Scottish Sceptic

I came across this article and thought I’d reproduce it for a laugh:-

Is Global Warming a Hoax?
Many people believe that global warming is a hoax.  But is it?
I am very concerned of the present situation of Mother Earth and I always worry what may happen to Mother Earth come tomorrow. I have strong belief that global warming is true. There are numerous indications of global warming. Just look at all the incidents happening in our world today; the frequent earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, landslides, cyclones and worst the sudden change of weather which could become extreme hot or extreme cold. Continue reading →

Just did a search for global warming news and the air is thick with desperation.
Rising flood risk ‘being ignored’ – in other words people don’t care about it any more
Australia May Kill Farting Camels To Curb Global Warming – global warming is a bit of a laugh
Gibbons: Like it or not, planet is warming – in other words: even though most people don’t believe it anymore there’s some “scientist” studying gibbons who is under the delusion that jumping on the global warming bandwagon is good for their career.
Bill McKibben Talks Global Warning, New Book In Mother Jones – what?
How global warming affects your health – OK, we admit you can’t see it, nor feel it, so lets  try to persuade you it still is affecting you by some mystic power that affects your health.
Students Must Rally Against Global Warming – Oh dear, not even the students are willing to have a day off lectures to go on a global warming march … obviously all the sexy students are going on other marches!

Like most UK sceptics I’ve written my fair share of complaints regarding BBC bias. But one person really does take the biscuit for their response. Richard Black wrote an article about Chinese pollution causing warming. I wrote to complain that he was clearly biased because he surely must be aware that if a small amount of pollution from China had halted warming, he must also we aware that the wholesale cleaning of the air due to clean air acts in the the 1970s must have led to much larger warming.
This is his reply:

Dear Mr Haseler,
Thanks for your email. I am required to furnish you with a reply, but it
will not be a detailed one because as you consider me to be an idiot,
clearly reading any reply I made would be a waste of your time. I am
sure you have something better to do with it.
Best regards,
Richard Black

And the very minute I had finished writing my complaint to the BBC trust, in came an email from the Global Warming Policy Foundation along the same lines:

Looking at the aerosol data, obtained by satellites, it is apparent that the global aerosol burden declined between 1960 – 1980. There is no trend in global aerosol depth between 2000 – 2006, a period that includes the Kaufmann analysis claiming the Chinese effect. In 2007 Nasa stated that the aerosol effect had reduced, and even said that the “thinning” of the atmosphere had given a push to global warming. (for more see GWPF)

The problem with people like Richard Black … well as he said: he acts like an idiot, he writes like an idiot and so it really is incredibly difficult not to believe he is an idiot!
Come on Richard. If you ever read this, please just prove you aren’t as stupid as you make out and tell us how Chinese pollution in the 21st century can halt global warming, when the worldwide reduction in pollutants from virtually all industrialised nation has never been credited with causing the apparent warming we saw from 1970-2000 by your like.
Which reminds me of a joke: “why do you find so many global warmists at the top of hills … because they don’t know that there is a path downwards.”

If you want a indicator of future trends, there is nothing better than large commercial investors because being large they have the time and resources to check the facts and the political contacts to tune into the real mood of the politicians and not the fake crocodile tears they offer to the public.
So, when large energy converter decides that the “proven technology” of pumping CO2 under the ground is not a commercial option for the future, that speaks volumes of what the smart money thinks will be the prevailing political environment for the next decade or so.

American Electric Power has decided to table plans to build a full-scale carbon-capture plant at Mountaineer, a 31-year-old coal-fired plant in West Virginia, where the company has successfully captured and buried carbon dioxide in a small pilot program for two years.  (New York Times)

Of all the people who have the expertise to differentiate between “noise” and “manmade trend”, there can be few who  spend so much time staring at the “signal” of electricity consumption, trying to predict what is just “random variation” and how much is real “manmade trend” and then having to suffer the indignity of having those predictions tested in real time.
Electricity companies know that there is “random variation” that looks like trends, and then disappears, and real trends that look like random variation and end up with them having to shut down industrial consumers, to bridge the discrepancy between available supply and demand and consequentially loose millions with someone ending up with egg on their face. They know they can’t just jump to conclusions and they know they can’t just let fanciful interpretations take over from the cold hard facts that they often get it wrong.
UNLIKE CLIMATE “SCIENTISTS” ELECTRICITY COMPANIES KNOW WHAT THEY DON’T KNOW, and they know what they do know. And they do know that global warming is just a political fad that is near its end and is no longer an important consideration when deciding future investment in power plant.

