Tony Thomas: Climate science comes up short

Temperatures refuse to rise, exterminate polar bears, melt the icecaps, engulf coastal cities or make Tim Flannery seem rational. Not that the paleontologist is alone in the upper ranks of ratbaggery. Meet Professor Matthew Liao, who yearns to bio-engineer smaller, drug-ready humans
People unwilling to act on the climate-crisis narrative should be assisted with drugs that improve and promote conformity, according to eminent bio-ethicist Professor Matthew Liao, of New York University, who also wants to see parents dosing their children with hormones and diets to keep them shorter and less of a burden on the planet.

He wants such people to be given  the ‘love drug/cuddle chemical’ oxytocin. This would increase their trust and empathy and make them more ready to change to emission-saving lifestyles.

As his peer-reviewed study puts it, “Pharmacologically induced altruism and empathy could increase the likelihood that we adopt the necessary behavioral and market solutions for curbing climate change.” He emphasises there would be no coercion. The drugs would merely help those who want to be climate-friendly behaviour but lack the willpower

Once sufficiently drugged, parents would be less likely to reject notions of “human engineering” techniques that will be needed to create Humans 2.0. These amended species will be 15cm shorter than now, hence more energy efficient and less resource-demanding. His study,  Human Engineering and Climate Change, is in  Ethics, Policy and the Environment.[1]

Yes Minister Does Global Warming

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Climate miserablists – look away now.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Jo Nova

If only Yes Minister had done global warming. Well, it has now, in the new stage version.

It’s hilarious, absolutely to the point, and a must watch.

Yes Prime Minister Global Warming etc Part 1 from Aris Motas on Vimeo.

Yes Prime Minister Global Warming etc Part 2 from Aris Motas on Vimeo.

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DELINGPOLE: Global Warming Study Cancelled Because of ‘Unprecedented’ Ice

Ship of Fools III – scientist says in effect: “It’s warming Jim – but not as we know it.” Irony alert…

A global warming research study in Canada has been cancelled because of “unprecedented” thick summer ice, reports James Delingpole at Breitbart News. Naturally, the scientist in charge has blamed it on ‘climate change.’

According to Vice:
The study, entitled BaySys, is a $17-million four-year-long program headed by the University of Manitoba. It was planning to conduct the third leg of its research by sending 40 scientists from five Canadian universities out into the Bay on the Canadian Research Icebreaker CCGS Amundsen to study “contributions of climate change and regulation on the Hudson Bay system.”

But it had to be cancelled because the scientists’ icebreaker was required by the Canadian Coast Guard for a rather more urgent purpose – rescuing fishing boats and supply ships which had got stuck in the “unprecedented ice conditions”.

“It became clear to me very quickly that these weren’t just heavy ice conditions, these were unprecedented ice conditions,” Dr. David Barber, the lead scientist on the study, told VICE. “We were finding thick multi-year sea ice floes which on level ice were five metres thick… it was much, much thicker and much, much heavier than anything you would expect at that latitude and at that time of year.”

Clearly not one to let a crisis go to waste, Barber seized the opportunity to perform the usual alarmist clown dance for the media, explaining why this incident definitely shows that global warming is a major problem and deserving of our urgent attention.

Continued here.

Clive James: Climate alarmists will never admit they’re wrong

Via GWPF, an abstract from a brilliant essay by the evergreen Clive James.

When you tell people once too often that the missing extra heat is hiding in the ocean, they will switch over to watch Game of Thrones, where the dialogue is less ridiculous and all the threats come true. The proponents of man-made climate catastrophe asked us for so many leaps of faith that they were bound to run out of credibility in the end.

Now that they finally seem to be doing so, it could be a good time for those of us who have never been convinced by all those urgent warnings to start warning each other that we might be making a comparably senseless tactical error if we expect the elastic cause of the catastrophists, and all of its exponents, to go away in a hurry.

I speak as one who knows nothing about the mathematics involved in modelling non-linear systems. But I do know quite a lot about the mass media, and far too much about the abuse of language. So I feel qualified to advise against any triumphalist urge to compare the apparently imminent disintegration of the alarmist cause to the collapse of a house of cards. Devotees of that fond idea haven’t thought hard enough about their metaphor. A house of cards collapses only with a sigh, and when it has finished collapsing all the cards are still there.

Roy Spencer on ‘Santer takes on Pruitt’

US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt

As Dr Roy Spencer points out: ‘You can’t build a case for human-caused warming by relying on natural warming! (But, they did anyway.)’

