Scottish Sceptic

First my bias. I live between Glasgow and Edinburgh. I have links with both cities. I do not like “touristy” places like Stonehenge, nor do I go much for “Celtic”** culture. But if someone like me were to visit Scotland, the places I’d recommend:

1. The Barrowland in Glasgow … it’s a market with a warren of small shops. It feels like it ought to be full of pick-pockets, but I’ve never had my wallet stolen.
2. Glasgow itself has some superb architecture. I hadn’t e.g. realised that Glasgow has the only building in the Crystal palace style. There are some superb buildings (but it took a guide to point these out) Continue reading →

I think this picture just about sums up Scotland’s attitude to science, but particularly engineering. It shows James Watt’s workshop at Kinneil where he did much of his work developing the steam engine. Beside it rusting away and covered in graffiti (worse when I visited) is one of the most important artefacts of the modern world: part of his steam engine.
What we need to understand, is that this need to create traction engines for mining was what drove the development of science. It was the impetus for Boyle and others to investigate the behaviour of gases. It is often suggested that science created the industrial revolution, the truth is that the industrial revolution drove the scientific revolution in the UK. Unfortunately, history is not written by industrial engineers but by academics.
Now Watt lived just a few years after the Jacobite rebellion which ended at Culloden. So Culloden is a famous defeat for the Scots. One which is celebrated and visited and generally made a fuss of. Culloden, was an English victory not over Scots, but over a King who had hardly seen Scotland who had an arrogant belief in his divine right to rule his people but was so incompetent it is a miracle he won any victories at all. Continue reading →

… the debate. But …

I have been thinking about the debate at St.Andrews. I thought we would get a stronger case from the warmists. Instead, where we did have discussion, our half-heated, ill-prepared, sometime ill-informed, attempts to make our case was making huge inroads into their arguments. It was really like a village football team going along to Celtic straight from the pub and only afterwards realising they drew … as none of the village team had thought to keep a tally of the score.
What surprised me was that Andrew Montford did not cover all the numerous bits of science that show the exaggerated global warming hypothesis is certainly unproven and quite probably disproven.
In no way am I criticising Andrew. He clearly has an expertise in climategate. It does take a certain brass neck, to challenge people who have spent their whole lives on a subject and are utterly convinced they are right and know you are using terminology and ideas which sound like baby talk to them … even if you are right.
But, I came away, feeling that even given the huge odds, given time and a little patience on the other side to listen to my “baby talk” I could certainly have convinced a large number, and likely a majority that the science didn’t support the assertions on the warming induced by CO2. But that is only one part in a long chain of argument that all falls if even one part falls.
If you then examine: the claims of a manmade source for all the CO2, as Prof Salby shows, this is highly suspect. If you examine the supposed effects of warming like reduction in cereal crops or deaths in the UK from heat/cold, again is should be blatantly obvious that the figures are highly distorted. E.g. Scotland is at the Northern margin of wheat production. The idea that wheat would be adversely affected here is fraudulent. Even in warmer climate where it is heat stressed, using a variety adapted to the heat stops eliminates the effects of heat, and anyway any adverse effects of heat is more than offset by the increasing CO2.
Then you take the economic costs. Energy use is a very close proxy to GDP. The two are so intimately entwined that I suggest energy would be a better measure of GDP when e.g. comparing pre-monetary societies or when taking into account inflation which distorts GDP.
So, the very idea we would reduce energy is is tantamount to saying we will reduce GDP. I personally think that would have a lot of benefits, but that should be considered as a policy on its own. But in terms of cost-benefit analysis, there is no doubt that even if all the CO2 increase were manmade, even if the feedback induced warming was as much as predicted, even if all the fraudulent claims about effects were true. The costs of stopping fossil fuel use exceed the benefits.
So, why is no one in Scotland telling the public? I think the answers are various. Continue reading →

