WHAT IS THE USE OF JOHN KERRY?

Lord Monckton challenges secretary Kerry to debate on climate change (And has a lot of fun doing it)

Like profiteers of doom worldwide, John Kerry, described as a secretary of state, believes in the “global warming” bugaboo with every fiber of his bank account.

One of the strangest phenomena in politics is the uncritical alacrity and Damascene fervor with which the hive mind of the international left, believing the unbelievable, will find any pretext to argue passionately for the greatest transfer of wealth and power in human history from the poor to the rich, from the workers to the “workers” – to themselves.

Some years ago, John Kerry said he was prepared to debate anyone on climate change. Challenged on my behalf, he ran and ran. His favorite song: “Keep on runnin’.” For belief in the New Religion differs from belief in the True Religion in three respects.

First, the New Religion is not true. Secondly, its believers know it is not true – or, which is just as false, are reckless as to whether it is true or not. Thirdly, the Borg are almost always, almost everywhere, terrified to defend the New Religion against doubters like me.

Kerry has issued a whining press release to coincide with publication of the fifth and latest novel in the “Apocalypse” series by the U.N. Intergummintal Panel on Climate Change. He wails: “This is yet another wake-up call. Those who deny the science or choose excuses over action are playing with fire.”

The only noble work of literature that ever came out of a committee was the King James Version of the Bible. For proof that committees write lousy fiction, just try to read the climate panel’s five-volume “Apocalypse” trilogy: “The Sky Is Falling” (1990), “Apocalypse Soon” (1995), “Apocalypse Very Soon” (2001), “Apocalypse Any Day Now, We Mean It” (2007) and now “Apocalypse With Added 95 Percent Certainty, But We’re 0 Percent Certain Why It Hasn’t Gotten Around To Happening Just Yet” (2013).

Kerry moans, “Once again, the science grows clearer, the case grows more compelling, and the costs of inaction grow beyond anything that anyone with conscience or common sense should be willing to even contemplate.”

Nay, unverily. And try not to inelegantly split infinitives, John.

I mean, come off it: If the science of Catastrophology were that clear, why would it need 10,000 pages of turgid, inspissate, self-contradictory, self-serving waffle to justify it?

Einstein’s paper on relativity, “Zur Elektrodynamik Bewegter Körper,” was just 30 pages long, and that changed the world.

Remember what the men of ancient Athens said. Mega biblion, mega kakon: “The bigger the book, the badder.”
Besides, a reviewed paper by a talented researcher, Monckton of Brenchley, published just last month by the World Federation of Scientists, demonstrated that it was 10-100 times costlier to try to make global warming go away today than to let it happen at the predicted rate and pay the predicted cost of adapting to its predicted consequences the day after tomorrow.

Even if the predictions are right – and every major prediction of the climate panel and its useless models has been relentlessly wrong so far – it would still be orders of magnitude cheaper to do nothing.

Kerry says: “Boil down the latest report and here’s what you find: Climate change is real, it’s happening now, human beings are the cause of this transformation, and only action by human beings can save the world from its worst impacts.”

Well, of course “climate change is real.” It’s been happening for 4,567 million years (or 6,000 years if you follow the late Bishop Ussher’s delightfully dopey calculations based on counting the generations since Adam and multiplying by the number of days in the lunar month minus the number of days in the week and calling it years).

And we can no more stop sea level rising than King Canute could. He reminded his courtiers that if even the divinely anointed king could not rule the waves, not even a host of scientists could waive the rules of physics. “He that made the oceans,” said Canute, “alone hath the power to command them to rise and to fall. To Him, then, be all praise.”

Kerry whiffles on: “This isn’t a political document produced by politicians. It’s science.” No, it isn’t a scientific document produced by scientists. It’s politics.

The scientists, in the pre-final draft report, had admitted their bug-ridden computer programs that exaggerate global warming aren’t up to the job.

The politicians who decide the final wording took out that telling admission. They don’t care what the science says. Crisis is profitable. Just ask Al Gore’s bankers.

Kerry burbles: “Scientists … by profession are conservative because they must deal in what is observable, provable and reviewable by their peers.” No, they’re not. They’re alarmist because they deal in what is grantable, fundable and reviewable by their pals. Bigger crises mean fatter grants.

