How the GW myth is perpetuated
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Rex Murphy
Toronto is having a Newfoundland summer.
Now I don't mean, even though it would be a wonderful idea, that there are bake-apple festivals at Bloor and Yonge. Or that the Bay Street stockbrokers are out jigging codfish on “food fish” weekends. Though that, too, would be an encouraging, even edifying, spectacle.
No, what I mean is that, for most of July, temperatures in the Ontario capital and beyond are in that sweet temperate zone of the low 20s, and there seem to be as many grey and rainy days as sunny ones. With a great heave of homesickness, I've even seen fog obscuring the shoreline of Lake Ontario and the nether parts of the metropolis itself. I know it's odd, but when I see the Royal York hotel clouded by mist, I immediately think of Twillingate.
For Toronto, a Newfoundland summer in 2009 is a godsend. Because as all of Canada and a good portion of the world knows, this city is caught in the turmoil of a garbage strike. Its citizens are doing the best they can with the ever-growing heaps of garbage, but it's been a hard go.
For a city that so much prides itself on its environmental credentials - Toronto professes to be green with evangelical fervour - it really hurts to be seen as a giant litter box. Nightly news shots of rats making a buffet of the mountains of mess are a blow to civic pride, as well as a health hazard. And the smell: As Maclean's magazine put it so delicately on its recent cover, Toronto Stinks.
Which is one reason why having a Newfoundland summer in Toronto this year has been such a great piece of luck. The strike has been - just - bearable because the city has been cool, grey and rainy. Just like home.
I find it curious, though, that the city is so ambivalent in its response to this cooler-than-normal summer. Curious because it's very obvious that, if the weather were hotter, what now “stinks” would be rancid, what is barely tolerable would be utterly unendurable. Yet, night after night on most of the city's TV news shows, you hear in the faux hearty chatter that is now obligatory in the weather segment great moaning and whining about “where has our summer gone?”
Personally, I don't know what it is they're yearning for. More days of blistering mid-30-degree saunas during a garbage strike? Surely not. But gurgle on they do, hoping or promising for hotter days yet to come.
What we do not hear from them, from any one of them, is the slightest indication of puzzlement over how or why so suddenly, in this age of the greatest emergency our planet has ever faced - global warming - things have gotten cool. Not a furrowed brow among the lot over the consideration that, contrary to the visions of Al Gore and David Suzuki or NASA's own anti-global warming Nostradamus, James Hansen, the great trend line of an ever-warming world is being contradicted nightly in their own forecasts.
I do recall, however, when, during the few periods Toronto was experiencing higher-than-normal temperatures - there was that period, remember, almost coincident with Stéphane Dion's election as federal Liberal leader, when Ontario warmed up more than usual - no weathercast was complete without some reference to global warming. That the then current conditions were “proof” or “another sign” or an “indication” that global warming was upon us. When every weathercast was incomplete without some pointed reference to how “unusual” such weather was.
I bring this up merely to make a single point. Not that these studio meteorologists were making the elementary mistake of confounding weather with climate, for this is a distinction familiar now even to kindergartners. Rather, to point out how “accepted” the vague, soft, but relentlessly propagandized theory of global warming has become. That being on the “right” side of the global warming argument is so very much the politically correct place to be. It's the “virtuous” side to be on, so naturally our supper-hour meteorologists, even if unconsciously, were eager to encourage virtue.
Now, however, Toronto in July is cool and I am waiting in vain for the lips of just one forecaster to ask how can this be. Waiting just once to hear the familiar phrase “global warming” in a sentence that even hints that the theory behind it is so much more tentative than we have been urged with such fervour to believe.
And while I'm waiting, perhaps I could recommend to people who study or report on the weather a wonderfully comprehensive and fearless book on the subject by Australian geologist Ian Plimer called Heaven and Earth: Global Warming - The Missing Science. If there are any willing to hear some truly inconvenient truths on the stampeding advocacy of global warming, Mr. Plimer's book is a collection of some of the sternest.
Toronto is having a Newfoundland summer.
Now I don't mean, even though it would be a wonderful idea, that there are bake-apple festivals at Bloor and Yonge. Or that the Bay Street stockbrokers are out jigging codfish on “food fish” weekends. Though that, too, would be an encouraging, even edifying, spectacle.
No, what I mean is that, for most of July, temperatures in the Ontario capital and beyond are in that sweet temperate zone of the low 20s, and there seem to be as many grey and rainy days as sunny ones. With a great heave of homesickness, I've even seen fog obscuring the shoreline of Lake Ontario and the nether parts of the metropolis itself. I know it's odd, but when I see the Royal York hotel clouded by mist, I immediately think of Twillingate.
For Toronto, a Newfoundland summer in 2009 is a godsend. Because as all of Canada and a good portion of the world knows, this city is caught in the turmoil of a garbage strike. Its citizens are doing the best they can with the ever-growing heaps of garbage, but it's been a hard go.
