where they add an “isostatic adjustment,” meaning that the land is also rising, offsetting much of that staggering 3mm. Consider that 3mm is as small as the tiniest visible ripple on the ocean, less than the thickness of two pennies, this on seas heaving meters by the moment, bulging erratically here and there according to thermal, gravitational, wind and dynamic forces, evaporating, receiving rain and runoff. Seriously, who is going to measure that Protean target, somehow average it all, and tell you with a straight face they know beyond the margin of error it is rising 0.0576923076923077mm per week (okay, call it an invisible .06mm)?
The fact is no inhabited islands have been deluged by sea level. Not nearly. The world is still safe for gaudy Hawaiian shirts and tacky dashboard hula girls. Rates of sea level increase do not appear to be accelerating by most accounts, in fact in the recent past they even have shown decline. Sea level rises over the last few decades add up to a paltry few inches. So when the climate emperor tells you that rising sea levels contribute massively to flooding after the storm du jour, use some common sense.
Roasted by global warming?
Factoid: surface air temperatures are rising at a whopping 0 degrees per year, for now
…and have been for at least 13 years, according to the average of 5 major monthly datasets, with no lower-troposphere warming for over 17 years according to the RSS Global Mean. The climate fright industry had predicted runaway temperatures encompassing centuries’ worth of terrestrial warming in those years, but the observed result was NO warming, for nearly a generation. Let’s call this the Alarming Non-Crisis of Generation zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
A broken clock is right twice a day, but not the climate emperor’s Rolex. The sky just did not fall on queue. When observation refutes theory, that theory is discredited–but not in the political world of climate science: the rule is, when disgraced, re-double your unfalsifiable claims of future doom, ask for more taxpayer money, rinse and repeat.
A theory predicting everything predicts nothing
According to the theory of catastrophic climate change you might expect to see any or all of the following:
- Warm places getting warmer
- Warm places getting colder
- Cold places getting warmer
- Cold places getting colder
- Dry places getting drier
- Dry places getting wetter
- Wet places getting dryer
- Wet places getting wetter
- Unchanged places getting unchanged-er
Nearly everything is proof of the magic theory, there’s even a list. Heads they win, clichés, you lose. In addition, this “settled science” offers dozens of sometimes contradictory models which spit out a ridiculously broad range of predictions encompassing nearly every outcome. Common sense: if the undeniable, irrefutable, hard science is “settled” why isn’t there just one precise model?
Furthermore, when their predictions don’t come true, like the prediction of more frequent hurricanes and tornadoes after Katrina, they simply find some way of claiming it really was explained by the theory all along. Another gambit is to place predictions so far into the future as to be unfalsifiable until such time as the climate prophesier is either long in his/her grave, or at a minimum extremely elderly, off drooling somewhere in a rest home instead of on the job. According to the infallible theory of anthropogenic global tautology, everything is proof of the theory, either now, or until such time as virtually forever happens.
On the subject of forever, even 100 years is short in climate-scale time. While temperature might not be rocketing ahead at an exponential rate, technology certainly is. Some, like brainy wizard Ray Kurzweil, say that if well documented trends continue, in as little as 35 years, technology will be so advanced as to render the future unrecognizable. Even now we see the cost curves of alternative energy and storage technologies plunging to soon devastate fossil fuels.
Common sense: who will be burning dinosaur fossil fuels for energy in just 100 years? The stone age did not end for lack of stones.
To get mildly technical, physics tells us the globe should heat about 1°C for each new doubling of CO2 (ignoring other negative and positive forcings). At the current nearly linear increase in CO2, that doubling would take nearly 200 years: by then man will have evolved into Homo GeorgeJetson, the unrecognizably futuristic man.
Warming theorists generally accept this 1°C baseline, but fret that the tiny warming will cause a runaway cascade of water vapor that will steam clean the planet, any three rooms and a hallway or two rooms and stairs, at a minimum.
