Essay by Eric Worrall
Sydney Morning Herald talking up the alleged climate cataclysm, from the comfort of their air conditioned offices.
‘Sleepwalking to destruction’: World struck by relentless climate catastrophes
By Nick O’Malley
September 3, 2022 — 5.00am…
“The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids — the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding,” said United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said this week, calling on the world to stop “sleepwalking towards the destruction of our planet by climate change”.
The horror of his language was echoed in Pakistan, a nation of 220 million citizens.
“It has been a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions,” Pakistan Climate Minister Sherry Rehman told Associated Press.
…
Apart from the catastrophe facing one of the world’s poorest and most populous nations, what is worrying scientists today is that the extreme weather crippling Pakistan is echoing around the world.
Records for flood, fire and drought have tumbled across the world this year.
In China, rivers have run dry, crippling power generation, closing factories and shrinking crops. For more than 70 days straight this year, nearly a billion people suffered through a heatwave that saw sustained daily temperatures above 40 degrees across 17 provinces.
In Europe. the rusting ghost ships of Hitler’s Black Sea fleet have emerged from the retreating Danube River, and for the first time, a temperature of 40 degrees was recorded in England. Much of the continent is now in its worst drought in 500 years, compounding food and energy shortages caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
…
Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/sleepwalking-to-destruction-world-struck-by-relentless-climate-catastrophes-20220902-p5besw.html
Is that it? Pakistan experienced severe floods in 1992,2001, 2007, 2009,2010, (2011 Balochistan, Kohistan, Sindh floods), 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2019 and of course 2022. If the floods happen to be more severe than normal this year, that’s pretty thin evidence to call the apocalypse.
As for the worse European drought in 500 years, 500 years ago Europe was in the depths of the Little Ice Age. Did Global Warming tunnel backwards in time and make the Little Ice Age megadrought happen as well?
As for China – China, big river systems, floods. A year ago a significant number of poorly constructed Chinese dams and levies collapsed under heavy rainfall. Now they have no water – partly because of the severe drought, but likely also because a lot of dams which used to manage water no longer exist.
The Sydney Morning Herald fails to mention some good weather news. While the floods in Australia inundated many homes which had been recklessly built in flood zones, this year the Australian desert has bloomed, thanks to a powerful La Nina system which blew a little rain our way for once.
Some records were broken – but it would be difficult to find a year in which no records were broken. The world is a big place.
My heart goes out to people whose lives were affected by flooding tragedies or drought. But what happened this year was weather.
It is now so obvious that the alarmist predictions are failing that they are desperately hyping up every weather event.
Here in SE England we are experiencing the wettest drought since records began. It’s unprecedented.
Wet drought is the new normal.
Now, beware of the freezing heat-wave.
This drought featured 30,000 lightning bolts last night – loud claps of thunder, too
The 2 heatwaves, record temp, drought then flash floods – yes, that’s VERY unusual
2 hot days and a thunderstorm isn’t a heatwave
It’s a climate EMERGENCY !
Wasn’t 2 hot days and a thunderstorm the standard UK summer before the climate emergency kicked in (which now apparently brings 2 hot days and 1 warm night followed by a thunderstorm)?
Indeed it was
When I was stationed in England, 1975-1990, we used to say if summer comes on a weekend we’d have a picnic. Now we’d have to declare a climate emergency to apply for a UN loan for the hamburgers.
Of Peter Pan, Pinocchio or the combined Panocchio, you
sound most like Pinocchio.
“that’s VERY unusual”
Well actually.. Its pretty normal !
Its called WEATHER.. and it happens.
How old are you? 12?
Get lost, troll.
Sigh. giffie’s been lost for years.
If you find it, put it back in it’s swamp algae mat.
Coming your way, Hurricane Danielle:
As Joe Bastardi says, “Enjoy the weather, it’s the only weather you have.”
Looks like Danielle is headed for Galicia and the Douro Valley of northern Portugal.
Rush out and buy a few bottles of Port.