For a city that so much prides itself on its environmental credentials - Toronto professes to be green with evangelical fervour - it really hurts to be seen as a giant litter box. Nightly news shots of rats making a buffet of the mountains of mess are a blow to civic pride, as well as a health hazard. And the smell: As Maclean's magazine put it so delicately on its recent cover, Toronto Stinks.
Which is one reason why having a Newfoundland summer in Toronto this year has been such a great piece of luck. The strike has been - just - bearable because the city has been cool, grey and rainy. Just like home.
I find it curious, though, that the city is so ambivalent in its response to this cooler-than-normal summer. Curious because it's very obvious that, if the weather were hotter, what now “stinks” would be rancid, what is barely tolerable would be utterly unendurable. Yet, night after night on most of the city's TV news shows, you hear in the faux hearty chatter that is now obligatory in the weather segment great moaning and whining about “where has our summer gone?”
Personally, I don't know what it is they're yearning for. More days of blistering mid-30-degree saunas during a garbage strike? Surely not. But gurgle on they do, hoping or promising for hotter days yet to come.
What we do not hear from them, from any one of them, is the slightest indication of puzzlement over how or why so suddenly, in this age of the greatest emergency our planet has ever faced - global warming - things have gotten cool. Not a furrowed brow among the lot over the consideration that, contrary to the visions of Al Gore and David Suzuki or NASA's own anti-global warming Nostradamus, James Hansen, the great trend line of an ever-warming world is being contradicted nightly in their own forecasts.
I do recall, however, when, during the few periods Toronto was experiencing higher-than-normal temperatures - there was that period, remember, almost coincident with Stéphane Dion's election as federal Liberal leader, when Ontario warmed up more than usual - no weathercast was complete without some reference to global warming. That the then current conditions were “proof” or “another sign” or an “indication” that global warming was upon us. When every weathercast was incomplete without some pointed reference to how “unusual” such weather was.
I bring this up merely to make a single point. Not that these studio meteorologists were making the elementary mistake of confounding weather with climate, for this is a distinction familiar now even to kindergartners. Rather, to point out how “accepted” the vague, soft, but relentlessly propagandized theory of global warming has become. That being on the “right” side of the global warming argument is so very much the politically correct place to be. It's the “virtuous” side to be on, so naturally our supper-hour meteorologists, even if unconsciously, were eager to encourage virtue.
Now, however, Toronto in July is cool and I am waiting in vain for the lips of just one forecaster to ask how can this be. Waiting just once to hear the familiar phrase “global warming” in a sentence that even hints that the theory behind it is so much more tentative than we have been urged with such fervour to believe.
And while I'm waiting, perhaps I could recommend to people who study or report on the weather a wonderfully comprehensive and fearless book on the subject by Australian geologist Ian Plimer called Heaven and Earth: Global Warming - The Missing Science. If there are any willing to hear some truly inconvenient truths on the stampeding advocacy of global warming, Mr. Plimer's book is a collection of some of the sternest.
Debunking Ian Plimer’s “Heaven and Earth”
This is a collection of scientific assessments and commentaries on Heaven and Earth: Global Warming: The Missing Science, a book by Ian Plimer which attempts to deny that human activities are responsible for potentially dangerous climate change.
Kurt Lambeck, earth scientist and president of the Australian Academy of Science, comments on ABC Radio National’s “Ockham’s Razor” about Heaven and Earth. Audio with transcript. (Short link: Ockham's Razor - 7 June 2009 - Comments on Heaven and Earth: Global Warming: The Missing Science)
This is a collection of scientific assessments and commentaries on Heaven and Earth: Global Warming: The Missing Science, a book by Ian Plimer which attempts to deny that human activities are responsible for potentially dangerous climate change.
Kurt Lambeck, earth scientist and president of the Australian Academy of Science, comments on ABC Radio National’s “Ockham’s Razor” about Heaven and Earth. Audio with transcript. (Short link: Ockham's Razor - 7 June 2009 - Comments on Heaven and Earth: Global Warming: The Missing Science)
To give his arguments a semblance of respectability the book is replete with references. But the choice is very selective. Plimer will quote, for example, a paper that appears to support his argument, but then he does not mention that the conclusions therein have been completely refuted in subsequent papers. Elsewhere, he refers to a specific question raised in published work but does not mention that this issue has subsequently been resolved, has been incorporated in subsequent analyses, and is no longer relevant. Or he simply misquotes the work or takes it out of context. An example of this is a reference to my own in the Mediterranean where he gives quite a misleading twist to what we actually concluded.
Other examples can be identified in this section, and throughout the book. Together they point to either carelessness, to a lack of understanding of the underlying science, or to an attempt to see the world through tinted spectacles.
Climate scientist Barry Brook has a page of notes on Heaven and Earth, including links to other commentaries. (Short link: Ian Plimer – Heaven and Earth « BraveNewClimate.com )Other examples can be identified in this section, and throughout the book. Together they point to either carelessness, to a lack of understanding of the underlying science, or to an attempt to see the world through tinted spectacles.