Common sense: on a planet covered 70% in water, if runaway water vapor warming were likely or easy, wouldn’t we all be cooked medium rare by now?
But evil “deniers” are all paid oil company shills
While refreshing to hear the honest possibility that climate researchers and analysts (on both sides) just might be influenced by whom pays the piper, here’s a bit of irony:
“The Climate Research Unit (CRU) in the UK was set up in 1971 with funding from Shell and BP as is described in the book: “The history of the University of East Anglia, Norwich; Page 285)” By Michael Sanderson. The CRU was still being funded in 2008 by Shell, BP, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and UK Nirex LTD (the nuclear waste people in the UK)”
And do you remember “Kenny Boy” Lay, and the fraudulent corporate carbon monger Enron? Well, Enron was a major lobbyist for the original Kyoto climate treaty. Kenny Boy is likely salivating in his grave at realization of his dream of a carbon derivatives market.
The dirty secret is that carbon lobbyists help write environmental legislation and energy policy. If played their way, fossil companies stand to hold all of the chips in the carbon trading casino, squeeze out competition, maintain centralized near monopolies, perhaps even get paid not to drill at some point.
Common sense: With their mega $billions, wouldn’t fossil companies be able hire an army of pseudo-scientists to rival the current army of the imperial climate clothiers, to co-opt easily bought off politicians, universities, broadcast media and publications?
Comforting the afflicted
The climate change gang will tell you that yes, droughts, floods, storms have always happened, but now there are statistically more extreme weather events than ever.
Well, things definitely are more like they are now than they ever were before. But how different?
According to Bayesian probability, you have to toss a coin thousands of times to determine with mediocre certainty that the coin is fair (fair, as compared to a slightly biased coin). How many times must we roll the weather dice before we call the outcome unusual? How are we to find the AGW climate catastrophe signal in the normal climate variation noise? Exactly where is that Waldo, anyway? And if it’s so freaking warm, why the turtleneck sweater and ski cap?
Here is a common sense modest proposal: offer to sell global warming insurance to interested parties for a mere $300 per month. In the event one is swallowed up by rising sea levels, roasted by 1°C temperature increase, or damaged by some weather event provable to be impossible via natural variation, the insurer will pay off. What a great deal! Certainly those panicked by the current, real, undeniable, happening now catastrophe will flock to put their money where their paranoia is. How much this generous offer will comfort the afflicted is incalculable, even using proxy data and perverse statistical contortions.
Picking Cherries
In fairness, a properly-cherry picked time frame can display most any warming or cooling trend you want to demonstrate. But as the small print reads, “Past performance is no indication of future gains.” As any stock trader weeping on a hi-rise ledge can tell you, fresh-picked trends and computer models are not always reliable predictors.
Some of the cherry pickers have the luxury of post-hoc adjusting, value-adding, heat islanding, interpolating, outlier-eliminating, proxy-shopping the data. Others have to sift through the leftover pits. In any event, complaints about “cherry picking” by all parties are reasonable within common sense.
Doom and Gloom
Perhaps the fact that global harvests of wheat, rice and corn have tripled or quintupled since 1960 in the face of all of this terrible warming teaches us a dire lesson. Or maybe the fact that the population has swelled to 7 billion thriving humans, mostly in the warmer tropical latitudes, best expresses the current hopeless doom. Then again, according to the NCPA “tropical disease rates are decreasing on average globally, and at an even higher rate in developing countries,” clearly this is the calamity of which the wise speak. No, it is definitely, as CSIRO reports, that CO2 fertilization correlates with an 11 per cent increase in greening foliage across the world’s deserts that spells doom.
Whatever, doom is certainly upon us. The earth has a fever. The earth has a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell! And by cowbell, of course we mean $trillions in carbon derivatives going to Wall St., in taxes going to government, in gravy going to climate cronies.
Common sense: When science gets tainted with politics, follow the money and power.
Please remove that awful image. I shall send you the bill for my PTSD treatment!!
