Scottish Sceptic

When the Scottish parliament was set up, the powers of the old Scottish Office were simply transferred to the Scottish parliament which one exception: renewable energy. This should have been a massive benefit to Scotland. Because with 8% of all Scottish electricity already coming from Hydro, not only would there be no need to charge Scottish consumers anything to match our target until 2008**, but it would mean we could effectively sell our excess Hydro back to the English, Welsh, NI, and so Scottish consumers should in theory have CHEAPER FUEL as a result devolving this policy. Continue reading →

I was reading an excellent article by Paul Homewood on Biomass (Biomass Emits Double The CO2 Of Gas), when I noticed something very odd in a reply he had from DECC:

We do not routinely estimate the emissions of biogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) from combustion of wood pellets when calculating the national emissions total. In reporting emissions the UK follows the requirements of IPCC guidelines on International Greenhouse Gas reporting. In order to avoid double counting of emissions and removals, the reporting convention is that the CO2 contained within biological materials, such as wood pellets, which are to be burnt for energy purposes, such as electricity generation, is accounted for by the harvesting country. This emission is reported by countries included under the forest management sector.

Did you spot it? They don’t emissions from Biofuels – instead they only count the amount of CO2 “saved” in the harvesting country.
So, let’s use a simple example to illustrate. We have two forests. One story CO2 last century the other story CO2 millions of years before. In each 1tonne of CO2 equivalent is stored in the wood. In one it is known as “coal”, in the other “wood”. They both contain the same amount of CO2.
But when Carbon in the form of “wood” is burnt, it’s emissions are not counted, whereas when is “coal” they are. However apparently the CO2 locked up temporarily in the wood is counted.
So here are the equations:

Net CO2 from Coal = CO2 released – CO2 stored
Net CO2 from Coal = 0

Net CO2 from wood = CO2 released – CO2 stored
Net CO2 from wood = 0

So (ignoring processing costs), neither coal nor wood actually cause more CO2 than they consume. But what about how much CO2 is released today? Now we are told we cannot include the CO2 stored in the past in the equation so:-

Net present CO2 from Coal = CO2 released – CO2 stored
Net present CO2 from Coal = CO2 released

Net present CO2 from wood = CO2 released – CO2 stored
Net present CO2 from wood  = 0

So, the difference between coal and wood is that all the 1tonne of CO2 from coal is counted and none of that from wood. But this is not how the IPCC and DECC appear to count it. Instead this is what they do:

Net present CO2 from Coal = CO2 released

Net present CO2 from wood = CO2 released – CO2 stored
Net present CO2 from wood = – CO2 stored

Now the difference between coal and wood is twice the total CO2 in the fuel. If e.g. we take a typical example of wood being shipped from America. In the UK (ignoring all the additional CO2 as described in Paul Homeward’s expose) we release the same amount of CO2 from coal and wood. BUT WE ONLY SEEM TO COUNT  CO2 IF IT COMES FROM COAL.
That is the height of corruption. Even if CO2 had been important (and it is not) then ignoring CO2 from one fuel is bound to lead to stupid policies which artificially favour one type of fuel purely because it is “politically correct” and not because burning it is of any use to humanity.
The IPCC and DECC really are a bunch of ignorant gullible clowns.

International Panel of Climate Clowns present their latest report.

“We can say with confidence that we are heading toward another ice-age.”

I listened to a similar documentary when at school.
When recently green groups pushing doomsday warming started denying that this global cooling scare ever happened, I tried to find the original UK documentary without success.
But thanks to Steve Goddard I’ve finally found this broadcast in 1977. It never occurred to me there would be an American version narrated by Spock.

RIP

It is very easy to criticise the obvious failures of many broadcasters and newspapers to accurately and therefore honestly report the climate debate. But what would we sceptics say if someone genuinely came to us and wanted to know how the debate should be accurately reported in an impartial way?
Let’s create an entirely fictional organisation I shall call the SBC (Scottish Broadcasting Company). This is a public broadcasting company which is attempting to be impartial. It is therefore filled with public-sector journalists, of whom very few are scientists and none have any specialism on climate or energy.
Traditionally “science” was seen by the SBC as those ideas and facts originating from the group of people it called “scientists”. And with almost no other communication channels to challenge this view except other non-scientist journalists and a few scientific journals, the authority of “scientists” to be the spokespeople for “science” was never realistically challenged.
And as such “science” was largely synonymous with the views of the self-governing association of public-sector university academics (albeit with a much smaller & less vocal number of private-sector scientists). Continue reading →

This is a test post to test if twitter is working.
It does appear to be working.
This now means that my twitter account will now have links to all articles!

I have never, seen such a torrent of articles so negative to the Global Warming scam, not even at the time of Climategate. The attacks on Pielke and Willie Soon have completely backfired and with Pachauri clearly disgraced and gone, Hansen long since forgotten, Black of the BBC a long distant memory and Mann about to see his career go up in smoke, there hasn’t been a better time to be a climate sceptic.
And I personally believe it all comes down to one Man Senator Inhofe. When I heard he was going to chair the Environment and Public Works Committee I knew we finally had some big guns lined up on our side. And slowly but surely they are hitting their marks.
For a start, if you are some idiotic celebrity who wants to fluff a few words of global warming “science” in the hope that it will make you look smart – we sceptics now have our own celebrity who actually knows what he’s talking about to put them in their place.
Next, if you are some government employee fabricating temperature records who used to be immune from public scrutiny. Now tremble at the prospect of being called before Inhofe to account for your misconduct.
And if you are some nasty immoral person like Pachauri who pushed their insane religion on us – if you claim to know what the climate will do in 100 years but clearly are incompetent to predict anything substantial about the climate from bogus predictions of rising temperature to lack of snow – best get ready for gardening leave.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkx68UdcPA0

With Inhofe Chairing the Environment committee – the big guns are firing and the doomsday warming scam is going up in flames.

