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Did Amnesty just make up the story of the Indian sisters to be raped as punishment?

September 3, 2015

There are a number of bodies who I once admired but whose veracity can no longer be relied upon. I take anything from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the World Wildlife Fund and now Amnesty with a very large shovel of salt. Their exaggerations, alarmism and plain lies means that I have come to discount virtually everything they publicise to a large degree. They have made it all too plain that they believe their ends are so good that it justifies some lying and fraud and deception along the way.

Over the last few days Amnesty International and the World Press have made much of a story where two sisters were “sentenced” by village elders (panchayat) to be gang-raped as punishment because their brother had “eloped” with a woman of higher caste. There was much indignation and gnashing of teeth.

But now it would seem that the whole story was probably just made up by Amnesty. In the best interpretation Amnesty has been gullible to the point of stupidity. In the worst interpretation Amnesty exploited these sisters for their own agenda by making up the whole story and implementing a deliberate PR campaign. Mind you, the world’s press have then been pretty gullible as well and their fact-checking has been virtually absent.

Daily Mirror: The village council accused of ordering the rape of two Indian sisters because their brother ran off with a higher caste woman has denied it ever ordered the sickening punishment. 

The news that the women were to be assaulted because of their brother’s actions led to an international outcry and hundreds of thousands of people have demanded their safety.

Now, members of the village council in the Baghpat region of northern India have told Reuters they passed no such order.

Family members of the two sisters also said they are unsure if the ruling was made – while local police deny any such directive was given.

When the accusations first emerged last month, they spread like wildfire. An online petition by Amnesty International seeking justice and protection for the low-caste sisters gathered over 260,000 signatures, mostly in Britain.

But family members said it may have just been gossip.

“It is all hearsay, we don’t know if this actually happened,” said Dharam Pal Singh, 55, the women’s father and a retired soldier. “We heard it from other villagers.” He identified one of the villagers, a man who also said he had heard it from others.

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Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Ethics | Comments Off on Did Amnesty just make up the story of the Indian sisters to be raped as punishment?

12,000 years of agriculture has only reduced tree numbers by 46%

September 3, 2015

There is a new paper in Nature which tries to count the number of trees in the world.

Crowther, T. W. et al., Mapping tree density at a global scale, Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature14967 (2015)

They find that there are 3.04 trillion trees which is about 7 times larger than was previously thought. They further estimate that in spite of 12,000 years of agriculture, the number of trees in the world has only reduced by 46%.

But then I heard the lead author, Thomas Crowther, being interviewed on the BBC today. I was less than impressed by his apparent lack of common sense. “The scale of human impact is astonishing” he says.

Really?

There has been a less than 50% reduction of tree-numbers in 12,000 years of agriculture, with all the forest clearing that entails, to feed 7 billion people. A human impact of less than 0.0038% per year (or 3.8% per 1000 years) is claimed to be “astonishing”.

He also claims that their results do not impact “carbon science”. Again, Really?

Seven times as many trees as thought before is 7 times as much bio-mass existing as trees, which leads to 7 times as much carbon inventory locked-up in trees as thought before. It means 7 times more trees die every year than was previously thought. Which makes man-made carbon emissions an even smaller fraction (c. 4%) of natural carbon emissions.

Crowther sounded like a vacuum cleaner salesman talking up his product. He kept emphasising the importance of his paper while denying that it had any implications for “politically correct science”. The estimate of the number of trees is interesting and could be something to build on for carbon cycle calculations. It also suggests that alarmism about bio-diversity of trees is ill founded. But some of their conclusions are just stupid and geared to getting more funding by demonstrating “political correctness”.

Reasonably interesting science but with idiot conclusions.

Oh dear!

Abstract: The global extent and distribution of forest trees is central to our understanding of the terrestrial biosphere. We provide the first spatially continuous map of forest tree density at a global scale. This map reveals that the global number of trees is approximately 3.04 trillion, an order of magnitude higher than the previous estimate. Of these trees, approximately 1.39 trillion exist in tropical and subtropical forests, with 0.74 trillion in boreal regions and 0.61 trillion in temperate regions. Biome-level trends in tree density demonstrate the importance of climate and topography in controlling local tree densities at finer scales, as well as the overwhelming effect of humans across most of the world. Based on our projected tree densities, we estimate that over 15 billion trees are cut down each year, and the global number of trees has fallen by approximately 46% since the start of human civilization.