It’s a big world silly boy there bounds to be some weather excess occurring someplace.
You one of those twilight zone people afraid of your shadow?
“yes, that’s VERY unusual”
So you claim. The numbers show you are wrong.
Griff,
In your comment to a Kentucky flash flood, you said this:
“griff
August 11, 2022 10:14 am
another ‘1 in 1,000 year’ rain event – well off the scale of previous Kentucky floods.
Of course this is climate change.
We are getting multiple new record 1 in 1,000 year floods across the globe every year now…”
Then, in response to this post: “Is Extreme Weather Causing the World’s Rivers to Dry Up? https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/09/02/is-extreme-weather-causing-the-worlds-rivers-to-dry-up/ You answered:
“griff
September 3, 2022 1:05 am
Yes!
Next question…”
You seem to be very, very confused.
Are you getting enough Vitamin B-12?
“We are getting multiple new record 1 in 1000 year floods across the globe every year now ” ……..That’s some amazing arithmetic there ….Strange the IPCC has an opposite view on floods since 2013
Watched our new PM’s cavalcade drive from RAF Northolt to Downing St. It all looked green, in fact the trees in London were bright green. I was shocked.
And here’s me thinking we were having a 6% wetter dry flood.
Do you not think it odd there are so many exceptional weather events these days?
No
There has always been variable weather
No.
Virtually everyone can instantly make a video these days.
There was bad weather before 1900 you know, lots of it in fact.
It shows you are not well read.
Nor well-bred.
Actually griffo, this weather has been as normal as can be as both
wind & solar in the UK are “stinking up the joint”. Yesterday, was
only the fifth day since mid-July that had a momentary glitch >
10MW. Solar hasn’t even reached 5.5MW in Sep. Sounds quite
normal to me!
Since none wish you ill-will, you may want to get some batteries &
a charger to use with your exercise equipment before either of them
are sold out. They have a good chance of being quite useful if/when
the sun don’t shine and/or the wind doesn’t blow, which have
normally happened for long periods in the past. An extra supply of
fish & chips or similar high-energy/calorie-laden food may be
needed to keep your new power source from becoming too
unreliable, like wind & solar currently are.
The older I get, the less exceptional the weather seems. When I was young, I remember looking at every thunderstorm, and thinking “Wow this is awesome!” Now I just lament the fact that they don’t make thunderstorms like the used to.
“so many exceptional weather”
Except its all just hype. !
The “extreme” is in the reporting !
It once was the case that weather was reported locally. We did not hear about “extreme weather” in other parts of our country or other countries. National networks have now discovered that “Extreme Weather Bulletins” sells; gone are the days of the amiable weatherman who got a short slot between local news and sports and had to fill his/her 5 minutes with personality or human interest interviews or even stand up comedy.
A 100 year storm means that severity of weather only occurs statistically once every 100 years in that weather locality. Basic statistics, combined with an understanding of how many local weather zones exist in the world would lead you to the conclusion that 100 year storms are not that unusual.
If you want hard data on such events, I recommend you to Roger Pielke Jr, John Christie or Bjorn Lomborg.
I think it odd that you think there are “so many exceptional weather events these days.” Has Mum let you take the training wheels off of your bike yet? You are obviously a young squirt to have so little life experience with weather.
Calling then ‘exceptional’ does not make it so
Rank nonsense by weather or climate illiterates.
It is weather!
The vast majority of records are historical with many reaching back to the 1880s, 1920s, 1930s, 1950s, 1960s, 1990s, etc. etc.
Many records are centuries old!
Only the truly ignorant or delusional believers focus on pretending every weather event is “extreme”!
Apparently, you fit both categories.
If they had happened this winter, it might be fun to hear Griff explain how the two “Blizzards of ’78” were caused by CAGW. 😎
PS Griff, don’t bother to claim “Climate Change”. Blame nature. Per Forrest Gump, “Sh*t Happens”.
Griff, here in canada we had an exceptionally cold year until mid-July, people were skiing at mountain resorts in early July that normally close in may at latest.
