Posts Tagged ‘Alarmism’

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Alarmist WHO for sure .. but why and for whom?

June 29, 2010

Handling of the H1N1 pandemic

The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) today endorsed the conclusions of its Health Committee regarding the Swine flu pandemic and the actions of the WHO.

According to the Assembly, the handling of the pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), EU health agencies and national governments led to a “waste of large sums of public money, and unjustified scares and fears about the health risks faced by the European public”. The report finds that there was “overwhelming evidence that the seriousness of the pandemic was vastly overrated by WHO”, resulting in a distortion of public health priorities.

The WHO has been “highly defensive”, the adopted text underlines, and unwilling to accept that a change in the definition of a pandemic was made, or to revise its prognosis of the Swine Flu outbreak. The WHO and European health institutions were not willing to publish the names and declarations of interest of the members of the WHO Emergency Committee and relevant European advisory bodies directly involved in recommendations concerning the pandemic.

The obvious beneficiaries are the pharmaceutical manufacturers of vaccines and Tamiflu and their supporters.

But is anybody at the WHO accountable to anybody?

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Developing language of Global Warming

June 21, 2010

alarmist –  a paranoid Warmist

AGW –  a religion propogating the homo-centric view of the universe and denying any influence of the sun

climate scientist  –  one who tricks successfully; a failed  statistician

climategate –  release on the internet of the inner workings of the hockeystick team

denialist  –  a heretical sceptic

Gore   –  a figurehead for AGW

hockeystick   – a Warmist religious symbol; a graph depicting the uncontrolled increase of any paramater

hockeystick team  – a small group of fanatical Warmists who created the hockeystick symbol by a trick

IPCC   – The High Church of AGW; primarily an advocacy group for the generation of funds for Warmist projects

Jones  – A Warmist priest and member of the UK Chapter of the hockeystick team

Mann  –  A Warmist priest and inventor of the trick

mann  –  n. a successful practitioner of a trick (not to be confused with a human person)

(mann.ism  n. a trick; mann.ick  adj. manic)

Pachauri  –  High Priest of the IPCC, a railway engineer who underwent a religious conversion to Warmism

peer-review – process for preventing publication by heretics  comparable to excommunication

sceptic – a scientist; a heretic

trick  –   n. data manipulation by exclusion; v. to selectively exclude data to achieve a desired result

settled science – as defined by the High Church

voodoo science – any  scientific endeavour following the scientific method but not conforming to to Warmism dogma

Warmist    –  one who adheres to the religion of  man-made Global Warming

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IPCC is to Science what Mussolini was to Democracy

June 15, 2010

Pachauri’s back!!

The BBC reports that “The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, says he welcomes “the development of a vigorous debate” on climate science”.

It would seem that he has changed his tune such that what he once considered “voodoo science” is now elevated to  “vigorous debate”. I am afraid his credibility has evaporated completely and whatever credit he once had when simply running TERI has been fatally contaminated by his mixing of science with greed and advocacy while at the IPCC.

As Der Spiegel reported in April

Also at issue is the position of IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri, who is praised as a “leading global thinker” in his official biography. A railroad engineer by trade, Pachauri wrote an erotic novel and recommended that people reduce their meat consumption while traveling around the world to save the climate. He has cut a miserable figure during the current crisis. The climate guru summarily dismissed justified objections to the IPCC report as “voodoo science.”

After the Climategate circus and the discrediting of the IPCC the UN has established its own inquiry (which is a long way from being independent and seems slightly incestuous) to contemplate its own navel. An “expert” review panel convened by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) – a network of science academies across the world, such as the UK’s Royal Society – will hear testimony from four expert witnesses at the session in Montreal.

Pachauri’s new found respect for scientific dissent and openness is in marked contrast to his wish in February 2010 that skeptics would “apply asbestos to their faces every day.”

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Journalists: The Purveyors of Doom

June 15, 2010

Why do journalists always feel it necessary to report science in alarmist terms?

Solar storms and the geomagnetic consequences are serious and the subject of serious study but such study is devalued when sensationalised by intrepid reporters from the outback.

Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph informed us that “Nasa warns solar flares from ‘huge space storm’ will cause devastation”. The reporter Andrew Hough goes on breathlessly  to explain that the “Daily Telegraph can disclose” that

National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years. Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013. In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken. “We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” said Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa’s Heliophysics division. Every 22 years the Sun’s magnetic energy cycle peaks while the number of sun spots – or flares – hits a maximum level every 11 years. Dr Fisher, a Nasa scientist for 20 years, said these two events would combine in 2013 to produce huge levels of radiation.

We should head for the hills !!!!

The 22 year Solar Cycle – the Babcock cycle was discovered by HW Babcock in 1961.

In 2007 NASA was predicting the Cycle 24 maximum for 2011 as a strong maximum or in 2012 as a weak maximum. By March 2009 the maximum was being forecast for May 2013 with the admission that “It turns out that none of our models were totally correct,” says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA’s lead representative on the panel. “The sun is behaving in an unexpected and very interesting way.”

The great 1859 storm– the “Carrington Event” – electrified transmission cables, set some papers on fire in a few telegraph offices, and produced exceptionally  bright Northern Lights. Some electrical disruption also occurred during storms in 1921, 1937, 1941 and 1958. On August 4, 1972 a solar flare knocked out long-distance telephone communication across Illinois. That event, in fact, caused AT&T to redesign its power system for transatlantic cables. A similar flare on March 13, 1989, provoked geomagnetic storms that disrupted electric power transmission from the Hydro Québec generating station in Canada. In  2005, a solar storm disrupted satellite-to-ground communications and Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation signals for about 10 minutes.

