Lord Monckton Does Schenectady

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Video via Watts Up With That (Some sound problems)

Lord Monckton moved into the auditorium and began with his now-famous, exuberantly verbose parody of how the IPCC might describe a spade. This elegantly hilarious gem, delivered from memory, is rumored to be longer than the Gettysburg Address. Then he said that, unlike the IPCC, he was going to speak in plain English. Yet he proposed to begin, in silence, by displaying some slides demonstrating the unhappy consequences of several instances of consensus in the 20th century.

The Versailles consensus of 1918 imposed reparations on the defeated Germany, so that the conference that ended the First World War (15 million dead) sowed the seeds of the Second. The eugenics consensus of the 1920s that led directly to the dismal rail-yards of Oswiecim and Treblinka (6 million dead). The appeasement consensus of the 1930s that provoked Hitler to start World War II (60 million dead). The Lysenko consensus of the 1940s that wrecked 20 successive harvests in the then Soviet Union (20 million dead). The ban-DDT consensus of the 1960s that led to a fatal resurgence of malaria worldwide (40 million children dead and counting, 1.25 million of them last year alone).

You could have heard a pin drop. For the first time, the largely hostile audience (for most of those who attended were environmentalists) realized that the mere fact of a consensus does not in any way inform us of whether the assertion about which there is said to be a consensus is true.

Watts Up With That
Lord Monckton then startled his audience by saying it was settled science that there is a greenhouse effect, that CO2 adds to it, that CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere, that we are largely to blame, and that some warming can be expected to result. But these facts had been established by easily-replicable and frequently-replicated measurements first performed by John Tyndall in 1859 at the Royal Institution in London, “just down the road from m’ club, don’t y’ know” (laughter). Therefore, these conclusions did not need to be sanctified by consensus.

The audience were startled again when Lord Monckton showed a slide indicating that the rate of warming since 1950 was equivalent to little more than 1 Celsius degree per century, while the rate of warming the IPCC predicts for the 21st century is three times greater. His slide described this difference as the “IPCC credibility gap”.

Next, Lord Monckton baffled his audience, including the professors and PhDs (whose faces were a picture) by displaying a series of equations and graphs demonstrating that, while it was generally accepted that a doubling of CO2 concentration would cause 1 C° of warming in the absence of temperature feedbacks, the real scientific dispute between the skeptics and the believers was that the believers thought that feedbacks triggered by the original warming would triple it to 3.3 C°, while the skeptics thought the warming would stay at around 1 C°. _Much more description of Monckton's talk and aftermath at WUWT

Lord Monckton's Union College audience in Schenectady was far more polite than a typical academically lobotomised university audience for such an informative and not-PC talk.

When authority commits abuses -- as with the climate catastrophe orthodoxy -- it is up to responsible and thinking persons to disabuse students of their dysfunctional belief in and obedience to authority.

Human societies are faced with enormous problems, chief among them the twin threats of debt and demographic decline. Both problems are caused by government policy. Bad governments are chosen by an irresponsible electorate. It is in the interest of bad governments to keep the electorate uninformed and irresponsible.

This process of electoral decline inevitably results in idiocracy, unless something extreme happens. Hint: Something extreme frequently happens.

Professor Richard Lindzen on Climate at UK House of Commons

MIT Professor Richard Lindzen has more climate intelligence in the distal phalanx of his right ring finger than all the IPCC hockey team can conjure up -- body, mind, and soul. Here he presents the basics of understanding climate in the committee rooms of the House of Commons.


Part 1 of 2


Part 2 of 2

H/T Climate Realists

This is the type of rational discussion of climate which school children and college students should be exposed to, rather than the officially sanctioned carbon hysteria orthodoxy dumbing down programme.

A Quick Primer on Modern Climate Change Theory from Warren Meyer

Following is an extensive excerpt from a piece in Forbes by Warren Meyer: Understanding the Global Climate Debate. Beneath the extended excerpt is a more detailed discussion by Meyer, in video form. Below the video is a link to more presentations from Meyer on the same topic. Warren Meyer's climate website is here.

Why bother learning about the climate debate at any particular level of detail -- much less the extensive level of detail provided in Meyer's video or power point presentations? Because the quality of your future existence, and that of your descendants, depends upon not being hornswaggled on this multi-$trillion issue. You cannot afford to be a climate ignoramus any longer. ;-)

Let’s begin by putting a careful name to what we are talking about. We are discussing the hypothesis of “catastrophic man-made global warming theory.” We are not just talking about warming but warming that is somehow man-made. And we are not talking about a little bit of warming, but enough that the effects are catastrophic and thus justify immediate and likely expensive government action.