The recent heat has helped fill and finish the crops such that most areas will have above average or bumper crops.
Good news right?
Makes you happy to hear that maybe fewer will starve?
But it is now cooling, and at the end of the year the Adjustment Bureau will be forced to admit that the year was even cooler than last years “7th hottest ever” BS.
What will you have to say then?
Pretty much nothing, I’m thinking.
No what I consider odd is people like you who LIES about the weather continuously, tornado counts down, hurricane counts are down, global wildfires are down, worldwide droughts are down, irrational fear of weather is way up.
No.
I (and possibly others ?) have already pointed this out to you (singular) several times, but apparently you have a (short- to medium-term ?) memory problem … maybe you should write down that you should see a neurologist about that ?
On the NCDC’s “Daily Weather Records” webpage (direct link), click on the “Global Summaries” tab then scroll down.
Today’s numbers are “screen-copied” below, for the “This Day of the Year”, “This Month” and “All Time” records.
Over the last year (the “Last 365 Days” row in each table), when looking at each date individually (the “Global Daily Records Summary” table at the top) :
– 61,108 “Hottest day for date DD/MM” records were set and
– 22,506 “Coldest night for date DD/MM” records were set and
– 47,828 “Most rain for date DD/MM” records were set and
– 6,862 “Most snowfall for date DD/MM” records were set.
In the “Global All Time Records Summary” for the last 365 days :
– 224 “Hottest day EVAH ! ! !” records were set and
– 26 “Coldest night EVAH ! ! !” records were set and
– 206 “Most rain EVAH ! ! !” records were set and
– 51 “Most snowfall EVAH ! ! !” records were set.
You can “expect” either a “Hottest day” or a “Most rainfall” all-time record to be set somewhere around the world 430 times a year …
To paraphrase Forrest Gump, “Weather happens”.
What is odd, and dishonest, is the declaring that weather events the have been happening for millenia are somehow unusual due to “climate change”. But it makes gullible useful idiots satisfied.
No, griff, it’s not “odd”.
What is “odd” is that every weather event where there is a cellphone has become MSM headline news.
They’ve all happened before there were cellphones or a “meme” to sustain.
The only thing that has changed is we now get reports of every weather event that occurs anywhere on earth. It’s just the climate change propaganda hype machine running at the full alarmist setting. Fortunately records have been kept for over 100 years so we can check and see that nothing that’s happened weather-wise is truly unprecedented.
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Here is the link to the seven video clips based on
a talk I gave at Washington DC on April 11, 2022:
https://www.ceres-science.com/post/the-weaponization-of-science-politics-vilification-and-the-climate-debate-dr-willie-soon
Please feel free to share and repost as you wish on your blogs, websites
and any other communication means you have.
Thank you for help.
Cordially,
Willie Soon
Look at Pakistan’s population. 235 million today. 38 million in 1950. Clearly 1000 unfortunate deaths is proportionately much smaller than past disasters. And to be clear, those 235 millions are going to be living in more dangerous places as the safe places were occupied long before.
Perhaps that is the real issue, not climate change, but rather the increase in population occupying more space and consuming more of everything.
I wasn’t discussing consumption but rather human development patterns. A lesson I learned very young. In the 1960s my parents took us kids on a road trip to Florida from New England. We ended up in Naples a couple blocks up the “hill” from the pier. I thought it was funny that there were no houses on the south side of the street. 13th Ave on. Our host said “Used to be houses but the hurricane took them.” Gargle mops search the same area today. What sane insurance agency would insure? There are reasons people didn’t used to live in places they are living now.
Miami Beach, first developed circa 1916 as a destination for the “Dixie Highway” was wiped out in a 1926 hurricane. It must have been all of those Tin Lizzies what done it.
It isn’t. The proportion of whole country flooded is unprecedented
So is the corruption
8% ?
Not the one third claimed by a politician.
All the area affected is the usual flood plain.
“The proportion of whole country flooded is unprecedented”
WRONG!
Has happened many times before..