It seems that The Smugblog must have been reading my articles because they seem to have tried to follow the conclusions I presented that alarmists are persuaded by ad hominen attacks. However, the work is so appallingly bad as an attack piece that I thought I should highlight this because those paying the numb skulls know they aren’t getting much for their money.
The poster I refer to his this.
It is in essence a replication of a similar poster by the Heartland Institute. However, when I went first to the Smugblogs poster my immediate instinct was that they must have got the links mixed up. Eventually I did find the tell tale marks showing the immoral hatred of the typical alarmist.
So, here are a few of the problems in no particular order:

• Even an idiot would know that you remove all suggestions of credibility. So why on earth do they highlight their credentials by listing their PhDs. On the positive side, I note there are no titles like “profs”, but what would it have taken to have just used the first and last name?
• The title is a dog’s dinner of how not to do it. They specifically refer to the Heartland Institutes “experts”. Thus informing anyone who wanted to know the “other side” where to find it and where there is a body of expertise. They reproduce opponents message top of the page “global warming is not a crisis”. And they fail to provide any evidence anywhere on the poster to counter the Heartland statement that is is not a crisis. Therefore the only information available is the Heartland message.
• But worst of all, as far as I can see in each description they reproduce the evidence that these people are indeed credible experts. They even give a potted summary of many of the best arguments against global warming being a “crisis”. For example taking “Habibukki Abdussamatov, Dr Sci”: “Mars is also warming” – so clearly if Mars is warming, this could explain our warming.
• They fail to marginalise those involved. So rather than suggested this is just an isolated group, they instead publicise that this is a global group, mainly from scientific but in general quite diverse backgrounds. In other words, suggesting that experts from a whole range of areas and nations have think global warming “is not a crisis”.
• Each and every description appears to have been written to bolster the credibility of the person. So J.Scott Armstrong, PhD. “Does work on forecasting and holds the opinion that experts are no better at forecasting than unaided college students”. First it highlights the forecasts have failed so ensuring the reader knows this argument as well, then it shows he is a modest person who the public would admire. And finally it fits in with what most of the public know about the weather forecasts.

Yes there are a few comments that amongst the dog’s dinner do have a good go (but not very good) at undermining the people being portrayed, but overwhelmingly this is one of the crappiest bits of marketing I’ve ever seen. The effect is just to demonstrate that the Heartland Institute have a panel of experts of whom many do publish on climate. And the rest are clearly experts in their own fields.

They’ve shot themselves in the foot.
(and what a waste of money for their financial backers!)

Having done so much to demonstrate the credibility of the Heartland panel, they then do a very good job of listing all the many good arguments supporting their view from the warming on Mars to the lack of correlation of CO2 and tempreature. So that the very few instances where anyone might see the statements as negative are easily dismissed because it’s clearly an attack. The result is that even Heartland’s detractors admit that overwhelmingly this is a group of highly qualified people who have good reasons to think global warming is not a crisis.

PS. If you are wondering why I’m giving the Smugblog this good advice. The answer is that the alarmists have tried and failed to convince anyone and now as the data begins to make it impossible to deny we sceptics were always right, not even the most slick marketing (and certainly not crap like that poster) can keep this scam going much longer.

I was reading Robert Bradley’s excellent blog Master Resource in which he discusses Ad hominen attacks. But I had to disagree with his assertion that the Ad Hominen attacks must cease. Indeed quite the reverse. Instead it is now my firm belief that the reason we sceptics have so far failed to make our case is because we have failed to undermine the people – NOT EVIDENCE, BUT PEOPLE – behind this scam.
Replying to Robert’s article I wrote:

If you hadn’t noticed, despite the complete lack of any trends backing them up, the failure of their models and the wholesale corruption of the alarmist academics and NGOs … sceptics have failed to win the climate wars by constant regurgitation of the same data and graphs which overwhelmingly proves us right, but apparently goes down like a lead balloon with most journalists, politicians and environmentalists.

For these science illiterates, the whole argument is this: “someone they deem to be an authority in society because they are referred to as a ‘scientist’ says … doomsday warming is happening.”

No end of graphs showing that it hasn’t warmed for 18 years or showing that similar warming and cooling periods are prevalent throughout CET will convince these scientific illiterates.

Instead we have to stop them believing that some academic with no more claim to speak on climate than you or I, should be accepted as an “authority”.

Because for the vast bulk of the population who do not have the education of sceptics, there is little choice but to judge the issue of doomsday warming based on whether those PEOPLE they perceive to be “authorities” say it is true or not.
We will win this war. Continue reading →

Following the results of the survey I concluded that it was easy to convince a sceptic – just show them the data. But the data and analysis does not lie. And the inevitable conclusion from my detailed analysis is that climate alarmism stems from the combination these factors:

• Ignorance & inability to analyse the data
• Susceptibility to social pressure
• Reliance on views of authority

So, we sceptics may as well be talking Klingon to most alarmists when we present another detailed analysis of the data packed full of graphs, particularly when these don’t mention any supposed “authority”, even if that authority is a geneticist or a would-be monarch both of whom are clueless.

How to convince an alarmist

The conclusion of my research is very clear. If you want to convince an alarmist you have to do it socially and not present detailed data analysis which most don’t understand. Continue reading →