Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair once told us that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction that could be deployed within 45 minutes. We went to war as a result, yet no WMDs were ever found. The WMD statement was a blatant LIE.
Now, according to today’s headline in UK newspaper The Guardian, ‘Blair to lead campaign on climate change’, ‘Act urgently or global warming will be irreversible, former PM warns.’
Blair said: “Essentially what everyone has agreed is that climate change is a serious problem, it is man-made, we require a global deal, that there should be a substantial cut in emissions at the heart of it, and this global deal should involve everyone, including in particular America on the one hand and China on the other, so it is the developed and developing world.”
He said the world had less than two years to secure a deal, or accept that global warming is irreversible.
“The fact of the matter is that if we do not take substantial action over the next two years, then by 2020 we will thinking seriously about adaptation rather than prevention.”
Words spoken by a man with a degree in law rather than a science.
Where is the scientific basis for ‘2 years’ and the ‘magic’ year ‘2020?’ Very little of what Blair says makes any sense from a policy or scientific point of view. Adaptation to inevitable climate change should be the key part of any climate policy regardless of whether or not any meaningful CO2 emisssion reductions are necessary or can be achieved, given climate history and the IPCC claim that CO2 remains in the atmosphere for 50 to 200 years. The situation is much worse according to Matthews and Caldeira, 2008.
Prins and Rayner are banging their heads against a brick wall and must surely believe Tony Blair is wearing the wrong trousers. Even so, the assumption that we need only prepare for warming and can ignore the possibility of substantial cooling in the future is dangerously flawed.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
I suspect Blair’s belief is sincere, but his belief, none the less, is the latest variant of millennialism, during which a sinful humanity is to be punished for its transgressions.
Pertinent indeed to note that both Blair and other alarmists are also devout Christians, and thus possessed of the religious mind that is, in its essence, opposed to the scientific method, in which empirical fact compells dissention.
And an important addition is the fact that pseudoscience relies entirely on persuasion to “prove” a scientific fact, not measured evidence; climate alarmsism is principally, if not wholly, based on persuading recalcitrants to recant.
They would if the the facts were compelling.
Perhaps he will use the same defence as with Iraq – the consensus is clear.
There was just about unanimous acceptance by the experts that Iraq possessed WMD.
The main difference being that only the AGW sceptics are comprehensively vilified whereas the WMD sceptics got a much better hearing….
The end is neigh. You -I mean we must drink the Koolaid now. Ready?
Hell no. Court action my friends. There is no denying that regardless of the outcome, the next President of the USA will be an unrepentant AGW believer.
We, you and I, have to take matters into our own hands.
Lord Monckton has shown the way. Fight to have AIT removed from the classroom. At the least have it’s many errors corrected. Take the school board to court. Make the local government acknowledge with the force of law that global warming is a hoax.
Because the politicians stand to gain by playing along with the alarmists either way it goes.
If it gets colder they will say, we errored on the side of caution. If it gets warmer they will say, you people didn’t do enough.
There is no up side for them politically to admit the truth – so they are not going to.
WE have to force them to.
If you win. Litigation as any good barrister would tell you is a high risk activity. And of course there is the issue of costs of vexatious complaints. A SLAPP suit would be most interesting. The real hoaxers of course are the denialists and I think a court action could be very revealing.
Bring it on.
Lets see- risk of slapp suit on the one hand,
untold millions of people who can’t afford food,
shivering in their unheated homes on the other.
I’ll take that risk. California is mine. The rest
of the world you can divy amongst yourselves.
How can it become irreversible in two years when there has been no increase in GMT since 1997
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/a-note-from-richard-lindzen-on-statistically-significant-warming/
and no upper (700m) ocean warming since 2004, Willis, J. K., D. P. Chambers and R. Steven Nerem, 2008: Assessing the Globally Averaged Sea Level Budget on Seasonal and Interannual Time Scales. Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans (in press),
http://climatesci.org/2008/03/14/reality-check-on-this-years-cold-and-snowy-weather-implications-for-global-warming/
?
Warm days downunder.
35C + again at my place, that’s 3-4C up on last year and possibly 10C up from the long term mean (for T max in march ).
