BBC’s Climate Change ‘Facts’ Are Fiction

by Harry Wilkinson

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.

SOURCE




Green Flop: Saudi Arabia Shelves $200 Billion Solar Project

Saudi Arabia has put on hold a $200 billion plan with SoftBank Group Corp. to build the world’s biggest solar-power-generation project, Saudi government officials said, in a complication for another eye-catching transformation project in the kingdom.

The stalled project marks a setback for a partnership between Saudi Arabia and SoftBank that has pursued ambitious ideas. Together, they have created a $100 billion fund for technology company investments that has resulted in a rush of new money flooding into startups.

The project would have turned the world’s most important oil producer into a giant in solar power, ultimately generating about 200 gigawatts of energy—more than three times what the country needs every day.

The plan was announced by SoftBank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in New York last March and was meant to be an extension of their partnership.

Now, officials and a Saudi government adviser said, no one is actively working on the project…

“Everyone is just hoping this whole idea would just die,” the Saudi energy official said.

SOURCE




Evidence Lacking for Major Human Role in Climate Change

By Ralph B. Alexander, Ph.D.

Conventional scientific wisdom holds that global warming and consequent changes in the climate are primarily our own doing. But what few people realize is that the actual scientific evidence for a substantial human contribution to climate change is flimsy.

It requires highly questionable computer climate models to make the connection between global warming and human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2).

No Proof Warming Is Human-Caused

The multiple lines of evidence which do exist are simply evidence that the world is warming, not proof that the warming comes predominantly from human activity.

The supposed proof relies entirely on computer models that attempt to simulate the Earth’s highly complex climate and include greenhouse gases as well as aerosols from both volcanic and man-made sources – but almost totally ignore natural variability.

Models Way Off The Mark

So it shouldn’t be surprising that the models have a dismal track record in predicting the future. Most spectacularly, the models failed to predict the recent pause or hiatus in global warming from the late 1990s to about 2014.

During this period, the warming rate dropped to only a third to a half of the rate measured from the early 1970s to 1998, while at the same time CO2 kept spewing into the atmosphere.

Out of 32 climate models, only a lone Russian model came anywhere close to the actual observations.

cmip5 models vs observations

Not only did the models overestimate the warming rate by two or three times, they wrongly predict a hot spot in the upper atmosphere that isn’t there, and are unable to accurately reproduce sea level rise.

Yet it’s these same failed models that underpin the whole case for catastrophic consequences of man-made climate change, a case embodied in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The international agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions – which 195 nations, together with many of the world’s scientific societies and national academies, have signed on to – is based not on empirical evidence, but on artificial computer models.

Only the models link climate change to human activity. The empirical evidence does not.

Correlation Is Not Causation

Proponents of human-caused global warming, including a majority of climate scientists, insist that the boost to global temperatures of about 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius) since 1850 comes almost exclusively from the steady increase in the atmospheric CO2 level.

They argue that elevated CO2 must be the cause of nearly all the warming because the sole major change in climate “forcing” over this period has been from CO2 produced by human activities – mainly the burning of fossil fuels as well as deforestation.

But correlation is not causation, as is well known from statistics or the public health field of epidemiology.

So believers in the narrative of catastrophic anthropogenic (man-made) climate change fall back on computer models to shore up their argument.

With the climate change narrative trumpeted by political entities such as the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and amplified by compliant media worldwide, predictions of computer climate models have acquired the status of quasi-religious edicts.

Warmists On The Wrong Side Of Science

Indeed, anyone disputing the conventional wisdom is labeled a “denier” by advocates of climate change orthodoxy, who claim that global warming skeptics are just as anti-science as those who believe vaccines cause autism.

The much-ballyhooed war on science typically lumps climate change skeptics together with creationists, anti-vaccinationists, and anti-GMO activists. But the climate warmists are the ones on the wrong side of science.

“Fear, Hyperbole, Heavy-Handed Tactics”

Like their counterparts in the debate over the safety of GMOs, warmists employ fear, hyperbole and heavy-handed political tactics in an attempt to shut down debate.

Yet skepticism about the human influence on global warming persists, and may even be growing among the general public.

In 2018, a Gallup poll in the U.S. found that 36% of Americans don’t believe that global warming is caused by human activity, while a UK survey showed that a staggering 64% of the British public feel the same way.

And the percentage of climate scientists who endorse the mainstream view of a strong human influence is nowhere near the widely believed 97%, although it’s probably above 50%.

Most scientists who are skeptics like me accept that global warming is real, but not that it’s entirely man-made or that it’s dangerous.

The observations alone aren’t evidence for a major human role. Such lack of regard for the importance of empirical evidence and misguided faith in the power of deficient computer climate models are abuses of science.

SOURCE  (See the original for links, graphics etc.)




Rooting Out Scientific Corruption

Dr. Brian Wansink recently resigned from his position as Columbia University professor, eating behavior researcher and director of the Cornell “food lab.” A faculty investigation found that he had misreported research data, failed to preserve data and results properly, and employed dubious statistical techniques.

A fellow faculty member accused him of “serious research misconduct: either outright fraud by people in the lab, or such monumental sloppiness that data are entirely disconnected from context.” Among other things, Wansink had used cherry-picked data and multiple statistical analyses to get results that confirmed his hypotheses.

His papers were published in peer-reviewed journals and used widely in designing eating and dieting programs, even though other researchers could not reproduce his results.

It’s about time someone exposed and rooted out this growing problem, and not just in the food arena.

Countless billions of dollars in state and federal taxpayer money, corporate (and thus consumer) funding and foundation grants have fueled research and padded salaries, with universities typically taking a 40% or so cut off the top, for “oversight and overhead.” Incentives and temptations abound.

