How the BBC Used the Wrong Picture to Talk About Media Accuracy

This is too funny to pass. Message just sent to the BBC:

Hi - you are using the wrong picture to accompany one article about the Ofcom ruling on the “Global Warming Swindle” documentary.

The page “Opinion: A reluctant whistle-blower” is using the IPCC TAR (2001) “Hockey Stick” graph

IPCC TAR (2001) Hockey Stick

The above can be seen in a 2004 BBC News article “Climate legacy of ‘hockey stick’“.

Obviously, you should have used the more recent IPCC (2007) temperature graph, as per your own website

IPCC AR4 (2007) Temperature Graph

That graph is published in the BBC News website’s “Climate Change: The evidence“.

Please have it fixed asap. After all, the article with the wrong picture is about…accuracy in the media!!

regards - maurizio

Sex and Global Warming: the Underrated Issue

What’s wrong with the AGWers, globalwarmers, climatechangers? Why oh why there are girls stripping for peak oil, and famous actresses producing green porno, whilst for climate change it’s always Gore, Hansen and Polar Bears?

The doom-and-gloom is always greener…

Algorino’s Opera

Very funny and inspired yesterday John Tierney in his parody of a letter to Al Gore about the upcoming opera based on his book “An Inconvenient Truth“.

No prize to guess who the main character Prince Algorino is meant to resemble closely…

Well, At Least He Drives A Prius

This is surely old stuff for many, but still quite funny: a spoof Toyota ad campaign by David Krulik: “Well, at least he drives a Prius“

Talk about giving too much importance to “saving the planet”…

 (click on the picture to go to David Krulik’s site)

(note: the pictures are definitely politically INcorrect)

AGW: Three Hoorays for the “Fritzl” Bishop

The Bishop of Stafford, the Right Reverend Gordon Mursell…compared climate change sceptics to the Austrian child abuser Josef Fritzl.

Now why do I feel better? BECAUSE methinks there is isn’t much to worry about climate change, if the bubble needs to be inflated to the point of making a “Josef Fritzl” analogy…

(Does anybody want to guess when a CoE Bishop will finally associate climate change to that other nasty Austrian fellow, Adolf H?)

GLOBAL WARMING: IT’S ALL MY FAULT!!!

TierneyLab mentions a Lancet study according to which “obesity promotes global warming”.

Oops!! I should have done that diet last year!!!

Hopefully though, the paunch police won’t throw me in jail any time soon (you know, we Large People are usually easy to catch…)

Great News About Great Tits

Shameless traffic-enhancing post (just guess how) to mention Richard Black’s reporting of some great news about great tits (yes it’s birds, but alas, dear drooling visitors, of the avian variety).

A Place Where Climate Forecasts Should Be A Piece of Cake

Lloró, Colombia

It’s the place with the highest average annual precipitation: 523.6 inches / 13,300 millimeters of rain per year (estimated average, 29 years of records)

(note how the Google Maps photo in the link above does show Lloro shrouded by clouds)

That translates to 1.43in / 36.4mm of rain per day, every day of the year. And it looks like that’s what actually happens, as the forecast is of constant rain and thunderstorms.

There are 7,000 people living in Lloró and one can only imagine the strength of the local umbrella market.

=========

One wonders if any climatologist will step forward with a 1-year, 5-year, 10-year climate forecast of rain for Lloró?

(many thanks to RS at the Italian weather forum “Meteoweb” for writing about Lloró in the first place)

RealClimate Raises the Bar AGAINST Climate Models

With the death of Ed Lorenz and a world apparently taking a hiatus on the way to unstoppable anthropogenic global warming, It has taken a group effort at RealClimate to try to deal with the issue of chaotic weather vs. climate modelling: “Butterflies, tornadoes and climate modelling“.

Rather unfortunately for the authors, the conclusions contain a remarkable amount of unintended irony.