Kerry opines: “If ever there were an issue that demanded greater cooperation, partnership, and committed diplomacy, this is it.” OK, then, John. Let’s suppose you mean it.

If you really want cooperation from the fast-growing body of scientists and researchers who have seen no global warming or sea level rise to speak of for at least a decade and see no reason to expect much of either in future, then step up to the plate like a jock, not a wimp, and debate me on international TV.

Like you, I’m a layman, so the debate will be fair. Unlike me, you command all the resources of the U.S. government. You can even have an earpiece if you want, so your fellow racketeers in the organized-crime syndicate that is the U.N.’s climate panel can feed you the answers.

I’ll still win. And you know it. For you have the money, the power and the glory, but I have the truth. Which is why – like Al Gore, James Hansen and the host of other Capones of climatology who have profiteered so cruelly by stealing the pennies of the poor – you just won’t dare debate me.

If you were to try to pick up the gauntlet I’ve thrown down, you’d collapse in a heap. For you have no backbone. Sir, you are an inveterate invertebrate.

SOURCE

NOTE: The title of Einstein's paper above was slightly misspelled.  I have corrected it -- JR




Nir Shaviv: the IPCC AR5, first impressions

The author is an Israeli astrophysicist and cosmoclimatologist

The IPCC summary for policy makers is out, and as I started writing these lines so was the last draft of the main report. Of course, it will take a while to digest the 2200 pages of the full report (it has a lot of starch!). Until I do, here are my first impressions from having read the summary and having skimmed the full scientific report.

My main conclusion is that this report is to a large extent a rehash of the AR4 report. However, given the lack of any new evidence pointing to humans and the increasing discrepancy between the alarmist models and predictions, the IPCC authors are bluntly making more ridiculous claims as they attempt to fill in the gap between their models and reality.

One of the statements which wonderfully exemplifies the absurdity of the new report is this paragraph discussing the climate sensitivity in the summary for policy makers. They write:

“The equilibrium climate sensitivity quantifies the response of the climate system to constant radiative forcing on multi-century time scales. It is defined as the change in global mean surface temperature at equilibrium that is caused by a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C (high confidence), extremely unlikely less than 1°C (high confidence), and very unlikely greater than 6°C (medium confidence) 16. The lower temperature limit of the assessed likely range is thus less than the 2°C in the AR4, but the upper limit is the same. This assessment reflects improved understanding, the extended temperature record in the atmosphere and ocean, and new estimates of radiative forcing.”

Now, have you noticed something strange? According to the AR4 report, the "likely equilibrium range of sensitivity" was 2.0 to 4.5°C per CO2 doubling. According to the newer AR5 report, it is 1.5 to 4.5°C, i.e., the likely equilibrium sensitivity is now known less accurately. But they write: “This assessment reflects improved understanding”. How ridiculous can you be?

More seriously, let me put this in perspective with the most boring graph I have ever plotted in my life. Below is the likely range of climate sensitivity as a function of time. As you can see, with the exception of AR4 with its slightly smaller range mentioned above, the likely range of climate sensitivity did not change since the Charney report in 1979. In other words, after perhaps billions of dollars invested in climate research over more than three decades, our ability to answer the most important question in climate has not improved a single bit!



One reason for the lack of improved understanding could be incompetence of the people in the field. That is, all the billions of dollars invested in climate research were not or could not be used to answer the most important question in climate, one which will allow predicting the 21st century climate change. I doubt however that this is the real reason. Among the thousands working in climate research, surely there are at least a few who are competent, if not more.

I think the real reason why there is no improvement in the understanding of climate sensitivity is the following. If you have a theory which is correct, then as progressively more data comes in, the agreement becomes better. Sure, occasionally some tweaks have to be made, but overall there is an improved agreement.

However, if the basic premises of a theory are wrong, then there is no improved agreement as more data is collected. In fact, it is usually the opposite that takes place, the disagreement increases. In other words, the above behavior reflects the fact that the IPCC and alike are captives of a wrong conception.

This divergence between theory and data exactly describes the the situation over the past several years with the lack of temperature increase (e.g., as I described here some time ago). It is also the reason why the IPCC had to lower the lower bound. The discrepancy is large enough now that a climate sensitivity of 2°C is inconsistent with the observations.

