BBC Ignores Widely Publicized IPCC Problems
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | September 26, 2018
The BBC recently issued a document telling its journalists how to approach climate stories. That document treats the findings of a UN entity known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as gospel.
The “best science on the issue,” it says, is expressed by the IPCC, “which drew on the expertise of a huge number of the world’s top scientists.”
Cripes. Out here in the real world, it’s 2018. But the last decade may as well not have happened as far as the BBC is concerned. In the bubble in which BBC bureaucrats reside it’s still 2007, the year Al Gore and the IPCC were each awarded half of the Nobel Peace Prize – not for their scientific prowess, but for their role in raising the alarm about climate change.
The world was more innocent back then. The InterAcademy Council (IAC) – an international collection of science entities – wouldn’t strike a committee to examine the IPCC’s internal workings until two years later.
The release of the IAC’s August 2010 report should have been a game changer. After all, the report identified “significant shortcomings in each major step of IPCC’s assessment process” (see the first paragraph of Chapter 2).
The New Scientist magazine considered the report so devastating it called for the resignation of the IPCC’s chairman in an article titled Time for Rajendra Pachauri to go.
The Financial Times similarly ran an editorial that urged Mr. Pachauri “to move on.”
Geoffrey Lean, then Britain’s longest-serving environmental correspondent, said the report revealed the IPCC to be an “amateurish, ramshackle operation.”
Louise Gray, environment correspondent for Telegraph, began her account with these words: “In a damning report out earlier this week…”
Over at the Daily Mail, writer Fiona Macrae called it a “scathing report.”
Environmental studies professor Roger Pielke Jr. thought the report “remarkably hard hitting” – and was quoted by the Associated Press saying the IPCC might be redeemed via this flavour of “tough love.”
A headline in the London Times declared: This discredited science body must be purged. Two others – in India and America – used the word “slams” when characterizing the IAC’s conclusions.
Precious few improvements have occurred since then. Being a UN bureaucracy, the IPCC is essentially a law unto itself, an entrenched culture with no meaningful oversight mechanisms.
But the BBC wouldn’t know that. Because rather than performing due diligence to determine how much progress has been made since 2010, the BBC chooses to behave as though the IAC report doesn’t exist. The IPCC’s fall from grace simply never happened.
BBC’s climate change ‘facts’ are fiction
By Harry Wilkinson – The Conservative Woman – September 22, 2018
In order to avoid giving ‘false balance’ to the climate alarmists at the BBC, I thought it would be a good idea to fact-check their new internal guidance on climate change. This is their totalitarian memorandum aimed at stamping out free scientific discourse, on the basis that certain facts are established beyond dispute.
The problem is that these aren’t, and the BBC is guilty of repeatedly failing to describe accurately the nuances of climate science and the degree to which certain claims are disputed.
The crucial paragraph reads:
‘Most climate scientists regard a rise of 2 degrees C as the point when global warming could become irreversible and the effects dangerous. At current rates, we are on track for a rise of more than 3-4 degrees C by the end of the century.’
There are so many things wrong with this short statement.
That global warming can be somehow ‘irreversible’ is pure propaganda; the climate has always been changing and it always will. The briefing later describes the idea of catastrophic tipping points as a ‘common misconception’, so they have comically failed their own test right at the start.
A temperature rise of more than two degrees is not inherently dangerous either. The majority of economic impact studies put the cost of climate change by the end of the century at between 1.5% and 3% of world GDP, but these studies often make the inaccurate assumption that either no or little adaptation will take place.
In contrast, even the IPCC has admitted (p.15) that the cost of reducing emissions (‘mitigation’) to meet the 2oC target may be up to 4% of world GDP in 2030, 6% in 2050 and 11% in 2100.
These numbers do not incorporate the benefits of reducing our emissions, which are primarily the avoided costs of climate change. But given that a certain amount of warming is already ‘baked in’, it looks almost certain that this ‘mitigation’ will actually be far more expensive than not doing anything. If warming actually turns out to have a positive effect, the gamble will have failed even more spectacularly.
The IPCC has openly admitted that its cost forecasts come with incredibly optimistic assumptions that immediate mitigation takes place in all countries, that there is a single global carbon price, and that there are ‘no additional limitations on technology relative to the models’ default technology assumptions’. With no carbon capture and storage (CCS), they predict the total mitigation cost rises by a staggering 138%. The bad news is that CCS is currently failing to deliver, and few now expect it to play a significant role in reducing emissions.
Given the record of economic forecasts, all these predictions should be taken with a pinch of salt, but on the available evidence it appears we are sleepwalking into spending trillions of pounds to achieve only a negligible reduction in global temperatures.
The father of the two-degree target, veteran climate alarmist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, has admitted the number is entirely fabricated: ‘Two degrees is not a magical limit; it’s clearly a political goal’. He nonetheless celebrates its cynical effectiveness at motivating international political action.
Other prominent climate scientists, such as Hans von Storch, have been much more critical of this approach. Storch reflects on how scientists have become political sermonisers in a way which damages science as a whole: ‘Unfortunately, some of my colleagues behave like pastors . . . it’s certainly no coincidence that all the mistakes that became public always tended in the direction of exaggeration and alarmism.’