I’m sorry, Watts, but you forgot to hide the facts behind a wall of angry screams and, consequently, everything you say must be false.
It’s a pleasing coincidence that the emperor analogy lends itself perfectly to the natural correlation between cooler weather and penis shrinkage.
“ICPP!”
rogerknights says: April 4, 2014 at 12:24 am
“ICPP!”
________________________
ROFL – the artist needs to add it 😉
Ralph
Rogerknights for President
Or Emperor
Fully dressed please
“The sky just did not fall on queue.”
Must have been queuing under shelter.
“An old tale …”
You couldn’t give credit to Andersen?
But I’m glad you pointed out that some big business is involved in this scam.
Typo: “The sky just did not fall on queue” Should be .”..fall on cue”
Sorry, it was an excellent post of course – I just can’t stop my pedantic proof-reading brain!
reality will win out in time:
3 April: Florida Current: Bruce Ritchie: House, Senate pass memorials supporting coal, raising concerns about federal regulations
HB 1027 says that carbon regulations for existing coal-fired plans could threaten the affordability and reliability of Florida’s electricity supplies.
The memorial passed the House Local & State Affairs Committee by a 10-6 vote along party lines except for Rep. Daphne Campbell, the ranking Democrat from Miami, joining Republicans in support…
But Rep. John Wood, R-Winter Haven and HB 1027 sponsor, said coal burning provides affordable electricity and the effects are minimal.
“God gave us this resource (coal),” Wood said. “Until we have better technology at some point in the future we need to use it to keep our economy going.”…
Wood said solar and wind can’t produce the energy that is needed.
“For it to do it we would live in a world of windmills and solar panels,” he said. “And I don’t think the American people need that.”
HB 1027 has one more committee stop.
A similar Senate memorial, SB 1174, passed the Senate Committee on Communications, Energy and Public Utilities by a 9-0 vote on Tuesday. Sen. Audrey Gibson, D-Jacksonville and bill sponsor, said the EPA approach on regulations doesn’t take into account the cost to households across the state…
http://www.thefloridacurrent.com/article.cfm?id=37089254
How can anyone reasonable argue with any of that, unless of course you are I) a beneficiary of the climate gravy train, ii) a goofy greenie, or iii) a gullible and/or unscrupulous, populist politician?
There is however an unfortunate error, the world’s population is currently circa 7.2 billion.
Warmists at the Guardian and on some blogs fire back by saying “sea levels are rising!” I point out that sea levels have been rising for about 18,000 years and has accelerated during various Melt Water Pulses MWPA, B and C and has been flattening over the last ~5,000 years.
I also point out a paper from 2010 that shows that around 1/4 of current sea level rise is due to water extraction from aquifers for irrigation (abstract).
The question is this: Is there an acceleration in the rate of sea level rise? Some scream yes! some scream no! some say we don’t really know.
martin (global warming swindle) durkin has a new docu on uk politician, nigel farage:
Nigel Farage, Who are you ? – Channel 4 documentary
On sea level rise. Warmists also scream that coral atolls are drowning etc. I point out that sand mining, coral mining, fresh water extraction from the lens etc. is contributing to the various islands inability to rise with sea level rise.
My dear friend that list is pathetically short. 🙂
• More snow, less snow
• More sea ice, less sea ice
• Animals bigger, animals smaller
• More fog, less fog
• Heavier monsoons, lighter monsoons
More… and much, much more… LOL.
Ahhhh yes.
Sad really.
So they can’t be falsified. Whatever happens they retort that “the models predicted / projected this very thing.” Of course they do since they simulate many, many outcomes.
The past has had a number of more humid phases. We are still here!
The environmental group, Sierra Club, has in the past quietly received $25 million from the gas industry. Then they got found out. Heh, heh.
“……TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign…….”
http://science.time.com/2012/02/02/exclusive-how-the-sierra-club-took-millions-from-the-natural-gas-industry-and-why-they-stopped/
We know that Warren Buffet has an eye for profit and is not easily fooled. His Actuaries would have told him that things are getting worse. Yet what happens?
