Top 17 Signs Your Belief In Catastrophical AGW Is Going The Way Of The Dodos

Fellow AGWer! Are you worried you’re losing the climate debate? Worry no more. It’s a certainty in 17 easy-to-spot signs!!

1. Main conversational topic among fellow believers are revolving around complaining the rest of the worls is made up of “deniers”
2. Highlight of the month: a conference about climate change and the arts, closed by a truly inspiring dance act
3. You’ve given credibility to fatuous claims about ill-behaving humans inducing global warming and ultimately causing bad things such as earthquakes, volcanoes
4. Worse: an Iranian cleric has made moral remarks perfectly equivalent to yours: about ill-behaving humans (well, women…) ultimately causing bad things such as earthquakes
5. Having waited for major legislation to materialize, you have seen it evaporating at the very last minute
6. Worse: you’ve been spending time shoring support for major legislation that you agree would be wholly ineffectual even if it passed as dreamed
7. Worst: the only reason to support such ineffectual bill proposal has been the remote chance it might show “leadership” (showing the world how to pass ineffectual legislation, one suspects)
8. Worse than worst: well after the very last minute, you have openly withdrawn your support, thereby making sure nothing will ever happen
9. You have celebrated the results of an “independent” committee setup by the British Government, even if the final report couldn’t help criticizing the IPCC in order to “pass the blame” to somebody
10. Suddenly, the political and intellectual German classes has started to look the other way
11. The BBC Science and Environment page is ever more struggling to find any news to report, about “global warming” and “climate change”, as all the potential physical manifestations have been quickly dismissed as “it’s weather not climate”
12. Your preferred blogs have been chugging along tediously of late,  with naive, self-debasing and embarrassing remarks on the psychology of people that disagree with AGW catastrophism
13. Miraculously, scientific papers have surfaced claiming the latest data support catastrophical global warming, despite the same latest data going the opposite way of previous data the same people claimed as supporting catastrophical AGW
14. Worse: you have not noticed those are exactly the kind of claims that erode the public’s respect in AGW proponents, especially of the catastrophical variety
15. The best answer you have had for months for your critics still concerns the well-being of people that haven’t even been born yet, and will do so in a future world we know about as much as Napoleon would have known of World War I and the trenches
16. A great deal of people supporting your side have forever kept turning up dressed funny in front of cameras for the n-th repetition of ridiculous stunts that interest nobody any longer
17. For months, nothing has appeared to make you happy and your blog and comments have been full only of depictions of future catastrophes. Yet when a volcano has threatened the lives and livestock of Iceland, and has stranded hundreds of thousands of people all over the world, you couldn’t contain yourself and started radiating your newly-found happiness, oblivious of the apparent nastiness and anti-human stance of yours it has shown to all

Cue ever-dwindling public and political support for your reality-challenged belief…

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If It Looks Like UHI, Heats Like UHI, And Graphs Like UHI, Then It Probably Is UHI

by Guido Guidi and Maurizio Morabito

Our friend Teo has just expressed his personal and perfectly reasonable opinions about new, old publishing venture called “Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change (WIRCC)“.

In fact, we find it hard to disagree with him.

The subject of Urban Heat Islands (UHI) is topical, and it is somewhat ironic that such a self-evident effect is so happily dismissed away by AGW proponents. One suspects UHI is extremely inconvenient and uncomfortable to consider to those strictly supporting only the greenhouse-gas-emission side of AGW theory.

Who them? By sheer coincidence, only the greenhouse-gas-emission side of AGW theory can be used to dictate deep societal changes. But that’s another story.

Let’s just add some considerations based on a Willis Eschenbach post on WUWT. It’s a simple but eloquent analysis of a dataset of temperatures, with measures coming from about seventy stations over Northern Europe. Interestingly, an analysis of the monthly data across the decades for the duration of the dataset, shows a warming trend to be occurring primarily in winter months.

NORDKLIM Decadal monthly temperatures, 1900-1999

And what kind of forcing is especially important in the coldest period of the year? No prize for guessing that one right. This is precisely what is expected from the UHI effect, and it is due to changes over time to the environment surrounding the measurement equipments. Roads, buildings, infrastructure are built, woods are fallen and so on. That’s “Anthropogenic” as well, of course, and it has all the potential for local and global consequences.

