These days a “sceptic” has come to mean someone who bases their views on the evidence – particularly in the area of climate. In other words, largely the philosophy that (used to) prevail(ed) in science.
And I so, I suppose the extreme opposite would be a “group-thinker”, a “believer”: someone who never has an original thought nor has their own view, who cannot or will not understand the evidence or understand how to interpret it, but instead gets through life by just citing or assuming the views of others.
But when I was a lad … wasn’t a sceptic was someone who was … sceptical – even pessimistic to which the opposite used to be an “optimist”.
So isn’t it ironic, that these days it is the sceptics who are the optimists … that mother nature can do pretty well by herself with little or no help from humans and the opposite of sceptics  are the pessimists … always believing the world is going to get worse.

The pause is something whose definition belongs to climate sceptics like me who first identified it and named it. I personally was using it as long ago as 2007/8. It is in my climategate submission of 2009.
And because sceptics key concern is whether the forecasts of impending warming were correct, the pause has always been and will always be defined in terms of whether these forecasts of warming are correct. Thus the “pause” is anything less than the predicted warming.
And whilst there may be other forecasts, I personally have always used the 2001 IPCC prediction of between 1.4 and 5.8C warming by 2100 as being the key test. This is because 2001 was after the 1998 peak or the 1970-2000 warming and because it was a period without net change for a few years, it was not biased by the particular year chosen for the start, because being “flat” for a few years, one could use any date from 2001 onwards and get fairly much the same trend.
And as not one of those metrics for global temperature predicted to warm in 2001 has warmed at even the lowest rate, I can be 100% confidence that there is a 100% statistical significance that 100% of the metrics show a pause.  (Although obviously if one later fabricates “metrics” with the intent of not showing a pause …. ) Continue reading →

I’ve noticed a repeated pattern throughout the world that the people who run organisations tend to be the most extreme of the climate extremists. Why?
Some examples: the Pope, US president, Nurse (former head of Royalist Society), Richard Branson.
Here are some suggestions:

1. Those who can do … do. Those who can’t do … become managers. In other words, those who understand how things work in the world, tend to be interested in things that work. After all … it’s no great skill for us humans to interact with other humans. And management is really not that difficult – any decent parent knows how to be a manager, but only a few of us have the skills, education and experience to various aspects of the world.
2. Heads of organisations are seldom great thinkers. Instead, they are great at convincing other people to hand over ideas, power, etc. In other words, it is not what you know, but who you know who knows what you need to know – and the head’s ability to persuade underlings to hand over what they know to the heads who don’t know. So, the heads become powerful, by creating a coalition of people to feed them information, rather than knowing the information for themselves. As such they are extremely vulnerable to false information and “group-think”. Particularly ideas of their social grouping which they like … because to put it quite simply, they lack the knowledge/intelligence to know when they are being fed bullshit.
3. You don’t get to be head of some big organisation without a great deal of arrogance. And there can be nothing more arrogant than the idea that us humans could significantly change the climate. But also heads of organisations tend to live “consensus” decision making. Not that they seek a consensus, but instead, if they perceive a “consensus” even if all the individuals are cautious about a subject, they will tend to see “consensus” as showing that there is no need for caution. So, often heads, despite their almost total ignorance on a subject, will, if a “consensus” is present, be far less cautious than their advisers on a subject. Which works – when the advisers have all formed their own views – but is a recipe for disaster when they all come to their view from the same source.
4. World leaders today have a particular problem with climate. Because unlike those of us, who have pretty much stayed in the same place for decades on end, and whose own experience tells us the climate extremists rhetoric is bullshit, someone who has constantly moved location in their political career and doubtless goes on exotic foreign trips to relax rather than walk out their own front door … they haven’t a clue what is “normal” for even their own “local” climate. That’s because they don’t have a “local” climate.

Readers of a certain age will instantly recognise the quote from Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life”, but as some readers may not, let me take a moment to expound. The sketch concerned is famously unsavoury. It involves probably the fattest person you can imagine (called Mr Creosote, for those Python afficionados out there) arriving at a restaurant, ordering and then eating an unfeasibly large amount. Finally replete, a corpulent Mr Creosote is approached by the perhaps vengeful Maitre D, played by John Cleese, and tempted into just a tiny little wafer thin mint. Mr Creosote swallows the mint, expands and then literally explodes.

