"Global warming is killing the world" says the Herald headline.
Global warming? The earth hasn't been warming since 1998's El Nino put an end to the '79 to '98 warming splurge (before which there were several decades of cooling after the highs of the thirties and forties).
"Regional warming" is killing the glaciers, says NIWA's Jim Salinger.
Regional warming? According to Salinger's own organisation, New Zealand's average temperate last month was 0.5 degrees Celsius below the average for October.
Catastrophe? I think not. Bullshit? I think so. In fact, Doomsday has been called off [video, 44min.].
But I'm damn glad summer's finally here.
UPDATE: Jeanette Fitzsimons' wind turbine has fallen off the roof for the last time -- she's giving up on wind power. And a good thing too. When the cost of repairs is taken into account, Fitzsimons' turbine has produced some of the most expensive electricity ever made.
8 comments:
Yes, I had to wince when I read that headline. Doesn't do anything to enhance anyone's understanding of the issues.
It was however the same wince I use every time I read 'the world has been cooling since 1998'. Broadly true if you like, but massively disingenuous...
Spin is the enemy of proper scientific understanding for the layperson - newspapers should understand that, but naturally they only want to hook in readers with pithy, worthless throwaway headlines like that one.
DenMT
DenMT
"...naturally they only want to hook in readers with pithy, worthless throwaway headlines like that one."
Same goes for the IPCC.
Regards
LGM
Yeeees... While we'd all like an easy caricature of the IPCC, I think you'll find that the annual reports are written in ever so slightly more academic and carefully couched language. You know, confidence intervals and such...
DenMT
More artful language perhaps, but bullshit all the same.
BTW not so long ago PC posted an article about the veracity of the IPCC and its claims of scientific consensus. Did you read it?
LGM
Possibly, I'm not sure. I read the press release from that Junk Science guy Steven Milloy on his survey on the matter, whereby he claimed to disprove the IPCC consensus (very dubious use of statistics) but I don't think PC commented on it.
The rigorous process that has to be gone through to get anything out the door there is seen by IPCC skeptics as a cynical word-smithing exercise, whereas it is infact a process of stripping out as much emotion, uncertainty, and 'spin' as possible.
In fact, I find it hard to conceive of an environment less likely to produce the kind of spurious, alarmist one-liners that the media are notorious for. The IPCC are labelled 'alarmist' by those who disagree with their findings, not because those findings are presented in a spectacular or colourful way.
DenMT
DenMT
The process the IPCC applies is political, not scientific. It's a method of suppressing anything that does not harmonise with the aims of a political organisation, founded for political reasons. Censoring research, selectively presenting favoured "results" and personalities while claiming a fictitious consensus is not the way science is accomplished and knowledge is won; never has been. Sadly, the process is more than a little similar to how the Catholic Church used to announce its findings (like how the Earth is at the centre of the solar system). It owes much to methodologies used by the National Socialists in Germany and by the Socialists in Russia (science determined by political requirement).
As economic restrictions imposed by environmental legislation and regulation start to bite, people will become far more concerned and scruitiny over the "scientific" jusifications offered by regional and national politicians will intensify. A cursory examination of the IPCC and its processes soon demonstrates the canards at the heart of that organisation's existence. The IPCC and its scaremongering is a propaganda excercise freely exploited by authoritarians and power seekers. The damage it is causing to the reputation of science and the practitioners who undertake serious research is going to get more and more severe. That is something to be concerned about.
A modern industrial civilisation, such as the one we enjoy presently, requires that science is undertaken objectively and seriously. The politicisation of science leads to a situation where science is rejected as partisan and subjective by non-practitioners. Scientists become politicians and hence not to be believed or trusted- ever. They are then seen as nothing more than self-serving state employees...
In a sense those who seek to frustrate the industrial, technical and scientifica progress of Man have a win/win hand here. Either they wreck industrial civilisation by imposing environmental socialism or they do it by wrecking confidence in scientific progress and the science that lies at the heart of Man's ability to exploit nature for his own ends.
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The IPCC is a disaster and should be rejected for what it does and how it does it. Most important, it should be rejected for what it is. What the IPCC does is not scientific.
LGM
"Global warming? The earth hasn't been warming since 1998's El Nino put an end to the '79 to '98 warming splurge (before which there were several decades of cooling after the highs of the thirties and forties)" This is such bullshit PC... the earth has been warming, and you know this Not-PC... no need to lie.
Check out
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/11/a_picture_is_worth_a_thousand_1.php
And you think you are correct
Anonymous (anonymous, wouldn't you know it -- you don't even have the balls you were born with), round here we take accusations of lying pretty seriously.
Have a look at that graph you linked to and you'll notice:
a) a high in 1998, and
b) the graph begins in 1979, just as the most recent warming splurge began.
You sir/madam/ManBearPig, are a schmuck. A lying schmuck. As is the schmuck to whom you link. But at least he has the balls to put his name to his lies.
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