The statement that we are on track for ‘more than 3-4 degrees’ is an even more blatant distortion of the scientific evidence. Earlier this year, Peter Cox of the University of Exeter announced the results of his latest study which ruled out higher levels of warming. He concluded that ‘climate sensitivity’ would be in the narrower range of 2.2-3.4oC, thus ruling out warming of 4 or 5 degrees by 2100. His voice adds to a growing consensus that climate sensitivity will be lower than previously estimated. Does the BBC now consider him a climate denier too?
Quite surreally, the document also describes the statement that ‘climate change has happened before’ as a ‘common misconception’. How much longer before the BBC renames itself The Ministry of Truth?
Estimating the current and future impacts of climate change is a complex and contested enterprise, but the BBC would rather you didn’t know. ‘The science is settled’ they say, so move on. This climate memorandum is nothing less than propaganda presented as fact by controller Fran. There is a critical debate to be had, so inquisitive people had better look elsewhere.
The BBC’s Naive View of the UN’s Climate Machine
Big Picture News | September 24, 2018
SPOTLIGHT: Bureaucracies put their trust in other bureaucracies.
BIG PICTURE: A few weeks back, Joanne Nova perfectly captured the position of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) regarding the scandalous UN entity known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
A recent internal document gives BBC journalists advice about how to report on climate matters. In Nova’s words, it declares that the “IPCC is God, can not be wrong.”
The document’s exact words:
What’s the BBC’s position?
- Man-made climate change exists: If the science proves it we should report it. The BBC accepts that the best science on the issue is the IPCC’s position, set out above. [italics added]
Well, here’s the problem. The IPCC does not do science. The IPCC is a bureaucracy whose purpose is to write reports.
The primary function of those reports is to pave the way for UN climate treaties. A set of facts need to be agreed-upon by all parties in advance, so that negotiators can start from the same page.
IPCC reports get written by government-appointed scientists, according to predetermined guidelines. Portions of IPCC reports then get re-written by politicians, bureaucrats, and diplomats (in effect, this is an unofficial round of negotiating, in advance of the official negotiations that take place later).
International treaties are political instruments. The IPCC exists to make climate treaties possible. The ‘science’ involved has therefore been selected and massaged to serve a political purpose.
Let’s ditch the naiveté. How likely is it that experts appointed by governments that have spent billions fighting climate change, would conclude that man-made climate change doesn’t exist?
TOP TAKEAWAY: Journalists are part of a system of checks and balances that help keep governments and large organizations honest. The BBC is a huge bureaucracy. The geniuses running it have declared another bureaucracy – the UN’s IPCC – a font of scientific truth. How pathetic.
LINKS:
- Jo Nova, BBC tells journalists that IPCC is God, can not be wrong –”No debate allowed”
- Exclusive: BBC issues internal guidance on how to report climate change
- my previous commentary: Where’s the Science at the IPCC?
- The Sneaky, Not-So-Secret Purpose of the IPCC
- 3 Things Scientists Need to Know About the IPCC
- If IPCC Meetings Were Televised
- US Scientific Integrity Rules Repudiate the UN Climate Process
- Cogs in the Climate Machine
- The IPCC as UN Funding Mechanism
IPCC to release “October surprise” on climate change
Watts Up With That? | September 24, 2018
With all the crazy talk about “Russian meddling” in the 2016 Presidential election, one wonders if the same sort of crazy talk might be applied to the release of a special climate report just weeks before the U.S. mid-term elections. Given the timing, you can be sure that whatever is in the report will be front page news and used by the left as a political tool. Here is a press release from the IPCC, h/t to Dr. Willie Soon
Save the Date: IPCC Special Report Global Warming of 1.5ºC
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will meet in Incheon, Republic of Korea, on 1-5 October 2018, to consider the Special Report Global Warming of 1.5ºC. Subject to approval, the Summary for Policymakers will be released on Monday 8 October with a live-streamed press conference.
The press conference, addressed by the IPCC Chair and Co-Chairs from the three IPCC Working Groups, will be open to registered media, and take place at 10:00 local time (KST), 03:00 CEST, 02:00 BST, 01:00 GMT and 21:00 (Sunday 7 October) EDT.
Registered media will also be able to access the Summary for Policymakers and press release under embargo, once they are available. They will also be able to attend the opening session of the meeting at 10:00-11:00 on Monday 1 October. All other sessions of the IPCC meeting are closed to the public and to media.
The opening session of the meeting will include statements by the Chair of the IPCC, senior officials the IPCC’s two parent bodies World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) and of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and senior officials of the Republic of Korea.
The IPCC meetings and the press conference will take place at Songdo Convensia in Incheon.
Arrangements for media registration, submitting questions remotely, booking interviews, and broadcast facilities will be communicated in the coming weeks.
The report, whose full name is Global Warming of 1.5°C, an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty, is being prepared under the scientific leadership of all three IPCC Working Groups.
Formally, the meeting will start with the 48th Session of the IPCC. Next a joint session of the three Working Groups chaired by their Co-Chairs will consider the Summary for Policymakers line by line for approval. Then the 48th Session of the IPCC will resume to accept the Summary for Policymakers and overall report.