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Posted in Agriculture, Alarmism, Science | 1 Comment »

A real correlation from a real causal relationship

August 31, 2015

A green fantasy rather than just a mirage. And I am afraid that the fantasy is intentionally malicious and not just the delusions of sanctimonious do-gooders. Just following the money reveals those who have gained the greatest benefit.

No doubt the Danes and the Germans have ensured a mild and benevolent climate for themselves?

Note that this is just the direct price paid by the consumer and does not include the cost of subsidies which are sourced from general taxation.

Chart by Euan Mearns.

The Y-axis shows residential electricity prices for the second half of 2014 from Eurostat. The X-axis is the installed wind + solar capacity for 2014 as reported in the 2015 BP statistical review normalised to W per capita using population data for 2014 as reported by the UN.

Renewable energy does have a niche where it makes very good sense – but it is not common sense which rules in Europe today.

 Eurostat

2015 BP statistical review 

UN population data.

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Posted in Alarmism, Europe, Renewable Energy | Comments Off on A real correlation from a real causal relationship

Carbon credits used for “printing money”

August 25, 2015

I first realised that the “carbon credit” schemes were essentially money-making scams sheltering under the “environmental” umbrellas of the UN and the EU in the mid 1990s. The misguided and meaningless Kyoto protocol was established in 1992 and fuelled a whole raft of “environmental entrepreneurs” who soon became expert at milking the funds available. I was visiting some of the former Soviet countries to discuss their power generation needs (with a view to selling power plant equipment) and soon realised that all the discussions had nothing whatever to do with meeting energy needs, but were for bureaucrats and politicians to find ways to tap into the carbon credits available via UN and EU schemes for – ostensibly – reducing carbon emissions that didn’t exist. Sometimes the discussions were quite openly about how to show that carbon emissions were much higher than they actually were and then claiming credits for running quite normally. As an example, a district heating scheme actually using Russian gas had combustion equipment capable of burning heavy fuel oil or even coal. “Normal” emissions were then “certified” by the Ministry of Energy as being from the use of the worst possible fuel, and then carbon credits were claimed for “emissions reductions” by “switching” to gas.

The “cost of carbon” as reflected in carbon taxes and carbon credits have nothing really to do with reduction of emissions and even less to do with climate. They have all been schemes for milking very many taxpayers for the benefit of a few “environmental entrepreneurs”. Carbon credits have achieved little beyond promoting fraud.

Now, finally, 20 years after the event, the truth about carbon credits is beginning to surface:

BBC:Carbon Credits like “printing money”

The vast majority of carbon credits generated by Russia and Ukraine did not represent cuts in emissions, according to a new study. The authors say that offsets created under a UN scheme “significantly undermined” efforts to tackle climate change.

The credits may have increased emissions by 600 million tonnes. In some projects, chemicals known to warm the climate were created and then destroyed to claim cash.

As a result of political horse trading at UN negotiations on climate change, countries like Russia and the Ukraine were allowed to create carbon credits from activities like curbing coal waste fires, or restricting gas emissions from petroleum production.

Under the UN scheme, called Joint Implementation, they then were able to sell those credits to the European Union’s carbon market. Companies bought the offsets rather than making their own more expensive, emissions cuts.

But this study, from the Stockholm Environment Institute, says the vast majority of Russian and Ukrainian credits were in fact, “hot air” – no actual emissions were reduced.

They looked at a random sample of 60 projects and found that 73% of the offsets generated didn’t meet the key criteria of “additionality”. This means that these projects would have happened anyway without any carbon credit finance.

It is not just Russia and Ukraine of course.

And the fraud continues. No carbon tax or carbon credit scheme has ever been monitored for effect. No scheme has ever had any impact on climate. Every carbon credit or carbon tax scheme has only put general taxpayers’ money into the pockets of a few “environmental entrepreneurs”. And that applies to virtually every country in Europe and every former Soviet Republic.

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Emissions, Fraud | 1 Comment »

A year without summer in the Cairngorms and in the highlands of Lapland

August 15, 2015

It is successive cool summers and the persistence of snow and ice from one winter to the next which will cause the next little ice age. Of course the absence of summer in the highlands of Lapland and Scotland in 2015 does not necessarily mean that an ice age is upon us. But in the language of “climate science” (which is no science), it is entirely consistent with the coming of an ice age.

This year we have had a fairly miserable summer in Sweden but in the highlands of Lapland, conditions have gone directly from a “meteorological spring” to “meteorological autumn”. And even in the Scottish Cairngorms snow from last winter is still persisting and creating some impressive sculptures as it melts.

