Posted on 11 Aug 17 by Paul Matthews
Why can’t Peter Stott say the truth about hurricanes? https://t.co/rAFzqJOizb
— Bishop Hill (@aDissentient) August 11, 2017
Yesterday, Nigel Lawson was allowed onto the Today programme in response to an earlier interview with Al Gore promoting his new alarmist film. The audio is here, Gore at about 1:09:00, Lawson at 2:33:30. Gore had made the false claim that “The second big change is that the climate-related extreme weather events have grown far more numerous and far more destructive”, and Lawson corrected him on that, pointing out what the IPCC says about extreme events. He also corrected Gore’s bogus claims about fossil fuel subsidies, saying that fossil fuels are taxed, not subsidised. He also said that “during this past 10 years if anything mean global temperature has slightly declined,” which is not correct according the most commonly used indices (Lawson’s comment probably came from this graph of the global 2m temperature anomaly).
Needless to say, the usual suspects like Brian Cox and Jim Al-Khalili howled with indignation that Lawson was permitted to speak. Carbon Brief carried out a ‘fact check’, which I have fact-checked in their comments section. As far as I am aware, no climate scientist has yet spoken out about Gore’s false claim of “far more numerous” extreme events.
Even though yesterday’s programme featured one sceptic and two climate activists (alarmist film-maker Fisher Stevens was also interviewed), the BBC felt the need to balance this with two more climate activists this morning, their own Roger Harrabin and Peter Stott from the Met Office. Carbon Brief have put up the recording.
Harrabin tried to defend Gore’s claim about subsidies, but had to admit that as far as the UK is concerned, Lawson was correct, we don’t subsidise fossil fuels, we tax them, and most subsidies go to renewables.
Peter Stott’s interview was quite shocking. John Humphrys asked him about extreme events, and specifically storms, but Stott responded by talking about heat waves. I was reminded of the interview where Theresa May was asked about Health Service funding and gave an answer about the economy. Is Peter Stott a scientist, or a politician? I think this interview answered that question.
Here is a transcript of that section:
JH: Dramatic weather events, are we seeing more of them, more great storms, because of climate change specifically?
PS: We are indeed seeing more extreme weather as a result of climate change. In fact there was a big report came out only yesterday, compiled by over 450 scientists from more than 60 countries, and they looked at the latest data, and we know that 2016 was the warmest year on record, over a degree warmer than late 19th century levels, so this claim that we heard from Nigel Lawson that it’s been cooling is simply not true, and the other claim that was not true was to say that the IPCC had not found evidence for changes in extreme weather, well, we can look at what they found, and they state very clearly that we have seen changes in many extreme weather and climate events, since the late 1950s.
JH Such as?
PS: Well, for example if you look at heat waves, we did an analysis at the Met Office and looked at the UK actually, looked at temperature records, and you see that there’s been about ten times as many hot weather records as there have been cold weather records.
So here is a reminder of what the IPCC does say about storms, (see section 2.6.3 of the latest IPCC report) which might have provided Radio 4 listeners with a more honest answer to John Humphys’ question than the one Peter Stott gave:
Current data sets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century and it remains uncertain whether any reported long-term increases in tropical cyclone frequency are robust, after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities.
No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin.
In summary, this assessment does not revise the SREX conclusion of low confidence that any reported long-term (centennial) increases in tropical cyclone activity are robust, after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities.
HT/ The GWPF
There is too much government money at stake for these crooks to back off their – man is making the planet do bad things – meme. They shamelessly look right into the cameras with a straight face and tell tales they know to be lies.
Which is why funding needs to be cut, and in the US probably will be.
We can’t keep borrowing and inventing a trillion dollars a year, only to give so much of it to such anti-human charlatans.
When they stop telling lies I will consider believing them…
But they just can’t stop telling lies!
Bill,
I think that the CO2 ‘cat’ is let out of the bag if you look at the detail of the Paris Climate Agreement and INDCs. Paris, to my mind, demonstrates that the Emperor truly has no clothes.
If politicians genuinely believe, and I don’t think they do, that CO2 emissions are causing global warming then why are they following policies which significantly increase CO2 emissions ?
