Film review corner: Dr Ron Smith, a senior lecturer at the University of Waikato and a regular contributor to Muriel Newman’s crank echochamber went to see Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s film Home earlier this month (previewed here), and was moved to provide Muriel with a review. As crank effluvia go, it’s a classic…
Tag: cooling
Bob’s big lie
Time to revisit events at crank central. In the course of researching the NIPCC (at the behest of Peter Dunne), I popped over to the International Climate Science Coalition site, and then on to their Australian spin-off. The Aussie crank collective is greatly enriched by the presence of Prof Bob Carter, known here as “the great communicator” because of his accomplished presentation skills and ability to make outrageous nonsense sound almost plausible. The ACSC points to Prof Bob’s latest article for Aussie magazine Quadrant, and so — noting that one R M Carter is due to give evidence to the ETS Review committee at some point — I thought I ought to catch up on the great man’s current thinking. Prepare yourself for a jaw/desk interface event:
Get this. First, there has been no recent global warming in the common meaning of the term, for world average temperature has cooled for the last ten years. Furthermore, since 1940 the earth has warmed for nineteen years and cooled for forty-nine, the overall result being that global average temperature is now about the same as it was in 1940.
Global average temperature is now “about the same” as it was 69 years ago? Obviously, the “cooling since 1998” lie no longer cuts the mustard. Bob has to bend the facts beyond breaking point to bolster his case. Here’s the NASA GISS graph:
And here’s the Hadley Centre version:
It is quite clear that global temperature is only “about the same as 1940” for definitions of “about the same” that consider variations ±0.5ºC to be inconsequential. You might as well say that because the world hasn’t warmed by 10ºC then it hasn’t warmed at all. But if you do that, then you can’t also insist that the world has cooled since 1998…
And how on Earth (or off it), did Research Professor Robert Carter of the James Cook University (Queensland) and the University of Adelaide work out that the world has warmed for 19 years but cooled for 49 since 1940? He must have a sophisticated statistical analysis to bring to bear on the topic. Or perhaps he has been counting all the little ups and downs in the GISS graph… Great science, by a great… something or other.
Nutted by reality
Gerrit van der Lingen, a local crank, NZ CSC member and self-styled “climate change consultant” who comprehensively lost a magazine “debate” with a local scientist last year, was mightily exercised by a recent article in my local paper, The Press (one of New Zealand’s big four dailies), covering Lovelock’s latest ruminations. So incensed, in fact, that he was moved to regurgitate a few crank tropes for an op-ed in the paper last Wednesday. It’s not available on the web, sadly, so I’ll just confine myself to pointing out where he gets his facts wrong.
I can’t tell the bottom from the top
A couple of weeks ago I blogged about NIWA’s climate summary for 2008, but inexplicably missed a most excellent response to the figures from the NZ Climate “Science” Coalition’s energy expert Bryan Leyland. He must have been digging through some dusty tomes in the library, because he arrived at the astonishing conclusion that New Zealand was warmer 141 years ago:
New Zealand’s national average temperature of 12.9 degrees C during 2008, described by NIWA as ‘milder than normal†was in fact cooler than it was 141 years ago, this, and worldwide drop in temperatures since 1998, demonstrate that claims of man-made global warming have lost touch with reality.
Oh really?
Mr Leyland said it is important that all New Zealanders, but especially politicians, understand the significance of the two sets of temperature readings.
Quite so, Bryan, quite so. Let’s see if I can help out a little…
Baby, it’s cold outside
In the make-believe world of Climate Debate Daily, where there are two sides to a great “debate” on the reality of climate change (there aren’t), a great gulf is opening between the opposing teams. Cranks are investing a great deal of (wasted) time and effort into spreading the idea that the world is cooling, while climate scientists think a new record high global temperature can’t be far away.
In The Australian today, The Great Communicator (for it is he!) runs the cooling argument for all its worth:
Thus, using several fundamentally different mathematical techniques and many different data sets, seven scientists all forecast that climatic cooling will occur during the first decades of the 21st century. Temperature records confirm that cooling is under way, the length and intensity of which remains unknown. […] Perhaps a reassessment will finally occur when two-metre thick ice develops again on Father Thames at London Bridge, or when cooling causes massive crop failure in the world’s granary belts.
Meanwhile, in an interview with Robin McKie in The Observer, Jim Hansen nails his colours to the mast:
Deniers should show caution, Hansen insisted: most of the planet was exceptionally warm last year. Only a strong La Niña – a vast cooling of the Pacific that occurs every few years – brought down the average temperature. La Niña would not persist, he said. “Before the end of Obama’s first term, we will be seeing new record temperatures. I can promise the president that.”
There’s a collision coming…