If you knew anything about geomorphology, you would see that.
But you remain perpetually ignorant about everything.
Worst flood since the LAST WORST FLOOD
No since it happens every few years when LA-NINA is significant.
Your ignorance of Australian weather history is not surprising.
No that is an exaggeration ……Head over to Paul Homewoods blog and check the Pakistan floods satellite observational data for yourself ….Not even close to a “third of the country” flooded
Well, such increases in population would certainly significantly increase the numbers affected in any climate “event” but is also the reason for much of the water shortages in California, whose numbers have not only quadrupled in the past 100 years but so has their water usages and ‘needs’.
No, they are living upon a great flood plain. Figure it out.
We had TV News yesterday showing the flooding in Pakistan with people waist deep in flood water over two weeks since the flooding started ..
It is indeed a tragedy but it has been flooding on the Indus river for centuries ,
Monsoon rains combined with natural summer melting of glaciers .
This has been happening for centuries but the population has expanded rapidly in the last 70 years on to the flood plain to build houses where it was always know to flood .
I see that a lot of dams had to release water because of fear that they might collapse .
These pictures are flashed around the world to bolster the false climate change lies that man is destroying the earth .
Monsoon rains and glacier melting has been a constant feature of Pakistan’s history with the flooding fertilizing the plains for centuries
Don’t build in a flood plain. Where is the difficult part of this to understand?
Developers don’t care. They just want their money.
It is not just developers – the development must be approved so local councils / town planners carry even more responsibility since they have the experience and knowledge of the prior land use and water course history.
Headed toward 400,000,000. Most of the country is mountainous. A floodplain is not a good place to build but it is easier and cheaper than urbanizing a mountain.
Pakistan geography, maps, climate, environment and terrain from Pakistan | – CountryReports
Regardless of what “The Climate” does (or doesn’t) do, expect Pakistan citizens to suffer.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
The safe and effective mantra is being slowly replaced by a reality of sudden and unexpected and unknown cause, but interestingly in mostly Western countries only.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
Yes, I think this is what has happened to Griff. He is a victim of climate change propaganda. Griff is a True Believer now. He must be really fearful of the future. And we can’t seem to disabuse him of this CO2 delusion. We’ll keep working on it, Griff. Calm down, there’s nothing to see here weatherwise. It’s all happened before.
Funny how they fail to mention how many hurricanes haven’t devastated the Atlantic coast this year, in contradiction of the predictions.
If “Climate Change” is to blame for all the bad things, shouldn’t it get credit for the good things too?
Now that a hurricane has finally appeared, the national meteorologists are just delighted. They were very depressed about the hurricane drought, but now they have perked up. They’re all smiles.
Thankfully, our local meteorologists stick to the local weather and don’t talk about CO2. And that’s just the way we like it. Just the facts, please. That’s all we want. We don’t need unsubstantiated speculation about CO2 in our weather forecasts.
The USA National Hurricane Center’s current map …
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/?atlc
… shows a new disturbance entering the Atlantic Ocean near the northern border of Sierra Leone; about 9° N. Lat. This is a week away from the area where media types will start to hype the action — or, it may swirl off to the north and east as the others are doing.
Watch Monday’s news.
It would make an informative study for humanities students to examine a question such as –
if mainstream media reportage about climate studies since 1975 had been relegated to say page 10 content, would the “climate crisis” exist at all today?
(Social Studies students could start with the observation that discussion of the weather was probably the most prevalent ‘conversation-filler’ everywhere in the world since humans passed time together while not involved in hunting & gathering.)
In other words, if the general public wasn’t conditioned by the media, would anyone actually notice anything significantly different / changing about prevailing weather / climate behaviors?
No one goes into mainstream media because they want to maintain the status quo. Every.Single.One wants to change things.
The climate crisis doesn’t exist. The climate alarmism crisis does. Maybe that’s what you meant to say?
That’s why I put it in ” “.
In early 1956 the Mississippi River was about half it’s width with river barges on dry land. Yet the river has overflowed it’s banks many times since. Why, because of weather that is always changing somewhere.