Paris has been hyped and described as limiting global temperature rises by preventing increased CO2 emissions. That is all you would believe from listening to politicians and particularly to the BBC – and the BBC has been spitting feathers over Trump’s withdrawal of the US from it !
The facts show a very different picture. From the published INDC figures there will be ~46% increase in global CO2 emissions between now and 2030 with India trebling and China doubling theirs.
Announcements to ban petrol / diesel engine cars and only permit electric vehicles have been made in the Netherlands from 2025, Germany from 2030 and the UK and France from 2040. When carefully examined this seems to be another major blow to the claims that politicians are working to reduce CO2 emissions .
The IVL Swedish Research Institute figures published recently show that if 30%-50% renewable energy is used to make a battery for a Tesla car then some 15 – 20 Tonnes of CO2 are emitted in manufacture – equivalent to some 8 years of driving a petrol / diesel car. (http://www.ivl.se/english/startpage/top-menu/pressroom/press-releases/press-releases—arkiv/2017-06-21-new-report-highlights-climate-footprint-of-electric-car-battery-production.html)
What it doesn’t go into is battery life. Currently a Tesla battery seems to be good for ~8 years and a Nissan Leaf for about 3-4years before they must be replaced. On that basis the battery manufacture and replacement alone wipe out any CO2 reductions – equivalent to 8 years CO2 emissions from a normal car but needs replacing at ~8 years ! But as the electricity to run these vehicles will be from a mix of fossil and renewable these policies must and will actually Increase CO2 emissions.
But it gets much, much worse because that 8 years of emissions comes in year 1, when the electric car leaves the dealership and then again in years 2,3,4 etc.
2016 new car registrations in the UK were 2.69 million – taking that same number in 2040 and each year thereafter shows an Increase over 2015 in UK CO2 emissions of between 19% and 37% by 2048 because of the replacement batteries required every year from 2048. The spread in the percentage increase is dependant upon the percentage of renewable energy used to make the batteries.
Government policies usually fail so rather than just admit they got it wrong they will come up with another policy to correct the failed policy that will in time also fail. Proof? Try South Australia’ energy policy.
In spite of all the hype about electric and “driverless” cars in the WSJ and other media, due to the battery-life problem cited above down the road the primary customers for these cars will be fleets that lease them and dump them at the point where the battery would need replacement, making them effectively “disposable.” I don’t see that as very “green,” and I don’t believe the private market is going to find it attractive once the subsidy incentive disappears.
At 4:30pm on Friday BBC Radio 4 had Feedback which was looking at the BBC’s science coverage. They admitted that their coverage of climate was very biased.
They give far too much time to sceptics, apparently.
It’s a false equivalence, they say. If 97% of scientists have an opinion then that must be as true as 97% of experiments confirming gravity.
The logical fallacies were laughable.
But the conclusion was terrifying from a democratic viewpoint.
It’s a testament to the poor science educations out there that a statistical probability is considered equivalent to a physical, measurable phenomena. Very, very sad.
US TV program Max Headroom was a brief but poignant warning of the indoctrinated generations to come. Had poor ratings, I guess.
Great program! I think it had what is commonly called a cult following, which is rarely enough to keep such programs on.
Max Headroom was a British creation, although there was a US series based on the character. Very few people seem to have ever seen the original film depicting his creation, it’s worth seeking out.
I have the original pilot (Max Headroom) and all the TV shows. I thought it as pretty good myself.
On the subject though; it should be cleat by now that if there was definitive physical evidence for or against warming, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Solid evidence doesn’t get lost in the noise, which really is what going on here. None of the evidence is compelling, it’s all within the limits of uncertainty, so it gets debated endlessly.
And that’s the entire problem; there’s nothing compelling. It’s all noise and all we end up arguing about is the noise.
” it should be cleat by now”
I feel like I’ve been stepped on as well.
Paul
The quote frm dr Stott is interesting.
Two years ago I compiled this, which shows that as far as the UK is concerned, no one born this century has experienced warming, instead there has been a cooling trend. We have had some warm weather since then but the trend is still slightly downwards.
https://judithcurry.com/2015/11/25/the-rise-and-fall-of-central-england-temperature/
Of particular interest might be my discussions with the Met office who are convinced that their stations do not show a uhi bias, so the cooling trend is genuine it appears.