Data so heavily biased are simply not compatible with the currently fashionable “globalization of forcing“, the mistaken belief that temperatures overwhelmingly taken on land and in heavily urbanized areas, are representative of the thermal state of the entire Blue Planet.

Think of it for a minute. We are talking about temperature anomalies with a positive trend coming from winter months. We are talking of continental regions at high latitudes. We are talking about winters with little insolation, in areas with a high albedo (reflecting visible light!) due to large amounts of snow cover.

• Temperature sensors, under those specific conditions, show a gradual Winter warming

In the summer, with a much lower visible-light albedo in the absence of snow, the incoming solar radiation is absorbed and then re-emitted as longer waves: exactly those “captured” by greenhouse gases.

• Temperature sensors, despite the abundance of infrared radiation, show no Summer warming

How could the positive anomalies be ascribed to a greenhouse effect, that remains a mystery to us. It definitely looks like this is enough to ring more than a few alarm bells, no matter what has been said in the past and by whom.

And the problem of telling between the greenhouse gas contribution to warming, and all other anthropogenic and natural effects, does not just apply to urban setting. It remains to be seen about who’s going to care about it, bringing forward a better understanding of the climate, rather than continuing to run like headless chicken always after the next CO2 molecule, as if it were volcanic ash…

A Brief History Of Dashed UHI Hopes

by Teodoro Georgiadis – slightly romanced English version by Maurizio Morabito

And there I am, at the beginning of March 2010: me and the brand-new, Volume 1, Number 1 , January / February 2010 issue of “Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change (WIRCC)” . Editor in Chief: Mike Hulme.

Wow, a fresh journal on Global Climate Change!

Even better: according to itself, the journal is meant as

“a unique platform for exploring current and emerging knowledge from the many disciplines that contribute to our understanding of this phenomenon – environmental history, the humanities, physical and life sciences, social sciences, engineering and economics“

Wouldn’t that be a welcome novelty, in a world post-climategate, post-submerged Holland, post-quickly disappearing Himalayan glaciers, post-Amazongate…in short, in a world that has seen an intense and compact series of scientific downpours on concepts perhaps too quickly assumed as established truth.

Downstream of Copenhagen, a new journal following WIRCC’s statement of intent would surely sport a truly different outlook: new style, new peer-reviewers, new structure all with the goal of providing science with the required level of objectivity, sadly and mostly missing in contemporary climate discourse.

I proceed therefore with all enthusiasm to select an article of surefire interest to me:

David E. Parker, “Urban heat island effects on estimates of observed climate change” p 123-133, Published Online: Dec 22 2009 12:42PM DOI: 10.1002/wcc.21

That’s it then! Finally we can leave the “gates du jour” behind and improve our knowledge of climate change.

Or maybe not.

First reference: IPCC. Second reference: Jones et al. (with Wang).

Wait a sec…what’s going on?

OK let’s move forward…alas, only to find something truly amazing:

“the influence of urban heat islands on estimates of global warming is limited by the fact that about 70% of the Earth’s surface is ocean and is absolutely unaffected by urban warming“

Say what? Oh yes, the Blue Planet, ever the envy of nasty aliens such as those in HG Wells’ “War of the Worlds”. But hang on…most of the network of temperature measuring stations is literally on solid ground…if you place them on a map they’ll be a bunch of dots almost exactly superimposed to cities. As for the ocean temperatures, we know very well how they are derived.

This isn’t looking good.

Anything better?

“Exclusion of urban sites, or selective use of rural sites, requires information (‘metadata’) about the site and its surroundings“

Yes, yes…ah, that refers to a 2005 J Clim paper by Peterson and Owen…isn’t that the same Peterson unceremoniously criticized for example by McIntyre on Climate Audit, regarding the peculiar classifications of urban and rural stations? There is a truly remarkable definition of “Parking Lot Effect” on that site.

How strange though, of all the past and present discussions and questions on the topic, Parker manages to mention exactly nothing. Well, at least that might explain the article’s conclusions:

“The urban heat island has had only a minor impact on estimates of global trends”… The impact is small because assiduous efforts have been made by the compilers of global surface air temperature records to avoid or compensate for urban warming“

“Assiduous effort“? Amen to that.