If Warren saw increased risk he would say so as they are to his benefit, yet he says it as it is.
Use your common sense.
Anthony, correction.
It is just over 7 billion, which actually strengthens the point being made.
United States Census Bureau
http://www.census.gov/popclock/
All great points. The future from the 1990’s is now! The predictions have not happened and enough time has passed to use it for, at the least an initial,judgement that gets weighted based on reality.
It’s clear that planet earth has benefited greatly from co2 increasing. Until that changes, speculations using theories that lack evidence, should wait for evidence……real measurable evidence to get more weighting.
@Omnologos
We may have to file a class action suit. 😉
“The earth has a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell!”
___________________________________
That’s not only a great line, but the entire post is a masterpiece.
the Winner!!
rogerknights says:
April 4, 2014 at 12:24 am
Finally it took a lowly, uncompromised child to state the obvious:
“ICPP!”
====================
excellent:-)
Very much so. However, I wondered a little at this statement: “Even now we see the cost curves of alternative energy and storage technologies plunging to soon devastate fossil fuels.” Firstly, “alternative energy” is extremely vague, but if costs are dropping for anything, I would guess it to be solar. Sorry, but I just don’t see either solar or the necessary storage technology being much more than a pipe dream at this point. The huge amounts of land they require is just one drawback of many. I believe the future of energy lies in nuclear.
This ought to be a full page advertorial in the New York Times. The average person sees the doomsayers in the media and later, when a natural weather event occurs, all they remember is that they saw an article predicting that global warming would include just such an outcome. They don’t recall that a separate article predicted the opposite result. The only thing that I would add is that the word “unprecedented” has a specific meaning, and the phrase “Unprecedented since (insert date here)” is an oxymoron.
(Wait…George Jetson is gay? Never mind…)
Climate science has adapted one of the most unscrupulous (and successful) marketing ploys developed by financial advisors. You send out 50,000 letters telling prospective investors that a commodity will rise, and then send an equal number to another 50,000 people that it will fall. The next week you target only the group that got the correct information, and give half of that group one prediction and the other gets the opposite. After 4 or 5 weeks of this, you have a pretty substantial group of people who are convinced that you’re clairevoyant and will gladly send you their life savings.
Thanks for a good laugh. “Unchanged places getting unchanged-er”. You kill me…
Bruce Cobb says:
April 4, 2014 at 4:54 am
“Firstly, “alternative energy” is extremely vague, but if costs are dropping for anything, I would guess it to be solar”.
You are right, according to an interesting article published by McKinsey & Co earlier this week:
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/energy_resources_materials/the_disruptive_potential_of_solar_power?cid=ResourceRev-eml-alt-mkq-mck-oth-1404
Should be at top of the list:
“Global Warming causes Global Cooling”
(Caution – applying common sense here may cause your head to explode)
Uh, looking at that picture,
it appears that clothes is not the only thing the Emperor is missing.
(Hey, don’t judge me, you know you were thinking the same thing)
LOL
Here is George Monbiot of the Guardian exhibiting a classic case of bipolar disorder in chameleons.
Warm winters and early springs are sure signs of UK’s ‘global warming’.
When will the weather stop being the same as the climate? The above is an example of Warmist behaviour as they watch their hypothesis stutter and fail before their tearful eyes. A sad end indeed.
With Gore’s ‘crazed sex poodle’ proclivities and penchant for being publicly humiliated, I shudder to think what he plans to do with that thermometer.
The cartoon in the article should come with a “Things You Can’t Unsee” warning.
Thank god for that big belly.
Did you really have to show that cartoon? That image is stuck in my head and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to eat again anytime soon. That cartoon of a naked Al Gore is going to be with me longer than my breakfast is and I can’t afford to take any sick days this year.