However, under legitimate scientific behavior, the upper bound would have been decreased in parallel, but not in this case. This is because it would require abandoning the basic premise of a large sensitivity. Since the data requires a low climate sensitivity and since alarmism requires a large climate sensitivity, the "likely range" of climate sensitivity will remain large until the global warming scare will abate.

Incidentally, if one is not a captive of the high sensitivity idea, then things do converge, but they converge towards a climate sensitivity of about 1 to 1.5°C per CO2 doubling.

A second important aspect of the present report is that the IPCC is still doing its best to avoid the evidence that the sun has a large effect on climate. They of course will never admit this quantifiable effect because it would completely tear down the line of argumentation for a mostly manmade global warming of a very sensitive climate. More about it in a few days.

SOURCE




Some excellent realism from Switzerland

Swiss News Magazine calls IPCC: “Fortune Tellers, Not Scientists”

Swiss news magazine Weltwoche (World Week) print edition just published a stinging article about the now disgraced IPCC’s fifth assessment report Summary for Policymakers where it describes the refusal by scientists to acknowledge observations and their obstinate clinging to faulty models and doomsday scenarios.

The introductory heading of the Weltwoche reports reads:

"For a quarter of a century leading climate scientists have been warning of a dangerous global warming due to CO2 emissions. Now under Swiss leadership [Thomas Stocker] they publish a new report. It shows: The scientists were wrong. By Markus Schär.”

Weltwoche writes how IPCC lead scientist Thomas Stocker may have experienced an historic moment when he introduced the IPCC’s AR5 Summary for policymakers, but one he may not wish.

Crumbling consensus

Weltwoche writes that in the days leading up to the report’s release, a dispute prevailed among the delegates who were busy hammering out the final text. The Germans wanted no mention of the 15 years of no warming, the Belgians wanted to keep the year 1998 out of the statistics, the Hungarians advised to hold back facts in order “not to provide climate skeptics with ammunition“.

Weltwoche writes that Dutch delegates, however, insisted on including the natural impacts on climate change which refuted the claims of galloping global warming. One thing is sure, writes Weltwoche, the IPCC must come to terms with: “The consensus among the climate scientists that had been cemented over the last decades, is cracking – or is even crumbling completely.”

“Pitiful” model performance

To explain what is driving this crumbling consensus, Weltwoche looks at the history of global warming, reminding readers of the doomsday prognoses made in the past by experts like NASA’s James Hansen and by the IPCC years ago. For example in 1988 James Hansen “predicted that with an annual increase in CO2 emissions of 1.5%, the temperature would rise by 1.5°C by 2011. But in fact CO2 emissions rose 2.5% annually and the temperature ended only 0.3°C higher – even below the value that scientists had calculated if no CO2 had stopped being added beginning in the year 2000“.

Worse for the IPCC, British meteorologists recently forecasted a cooling ahead for the next few years, Weltwoche writes.

Weltwoche comments as follows on this miserable performance: "Anyone that far off is not a scientist, rather he’s a fortune teller – and one with a pitiful performance.”

IPCC devastated by observed data

Today, the IPCC’s latest report ends up contradicting all the earlier forecasts and warnings it made earlier. Weltwoche writes:

"In its new report, the IPCC refutes itself. … They [scientists] tried time and again to defend their theory using tweaked models and honed studies. It gladly made itself vulnerable to attack by making forecasts that it could not live to see. After 25 years many of the forecasts can indeed now be evaluated – the result for the IPCC is devastasting.“

IPCC abandons Mann’s flawed hockey stick

Weltwoche then explains the sorrowful story of Michael Mann’s hockey stick in depth and how it was shown to be flawed by a Canadian statistics expert and how the IPCC eventually abandoned it altogether in that they conceded that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were real after all. Weltwoche writes:

"The draft of the new IPCC report also admits that the same warm temperatures we have today also prevailed at the peak of the Medieval Warm Period and that people suffered later on during the ‘Little Ice Age’ – the climate Bible of 2001 with its hockey stick chart was obviously wrong.”