Telegraph: Low summer temperatures mean snow continues to cling to the mountainsides of the Scottish National Park, even in the middle of August. But as the patches begin to melt from below, and water flows downhill, vast caverns – some big enough to walk through – are formed.

These striking pictures were captured by Helen Rennie at Ciste Mhearad in the northern Cairngorms.

Melting snow leaves behind magical frozen caves in Scotland

Helen Rennie at Ciste Mhearad Photo: Helen Rennie

In Lapland, the highlands have officially skipped summer and gone directly from spring to autumn conditions.

Swedish Radio:

There was no summer this year in the Tarfala highlands of northern Lapland. They have gone from meteorologic spring to autumn without going through any summer according to the temperatures says SMHI meteorologist Sandra Andersson. “If the summer has not formally come by 1st August we can go directly to autum instead and so it was for Tarfala” says Sandra Andersson.

How common is it to skip a season? “In the highlands it happens occasionally. Even Falsterbo in Skåne (southern Sweden) have sometimes skipped winter but it is not so common”. 

Even in Stekenjokk in the southern highlands of Lapland it is is now officially autumn, which means that the average temperature during the day after 1st August did not exceed ten degrees for five days in a row. 

Kebnekaises sydtopp. Foto: Stockholms universitet.

Southern top of Kebnekaise Foto: Stockholms universitet.

 

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Weather, Winter | 1 Comment »

Mann is “A disgrace to the profession” – as “climate science” is a disgrace to “science”

August 14, 2015

I am waiting for my Kindle edition of Mark Steyn’s “A disgrace to the profession” which is only available on 1st September from Amazon. Something to look forward to.

If “the profession” is supposed to be  “climate science” then this so-called “science” – having no falsifiable hypotheses – is itself a disgrace. But certainly Michael Mann is classified and gets paid as a “scientist” and as an “academic”. And to both those classes, Mann is an embarrassment and a disgrace. His construction of the “hockey stick” was not just invalid and unjustified, it was close to fraud. (The Hockey Stick Illusion). But the gullibility of those who have swallowed the illusion without application of mind or any other critical judgement is also a disgrace to sentience.

WUWT has a review of this compilation of what other scientists have to say about Michael Mann’s work on the “hockey stick”.

WUWT:

I remember when Mann decided to sue NRO and Steyn for defamation, and despite all the laughing at the time there was this prescient thought from Dr. Judith Curry:

“Mark Steyn is formidable opponent. I suspect that this is not going to turn out well for you.”

Well, Part 1, or should I say, Volume 1 of that prediction is now in press. It’s a scorcher, hilarity, and a tale of science and politics gone awry all in one.

Steyn realized the word of a political pundit like himself can only travel so far in certain circles, and in a brilliant move, he has gathered a compendium of what other scientists have to say about Mann’s work on the “hockey stick”. And of course, he’s had it illustrated by Josh. My favorite is Mann as Yoda, wielding a hockey stick rather than a light saber, seen in this collage below:

If Michael Mann is a disgrace to a profession which itself is a disgrace, it is not a case of one disgrace cancelling the other, but a case of Mann being doubly disgraced.

 

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When the models fail, just “homogenise” the data

August 13, 2015

Jennifer Marohasy has another example from Australia of how climate data is changed under the guise of “homogenisation” or “adjustments” or “corrections”. Raw temperature data showing a cooling trend are “fixed” to match the religious beliefs of the global warming crowd (or should it be the global warming mob?)

……….

More recently, the Bureau has been claiming that it had to change the temperatures at Rutherglen because they were different from temperatures at near-by locations.  Of course, a real scientist wouldn’t tamper with data because it showed an unusual trend.   Rather the unusual result might be investigated.

But not the Bureau.  It changes the trend at Rutherglen so it matches neighboring stations, but only after first changing the trend at neighboring stations so it matches the global warming trend.

In protest I’ve sent an email to the CEO, Vicki Middleton.

Dear Ms Middleton,

Re: Deniliquin shows statistically significant cooling, Rutherglen just shows cooling

I am writing to request that you correct a Bureau of Meteorology fact sheet*, which shows remodelled (homogenized) data for Wagga, Deniliquin and Kerang with actual physical temperature measurements (raw data) for Rutherglen.

Several members of the public, seeking clarification regarding adjustments to the temperature record for Rutherglen, have been advised by you in recent correspondence that the adjustments at Rutherglen are necessary to make temperature trends at Rutherglen more consistent with neighboring sites.   In particular, you have directed them to this fact sheet* that shows minimum temperatures at Rutherglen cooling, while temperatures at Wagga, Deniliquin and Kerang are warming.  What you have failed to point out, however, is that the Wagga, Deniliquin and Kerang series represent homogenized time series.   That is, the data have been substantially remodelled.