“Current and EMERGING knowledge?” Not by a long shot.

My conclusions: “Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change (WIRCC)“? New journal, same old story.

The Best Way To Make People Worry About Climate Change…

…is to provide them with a university education, adequate living quarters in urban settings, and $100,000 in “investable asset”:

Climate change topped the list of concerns by some two-thirds of Hong Kong residents polled as well as majorities of residents of London, Paris, Sao Paolo, Toronto, Vancouver and Sydney, according to the poll of 2,044 urban residents around the world…The survey was conducted online from February 17 to March 1 among respondents who had university or post-graduate educations, were ages 25 to 64 and had at least $100,000 of investable asset…

(well, obviously under those conditions it should make it easier to have a little fewer of other concerns such as paying the mortgage, getting dinner organized, staying ahead of the bills)

Can’t wait to see thousands of self-styled environmentalists worldwide lobby their democratic representatives to defend the planet from climate change through a “Global Get Well Schooled, Urbanite And Rich Initiative“!

Now, that’s a Climate Campaign I would like to see started…just let me know where I can cash my $100,000, please?

UK Authorities To Impose A Ban On Lounges, Kitchens, Stairs And Ladders At Home

“I will never apologise for putting safety first“, said Andrew Haines, chief executive of the British Government-controlled “Civil Aviation Authority” and formerly of “Great Western Trains” until last year.

Shall we bring Mr Haines’ logic to its natural conclusion? Why, 15,000 accidents occurred in the UK in “Lounge/study/living/dining/play areas” in 2002 alone (see HASS Table 4). A little less of 13,000 of those, in kitchens. If you sum them up, they total for around a fifth of all home accidents.

Now look at the HASS Table 2 at the same URL. A staggering 46% of all accidents concern one or another kind of falls.

Urgent initiatives are in order. A blanket ban on lounges, kitches, stairs and ladders shouldn’t be too far away. And it doesn’t have to stop there…don’t you know, “children under the age of 12 [are] the most likely of all those aged 16 and under to have reported being raped by someone they knew well” (explained as “typically refer[ring] to a friend or family member“).

Let’s outlaw families and friendship too.

An Illegal Volcano

From Daryl Cagle’s “Daily Updating Political Cartoons”

illegal volcano

EUFAR’s Measurement Flights Of Volcanic Ashes

Alas, the “major measurement news” are coming out slower than expected. Anyway: all those interested can head off to the European Facility for Airborne Research  (EUFAR), where a mailing list has been set up to share information (not sure if that’s open to the public yet).

Here’s EUFAR’s relevant page as of now:

Measurement flights of volcanic ashes

This page will be updated regularly with new information.

Next EUFAR teleconference tomorrow Wednesday 21st at 2:00 P.M. (CET)

• to report what has been measured so far
• to share experiences.

2 teleconferences took place to discuss the “Status about the volcanic ashes measurement flights”:
– on the 19/04/2010 – meeting 01
– on the 20/04/2010 – meeting 02.

A mailing list to exchange information about the ash measurements is already operational. Please contact bureau@eufar.net to subscribe or un-subscribe.
A webpage has also been created. It is available from the “What’s new?” section of the EUFAR website homepage http://www.eufar.net or directly at:http://www.eufar.net/wiki/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/EufarCMS/VolcanicAshes?skin=view.
A repository to share all the data collected within the aircraft operators and the scientific community will be set up by Wendy Garland from BADC. You will be informed when this is completed (in the next few days).

Volcanic Debacle, Failed Models, And Mean “Greens”

Sounds like anthropogenic global warming, doesn’t it? The danger exists, but it is being senselessly exaggerated.

What if behind the decision to stop flights on a continental scale were the failure of a whole way of thinking public policy in Europe, with an asinine fixation on using computer models?

What if the aftermath of weeks of anthropogenic fear about millions dying of swine flu or maybe not, and the aftermath of weeks of anthropogenic fear about volcanic cloud making airplanes drop from the sky like flies or maybe not…what if people finally opened their eyes about the extreme limitations of computer modeling?