The AGW congregation enjoy drawing parallels to ‘man on the moon’ conspiracy believers. I would like to say with certainty, if you buy CAGW you will buy anything pitched at you in a green wrapper.
You say “To get mildly technical, physics tells us the globe should heat about 1°C for each new doubling of CO2”. What physics? Yes, CO2 can absorb IR, but it also has to obey the ideal gas law, so any energy gained must be spontaneously given up when colliding with cooler molecules, incl. O2 & N2, when rising up under thermal convection to the upper atmosphere. And hasn’t TOA measurements shown that there’s an equal radiation out into space for any increase in inward energy from the sun?
KRJ Pietersen says:
Nope, not seeing it. Cost-shifting means that some of the costs are being picked up by others. The “green” agenda is being pushed by governments and Big Solar is lovin’ it. Punishing coal, and to some extent gas also helps make solar look better than it really is. No sale.
On sealevel, This says there is a problem.
http://www.batemansbaypost.com.au/story/2196045/agricultural-scientist-warns-planning-for-sea-level-rise-crucial/?cs=12
This says there is not.
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/05/sea-level-surprises-at-hilo.html
Anthony, you certainly hit your stride in this one. You made me laugh out loud several times with your unexpected wittiness. This one goes in my keeper file!
Concerning sea level: The IPCC predictions are hard to understand, but appear to predict a global sea level rise of 20 to 38 inches by 2100. Definitely catastrophic, if true. The IPCC also says in their Summary for Policy Makers that warming to date already is causing problems, such as almost-Hurricane Sandy, and flooding from other strong storms. So let’s look at sea level from a West Coast perspective. We are lucky to have tide gauge records for each of our four major coastal cities – San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Seattle – that each cover 100 years or more. However, for all four cities, the 2013 sea levels are slightly less or about the same as 1941, and all four show sea level falling since 1997. Sea levels rose more and at a faster rate before 1950, and are now falling when they should be rising rapidly.
This excellent site has tide gauge records worldwide http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/ , and it is easy and informative to see what the sea level has been doing for your favorite city. Since I live near San Francisco, and the news often contains supposedly what is going to happen to sea level here by 2100 – an increase of 4 to 6 feet – i personally think it interesting that their tide gauge only shows sea level rising less than four inches per century, and comparing 1941 to the present, actually flower now than in 1941. Why such simply obtained information does not spur more journalistic interest is in and of itself interesting.
KRJ Pietersen says: April 4, 2014 at 5:32 am
Bruce Cobb says: April 4, 2014 at 4:54 am
“Firstly, “alternative energy” is extremely vague, but if costs are dropping for anything, I would guess it to be solar”.
You are right, according to an interesting article published by McKinsey & Co earlier this week:
Unless you try to figure in the bankruptcy on Chinese solar companies.
Chinese Default Protection Team will have its hands full as soon as Friday, March 7, which is when the interest on a bond issued by Shanghai Chaori Solar Energy Science & Technology a Chinese maker of solar cells, falls due. That payment, as of this moment, will not be made, following an announcement made late on Tuesday that it will not be able to repay the CNY89.8 million interest on a CNY1 billion bond issued on March 7th 2012.
FT reports:
The company has until March 7th to repay the interest, charged at an annual 8.98 per cent, the company said in a statement. “Due to various uncontrollable factors, until now the company has only raised Rmb 4m to pay the interest,” it said in the statement.
Trading in the Chaori bond, given a CCC junk rating, was suspended last July because the company suffered two consecutive years of losses. The company had a further RMB1.37bn loss in 2013, according to the results it posted on the exchange.
Just pointing out the obvious here, but how bad must things be for the company to be on the verge of default not due to principal repayment but because two years after issuing a bond, it only has 4% in cash on hand for the intended coupon payment?
Also
Struggling Chinese solar panel maker Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd is set for a $150 million local government bailout, a step towards tackling its $2.3 billion debt pile that is at odds with Beijing’s effort to wean the sector off state support.