The IPCC decided to prepare the report, in response to an invitation from the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties at its 21st meeting in December 2015 when the Paris Agreement was signed.
Alabama debunks the Times’ story about our warming world
Fabius Maximus website | September 19, 2018
Summary: The NY Times gives a story with bold numbers, confidently stated. Too bad their fact-checkers did not notice that their numbers are grossly misleading. Propaganda pretending to be science. This does not help, even if well-intended. The State Climatologist of Alabama tells the real story.
The Alabama Climate Report, August 2018.
By John R. Christy, Alabama State Climatologist.
Also Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center
at the U of AL in Huntsville. Links added.
Meteorological summer (June, July and August) is over. It is time to check how the summer temperatures compare with other years. For a research project a few years ago we developed a statewide summer temperature index for four 100-mile diameter regions centered on the major cities of the state – Mobile, Montgomery, Birmingham and Huntsville – going back to 1883. This summer will go down in that database and in NOAA’s official records as being slightly cooler than average.
Somewhat related to this, a reader sent me a link to a New York Times interactive website that claims to provide the number of days above 90°F each year for cities across the country: “How Much Hotter Is Your Hometown Than When You Were Born?” The results are produced for the Times by Climate Impact Lab (some might call it an environmental pressure group).
Since I build numerous datasets of this type, I took a look. The website asks you for the town and year in which you were born, then provides a time series purportedly showing the number of 90°F days per year since your birth and how that has increased.
Though a native of California, I have lived in Huntsville more years than any other place, so I put in my birth year and Huntsville as my hometown. Immediately I became suspicious when their dataset started only recently in 1960 (and a few years after my birth). …
For Huntsville and Montgomery, here are their results. Quite scary. It appears that the number of 90°F days has risen to their highest levels ever. It says that in 1960 Huntsville had 45 days above 90°F, but by 2017 it was 57 days and rising.
Huntsville, Alabama.
Montgomery, Alabama.
Then, to make matters even scarier, they use climate model projections to 2090 to tell me that in 2040, when I’m 80, there will be 73 such hot days in Huntsville (as shown below). Yikes!
Huntsville’s future per RCP4.5!
Editor’s note – From the NYT website.
“For each year, the count of days at or above 90 degrees reflects a 21-year rolling average. Temperature observations for your hometown are averaged over an area of approximately 625 km² (240 square miles), and may not match single weather-station records.
“The time series is based on historical data for 1960-2000. The 2001-2020 period relies on a combination of historical data and future projections. After 2020, the data uses a mixed climate model that captures a broad range of extreme temperature responses. The “likely” future range reflects outcomes with 66 percent probability of occurrence in the RCP 4.5 scenario.”
The rest of the story
Before you sell your house and move to Canada, let’s take a look at the real story. Having built many climate datasets of Alabama, some starting as early as 1850, I knew the Times story was designed to create alarm and promote the claim that humans who use carbon-based energy (gasoline, natural gas, coal) to help them live better lives are making our summers ever more miserable. Be aware reader, this webtool is not designed to provide accurate information.
First of all, climate data for Alabama began in the 19th century, not 1960. In 2016 Dr. Richard McNider (Alabama’s former State Climatologist) and I published a carefully constructed time series of summer temperatures for the state starting from 1883. This used numerous station records, including some that the federal government had not archived into its databases (which are the most common source for outfits like the Climate Impacts Lab.)
“Time Series Construction of Summer Surface Temperatures for Alabama, 1883–2014, and Comparisons with Tropospheric Temperature and Climate Model Simulations” in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, March 2016.
I’ve updated that work to include summer temperatures through 2018. The result is below. Not only are summer daytime temperatures not rising, they have actually fallen over the last 136 years. After looking at the graph, why do you suppose the Climate Impacts Lab decided to start their charts in 1960?
We went a step further in that paper and demonstrated that climate models failed completely to replicate the downward temperature trend in Alabama over the past 120 years: 76 different models with a 100% failure rate. Would you trust these same models to tell you about the future as the Times does? Why did they not check the models for validity?
Now, what about the number of “hot” (or in Alabama we would say “typical”) 90°F days? For Alabama and the nation, I’ve calculated the average value per station each year since 1895. The results below speak for themselves (there is no increase of days hotter than 90°F) and expose the misinformation provided through the Times.
Providing accurate information on Alabama’s climate is what we do in our office. In fact, using real data, I can’t even come close to reproducing the images that the Climate Impacts Lab did which show 2010’s as having the most 90°F days in Alabama. I’m guessing they are using some theoretical output rather than sticking with observations. …I’ll check and follow-up as I can, but something is fishy.
This is a great state in which people can enjoy life and in which businesses can operate. Our climate resources are one of the reasons we are doing so well in recruitment. Occasionally though the time comes when I must address claims made by those whose intention is not to inform but to promote false alarm. This usually happens when an environmental pressure group generates a press release whose dramatic statements are published by a willing media (without any fact-checking). This is one of those times, and I’m sure it will not be the last.
Dr. John R. Christy is the Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Since November 2000 he has been Alabama’s State Climatologist. See his bio at the U of AL website (from which this bio was taken).