[...] But how can climate be predictable if weather is chaotic? The trick lies in the statistics. In those same models that demonstrate the extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, it turns out that the long term means and other moments are stable. [...] Climate change then is equivalent seeing how the structure changes, while not being too concerned about the specific trajectory you are on

In other words, “climate change” is an entity that can only become observable in the long, long term. And since there is little concern for the “specific trajectory”, there literally exists NO possible short-term sets of observations that can falsify the climate models.

Another way of saying it is that for the climate problem, the weather (or the individual trajectory) is the noise. If you are trying to find the common signal that is a signature of a particular forcing then averaging over a number of simulations with different weather works rather well [...]

In other words, since each and every atmospheric event can be obviously described as “weather”, there is no single observation that can falsify the climate models.

Their work doesn’t have to deal with any single observation, no short-term sets of observations…do they realize what they are saying???

Real climate is in their own words almost perfectly insulated from the real world. Nothing that can ever happen will be able to disprove the work of the climate modellers, apart from multi-decadal averages that are so poorly defined, they can easily be used to demonstrate anything.

Is this “science”? Looks more like long-term guaranteed employment to me… No wonder Anthropogenic Climate Change has important detractors in the metereological community.

In further irony, the above pairs up perfectly well with RC’s “comments policy” that can be summarized more or less into “we will censor everything we do not like“.

RealClimate: the insulated web site, where insulated researchers post insulated content. Now I understand why poor Gavin Schmidt had such a hard time dealing with an open debate…

No Worries, Blair and Branson Are Thinking About Our Climate…

…with a few chums, on a private island of course.

Having reached the agreement that (”the world is on fire” and) there must be an agreement but nobody knows what kind of agreement, they relaxed by sailing off in a dozen catamarans for a little beach party. With Blair’s security people behind in a motorboat, of course.

Global warming has been defeated! Glory be to Rich People That Care About the Planet!

Next: a zero-emission, perpetual-motion device. A couple of island retreats should suffice…

UPDATE: from a letter published in today’s IHT:

Get real on ‘green’ talk

Regarding the article “A getaway for a bit of ‘green’ talk, via jet-pool” (March 21): You’d think this group of wealthy, powerful fellows who were so involved in developing new uses for the Internet would have heard about teleconferencing. They could view one another on big screens and meet, in real time, without such a profligate use of the petroleum they want the rest of us to do without.

It’s so transparent: They just want to make more money. There is nothing wrong with making money, but they shouldn’t pretend they are trying to save the world.

Betty Perkowski North Stonington, Connecticut

Me “Denier”? You “Goebbelite”!

From a comment by “Aaron” on Accuweather Global Warming’s blog:

[...] the AGW proponents have resorted to name calling and personal smears. They subscribe to the Bushism “if you’re not with us, you’re against us“. This is somewhat ironic as nearly all of them hate the president with every fiber of their beings.

They have also taken to using the term “denier” to describe anyone in disagreement with their beliefs in a not so subtle attempt to compare those who don’t agree with those who deny the fact that Nazi Germany was responsible for the extermination of six million Jews, ethnic minorities, intellectuals, and political adversaries.

It’s an ugly term, and personally I find it’s use to be quite offensive. In response, about the best the skeptics and AGW opponents can respond with is “Global Warming Alarmist” which isn’t a comparison to anything, but entirely accurate.

So, in the spirit of fairness, I’m proposing that a new term be adopted to describe AGW proponents: Goebbelites. I’ve seen the term goebbelsian used in another context, but I prefer Goebbelites. It will be used to describe anyone who can be described as adhering to the following quotation from Joseph Goebbels:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.“

[...] Civil discourse is essential to the solution of any problem, and the use of derogatory and offensive terms to describe those who disagree with you isn’t civil.

A New Entry For Numberwatch

What a surprise! Numberwatch, the site listing a total of more than 480 “things caused by global warming”, doesn’t have this “new entry”:

“The Ocean’s Biological Deserts Are Expanding” by Richard A. Kerr - ScienceNOW Daily News - 25 January 2008

Everybody: please PLEASE, whatever your concern is, DO NOT ever make it descend into a farce, following the sad path of AGW.