 

CHART3-WITH EXPLAINATION-Ver2

There is no single, long, continuous, raw minimum temperature record from the same site for either Kerang or Wagga.   Recordings were made at Wilkinson Street, Deniliquin, from February 1867 to June 2003, providing a record comparable in length to the raw series from Rutherglen.

I have plotted the raw temperature series for three Deniliquin locations below, including the data from Wilkinson Street from 1913, which is when the Rutherglen series begins.

Chart3-Revised-Deni-Rutherglen

The top green squiggly line represents data from Wilkinson Street, Deniliquin, the short purple squiggle is data from the airport at Deniliquin, and the mustard-colored squiggle is from a site referred to as Falkiner Memorial, Deniliquin.

Also shown in this chart are both homogenized and raw data for Rutherglen, as the red and blue squiggly lines, respectively.

The three dotted-lines represent the linear trends from Wilkinson Street (green), the raw (blue) series for Rutherglen, and the homogenized (red) series for Rutherglen.

The cooling trend in the Wilkinson Street, Deniliquin series of 0.6 degree Celsius per century is statistically significant (p<0.05).

I appreciate that you may have been misled by your employees into believing that the cooling trend at Rutherglen (represented by the blue line in the above chart) is erroneous.   This is not the case.

I recognize that this cooling trend evident in the minimum temperature record for much of the twentieth century at many rural locations in south eastern Australia is inconsistent with official Australian and also global trends.   Nevertheless, it does appear to be real, and is statistically significant for some locations.   Of course, real scientists are concerned with the interpretation of real data, rather than remodeling to generate constructs that fit popular political agendas.

Yours sincerely,
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD
Independent Scientist

9th August, 2015

Copy Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council.

*The following document is cited in Bureau correspondence as a Fact Sheet:

Bureau of Meteorology, 2014. ACORN-SAT station adjustment summary – Rutherglen (as at 24 September 2014), Accessed 8 August 2015. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/documents/station-adjustment-summary-Rutherglen.pdf

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Climate models would fit data better if they drastically reduced carbon dioxide “forcings”

August 9, 2015

It is almost the first lesson I was taught when I started doing “research”. Research 101. If the data does not fit the model, you change the model – not the data. The fundamental problem with climate models is that they are not falsifiable. And as long as “climate science” can not, or will not, put forward falsifiable hypotheses, it is not Science. The models all start with assumptions which are approved by the high-priests of the religion. The results are then “forced” to fit with past data and are then used to assert that the initial assumptions are correct. When they are then used for making forecasts they invariably fail. They then try to “adjust” the data (cooling the past) rather than change their religiously-held assumptions.

Five year running mean temperatures predicted by UN IPCC models and observations by weather balloons and satellites. University of Alabama’s John Christy presentation to the House Committee on Natural Resources on May 15, 2015.

Five year running mean temperatures predicted by UN IPCC models and observations by weather balloons and satellites. University of Alabama’s John Christy presentation to the House Committee on Natural Resources on May 15, 2015.

Just the effect of carbon dioxide concentration on incoming and outgoing radiation is small, easy to include and not really an issue. The problem arises because of the assumptions made of the feedback loops and the subsequent “forcing” attributed to carbon dioxide concentration. It is politically incorrect and therefore no climate model is ever allowed to ignore carbon dioxide “forcings”. Even though the “forcings” are largely conjecture. The feedback loops due to changes in carbon dioxide concentration acting through consequent changes in water vapour concentration and cloud cover are not only not known – it is not even known if they are net positive or net negative on temperature. The unknown “forcings” are called “climate sensitivity”, just to make it sound better, but these “climate sensitivities” are little better than fudge factors used by each model. (Even more fudge factors are applied to assert how man-made carbon dioxide emissions affect the carbon dioxide concentration even though the long-term data show that carbon dioxide concentration lags temperature). What I note is that the error between the models and real data is of the same magnitude as ascribed to the effects – with “forcing” – of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. There is no evidence that the assumed “forcings” are valid. The obvious correction to be made in the model assumptions is that the “climate sensitivity” assumed for carbon dioxide concentration is too high and that any “forcing” effects must be scaled down. But that, of course, is politically incorrect. You cannot get funding for developing a model which does not pay homage to the orthodoxy.