In 1989 Dr. Roy W. Spencer (then a NASA scientist, now a Principle Research Scientist at UAH) and Christy developed a global temperature data set from microwave data observed from satellites beginning in 1979. For this achievement, the Spencer-Christy team was awarded NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1991. In 1996, they received a Special Award by the American Meteorological Society “for developing a global, precise record of earth’s temperature from operational polar-orbiting satellites, fundamentally advancing our ability to monitor climate.” In January 2002 Christy was inducted as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.
Dr. Christy has served as a Contributor (1992, 1994, 1996 and 2007) and Lead Author (2001) for the U.N. reports by the IPCC in which the satellite temperatures were included as a high-quality data set for studying global climate change. He has served on five National Research Council panels or committees, has performed research funded by NASA, NOAA, DOE, DOT and the State of Alabama, and has testified 18 times for congressional committees.
His papers have been published in many journals, including Science, Nature, Journal of Climate, and The Journal of Geophysical Research. See the list here (with links).
A Test of the Tropical 200-300 mb Warming Rate in Climate Models
By Ross McKitrick | Climate Etc. | September 17, 2018
I sat down to write a description of my new paper with John Christy, but when I looked up a reference via Google Scholar something odd cropped up that requires a brief digression.
Google Scholar insists on providing a list of “recommended” articles whenever I sign on to it. Most turn out to be unpublished or non-peer reviewed discussion papers. But at least they are typically current, so I was surprised to see the top rank given to “Consistency of Modelled and Observed Temperature Trends in the Tropical Troposphere,” a decade-old paper by Santer et al. Google was, however, referring to its reappearance as a chapter in a 2018 book called Climate Modelling: Philosophical and Conceptual Issues edited by Elizabeth Lloyd and Eric Winsberg, two US-based philosophers. Lloyd specifically describes herself as “a philosopher of climate science and evolutionary biology, as well as a scientist studying women’s sexuality” so readers should not expect specialized expertise in climate model evaluation, nor do the book’s editors exhibit any. Yet Google’s algorithm flagged it for me as the best thing out there and positioned two of its chapters as top leads in its “recommended” list.
Much of the first part of the book is an extended attack on a 2007 paper by David Douglass, John Christy, Benjamin Pearson and Fred Singer on the model/observational mismatch in the tropical troposphere. The editors add a diatribe against John Christy in particular for supposedly being impervious to empirical evidence, using flawed statistical methods and refusing to accept the validity of climate model representations of the warming of the tropical troposphere.
By way of contrast, and as an exemplar of research probity, they reproduce the decade-old Santer et al. paper and rely entirely on it for their case. If they are aware of any subsequent literature (which I doubt) they don’t mention it. They fail to mention:
- Santer bitterly fought releasing his data
- Despite having data up to 2007 he truncated his sample at 1999
- If he had used the same methodology on the full data set he’d have reached the opposite conclusion, supporting Douglass et al. rather than supposedly refuting them
- Steve McIntyre and I submitted a comment to the journal showing this. It was rejected, in part because the referee considered Santer’s statistical method invalid and didn’t want it perpetuated through further discussion
- We re-cast the article as a more detailed discussion of trend comparison methodology and published it in 2010 in Atmospheric Science Letters. We confirmed, among other things, that based on modern econometric testing methods the gap between models and observations in the tropical troposphere is statistically significant.
Ofgem exploited national security law to silence us, whistleblowers claim
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | September 17, 2018
From the Guardian :
Britain’s energy regulator has been fighting to keep secret the claims of two whistleblowers who independently raised concerns about potentially serious irregularities in projects worth billions of pounds, the Guardian can reveal.
The two men say Ofgem threatened them with an obscure but sweeping gagging clause that can lead to criminal prosecutions and possible jail terms for those who defy it.
MPs and the whistleblowing charity Protect fear Ofgem is abusing its position and exploiting a law that was intended to protect UK national security – not a regulator from potential embarrassment.
The Labour MP Peter Kyle said: “Whistleblowers save lives and protect our economy from harm; they should be protected by law, not have it used against them.”
One of the whistleblowers told the Guardian he was “continually threatened … for trying to tell the truth. For doing my job and uncovering an issue, Ofgem made my life hell.”
He said the regulator had attempted to “scare me witless with threats of imprisonment” and he felt “utterly ashamed” of Ofgem’s behaviour.
Ofgem said it encouraged staff to report suspected wrongdoing and took their concerns seriously.
Both men worked for Ofgem in entirely different areas of the business and were regarded as qualified experts in their respected fields.
One was Greg Pytel, an economist with oversight of the rollout of the £10.9bn smart meter programme, which is due to be completed in 2020.
Smart meters are electronic devices for homes and businesses that measure the use of electricity and gas. They are designed to make billing easier and to help energy companies manage the supply of electricity more efficiently.
The second whistleblower, who has asked to remain anonymous, worked on the renewable heat incentive (RHI), which offers financial rewards to promote the use of new technologies such as green boilers.
The scheme, which started in 2011, has been controversial – and could eventually cost taxpayers £23bn. Both projects are key to the government’s stated aim of making the UK a low-carbon economy.
The two whistleblowers do not know each other and have not been involved in each other’s cases. They say they are only linked by the reaction of Ofgem to their claims.
They found themselves in similar positions after being tasked with scrutinising elements of the two major projects they were working on between 2014 and 2017. Both raised concerns with their managers.