Far too many researchers have engaged in similar practices for much too long. Far too many of their colleagues do sloppy, friendly or phony peer review. Far too many universities and other institutions have looked the other way. Far too often those involved are rewarded by fame and fortune. Far too many suspect results have been used to attack and sue corporations or drive costly public policies.

A good example is glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup weed killer and the world’s most widely used herbicide.

The Environmental Protection Agency, the European Food Safety Authority, and many other respected organizations worldwide have consistently reaffirmed that this chemical does not cause cancer.

One rogue agency says otherwise. The International Agency for Research on Cancer is top-heavy with anti-chemical activists, some who’ve had blatant conflicts of interest or engaged in highly questionable conduct.

IARC relies on antiquated methods that have examined over 1,000 substances – and found that only one does not cause cancer. It says even pickled vegetables and coffee are carcinogenic.

IARC makes no attempt to determine exposure levels that actually might pose cancer risks for humans in the real world and ignores studies that don’t support its agenda.

It has created enormous pressure on EU regulators to ban glyphosate, which would help organic farmers but decimate conventional farming.

It also helped the mass-tort lawsuit industry hit the jackpot when a San Francisco jury awarded a retired groundskeeper $289 million in compensatory and punitive damages – because he claims his non-Hodgkin lymphoma resulted from exposure to glyphosate. Thousands of similar lawsuits are now in the pipeline.

The potential impact on the chemicals industry and conventional farming worldwide is incalculable. But worse outrages involve research conducted to advance the “dangerous manmade climate change” thesis – for they are used to justify demands that we give up the fossil fuels that provide over 80% of America’s and the world’s energy – and replace them with expensive, unreliable pseudo-renewable alternatives.

In a positive development that may presage a Cornell style cleanup, after seven long years of stonewalling and appealing court decisions, the U of Arizona has finally agreed to give the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic the emails and other public, taxpayer-funded records it asked for in 2011.

The documents relate to the infamous “hockey stick” temperature graph, attempts to excise the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age from history, machinations over the preparation of an IPCC report, efforts to keep non-alarmist papers out of scientific journals, and actions similar to Wansink’s clever research tricks.

While the legal, scientific and public access issues were very similar in another FOIA case back in 2010, the court in that U of Virginia/Penn State case took a very different stance.

That court absurdly ruled that alarmist researcher Dr. Michael Mann could treat his data, codes, methodologies, and emails as his personal intellectual property– inaccessible to anyone outside Mann’s inner circle – even though his work was funded by taxpayers and was being used to support and justify the Obama-era carbon dioxide “endangerment finding” and war on fossil fuels, and thus affected the living standards of all Americans.

Scientific debates absolutely should be played out in the academic, scientific and public policy arena, instead of our courts, as some 800 academics argued in defending Mann’s position.

However, that cannot possibly happen if the scientists in question refuse to debate; if they hide their data, computer codes, algorithms, and methodologies; if they engage in questionable, secretive, unaccountable science.

We who pay for the research and will be victimized by sloppy, improper or fraudulent work have a clear, inalienable right to insist that research be honest and aboveboard.

That the scientists’ data, codes, methods, and work products be in the public domain, available for analysis and critique. That researchers engage in robust debate with fellow scientists and critics.

It’s akin to the fundamental right to cross-examine witnesses in a civil or criminal case, to reveal inconsistencies, assess credibility and determine the truth.

Scientists who violate these fundamental precepts should forfeit their access to future grants.

Instead, we now have a nearly $2-trillion-per-year renewable energy/climate crisis industry that zealously and jealously protects its turf and attacks anyone who dares to ask awkward questions

More HERE 




Australia refuses to be the fall guy for the "crisis" at the global climate fund

Australia will freeze its level of funding for a Green Climate Fund that stalled after giving millions of dollars to replace cooking stoves in Bangladesh and sponsoring “gender responsive” drinking water projects in Ethiopia.

The GCF was a critical part of the Paris Agreement but was suffering a “crisis of confidence” and unable to function.

The US has already pulled $US2 billion ($2.7bn) of its promised $US3bn contribution but Australia is under pressure to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars more. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Australia had given the fund $200 million between 2015 and 2018. And it would “consider possible further contributions” through the course of “replenishment negotiations”.

But Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said yesterday: “Australia will not be increasing our commitment.”

A paper issued by the World Resources Institute this week said Australia should be the sixth biggest contributor to the fund based on its economy, past greenhouse gas emissions and current emissions per capita. This would amount to about $400m in second-round funding.

Environment groups have said “replenishment” funding would be “a critical indicator to developing countries about whether developed countries are serious about holding up their part of the Paris Agreement bargain”. But former GCF board member Jacob Waslander has written a scathing critique of the fund’s operation. “Rather than a dynamic global centre for climate finance, the GCF board has been mired by ineffective decision-making in an atmosphere of distrust,” Mr Waslander said. “After five years of operation, the GCF — the world’s biggest multilateral climate fund — faces a crisis of confidence … Representative from developed and developing countries, the private sector and non-governmental organisations are deeply concerned about the effectiveness and efficiency of the fund’s governance, and particularly about how its board functions.”

The last board meeting ended in stalemate with the resignation of Australian chief executive Howard Bamsley. Mr Waslander said a key problem was the board worked on the basis of unanimity, so any board member could block any decision for any reason. As a result, funding for new projects had effectively stopped.

The GCF had so far approved 76 projects worth $US3.7bn ($5bn) to help developing countries in their low-emission development. About half of the money was in loans and half in grants, much of it dedicated to promoting renewable energy. Most projects were in Africa and Asia Pacific.

SOURCE 

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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.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

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