And so, many scientists who have the facts and know the truth remain silent
June 7, 2019
6:28 AM EDT
Last Updated
June 7, 2019
6:28 AM EDT
By Ross McKitrick
This week in Vancouver, Prime Minister Trudeau said the federal carbon tax, a key pillar in his government’s climate policy, will help protect Canadians from extreme weather. “Extreme weather events are extraordinarily expensive for Canadians, our communities and our economy,” he said, citing the recent tornadoes in Ottawa and wildfires in Western Canada. “That’s why we need to act.”
While members of the media may nod along to such claims, the evidence paints a different story. Roger Pielke Jr. is a scientist at University of Colorado in Boulder who, up until a few years ago, did world-leading research on climate change and extreme weather. He found convincing evidence that climate change was not leading to higher rates of weather-related damages worldwide, once you correct for increasing population and wealth. He also helped convene major academic panels to survey the evidence and communicate the near-unanimous scientific consensus on this topic to policymakers. For his efforts, Pielke was subjected to a vicious, well-funded smear campaign backed by, among others, the Obama White House and leading Democratic congressmen, culminating in his decision in 2015 to quit the field.
A year ago, Pielke told the story to an audience at the University of Minnesota. His presentation was recently circulated on Twitter. With so much misinformation nowadays about supposed climate emergencies, it’s worth reviewing carefully.
Pielke’s public presentation begins with a recounting of his rise and fall in the field. As a young researcher in tropical storms and climate-related damages, he reached the pinnacle of the academic community and helped organize the so-called Hohenkammer Consensus Statement, named after the German town where 32 of the leading scientists in the field gathered in 2006 to sort out the evidence. They concluded that trends toward rising climate damages were mainly due to increased population and economic activity in the path of storms, that it was not currently possible to determine the portion of damages attributable to greenhouse gases, and that they didn’t expect that situation to change in the near future.
Shortly thereafter, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its 2007 report, largely agreeing with the Hohenkammer Consensus, while cherry-picking one unpublished study (and highlighting it in the Summary for Policymakers) that suggested a link between greenhouse gases and storm-related damages. But the author of that study — who just happened to be the same IPCC lead author who injected it into the report — later admitted his claim was incorrect, and when the study was finally published, denied the connection.
In 2012, the IPCC Special Report on Extreme Weather came out and echoed the Hohenkammer Consensus, concluding that once you adjust for population growth and economic changes, there is no statistical connection between climate change and measures of weather-related damages. In 2013 Pielke testified to the United States Congress and relayed the IPCC findings. Shortly thereafter, Obama’s science advisor John Holdren accused him of misleading Congress and launched a lengthy but ill-informed attack on Pielke, which prompted congressional Democrats to open an investigation into Pielke’s sources of funding (which quickly fizzled amid benign conclusions). Meanwhile heavily funded left-wing groups succeeded in getting him fired from a popular internet news platform. In 2015 Pielke quit the climate field.
So where did the science end up?
In the second half of his talk, Pielke reviews the science as found in the most recent (2013) IPCC Assessment Report, the 2018 U.S. National Climate Assessment, and the most up-to-date scientific data and literature. Nothing substantial has changed.
Globally there’s no clear evidence of trends and patterns in extreme events such as droughts, hurricanes and floods. Some regions experience more, some less and some no trend. Limitations of data and inconsistencies in patterns prevent confident claims about global trends one way or another. There’s no trend in U.S. hurricane landfall frequency or intensity. If anything, the past 50 years has been relatively quiet. There’s no trend in hurricane-related flooding in the U.S. Nor is there evidence of an increase in floods globally. Since 1965, more parts of the U.S. have seen a decrease in flooding than have seen an increase. And from 1940 to today, flood damage as a percentage of GDP has fallen to less than 0.05 per cent per year from about 0.2 per cent.