Instead of welcoming their input and investigating their concerns, the men allege they were bullied, treated unfairly and sidelined to such an extent they felt compelled to bring their grievances to an employment tribunal.
The RHI whistleblower claimed he was “continually ignored or threatened.” In both instances, the men say they were told they would not be allowed to reveal to the tribunal, or anyone else, the concerns they had. They say Ofgem warned them that the details were protected by Section 105 of the Utilities Act 2000.
This prohibits the disclosure of certain types of evidence relevant to the energy sector – and it is so restrictive that those who ignore it can be fined or jailed for up to two years.
At an early hearing of Pytel’s case, the tribunal ruled Ofgem was required to disclose his documents about public procurement arrangements for the smart meter programme, citing the Human Rights Act. It said he had the right to freedom of expression without interference from a public authority. But Ofgem has against appealed the decision.
Peter Daly at Bindmans, the legal firm that is acting for Pytel, said: “Ofgem’s position appears to be that anyone who disclosed or reported the content of his whistleblowing would be themselves committing a criminal offence.
“They [Ofgem] are appealing an employment tribunal order to provide disclosure in the proceedings because they say to do so would be a criminal offence. Ofgem’s appeal therefore indicates that in Ofgem’s view this prohibition extends to Ofgem themselves.”
Daly says if Ofgem wins this legal battle, it would “have a corrosive and asphyxiating effect on the rights of whistleblowers in the energy sector and would create a binding precedent.”
A second hearing of the case will take place in October.
The second whistleblower has described the alleged reaction of his managers when faced with the concerns he raised. “Specifically I was told that if I told the truth, my career with Ofgem would be finished.”
Despite the threats, he said, he briefed the National Audit Office – a move that infuriated Ofgem, he claimed.
He said a senior manager “screamed and shouted” at him, and he was then warned his disclosures were a breach of section 105 of the Utilities Act 2000.
The whistleblower says he left Ofgem last year after being “threatened with imprisonment if I shared information about the wrongdoings that I had witnessed”. He has described Ofgem as being “dishonestly secretive”.
Kyle, a member of the business, energy and industrial strategy select committee, said: “Ofgem do have many commercial secrets that are vital to the wellbeing of our nations’ infrastructure, but the power they have to gag whistleblowers is an extreme one and should be used in only extreme circumstances.
“I’m now extremely concerned about the potential abuse of these powers. Parliament might need to look at who has oversight and scrutiny of them and see if the law needs updating.”
Protect, formerly Public Concern at Work, has been helping both of the Ofgem whistleblowers, and has intervened in one of the ongoing legal cases.
The body’s chief executive, Francesca West, said: “The whole of the UK energy market – that’s more than 600,000 workers – are currently being held to ransom over Section 105 of the Utilities Act, and threatened with a prison sentence if they speak up over wrongdoing. It is utterly shameful.
“Our society needs whistleblowers to speak up, to stop harm. But we also need organisations to be honest, open and operate legally.”
Ofgem said it had only had to consider the use of section 105 once in the last five years.
“In carrying out our duties as the energy regulator, Ofgem handles large amount of information from consumers and businesses which is often both personal in nature and commercially sensitive.
“With the exception of a few prescribed circumstances, section 105 of the Utilities Act 2000 prohibits the disclosure of the information we receive. Section 105 is intended to ensure that consumers and businesses can share their information without fear that it may be subsequently disclosed. Ofgem takes our obligations under law very seriously, including the restrictions in section 105.
“Ofgem adheres to its whistleblowing policy which encourages staff to report suspected wrongdoing as soon as possible, in the knowledge that their concerns will be taken seriously and investigated.”
Curiously the Guardian gives no hint of what the two whistleblowers wanted to tell us.
It does not take a genius to work out the whole smart meter programme has been highly flawed from the outset, and an obscene waste of billions of pounds.
As for the RHI, many more billions are being wasted, often on environmentally damaging projects, and again for the same reasons of reducing CO2 emissions.
The fact that the Guardian has been wholeheartedly behind both schemes might give a clue as to why they are reluctant to tell the whole story.
Guns and Butter Banned and Removed from KPFA Radio
Guns and Butter | August 16, 2018
Dear Guns and Butter Supporters and Listeners,
Guns and Butter has been taken off the KPFA airwaves by the General Manager of the station.
I received on Wednesday, August 8th, before Guns and Butter would have aired on KPFA, the following email from the General Manager:
Bonnie,
KPFA will cease broadcasting “Guns and Butter” effective immediately.
We’ve received an avalanche of negative calls and emails from listeners about your uncritically airing of views by a holocaust denier, climate denial and casting the Parkland mass shooting survivors as crisis actors. As steward of our airways, we can’t defend this content to our listeners.
Sincerely,
Quincy McCoy Kevin Cartwright
General Manager Program Director
This was followed by removal of the entire KPFA broadcast archives of Guns and Butter, down the memory hole.
KPFA defines itself as “Free Speech Radio” and this reaction is a form of censorship. There was no discussion of these claims, nor any provision for due process or community involvement before these actions were taken.