The last few paragraphs mention the wind which seems to me to have the greatest influence on our weather. In this respect I have been in correspondence with Phil jones who has just retired from the UEA. He has been extremely helpful in furnishing further information to me that originally emanated from Hubert lamb, who of course, Jones ŵorked with. I hope to work this up into an article later this year but am currently trying to see what effect the jet stream has on our wind directions, again Dr Jones has been generous with his time on this.
So as far as the UK is concerned Stotts comments are wrong. Presumably he was talking about the global situation which I can not comment on
Tonyb
“…the wind which seems to me to have the greatest influence on our weather
Couldn’t agree more. The occasional heatwave is always connected with hot winds coming up across europe from africa; cold summer spells are more often than not from cold northerly or easterly winds, and of course cloud cover drops temperatures in minutes. The same wind influence applies in the winter and seems very much connected with the jet stream position.
Currently we have had one of the coolest late July’s and starts to August for quite a while – But no mention of that on the BBC – just lots of coverage of ‘satanic heatwaves’ sweeping across Europe (hot winds from Africa while we had cold winds from elsewhere).
It was interesting the other day watching the BBC weather forecast, the chart showed London as going to be some 4 C hotter than the countryside around London (22 C and 18 C) and the weather forecaster simply said the day would be much warmer reaching a high of 22 C. No mention of rural temperatures and no explanation as to why UHI makes London so much hotter.
You meant to say ‘why UHI makes London so much’ less cold. It’s mid August and I had to turn central heating on.
vukcevic
I’m ashamed of you. August, and your putting the CH on?
Put a vest on man.
🙂
I saw rural temps drop as low as 8C at night near London in reports. I shivered but felt OK being by the Mediterranean myself 🙂
HS
I gather temperature was below 2 C (yes 2 centigrade) this morning near Belfast, but you are a tough lot up there north of M4.
Why was Al Gore in Belfast?
Auto
I have thought for some time that wind direction has a major influence on UK.
I would have liked to compare prevailing wind direction with CET but I don’t think that the wind direction data exists.
It would be possible to get approximate data from pressure charts, but that would involve a lot of work.
Sorry, first sentence should read:
I have thought for some time that wind direction has a major influence on UK temperature.
Quaesoveritas
I have hubert lambs wind direction data back to the 1500’s covering Britain. I have put it against my own CET extension which takes it back to 1538. There is at times remarkable correlation when, for example, during the intermittent little ice age clearly the cold easterlies had an effect in winter and during the warm spells winter winds come from the west. Sometimes, for reasons as yet unknown , the correlation is not so good.
The point is that Lambs data finishes in the 1970’s. I have tried via the met office to bring the data up to date and ascertain if the warm 1990’s correlate to appropriate winds and whether the cooling trend since then is also due to wind direction. The met office, although helpful, do not hold the data needed to update the data. Phil jones has been attempting to help me bring it up to date.
Over riding it is all is the question as to whether the wandering jet stream directly impacts on wind direction and if so why does it wander.
Tonyb
“Sometimes, for reasons as yet unknown , the correlation is not so good.”
I wonder if it could be the ultimate origin of the wind, rather than simple direction.
I am not surprised at the high level of correlation.
Hopefully my rsearch will show why the historic correlation is not always high although generally it is good. Whether the theory holds true in the last thirty Years or so will be the interesting thing but it looks difficult to get hold of the data on a like for like basis.
Tonyb
@ Tonyb, Maybe look also for correlations in SST patterns and the subsequent jet stream teleconnections?
@ Climate Reason
I queried jet stream position and effect on prevailing winds and UK temperatures with the Met Office around 4 years ago and was told they were looking into it ……..
I’m not aware of any comment since from the met office – do you know anything about how they are progressing ?
climatereason , i would be interested to see the wind direction over time data plotted against the rise and fall of the amo and nao.
Two on one, with a “rebuttal” the next day by two more orthodox warmists seems to be the sort of thing PBS or NPR would do in the US, too.
Three believers are needed to counteract one skeptic? Sounds like the skeptic has the best argument there.
Good point.