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/IDCJDW2801.latest.shtml
Proteus, there was a GMT increase from Jan 2008 to Feb 2008… So my ridiculous argument proves your ridiculous argument wrong.
I am told the reason it is has been hot over most of southern australia is because of the High being stationary over the Tasman for the last few weeks.
It of course would be drawing a very long bow to say that this unseasonal hot weather is directly related to increased Co2 which has caused the Tasman High to stay inplace, which then causes the air flow overland to end up in the south parts with hot preheated desert day time air.
No more so than saying that when we get cold southerly winds coming off the antarctic cause freezing weather in winter.I guess it all averages out in the end.
Malcolm: check out global SST anomalies across latitude 40
http://www.eldersweather.com.au/climimage.jsp?i=sstag
For “Addicts”
http://forum.weatherzone.com.au/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=005025;p=98#001468
Mr T, I meant the trend. And you knew that.
Thanks Gavin
It looks like I will have to move the boat up to Lat 0 in the mid Pacific to get any cooler water, ie, below the SST anomalous mean.
BTW the Elders weather site is a much better design and more informative than the BOM.
Gavin:35C + again at my place, that’s 3-4C up on last year and possibly 10C up from the long term mean (for T max in march ).
I envy you though still a little too cool to consider going swimming I like 38+ for that.
Hi Jan
Air temp here about your swimming comfort zone. But I aouldn’t be too keen. Local fishermen have noted significant water temp drop for March. Apparently unusual. Swimmers swaying the water is very cold. Must be some currents stirring down south – or perhaps the unusually cold Feb did the water temps in? Who knows.
I doubt that reducing my carbon output will have any effect on these massive systems, so adaption (going with the flow) is my only realistic option. Been doing that all my life anyway.
BTW agree about the Elders weather site. Good one.
Air temp here about your swimming comfort zone.
I have been known to take a dip in the odd mountain stream but that’s usually accidental. Ouch.
yes the elders site is a good one.
What sometimes disappoints about the BOM is that I’ve been out in the bush struggling to keep dry in the rain and to cross the odd swollen creek (see above re accidents) only to find when I get honme that it didn’t happen.
“Essentially what everyone has agreed…”
I don’t agree.
“…is that climate change is a serious problem,”
Only if the Government forces me to do something about it.
“it is man-made,”
Only the over-hyped scare campaign.
“we require a global deal,”
No I don’t, if you want to cut go ahead.
“The fact of the matter is that if we do not take substantial action over the next two years, then by 2020 we will thinking seriously about adaptation rather than prevention.”
I’m more than happy to wait, adaptation will be far easier and cheaper if we don’t have to simultaneously fix some imposed socialist cock-up.
It’s interesting that your blog attempts to convince us of the fact that politicians sometimes twist the truth.
Stop the press. Politicans lie. Who would’ve guessed.
Then you link Iraq to climate change so that you can write an article about a politician who cries wolf. Climate change is not an imaginary wolf, however much you might wish it.
That’s hardly the level of sophistication one would expect from a senior fellow of any organization. It is interesting to note that James Lovelock has said it’s already too late to stop what’s coming.
I’m getting my own little lifeboat together and hopefully there won’t be a socialist government telling me I have to let Forester into it.
Beware Jan; I’m now fully armed. My tiny digital thermometer responds well to a little TLC (I scraped the battery terminal). So, instant updates from the desk and the wide blue yonder are entirely possible again. Except for the tabby who insists on taking over the best seat in our study every time I leave it there is no stopping this challenge to SH coolers .
BTW its 26.7 inside at 8.30 pm (no a/c) after another 33C + max outside.
“Gavin:35C + again at my place, that’s 3-4C up on last year and possibly 10C up from the long term mean (for T max in march ).”
But I thought it was about the CLIMATE not the WEATHER.
Anyway, at my place we have had a cool summer so thats that.
I always use Weatherzone, BOM is too cumbersome and less correct.
Rog
http://www.ozforecast.com.au is another weather tool but uses 3 sources to come up with a guess what tomorrow’s might be. In Halls Creek, WA, I am not too impressed with it. No rain in Halls Creek but all around us, not a problem.
Cheers
And when was our weather not related to climate?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate
Rog; this thread is actually about the prediction of climate change and my contribution was aimed at enhancing our personal observations as another check on BoM data.