Background
On July 24th, after registering unique premiums I had developed for the two-week KPFA Summer Fund Drive, I received an email from the pledge room informing me that Guns and Butter was pre-empted for the two-week fund drive. The show had never been pre-empted during fund drives, no reason was given, nor any prior notice.
On July 18th I received one other message from the station – the General Manager forwarded to me two email complaints from listeners, the day Guns and Butter aired The Impact of Zionist Influence in the U.S., a presentation by Alan Sabrosky as part of a panel, Zionism – Deconstructing the Power Paradigm, from an online conference. The GM wrote that he agreed with the criticism, that there was “nothing in the mission that agrees or allows unbalanced issue shows like this especially about a topic as sensitive as this.”
Response to Claims
“Holocaust Denial” Alan Sabrosky is a Jewish American war veteran and former Army War College Director at the Strategic Studies Institute. He did not claim that there was no persecution of Jewish people in fascist Germany. The focus of his talk was on present and future perils, specifically war with Iran. Airing his brief comments on WWII is apparently what has angered some people. There could be an equivalent number of people who appreciated those comments but did not choose to send an email about them.
“Climate Denial” (Whatever that means) Programming on Guns and Butter has covered climate disruption, climate extremes, etc. It has not flat out supported the theory that global warming is the future trend because there are other scientific phenomenon and influences on the climate that are being studied such as sun cycles, space weather and the weakening of the earth’s magnetosphere, among other factors, that should be considered.
“Crisis Actors” No one on the show claimed that Parkland student shooting survivors were crisis actors. What was pointed out was that it was suspicious that the student activist whose political narrative was picked up by the media was not even at the school during the shooting, but showed up right afterward.
About Guns and Butter
Guns and Butter is an educational program that provides a platform for opinions and analyses not heard in the mainstream media. The program is not necessarily about what I think or believe, nor does it constitute an endorsement of every thing said by a guest, but an opportunity for thought and discussion by listeners interested in differing points of view. In a time of extreme polarity in our country, open sharing of ideas is where we need to be.
Guns and Butter spearheaded deep analysis of the seminal event of the 21st Century – the crimes of September 11th that no other program on KPFA would deal with. I also produced many hours of original economic and financial programming with Dr. Michael Hudson, Dr. Michel Chossudovsky, Dr. Webster Tarpley, to name a few. You wouldn’t realize it now, but there wasn’t any other financial/economic programming on the station at the time. The geopolitical coverage on Guns and Butter has also been superb. The show has produced outstanding programming on a wide variety of complex and difficult subjects.
Guns and Butter was created by me and a fellow volunteer reporter in the KPFA Newsroom in 2001. It was approved for broadcast by a democratic vote of the KPFA Program Council that included community members. The program is fully edited and mixed for broadcast, and is a more than full-time stressful job to produce. It has aired for 17 years and has raised multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars for the station, which reflects very strong listener support. I have never received any support from the station.
An unprecedented attack on the 1st Amendment right of free speech is taking place generally. Alternative media on the Internet is being removed, not just from social media platforms, but websites themselves have come under denial of service attack. Youtube has for some time been eliminating channels. I have just learned that Word Press is taking down websites. Computer algorithms are clamping down on search engines for alternative news and has adversely affected many popular sites, including Global Research.
It seems that differing viewpoints are no longer allowed on KPFA’s airwaves and that listeners’ feelings are purportedly being protected by station management when it is information, facts and data that should be given the highest precedence by management, not opinions. It is always uncomfortable hearing something that one finds offensive or that threatens to break one out of one’s bubble, but it is an individual’s responsibility not the station’s to take care of one’s own feelings. And rather than management deciding what listeners should or should not hear because of managements’ own personal biases or pressure from special interest groups, listeners’ ability to think for themselves and make up their own minds should be respected and not be subject to censorship of ideas and unknown research from either the Right or the Left, especially when it comes to KPFA which should be guided by the Pacifica mission that includes the following:
To establish a Foundation organized and operated exclusively for educational purposes. ……… In radio broadcasting operations to engage in any activity that shall contribute to a lasting understanding between nations and between the individuals of all nations, races, creeds and colors; to gather and disseminate information on the causes of conflict between any and all of such groups; and through any and all means compatible with the purposes of this corporation to promote the study of political and economic problems and of the causes of religious, philosophical and racial antagonisms.
Guns and Butter is broadcast on WBAI in New York City every Wednesday at 9AM and is carried on many Pacifica Affiliates and will continue to be archived here on the Guns and Butter website.
We need your financial help to sustain our programming, most especially during this extremely difficult time of alternative media censorship, and we thank you for your support. Thank you to everyone who has signed up for monthly sustainable contributions, and to those of you who have made one-time donations. We cannot express enough our gratitude. As always, your donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. Guns and Butter is a project of Inquiring Systems, a registered 501(c)(3) that has been providing non-profit status to socially responsible organizations since 1978.
How Do You Tell If The Earth’s Climate System “Is Warming”?
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | August 9, 2018
The earth’s climate system “is warming.” True or false? The answer is that there is no definitive answer. And if someone tells you there is, then that person doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.
A more precise answer to the question is that whether the earth’s climate system “is warming” or “is cooling” entirely depends on who gets to pick the start date for the analysis. If you are the one who gets to pick the start date, then you can make it so that the system is either warming or cooling, whichever you would like for your purpose of the moment.