A simple sanity check shows that every single climate model used by the UN’s IPCC would fit real data better if it used a much lower sensitivity to carbon dioxide concentration by using a lower level of assumed forcing.

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The ice age cometh – Iceland has coldest summer in over 20 years

August 8, 2015

It is cool summers – not cold winters – which will be the harbingers of the coming of a little ice age. In the north of Iceland it has been the coldest summer in over 30 years (since 1983) and in the south it has been the coolest since 1992.

Iceland

IcelandMonitor:

The first thirteen weeks of summer this year have been the coldest in Reykjavik in over twenty years, reveals Icelandic meteorologist Trausti Jónsson.

The northern city of Akureyri fares even worse – one has to go back around thirty years to find a colder summer. Last year was Akureyri’s warmest summer in 67 years.

Summer in Reykjavik has not been this cold since 1992, although the summer of 1979 was by far the coldest. The warmest summer in Reykjavik in the past 67 years was in 2010.

Summer in Akureyri has not been this cold since 1983.

And meanwhile the UK summer has been pretty miserable as well:

Paul Homewood: As I indicated a couple of weeks ago, July has been another miserably cold affair, despite a couple of hot days at the start of the month.

The UK as a whole has been 0.7C below the 1981-2010 average, with the west and north particularly cool. In Scotland, it was the coldest July since 1998. This is the third cool month on the trot, making the May to July start to the holiday season the coldest since 1996.

Despite a mild winter and early spring, UK temperatures year to date are now running 0.2C below the 1981-2010 average.

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Iceland, Weather | 1 Comment »

Climate science (global warming) has lost the plot

August 3, 2015

When (not if) the next little ice age or even the end of this interglacial begins, we will first observe it by cooler summers – not initially by colder winters. While the “climate scientists” are chasing non-existent links between man-made carbon dioxide emissions and “global temperature”, they are reduced to data tampering and cooling the past. There is not a shred of evidence but only much conjecture that man-made emissions are of any significance.

They cannot predict the future so they are rewriting history. Every year the temperatures of the past are adjusted downwards. No model forecast of global temperature has come anywhere near predicting actual development. When the models don’t fit, it is time to dump the models. “Climate science” is now two decades out of date. Today Obama will announce another round of restrictions on the climate bogey-man – anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions – even though his plans will have no impact on climate and will only make life more expensive.

The primary “forcing” or feed-back loop which will set off the little ice age or glacial conditions will be a reduction of ice melt over a few summers and followed by an increase of ice accumulation, which in turn will increase the solar energy reflected directly back into space. That will further reduce the ice melt in subsequent years. Cold winters and an increase of rate of ice growth is not required to set this off. Current, “normal” rates of ice growth in the winter are quite sufficient to reproduce the little ice age or even the return to glacial conditions provided that the summer melt is reduced and reducing. A large volcanic eruption with much dust ejected could well be the key factor to enhance the “forcing”. A year or two or three without summers in the higher latitudes could well be the key. It is probably of more significance in the northern hemisphere with its larger land mass which would support the direct growth of surface ice. In the southern hemisphere there is no reason that Australia could not also be covered with glacial ice sheets but more sea-ice would have to be created first. That would require much colder winters and not just cooler summers to trigger the change. It is not the climate near the equator or the tropics which controls. It is the regions above 50N and below 50S where we will first see the indications. It is the combination of reduced ice-melt followed by increased ice accumulation which will be critical.

Here in Sweden it has been a miserable July. The Finnish summer has been the coldest on record – so far. It has been the coldest July in most of Australia in twenty years. Iceland has seen snow in summer which is not that common. Scotland is said to have seen its worst summer in 40 years. Montana, Wyoming and Idaho have seen anomalous summer snow. The Greenland ice melt started very late and seems to already have come to an end. “Freak” snow storms have come to the Rockies in July. Over 40 people and 250,000 alpacas died in Peru in a cold wave and Chile declared cold emergencies..

“Global temperature” is not a real thing. It is an artefact, a number calculated by massaging and adjusting real data. No matter what the self-styled “climate scientists” believe and worship, “climate change” which is not manifested as changes to local weather and which can actually be experienced probably does not exit. We are now in for 2 – 3 decades of cooling which will include a little ice age. But over the next 1,000 years we will also be back into glacial conditions.

Right now, I experience more indicators of cooling than of any warming.

And when the cooling does start – as it will – we shall be very thankful for the more than 1,000 years of fossil fuel reserves we have.

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Weather | 1 Comment »

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