| A bit of refreshing news, via The GWPF: |
London, 6 September: The General-Secretary of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says that the alarmist narrative on climate change has gone off the rails and criticised the news media for provoking unjustified anxiety.
Speaking to Finland’s financial newspaper Talouselämä (“The Journal”) on 6 September 2019, Petteri Taalas called for cooler heads to prevail, saying that he does not accept arguments of climate alarmists that the end of the world is at hand.
Dr Taalas also spoke of the dangers of green extremism:
“While climate sceptisism has become less of an issue, now we are being challenged from the other side. Climate experts have been attacked by these people and they claim that we should be much more radical. They are doomsters and extremists; they make threats.”
And he called for the media both to challenge experts and allow a broader range of opinions to be heard.
The director of the Global Warming Policy Forum, Dr Benny Peiser, welcomed Dr Taalas’s intervention:
“It’s very welcome to hear the Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization finally challenging eco-zealots.
“I hope mainstream climate scientists and the news media sit up and take notice; it’s high time they put some professional distance between themselves and radical greens and start to question their apocalyptic narrative of doom.”
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Do not believe a word he says. As a Finn I can tell you that our own Petteri has been one of worst of alarmists. I think he and his ilk fears Extinction Rebellion and other loonies may cause damage to their great plan, what ever that may be. Mr Turncoat, pfft.
Timo V, sometimes I feel that if important people speak the truth, they are shown as uneducated or silly, or in bed with the oil companies… hopefully he has changed and fully realised that speaking the truth is a good thing that can actually help people, as the scare tactics are destroying peoples lives.
I wonder whether Prince Charles would include this expert as one of his headless chickens?
The Prince Charles who lectures us about science whilst defending homeopathy?
Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-49515462
Are forest fires as bad as they seem?
By Reality Check team
BBC News
From the article:
“With the help of satellite data we have looked at four areas – Brazil, Siberia, Indonesia and Central Africa.
And we have concluded that although fires this year have wrought significant damage to the environment, they have been worse in the past.
As a Finn I’m moderately surprised to see THAT coming from Taalas of all people… But if he really is serious about it, I’m happy!
JR, do you have a signature to this newspaper and can provide us a translated copy? I like to read from the original. Best Regards
It’s always refreshing to hear someone with good sense. I have to congratulate Petteri Taalas for such an effort. However, throughout the years, others tried and failed and endanger themselves on becoming pariahs in the climate community. I remember that the unsuspicious Dr. Vicky Pope, about ten of years ago, made the same effort (she is, in general, aligned with the CAGW idea). Unfortunately this is not news for the masses and only a few will hear about it, mostly the ones that read this excellent blog.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/feb/11/climate-change-science-pope
I remember that a few years ago, after a few lines that I gave in public about, precisely, the danger of extreme alarmism in climate science (or in any other branch of science), I quickly entered a list, from a guy called Jim Prall, labeled as a dangerous scientist considering climate science…
Self-preservation. People eventually turn off, tune out from prophecies of the end is nigh. Duck dynasties and a gay old time for everyone!
In future news:
“WMO General Secretary Petteri Taalas has been removed from office and reassigned to a weather station in Siberia, after it emerged that he is in fact an evil denier in the pay of the fossil fuel industry.”
The factions are not so clearly delineated. A part or whole of the hydrocarbon industry is on board with government benefits transfer that are clean, green, and renewable.
It was a good gig, once, that netted billions, and promised trillions, for the Green Blight and its environmentalist lobbies. They inferred from a mechanism characterized in isolation to liberal proportions. They asserted models (i.e. hypotheses) that have demonstrated no skill to match past observations or forecast future evolution (i.e. chaos) are fit to purpose and justify their conception of social and economic “progress” (e.g. redistributive change, population control schemes). Their works are not viable in a social or scientific context outside of their minority followers, and, perhaps, dependents. People are not so green, and have chosen to deny their prophecies, and, increasingly their Profits (sic) and profits.
Is there anyone here with a signature to the original newspaper that can provide a complete english translation or conversion? As much as I respect GWPF, I always like to read the source.
There should be English language media coverage on this, besides GWPF. Many of the alarmists immediately write off anything that comes from GWPF. With something in NYT , WaPO, or similar, it would be easy to post it, letter to the editor in local paper or whatever, to get the activists to take note.
Without that, there is no real effect from these statements. The people that need to see it won’t.