Who knows. Meanwhile, let me state clearly that I am fully aware of the potential risks for an airplane flying in the wrong conditions and at the wrong time through a cloud of volcanic origin. But there are enough indications to doubt the necessity of a reaction even remotely like the irrational panic that is causing the closure of European air spaces.

For example, the famous BA9 flight that almost crashed in 1982, was not the only flight to pass through that area. Wikipedia reports that the airspace around the Galunggung volcano was temporarily closed after the accident, reopened days later and permanently shut only after a similar incident to a Singapore Airlines flight around 19 days later, on July 13, 1982.

Indeed, there are indications that the first “encounter” with the ashes from Galunggung had occurred on April 5. That is, in three months and with little precaution taken, only twice the conditions were bad enough for flights to experience severe problems. And even if we consider the famous eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, despite the resulting cloud being able to travel 8,000 kilometers to the East Coast of Africa, the total tally was of 20 “damaged” planes, none of them as badly as BA9.

Think about it…billions and billions of flight hours since the Wright brothers, thousands and thousands of flight accidents of all sort and a grand total of 22 issues with volcanic ash, none of it deadly.

Sounds like anthropogenic global warming, doesn’t it? The danger exists, but it is being senselessly exaggerated. Even a recent NASA study, stating that virtually invisible and imperceptible volcanic clouds can still cause serious damage to an aircraft, can’t dispel the doubts since, were that to be true, the effect of ash would have been long noticed in the maintenance of thousands of airplanes.

Anyway…where reason fails, money can still rule the day, hence the airlines’ discontent about the decision to keep everybody grounded. Lufthansa and Air Berlin protested first to the newspapers, and even Niki Lauda moved swiftly from caution to crying foul after finding out that the cloud of Eyjafjallajökull is not everywhere and anywhere in Europe.

Besides, once the Met Office has been found out as the main reason for the air space closure, and one of its computer models, memories of recent colossal gaffes and prediction errors just make it humanly impossible to avoid a good deal of skepticism…

There is also a clear problem with procedures. What has happened in 2010 that is so fundamentalle different from 2004 for example, when the Icelandic volcano Grímsvötn caused disruption of flights but in a limited area, and only resulted in precaution about flying some parts of the North Sea?

On Sunday, trade associations of European airports and airlines have issued a statement asking why a definitely not uncommon event (Iceland is full of volcanoes and eruptions follow one another) provoked different reactions in Europe than anywhere else in the world.

How difficult could it be to close part of the Icelandic and Atlantic airspace, fly some planes and launch some balloons to measure the situation, double-check aircrafts after they land in surrounding areas? And in fact that is what is probably going to happen anyway, and measurements have already started in earnest on Monday 19 (details in German: here, here and here).

Meanwhile, reknown experts are starting to speak up against the madness. Here’s an interview (in Italian) with Prof Guido Visconti of the University of L’Aquila, Italy. Prof Visconti teaches Atmospheric Physics, is Director of the local Extreme Phenomena Center, and has worked in the past with NASA and Harvard University. His opinion? “Much precaution about nothing…we have started taking measurements today in Italy and what we see is small and unimportant“.

======

Concluding with a note of regret, one has to report (but not necessarily link) various sites who take actual pleasure in what has happened, because for a few days you there is a little less emissions of CO2, and also humanity gets to suffer instead of being happy and flying. Too bad for the people of Kenya, right?

Ash Cloud – Expect Major Measurement News On Tuesday

Can’t reveal much now but well-respected international air measurement organizations have been busy measuring up the volcanic material above the European skies, on Monday (finally). This means that we can expect for early Tuesday major news about where there are actual problems for flying.

This may or may not have anything to do with the newly-found courage by UE Transport Ministers, finally seeing the light in managing the volcanic ash risk, instead of cowering in panic.

Met Office Atmospheric Models Cause International Chaos – Why Am I Not Surprised?

The old computational forecasting wizards at the Met Office are behind the decision of closing so much of Europe’s airspace.

Of course they are.

(yes, it’s “well-proven” models, no direct measurement, the works!)

From the Herald Sun:

German airlines Lufthansa and Air Berlin said the decision to close much of Europe’s airspace was not based on proper testing. They said that their aircraft showed no signs of damage after flying without passengers.