The BBC is supposed to be even-handed, balanced and factual but in practice they follow their own BBC left-wing, metrocentric, multicultural beliefs and agenda. This has gone on for so long that the BBC seems no longer able to recognise its own biases or to understand what ‘balanced’ reporting means.
They promote climate alarmism without allowing any scientific challenge and do so in every single programme that they can conceivably, and sometimes inconceivably, insert an alarmist reference to climate change in.
They continue to attack Brexit which the BBC appears to hate vehemently. It must be said the BBC does receive money from the EU and has been consistently europhile for years. Every good news announcement for the UK economy since we voted for Brexit such as increased exports, increased manufacturing order books, increased employment, increased investment and inward investment is, without fail, described as being “Despite Brexit”. The BBC seems incapable of overcoming its europhile nature and thus seems unable to even consider the idea that these good news items are a direct result of Brexit
A once much revered but now sadly much discredited organisation that I and many, many people here in Britain no longer trust.
I take it as obvious that the BBC will lose income if the UK pulls out of the EU. An alternative is that eth EU will continue to give them money to undermine the UK and convince the public that it was a mistake. It is hard to believe that will not happen with any country that dares leave.
Thoughts?
Crispness
The EU have presented us with a divorce bill as high as 100 billion. I see that as a fine in retaliation for daring to defy the elites so they want to punish us. I also see it as blackmail in order to demonstrate to other countries that if they want to leave they will be heavily punished. Lastly I see it as a means to plug their finances.
I do not see the EU as having any active role in significantly funding the BBC although the BBC does have a distinct bias in favour of that discredited gang.
Tonyb
“I do not see the EU as having any active role in significantly funding the BBC”
Try this:
BBC has received £2m in EU funding in run up to referendum, fueling accusations of bias
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12059280/BBC-has-received-2m-in-EU-funding-in-run-up-to-referendum-fueling-accusations-of-bias.html
Sorry crispin my iPad didn’t like your arm
Tonyb
Crispin in Waterloo but really in Ulaanbaatar
More generally than Auntie, my contention is that if Europe isn’t running scared of the UK leaving, it should be.
According to my crude calculations from figures presented here, and whilst I hate using Wikipedia, the information is apparently from the International Monetary Fund for the year 2016 so it should be reliable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_GDP_(nominal)
So, roughly speaking EU GDP is as follows
Germany 16.7%
United Kingdom 12.6%
France 11.9%
Italy 8.8%
Russia 6.0%
Spain 6.0%
Netherlands 3.7%
Switzerland 3.1%
Now I don’t care what anyone says, but losing 12.6% GDP overnight is a really big deal to the EU. Were that to happen to any major commercial organisation, the big red panic button would be pressed.
Meanwhile, the UK retains 100% of it’s GDP, OK, some may dribble away as a consequence of leaving the EU, but we’re hardly going to be sitting on our hands instead of finding other markets.
And despite the claims to the contrary, the EU is no more prepared for Brexit than the UK. First, nothing like this has happened before so no one has any experience of it, secondly, the EU, like the UK, didn’t believe for a millisecond Brexit was ever going to happen, and finally, 27 EU countries have to agree on a strategy, whilst the UK has only to deal with 4 countries.
Will the BBC be reliant on EU money for much longer? I guess they have 18 months or so left to be EU standard bearers before the funding is cut, then we might see the true colours of our UK government as they will likely be the main source of income for the BBC and will have to march to their tune.
I am just a crazy American. However, if I was a crazy Brit, and was looking at a 100 billion divorce tab, then I would start publicly talking to American companies about which GMO crops would do well in the UK.
I suspect the EU might then change the terms of the divorce, if the UK was willing to forswear the use of evil American GMO crops.
Hot Scot
Sorry – looking down your list from the IMF [who might have their own axes to grind] via the Wikimonster even I can edit – one country stood out.
Russia.
I understand that they are not members of the EU, nor NATO.
And there’s 18 % of GDP gone in Brexit and a Typo!
Oh – Switzerland – another 3% – over a fifth of GDP – Pouffff!!! – gone!