Lomborg: 20 trillion euros for 0.05°C

Weltwoche writes that the IPCC has (quietly) reduced CO2 climate sensitivity values, yet continues to insist that the world embark on a crash-course energy supply transformation. Too expensive, says Danish scientist Bjorn Lomborg. Weltwoche quotes Lomborg:

"But we also need to recognize that our current climate policy is too expensive. Every year the EU wants to spend 250 billion euros until the year 2100. With this 20 trillion euros, the temperature will drop by 0.05°C by 2100.”

But none of this impresses Stocker and the IPCC, who continue sounding the alarms louder than ever. Weltwoche concludes:

"The important thing is alarm, as Stocker continues to maintain what he told Weltwoche in April: ‘The problem is there, and it is one of the biggest ever for mankind, and we have the choice of how big it is going to be.’”

In the models, or in reality?

SOURCE




Politicians dictating the "facts"

Political manipulation of a scientific document – or pages upon pages of newly-discovered scientific errors? You decide



Last week, during a four-day-long, behind-closed-doors meeting, political operatives (diplomats, bureaucrats, and politicians from more than 100 UN countries) rewrote an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) document.

The re-written Summary for Policymakers is 36 pages long and purports to highlight the really important bits embedded within the first 14 chapters of the IPCC’s new report.

In my view, the fact that the summary was drafted by IPCC personnel and then re-written in secret by politically motivated third parties tells us everything we need to know. The IPCC isn’t an organization in which scientists are in the driver’s seat.

Five days ago, the IPCC released its new, improved summary. Two days ago, it made draft versions of the 14 chapters public.

One of the reasons these chapters are still in draft form is that changes now need to be made to them. Evidently, it wasn’t just the summary that was being messed with during that four-day meeting. In many cases the alterations were so substantial that the IPCC now says the text of nine of its 14 chapters needs to be re-visited.

It’s as though an English teacher started off by presenting a short story to her classroom. She makes a fuss about how famous the author is, and how many awards the story has won. She then invites her students to write a summary of the short story.

But this is a Communist country and the teacher mustn’t offend the leading Communist official. So when the son of that official produces a summary that diverges from the short story, the teacher announces that the short story will be changed “to ensure consistency.”

How many alterations will the IPCC be making? Ten pages worth – all carefully listed in a document you may examine for yourself. Entire paragraphs will be inserted, dates and numbers will be altered, italics will be added, and some material will simply disappear.

How can this level of political manipulation be taking place, right out in the open, in what we’re told is a scientific body?

Over at the BishopHill blog I shared some of these thoughts a few days ago. Richard Betts, who leads a division of the UK’s Met Office (the national, publicly-funded weather service), dismissed my concerns as “cynicism.” In his words:

"the list of corrections to the chapters is here, and it seems pretty clear that they do not constitute some sort of political re-writing of the chapters as you seem to be implying. For example, see the very first one, which is also repeated several times:

"Replace “0.89°C (0.69°C–1.08°C) over the period 1901- 2012″ with “0.85 [0.65 to 1.06] °C over 1880–2012″

You can see that this is slightly decreasing the estimated warming (from 0.89°C to 0.85°C) whilst at the same time increasing the time period over which it occurred (from 1901-2012 to 1880-2012) – so a smaller and less rapid warming.

Clearly a scientific correction, and one in the opposite direction to what you would expect under Donna’s narrative of science taking a backseat to politicians and bureaucrats."

For a moment, let’s accept Betts’ explanation. Let’s also admit that, as he points out, a number of the changes in the 10-page list are, indeed, duplicates or repeats. Where does his logic lead us?

It says that IPCC personnel – whom we’re told are the world’s top scientists – spent years writing their section of the IPCC’s new climate assessment (the Working Group 2 and Working Group 3 sections won’t be released until next year). Their work was, along the way, reviewed by third parties. It is supposed to be finished now. And yet, last week, 10 pages worth of new scientific errors were suddenly discovered.

In Chapter 2 alone, the 52 authors are collectively responsible for 18 instances of scientific mistakes that now need fixing. Their combined brainpower, plus the efforts of that chapter’s four review editors, were apparently insufficient to the task.

The authors of Chapter 5 similarly made 11 scientific mistakes. And the authors of Chapter 11 made 21 scientific errors.