Also note that this article is from 3 months ago! So any hope of getting mainstream coverage is effectively gone.
Oops, 3 months ago?
06/09/19 in European notation is today, but in US was 3 months ago.
The article to GWPF refers is by subscription only.
Here is another report on Taalas’ comments. Google translate seems to work.
https://www.uusisuomi.fi/kotimaa/290002-te-maailman-ilmatieteen-jarjeston-paasihteeri-petteri-taalas-tyrmaa-suomen
The media simply doesn’t ask the right questions when these people are interviewed.
They don’t ask the right questions to the skeptics or the alarmists. Maybe this is because the general public doesn’t understand the science.
One thing is I have never heard “global warming” defined in media. They use the term and never define it. What is is the sensitivity of co2 to temperature that we consider to be “global warming” ? How on earth can you debate anything without first defining the terms ?
There are too many extremists on both sides being put on TV. I would much rather hear from the center.
Well it does seem encouraging on the face of it,shame he didn’t do a bit more science,shame he didn’t mention the media scaremongering on “heat waves” there was no heat wave that lived up to Wmo standard definition.
The damage is done ,a whole generation of kids brainwashed, legislation whole rafts of it from power generation to farming ,all based on the lie of c02 driving the climate,I fear for this guys job.
Sent this to the news desk at The (Glasgow) Herald.
Not holding my breath that they will pick up on it.
The reality is that there is no climate emergency. Climate change has been going on for eons long before mankind started to make use of fossil fuels. Climate change is taking place so slowly that it takes networks of sophisticated sensors, decades to even detect it. We must be careful not to mix up weather cycles which are part of the current global climate with true climate change. Based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change we are experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. So even if mankind stopped making use of fossil fuels altogether, the effort would have no effect on climate change. Even if mankind could somehow stop the Earth’s climate from changing, extreme weather events would continue because they are part of the current climate so there is nothing to be gained. Rather than trashing the economy in the name of reducing CO2 emissions, we would be better off if efforts were concentrated on improving the global economy so that mankind would have an improved capability of dealing with the ravages of extreme weather events.
I have been a critic about this for some time but may have just discovered the basis of what has been going on in Sigma Xi for over a decade. Probably my own fault for not being an active member, but wonder how this happened. This came from a Sigma Xi blog on their recent concern with “Ethics,” and how members needed to take a pledge. Someone said wait a minute about {insert clarifying adjectives}, which led to this being exposed. There is hope of reality intruding. Maybe it was not a conspiracy, but certainly like-minded cooperation.
The pledge—-
“Do you hereby pledge yourself, in accordance with the {insert clarifying adjectives} purposes and objectives of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society, to encourage original investigations in science, to foster companionship and cooperation among scientists, to maintain honor, integrity and honesty in all scientific activities, and to assume the other {insert more clarifying adjectives} continuing responsibilities of membership?”
https://www.sigmaxi.org/about/value-of-membership
1. The pursuit of excellence along with equally passionate colleagues
2. The chance to “pay forward” to our profession through a career of
Active encouragement of, and participation in, research
Maintaining this community of excellence
3. The ability to voice concerns and offer direction with informed evidence on critically important issues nationally and beyond, and
4. The opportunity to “pay back” for your gratifying career through mentorship and support of our profession
Partnerships with National Organizations
AAAS, AAU, APLU, CGS, National Academies
AAAS Science and Human Right Coalition
UN-Sigma Xi Climate Change Report
The 2007 report.
https://www.sigmaxi.org/docs/default-source/Programs-Documents/Critical-Issues-in-Science/download-the-full-report-of-confronting-climate-change-(15mb-164-pages).pdf?sfvrsn=1ae3ad58_0
In Recommendation 6–“There is a need for downscaling of climate-change scenarios to relevant regional spatial and temporal scales and a “one-stop warehouse” where these can be accessed by non-experts who can apply them to their regional planning processes.
Regarding Sigma Xi: We have recently been uninndated with fat ‘gift’ containing fundraising packages fro large charities. The only source for us getting on such mailing lists (cancer, heart & stroke, and nature conserving, etc) is a recent subscription to their magazine, American Science.
Has anyone else had similar experiences?
Have not heard of that, but no surprise as they have a relatively new editor, and the society has been getting into the fad of the day/month/year like March for Science, environmental justice, etc. They were clearly into politics sending free subscriptions only to high schools where legislatures were considering vaccines, climate change and one other that does not come to mind. I have written them at least three times as this violates the society’s constitution, only response was from their communication director, who tried to worm out of it.