“It has been a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions”
Which requires large amounts of cash
“Climate change compensation fight brews ahead of COP27 summit”
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/climate-change-compensation-fight-brews-ahead-cop27-summit-1703270
I expect Pakistan just went up the league table a few points
Look at this bit of wisdom from NBC about the Thwaites glacier “About 100 years ago, it retreated faster than it is currently retreating… you could say that’s good news because it’s not so bad now compared to what it was in the past,” Anna Wåhlin, a co-author of the study and a professor of physical oceanography at Sweden’s Gothenburg University, told NBC News. “But you can also say that it’s bad news, because it could happen again.”
These people are so myopic.
Every single day multiple – perhaps hundreds – of records for this or that are exceeded in multiple locations around the planet. Records are always highly localized events. And of course they’re only records since reliable and explicit recordkeeping began, which for most of the planet is less than two centuries back – a mere piffle in geologic time.
This is like any other flavor of propaganda, being entirely one sided and completely oblivious to proportionality and sensibleness.
Mainly TMIN records rather than mainly TMAX records
There’s a high-pressure system over the Western United States right now causing temperatures to soar, and I’m noticing that the national meteorologists are reporting “potential” record highs in advance.
So now they have increased the climate change hype by stressing over potential record highs, and then if they get any record highs, they can stress over that, too. If they don’t get any new record highs, they still were able to scare the public with their potential record high forecasts. A new twist to the climate change propaganda.
Slightly o/t
WINTER IS COMING Russian oil firm Gazprom taunts West with video showing Europe ‘freezing over’ in ‘ice age’ after Putin shuts off gas
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/19722591/gazprom-releases-freezing-winter-video-europe-without-gas/
Gazprom wats to sell highly profitable pipeline gas to the EU
EU companies would prefer cheaper Russian pipeline gas over LPG by ship
But EU leaders and Putin are having a political war
The companies on both sides are being manipulated by politicians.
Russia Admits Weaponization of Gas, Halts NS1 Shipments “Until Sanctions Lifted” As EU Prepares Response to Energy Crisis
https://auronmacintyre.substack.com/p/the-folly-of-invincible-elites?s=w&utm_medium=web
“Consequences are what humble us, what give us pause when we are about
to make a rash mistake. Our losses teach us about the limits of humanity,
and those who do not learn from the wisdom they impart are usually setting
themselves up for an even bigger disaster….”
(h/t Dan Bongino 9/6 podcast)
This article parallels Eric’s post in that it does a necessary, but
tiring job of having to debunk elitist nonsense. Other necessary
posts by Eric & others have shown how misguided climate research has
also wasted a lot of time & $$$ which could have been used doing
effective research to get a better understanding of our climate.
Without their nonsense, everyone could have made much better use of
limited resources. Sadly, even with all of the warnings, they’re
still promoting a fraud & not seeing the real dangers ahead.
https://www.theartofannihilation.com/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/
(h/t fretslider)
People/groups/gubmints promoting things for their own benefit are quite
sophisticated in marketing their “spiel” & this piece goes into some
of the techniques used to get what they want, answering this question-
as fretslider put it: how easily are you tricked? Despite my skepticism,
they were a lot sneakier & more effective than even I had realized.
So you can see how much their work has affected the unsuspecting
non-skeptics & turned many of them into “sheeple”.
People should take a look at this. Especially the part where they (non profit s NGOs etc)want to “unlock 100 trillion in pension funds”
The road to hell is paved by these people. Thanks, J.O.
The Tee Shirt I bought in Iceland two weeks ago has “Climate Neutral” printed on size tag. The product manager who requested that must really think that’s a worthy selling point.
Steve,
The effect of that one T-shirt on the climate will need a lot of zeroes to the right of the decimal point.
A whole lot of zeroes.
So, for practical purposes, the Marketing Director is correct; it is ‘Climate Neutral’.
Mind, I think that that is true about our species, too.
