Swiss News Weekly Calls IPCC Lead Author Thomas Stocker ‘A Butler For Politicians’! Scientists Growing Shriller
Swiss News Weekly Calls IPCC Lead Author Thomas Stocker “A Butler For Politicians”! Scientists Growing Shriller
As climate observations continue their now obscene divergence from the earlier IPCC model projections, some media outlets are becoming harsher in their criticism of a science that increasingly appears corrupt and politicized. Moreover climate scientists are looking ever more shrill and desperate.
Hat-tip: hajo.
A recent feature story by Markus Schär in the print edition of Swiss news weekly Weltwoche even goes so far as to call IPCC lead author Thomas Stocker a “butler for politicians”. Weltwoche’s introduction reads:
Climate scientists, foremost some from Switzerland, are issuing increasingly louder warnings of catastrophe. This is because next year the global community should obligate itself to a strict treaty on protecting the climate. Despite the alarm, hardly anyone desires to keep playing along.”
Weltwoche adds later in the article that the way things stand now, the chances that of a new binding treaty getting ratified “are close to zero“.
As a result global warming alarmists are mounting another scramble to salvage a hypothesis that is increasingly looking unsustainable.
With the next large climate conference in Lima, Peru in December, more than ever scientists are coming under pressure to explain why warming has stopped and the models have been so embarrassingly wrong so far. The steam (science) that is supposed to be powering climate policy forward has blown a major gasket. Ironically science is beginning to act as a brake.
Weltwoche writes that the final (up-to-now confidential) Synthesis Report scheduled for release in October is designed to salvage the movement and supply the necessary urgency to get the binding climate treaty process to replace the expired Kyoto Protocol back on track. Here Weltwoche writes: “Dramatic proclamation are in demand in order to wake up the global public.” It adds:
The authors of the Synthesis Report, among them as always are environmental activists, have to threaten with an apocalypse.”
Clearly among those involved in the effort, Weltwoche writes, are Swiss scientists Thomas Stocker of the University of Bern and Reto Knutti of the ETH Institute, a leading climate modeling center.
As part of the effort to rescue the alarmism, Weltwoche describes how Reto Knutti, once a student of Stocker, was the lead author of a recent paper that systematically analyzed the reasons for the global warming pause. The paper concluded that it was due to ocean cycles …
EPA’s Phony ‘Environmental Justice’ Caper
‘UN Climate Propaganda At Full Throttle In Advance Of New York Climate Summit’
Shame of fake EU climate change ‘aid’ to Third World
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/5215/shame_of_fake_eu_climate_change_aid_to_third_world…
Polar Bear expert: ‘Polar bears miss the message on global warming’ – ‘Fat, healthy bears are still common and many of the assumptions used by computer models to predict future disasters have turned out to be wrong’
“Polar bears miss the message on global warming” – my article in RANGE Magazine
Here’s an excerpt of my article “Polar bears miss the message on global warming,” just out in the Fall 2014 issue of RANGE Magazine.
The caption for a copy of the photo above, included in the article, says:
“In a recent TV ad campaign, the Center for Biological Diversity said, “global warming is pushing polar bears to the absolute brink.” Results of recent research show this to be a lie – fat, healthy bears like this one from near Barrow, Alaska, are still common and many of the assumptions used by computer models to predict future disasters have turned out to be wrong.”
Excerpt, from the Fall 2014 issue of RANGE Magazine:
Last summer, one of the most experienced polar bear researchers alive, Ian Stirling (formerly of the Canadian Wildlife Service), speculated at The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom that the death of a single old bear on Svalbard, Norway could be blamed on global warming. “This 16-year-old male polar bear,” said the caption of a photo of an emaciated bear splayed out on the tundra, “died of starvation resulting from the lack of ice on which to hunt seals, according to Dr Ian Stirling.” The story was picked up by news outlets all over the world.
Most disturbing was that there was no disclaimer from Ian Stirling pointing out that 16 years is near the maximum life expectancy for polar bear males in the wild, or that starvation is the primary cause of death for very old and young bears alike, whatever the state of sea ice coverage.
Many people picked up on the irrationality of the claim that one old bear had “died of climate change,” even committed conservationists who accepted the tenets of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). Some of the criticisms of Stirling in social media were harsh.
For example, one reader of the Facebook page of Polar Bears International (PBI) responded to PBI’s explanation that Stirling only said the bear ‘likely’ died of starvation, replied:
“”Likely” does not cut it in science. This bear could have been injured or ill. I admire much of the work you do; but science is science. A hypothesis needs empirical evidence in order to be confirmed. You cannot try and make the science match your cause. No one is a bigger advocate for …
‘Has the tide turned on polar bears as icons of global warming?’
Has the tide turned on polar bears as icons of global warming?
http://polarbearscience.com/2014/09/01/has-the-tide-turned-on-polar-bears-as-icons-of-global-warming
The CBC in Canada is pretty much a mirror image of the BBC in the UK, ABC in Australia and PBS in the US. So you might appreciate my shock at the almost unbelievable balance contained in the recently broadcasted CBC documentary, “The Politics of Polar Bears: Tracking the Celebrity Bear.”
The film is a profound change from the hype and pessimism that has dominated the polar bear issue in Canada and abroad, supported unchallenged by the CBC. Finally, TV viewers were given some decently balanced perspective on the status of polar bears in Western Hudson Bay.
If the take-away message tipped towards reason and optimism rather than panic over the status of polar bears, it’s because the evidence was strongly in that direction.