Auto
Exactly. Trade is a two way street. Who wants to disadvantage their customers from doing business with them? Let’s make it as difficult as possible to trade? That’s what may be considered when talking about North Korea. This was the vote of the U.K. people, whether or not it’s popular with everyone else. There seems to be more effort put in to penalising the U.k than looking to see how best to make it work .
Just like the ABC in Oz. It’s funded to the tune of $A 1 billion per annum & is in no way as impartial as it is supposed to be. See this: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/abc-journalists-told-by-abc-boss-stop-being-biased/news-story/ee5162c64a8d72535182d930218495f3
Nail, head. Meet hammer.
Friends…either you are closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge, or you or not aware of the caliber of disaster, indicated by increasing CO2 in your atmosphere! Well you got trouble my friends! Right here, I say trouble right here in River City!
They are all flim flam men!
If Trump were crafty and smart, he would offer a bunch of grants to any climate scientists, or team of climate scientists, who could prove Al Gore is wrong.
It’s already been proven, TCE, and in dozens of ways.
TCE, in terms of Inconvenient Truth, he has been. Three examples. He got the lag between rising CO2 and rising temperature backwards in the ice cores. There has been no accleration in sea level rise. And polar bears are thriving; as Dr. Crockford has pointed out, they have no dependency on late summer Arctic ice anyway.
ristvan
The UK courts would only allow Gore’s movie to be shown in schools as long as 9 mistakes in it were highlighted first.
I was quite surprised as I didn’t think there were as many as 9 ‘meaningful’ statements made in the movie.
@ Hotscot
For anyone interested, a short precis of the key claims thatGore made in the film and which the High Court determined were Wrong from the scientific evidence presented to it can be found here :
https://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/British_High_Court_Ruling_on_An_Inconvenient_Truth.html
Old England
I like the capitalisation of ‘Wrong’.
Immediately brings to mind Feynman on Scientific Method – anathema to watermelons.
Magic!
Auto
Then let Judith Curry lead the peer review team.
Al Gore displayed ‘total deficiency’ in credibility, Peter Stott simply avoided to go there. One is peddling ‘snake oil’, the other gives the priority to financial security of his family over need to validate the fact; truth after all can be sourced elsewhere if one is so inclined.
I detest one and feel sorry for the other.
You get decent summer about once every 20y in the UK. Not many people will be calling it “extreme” if we get a few more warm periods.
“heat wave” in the UK is probably something like 25 deg C. But you can prove whatever you want to say with carefully crafted statistics.
20 deg C forecast for London tomorrow and its the middle of figging August. Height of the British summer !
Greg, not unexpected, Al Gore is currently in London.
Last Tuesday it was 18, and on Wednesday 16.5C.
Met Office page says “A heatwave is an extended period of hot weather relative to the expected conditions of the area at that time of year.” Not very scientific. Not quantified in any way.
The BOM says “A heatwave is now defined by three or more days of unusually high maximum and minimum temperatures in any area.” The period is at least quantified.
NOAA: “A period of abnormally and uncomfortably hot and unusually humid weather. Typically a heat wave lasts two or more days.” Again, the period is quantified.
An increase in heat waves is virtually meaningless with such loose criteria.
“The BOM says “A heatwave is now defined by three or more days of unusually high maximum and minimum temperatures in any area.”
I think you have to go at least two weeks straight before you start calling it a heatwave.
Stationary or slow-moving High-pressure weather systems cause heatwaves. The speed of movement of high-pressure systems should be the way heatwaves are judged. If they move fairly rapidly, heat won’t build up to extremes underneath them. If they sit still over one area, it will get very hot underneath them, and will stay that way until they move out of the area.
In the UK a heatwave is due to a stable jet stream.
It’s actually an assertion that the climate is becoming less weird.
Greg
I recall the Kentish summer of 1964 was one of the nice ones.
1976 was pretty good across most of the UK! I remember flying back from Perth, WA, and thinking – ‘Wow, it’s hot!’
Auto
Extreme heat waves are extreme weather events. That’s valid. What’s not valid is to try to prove more extreme weather by claiming “that there’s been about ten times as many hot weather records as there have been cold weather records.”
“Extreme heat waves are extreme weather events. That’s valid.”
It might be valid if there was a solid, scientific definition. There is not.
