A Cool Look At Global Warming

Following “climategate”, times are hard for the University of East Anglia (UEA) and their Climate Research Unit (CRU).

But should they be “spinning” quite so hard? After all as the old wisdom goes: “when in a hole, stop digging!“.

In the Sunday Telegraph today Robert Mendick reports that a “source close to CRU” is saying:

“One option is a mole was placed inside the university to leak emails to deliberately discredit the work being done at the CRU” (my emphasis).

A mole “was placed“?

This brings to mind John Le Carre’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy“, so wonderfully dramatised on the box all those years ago. Ian Richardson played Bill Hayden, the “sleeper” right at the heart of British secret intelligence – the “circus”.

Does CRU have its own “Bill Hayden”? How long has the mole been a sleeper? How was the mole recruited? By the KGB at Cambridge? Or maybe by ExxonMobil?

Or should we conclude that UEA are trying just a little bit too hard to distract from their scientific embarassment by conjuring up such sinister scenarios?

I was very sad to hear of Michael Crichton’s death this week. Of course he was famous for his books and films (The Andromeda Strain, Rising Sun , State of Fear, Jurassic Park and more) – but to my mind he had great insight as a thinker.

Here’s something from a talk at the California Institute of Technology on Jan. 17, 2003 that I believe is spot on:

“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period. . . .

I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. . . .“

“Consensus is the business of politics“  – that’s exactly it. If the  scientific revolution counted for anything it was surely the idea that our theories and ideas should be tested against Nature and Reason – not by the whim or bias of some arbitrary social group. Before that revolution it was the Church that exercised social control over ideas. The post-modern advocates of a consensus epistemology are simply replacing that discredited system with a form of control based on an entrenched academia (which in turn can be “managed” by the ruling political class on whom the academics are dependent for funds).

Let’s hope Science can survive!

“Snow fell as the House of Commons debated Global Warming yesterday – the first October fall in the metropolis since 1922. The Mother of Parliaments was discussing the Mother of All Bills for the last time, in a marathon six hour session. ” More on this

How does the UK Met Office’s forecast compare?

“25 September 2008
The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.“

So now of course we have extraordinary cold weather in October (triggering Government cold weather payments) and floods in Devon!

I have had a long break from posting. To be frank – with so much global cooling going on and with alarmists in retreat I have been suffering from a lack of motivation.

However I have been woken up to do a post following something I read at Anthony Watts’ excellent blog on the subject of Kids Against Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Kids everywhere seem to be brainwashed these days into the depressing lack of original thinking and political correctness of their teachers. Where’s the rebellion of youth?

For example – consider this that I read recently:

“A GROUP of Scarborough students learned all about their carbon footprint at a recent roadshow in Scarborough.

The Carbon Footprint Roadshow, run by BP, called at George Pindar Community Sports College in Moor Lane, Eastfield.

Its aim was to raise awareness about issues surrounding global warming and the students took part in role play exercises, planning and group work.

The workshop was part of the students’ theme in science of making learning real and they also took part in the BP young persons’ survey about attitudes towards global warming.

A spokeswoman for Pindar College said: “The sessions went very well and the presenters were really impressed by how concerned the students were about global warming.”

She added that the organisers were impressed by the fact that the students got more questions right than older participants from a recent workshop.“

Yuck! And run by BP for heaven’s sake! For some reason it brings to my mind a line from a Lewis Carroll poem:

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws

How refreshing then to find a 14 year old from down under taking on the AGW orthodoxy.

So good on yer webmistress Eloise and may your cloud of Google referring links grow ever larger and more authoritative by the day!

“All four agencies that track Earth’s temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.” Phil Chapman.

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer and the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut writing in the Australian.  He continues alarmingly…

“The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027. By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining“

Which brings to mind Robert Frost’s wonderful poem:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.