A new paper in Nature: Scientific Reports by Santer et al entitled Tropospheric Warming Over the Past Two Decades begins with this:

After a recent Senate confirmation hearing, Scott Pruitt the new Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency received a written question regarding observed warming estimates. In response, Mr. Pruitt claimed that over the past two decades satellite data indicates there has been a leveling off of warming. We test this claim here.

Now, exactly how does one scientifically test a claim of “leveling off of warming”?

Cartoon of the day: Dilbert does denial

Today's Dilbert is a hoot
via @ScottAdamsSays pic.twitter.com/sL8EkVTQhF

— Good Ideas Vs Bad (@BadIdeasVs) May 14, 2017

Cartoon of the day: Josh on Wind energy

Cartoon of the day: Gavin’s Goggles

@RogTallbloke @ClimateOfGavin @Balinteractive @tan123 @curtstager 😉 pic.twitter.com/anmk96LZk1

— Josh (@Cartoonsbyjosh) April 27, 2017

Venezuela blames climate change after its troops invade Colombia

Map readers required?

H/T Climate Depot

Another story from the ‘Climate change causes everything’ file. Fortunately Colombia has not over-reacted.

TODAY VENEZUELA – Venezuela tried to downplay its illegal entry of troops into Colombia this week by claiming the constantly changing direction of a river near the border accidentally led the soldiers beyond their jurisdiction.

Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said the Venezuelan soldiers entered Colombia’s eastern department of Arauca as a result of the Arauca River, which she said is constantly changing its flow and direction.

A diplomatic commission still has to clarify the incident, which is reportedly expected in the coming hours.

A poetic response to Eric Idle’s call for the imprisonment of climate sceptics

 

Here’s an extra verse to add onto Eric’s famous ‘Universe song’

Tim Channon

With sadness, I’m sharing the news that my Talkshop co-blogger Tim Channon passed away on Friday. Tim had been bravely battling with cancer for some time, and was still upbeat and lively-minded when I spoke with him last week. Since then unfortunately, medical complications set in.

Tim was one of a kind. A humorous, thoughtful and technically brilliant individual. His contribution to our understanding of cyclic phenomena through the analysis software he wrote propelled me into my own research. His patient recording of weather data and survey of UK weather stations demonstrate the depth of interest and passion he had for bringing facts to bear on the climate debate. His dedication, skill and good natured rebukes against uninformed speculation and bad theory puts him in the Pantheon of great sceptical thinkers and scientists.

Tim will be missed and remembered.

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News outlets fooled by fake news: the Badlands National Park hack

Credit: hackersnewsbulletin.com

Were some people too ready to believe this ‘news’?
H/T Climate Change Dispatch / Daily Caller

When the Badlands National Park’s official Twitter account began publishing posts on global warming, news outlets frantically ran headlines about a defiant federal agency sticking it to the Trump administration.

The media’s fever-pitch only increased once the tweets were taken offline, with some celebrities joining the fray and tweeting about the “fascism” and “censorship” being pushed by the Trump administration.

Reporters pointed out the Badlands tweets came after the Trump administration issued a “gag order” to federal employees, preventing them from talking to the press, issuing official statements on social media. “With new rules like this in place, where’s the public going to get its scientific information?” opined New York magazine writer Madison Malone Kircher.

It turns out, Badlands National Park wasn’t trying to defy Trump. A former employee “compromised” the park’s Twitter account to post about global warming. Moreover, the Trump administration did not ask the park to remove the tweets, they did so voluntarily.

Harvesting renewable energy from Earth’s mid-infrared emissions

Tim writes,

Enjoy. When I first came across this paper there was a lot of chuckling, can’t be serious, surely?

Well, I can understand someone wanting to quantify the effect, show the laws, make it a warning for any fools who need saving from themselves, ain’t engineers. I’m afraid this paper goes too far off the deep end, hints at meant seriously. Your opinion might differ.

Published PNAS

Harvesting renewable energy from Earth’s mid-infrared emissions
Steven J. Byrnes, Romain Blanchard, and Federico Capasso, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
Contributed by Federico Capasso, February 3, 2014 (sent for review November 1, 2013)

It is possible to harvest energy from Earth’s thermal infrared emis-
sion into outer space. We calculate the thermodynamic limit for
the amount of power available, and as a case study, we plot how
this limit varies daily and seasonally in a location in Oklahoma.We
discuss two possible ways to make such an emissive energy har-
vester (EEH): A thermal EEH (analogous to solar thermal power
generation) and an optoelectronic EEH (analogous to photovoltaic
power generation). For the latter, we propose using an infrared-
frequency rectifying antenna, and we discuss its operating princi-
ples, efficiency limits, system design considerations, and possible
technological implementations.
— http://www.pnas.org/content/111/11/3927.full.pdf

Actual merit? Works at night.