The kids are on holiday, except for a short period last week, the weather has been foul for months. Indeed last winter and last summer and the winter before have all been on the cold side. Bored kids, cold weather and endless petty disputes about Choco square breakfast cereals … I really do wish this blasted global warming were true!
To be frank, I cannot remember a summer like it. The kids have been trapped indoors, it was June before I managed to cut the Grass for the second time this year (it just rained and rained and rained and it wasn’t dry enough to cut).
Even when it’s sunny, the weather is cold (the sky “feels” cold). Continue reading →

OK, now that News of the gutter is no more, we can expect the other papers to be going down gutter to try to pick up readers, but really does the independent have to stoop so low:
Climate change could …

“Climate change <add in your bit of research you are flogging and a very tenuous link to temperature based on some very fanciful imagination> … because of the effects of global warming, a study has found.”
“The findings support the view that the earth is currently experiencing <insert your favourite doomsday scenario which is the reason you were cherry picking the data to find something to support your prejudged conclusion> … Scientists said” (aka as a student who still goes home to mum to do the washing, or some academic whose main experience outside the ivory towers of academia is the people he meets at the eco-food shop) Continue reading →

The number of US citizens  that say they “believe the theory” that carbon dioxide emissions are warming the Earth, has dropped down to 44% down from 51% in 2009 and 71% in 2007, but most movement has been into the “not sure” column.
The online poll of 2,163 adults was conducted June 13 through 20. Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/07/11/Poll-Most-see-disasters-few-climate-turn/UPI-71691310419193/#ixzz1Ry51bMe8
Now if we remember that one in five Americans believe in Alien abductions, and note that no government agency appears to be suggesting a policy of anti-alien barrage balloons protecting the population, we can basically conclude that 20% of Americans will continue to believe manmade global warming irrespective of the evidence and government will ignore them.
So as support for manmade global warming (or more likely climate change) is never likely to drop below 20%  … and I suppose 20% will never believe it even if they personally were melting into the tarmac as the lava flowed past their house. For fun let’s see how what the “open to evidence” percentage has changed:

• 2007  85%
• 2009 52%
• 2011 40%

And what do those figures tell you … probably not a lot… as there still remains a big proportion who are yet to realise that the experts know no more about what the climate is going to do “long term” than weather forecasters know what the weather is going to do “long term”.
The big difference being we can personally assess whether the weather forecast was right, but we have to rely on the “experts” to assess their own climate forecasting skills using their own “interpretation” of the data.

I was reading WUWT, and came across a comment:

“As is our stated blog policy, no discussions or linkages to discussion of chemtrails will be permitted. Grousing about it won’t change anything.” (WUWT)

This is an odd comment. First it assumes that people know what “chemtrails” are, because how can you reframe from posting on something if you don’t know what it is? Secondly, on a blog whose whole premise is that there has been a conspiracy on global warming (which is undoubtedly true give the scam of the climategate inquiries) to reject outright any discussion of other possible conspiracies seems a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. Continue reading →

For years I’ve been saying that one likely reason for the apparent rise in temperatures after the 1970s was the introduction of anti-pollution measures in the 1970s. The logic seemed simple: evaporative pan measurements had shown a reduction in evaporation that seemed to correlate with pollution levels and  it seemed there was a strong connection between pollution and the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth … and of course the greens had taken this whole scenario to its absurd extreme with doomsday nuclear winter which was supposedly the inevitable result of any nuclear explosion. Continue reading →