Auto
I lived in Australia in the 90’s and the Sydney Morning Herald seemed to be a very reasonable newspaper at the time. I read it daily. So as with what happened in the US things have changed drastically. There was always left wing journalism but back then things seemed more rational. While living in Sydney I was sometimes struck by the fact that when I brought up what I perceived to be a problem most people would say..well the government will take care of it. I never thought that way seeing as how govt often just made thing worse in the US. During the Covid lockdown in Australia my ex wife who has lived there over 40yrs lost her business. She was at one time in the 90’s the director of the Newspaper Advertising Business which was supported by the Aussie newspapers. She later went into the headhunting biz recruiting orthopedic and neurosurgeons which is what she lost.
More lies from useless bureaucrats and/or administrators from the UN. Why on earth would anyone listen to these mental midgets.
If climate models were useful they would be forecasting rising temperature in boreal summers and cooler winters with snowfall trending upward.
Extremes in the HN are going to become more extreme and it has nothing to do with CO2. Wasting massive resources to reduce CO2 means the ability to accommodate real climate change will be diminished.
The attached shows how solar intensity has shifted at 30N over the past 520 years to the next 80 years. April and May have the greatest warming, which will reflect on summer temperature due to thermal lag while September has the greatest cooling, which will reflect on winter temperatures. Overall a slight upward trend but extremes are more extreme.
Rick that is fascinating. I’m curious as to how you derived your plots, with what data?
A positive 1 W/m2 change in 80 years is a lot, and the change from 1500-present is even more, >1.5 W/m2. That range is comparable to the average solar cycle TSI change.
As your insolation changes are unfamiliar to most, perhaps it would give greater context if the annual value at 30N for 1500-2100 was also plotted seperately, in addition to your monthly changes plot, or perhaps go all out with a 12-panel stack plot, one for each month.
You’ve possibly provided an indirect mechanism for why the Law Dome CO2 was so flat until the last century, as the year 1500 Apr-May sea surface temperature would’ve been cooler than now from less insolation then, depressing CO2 outgassing while enhancing CO2 sinking.
It would be nice if you could make a plot of the insolation changes for 1850-Present along with Present-2100. The alarmists always reference 1850 as the time of CO2 ‘equilibrium’, perhaps CO2 changed from insolation changes and strong solar cycles working together, warming SST.
I calculate this using orbital data from Astropixels available here for each year:
http://www.astropixels.com/ephemeris/perap/perap2001.html
This covers from 1500 to 2500 with 100 years per web page.
The orbit formulas are complex so I rely on others such as Astropixels for that. NASA also publish orbital data. The geometry to assess the insolation at day and latitude is not quite so complex but not simple either.
The IMCCE site can provide similar data over longer duration and also has a web page for calculating insolation at latitude and month:
http://vo.imcce.fr/insola/earth/online/earth/online/index.php
Precession change, a 23kyr cycle, is observable in most of the good temperature trends now. There is no GLOBAL warming. Over the past 4 decades of the satellite era some regions are warmer, some static trend and others cooler. The warming and cooling approximately follow the insolation but it is not that simple because there are different response times for different surfaces and multiple processes involved. The static temperature trend is the tropics where deep convection sets an upper limit of 30C on ocean surface temperature. Any land region can get warmer than 30C if it is not permanently covered in ice. Currently the South Pole gets the highest monthly insolation of anywhere on Earth, 541W/m^2 average during January but it is still freezing because the 2000m thick ice mountain is not going to melt in a month. The peak January insolation of 542W/m^2 at the South Pole was just 1000 years ago. So the Southern Ocean is only just beginning to cool. In 1000 years from now the January insolation will drop to 537W/m^2.
Thanx for your reply and effort.
A few hysterical headlines I recall —
You will not hear this on the MSM, I’m sure.
Historically quiet start to this year’s Atlantic hurricane season
https://youtu.be/YgSkHSYQ6M4 via @YouTube
Fast forward to when the CO2 increase is eliminated. How will they explain weather events then?