HT/Cam_S
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I would imagine being at sea to be a dangerous occupation in regard to extreme weather-
“Shipping Losses Declines by 65%”
“Shipping losses declined by a record level of more than 50% year-on-year from 98 in 2017, driven by a significant fall in hotspots around the world and weather-related losses halving after a quieter year of hurricane and typhoon activity. The 2018 loss year is exceptional compared with the rolling 10-year loss average of 104 (down by 55%)”
Its a very dirty business out there in the CC world. Big business is in it
too. If governments are stupid enough to offer large chunks of money to
those organizations , including utilities, who pay lip service to Green
thinking, why should they refuse it.
I say yet again we must start at CO2, and its properties, then move forward
to what the Global warming to CC mob have done with it.
Its still the key card in the whole rotten “”House of Cards””.
MJE VK5ELL
They keep saying “Climate Change”…. That is not the right term. The issue is whether the hypothesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming is correct or not. Not climate change. Climate change is normal. The climate changed before humans were upon the planet and it will continue to have changes while we are here and after we are gone.
Increased resolution of Ice Cores showed that the original premise of the hypothesis of AGW was wrong when it became apparent that CO2 in the Ice Cores were showing increasing temperatures before increases in CO2. AGW hypothesis falsified.
The failure to find a “Hot Spot” in the Tropical Troposphere which was to show that extra Anthropogenic CO2 was causing feedbacks in Water Vapor. This was modeled by “Climate Scientists” and they failed to find their own prediction on water vapour feedback. AGW hypothesis falsified.
The hiatus in warming. Despite a 12 percent increase in atmospheric CO2 over twenty years there has been no corresponding rise in global average temperatures as measured by the Satellite record. AGW hypothesis falsified.
… and then there is the absolute debacle of the thermometer surface temperature record which has brought the climate science community into disrepute….. The thermometer record is an utter dogs breakfast of adjustments, bias and political interference.
The hypothesis of AGW has been falsified many times, but the politics of AGW refuses to die.
And on it goes. There’s no trend in U.S. tornado damage (in fact, 2012 to 2017 was below average). There’s no trend in global droughts. Cold snaps in the U.S. are down but, unexpectedly, so are heatwaves.
It is plausible that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere will increase climate stability, by a GAIA type mechanism in which plants stabilise local – and possibly wider – climate to their own advantage.
Thus in cold periods, low CO2 weakens the plant biosphere resulting in greater climate instability.
Thus the glacial-interglacial flicker during transitions to global deep glaciation (i.e. now) and huge instability during glacial intervals – DO events (microinterglacials), etc.
Plants bring the hydrological cycle into land interiors which stabilises climate.
Glacial periods become arid and unstable.
Howard June 8 at 2:46, the reason that the BBC reports Climate Change in such an unbalance way is to be found in the BBC Trust, June 2007 document which was, with no irony intended, was titled “From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel – Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century” which may be found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/18_06_07impartialitybbc.pdf Here is an extract:
” Climate change is another subject where dissenters can be unpopular. There may be now a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening, and that it is at least predominantly man-made. But the second part of that consensus still has some intelligent and articulate opponents, even if a small minority.
Jana Bennett, Director of Television, argued at the seminar that ‘as journalists, we have the duty to understand where the weight of the evidence has got to. And that is an incredibly important thing in terms of public understanding – equipping citizens, informing the public as to what’s going to happen or not happen possibly over the next couple of hundred years.’
Roger Mosey, Director of Sport, said that in his former job as head of TV News, he had been lobbied by scientists ‘about what they thought was a disproportionate number of people denying climate change getting on our airwaves and being part of a balanced discussion – because they believe, absolutely sincerely, that climate change is now scientific fact.
