Michael Mann is no scientist – but he likes to claim he is one.
Michael Mann is no Nobel laureate – but he likes to claim he is one.
Climate “science” is no science – but Michael Mann likes to claim it is.
Time for the so-called “climate scientists” to be held accountable for their alarmism and waste.
The hype about electric cars is just one more example of environmental alarmism leading to bad decisions. The list of “bad decisions” made to appease environmentalism is long and getting longer. Wind power before its time and solar power before it was commercially viable have only helped to increase the costs to the consumer but they have been a windfall for those who have managed to “milk” the subsidies. The electric car fiasco is no different. Billions have been wasted in subsidising something that is not commercial and in trying to skew the market in the hope of artificially creating a demand where there is none. But a few have managed to live very well off the subsidies. Some day electric cars may well become commercially viable and when they do it will not be because an environmental lobby group or a government merely wished for it but because the technology and supply network then will be sufficiently developed to offer the consumer a superior product at a reasonable price.
The simple reality is that:
More importantly the ostensible reason for subsidising the technology – as being for the cutting of carbon dioxide emissions to try and reverse natural climate change – is both based on a false premise and futile.
“The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society’s needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs, or how it takes a long time to charge,” said, Uchiyamada, who spearheaded Toyota’s development of the Prius hybrid in the 1990s.
I am always irritated when the regulations regarding in-flight electronics are announced at the start of a flight. I dutifully switch my phone off not because I have any perception of causing danger but only because I don’t want to be denied travel.
There is no evidence whatsoever that using electronic devices on flights – whether during take-off and landing or while cruising – has any deleterious effects on aircraft navigation or any other technical operations during the flight. But this regulation – like so many others – was based originally on fears. Getting rid of an existing regulation even when there is no evidence that the fear is justified is extremely difficult. Once any irrational – but fear-based – regulation is in place the onus of proof shifts from showing something to be unsafe to proving instead that it is not unsafe. And proving a negative is not very easy.
An FAA regulator is walking down the street snapping his fingers continuously. A guy stops him and asks, “Why are you snapping your fingers all the time?” “To keep wild elephants away.” “That’s ridiculous!“, says the guy. The regulator replies, “Oh, yeah? You don’t see any wild elephants around do you?”
The Wall Street Journal writes:
Do Our Gadgets Really Threaten Planes?
The ban on electronic devices rests on anecdotes, not on hard evidence—because there isn’t any.
I have a theory that within a hundred years we will be bemoaning the lack of world population. The collapse of society will be forecast as an impending catastrophe as the total world population stabilises at less than 10 billion with the proportion of the young working population decreasing relative to the increasing numbers of the “leisured” population. And that apocalypse too shall not come to pass.
Matt Ridley has a new essay in Wired which needs to be read. Just some excerpts below:
Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times
When the sun rises on December 22, as it surely will, do not expect apologies or even a rethink. No matter how often apocalyptic predictions fail to come true, another one soon arrives. And the prophets of apocalypse always draw a following—from the 100,000 Millerites who took to the hills in 1843, awaiting the end of the world, to the thousands who believed in Harold Camping, the Christian radio broadcaster who forecast the final rapture in both 1994 and 2011. ………
I shall not be trying to switch off today. But I shall not either be trying to maximise my electricity consumption in some futile gesture to protest against the even more idiotic gesture that is Earthhour. I shall be as normal as possible.
The hype around Earthhour on 31st March each year is not just irritating – it demonstrates for me the intellectual bankruptcy that is now enveloping the environmentalists and conservationists and the eco-fascists. It is a tale told by idiots and full of sound and fury and signifying – nothing.
If it was a just a meaningless gesture it would not be as bad as it is. It actually denies all that humankind has achieved and promotes a view of what the future should be which not only do I not share but is one which celebrates the lack of electricity. It condemns humankind to return to a bleak world of hunger and death and misery. That may be a future which the lack of electricity could cause but it is not a future I would choose or glorify.
This post by Ross McKitrick is pretty close to how I see things:
Earth Hour: A Dissent
by Ross McKitrick
Ross McKitrick, Professor of Economics, University of Guelph, Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Ross McKitrick, Professor of Economics, University of Guelph, Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In 2009 I was asked by a journalist for my thoughts on the importance of Earth Hour.
Here is my response.
I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity.
Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading.
I have yet to come across a case where Alarmism and the invocation of the Precautionary Principle to spend billions has been justified. The Precautionary Principle itself is flawed and is usually invoked to justify actions in favour of a political ideology which go against common sense. There are no principles involved. For example the billions spent on “preventing” the alleged Y2K meltdown were shown to have been essentially unnecessary when countries which just did not have the money to spend suffered no significant ill-effects (Ukraine and Romania for example).