And if the increase was global, not a limited area.
The word extreme…invalidates it
As commented elswhere on Paul Matthew’s post. Dr. Stott surprises and disappoints. Surely he knows what he says can be easily checked and discredited. He damages his professional reputation and that of UK Met for no gain. Not smart. Not as bad as Mann whining in his recent congressional testimony he has never called anyone a denier, until Judith Curry points out he did so in his written testimony submission. And as the hearing was telivised, now an immortal Youtube snippet. Not smart squared.
Neither Lawson or Gore have any scientific credentials.
Their motivation is less than clear, although they both clearly want to be movers and shakers rather than has beens. They have both decided to align themselves with a high profile debate. Only one will be able to say “I told you so” – if they live long enough.
Gore wants to be the saviour of the world – or at least align himself with the story.
Lawson was a mover and shaker – although since the late 1980s has become something of an irrelevancy- a status from which he would no doubt like to extricate himself.
Terry Warner
Lawson works with the GWPF which has numerous scientific experts supporting it. He has nothing obvious to gain from it.
Gore works with his investment company that deals in carbon credits and has a great deal to gain from maintaining the AGW scare.
Nigel Lawson has studied the subject enough to write a fine book “An appeal to reason”.
I heard the program. I listened to Gore going on about the fact that heatwaves were proof of global warming – but I didn’t hear anything about what he thought would be the outcome if the heat-wave had actually been a ‘coldwave’. (Of course that would have been weather).
In “An Inconvenient Truth” a British judge ruled in 2007that there were nine incorrect assertions and that the film should not be shown to British school children without appropriate explaination. My question is “Will his new film have more or fewer incorrect assertions?”
The first thing to check is whether he repeats any of those 9 assertions. I didn’t (and won’t) view the film, but I bet Al is stupid enough to do so.
Someone with a better stomach than mine should verify. 🙂
Here is where you will find the decision:
England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions
Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education & Skills [2008] 1 All ER 367, [2007] EWHC 2288 (Admin)
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/2288.html
Gore is a politician. What do you think?
I must count the immense cost of maintaining a substantial naval presence in the Persian Gulf in order to protect the free flow of oil as a form of subsidy. But in relation to the immense amount of oil involved and the geoplitical implications this subsidy might be a whole penny a gallon.
If you run a solar company the subsidy is paid to you.
If you run an oil company not named Saudi Aramco, and Iran manages to destroy all of the Saudi oil facilities in the gulf, then the huge upward spike in oil prices would be a huge windfall to your oil company.
I think the military expenditures in the ME to protect oil supplies are an “anti-subsidy” to oil companies. YMMV.
Tony, in your link to Judith Curry’s blog discussion on CET, you take on Steven Mosher gently, responding re the hiatus in warming that, you can’t comment on whether the 15yr pause in the CET occurs globally (Steven appears to argue it doesn’t – makes one wonder, then about the ‘global’ in CAGW).
Questions beg an answer. Shouldn’t we know if this is global? Shouldn’t climate science have been interested in the answer. Doesn’t it weaken the concept of G Warming to not think or even care if their are global congruities to major, durable changes visible in such important records? I believe you could know the answer to this question with a days research.
Here is a raw record from Capetown that looks like it came off Tony Hellers blog showing an identical US record where the 1930s are the highest temperatures of the century. If these raw temperatures are roughly identical, are they not powerful corroboration for one another? Greenland, Iceland, Siberia, Australia(?) also look the same. Am I in line for becoming the father of climatology?
Oops link
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/28/homogenization-of-temperature-data-makes-capetown-south-africa-have-a-warmer-climate-record/
http://hot-topic.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/GRIPtempBoxlarge.png
Graph is greenland, same as SouthAfrica!!! ,
Scott is merely following his ‘leader’ who through beating the climate doom drum as bought considerable funds into the MET android personal honour unto themselves. In addition it’s been clear for years what makes a good cilmate ‘scientist’ and that is not good science.
‘alarmists really want to see ‘severe weather’.’
Yes. It is the old millennial thing with a twist. Previous millennials have thought the good ones would go to heaven, but in this one we are all damned. There must be some weird psychology behind it. It’d be nice to know how it works.