You, dear reader, must decide for yourself whose point-of-view is more persuasive – mine or Betts’. He is an IPCC insider keen to defend that organization. I am an outsider who can’t believe that smart people can be so blind to the implications of some of their own actions.

But here’s the bottom line: my argument (that a scientific document is being crassly manipulated) and Betts argument (that IPCC authors made 10 pages worth of scientific mistakes), are equally damning. The IPCC doesn’t look good in either case

SOURCE





More Climate Junk Launched into the Biosphere: a concerned citizen spots it, but not in time to prevent widespread dispersal



The headline is bad enough, since it is not true, but the first words of the article are even worse: 'The oceans are more acidic now than they have been for at least 300m years, due to carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, and a mass extinction of key species may be almost inevitable as a result ...'

These are words to delight the activist.  What campaigner for hearts, minds, and wallets on the climate bandwagon could fail to be moved by them.  Another scare!  Yippee!!  Let's get it out there!!!

But, but, ... said a concerned citizen, noting the nonsense, it is just not true.  Ruth Dixon wrote it up on her blog, contacted the journalist and newspaper involved, and a few days later both the headline and the first sentence were changed to make them less misleading.

So that's good.  That was relatively quick.  Similar nonsense over ice disappearing on Kilimanjoro, glaciers disappearing in the Himalayas, polar bears disappearing in the Arctic, snow being a thing of the past in the UK, New York City streets soon to be under sea level, and such like all attributed to 'burning fossil fuels' took months or years to get corrected.  Even now, who would bet against finding some or all of them being found in materials intended for use in schools?

So the question is, how long before we see this latest one there as well?  It is well-suited for scaremongering after all: acid is scary, the entire ocean is dramatic, the threat of 'mass extinctions' ideal for getting the attention of the young.  Ruth Dixon has noted that the original spin by the journalist has been twittered round the world, as well as being studied by Guardian readers.  It is interesting to note some of the gushing tweets she has captured were from scientists, including this one who describes himself as 'a deepsea biologist, passionate about the oceans'.

As noted by Dixon, the Guardian did eventually edit both the headline and the offending first sentence to reflect the reality that the source of all this was referring to the rate of acidification.  Or, more accurately, to the rate at which the oceans are becoming slightly less alkaline.  Whether that rate is really remarkable is another matter, but one thing seems agreed at the source linked to by Dixon (loc cit): the oceans have been appreciably less alkaline for much of the past 300 million years:



And, as illustrated in a well-known graphic reproduced here, CO2 levels were typically over 1,000ppm for much of that time:



Whatever, we now have another piece of climate junk in circulation.  Keep an eye out for it coming your way.  If you see it being aimed at children or teachers, please let me know and I'll add the details here.

SOURCE




Father of chaos theory explains why it is impossible to predict weather & climate beyond 3 weeks

An article published today in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society may be the last interview with the father of chaos theory, MIT professor Dr. Edward Lorenz, and has essential implications for climate modelling.

In the 2007 interview, Dr. Lorenz confirms that chaos theory proves that weather and climate cannot be predicted beyond the very short term [about 3 weeks], and that even with today's state-of-the-art observing systems and models, weather [or climate] still cannot be predicted even 2 weeks in advance.

Dr. Lorenz notes that although other fields that deal with complex, non-linear systems have accepted the implications of chaos theory, some meteorologists and climatologists remain reluctant to accept the implications of chaos theory, namely that long-term climate forecasting is impossible.

According to chaos theory, all the current "initial' conditions throughout the atmosphere must be known precisely to predict what the atmosphere will be doing in the distant future. In addition, one must know all the current conditions throughout the oceans as well, since the oceans control the atmosphere. “In view of the inevitable inaccuracy and incompleteness of weather observations, precise very-long-range forecasting would seem to be nonexistent,” Lorenz concluded. So even if the molecules in the air all interacted nonrandomly, in a totally cause-and-effect (deterministic) manner, you still couldn’t predict with certainty what they would do or what the weather would be."

Chaos theory also debunks the claim of some climatologists that although models cannot predict short-term climate variations such as the current 20 year "pause," they can still be used for long-term projections. Chaos theory instead proves that uncertainty of projections increases exponentially with time, and therefore, long-term climate model projections such as throughout the IPCC AR5 report are in fact impossible to rely upon.

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

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