Representatives of a range of views got their say in this film: gloom-and-doom conservation biologists, pragmatic polar bear scientists, on-the-ground conservation officers, polar bear attack victims, activist organizations, Churchill residents, Inuit hunters, the Canadian government, and the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG).
True, the CBC did air it live only in Manitoba — and on Saturday night of the most popular get-away long weekend of the year in Canada (our last grasp at summer before winter sets in). So the audience for the live broadcast was likely quite small.
But they did post the video online, which was where I saw it last night.
If you haven’t seen it yet, I suggest you set aside the 45 minutes (no commercials), to view it with your morning coffee, lunch, or evening popcorn – I think you’ll find it as engrossing as I did.
The interview segments with polar bear biologist Mitch Taylor (Lakehead University) were especially compelling. The audience was left to decide for itself which scientist was the more credible: the guy (Taylor) who was kicked out of the PBSG after decades of service for daring to ask questions about alarmist polar bear population predictions and the veracity of sea ice models — or the guy in charge of the PBSG when Taylor was ousted (Andrew Derocher, University of Alberta), who insisted on camera that sea ice predictions are all that matter for polar bear conservation and stated, with a straight face: “scientifically, there is no debate” that polar bears are endangered.
I wasn’t interviewed for the program but I think you’ll see …
‘CO2 Going Up. Human Progress Going Up’
CO2 Going Up. Human Progress Going Up.
http://www.cato.org/blog/co2-going-human-progress-going
Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger
Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”
Yesterday it was announced by the World Meteorological Organization (an arm of the United Nations), with front page coverage by the global media, that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) last year reached a new high value (396 parts per million, ppm) and got there in record time (2.9ppm/yr). Although newer data (through July of 2014) indicate that the rate of rise has fallen back again to levels more characteristic of the past decade, the signal remains—carbon dioxide is building in the atmosphere and rising to levels that have probably not been seen in along time (hundreds of thousands of years).
This rise is a continued reminder of the steady drumbeat of human progress. The carbon dioxide that is building in the atmosphere, at least in part, gets there through human emissions of carbon dioxide that are the by-product of burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) to produce the vast majority the energy that has powered mankind’s industrial and technical ascent since the Industrial Revolution.
The gradual increase in the rate of the rise of the carbon dixoide concentration is a sign that we are continuing to expand our energy use and availability, primarily in developing countries like India and China. With more than a billion people still without much access to electricity (and many more than that who would like access to more) and all the life-improving benefits that come with it, we still have a long way to go.
Consequently, we should anticipate that the atmospheric CO2 concentration will continue to grow for many years to come.
The benefits that fossil use have delivered to humanity are enormous. A taste of them can be found at Cato’s HumanProgress.org website and a compelling case for why we should continue to embrace and expand fossil fuel use is made by Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress in his excellent (and very soon forthcoming) book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.
The only concern that arises from growing atmospheric CO2 levels stems from the potential climate changes that may result. Carbon dioxide is …
Analysis: ‘If only Muslim states thought climate change was the ‘greatest challenge’
Michael Mann caught telling a ‘porky’ to the court (again) in legal filings
Michael Mann caught telling a ‘porky’ to the court (again) in legal filings
After being caught out claiming he was a “Nobel Prize recipient” in his original complaint (then having to retract it), it seems Mann and his lawyers just don’t have the good sense to know when to stop. In this case Mann has been “hoisted by his own petard”. His very own words condemn him. Again. […]…
Physicist Dr. Lubos Motl: ‘One-half of CO2 doubling achieved…& Detectable impacts on the climate are yet to be seen’
One-half of CO2 doubling achieved
Detectable impacts on the climate are yet to be seenWhen the CO2 level in the atmosphere surpassed 400 ppm a short time ago, many alarmists would celebrate this symbolic achievement. Oh, the CO2 concentration is so high! It’s a signal from the heaven, a shot from the Aurora telling us to start another world revolution because our previous one, that of 1917, has already faded away and it wasn’t enough for us, anyway. The number is so round, and so on. Of course, nothing new happens when the CO2 level reaches 400 ppm – it’s just another number that only looks special because of an arbitrary decadic numeral system we happen to use today. The Earth has seen concentrations around 6,000 ppm as well and 4,000 ppm would be just fine for all life forms we know today. By far the closest worrisome CO2 concentration is 150 ppm in which most existing plant species stop growing (ice ages have only forced them to easily withstand 180 ppm or so).Another numerically special value of the concentration was achieved two years ago or so but unlike 400 ppm, it wasn’t hyped by anyone. The hypothetical effect of CO2 on the temperatures (well, almost certainly real effect theoretically; hypothetical from an empirical viewpoint because the effect is so incredibly weak) is often quantified – converted to numbers – when we talk about the “climate sensitivity”, i.e. the increase of the global mean temperature caused by a doubling of the CO2 concentration.The doubling defines more natural benchmark values of the concentration because it suggests that we should look at the behavior of the temperature assuming the exponential growth of CO2. That’s natural because the temperature increase is approximately (very accurately) proportional to the logarithm of the temperature increase. The global mean temperature as a function of the CO2 concentration is\[T(c) = 14.5^\circ {\rm C} + {\rm sensitivity} \times \frac{\ln (c/280\text{ ppm})}{\ln 2}\] The temperature 14.5 degrees Celsius is the holy “optimum” global mean temperature that the climate alarmists want to see forever because it was how things probably were in 1750 although no one can really reconstruct the temperature in 1750 with a sub-degree accuracy (and even today’s “global mean temperature” depends on so many technicalities that it’s fair to say that it isn’t defined at a sub-degree accuracy, either). The ratio of logarithms may also be written …