Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Are the wheels coming off of the Global Warming bus?

Despite the prominence of Global Warming in Obama's inauguration address, the wheels look to be coming off.  Germany's Der Spiegal has an 8 part series about the abuses of the Climate Science Establishment aimed at the general reader.  The series is simply devastating to the consensus view of ZOMG Thermageddon!!!  It exposes the shoddy work of the IPCC with examples like this:
The all-clear signal on the hurricane front is another setback for the IPCC. In keeping with lead author Kevin Trenberth's predictions, the IPCC report warned that there would be more hurricanes in a greenhouse climate. One of the graphs in the IPCC report is particularly mysterious. Without specifying a source, the graph suggestively illustrates how damage caused by extreme weather increases with rising average temperatures.

When hurricane expert Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado at Boulder saw the graph, he was appalled. "I would like to discover this sort of relationship myself," he says, "but it simply isn't supported by the facts at the moment."

Pielke tried to find out where the graph had come from. He traced it to the chief scientist at a London firm that performs risk calculations for major insurance companies. The insurance scientist claims that the graph was never meant for publication. How the phantom graph found its way into the IPCC report is still a mystery.
It's all here: the hockey stick shenanigans, the poor quality of the temperature data bases, the ignoring of Urban Heat Island effects (cities are warmer than countryside, and growing cities absorb what used to be rural weather stations), the uncertainties that are brushed under the carpet, the over-reliance on computer simulations rather than gathering actual data, the politicization of science.  The opening lays out the indictment:
Plagued by reports of sloppy work, falsifications and exaggerations, climate research is facing a crisis of confidence. How reliable are the predictions about global warming and its consequences? And would it really be the end of the world if temperatures rose by more than the much-quoted limit of two degrees Celsius?
This is astonishingly fair for a mass media publication.  Long time readers here will recognize much of this but the fact that it's published in Germany's equivalent of Time Magazine is nothing short of astonishing.  Anthony Watts speculates that the political climate in German has changed, with Nuclear power generation being replaced en mass by Coal, leading to a political benefit for climate skepticism.  I'm not sure if this is the reason or not, but if even the eco-friendly Germans are in full skeptic mode, this is bad juju for the carbon catastrophists.

Watts also points out that the reliance on "renewable" electricity and the required subsidies to make it viable have resulted in the average German's electricity bills rising over 60% since 2000.  That's also very bad news for Obama's climate agenda.  Donna Laframboise puts this in terms that I've used here, objecting to stupid, useless environmental regulation:
The greens have been very clear. Climate change is due to too much CO2. Therefore energy use, which produces CO2, must be slashed. Therefore prices should rise sharply to discourage people from using energy.

No other serious analysis has been advanced by the big green machine. That’s the basic climate change argument. The problem is that this amounts to a war against the poor.
A "War on the Poor" is worse than stupid and useless regulation, when you think about it.  Here's the sound bite for the Stupid Party to use when Obama announces the details of his climate policy.

3 comments:

ProudHillbilly said...

There was an article in Der Spiegal a couple months ago about the fact that green legislation caused the cost of power to sky-rocket. The dream of everybody with their own little solar power source who makes money by feeding extra power back over the lines doesn't work - the grid can't take it. They are having to buy from neighboring countries like France who have nuke plants.

Paladin said...

They should graph the amount of time the networks spent beating me down with coverage of Hurripocalypse Sandygeddon before it made landfall.

SiGraybeard said...

Couple of thoughts, if you'll humor me.

First, to No other serious analysis has been advanced by the big green machine. That’s the basic climate change argument. The problem is that this amounts to a war against the poor. That's easy. Redistribute the rich people's money. Hasn't the last 4 years been nothing but tax the rich/spread the wealth? Anyone making over (what was it?) $40 K in the US is in the richest 1% in the world, and can have their income redistributed overseas.

Second, you really can't disprove a religion, which is what the modern climate belief is. The whole article over at Donna Laframboise is about how "global warming is not just about science and…it is not just a political issue. It is really a moral issue." as Gore puts it. They want to make it a religion. Religions require faith.