In discussing this theory, we’ll use the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as our main source. After reading through most of the IPCC’s last two reports, I think it is fair to boil the logic behind the theory to this picture:

As you can see, the theory is actually a chain of at least three steps:

1. CO2, via the greenhouse effect, causes some warming.
2. A series of processes in the climate multiply this warming by several times, such that most of the projected warming in various IPCC and other forecasts come from this feedback, rather than directly from the greenhouse gas effect of CO2.
3. Warming only matters if it is harmful, so there are a variety of theories about how warming might increase hazardous weather (e.g. hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts), raise sea levels, or affect biological processes.

In parallel with this theoretical work, scientists are looking for confirmation of the theory in observations. They have a variety of ways to measure the temperature of the Earth, all of which have shown warming over the past century. With this warming in hand, they then attempt to demonstrate how much of this warming is from CO2. The IPCC believes that much of past warming was from CO2, and recent work by IPCC authors argues that only exogenous effects prevented CO2-driven warming from being even higher.

From a Distance, the Hockey Stick Looks Unimpressive

Prolific and innovative thinker and scientist J Storrs Hall takes a look at where the climate has been, compares current climate with similar climate curves in the past, and slyly invites readers to guess where the climate is likely to be heading.

First -- Where the climate has been over the past 10,000 years or so... :

Images from WUWT
Next -- Comparing our current climate curve with similar climate curves from the past, to get an idea of a possible trajectory... :

Here I’ve plotted the 400 years following each minimum in the record that leads to a sustained sharp rise. There were 10 of them; the first five are plotted in cyan and the more recent 5 in blue. You can see that in the latter part of the Holocene the traces settle down from the wilder swings of the earlier period. Even so, every curve, even the early ones, seems to have an inflection — at least a change in slope — somewhere between 200 and 250 years after the minimum.

The hatched black line is the average of the 5 recent (blue) spikes. The red dots are the uptick at the end of GISP2 and HadSST, spliced at 1850. Note that ALL the minima dates are from GISP2. _WUWT

Then Josh invites readers to guess what will happen next, if history is any guide.

For some parts of the northern hemisphere, it may be time to get out the summer parkas.

Climate simpletons who believe that the global climate is controlled by one trace gas which constitutes less than 0.04% of the planetary atmosphere, have controlled the microphones, printing presses, funding agencies, and public stage for far too long. It is time for science to displace the politically convenient (and economically lucrative) climate hysteria, so that ordinary people can make rational plans.

Previously published at Al Fin Potpourri

Archibald WUWT
The graphic above is from a PDF slide presentation by David Archibald. It provides a look at global temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels over the past 600 million years. As you can see, modern CO2 levels are quite low compared with historical levels. If you go to the Watts Up With That posting of Archibald's slide show, you can see that modern temperatures are not particularly high in comparison with historical temperatures. You will also see that the correlation between temperature levels and CO2 levels is far from perfect.

The above graphic provides both the source for CO2 data and the source for temperature data. It includes the geologic time scale as well as the temperature and CO2 curves.

The climate of Earth is not constant -- it is in fact chaotic. Climate is affected by orbital, solar, terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric phenomena, as well as by extra-solar phenomena. But it is kept within bounds by a complex system of feedbacks, both positive and negative.

When planning for the future, it is best to stay firmly grounded in reality, but to allow the imagination significant leeway within those bounds.

Unrealistic speculation and devious quasi criminal deceptions -- such as we see from the IPCC and climate grifters with their hands in the till -- should be slapped down as quickly and as hard as possible.

Helping Asia Deal with World-Spanning Pollution

Pollution from Asia rises with the monsoons up to the stratosphere, and circles the globe for years before dropping down to cover all the countries of the world.

The study suggests that the impact of Asian pollutants on the stratosphere may increase in coming decades because of the growing industrial activity in China and other rapidly developing nations. In addition, climate change could alter the Asian monsoon, although it remains uncertain whether the result would be to strengthen or weaken vertical movements of air that transport pollutants into the stratosphere. _ImpactLab

We know that up to 70% of melting of glaciers and polar ice is due to black carbon pollution -- mainly from Asia. What is not known is what other effects is the entire world suffering due to the ongoing pollution of the world's rivers, oceans, and atmosphere -- up to the stratosphere -- by Asian countries?

It is time to help these massive third world countries of Asia -- such as China and India -- to deal with their devastating problems of pollution. How can we do this?