Many of us were well innoculated against nonsense like “climate change” before we started school by such important fables as “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.
Wonderful Cartoon!
I’d like to see these too…..
“The Boy Who Cried Wolf”
“Chicken Little”
“The Blind Men and the Elephant”
Aesop’s “The Dog and the Bone”
Anthony
The pedantically proof-reading Reaumur seems to have missed under Doom and Gloom “…greening foliage across the worlds desserts…” possibly meant deserts?
Roger
REPLY: Thanks for extra special pedantic proofreading – A
I hope that at the end of this CAGW nonsense the UN will be recognized as a failed socialist organization. With their latest report they have quintupled down on stupid! I would like to see a more accurate description of the IPCC, the name should be written as [UN] IPCC. ICPP, hilarious!
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Perhaps they are concerned because they think “3mm” means 3 million meters per year?
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Look for the missing heat?
Mods, I see my comment is in moderation.
Feel free to just say, “Let’s not go there.” 😎
Yes
When the debunking process is complete, alarmists will claim that “the scientific process worked, as the theories were adjusted and then abandoned.
I didn’t know Al Gore was a transgender!?
Or did he lose his family juwels in that divorce?
Sorry, bad week at the office…
Bravo! Mr. Watts, go, man! Great piece!
This is a link to Junkscience regarding Dr. Tol. Enjoy.
http://junkscience.com/2014/04/04/professor-tol-is-scheduled-for-the-lowest-relm-of-the-8th-circle-of-hell-dante-says-so/
Author(s) ?, seems to be a mix.
Well done in any case.
Good to hear let it rip. Well done.
OMG, man boobs! Somebody needs to get ‘porky’ on testosterone booster.
World population is 7.2 billion and is projected to 8.4 b in 2025 & 9.6 b in 2050.
Young folks, pay attention.
http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/03/looming-retirement-crisis-boomers-big-trouble/
That’s gross.
@Bruce Cobb –
Future in energy ultimately would seem to be hydrogen, the ultimate renewable – if fusion can be harnessed. Energy from fusion could be applied not only for generation but for production of substitutes for petrochemicals, including reconversion of the CO2 produced from then-exhausted fossil fuels – possibly producing fuels more easily and safely portable than hydrogen itself. The “if,” however, depends on the enviro-extremists not destroying civilization, and with it the prospect for and means of harnessing fusion.
In any event, for the time being, we have to have cheap energy, and that means fossil fuel energy, as well as nuclear – nuclear could only be made portable by charging electric vehicles, which wouldn’t be done economically (keeping in mind that electric vehicles will never achieve net energy efficiency, compared to fossil fuels, since charging them consumes more energy than fossil-fuel powered vehicles consume in operation).
Bruce Cobb says:
April 4, 2014 at 9:17 am
Yeah, I have no direct interest for or against solar power. I thought it was interesting that McKinsey’s had written about it as perhaps a positive investment among the group of renewables. I thought that was confirmation of what you had suggested, and sought to highlight that, while offering the links further reading for those that are interested.
Our host here, Mr Watts, has a decent solar set up. I think he may have read McKinsey’s discussion of the economics of solar with some interest.
Anthony – your thoughts?
No balls I notice! Goes with the personality!
DD More says:
April 4, 2014 at 10:43 am
Yep, you make valid points. Nobody should take one article or published paper as gospel (unless you are a CO2er, in which case you are willing to trumpet any passing flotsam as THE TRUTH if it suits your pre-conceived view).
I liked the article though as a serious discussion of the future economics of solar. That’s interesting.
I always want to know where they got the “global” weather data from a century ago. The Earth resources satellites weren’t launched until the late 1970’s and most of the data from the first ten years is too inaccurate (margin of error) to use in current theories.
, that a snorkel will soon become essential day wear–in addition to its traditional role as perhaps the most absurd sounding word in the English language.
Be fair snorkel is a German word, I believe meaning scroll from its shape. We have many far more silly sounding words.