But of course, there are many people out there today with a lot invested in the proposition that the climate system “is warming.” That proposition is a key tenet of global warming alarmism. To “prove” the point that the system “is warming,” advocates use the simple trick of picking a start point to their liking, making for a presentation that appears to support their position. Have you been fooled by this simple trick? The advocates leave it up to you to figure out that if you picked a different start point, you could just as easily make an equally convincing presentation showing that the climate system “is cooling.” A lot of seemingly intelligent people can’t figure that out, and get taken in by the scam.
I raise this point today because it appears that, as part of the campaign to suppress disfavored political speech, Google has begun within the past few days adding a legend at the bottom of YouTube videos that express politically incorrect views in the field of climate science. For example, here is the legend that they have added to a video made for Prager University by eminent MIT atmospheric physicist and climate skeptic Richard Lindzen:
“Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.”
The quote comes from the first two sentences of this Wikipedia entry with the title “Global warming.” Well, Wikipedia says it, so I guess it must be true!
According to this post at BuzzFeed on August 7, others who have been subject to having the same legend affixed to their work include Tony Heller of the Deplorable Climate Science Blog, Mark Morano of Climate Depot, and the Heartland Institute. (So far, nothing comparable has happened to the Manhattan Contrarian; but then, I don’t make YouTube videos.)
So let’s investigate the question of whether the earth’s “climate system” is or is not warming. You could, for example, look at the chart presented by Wikipedia in that entry. Here it is:
That looks rather dramatic. On the other hand, the whole vertical scale of the chart is only about 1.5 deg C; and they picked 1880 as their start date. (The slope here is also greatly accentuated by some very large and questionable “adjustments” that have made earlier years cooler and more recent years warmer. You can read my eighteen part series “The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time” for much more detail. But those details are not critical for understanding the current issue.)
Does your skeptical mind possibly think, when they use that phrase “century scale,” is that just a bias-free description of the issue at hand, or is it instead a hand-wave to provide a fake justification for picking a preferred start date? Why do we need to go back 138 years when we are considering a question phrased in the present tense — whether the climate “is” warming? Wouldn’t the present tense normally be used to cover a much shorter period, like a year or two or three at most? So you ask, what has the climate system been doing during that time? For the answer, how about looking for temperature data to the far more accurate UAH satellite-based series which provides monthly data points going back to 1979. Here is the latest chart from that source:
This time, you get to pick the start date. To cover the last few years, how about picking early 2016? After all, these last couple of years should be a much better indicator of whether the climate “is” warming or cooling than the entire last 138 years. Really, what do temperatures more than 100 years ago, or even 30 or 40 years ago, have to do with the question of whether the earth’s climate “is” warming? So we look at the UAH chart, and we find our answer: since early 2016 temperatures have fallen by more than 0.5 deg C. Thus, once we get to pick our preferred start time, it is obvious that the climate system “is cooling.”
Or, you can pick a different start date to your liking. How about 1998? That will give you an entire 20 year run. It’s hard to say that the verb “is” should cover a period of more than 20 years. On the UAH series you can see that temperatures have also fallen about 0.4 deg C since early 1998. Again, even on this substantially longer scale, the earth “is cooling.” (Note, however, that there is a significant difference between the Wikipedia chart and the UAH satellite series as to what has happened since 1998. On the Wikipedia chart the latest reading (2017?) is up about 0.3 deg C from 1998; while on the UAH series, the latest reading (July 2018) is down about 0.4 deg C from the then-records set in 1998. That’s those “adjustments” in the surface temperature record that I was talking about. I would say that there is no credible position that the heavily adjusted surface temperature record that Wikipedia relies on should be used for this purpose over the far more accurate and un-tampered UAH satellite record.)
But how about if we decide that there is something to this “century-scale” thing? Let’s agree that we’re going to go back many, many decades to determine if the earth “is warming.” But if we’re going to do that, where do we stop? If you want, you can go back a hundred million years; or even a billion. And if you follow this subject a little, you probably know that the 1700s and 1800s are a very suspect era to start a series like this, because those centuries are a known cold period sometimes referred to as the “Little Ice Age.” Picking a date in the “Little Ice Age” as the start point to prove warming is what’s called “cheating.” Let’s pick something more fair. How about going back a nice round millennium? Was that time warmer or cooler than now?
OK, they didn’t have networks of thermometers set up around the globe in the 11th century, let alone the highly accurate satellites that we have today. But scores of scientists have done hundreds of studies based on many sorts of “proxies” to determine at least whether it was warmer or cooler at that time than today. It turns out that the evidence is rather overwhelming that it was warmer. Actually, this is what is known as the “Medieval Warm Period.” But picking a date in that period as your start date for deciding whether the earth “is warming” is no more fair or unfair than picking a date in the “Little Ice Age.”
Here is a compilation of dozens of studies reaching the conclusion that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the present: “More than 700 scientists from 400 institutions in 40 countries have contributed peer-reviewed papers providing evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was real, global, & warmer than the present.” Examples:
- “Paper finds Medieval Warm Period in Arctic was much warmer than the present.”