Obviously monetary self-interest and status seeking accounts for some of these millennials’ beliefs, but that doesn’t account for the many who sign up even to their detriment (eg increased power prices etc).
Maybe we just need an existential challenge to help us feel more keenly that we are alive.
I think part of it is the need to pay some sort of penance for the sins of humanity. Higher power prices are the perfect tithe.
The problem is that they want someone else to pay for the sins.
Here is how to show the truth about extremes of temperatures, in this case for Australia.
You show data from approved, official sources.
Here is some key data arranged by me for ease of viewing.
All Australians know that heatwaves have become, hotter, longer and more frequent. That is the official line. Unfortunately, it is not so for most Australian capitals.
Readers here should do similar exercises for their regions so we can all see how different Australia might be. It is simple stuff, little more than counting. Here the data sources are the official BOM Climate Data Online (CDO) and their adjusted data set named ACORN_SAT. I use some of each as CDO are longer because Acorn starts after 1910.
The first link is to 6 Aust capital cities where most Australians live and are potentially at threat from worse heatwaves.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/are_heatwaves_more_severe_version2.pdf
The next link is graphical data to support the first link.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/SummaryGraphHeatwaveWord.pdf
Next, we have graphs for Sydney and Melbourne showing days each year hotter than 100F (37.8C) and the more common 35C cutoff. There is NO SIGNIFICANT threat to people here.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/century_days_sydmelb.jpg
“JH: Dramatic weather events, are we seeing more of them, more great storms, because of climate change specifically?”
bbc clip out the jh question
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40899188
audio starts “…we are indeed seeing more extreme weather” proving bbc propaganda
The Today show interview of Stott is a follow up on a radio programme done for ABC 4 in Australia – a science program from some months ago in which Judith Curry appears and rehashes “deniers” versus orthodox AGW alarmism – but plainly trying to debunk the critics. Peter Stott is heard in the program briefly spouting the same lines here. But while offering no data, nor support, no references that one could check to decide whether or not he’s truthful or not. For the ABC, it’s strictly Trust us, we’re scientists” or not.
Joint Typhoon Warning Centre — Bay of Bengal Region Cyclones per year [May to November] — showed a 56-year cyclic variation similar to Northeast Monsoon Rainfall in the State of Andhra Pradesh.
Hurricane Season — Atlantic storms since 1913 presented a normal distribution pattern centered around September 10 [Tropical Storms and Hurricanes, Hurricanes] as presented by NOAA/NMS National Hurricane Centre.
Unfortunately, the selected data in a long-term series present different stories. When somebody says increased occurrence — they should specify the period they used to assess that scenario. This then give the clue for such variants in cyclic pattern events.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
The phrase “To tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” is required for reasons just like this.
Go read what the re-Insurance companies, like Lloyds and Munich Re have to say about this. They have skin in the game; getting it wrong will cost them $BIGNUM!
http://newsthump.com/2017/08/11/lord-lawson-invited-onto-bbc-to-argue-that-the-earth-is-flat/
I’ve seen a lot of this recently – equating climate change scepticism with Flat-Earthism. And it isn’t just comedians who are doing it.
A couple of years ago nobody had heard of Flat-Earthers, except for a few eccentrics who were arguably being ironic, but now there are celebs all over the place coming out quite seriously with this nonsense.
I have to wonder if there’s some kind of agent provocateur action going on here…
I agree there’s something very stinky about it. An ordinary man-in-the-street like me can pull flat-Earth theory to shreds. It feels like a false flag operation.
The BBC webpage on the interview was no better, trumpeting “anger” and “scientists respond furiously”, drone drone drone.
I was furious too, with the BBC, but the page did not enable comments to allow me to express why I thought the BBC was wrong to report it thus. These days it seems that the more contentious an article from the BBC is, the less likely they are to allow comments. I conclude that they know full well how duplicitous they are being.
When David Holland was pursuing the Met Office over Zero Order Drafts of an IPCC Assessment Report, they moved the tribunal out into the sticks of Central England, Northampton.
There was a public audience of one, if I amount to that. My impression there of Peter Stott was that he was merely a shuffling bureaucrat hiding behind a rather expensively dressed London Lawyer.