Tag: climate change

IPCC science settles in transit. #rsrh

Oh, my aching head. Via Drudge:

UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article

The United Nations’ expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain tops on a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

Well, maybe there was still actual science going on…

…one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

Or not.

Moe Lane

PS: Here’s a little secret about scientific consensus, folks: it assumes – it has to assume – that trusted users are not lying. Nobody can check everything, all the time, so eventually you have to rely on people not abusing the fact that they’re going to have their word taken on their results.

It generally works, too. You have to remember that.  Most scientists play be the rules, which is why we continue to see scientific and technological advances.  But when they don’t play by the rules, you get scandals like this.

Warmingists shiver in Copenhagen.

No, really: those poor folks are stuck with bundling up and marching against global warming in what has become stereotypically freezing weather.  Although some of them have found a way to keep warm via physical activity:

Hundreds of youths dressed in black threw bricks and smashed windows as at least 30,000 people demonstrated in the centre of the city as world leaders debate global warming.

The rioters, whose faces were covered, went on the rampage in the heart of the city, prompting swift arrests as some 50 policemen in riot gear intervened.

The cops are probably swearing that Al Gore’s not there yet: if he was, the rioters would be snowed in right now, which would probably cut down on the property damage a little.

Moe Lane

PS: Yes, yes, yes: they’re claiming it’s ‘climate change’ instead of ‘global warming’ these days.  I’m not all that interested in the theo-linguistic gymnastics that believers have to go through to not have to address the fact that it’s almost 2010 now and still no sign yet that Soylent Green is people.

Crosspsoted to RedState.

Phrase of the day: ‘Climategate Denier.’

As per Simon Scowl of Deceiver.com, who uses it with malice aforethought against Cubslayer Gore.  The context: Gore claimed that the Climategate emails were ten years old, and the CNN guy called him on it right away, and Gore… said nothing further about it.  Simon Scowl:

His financial and psychological investment in this crap is way too deep for him to acknowledge such, ahem, inconvenient truths. The only way to deal with such a massive blow to his ego is to just bull through it. Pretend it’s not happening. He is, to borrow a phrase, a Climategate denier.

Perfect.

Moe Lane

PS: Having listened to Gore, I’m reminded: dag. Triple-digit IQ people believe in this guy? And how long will the CNN guy last at his job?

Crossposted to RedState.

UK Met office pushes reset button on CRU data.

It’s going to take a while for them to cycle through the process, though. As in, more than a week. A lot more than a week.

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.

The Met Office database is one of three main sources of temperature data analysis on which the UN’s main climate change science body relies for its assessment that global warming is a serious danger to the world.

Just in time for Copenhagen, which relied heavily on the climate change data that CRU provided, and can no longer even remotely back up.  Meanwhile, the President – who seems to have a real gift at walking into these controversies at the worst possible moment for him – seems determined to use the luster of his name to ensure results at the Copenhagen thing.  Personally, I think that it’d be good for the planet, the country, and his political party if the President just dropped the trip entirely.  Which he won’t, of course.

Via Q&O, who thinks that they should completely cancel Copenhagen; and Hot Air, who thinks that the British government should stop trying to keep the Met Office from pushing the reset button.  And if either actually happens, all three of us will be massively surprised.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Everybody stop breathing.

It’s good for the environment.  Well, until all the plants suffocate*. Mark Hertsgaard, in the Nation:

The IPCC says that rich industrial countries must cut emissions 25 to 40 percent by 2020 (from 1990 levels) if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. By contrast, the WBGU study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020–i.e., quit carbon entirely within ten years. Germany, Italy and other industrial nations must do the same by 2025 to 2030. China only has until 2035, and the world as a whole must be carbon-free by 2050.

I don’t object to a man having a religion.  I don’t even mind when his religion impacts his policy opinions.  But this desire of the Left to mix their religion with their science is a definite problem.

Via The Corner and AoSHQ.

Moe Lane Continue reading Everybody stop breathing.

Q. How does Al Gore handle inconvenient truths?

A. By getting the microphone cut off, of course. Via Breitbart TV and the B-Cast:

For the record, I find the sight of Big Green shills stomping on the free speech of an independent whistleblower – yes, that was fun to write; thanks for asking – to be just a sign that they themselves know that they’re having problems pushing their agenda these days. When even the BBC’s no longer a reliable stenographer (H/T: AoSHQ), well…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Climate Change and the White Man’s Burdening.

(H/T: On Park Street) To sum up this Reason article on developing nations and climate change despair:

The Chinese and the Indians have no intention of giving anything but lip service to the quaint religious beliefs of Western climate change fanatics. They have no incentive to, and a powerful incentive not to: they are poor, and they wish to stop being poor, and there is no way to do that and not industrialize. If the aforementioned religious fanatics wish to try to force an economic Crusade upon the Chinese or the Indians in response, it is not entirely obvious that it will not backfire in the fanatics’ collective face.

The White House knows this, but it actually is not very good at making people do things that they don’t want to do, so don’t count on them to bail the country out of this mess.

Continue reading Climate Change and the White Man’s Burdening.

You can have my gyro when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

It’s like we have our own home-grown crop of Puritans these days. Only without the work ethic. And the radical egalitarianism. And the fierce hatred of slavery and anti-Semitism. And, heck, the desire to eat a freaking piece of meat every so often:

GIVE up lamb roasts and save the planet. Government advisers are developing menus to combat climate change by cutting out “high carbon” food such as meat from sheep, whose burping poses a serious threat to the environment.

Out will go kebabs, greenhouse tomatoes and alcohol. Instead, diners will be encouraged to consume more potatoes and seasonal vegetables, as well as pork and chicken, which generate fewer carbon emissions.

I have my own suggestion for these people: you want to cut down on carbon emissions? Stop talking. Less talking, thus less need to breathe, thus less carbon dioxide being emitted. You could also try not going to extravagantly wasteful climate change conferences on jet planes, too. Just a thought.

On the bright side, I now know where I’m ordering lunch from.

Moe Lane

PS: H/T: Instapundit, who also came up with a very pithy saying about this: “I’ll believe that it’s a problem when the people saying that it’s a problem start acting like it’s a problem.”

Crossposted to RedState.

I have the Vaclav Klaus speech…

…from the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change; I’m just working on getting it up. In the meantime, my general impressions of the speech: President Klaus isn’t particularly shy about opining that the situation with environmentalists pushing climate change is not one of science, but of competing agendas, and that there is an economic dimension to the environmentalists’ policy platforms. He also had a few choice comments about how the typical response from climate change proponents to any kind of skepticism reminded him of the way the communists used to handle similar objections… which is, of course, not complimentary. Ending quote: “The environmentalists don’t want to change the climate: they want to change us and our behavior.”

His book Blue Planet in Green Shackles was distributed as part of the dinner comments; I’ll be looking it over during the next couple of days and let you know what I think of it.

Crossposted at RedState.