Bishop Hill Is there an environment conference on the way?
Mar 25, 2012 BBC Climate: WG2 I guess there must be - the BBC is doing its usual pulling out of all the stops to get AGW plastered across the airwaves. Tuesday's Horizon is about an alleged increase in "freak weather".
Something weird seems to be happening to our weather - it appears to be getting more extreme.
In the past few years we have shivered through two record-breaking cold winters and parts of the country have experienced intense droughts and torrential floods. It is a pattern that appears to be playing out across the globe. Hurricane chasers are recording bigger storms and in Texas, record-breaking rain has been followed by record-breaking drought.
Horizon follows the scientists who are trying to understand what's been happening to our weather and investigates if these extremes are a taste of whats to come.
H/T Climate Realists, who note that the show will feature Kerry Emanuel and Katharine Hayhoe, among others.
Reader Comments (49)
Slippery customers. When the perpetual mild winters they've been forecasting fail to materialise the expression 'Global Warming' is quietly dropped. Now it's the 'worrying' extremes - as if there were no such extremes in the past.
"No repetition of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl" and "Basking Sharks off the Isle of Man: No Change" wouldn't sell many newspapers. When will these plonkers accept that it's business as usual in the worlds's climate?
The Marxists are going for broke. Notice how Nurse was on TV recently pretending to be a bloke instead of an admitted past SWP activist. The tactic has apparently been to falsify climate science and to use use organisations like the BBC to scare the population into accepting the end of democracy. The same is happening in Germany, the US and Australia.
In Australia the voters have however woken up to the destruction of scientific integrity but their politicians have been remarkably ineffective. Here it's a battle to stop those whose pay off will be to become EU commissioners from destroying the economy. Harriers, Tory funding, Huhne, outright aggression by CACC and UCS trolls, the big picture appears to be emerging.
Err, I kind of thought hurricanes were so big and covered such a lot of area, they did the chasing.
Tornadoes on the other hand...
Does anybody know when it was recorded??
I will be very interested in Katie Hayhoe's contribution.. If you communicate to the public, you must expect communication and criticism back (polite of course)
I hope her contribution is better than ther climate change slides.. ie 10 year old emission data shown, makes a very different picture then vs now.. ie China way behind, now way ahead, and increasing yr on yr per capita..
Then there is the s 7 snaphots before and after - glaciers melting, ie 1900's vs now..
one glacier I looke up lost 80% of it's length pre the 1960's, and actually GREW a bit in the 80's..
took me about 5 minutes to find the official Swiss website with a hundred and 50 years of annual measurement for all glaciers in the region.. Why couldn't she..
Thankfully she has removed the 300k climate change deaths slide (GHF cite, same as Greenpeace use) but it took Richard and Tamsin's help to achieve that...
TerryS,
That is a direct quote from the BBC; it is the BBC; they are always right; therefore, you must be wrong.
The logic does seem to be that, if you cannot accept that this change in the climate is the fault of humans, you are denying that there is any climate change. This is a very bizarre logic - perhaps they will soon insist that, if you cannot accept that the Sun rises by European edict, then you are denying that the Sun does not rise.
Oops...
...perhaps I shouldn't have said that - it might give someone ideas!
Damn! Please forgive my typo.... The Sun DOES rise.
Barty Woods - oops!!
that was me Barry Woods.
Anybody know when the interviews were recorded?
Re: Barty Woods
How do you expect us to take you seriously when can not even spell your own name?
I CAN spell... sadly though - can't type.. and the kids are a bit distracting, so rush, rush, rush
Don't worry, Bazza.
PS: You made some good points to Tamsin on her latest Science Exhibition thread.
From the Radio Times: This is not exactly true though is it?
http://www.radiotimes.com/episode/pymy9/horizon--horizon-global-weirding
"The work of scientists trying to understand why the world's weather seems to be getting more extreme and if these patterns are a taste of what is to come."
comments are open.
David Appell has some thoughts on a critical vein, ref Bill McKibben views on wierding
http://davidappell.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/bill-mcfibben-on-weirdest-weather.html?m=1
If Tamsin really did go and buy straws to "prove" the oceans (yes all of them) are turning into acid then it would be a Straw Woman fallacy :)
Something weird is not happening to our weather. In 1948 snow and ice covered Britain for 3 months. A flash flood in 1952 destroyed Lynmouth killing over 20 people, In 1953 a storm surge flooded East Anglia killing over 300 people, while in 1976 we had the worst drought in living memory.
