Boy, that didn't take long, did it? The warmist propaganda machine is now going into overdrive to try somehow to repair the damage of Climategate on the eve of the Copenhagen This article will be splashed (ho ho) all over tomorrow's Times newspaper with its IPCC lala land "warning" that sea levels are going to rise by a thousand feet in six months unless we all commit suicide tomorrow (actually, it's only 60m according to arch AGW loon, James Hansen but let's not split hairs here, right?). All over the world, search engines have been doctored and large sections of the MSM has done all it can to bury the biggest scientific scandal of the modern era. Now they're moving into the next phase - Operation: Scare the Shit Out of Everyone. Lo and behold, here's their first offering, complete with tame German professor and a peer reviewed analysis (peer reviewed using the CRU, "have you hidden the decline?" approach, naturally) revealing new, devastating results of - well what, exactly? Something that might happen if a whole bunch of other stuff happens, based on models that tell them what should be happening - but isn't. Top research. Stop press. Cue banner headline. It's a scoop!
Read it and weep, folks. (Oh, and then, of course, "think of the children!")
Sea levels will rise by twice as much as previously predicted as a result of global warming, an important international study has concluded.Well at least the authors of this report had the sense to use the suitably hedging conditional "would" instead of the usual, hysterical 'will' of AGW fanatics. (And if the sun exploded, we'd all get pretty warm very quickly, right?) Mind you, they had little choice on that one, as this comment on a Telegraph blog (well known climate change activist's, Will Heaven...erm) points out:The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) calculated that if temperatures continued to increase at the present rate, by 2100 the sea level would rise by up to 1.4 metres — twice that predicted two years ago.
Such a rise in sea levels would engulf island nations such as the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and Tuvalu in the Pacific, devastate coastal cities such as Calcutta and Dhaka and force London, New York and Shanghai to spend billions on flood defences.
Even if the average global temperature increases by only 2C — the target set for next week’s Copenhagen summit — sea levels could still rise by 50cm, double previous forecasts, according to the report.
SCAR, a partnership of 35 of the world’s leading climate research institutions, made the prediction in the report Antarctic Climate Change and Climate. It far exceeds the 0.59 metre rise by the end of the century quoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007. This was based on a “business as usual” approach by governments that allowed temperatures to rise by 4 degrees. It will underpin the negotiations in Copenhagen.
SCAR scientists said that the IPCC underestimated grossly how much the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets would contribute to total sea-level rises.
The satellite measurement of the arctic ice coverage for yesterday (28th Nov) was 10,362,813 sq kms. On the same day in 2006 it was 9,597,969 sq kms. That represents a growth of 8%.
Source: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
This Times article, with its now all-too familiar end-of-days, alarmist propaganda mixed in with suspiciously timed, dodgy science reports and interviews with the usual suspects from the IPCC (Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, is a former railway engineer for God's sake) merely serves further to demonstrate that while the blogosphere remains free (for now), the increasingly schitzoid MSM is basically in thrall to the prophets (yes, I agree, that should read "profits") of doom. In point of fact, the manner in which the report ends seems to prove my point (about the schitzoid nature of the legacy press).
Sceptics seized upon his figures as further evidence of the unreliability of climate change predictions.I suppose they would call that balance, but the use of the warmist term of abuse "sceptics," (euphemistic codespeak for the vicious slur "denier" and/or the debate-killing "crank"), instead of the usual (and balanced) "critics" suggests to me that at the very least - and this is a generous conclusion - post-Climategate they simply don't know how to frame this issue any more.“It’s 50cm, 60cm, 100cm — 60m if you ask James Hansen from Nasa,” said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation . “The predictions come in thick and fast, but we take them all with a pinch of salt. We look out of the window and it’s very cold, it doesn’t seem to be warming. We’re very concerned that 100-year policies are being made on the basis of these predictions”
They don't know, I don't (really) know - and neither does the IPCC or SCAR or the rest of the AGW industry.
But the difference is, one of us isn't being honest, and Climategate has shown us all who that is.
==Update==
Past my bedtime, but I've just seen this hilarious comment by somebody calling herself (I presume) "Auntie Mavis" under the Times scare story in question:
jim king wrote:You what? This uber-hoon really seems to believe that someone - or something, perhaps - dropped a trillion trillion tons of ice on top of the sea at the polar ice caps. Mind you, she's probably an A-level Physics teacher (though fairly new to the profession - and the subject - it would seem) given that she appears to know more about all powerful space aliens that like to drop huge lumps of ice on unsuspecting, mostly harmless, planets, than Archimedes' principle.
"1. Put a large ice cube in a glass.
2.fill it to the brim with water.
3.The ice cube will protrude above the surface.
4.Wait till the ice cube melts
5. In the doomsday theory the scare mongers would have you believe the protruding ice that has now melted will over flow.
6.It never will because ice displaces it's own volume.
7. When water freezes it expands.
8. So the reverse happen's when it melts
9. Simple school boy facts."
Now do it with the ice on top of a column of concrete with the water level up to the top. Watch the water flow over the top when the ice melts.
Very, very stupid. That's what we're up against folks.
It's even more scientificif you do it with a nice gin and tonic and ice
ReplyDeleteI think in fairness what "Auntie Mavis" actually meant was that there are also large sheets of ice on Antarctica itself (the concrete column) which would materially affect sea levels if they melted.
ReplyDeleteThe big question, and one that has yet to be satisfactorily answered to my mind, is whether the effect of the Greenland and Antarctic glaciers would lead to a net rise in sea levels given the concomitant melting of the ice caps in the sea already. This report doesn't really do that, although it's a start. For instance, observed minor falls in sea level over the last few years may be partly attributable to the melting of the northern ice caps while ice thickened in Antarctica. It might also have something to do with the modest decline in mean temperature from a high point in 1998. These two seem to assume that it's either/or - but they're inextricably linked.
And I completely agree that most of climate change's strongest supporters, who seem to get into a frenzy every time someone questions their data, need to learn to moderate their language. Perhaps they could learn for a start that in the natural sciences you have tenable hypotheses consistent with the observed data. The latter are facts, that former are not. That's one of the reasons why I got bored with physics and moved on to history.
Nice Mr D. Dunno if you've heard this (via Bishop Hill):
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nyy8q
One 'top-drawer' scientist (Thomas Crowley) stands up for another (Phil Jones). Devoid of internal logic or correspondence with known facts, it is.
Thanks for the comms.
ReplyDeleteHBW: Great comment.
Granted, land mass ice sheets in Antartica (and, to a lesser extent, Greenland) melting would cause significant sea level rises over centuries. But I'm really not convinced that's what "Auntie Mavis" was alluding to which is why I didn't mention it. I did consider mentioning it (but obviously I'd run out of 'gin and tonics' - what was all that about?) and thought to include in the post the fact to which I believe you are referring: the recent increase in ice density in West Antarctica (which is the land ice mass). East Antartica (sea ice with a depth of 2500 meters) has shown signs of break-up, but it is as yet insignificant relative to the vastness of the shelf. As I said, scientific facts are simply irrelevant now. All data is now routinely filtered through the pattern-making computer models of the ideologically motivated MMCC brigade and their allies.
I do hope others read your comment, by the way. It's better than my post.
BHS: Expect it only to get worse and worse (the propaganda that is, not the "climate change") as we approach Copenhagen.