“The decision to close the airspace was made exclusively as a result of data from a computer simulation at the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre in London,” Air Berlin chief executive Joachim Hunold said.

The “Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre in London”? Here it is, at the Met Office:

When a volcano in its area of responsibility erupts, the London Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC), based at the Met Office, runs the NAME atmospheric dispersion model. This, and similar models, are well proven and we can use them to predict the spread of pollutants following a chemical or nuclear leak or even the spread of airborne diseases. In this case we use the dispersion model to forecast the spread of volcanic ash plumes.

The London VAAC forecaster provides the location, start time, release height and the top and bottom of the plume (if known) and the model is run. It takes about 15 minutes to complete.

Output from this model is in a map-based graphical format, and can detail expected ash concentrations over a large region. The forecaster uses this detail to prepare the volcanic ash advisory message with the expected positions of the ash plume for up to 24 hours ahead.

The Advisory message is then used by aviation authorities to decide whether airspace needs to be closed to prevent aircraft encountering volcanic ash.

Note how the Met Office washes its hands from any decision, and yet in all those years with NAME, it has apparently decided not to complement the model results with in-situ measurements. A “revolutionary” idea brought forward at present by Lufthansa itself…

“Not one single weather balloon has been sent up to measure how much volcanic ash is in the air.” Lufthansa spokesman Klaus Walter added. “The flight ban, made on the basis just of computer calculations, is resulting in billion-high losses for the economy […] In future we demand that reliable measurements are presented before a flying ban is imposed.”

Professional Environmentalist Tom Burke: Climate Change “Not An Issue Of The Day”

Funny isn’t it how the AGW debate has recently seen a series of incredibly self-defeating remarks. Latest in the series, a couple of sentences uttered during BBC Radio4′ “Today” programme by Tom Burke, “Professional Environmentalist” and visiting Professor of environmental science and technology at Imperial College (Apr 14, around 05m26s):

(Climate Change) is not an issue of the day. There is no way that this is ever going to be an issue of the day at least until it’s too late to do something about it.

That’s very nice to know…whenever people (scientists or otherwise) will turn up claiming Climate Change has done this or that already, it will be fairly straightforward to reply to them “It is not an issue of the day!“

CRU Who? Or…Can The IPCC Survive The Oxburgh Review?

Forget Phil Jones and the CRU…for all intents and purposes, Lord Oxburgh’s “International Panel” has hit the IPCC itself with quite a broadside.

This is what the friendly Panel has just deemed necessary to write about the IPCC (my emphasis):

Recent public discussion of climate change and summaries and popularizations of the work of CRU and others often contain oversimplifications that omit serious discussion of uncertainties emphasized by the original authors. For example, CRU publications repeatedly emphasize the discrepancy between instrumental and tree-based proxy reconstructions of temperature during the late 20th century, but presentations of this work by the IPCC and others have sometimes neglected to highlight this issue. While we find this regrettable, we could find no such fault with the peer-reviewed papers we examined

And here’s what the IPCC says about the IPCC (my emphasis again):

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the leading body for the assessment of climate change, established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences.

Clearly, it has now been established beyond all doubt that the IPCC has been a failure regarding the provision of “a clear scientific view” on the “peer-reviewed papers” by CRU researchers. Those papers said one thing, the IPCC another.

With Climate Change too serious an issue to be left in oversimplifying hands,  the Fifth Assessment Report is unlikely to be any good unless substantial organizational changes are implemented in the IPCC.

English-World Exclusive: Little Wonder Some Glaciers Are Melting…

(mysteriously, this piece of very interesting news has so far only appeared in Italian)

(ANSA) – AOSTA, April 9 – City-like pollution levels on the Everest and the entire Himalayan range. That’s the conclusion of project Share – Stations at High Altitude for Research on the Environment – sponsored by the EvK2Cnr Committee and highlighted in studies published by researchers at ISAC-CNR in Bologna, Italy and Lgge-CNRS in  Grenoble, France.