First, while most of the world's pollution is coming from Asia, almost none of the world's environmental lobbyists, environmental trial lawyers, environmental community organisers, or environmental political activists are headquartered or working in Asia. Most of these busy little worker bees are buzzing around the capitals and large cities of western nations -- where for the most part skies and waters are relatively clean.

Why not ship these eager beavers to the places where they could be doing the most good? To Mumbai, to the hinterlands of industrial China, to Beijing, to the polluted slums of Africa and South America? Those are the places where the enviro-activists need to be working -- where conditions are the absolute worst.

They would not make nearly as much money, but they would be doing so much more good for all the people of the world if they would shower their attentions upon the activities that are genuinely causing harm to Earth's human and animal populations.

Imagine, for example, if all of the "scientists" who are busy making up and falsifying data in the attempt to prove the existence of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) were instead engaged in useful activities. What if these "scientists" were using their intelligence for good, instead of for energy starvation? What a better world we might have.

Finally, imagine if public sector employees in the west were required to spend 10 years in the third world at the end of their working years at age 55. Ten years helping third world people to provide themselves with clean water, clean air, healthy and abundant food, efficient sanitation, and other advantages enjoyed in the first world. And then these public servants could retire, at age 65 like everyone else, but with the knowledge that they had finally done something worthwhile with their lives. At that point they could sponge off struggling young private sector families to their heart's content, and take all the extended luxury cruises that their bloated pensions could support.

Truly, the western world has a lot of assets that could be devoted to the purpose of cleaning up the filth of the third world. It is only a matter of political will.

BBC Caught in Huge Conflict of Interest Scandal

Government supported British media, the BBC, has been caught out in a huge journalistic ethics scandal that threatens to rock the institution to its very foundations.

Well, the BBC, a prime proponents of warming theory, or AGW, has heavily invested its pension fund in the theory, and thus have had a major non-Scientific reason for their bias. As revealed this weekend in The Express:
The corporation is under investigation after being inundated with complaints that its editorial coverage of climate change is biased in favour of those who say it is a man-made phenomenon. The £8billion pension fund is likely to come under close scrutiny over its commitment to promote a low-carbon economy while struggling to reverse an estimated £2billion deficit. Concerns are growing that BBC journalists and their bosses regard disputed scientific theory that climate change is caused by mankind as “mainstream” while huge sums of employees’ money is invested in companies whose success depends on the theory being widely accepted. The BBC is the only media organisation in Britain whose pension fund is a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which has more than 50 members across Europe.

The IIGCC is an interesting group. As their website explains:
The IIGCC is a forum for collaboration on climate change for European investors. The group’s objective is to catalyse greater investment in a low carbon economy by bringing investors together to use their collective influence with companies, policymakers and investors. The group currently has over 50 members, including some of the largest pension funds and asset managers in Europe, and represents assets of around €4 trillion.

Wait… I hate to be a skeptic, but did they just say… “Four Trillion Euros”? _BigJournalism

For four trillion euros, Al Gore, Raj Pachauri, Phil Jones, and Barack Obama would no doubt send 99% of the world's population to the antipodes of the universe with no chance of safe return. No wonder the BBC has been so gung-ho about man-made global warming! I wonder what skin the New York Times has in the game?

Right about now, anyone connected with politics and the media who has come out strongly -- well beyond reason and logic -- in support of big carbon taxes, big carbon trading, and multi-billion dollar reparations to environmental groups, the UN, and third world countries needs to be shot have their affairs looked into very scrupulously.

Organised crime is beginning to look very ethical in comparison to this climate scam affair. Shame on the BBC, and anyone else involved.

Winter of 2008-2009 Sets Millenium Record!

Despite the prediction from the UK Met Office that this winter would be "milder than average", this winter is instead proving to be the coldest of the millenium.

Winter will return with a vengeance today, with a band of heavy rain and snow due to sweep across Britain.

More than a week's rainfall is forecast to deluge parts of England and Wales in just a few hours this afternoon, bringing the risk of flash-floods.

The heavy rain will be followed by hail and sleet over the next few days as temperatures plummet back to a few degrees above freezing.

Scotland will see heavy snow showers, with up to a foot expected to fall on higher ground. _DailyMail_via_GreenieWatch

The UK's climate center is making of habit of predicting the polar opposite weather from what actually occurs. Only NASA GISS is more fanatically attached to the idea of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) than the UK's Met Office. Such foolish predictability is causing official governmental climate offices to lose credibility with the public.

