Category: Climate cranks

When will they ever learn?

homer.jpg“Forget global warming. The cold, hard facts point to another threat on the horizon – severe cooling.” That’s the strapline over an opinion piece in yesterday’s Dominion Post business section (Sunspots spell end of climate myth), contributed by Bryan Leyland, one of the more vocal of our local climate cranks. It’s an astonishing piece, given a splash treatment by the paper. Consider this sentence, given prominence as a pull-out quote by the Post:

Researchers have discovered that warming since 1975 is not caused by greenhouse gases.

That’s news to me. It would be news to anyone with half a brain. So why then is this “fact” not on the front page of the Dom Post, or indeed the world’s newspapers? Because it’s not true. Leyland is making stuff up.

Continue reading “When will they ever learn?”

Touch of Gray

gray.jpgOur tame cranks, the NZ Climate “Science” Coalition are trumpeting Royal Society resignee Vincent Gray’s recent update of his seminal paper The Global Warming Scam [PDF], first published on the NZ CSC’s web site in April this year. History does not record if it was first rejected by Nature. In terms of the “science” it contains it’s nothing new. Gray makes muddled (and lengthy) assertions about the impossibility of determining the average temperature of the planet, gets worked up about measurements of CO2 (setting great store by the work of Beck), and is unpersuaded by climate modelling and the IPCC’s use of scenarios. On the positive side, it’s 37 pages long.

In one respect, however, Gray’s magnum opus is most revealing. He devotes a short introduction[2. p3, section 1.1] to the birth of the “scam”:

The global warming scam is the result of the widespread belief in a new religion, based on the deification of a nebulous entity, “The Environment”. “The Environment” is an extension of the concept of “Nature” which was held sacred by the Romantics, but it is a much more demanding deity, requiring constant and increasing sacrifices from humans.

That’s pretty standard stuff on the crank fringe, but Gray opens whole new avenues of thought with his next paragraph…

Continue reading “Touch of Gray”

First we take Manhattan

homer.jpg Steve Jobs, Apple’s iCEO, is said to possess a “reality distortion field” that allows him to make all Apple products sound great – even when they’re mundane. To quote Wikipedia: “RDF is the idea that Steve Jobs is able to convince people to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bluster, exaggeration, and marketing.” It’s a perfect description of The Heartland Institute’s approach to climate change in its announcement of a second International Conference on Climate Change. Helpfully sub-titled Global Warming Crisis: Cancelled (so that there can be no confusion about its main thrust), it’s to be held in New York next March. It promises to be a major paradigm shift in the climate debate[1. Not really, I’m being sarcastic.], according to bombastic Heartland boss Joseph Bast:

Last March we proved that the skeptics in the debate over global warming constitute the center or mainstream of the scientific community[2. Not really, he’s making that up.], while the alarmists are on the fringe,” said Heartland President Joseph Bast. “In the past six months, the science has grown even more convincing that global warming is not a crisis[3. No, it hasn’t – if anything it’s become more convincing that things are worse than we thought.].

There’s a bit more detail about Heartland’s take on the climate problem on the conference background page:

Until the debate over global warming was politicized in the 1990s, the scientific “consensus” was that the Modern Warming is moderate and natural[4. No, it wasn’t.]. Books and recent literature reviews suggest this is still the consensus[5. He’s making things up again], even though it contradicts the alarmists’ views.

And…

Distinguished scholars[6. Mostly “grumpy old deniers“.] from the U.S. and around the world have addressed these questions seriously and without institutional bias[7. But with lashings of political bias.]. Their findings[8. They made them up.] suggest the Modern Warming is moderate and partly or even mostly a natural recovery from the Little Ice Age; that the consequences of moderate warming are positive for humanity and wildlife[9. Only in La-la Land]; that predictions of future warming are wildly unreliable; that the costs of trying to “stop global warming” exceed hypothetical benefits by a factor of 10 or more[10. Only by applying La-la Economicsâ„¢]; and more.

The RDF is strong in this Bast. So strong, he could almost whisk his audience off to another planet – rather convenient, because many of the speakers seem (judging by some of their “work“) to be already there.

Where next for this conference, I wonder? Berlin?

[Title reference: one, two]

Daydream (un)believer

bellamytreehugger.jpg

It’s crankfest time at the Independent (UK). Over the last few years, the Indescribablyoverhyped (as Stoat describes their climate reporting) has been the most outspoken of the world’s newspapers on the threat of climate change, but this weekend it allowed some of the UK’s leading climate cranks to state their various cases.

Bewhiskered botanical unbeliever David Bellamy:

Global warming is the biggest scam since the church sold indulgences back in the Middle Ages.

Economist Ruth Lea:

When you hear people saying the temperature is going to rise by four degrees this century, do you hear anyone explaining that there’s only a 0.001 probability that will happen? No.

“Climatologist” Piers Corbyn[1. If Corbyn’s a climatologist, then Ken Ring is the saviour of meteorology]:

There’s no evidence that carbon dioxide drives world temperatures or climate change. The ‘hockey stick’ is fraud, Al Gore’s film is fraud, and schemes to remove CO2 from the atmosphere by machines are a scam.

Nigella’s dad, Nigel Lawson:

There has been no global warming this century, and that is apparent from figures produced by the Hadley Centre, the branch of the UK Met Office that monitors world temperatures[2. Despite the Hadley Centre explicitly stating that warming goes on].

Swindler Martin Durkin:

Objectively, it is staggeringly obvious that climate-change science is complete twaddle. There is no correlation, on any meaningful timescale whatsoever, between CO2 and temperature. Take the politics and the grants out of it, and no one would take it seriously.

Hans Schreuder – classic crank:

I haven’t been targeted by activists, which is a shame, as that would have created publicity. I called Al Gore a liar and lots of other things on the site, because I was hoping someone would sue me for defamation. But nobody has bothered.

What a pity, Hans.

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Raw Hide

rodenymorph.gifAs the general election nears and policies are beginning to emerge, ACT is sticking to its “dump the ETS” line and its leader, Rodney Hide, has confirmed himself as a climate crank. In a speech to a public meeting at the Franklin Centre, Pukekohe on Monday, Hide ran through his now familiar “I know better than the world’s climate scientists” schtick:

There is no evidence that CO2 drives climate or that industrialisation is warming the world. In fact, the evidence is the reverse.

No it isn’t.

Hide is telling lies to try to get elected, and our media should call him on it. But if they won’t, I will. I’m willing to debate climate science and policy with Hide, in public, in the run up to the election at a venue in Canterbury of his choosing, or here on Hot Topic. Will he accept my challenge, or rely on a complacent media to get away with spouting this nonsense? I’m not holding my breath…

The speech also suggests a schism on climate policy in the ranks of the National party:

National MPs have sidled up to us to agree with us – and to complain that Nick Smith as hijacked National’s policy. They agreed with John Key when he said climate change was a hoax. Now he too is backing the ETS.

Hide playing politics, or is the climate sceptic rump in the National caucus stronger than Smith and Key would like us to believe?

I think we should be told…

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