There is a long way in nature from notable to  disruption to devastation and to catastrophe; but in journalism the distance seems exceedingly short.

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Solar Cycle 24: Landscheidt minimum looking more likely

June 14, 2010

soho

The sunspot numbers and the solar flux for May are not keeping up even with the reduced expectations for this cycle.

Are we in the Landscheidt minimum or is it still to come?

Even though many of the alarmists of Global Warming reject the notion of the Solar Cycle having much influence on climate, there is little doubt that the period of the Maunder Minmum coincided with the Little Ice Age. It has been unfortunate that the so-called mathematical models on which Global Warming conclusions are based have descended to the level of glorified arithmetic even though there is little understanding of what the arithmetic represents.

It is time for science to return into the debate and for incomplete mathematical models relying on “fudge factors” to validate the model against temperature proxies (which are themselves highly unlikely to be solely dependant upon temperature) to be treated with the utmost scepticism. In fact it is time for scepticism to return to science.

Predictions of a global cooling over the next 20 or 30 years seem to be gaining substance.

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Alarmism and the perversion of science

June 6, 2010

Alarmism clearly pays.

The use of inflated fears of catastrophe to extract vast amounts of funding  is not perhaps a new phenomenon but in recent times has become so prevalent that it has led to the perversion of the scientific method, the utterly meaningless and false „precautionary principle“ and the prostitution of the peer-review process.

The Y2K hype surrounding doomsday scenarios of computers crashing around the world led to vast amounts of money  being spent by governments, industry and individuals for totally unnecessary activities and preparations. The experiences in those countries (such as Ukraine or Romania) where virtually nothing was done and nothing happened clearly demonstrate that the fears had been grossly exaggerated.The „precautionary principle“ replaced common sense and was used to justify the doing of even useless things to avoid catastrophe. I doubt there was any real conspiracy but I am convinced that the realisation that exagerrated fears of catastrophe could be used to extract large sums of money from those unable or unwilling to apply common sense led to a global wave of opportunism from the IT and related consultants. I too was caught up in the hype and hindsight is wonderful but I never did come across an IT professional who could clearly explain what would happen though each one had a different version of what could happen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/climate-theory-like-y2k-scam/1354506.aspx

http://news.cnet.com/FTC-settles-Y2K-fraud-case/2100-1091_3-233220.html

The arrogance of the Global Warming brigade and the prostitution of the peer review process by a select few (the Hockey Stick Team) has been used by pseudo-scientists, a few genuine scientists and innumerable politicians to extract huge sums of money for funding so-called „Climate Science“ projects – though no such science exists. Whole departments of „Climate Science“ have been established, the now infamous IPCC was established by the UN, results from poor and mediocre mathematical models have been taken as Gospel and the scientific method has been perverted. The sun and its overwhelming influence has been ignored. Carbon dioxide has become the villain and data has been fudged. The effects of clouds and water vapour –though having a dominating influence – have been too difficult to model and have been ignored. „Greenhouse gas“ has become a dirty word though we continue to expand our use of greenhouses to nurture life. No doubt the amount of money involved has provided an irresistable temptation.

http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/5/29/more-coverage-of-royal-society-rebellion.html

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/06/scientists-got-it-wrong

But Global Warming has run its course and the new alarmism surrounding Global Cooling is gaining momentum.We may be entering a new Maunder minimum (perhaps to be called the Landscheidt minimum) which portends a new mini-ice-age. There is money to be made and the more the alarm the greater the funding that can be extracted.

http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/50

The exagerrated fear of a swine-flu pandemic has led to the useless and unnecessary production and stockpiling of drugs and mass vaccinations. Whether this was a concerted effort by the pharmaceutical companies and their hired helpers in the medical world can never be proven, but it is another example of alarmism and the replacement of common sense by the „precautionary principle“ generating the flow of huge sums of money. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/04/AR2010060404608.html

„The WHO’s response caused widespread, unnecessary fear and prompted countries to waste millions of dollars, according to one report. At the same time, the Geneva-based arm of the United Nations relied on advice from experts with ties to drug makers in developing the guidelines it used to encourage countries to stockpile millions of doses of antiviral medication, according to the second report.”

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UK Airspace was never actually closed !!!

April 19, 2010

As criticism mounts over the alarmist behaviour based largely on bureaucratic processes, in turn based on computer modelling, it turns out that UK airspace was never legally closed following the Icelandic dust cloud !!!

Criticism is also growing in Sweden and Norway for blindly following UK Met Office projections without confirming them by measurement.

The Financial Times reports:

The National Air Traffic Services body has appeared to be the one legally responsible for closing Britain’s airspace. This is because NATS, which provides airlines with air traffic control services, made the first announcements on April 14 about airspace restrictions after the cloud of ash began drifting over the UK. On Sunday night, it announced that restrictions would be in place until at least 7pm, Monday . NATS is not a regulator, however, and cannot legally close airspace. That power lies with the Civil Aviation Authority, which regulates aviation on behalf of the Department of Transport. So far, the CAA has not used this power. “At no point has UK airspace been shut. It’s legally open,” a CAA spokesman said.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/39cbf638-4b45-11df-a7ff-00144feab49a.html

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