(on the other hand: with 480+ consequences to choose from, perhaps it can be said that AGW is true no matter what. As the saying goes, not even the astrologer can guess it wrong all of the time)

Penn Jillette: Al Gore, the Weather Opportunist

Another short video by Penn on his Crackle “Penn Says” channel: “I want to see an article by Al Gore that says ‘if we have 8 hurricanes next year…or we have zero hurricanes or we have something that means that I was wrong about global warming’. Because if you don’t have something that can disprove what you believe than you are believing in anything…”

Excerpted transcript below is mine:

…article in the New York Times about weather opportunists (1)…everything is caused by Global Warming…whether it is hurricanes, whether it is warmer, whether it is colder, more storms or fewer storms…

The important thing in the article is that there are these “weather opportunists” that are making anything…ice-cap melting, polar bears, they all look like they are caused by the same thing.

But I remember an article…several years ago…on the New York Times, an op-ed thing by Al Gore where Al Gore talked about how hot it was in New York…and how that showed there was global warming…and that’s insane. Even if you believe in global warming (I still scratch my head but it seems everybody does) it wouldn’t be enough that you could notice it in New York City that there would be a hot summmer because you wouldn’t notice that walking down the street.

And it struck me that the New York Times article just wasnt’ enough. because the real question is what weather could come along that would show us we were wrong about global warming. I want to see an article by Al Gore that says “if we have 8 hurricanes next year…or we have zero hurricanes or we have something that means that I was wrong about global warming”

Because if you don’t have something that can disprove what you believe than you are believing in anything…it must be falsifiable, you know, if something causes everything than it causes nothing.

I am not coming out, I am not crazy enough to come out against global warming or even man-made global warming (I just don’t know enough) but man! I wish they would try to convince me, stop exaggerating in order to clarify because all it does is give me less trust, and I also wish they would stop saying that everything is because of global warming because if everything is because of global warming then nothing is

(1) I cannot find any relevant article on “weather opportunists” on the New York Times archive. Perhaps he is referring to the Tierney Labs blog “Are There Any Good Weather Omens?“. Or perhaps the NYT article used a synonym.

NOAA sees dangers, only dangers

A cheerful welcome at NOAA for the possible first sign of Solar Cycle 24: “Sunspot is Harbinger of New Solar Cycle, INCREASING RISK FOR ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS” (my emphasis).

Is there any particular reason why they feel themselves forced into emphasizing risks in everything they write?

One wonders what the contents are in the NOAA employees’ newsletter? “Salaries are going to increase, and with them the danger of overindulging in one’s life’s pleasures” and/or “New, powerful instruments delivered, increasing risk of malfunction due to operator’s inexperience” ?

???

Yikes! I Have Received Money From Exxon!!!

I have a confession to make.

I got paid for my TCS article whose title I cannot quote for fear of being marked as spam.

Now, as TCS got (gets?) funds from Exxon, that obviously means I have received money from Exxon myself!

The article was of my initiative (not commissioned in advance) but surely that is too feeble an excuse. Also, the amount we are talking about is enough to provide me a few months of access to the internet from home, but that is not an excuse either.

All of the above means anything and everything I have and will ever say about Climate Change is forever tainted and can just be disregarded in advance.

(chorus) Amen!

p.s. If somebody knows how many trees I should plant to redeem my soul, please let me know ASAP.

Is your SUV Destroying the Universe?

Supernovae data from the 1950’s to 2007 show trends very worrying for the fate of the whole universe.

The Magnitude (brightness) of observed explosions, after hovering for several decades around the 20 mark, has recently dropped to 15 (i.e. towards brighter supernovae).

Furthermore, the number of observed supernovae has been increasing at an exponential rate, again after many decades below 50 per year, to 95 in 1996 and a little less than 600 in 2007.

The fact that this is happening exactly as anthropogenic greenhouse-gases emissions are on the increase, cannot be just a coincidence. If this will not convince Governments about the importance of stopping CO2 emissions, nothing will!

UPDATE: In case you missed it…the rings of planet Uranus are changing too. Help! Help!