But not with the media. The media is every bit as in love with the phantom climate catastrophe as are the climate modelers whose government paycheck may very well depend upon the ability to maintain a "climate of fear" -- at least among government officials and budgeting offices.

Climate disaster from anthropogenic CO2 is a steamroller losing its steam. Climates are cooling rather than warming, despite ever rising levels of atmospheric CO2. As the oceans themselves show more cooling, the atmospheric rise in CO2 itself may begin to reverse itself. That would be most difficult for James Hansen and Al Gore to explain.

Climate Luddite Fascism Reigns in Obama Reich

Obama has appointed another total moron -- this time as science advisor. John P. Holdren -- climate alarmist, carbon hysteric, and global warming orthodoxer -- is to be appointed science advisor for the incoming administration of the narcissist-elect. When taken together with other Obama appointments, Holdren's selection spells total disaster for US industrial competitiveness. How stupid is Holdren?

In 1980 Dr. Holdren helped select five metals — chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten — and joined Dr. Ehrlich and Dr. Harte in betting $1,000 that those metals would be more expensive ten years later. They turned out to be wrong on all five metals, and had to pay up when the bet came due in 1990. _NYT

Yep, that's right. Holdren was part of the "everyone is doomed to die of starvation, peak oil, and resource depletion before the year 2000" crowd, along with the Club of Rome, Paul Ehrlich, and the other predecessors of carbon hysteric Al Gore. Selecting this merry band of Luddites, dieoff.orgiasts, and all around faux environmentalists casts a dim light on Obama's judgment and capacity to reason. But then, we all knew that Obama didn't write his books. And we all knew he wasn't really the messiah, right? And none of us actually was influenced by Oprah's endorsement of the narcissist-elect, nicht wahr? Of course not.

Prepare for the reign of boobs, fools, crooks, and pompous nitwits. Beneath all the media fawning and foaming at the mouth, underneath the death-dealing regulations and choking taxation, and despite the pro-union and pro-trial lawyer stabbing in the back of business enterprise, pockets of competence will survive. Look for those pockets and find ways to expand them. We will need foci of recovery, when US voters eventually come to their senses and force the spiked boots off of the neck of the private sector.

Update: Here's another look at the Holdren appointment. H/T Tom Nelson

George W. Bush--Climate Superhero!

The United States under President George W. Bush has done more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than 75% of Kyoto signees. While the duncehat mainstream media is expected to downplay such accomplishment, one might expect climate organisations such as the IPCC to acknowledge Bush's climate superherodom.

If we look at that data and compare 2004 (latest year for which data is available) to 1997 (last year before the Kyoto treaty was signed), we find the following.

* Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
* Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
* Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
* Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.

In fact, emissions from the U.S. grew slower than those of over 75% of the countries that signed Kyoto. Below are the growth rates of carbon dioxide emissions, from 1997 to 2004, for a few selected countries, all Kyoto signers. (Remember, the comparative number for the U.S. is 6.6%.)

* Maldives, 252%.
* Sudan, 142%.
* China, 55%.
* Luxembourg, 43%
* Iran, 39%.
* Iceland, 29%.
* Norway, 24%.
* Russia, 16%.
* Italy, 16%.
* Finland, 15%.
* Mexico, 11%.
* Japan, 11%.
* Canada, 8.8%.

American Thinker

Bush appears to have picked up support from fellow Anglosphere nations, including Canada and Australia (under the new PM!).

Rather than being isolated, the decision by the United States and Canada to take the lead in international energy and climate diplomacy appears to have galvanized key allies, who are gradually rallying around a much tougher stance vis-a-vis China and India.

In Bali, the Anglosphere nations have in effect drawn a red line in the sand: Unless developing countries agree to mandatory emissions cuts themselves, much of the Western world will henceforth reject any unilateral burden imposed by future climate deals.

Source

Believers in Kyoto are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, to be sure. But their tendency to bury their heads in the sand provides a very tempting target for a quick wicked kick! I feel better now.

Regional Nuclear War--If So, When?

Thanks to Iran, North Korea, China, and Pakistan's infamous Dr. Khan, nuclear proliferation is a fact of modern life. Israel's famous bombing of Iraq's Osirik reactor, and its more recent bombing of a Syrian/North Korean collaborative reactor, bring the issue into focus. While Iran appears to be pushing US President Bush into a confrontation over its own nuclear proliferation program, some people think that Pakistan is the greater danger:

There was George Bush's Oct. 17 warning that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III," you ought to worry about the prospect of Iranian nukes. ... Then, a few days after Bush's Oct. 17 shocker, I came upon a less widely noticed, perhaps even more ominous quote, originally published two weeks earlier in London's usually reliable Spectator, in a story about the Sept. 6 Israeli raid on that alleged Syrian nuclear facility. A quote from a "very senior British ministerial source" contending, "[I]f people had known how close we came to world war three that day there'd have been mass panic."