American Scientist still has good articles including one on the Flint water problem where the author realized he was getting into a different territory, unlike their position on climate. The Sigma Xi administration clearly thinks science needs to “run things” and has apparently been tied up into national and international politics for some time, not sure how open that has been to members. They are pushing communication and ethics as in– https://www.sigmaxi.org/news/keyed-in/post/keyed-in/2019/08/28/overcoming-politics-and-misconduct-to-build-public-trust-in-science
As an interesting side note, the prolific author Henry Petroski, who writes a good article for American Scientist every month, has this book which I have not seen.
[Petroski, Henry. 2010. The essential engineer : why science alone will not solve our global problems . New York : Alfred A. Knopf.] As an engineer he sometimes necessarily gets into politics, but does it properly, at least from what I (and engineer friends) have read.
Well this guy won’t last long in his new job.
A “thunderbox” of climatologisrs perhaps?
This secretary general I suspect, has been told to cool the masses, by who IPCC,un, ? As the church disciples of global warming have taken alarmism to hysterical heights,there in danger of losing what public support they have,this is a planned damage limitation exercise,lord Monckton last week did a article here about a university that has a department dedicated to climate denialists, they will be watching here as well as many other places,they know the damage and the opposing view is growing, the BBC have cooled down on climate alarmism the last few weeks,and the above is the reason why,plus there being taken to court over there biased left wing reporting,in effect breaking there charter, until the debate becomes public ,a opposing view is given as much coverage as the global warming alarmism then I will remain skeptical of token offers to cool down the masses,I hope I’m wrong,
If the Metv scientist are telling the truth, who is then fiddling the figures
to say that its getting hotter etc. ?
MJE VK5ELL
I think he is seeing the same problems arising as the Democrats do in the US. The Party let the Socialists have a platform in 2016, showing a degree of respect to Bernie Sanders. They did this, of course, for their money and their votes. But the extremists now get all the media attention, and suck all the air out of the room. There is no way for the moderates to be heard, and the screamers are trying to outdo each other with their far-left positions. And what Pelosi, et al, have discovered: they cannot be controlled or reasoned with. A moderate Democrat today will be destroyed by the viciousness of the far-left Democrats more than by Republicans. The Democrats have unleashed a force that is consuming them.
There is an obvious parallel in global warming. The extremists have all but taken over. The ideas they are advocating range from the absurd to the abhorrent. Give up meat. Quit driving cars. Make do with unreliable power. Destroy the economy. Promote more third-world abortions. Cannibalism. The predictions are equally risible. By now, millions should have died, cities flooded, tens of millions of refugees, ice caps gone, and more hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, etc. The Michael Manns of the world encouraged such fear-mongering, and have now lost control. The Extinction Rebellion has created more ‘skeptics’ than ever. The perception is growing that those pushing climate fears are all nutters, trying to destroy Western civilization.
When the dust settles, there may be little left of the Democratic Party (at least, nationally), and no credibility given to climate change fears. And the world will be a better place.
Extreme left creates a lot of good straw-mans to shoot down. Media coverage of climate change topics is so crazy that people will reject it. That may result in rejecting the whole climate change, which is what Dr Taalas is worried about.
Petteri Taalas is main a stream climatologist no doubt that. But it is hard to live in Finland if you don’t have some common sense. If your god has said that true believers go bare foot and then come the Finnish Winter and he say “Put on warm shoes” you believe him. Key word is common sense.
I guess at some point they have to back down from the rhetoric a bit. Especially because how crazy the talk has become. Politicians and activists are competing with each other in who can say the most hysterical thing in order to gain attention and votes. Future generations will look back and wonder at the craziness of early 21st century, just like we look back and wonder at the craziness of previous centuries.
“The world will end in 50 years!!”
“No, we only have 12 years remaining!”
“No, fool, it’s 10 years now!”
“What, can’t you see? It’s going to be destroyed in 11 months!”
“Idiots! The world will explode tomorrow if you don’t immediately commit economic suicide and give me 1 000 000 dollars!”
Meanwhile these same people fly and drive regularly, eat expensive food, live in modern comfortable houses… Yeah, it’s kinda hard to take the whole climate change discussion seriously. Hopefully this means that atleast a little bit of sanity will return to the discussion.