The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus. But these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC’s role to close down this debate. They cannot be simply dismissed as ‘flat-earthers’ or ‘deniers’, who ‘should not be given a platform’ by the BBC. Impartiality always requires a breadth of view: for as long as minority opinions are coherently and honestly expressed, the BBC must give them appropriate space. ‘Bias by elimination’ is even more offensive today than it was in 1926. The BBC has many public purposes of both ambition and merit – but joining campaigns to save the planet is not one of them. The BBC’s best contribution is to increase public awareness of the issues and possible solutions through impartial and accurate programming. Acceptance of a basic scientific consensus only sharpens the need for hawk-eyed scrutiny of the arguments surrounding both causation and solution. It remains important that programme-makers relish the full range of debate that such a central and absorbing subject offers, scientifically, politically and ethically, and avoid being misrepresented as standard-bearers. The wagon wheel remains a model shape. But the trundle of the bandwagon is not a model sound.”
The Trust reports (first sentence of last paragraph): “The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus.”
Unfortunately for the tarnished, even shattered, reputation of the BBC it turns out that these “best scientific experts” whom the BBC consulted turned out to be nothing of the sort. The BBC spent tens of thousands of pounds on legal costs trying to prevent access to the list of their “best scientific experts” using FOI legislation only to find that the BBC itself had already published the list of the “best scientific experts” on the internet. Their “best scientific experts” turned out to be nothing of the sort. It is hardly surprising that trust in the once hallowed BBC Trust has evaporated. Here is the list of the “best scientific experts” whom the BBC consulted before deciding to abandon impartial reporting and judge for yourself:
Robert May, Oxford University and Imperial College London Mike Hulme, Director, Tyndall Centre, UEA Blake Lee-Harwood, Head of Campaigns, Greenpeace Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen Michael Bravo, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge Andrew Dlugolecki, Insurance industry consultant Trevor Evans, US Embassy Colin Challen MP, Chair, All Party Group on Climate Change Anuradha Vittachi, Director, Oneworld.net Andrew Simms, Policy Director, New Economics Foundation Claire Foster, Church of England Saleemul Huq, IIED Poshendra Satyal Pravat, Open University Li Moxuan, Climate campaigner, Greenpeace China Tadesse Dadi, Tearfund Ethiopia Iain Wright, CO2 Project Manager, BP International Ashok Sinha, Stop Climate Chaos Andy Atkins, Advocacy Director, Tearfund Matthew Farrow, CBI Rafael Hidalgo, TV/multimedia producer Cheryl Campbell, Executive Director, Television for the Environment Kevin McCullough, Director, Npower Renewables Richard D North, Institute of Economic Affairs Steve Widdicombe, Plymouth Marine Labs Joe Smith, The Open University Mark Galloway, Director, IBT Anita Neville, E3G Eleni Andreadis, Harvard University Jos Wheatley, Global Environment Assets Team, DFID Tessa Tennant, Chair, AsRia
Donna Laframboise has some comments about McKitrick, Pielke and Podesta, on her blog.
————————————
Extreme Politics: The Roger Pielke Jr. Story
Rabid dog climate enforcers will destroy you without conscience or regret.
Last week, an article by economist Ross McKitrick appeared in Canada’s National Post. Titled This scientist proved climate change isn’t causing extreme weather – so politicians attacked, it tells the story of Roger Pielke Jr., a professor in Boulder, Colorado who has been mercilessly persecuted for the unpardonable sin of telling the truth.
With Canada’s Prime Minister childishly insisting a national carbon tax will prevent wildfires, floods, and tornadoes, McKitrick sets us straight …
Read the rest at:
https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2019/06/10/extreme-politics-the-roger-pielke-jr-story/
So now that Trudeau has solved Canada’s climate problems and they won’t be experiencing any more extreme weather, what world problem does he tackle next?
I was on Huffpost today and got scolded for even questioning carbon tax effectiveness n fighting climate change. Then it got worse. Someone suggested that all climate change deniers should be put in jail.
These people are hard core and extreme.
I have a science degree and have read lots on this topic. The alarmists data is twenty years old and has been proven wrong. Greenland ice is expanding and he polar bears are thriving. An we have been in a 20 year cooling period.
I think we in Canada are in trouble. Our Prime minister has no science background and has bought in to the alarmists propaganda
I just posted a comment. How do sensible people fight back against the climate change alarmists.
There is no reasoning with them