Delingpole: How I totally crushed the ocean acidification alarmist loons

Well, gave them a black eye at least. Climate whingers have managed to score an own goal by referring JD to the press complaints people and losing the case. Having taken some stick he naturally seizes the opportunity to rub it in.

Meet Dr Phil Williamson: climate ‘scientist’; Breitbart-hater; sorely in need of a family size tube of Anusol to soothe the pain after his second failed attempt to close down free speech by trying to use press regulation laws to silence your humble correspondent.

Williamson – who is attached to the University of East Anglia, home of the Climategate emails – got very upset about some articles I’d written for Breitbart and the Spectator pouring scorn on his junk-scientific field, Ocean Acidification.

In my view Ocean Acidification is little more than a money-making scam for grant-troughing scientists who couldn’t find anything more productive to do with their semi-worthless environmental science degrees. The evidence that Ocean Acidification represents any kind of threat is threadbare – and getting flimsier by the day.

Global warming protest met with bitter cold, snow

Global warming takes the day off in Colorado

Outdoor protesting in December in the Northern Hemisphere can have its drawbacks, as The Daily Caller describes. Maybe add embarrassment to the list when you’re claiming that humans are making the world warmer.

A small group of global warming activists protesting oil and gas drilling outside the Department of Interior office in Colorado Thursday morning were met with bitter cold weather and snow.

About 10 “Keep It In The Ground” activists waved signs next to a busy road in the Denver area, calling for the Obama administration to stop issuing leases so companies can drill on public lands.

Activists say drilling only exacerbates global warming. The irony, however, is activists stood outside in about 4 inches of snow with temperatures hovering in the 20s — in degrees Fahrenheit.

Trumped!

Nice one Josh. 🙂

Tony Thomas: The Cream of the Climate Croppers

At Quadrant we respect winners, so hats off to newly-elected Australian Academy of Science Fellows, Professors Neville Nicholls and Ian Allison. Both are climate catastrophists, each seemingly oblivious to the empirical research which has downgraded the CO2 climate-sensitivity guesstimate (i.e. positive feedback number) from the IPCC’s 1.5-4.5 times to barely more than unity.

These real-world observations suggest that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial levels would generate, all things being equal, a beneficial increase of about 1degC in warming, not the supposed life-frying 4-6deg rise by 2100 on which the whole multi-trillion-dollar climate scare is based.

The IPCC’s fantasy figure for sensitivity to CO2 is one of the reasons why 111 of its 114 climate model runs  over-estimated the negligible warming in the 15 years to 2013. However, the main reason why the climate models are duds is that the very notion of complex and chaotic climate forces being controlled by a simple CO2-emissions dial is laughable.[1]

Climate Hustle: Moi on the Big Screen

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Somebody has to push back against these serial climate alarm exaggerators.

Donna Laframboise gets a few words in…

Big Picture News, Informed Analysis

I’m on screen for a few seconds in a documentary film that will be shown in movie theatres across the US on May 2nd.

Tomorrow, May 2nd, a documentary film titled Climate Hustle will be shown in hundreds of movie theatres across the United States. This is a one-day event only, although here in Canada the film will be shown on May 2nd and 3rd in Toronto, and on May 8th in Halifax (full details here; film website here).

I wasn’t interviewed by those involved and haven’t seen the film, but have been advised it includes a brief clip from a lengthy interview recorded by Australian filmmaker Topher Field in 2013. Others appearing in Climate Hustle include climate scientist Judith Curry who blogs about the film here, Greenpeace founding member Patrick Moore, economist Richard Tol, and biology superstarDaniel Botkin.

Bill Nye, who plays a science…

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Time to panic: the world is running out of [fill in the blank]

Empty supermarket shelves before Hurricane Sandy [credit: Wikipedia]

Running out of…sanity? Probably not, but the media has to get its ‘news’ stories from somewhere, as this GWPF report implies.

What explains our insatiable appetite for stories about shortages? Ever since Thomas Malthus warned of imminent food shortages and mass starvation in 1779, the spectre of a Malthusian resource catastrophe has resurfaced among each new generation of pessimists.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Website Climate Scepticism reports this exchange on BBC radio between self-styled environmentalist Roger Harrabin and (possibly sceptical) BBC interviewer Justin Webb. Marvel at the airy-fairy concepts being promoted. Webb’s closing comment causes hilarity in the studio.

On Friday last week, the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 featured some items about a report just released from the National Infrastructure Commission, which describes how Britain (lucky thing!) is perfectly placed to kick off a “smart power revolution” and become a world leader in all things low-carbon.