MICHAEL BUERK ON THE CLIMATE SUMMIT
So why no debate on the assumptions behind the more apocalyptic forecasts?
Example: the UN forecast 50 million climate refugees by 2010 – where are they?
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Agitator/Climate summit
The latest so-called Climate Summit, that’s been taking place in Durban, hasn’t made many waves. It could be because global warming seems less daunting if you can no longer afford heating bills. It could also be that we’re getting fed up with the bogus certainties and quasi-religious tone of the great climate change non-debate.
Now, I don’t know for certain that man’s activities are causing the planet to heat up. Nobody does. We simply cannot construct a theoretical model that can cope with all the variables.
For what it’s worth, I think anthropogenic warming is taking place, and, anyway, it would be a good thing to stop chucking so much bad stuff into the atmosphere.
What gets up my nose is being infantilized by governments, by the BBC, by the Guardian that there is no argument, that all scientists who aren’t cranks and charlatans are agreed on all this, that the consequences are uniformly negative, the issues beyond doubt and the steps to be taken beyond dispute.
You’re not necessarily a crank to point out that global temperatures change a great deal anyway. A thousand years ago we had a Mediterranean climate in this country; 200 years ago we were skating every winter on the Thames.
And actually there has been no significant rise in global temperatures for more than a decade now.
We hear a lot about how the Arctic is shrinking, but scarcely anything about how the Antarctic is spreading, and the South Pole is getting colder.
Droughts aren’t increasing. There are fewer of them, and less severe, than a hundred years ago. The number of hurricanes hasn’t changed, the number of cyclones and typhoons has actually fallen over the last 30 years.
And so on.
There may be answers, I think there probably are - to all these quibbles – I would like to hear them.
I don’t want the media to make up my mind up for me.
I don’t need to be told things by officialdom in all its forms, that are not true, or not the whole truth, for my own good.
I resent the implication that the exercise of my reason is “inappropriate”, an act of generational selfishness, a heresy.
I want a genuine debate about the assumptions behind the more apocalyptic forecasts.
As recently as 2005, for instance, the UN said there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010.
That was last year.
OK – so where are they?
I would like to hear a clash of informed opinion about what would actually be better if it got warmer as well as worse.
Where do you see reported the extraordinary greening of the Sahel, and shrinking of the Sahara that’s been going on for 30 years now – the regeneration of vegetation across a huge, formerly arid swathe of dirt poor Africa. More warming means more rainfall. More CO2 means plants grow bigger, stronger, faster.
I would like a real argument over climate change policy, if only to rid myself of the nagging feeling that sometimes it’s a really good excuse for banging up taxes and public-sector job creation.
It’s not happening. It’s a secular issue but skepticism is heresy.
They talk the language of science, but it is really a post-God religion that rejects relativist materialism.
Its imperative is moral.
It looks to a society where some choices are obviously, and universally held to be, better than others.
A life where having what we want is not a right and nature puts constraints on the free play of desires.
To reinvent, in short, a life where there is good and bad, right and wrong.
As with all religions, whether the underlying narrative is true, has become beside the point.
ends
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The IPCC myth about high feedback CO2-AGW is based on fraud.
1. High CO2 ‘climate sensitivity’ was the logical inference when it was thought CO2 rose with T at the end of ice ages but when in 1997 that was disproved, insiders switched to calibrating models against modern warming via the fake ‘hockey stick’ and systematically lowering past temperatures.
Few realise it but there was also a search for missing ice age amplification – Hansen claims it is the difference between the albedo of wet and dry ice, an explanation lacking in credibility.
In 2007 it was shown that at the end of the last ice age, warming of Southern Ocean deeps started 2000 years before CO2 rose. The same biofeedback process explains recent Arctic warming now reversing. Contrary to Gore propaganda and the indoctrination of our children, CO2-AGW/GW plays no part in ending ice ages, is much smaller than claimed and the science justifying it is plain wrong.
2. Aarhenius’ ‘back radiation’ can do no thermodynamic work. Such mistakes happen in science but are usually corrected. Unfortunately, climate science prevents publication of contrary opinion, a major part of the fraud.
3. Cooling by polluted low level clouds supposed to hide (2) is only true for thin clouds: as they get thicker it switches to heating, another GW/AGW. Sagan got this physics wrong.