- “Medieval Warming Exceeds Modern Warming, Per New Research Using 120 Proxies.”
- “Earth was warmer in Roman and Medieval Times say German researchers.”
There are literally dozens more, if you follow the links. The conclusion is inescapable: on a centuries-scale basis, the earth’s climate system “is cooling.”
And by the way, if you want to keep going back farther and farther, you can keep finding time periods that were warmer than the present. Examples: the Roman Warm Period, from around 250 BC to 450 AD; and the Holocene Climate Optimum, about 5000 to 3000 BC.
So here’s the real answer to the question of whether the earth’s ciimate system “is warming”:
- If your start date is June 2018, it “is warming.”
- If your start date is January 2016, it “is cooling.”
- If your start date is January 1998, it “is cooling.”
- If your start date is 1880, it “is warming.”
- If your start date is the year 1000, it “is cooling.”
- If your start date is the Dark Ages, it “is warming.”
- If your start date is Roman times, it “is cooling.”
In short, the question is completely meaningless.
It’s hard to believe that the supposed geniuses at Google could be taken in by a scam so obvious and so transparent. But that’s the world we live in.
Bjorn Lomborg: ‘Stop these silly, undocumented claims of ever-increasing fire’ Claims ‘based on anecdotes, not data’ – Reality is Global & U.S. fires declining
By Bjørn Lomborg · August 6 2018
Could we please stop with the misleading fire stories?
The Economist cover story, like so many other stories these last weeks, claim that forest fires are exceptional and record-breaking: “EARTH is smoldering. From Seattle to Siberia this summer, flames have consumed swathes of the northern hemisphere”
This is based on anecdotes, not data.
As I’ve shown in previous days, the US burnt area was much higher in the early part of last century, and the EU burnt area has declined by half over the past 36 years.
So: No, the US is not smoldering more – it is smoldering much less than it used to in the first part of the 20th century.
And no, the EU is not smoldering more – it is smoldering much less over the past 36 years.
Let’s finally look at the global perspective. While many of these fire scare stories are based on news from the US and the EU, the Economist claim was explicitly global.
Yet, the data does not support the argument that things are burning more and more.
The graph shows the estimated area burnt globally per year from 1900-2010. And it shows a steady decline.
It is from the article “Spatial and temporal patterns of global burned area in response to anthropogenic and environmental factors: Reconstructing global fire history for the 20th and early 21st centuries” One important point is to recognize that there is absolutely not enough data to do this only based on reported burning.
This is one of the reasons I started off with the US (where we have solid (if likely under-reported) data from 1926) and the EU. But clearly, the evidence for the global trend is unmistakable.
We see a similar pattern from the 2018 Nature article “Reduction in global area burned and wildfire emissions since 1930s enhances carbon uptake by land” which (as the title suggests, finds a strong decline in area burnt since 1930 (figure 2).
We also see declining area burnt from 1900-2000 from the article “Human impacts on 20th century fire dynamics and implications for global carbon and water trajectories”, figure 4b.
In a very recommendable (and freely available) overview article “Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world” they clearly write that people (like the journalist at the Economist ) who believe there is more fire now, that is worse and have higher impact, are likely wrong:
“Many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses. However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends. Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago.”
Beyond better fire prevention an important reason might be that more people and higher population densities perhaps surprisingly means *less* fire. The paper “Impact of human population density on fire frequency at the global scale” shows that “at the global scale, the impact of increasing population density is mainly to reduce fire frequency.”
So: Stop these silly, undocumented claims of ever-increasing fire, please.
Sources:
Graph from “Spatial and temporal patterns of global burned area in response to anthropogenic and environmental factors: Reconstructing global fire history for the 20th and early 21st centuries” https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/…/10.1…/2013JG002532.
“Reduction in global area burned and wildfire emissions since 1930s enhances carbon uptake by land” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03838-0
“Human impacts on 20th century fire dynamics and implications for global carbon and water trajectories” https://www.sciencedirect.com/…/artic…/pii/S0921818117303910
“Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world” http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/cont…/…/1696/20150345 (not embargoed)
“Impact of human population density on fire frequency at the global scale.” https://www.biogeosciences.net/11/1085/2014/
US fire data: https://www.facebook.com/…/a.2217582089…/10157044699208968/… and additional data set here: https://www.facebook.com/bjornlomb…/posts/10157044718363968…
EU fire data: https://www.facebook.com/…/a.2217582089…/10157047962983968/…
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The great ADHD swindle
By Daniel Ken | TCW Defending Freedom | May 20, 2023
Over more than two decades in the classroom I’ve taught thousands of children and teenagers: some were lovely and lots were hard-working. On the other hand, quite a number were disruptive and argumentative, and a number were violently opposed to learning. But I don’t think I’ve taught more than a handful of kids who could be properly described as having the symptoms of ADHD. And that handful could just as easily have had something else wrong with them. Because here’s the thing: despite the fact that the best part of a million children are medicated for the condition, ADHD doesn’t exist.
There’s no definitive medical test for it, experts can’t agree on what it actually means, and most of the symptoms disappear if the child in question has lots of exercise, good diet and, crucially, a set of clear behavioural boundaries, preferably set early in childhood and, for the boys at least, enforced by a stable adult male living at home. … continue
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