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.

Obama’s climate plan is off the rails

From the BBC website

Image credit: ibd.com

President Barack Obama’s plans to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide from US power plants have been stalled by the US Supreme Court.

The court ruled that the president’s Clean Power Plan could not go forward until all legal challenges were heard.

Designed to cut US emissions by 32% by 2030, the scheme put huge emphasis on a shift to renewable energy.

Flooding of biblical proportions in Lancashire

Verdier covers Paris climate nutfest for Russia Today

Forecast stuff is darn difficult, where is a French weatherman to go after heave ho?

h/t Joanna Nova and Bob Carter
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/12/phillippe-verdier-top-french-weatherman-was-sacked-now-hired-by-kremlin/

Top French weatherman makes headlines by joining RT to cover climate summit
Published time: 1 Dec, 2015 03:03

Well-known French meteorologist Philippe Verdier was fired from a national TV channel after publishing a book challenging the mainstream narrative on climate change. He is now able to do just that on RT France, covering the UN climate summit in Paris.

Verdier has thanked RT for the opportunity, saying that the Russian channel has enabled him to exercise his freedom of speech.

— https://www.rt.com/news/324072-french-weatherman-climate-reports/

The 2016 Cartoons by Josh Calendar is out

Get it while it’s fresh here

Josh says:

The Calendar has cartoons from the past year, mostly on Energy, Environment and Climate Change topics.
This year there are also political cartoons and caricatures.

Westminster debate: The BBC’s Relationship with the Met Office (Divorce)

From the parliament.uk website,  background on the Westminster hall debate to be held next Tuesday on the BBC-MetO relationship. What I’d like to know, is how does the MetO get a debate with a petition of less than 300 signatures, when other urgent causes with tens of thousands of names on e-petitions are ignored?

Image credit: Cartoons by Josh

Published Friday, October 23, 2015

A Westminster Hall debate on the BBC’s relationship with the Met Office has been scheduled for Tuesday 27 October 2015 at 1430hrs. The Member in charge of the debate is Mr Ben Bradshaw.

The following information has been compiled in preparation for the debate on the BBC’s relationship with the Met Office. It provides a brief history of the relationship between the BBC and the Met Office and a summary of the recent announcement that the Met Office had lost the contract to provide the BBC with data for its weather forecasts. Also included are links to relevant media articles and a selection of recent Parliamentary Questions on this topic as an attached document.

France Uses ‘Climate Train’ to Raise Awareness

Gare de Lyon, Paris [image credit: about-paris.com]

We can already hear the ‘hitting the buffers’ and ‘going off the rails’ quips coming down the line, as another desperate effort to stir up interest in so-called climate change hits the tracks. Voice of America reports from the station.

PARIS—A train is chugging its way across France this month to raise awareness about climate change and what is at stake during December’s climate summit in Paris. The climate train got a high-level send-off Tuesday at Paris’ Gare de Lyon station that included champagne and speeches by Environment Minister Segolene Royal and other officials.

Those invited wandered through rail cars displaying maps and interactive images of how a warming climate will change our planet — and how it already has made changes. High school student Anne-Marie Coelho visited the train with her father. She attended this week’s event, she said, to learn more about sustainable development and climate change.

Ice House of Mirrors

image credit: Pocket Perspectives

Ron Clutz at Science Matters offers an unusual perspective on Arctic sea ice data.

In the fable of Snow White, the evil step-mother asked her hand mirror: “Who is the fairest in the land?” The mirror on the wall always flattered her, but this mirror did not. As we all know, the hand mirror told the truth, the queen was angry and people had to suffer.We expect mirrors to tell the truth, to show us the objective reality. That is why it is amusing at the carnival sideshow to gaze into mirrors that make normal people look obese or like a beanpole, or otherwise distort one’s appearance.

Six things we’ll probably see on Obama’s ‘Running Wild’ episode

Not the John Wayne classic

You have to laugh – doesn’t this man have a country to run? Mashable lets its imagination run wild.

It’s official: POTUS is going to be on Running Wild with Bear Grylls. NBC’s press release about the show was relatively vague; we know the episode will take place in Alaska and focus on climate change’s effects on the area, but not much else.

So we couldn’t help but imagine what President Obama will be doing with the survivalist.

Like a foghorn calling out for its mate

I come across stuff, often in places definitely not for public consumption, too PC, too twitchy about reality. Rog and oldbrew seem to be away so I’d better write something.

I’d never heard of James Mickens, whom it seems wrote a blog on the Microsoft research site. Written about a year ago.