All observations were taken at the Nepal Climate Observatory, a.k.a. the Italian National Research Council (CND) “Pyramid”, at an altitude of 5,079 meters on the south side of the Everest. The samples were collected in the  pre-monsoon season, when pollutants from the Asian Brown Cloud are more easily transported to the high peaks of the Himalayas. According to Angela Marinoni, ISAC researcher, pollutant levels observed in early April are already beyond the already high levels reached in previous years”.

“Black carbon is close to 6 micrograms per cubic meter”, continued Marinoni, “and PM1 (the amount of fine dust)  largely exceeded 100 micrograms per cubic meter, a value never recorded at the observatory”.

These concentrations are so high, they exceed the EU-sanctioned alarm thresholds for air quality in cities. Moreover, according to Paolo Cristofanelli, head of Share’s atmospheric activities, ”these worrying particulate concentrations are accompanied by high levels of ozone, a highly-oxidizing greenhouse gas that is formed in atmosphere in the presence of primary pollutants and solar radiation” .

Original 09/04/2010 13:45 ANSA

Epidemiology And The Rise Of AGW’s Ugly (Fascist) Head

Mike Kaulbars at News Junkie Post writes plenty of idiotic nonsense in the desperate attempt at finding a legal way to prevent people from ever questioning a thing about climate change.

In particular, a lot is made of the alleged analogy between global warming doubters and the tobacco companies engaged in fighting against the truth about the nasty effects of cigarette smoking. A truth discovered by British researcher Richard Doll.

But whoever mentions Doll in support of the uber-Warmists has obviously not bothered to try to understand what Doll has actually done. Epidemiology concerns the past, and can only be applied to stuff that has already happened. Doll’s results were overwhelming, with manifold increases in the risks of developing cancer and/or heart disease.

That has little to do with “climate change”. In the very words of Mike Kaulbars himself, “climate change promises to be much more deadly in the 21st century“, i.e. it is a concern for the future. And as such, its effects cannot be ascertained in advance with any degree of certainty remotely resembling Richard Doll’s.

I am also amazed that Mr Kaulbars has managed to write so much about the legal aspects of talking about climate change, without a single mention or link to the IPCC.

Poor Pachauri, so much work done and now just of figure of fun or neglect.

The 32-Step Lifecycle Of Climate Alarms

As further evidence of divine sense of humor, Arctic sea ice extent is back to average exactly as new research indicates much of the recent decline is “not a direct result of global warming“.

One may be forgiven to think that reports about the opening up of most of the Arctic to ice-free summer navigation might have been premature.

Hasn’t this script been read to us before? Yes it has: about the disappearing snows of Kilimanjaro, the terrifying future hurricane seasons in the North Atlantic, the upcoming extinction of (often, drowning) polar bears, the slowing down to a crawl of the Gulf Stream, the warming-sea death of coral reefs.

But there is no need to be fooled any longer. Just keep yourself aware of the 32-step lifecycle of a climate alarm, especially if linked about Anthropogenic Global Warming (as they all nowadays are):