Also things have changed since we started making records. With BoM data now under continuous global scrutiny their current presentation is a reflection of an institution in a media straight jacket (IMO of course). However all the other local users of this rather precise data set (note they remain licensed BoM data extensions) can obviously tune up their daily assessment for a more targeted audience.
As I pointed out recently, digging for trends requires considerable patience.
Gavin:(I scraped the battery terminal)
that’ll do it lots of the time.
Don’t worry it will stop it will get cooler – winter is coming.
Hey Gavin that is a nice sea surface temperature link you posted.
Thanks.
While pondering over a Peters projection Map of the World I was jolted by the influence of the African land mass in our global ST considerations.
Given the Northern Hemisphere is dominated by continents and the Southern Hemisphere is mostly ocean, atmospheric warming or cooling rates can quite uneven over normal seasons. Longer trends north and south will be hard to see however I may well have chosen the one place that gives us it all in a single shell, Cape Grim.
Sure, extremes in weather are occurring all around the Cape Grim monitoring station as they have done for ages but the whole Australian coastline at this latitude has records going back to the first fleets. BoM has inherited a mass of other data from various programs besides CSIRO and I suggest we have an edge in building SH climate surveillance.
http://www.environment.tas.gov.au/anw_aq_rlap_lhweaq_tasmanian_air_and_weather_facts.html
http://www.csiro.au/science/ps20j.html
In addition to SST from NOAA we have this lot
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/climate/station.jsp?lt=site&lc=91245
http://www.eldersweather.com.au/climate.jsp?lt=site&lc=91245
All links can be switched to airports and other coastal stations that make up our total global plot. Many are only a few km apart and outside the city lights. In reference to the extreme Tasmanian weather it’s where I once lived and worked.
See Earth at Night –
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap001127.html
Global warming or global cooling anthropogenic climate change or natural climate change are, at one level at least, academic questions. Our global economic system is based on the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources. I have no idea when the crunch will come – all I know is that it will come unless we act. The argument is not about how much time we got but about the fact that if we know what we do is unsustainable then we need to act to make our actions sustainable. I personally suspect that it may already be too late but it would be foolish not to at least try and create a sustainable world economy for in so doing we will also be creating a zero carbon economy.
Thanks for your honesty John – I suspect many are in accord with your perspective but don’t say it!
John I agree we need to find more efficient means for energy usage to buy time to develop a sustainable economy. However spending $5 billion a year on climate science is not going to do it and I suspect that artificial carbon sequestration and current alternatives will only accelerate the demise.
John,
It is a standard method in university lectures that fears in resources depletion will lead to catastrophe.
A few centuries ago sperm whale oil was considered useful as a light source. Then someone discovered petroleum, and sperm whales continue to live as they no longer were the object of hunting.
Today many believe that petroleum resources are limited and infer that another catastrophe is at hand.
They forget one thing – chance discovery of some new fact and human adaption to that discovery.
To put a simple example work out why and how protons spin, extrapolate and you have an interesting source of energy.
“Pertinent indeed to note that both Blair and other alarmists are also devout Christians”
You may be carrying that relationship a little too far. While I’m not a Christian, I would be willing to bet that you find more AGW skeptics among the Christians than among the general population. The AGW cult has been most readily adapted by the far left, and there are few Christians among them.
Regarding Tony Blair and his Christianity, I think most politicians go to church. It’s the political thing to do. But I don’t think that you can deduce very much about a politicians believes because of it.
“35C + again at my place”
Your house should be catching fire any day now.
“Malcolm: check out global SST anomalies across latitude 40”
Across the globe it looks like more cold anomaly than hot.
By ignoring recent comments I can add another hot spot in one of our wettest regions (normally) on this part of the globe.
“Parks and Wildlife incident controller Chris Arthur said it was the most intense fire he’d seen since 1983”- “The heartbreaking thing for us is we’ve been constantly fighting fires on the West Coast since October,” Mr Arthur said
http://nwtasmania.yourguide.com.au/articles/1204651.html?src=topstories
TFS declared a total fire ban on the 14th March, about the same time SA was in trouble.
Alas, poor Tony appears to be another victim of WMD – Warming Mindset Disorder.