This is my last column! Thanks for reading, and thanks for all of the support🙂. never forget that when you are alone, I am with you, and when you are with someone else, I am also with you, because I think that I am better than that other person and I have lengthy opinions about why this is true.

And then a piece entitled To Wash It All Away. (link to PDF)

The first part of the article will raise some chuckles whether actually true or not, how reality has a way of bighty things, you want to do that, oh well.

Drought-hit Californians paint their lawns green

The green green grass of home
[image credit: AP / Daily Mail]

Terradaily reports on the feel-good factor of green grass:
The heat is stifling, the soil dry as a bone, and a new law in drought-stricken California restricts the use of sprinklers.

But far from saying farewell to their beloved lawns, some Californians are coping with the drought by… painting them green.

With a simple squeeze of a spray gun, dried-out yellow grass regains its lush green color before the eyes of its proud owners.

It is a kind of make-over which is becoming increasingly common in California, which is now in the fourth year of a historic drought.

Strange ‘outer space’ signal turns out to be microwave oven

Not this time [credit: northshireneedle.com]

Daily Telegraph report:
Scientists monitoring an Australian radio telescope have discovered that a series of strange signals which have baffled astrophysicists for 17 years were caused by the facility’s kitchen microwave being opened while in use.

The finding was made by Emily Petroff, a PhD student, who set up an interference monitor at the site to investigate the signals, known as perytons, which were thought to be from space but were also known – somewhat unusually – to be detected only during business hours.

So you like reanalysis, the 3 var trick

NCAR Research Data Archive Blog

2015-03-30
1938 atmospheric river that caused the Los Angeles flood of 1938
At least one person asked why I used a reanalysis that does not assimilate satellite water vapor data to study an atmospheric river (AR) event.

That’s a good question because the NOAA/CIRES Twentieth Century Global Reanalysis Version 2c (20thCR V2c) only ingests three things: surface pressure, sea ice coverage and sea surface temperature. The rest of the analysis is generated by the physical models of NOAA’s Global Forecast System (GFS).

— http://ncarrda.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/1938-atmospheric-river-that-caused-los.html

Forum on climate change postponed due to snow

Snow mountain [image credit: ibtimes.co.uk]

It’s not funny to be facing the result of massive snowfalls but this might be an exception.

BOSTON – A legislative forum on climate change has been postponed, ironically, due to the weather.

“I hope these repeated, severe storms serve as a platform for some important conversations around bolstering our natural and built infrastructure against climate change once a new date has been set for this discussion,” said State Sen. Marc Pacheco (D-Taunton), who chairs the Senate Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change and organized the summit.

The forum had been scheduled for Tuesday at the Statehouse, but the MBTA is shut down Tuesday as Massachusetts continues to dig out from an unprecedented amount of snowfall.

Pacheco’s forum was going to include numerous speakers from environmental organizations and academia as well as Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Matthew Beaton, Senate President Stan Rosenberg (D-Amherst) and other legislators. Raymond Bradley, director of the Climate System Research Center at UMass Amherst, and Richard Palmer, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UMass Amherst, were among those who had been slated to attend.

Report from masslive.com.

*****
Things are so bad they may have to dump cleared snow straight into the ocean.

1935 ‘Punch’ cartoon mocks scientists and highlights 1930’s warmth

Right click and open in new window to see the full size version.

The caption reads: “D’you reckon it’s true George, what them scientists says, that the world is slowly coolin’?”.

Merry Christmas from the GWPF

The Global Warming Policy Foundation sends seasons, greetings.

Which way wavy Davey, zilch is zilch.

Anyone for dates?

Photo left credit Smudge 9000. Photo right, can’t read it [1].

Ofgem approves power link with Belgium

LONDON Tue Dec 2, 2014 11:14am GMT

(Reuters) – Ofgem has approved plans for a 1 gigawatt electricity interconnector link with Belgium, it said on Tuesday.

The Nemo interconnector would run from Zeebrugge, Belgium, to Kent in southern England, facilitating the flow of enough electricity to power up to 3 million homes, Britain’s Energy Secretary Ed Davey said in the Ofgem statement.

…

It is due to open in 2019, Ofgem said.

— http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/12/02/uk-britain-electricity-links-idUKKCN0JG0ZS20141202

Hmm… Aug. 21, 2014

Nuclear Shutdowns Leave Belgium Looking for Power Closure of Three Nuclear Power Plants Leaves Government Fearing Winter Energy Crunch

— http://online.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-shutdowns-leave-belgium-looking-for-power-1408632643