It’s been a strange day … which is ironically typical.
7:30am wake up to crowing cockerel … mentally make a note that it is about time we got rid of it as it’s bound be be annoying neighbours. Remember youngest son has decided to breed from the current pair. Relax at thought of not having to dispatch chicken this week.
7:40 Wake up again to find that someone governmental is texting wife. Confused by modern technology, I jump out of bed and hand wife handbag … only to be told she knows who it is.
7:45 think of turning on Radio 4 … remember all the times I’ve had to complain because of their biased coverage … not in the mood to write another complaint, so leave it off. Continue reading →

The main thrust of Tom’s argument was “it has warmed” therefore we are right to be worried.
The main thrust of Andrew’s argument was “it has warmed … but as a group there has been dishonesty in climate science and we don’t trust nor agree with your assertions that we should be worried”.
The main contention appeared to be whether the “last decade” of standstill was enough to be significant. Continue reading →

Sorry.
Sorry, we are not a professional bunch of slick PR consultants with all the figures at our finger tips. Sorry particularly to the students, we sceptics are just amateurs … you deserve better than us, that is why we pay academics to research the whole picture and to present the whole story. The only reason we were there was because the academics have failed.
Sorry … personally, I wasn’t quite sure of the etiquette … eventually I thought it was better to speak up and be damned than sit there.
Thankyou
Thank you for the staff for putting on the debate. The very fact they were prepared to allow debate is a credit to them. On the other hand, why did I have this feeling that we were going to be treated like exhibits to be mocked and have our arguments falsely dissected (when we were unable to defend them) when we went away.
What the hell am I doing here?
Continue reading →

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he (Lovelock) said.
“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.
MSNBC

What does he expect us to do? Applaud him for only taking 12 years? Just look at the tripe he has been producing:

• Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back – and How We Can Still Save Humanity,”
• “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy It While You Can.”

Apparently he wants to produce a trilogy. Any suggestions for the title:

• The downfall of Science: why people like me are responsible.
• My life as a bullshiter.
• Consensus, global warming and other nonsense.

Just watched another superb video on YouTube of a talk by Professor Salby.
In the past I’ve avoided the question of whether all the CO2 was manmade. My feeling has been that there is more than enough evidence against the positive feedback thesis of the warmists to dismiss them as charlatans. Indeed the main point it not that rising CO2 should cause warming, but that it is wholly wrong for scientists to mislead the public and politicians about the scale of that warming using speculative, even fraudulent “science”. In other words propaganda with a thin a false veneer of scientific credibility.
So, I’ve not been too interested in the question of how much of the CO2 rise is due to mankind. But, I used to have the same dismissive view of the link between solar activity and climate. On that I was also wrong. When you look at the evidence it is clear, this is really beyond reasonable doubt … certainly sufficiently proven to require policy makers to take recognisance of the potential of a New maunder Minimum. Only this week I came across yet another paper:

Maybe it is less obvious than it looks to me, but I cannot see how anyone can deny that C14 levels known to be related to solar activity do not go up and down with the ratio of the O16 to O18 isotopes which is a known proxy for temperature.