1. Researchers make a barely-tamed if not completely wild claim in a scientific journal: if human GHG emissions were to continue apace, there could be dire consequences to “whatever”
2. The claim appears in a press release by the lead author’s institution, alongside even wilder claims that were not scientifically printable but are spread around anyway
3. Most major (and minor) news media engage in churnalism, i.e. they repeat the press release as-is with little consideration for critical thinking, just in case it may ruin the story
4. Other editors decide the alleged consequences are not dire enough and order a further spicing up of the story
5. George Monbiot tells us in his blog how bad he feels about “whatever”, with the help of a relevant anecdote possibly involving flowers
6. On the basis of the above, environmental movements issue more press releases, and e-mail campaigns materialize at once, raising the alarm about “whatever” on the basis of (of course!) the “latest scientific research”
7. The environmentalists’ press releases are fed to the newsmedia to pummel the public with another salvo of alarmism
8. The claims percolate through the web and reach alarmist blogs. Once again, the story is repeated with not a hint of reasoning and not a shadow of doubt
9. People start speculating how could skeptics ever live in the knowledge that “whatever” is going to be destroyed by AGW
10. More serious places like the Nature blogs, the BBC Science News pages and NationalGeographic.com can’t help publishing about the latest claims, substituting critical thinking for a barrage of links to external, strictly-alarmist sites
11. Suddenly, the news get populated of fear-inducing “evidence” that confirm the original claim was way too tame, and “things are worse than we thought”. Articles are accompanied by pictures of polar bears
12. Wikipedia’s entries about “whatever” and climate change are updated
13. An article by Bill McKibben is printed in well-known generalist magazines describing exactly how bad things are going to be for “whatever”, in case we don’t all mend our ways. News-gathered “evidence” is included, explaining that in the future we will hear “more of the same” kind of reporting
14. In due course, people including scientists interested in discovering what is real about climate change and what is not, they start to notice that the alarms and claims are not based on strong scientific evidence, at least not as strong as claimed
15. Somebody posts a blog or comment highlighting how, tucked away in the original article’s and press release’s full texts and unbeknownst to most churnalists and alarmist bloggers, there were very clear caveats, indicating: (a) results as “preliminary”, (b) data as “insufficient” and (c) “more studies” as “needed”
16. These doubts percolate through the web and reach skeptical blogs, where they are repeated in a storm of criticism against the alarmists and (alas!) the original researchers themselves
17. James Delingpole posts a blog making fun of George Monbiot
18. Many alarmist blogs reply to any kind of doubt by denouncing a giant conspiracy by evil fossil-fuel corporations paying tens of millions of dollars to fund skeptical blogs
19. Unanswered, doubts remain
20. Miraculously, a new post in “Skeptical Science” demonstrates how anything (anything!) a skeptic ever thinks is wrong, as shown in the published literature
21. A blog appears on RealClimate rebutting the doubts with rather unwise statements that, taken literally, might be used to undermine AGW alarmism
22. Where the best scientists are involved, a new scientific paper gets published, highlighting which issues are most important to figure out, and asking for more funding as results are preliminary, data is insufficient and more studies are needed
23. For some reason, the now-established fact that the original claims have been shown incorrect and/or premature does not appear in the news media and alarmist blogs (“climategate” notwithstanding)
24. On DotEarth, Andrew Revkin posts a blog stating that things are not as clear-cut as they seem, skeptics and believers are both wrong, but AGW is real nevertheless and remains so independently from the claims about “whatever”
25. Joe Romm preaches again to the converted, wondering aloud why Revkin is not toeing the alarmist line
26. A couple of years pass…the “evidence” reported by the news disappear as all data indicate a return to “average conditions”
27. Vicky Pope tells the media that we should not be looking for climate evidence in a record covering just a few years
28. Nobody has the courage to publish an article or blog saying how sorry they are about having raised a demonstrably baseless alarm
29. The online alarmist debate ignores that all and oscillates between “how can skeptics face the risk of the destruction of ‘whatever’ being right, and they wrong?” and “when can we have our climate dictatorship please”
30. Wikipedia’s entries about “whatever” and climate change are not updated
31. In the meanwhile, due to the law of diminishing returns and the fact that nobody can see any clear AGW climatic effect anywhere, the general public grows a little more weary of alarmism
32. It’s time for a new article where researchers make a barely-tamed if not completely wild claim in a scientific journal: if human GHG emissions were to continue apace, there could be dire consequences to “whatever else”

In all likelihood, the above is happening right now about ocean acidification. Somebody, please make a reality TV show out of this comedy.

Greenpeace – If It Isn’t Peace, Will It Still Be Green?

(comments are closed at Greenpeace’s incredibly stupid “Will the real ClimateGate please stand up? (part 2)” blog. This is what I have tried to post over there)

Juliette

You write:

At no point in this entry did Gene threaten to do anything more than civil disobedience and non-violent direct action – neither of which involve any kind of violence

There are two problems with your stance on the topic. First of all, even if the text ends mentioning “mass civil disobedience“, it also includes “We need to hit them where it hurts most, by any means necessary: through the power of our votes, our taxes, our wallets, and more“.

I have taken the liberty to emphasize the bits that may suggest violence is in the works.

Secondly, since the writer has described a progression from lawful interventions to unlawful ones because “pressuring politicians on climate change is not working“, what is there to stop the same writer from advocating violent means in the future, if “mass civil disobedience” doesn’t come up with the hoped-for results?

Words have meaning. Please let’s all try not to be disingenuous.