When I saw the headline ” IPCC takes legal action against Met“, I couldn’t imagine what could have happened for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to start taking legal action against the UK Meteorological Office. Had the IPCC finally found out that the Met Office knew that statistically the 20th century warming could not be distinguished from natural variation?
It turns out the IPCC is the UK Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Met is the the Metropolitan Police. Two points. First it continues to show the IPCC story flopped because the other IPCC is more newsworthy. Second if I am starting to believe this whole thing could blow up and have to read headlines like this to check, what must it be like for all those people who cut a few corners because they thought the end justified the means?
They must be getting seriously worried.
I think it’s finally dawning on them all how a) unexciting and slow (if any) warming would be, b) how hard and anti progress cutting CO2 is and c) ‘what do you mean we have to pay for it?’
I doubt many politicians read the IPCC reports or even the SPM, just lapped up the News at 10 version. Just stick up a few windmills, that coincidentally makes somebody rich, go to a few conferences to show off how caring you are and then back to Blighty where you’ll be loved and feted by the pathetically grateful public. FAIL.
After writing I had another check of the latest news on “IPCC”. I think about 2 or 3 to 1 for the police complaints commission. Where people are still commenting, it is true there are still a few sycophantic pro comments, but there is a growing momentum in the anti-stories.
This was supposed to be the “finale” … the great revival of interest. Instead it is a flop. This will make the science reports very interesting because the journalists will have to report something that most of them seem to have lost interest in.
So, the big question will be how do the journalists add some interest/controversy to what is otherwise a boring story? I certainly can’t see their editors allowing them just to lap up the BS and print it without criticism.
I think everyone thought the evdence would just get stronger. I don’t think they deliberately tried to con the public with things like Mann’s Hockey Stick or the Himalayas claim, I think they thought they’d genuinely got hold of shocking facts. It never occurred to them that the most tasty facts weren’t facts at all. So from easily being able to point to proof of worstening condtions they’re now wrong on almost all of them. Even the Arctic ice is letting them down, albeit after a record breaking 2012. Effectively they are 95% sure of even less than the 90% they were sure of last time.
The next exciting story is proving there was a conspiracy to con the public. They’ll want heads to roll. Neither attitude is the right one.
I imagine they just assumed the facts were very bad … and when they happened to find very bad things they assumed these must be the facts they were expecting.
Much like the two blind dates that each agree to wear a red rose … when one sees the wrong one, there is no reason to believe it is not what they were expecting.
Then when they realise they were wrong … they don’t tell a lie, they just “omit” to mention to anyone that they were wrong.
Iwould disagree. IF tthe public actually rises up over AGW hype, (which I doubt, will ever happen), heads will be called for (figuratively speaking) and they should be taken (figuratively speaking).
This was never a black and white problem. It’s neither 100 % true nor a total con. In any backlash you can guarantee the wrong people would end up being punished and the real trouble makers will walk away claiming they were as conned as anyone else.
A problem is that so much of the Alarmist groundwork has already been laid, so even if public interest dies the policies in place will still roll on. The public need to start finding the counter-position interesting before the policies will be revoked. The fuss about energy prices currently running in the UK is a good step, but a couple of mild winters could see everyone lose interest again. Then we would be left with the current status quo.