So when I came across Salby’s video on the origin of CO2, even though he was a respected academic, I thought twice about watching. I am very glad I did! Although an hour long, it is something I think anyone with an interest should watch and tell others about.
I should be careful how I phrase his results (because he was being scientific and being careful), so I probably ought to watch again to check what I say matches what was said in the video, but as far as I remember he was suggesting that it was provable that a large part of the rise in CO2 was due to natural causes, and (here I need to check) it would appear that all the rise could be natural. He came to this conclusion, by comparing the rate of CO2 rise with change in surface conditions (such as precipitation), and as the above graph shows, the two are very well correlated.
Just as the lack of warming this century, proves that the computer models have been wrong, but it does not prove that some at least of the warming was due to CO2 rise, so, the evidence provided by Salby does not prove that human activity is not responsible for a substantial part of the CO2 rise. But it does prove it is both false to say that all the warming was due to CO2 AND that all the rise in CO2 was due to human activity. In other words it is outright fraud to say that we are certain beyond doubt that human produced CO2 caused all the rise in temperature in the 20th century.
The balance of evidence is now wholly against the present Scottish policy on so called “climate change”. The evidence is there. The onus is not now on us sceptics to prove our assertions. The evidence the policy is wrong is there for anyone who looks. It is so palpably wrong in so many ways. The science is wrong, the economics was wrong, we were lied to about jobs, we were even lied to about the amount of CO2 reductions of wind. Now we have a legacy of a ruined countryside, a electricity grid on the verge of collapse and no doubt we will continue for decades paying through the nose to the very culprits who were most responsible for the scam and destroying the scenery of Scotland. Unless or until we can find some politicians with the guts to prosecute those who are most responsible.
In my view, it is now on the Scottish government and particularly the wind lobbyists to prove that they acted in good faith and not with criminal intent when they misled the public (even if not intentionally) and implemented a policy which is now clearly wrong.

London Evening Standard Award for Best Play of 2011
‘an absolute corker, funny, provocative and touching’ – The Telegraph
‘a riotous comedy’ – The Independent
Although far from a being a climate change sceptic, Dr Diane Cassell is nevertheless a serious scientist who likes the facts to speak for themselves. When her data contradict a key doctrine of global warming theory, her university puts pressure on her to conform. Yet she can do no other except speak her truth, even after her heresies hit the front pages and her world really heats up.
Temperatures rising. In his fleet-footed black comedy, British playwright Richard Bean gambols without a care through the climate change minefield. Noni Hazlehurst returns to MTC to play the fearless scientist in the Australian premiere production directed by Matt Scholten.
Opens Saturday the 12th of May tickets via the Melbourne Theatre Company

Around 4000years ago, the climate around the are of Lenzie changed significantly as it did in the rest of Scotland. That is why we have peat bogs all over the place.
I’m interested in the history of the area and the peat bog in particular, so I’ve been looking at some peat cores from the moss. All very harmless stuff and not at all controversial. In fact academia at its best … gather the evidence, look to see what it says and then interpret it by e.g. comparing and contrasting sites and looking at how the peat may reflect things like the building of the Antonine wall just over a mile away.
So, quite innocently I wanted to know what the climate change was that caused the peat to start growing (and other climate change events which appear to be represented in the peat sample), so I did a search
BANG WALLOP … up comes all the climate nonsense
According to the eco-nutter madmen of climate “science” the climate couldn’t possibly have varied in the past, so immediately up comes all the HOCKEY STICK nonsense about the climate never changing before it was upjusted by the scoundrels.
The eco-nutters are just like creationists. The record of climate change in Scotland is written in the peat. It is undeniable … and all I wanted was to compare the peat record to what we know of temperature.
INSTEAD I GET THE MARXIST DOCTRINE OF UNDENIABLE CLIMATE STASIS. GOD NEVER CHANGED THE CLIMATE BECAUSE THE ALMIGHTY MANN DICTATES THAT HOCKEY STICKS SHALL BE THE WORSHIPFUL IDIOTIC NONSENSE THAT IS PASTED ALL OVER THE INTERNET TO STOP PEOPLE LIKE ME GETTING ANY REAL EVIDENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE, ETC.
It makes my blood boil. It’s like swimming in a sea of condoms and tampex … reading academic work ought to be a pleasure, instead anything to do with climate science is full of crap … which is all the worse, when you know it is there … but you are doing something completely different from global warming and suddenly come across it.
Today, I didn’t care whether it was colder warmer or anything in the past. I just wanted to know the best academic insight into past climate and …. as I said, it was like wading in a sea of filth, condoms, tampex, old nappies. Worse still, somewhere in that filthy mess called climate “science” …. may just be the real impartial information.
So, I’ve come out of the sea for a moment to steady myself, before I go back in to swim the crap … and they wonder why we dislike them so much?