...And now we have the crisis in Pakistan, one that portends a nightmare scenario in which Pakistan's so-called "Islamic bomb" falls into the hands of al-Qaida sympathizers. Such an outcome would put us on a fast-track route to World War III....Finally, there was the almost unprecedented declassification of an element of the U.S. nuclear war plan formerly known as the Strategic Integrated Operating Plan, now called OPLAN 8044...Soon, if not already, one can be sure, there will be "robust contingency plans" for Pakistan, as Martin Walker put it recently in the New York Times.

...Now, there are at least eight nuclear nations and who knows how many "nonstate actors," as the euphemism for terrorist groups goes. And some of these nonstate actors have adopted an ideology of suicidal martyrdom, even when it comes to nukes, and thus can't be deterred by the reciprocal threat of death.

...I'm surprised there isn't a greater sense of concern about those Pakistani nukes. Forget Iran and Israel (Bush's hypothetical route to World War III). Pakistani nukes now represent the quickest shortcut to a regional nuclear war that could escalate to a global nuclear war.

Slate

Despite whatever Al Gore may say, climate change will probably not be the trigger for nuclear war. But a nuclear war may very well usher in the next significant climate change. All that dust circulating around the atmosphere will promote a "global dimming" that will not be good for the world's crops.

Nuclear weapons technology is a cat that is long out of the bag. If Pakistani, Iranian, and North Korean scientists have the technology, then anyone with political, religious, or financial connections to these scientists or their particular agencies can have the technology as well. Think about it. And make your plans accordingly.

"24" Los Angeles Nuked by TV Terrorists--When Will It Happen For Real

It is politically fashionable to pretend that "global warming" is a bigger threat than islamic terrorism. Most elected officials, entertainment celebrities, and news media conglomerates seem to agree that changing the subject and pretending the problem doesn't exist is the only way to deal with the existential threat to western civilisation--the only halfway civilised civilisation the world has ever known.

The television show "24" on the US Fox Network has come out with a powerful first four hours. A large part of Los Angeles has been destroyed by a suitcase nuclear weapon by arab muslim terrorists. This is a major break from an overwhelming denial of the problem among most media powers. I am wondering when the enablers of terrorism will begin to attack Fox for its realism?

Remember when Hollywood made a movie of a Tom Clancy thriller about muslim terrorists setting off a nuclear bomb in Denver? Hollywood changed the muslim terrorists into right-wing domestic terrorists. Realism doesn't sell to the media or political elite. Make believe pretending is more their style.

Muslim terrorists will kill innocent people anywhere in the world they can--until the west can produce an organised force with enough competence and power to put an end to the extremism that has captured the heart, mind, and soul of contemporary Islam.

Today, it is a "24" TV show episode. Tomorrow it will be on 24 hour news coverage of CNN. When it really happens, somehow I think the CNN producers will be smiling.

We Call it the Ramadan Shuffle

For the third night in a row, Ramadan rioting has been the favoured activity of muslim immigrants in the capital of Europe, Brussels. The youths can apparently not imagine a more appropriate means of celebrating the holy month of Ramadan.

The riots centered on the Brussels Marollen quarter and the area near the Midi Train Station, where the international trains from London and Paris arrive. Youths threw stones at passing people and cars, windows of parked cars were smashed, bus shelters were demolished, cars were set ablaze, a youth club was arsoned and a shop was looted. Two molotov cocktails were thrown into St.Peter’s hospital, one of the main hospitals of central Brussels.

....The immigrant youths claim that they are upset by the death of Fayçal Chaaban, a 25-year old criminal, in a Brussels prison last Sunday.

....The authorities are especially nervous since the Belgian municipal elections are being held on Sunday October 8th. It is likely that the elections will be won by anti-immigrant, “islamophobic” parties.

Source.

Yes, I would consider it likely that anti-immigrant parties would win many elections after all this rioting, as long as the polls close before the end of that day's fast. Otherwise a massacre of the voters and burning of the polls might take place.

Will the late Oriana Fallaci's predictions of the now and future "Eurabia" (Europe as the Gaza Strip) be proven sadly true? Far more likely than a global warming catastrophe, I warrant you, but far less likely to make the news in North America.