The Precautionary Principle: An activist is walking down the street snapping his fingers continuously. A guy stops him and asks, “Why are you snapping your fingers all the time?” The activist answers, “To keep wild elephants away.” “That’s ridiculous!”, says the guy. The activist replies, “Oh, yeah? You don’t see any wild elephants around do you?”
The AGW othodoxy is following the same path where trillions are being spent in following political objectives which have no basis and go against common sense.
Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT has been addressing the UK House of Commons.
The Independent: Is catastrophic global warming, like the Millenium Bug, a mistake?
The key requirement for the method of science is scepticism.
The scientific method is to make falsifiable hypotheses and then to check the hypothesis by gathering the evidence to check the falsifiability.
The IPCC and the Global Warming Orthodoxy have been making alarmist predictions for the last 20 years and their hypothesis comes in three parts:
In the last 20+ years, comparing actual observations show that each one of these 3 parts of this global warming hypothesis is – at best – oversimplified and – at worst – just plain wrong. “Wrong” in the sense that the causality proposed does not exist and that the mechanisms proposed for the causality are incorrect or non-existent. The IPCC predictions are being proved wrong and it is time to ditch the hypothesis.
IPCC predictions falsify global warming hypothesis
The 27th January article in the Wall Street Journal “No Need to Panic about Global Warming” by a number of scientists displaying true scientific scepticism was immediately criticised by members of the Orthodoxy. The original authors now reply to these criticisms in the WSJ:
This piece appeared in the WSJ signed by 16 scientists:
There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy.
Editor’s Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:
A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed. ….
Image via Wikipedia
I had posted earlier about the revelations that the BBC’s Roger Harrabin (with the help of his pal Joe Smith) had been acting as a mole within the BBC to lobby on behalf of the global warming orthodoxy in which he had a vested interest.
Well, it would seem that he gave up being an objective journalist and became a lobbyist some time ago. He has been lobbying hard since at least 1997. The CIES web page from August 18th, 2000:
Media & Environment Programme
Developed by Dr Joe Smith and Roger Harrabin (BBC Today Programme), the programme consists of a series of indepth seminars designed to broaden and deepen media thinking about global environmental change and sustainable development issues and to improve the academic and policy communities’ understanding of the setting and constraints of media reporting.
Programme co-directors:
Dr Joe Smith
Mr Roger HarrabinProgramme contact details:
Email: jhs125@cam.ac.uk or tel: +44 (0)1223 740135Details of previous seminars:
The Changing Environmental Agenda – BBC Editors (1997)
Climate Change Meeting – senior editors (1997)
Reporting Sustainable Development:
The Challenge to the Media – BBC Editors (1997)The Kyoto Outcome: Implications for UK Business (1997)
Reporting Sustainable Development:
The Challenge to the Media – BBC Editor’s Seminar (1998)
The less than objective “reporting” on global warming from the BBC was always fairly obvious but the role of Roger Harrabin, one of its senior environmental correspondents in driving that policy is now becoming clear. Christopher Booker has a long article in The Telegraph:
The BBC’s hidden ‘warmist’ agenda is rapidly unravelling
Since 2006, the BBC has relentlessly promoted the global warming orthodoxy as a pressure group in its own right.
The story of the BBC’s bias on global warming gets ever murkier. Last week there was quite a stir over a new report for the BBC Trust which criticised several programmes for having been improperly funded or sponsored by outside bodies. One, for instance, lauded the work of Envirotrade, a Mauritius-based firm cashing in on the global warming scare by selling “carbon offsets”, which it turned out had given the BBC money to make the programme. ……
….
The irony is, however, that just as the BBC adopted its new hard line on climate change, in the real world the story was beginning to shift. Ever more searching questions have come to be asked about the supposed “consensus” on man-made warming, and the BBC’s coverage has come to look ever more one-sidedly absurd.
Last week, even Richard Black, another BBC proselytiser for man-made warming, was gloomily having to reveal the conclusion of a new IPCC report: that, over the next few decades, “climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variabilty”. In plain English, that means the great scare story is over. What a shame. But at what a price. …
Meanwhile the Daily Mail carries the following headline:
(Update! The Daily Mail article has been removed but has been reported here).
(Update 2! The Daily Mail article has now been restored)
BBC’s Mr Climate Change accepted £15,000 in grants from university rocked by global warning scandal
Alarmism is lucrative.
The k2p blog 