Ian Plimer’s book is a case study in how not to be objective. Decide on your position from the outset, and then seek out all the facts that apparently support your case, and discard or ignore all of those that contravene it. He quotes a couple of thousand peer-reviewed scientific papers when mounting specific arguments. What Ian doesn’t say is that the vast majority of these authors have considered the totality of evidence on the topic of human-induced global warming and conclude that it is real and a problem.
t may well be held up as an example for the future. An example of just how deluded and misrepresentative the psuedo-sceptical war against science really was in the first decade of the 21st century.
Mathematician Ian Enting has produced Ian Plimer’s ‘Heaven + Earth’—Checking the Claims, a 31-page document listing the errors and problems in Heaven and Earth. (Short link: bit.ly/entingplimer )
Overall:
• it has numerous internal inconsistencies;
• it often misrepresents the operation of the IPCC and the content of IPCC reports;
• in spite of the extensive referencing, key data are unattributed and the content of references is often mis-quoted.
Most importantly, Ian Plimer fails to establish his claim that the human influence on climate can be ignored, relative to natural variations.
Earth scientist Andrew Glikson responds with Plimer wants to talk science? OK, here goes… in Crikey (Short link: Plimer wants to talk science? OK, here goes… - Crikey )• it has numerous internal inconsistencies;
• it often misrepresents the operation of the IPCC and the content of IPCC reports;
• in spite of the extensive referencing, key data are unattributed and the content of references is often mis-quoted.
Most importantly, Ian Plimer fails to establish his claim that the human influence on climate can be ignored, relative to natural variations.
Plimer’s book claims current global warming is a natural event consistent with climate variability through time and attributed primarily to the sun.
The book negates the well documented consistent relations between climate and carbon gases, which through the Earth’s history resulted in temperature changes in the range of several degrees C , including abrupt climate changes and related mass extinction of species .
Climate scientist David Karoly reviews Heaven and Earth (audio with transcript):The book negates the well documented consistent relations between climate and carbon gases, which through the Earth’s history resulted in temperature changes in the range of several degrees C , including abrupt climate changes and related mass extinction of species .
Given the errors, the non-science, and the nonsense in this book, it should be classified as science fiction in any library that wastes its funds buying it. The book can then be placed on the shelves alongside Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, another science fiction book about climate change with many footnotes. The only difference is that there are fewer scientific errors in State of Fear.
No science in Plimer’s primer by astronomer Michael Ashley in The Australian. (Short link: No science in Plimer's primer | The Australian )
Plimer has done an enormous disservice to science, and the dedicated scientists who are trying to understand climate and the influence of humans, by publishing this book. It is not “merely” atmospheric scientists that would have to be wrong for Plimer to be right. It would require a rewriting of biology, geology, physics, oceanography, astronomy and statistics. Plimer’s book deserves to languish on the shelves along with similar pseudo-science such as the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and Erich von Daniken.
The science is missing from Ian Plimer’s “Heaven and Earth” by computer scientist and climate change commentator Tim Lambert. (Short link: The science is missing from Ian Plimer's "Heaven and Earth" : Deltoid )
He accepts any factoid that supports his conclusion and rejects any evidence that contradicts his conclusion.
A review by geologist and planetary scientist Malcolm Walter on The Science Show, ABC Radio National. Audio. (Short link: Heaven + Earth - review by Malcolm Walter - Science Show - 6 June 2009 )
He has done a disservice to science and the community at large.
Mike Pope does a nice job at Online Opinion of debunking Plimer’s central claims in Heaven, Earth and science fiction, concluding:
To avoid following the polar bear to extinction, homo sapiens would do well to reject the science fiction espoused by Plimer. That may be a bit harsh on science fiction writers whose work is often prescient, even plausible. No such claims can be made for Ian Plimer’s book.
Short link for this post: to be precise » Blog Archive » Debunking Ian Plimer’s “Heaven and Earth”
Climate change has always been involved with man's development throughout history. For example there was global warming between 800 - 1200 A.D. We cannot blame that on man. Climate change has always brought about change, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. We either adapt or become extinct.
Vikings During the Medieval Warm Period - Influence of Dramatic Climate Shifts on European Civilizations: The Rise and Fall of the Vikings and the Little Ice Age
Vikings During the Medieval Warm Period - Influence of Dramatic Climate Shifts on European Civilizations: The Rise and Fall of the Vikings and the Little Ice Age
Absolutely, albeit a small part of the globe and temporary as well.........:lol::lol::lol:
TUKTOYAKTUK, Northwest Territories – The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square miles (square kilometers) of ice in a relentless summer of melt, with scientists watching through satellite eyes for a possible record low polar ice cap.
Vast expanses of Arctic ice melt in summer heat - Yahoo! News
Vast expanses of Arctic ice melt in summer heat - Yahoo! News
Maybe sometime, north of 60 and in the Antartic may be the only habitable places on the planet to live. The rest will be just too hot or humid or both.
Now, wouldn't that sound stupid knowing what we know now? I guess some people do all their thinking in straight lines, though. Gotta feel sorry for the ole sods.