 By: Marc Morano – Climate DepotSeptember 20, 2015 11:42 PM

Update: “Scientist” leading effort to prosecute climate skeptics under RICO ‘paid himself & his wife $1.5 million from govt climate grants for part-time work’

As I said last post as more and more people reject climate extremism leaving a bedraggled band of unhappy eco-fascists contemplating their navel, what I am now finding most fun these days is watching these climate extremists slowly, slowly slowly … getting the joke …
And to prove the point I spotted this:-

Just cynical manipulation? Making climate finance pledges meaningful

Let’s face it. When the world’s wealthy nations met in Copenhagen and pledged to give $30 billion over 2010-2012 to the poor nations to deal with climate change (called “Fast Start Finance”) and scale up that funding by 2020 to $100 billion, it was desperate rhetoric.
…
Were those pledges completely cynical manipulation? Nearly all observers—and none more than the developing nations they are supposed to help—hope not. But the only way to know is by observing the action of the pledging nations: are they holding up their end of the deal? Unfortunately, by failing to define what would count as climate finance and who would count it, negotiators opened the door to numerous contrasting statements regarding the fulfilment of these promises.

Six years after Climategate and these guys still don’t understand that the politicians never had any intention of giving $billions to this stupid scam. It was all cheap rhetoric to keep the idiotic greens voting for those hypocritical politicians who say one thing to the public out of one bodily orifice and deliver with the other.

An overview of the political process from Climategate to present.

1. As a result of Climategate and the continuing pause, we sceptics & mother nature gave an almighty kick to the system between the legs around 2009.
2. But like the Dinosaur, our political system has such a massive gap between those who do and those who decide that the pain of Climate felt at the bottom of the system takes time to make its way up to where the decisions are made.
3. It takes on average some 5-10 years. So even a go damn almighty kick between the legs which would cause me to double over, has almost no effect on immediate our government, because it takes time for it to register at the tiny brain at the top of the political tree.
4. By the look of the way the UK government are backpeddling on idiotic green commitments, it is now clear we are at the stage where the “brain” is wincing: it’s eyes have started watering, the cogs in the tiny brain are whirring and it’s now “considering” why its goolies have been throllopped…. or as a Paton would say: “We’ve got them by the balls”.

However, if our political system has a long neck and a small brain, climate extremists have a neck that goes out into the clouds and a brain that would make a midge proud:-

DeSmugBlog

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I’ve been doing “some” research into the Romans and the more I read, the more it seems to me that the Roman Empire, was built and largely run by what we would now call “sceptics” or “Engineers”. Take for example, the simplest facet of the Roman world: their straight roads (left :). Compare that to today’s architecture…

Roman road at Bainbridge. It is elegantly simple and functional and has lasted two thousand years with very little need for maintenance.

The Scottish parliament is an eyesore, a dog’s dinner come up of a mess – the windows leaked and it costs a fortune to maintain (both building and people).

The simple fact is that today’s society, run by idiot politicians with arts degrees and no common sense, seems to value rubbish that doesn’t work as typified by the Scottish parliament, and it despises the simple beauty and technically superb Roman roads (which by the way they have lasted are in many cases better than roads we put down today). Continue reading →

Engineering is an area which academics least well understand. This is largely because in the UK & US there is a cultural dislike by public-sector Universities of all things industrial, commercial, but worst of all … a group who are actually better than academics at understanding many subjects.
Global warming is one of these (hence the hatred directed at us). Academics just can’t fathom how we “engineers” just look at the data and can take all their hard work and just say “rubbish”. And even worse, they hate it most of all when with our down to earth approach we make better forecasts than they (and boy do they hate it!).
Here are a few reasons for the difference:

• The world’s climate is a complex system that cannot be modelled in any meaningful way, so it falls outside the type of systems which academics are taught to work with.
• Engineers have a wealth of experience with similarly complex systems – where far from more and more complex analysis being better, often simple is best, So we have a wealth of experience developing and using “rules of thumb” that work, which just don’t find the academic ethos.
• Academics are arrogant because they believe their “superior” knowledge means they know more. In contrast engineers have been beaten into humility by our experience of the real world. (Although – now academics are finding out what it’s like to be a novice engineer faced with their first crisis as the real life system doesn’t work  as the textbooks say they ought.
• Engineers are focussed on decision making, we learn a wealth of techniques to make highly complex decisions involving a huge raft of areas: science, sociology, finance. Such as can a safe, reliable & “pretty” bridge be built for X million?
• Academics have no training in decision making in issues where knowledge is lacking. The are excessively focussed on one area of knowledge and so can’t see the big picture or use knowledge from outside their own speciality. But worst of all they are only trained to look at what they can make sense of … and if they can’t make sense of it … then they have no tools or techniques to work with … in other words … they have not a clue what to do.

Continue reading →