4. The claim of 33K present total GHG warming is wrong because it includes ‘lapse rate’ warming. It’s really ~10K, easily proved.
So, CO2 climate sensitivity is exaggerated by a factor of at least 6.7. When you correct the physics, extra CO2 probably slightly cools now there is IR band saturation. Hence no IPCC climate model can predict climate.
It’s time this new Lysenkoism was consigned to the dustbin of history. The previous attempt by international Marxism to create fake science, ‘accelerated evolution’, was in the 1980s.
Mydogsgotnonose
Well…. you are certainly echoing my thoughts on this matter. They need to be repeated loudly and often.
However…expect a shit-storm for your efforts.
Hearty thanks from the Savage household!
Jack Savage
It’s a bit rich for a BBC newsreader to spout “I don’t want the media to make up my mind up for me.” Where does Buerk get “… the issues beyond doubt and the steps to be taken beyond dispute” from ? Mr Buerk posits that there probably are answers to all his quibbles and if he researched properly he would find that is so. On the whole Buerk is ruminating on tedious canards.
One statement in particular indicates that Buerk’s polemic is biased towards misinforming the public “I would like to hear a clash of informed opinion about what would actually be better if it got warmer as well as worse.” The trouble with that is whilst it would get better for a small few , the aggregate effect on humanity would be negative. There is no informed opinion that disputes that ergo Mr Buerk’s desire to hear such a clash of opinions is on the face of it misleading.
Hengist McStone
Hallelujah,
Spot the irony in the religious exclamation, if you may.
At last someone speaking sense in public on how environmentalism has become the new religion which no-one may gainsay.
Hooray for Michael the new Messiah.
Steve Brown
A scientific but admittedly skeptic point of view here:..Do a search at… http://wattsupwiththat.com/
radiospu
Better late than never. Thanks for a rational comment. I have three degrees in sciences, two with relevance to climate science, but I am far short of forming an independent assessment of AGW. But I have the expertise to read and form judgements on the evidence. What do I have to go on?
On the one side there seems to be strong evidence (evidence that has not been effectively challenged) that the IPCC has been corrupted and that much of the evidence that it relies on is dodgy and often fraudulent. The models (and I have hands-on experience of modelling physical systems) and all, by the only valid criterion, useless. There have been countless attempts to undermine the peer review process. It is doubtful if it ever worked in climate science and it is certainly broken now. Finally, we have the mindless chattering of the likes of that latter-day Goebbels, Al Gore, and Brian Cox who used to be a scientist but is now infatuated with his TV image. They are aided and abetted of course by the BBC, which lost its reputation decades ago. All of these are driven by fantasy-level financial incentives.
On the other side, we have a few who produce authoritative work using open data and who make, at best, relatively modest rewards and suffer continuous abuse.
I know where my sympathies lie. I hope that the charlatans and fraudsters will get their deserts one day but I doubt it.
Steve
“The trouble with that is whilst it would get better for a small few , the aggregate effect on humanity would be negative.”
And of course this is informed opinion…
Neal Asher
Hengist McStone
I too ruminated on a tedious canard yesterday, I must have overcooked it.
However, your other comment regarding misinforming the public seems to me to reveal a fear that, given a true balanced opinion, most rational people currently in the “I don’t know what to think” category would tend to side with the ‘Climate Realist’ view once presented with all the facts.
Till now the realistic view has had no mainstream voice thanks to an establishment run MSM where the
Harrabins, Clovers, Leakes, Leans and Monbiots always have the last word, as given to them by the IPCC, WWF and Greenpeace.
Climategate e-mail 0927 from wwf to someone at UEA.
We can help you with the
database of journos of course – obvious
ones are Paul Brown, Nick Schoon, Charles
Clover, Fred Pearce, Geoffrey lean Jonathan
Leake etc., and Julian Rush or Andy Veitch
at Ch4 news
jazznick
Exactly so ! So what can we do about it ?
David Edmonds
Well, you’re getting some buzz over at WUWT, the Goliath of science blogs. M. Buerk, drop a line/comment to Anthony Watts there. I’m sure you’d be welcomed as a Guest Blogger.
Brian H