There is zero evidence that in the last few years the weather is getting more extreme.
This is not science. It is social engineering.
That made me chuckle.. and helped me understand how it happened in t'other thread, an' all! Don't forget to fix it! LOL!
Clive Best
and looking further back in my old friend the Angloe Saxon Chronicle
In the winter of 1141, Stephen besieged Matilda in Oxford Castle, and if he had captured her, he might have won the war. But she escaped over the snow, camouflaged by being dressed in white.
A.D. 1046. This year went Earl Sweyne into Wales; and Griffin, king of the northern men with him; and hostages were delivered to him. As he returned homeward, he ordered the Abbess of Leominster to be fetched him; and he had her as long as he list, after which he let her go home. In this same year was outlawed Osgod Clapa, the master of horse, before midwinter. And in the same year, after Candlemas, came the strong winter, with frost and with snow, and with all kinds of bad weather; so that there was no man then alive who could remember so severe a winter as this was, both through loss of men and through loss of cattle; yea, fowls and fishes through much cold and hunger perished.
A.D. 1115. This year was the King Henry on the Nativity in Normandy. And whilst he was there, he contrived that all the head men in Normandy did homage and fealty to his son William, whom he had by his queen. And after this, in the month of July, he returned to this land. This year was the winter so severe, with snow and with frost, that no man who was then living ever remembered one more severe; in consequence of which there was great destruction of cattle. During this year the Pope Paschalis sent the pall into this land to Ralph, Archbishop of Canterbury; and he received it with great worship at his archiepiscopal stall in Canterbury. It was brought hither from Rome by Abbot Anselm, who was the nephew of Archbishop Anselm, and the Abbot John of Peterborough.
Sandy Sinclair
is Tom Jones booked already?
Yes Barry, totally solid comments on the Tamsin thread - I learnt a lot about the British Science Association etc, from that springboard. I found it interesting how Tamsin never once paused to think why at all there were three display stands for climate science in a kids event where they got together and put out such simplistic messages. Heat->melts->ice. Who would have thought of teaching that?
These are the averaged temperature anomalies in degrees C. for all weather stations in the UK & Ireland since 1940 using the CRU/Met Office data. Sorry for the boring list of numbers ! - If you want to see it plotted out click here
1940 0.04
1941 -0.37
1942 -0.14
1943 0.71
1944 0.21
1945 0.77
1946 0.29
1947 -0.12
1948 0.42
1949 0.98
1950 0.23
1951 -0.55
1952 -0.17
1953 0.39
1954 -0.08
1955 0.03
1956 -0.27
1957 0.54
1958 0.01
1959 0.83
1960 0.39
1961 0.30
1962 -0.68
1963 -0.72
1964 0.11
1965 -0.53
1966 -0.13
1967 0.06
1968 -0.04
1969 -0.21
1970 -0.12
1971 0.34
1972 -0.08
1973 0.20
1974 -0.11
1975 0.55
1976 0.62
1977 -0.30
1978 0.10
1979 -0.72
1980 -0.01
1981 0.14
1982 0.04
1983 0.24
1984 0.28
1985 -0.46
1986 -0.70
1987 -0.29
1988 0.24
1989 0.95
1990 0.77
1991 0.19
1992 0.44
1993 0.01
1994 0.17
1995 0.89
1996 -0.13
1997 0.76
1998 0.72
1999 0.85
2000 0.42
2001 0.36
2002 0.80
2003 1.01
2004 0.86
2005 0.98
2006 1.09
2007 1.14
2008 0.70
2009 0.84
2010 -0.16
2011 0.23
It might not be a conference. I notice that the media does this sort of thing any time the weather is unusually warm. Has the weather been warmer than normal in the UK?
It is their way of saying "see! global warming!" without really coming right out and saying it.
I must remember to feel sorry for the record breaking athletes at the upcoming Olympic games. Using warmist logic, any new records at the end of a long period of observation can only be achieved through unnatural man made means.
It has been an extremely dull summer in NZ, though I think my car got struck by lightning on Sunday. (A blinding flash of light appeared before me, and then the indicators went crazy for a while)
On the other hand, it might have been a biblical experience.
Is this part of the alarming increase in tax payer funded organizations broadcasting shows created with lobbying group funding?
Given their penchant for delving into the 'motivations' of climate commentators, and their zeal for transparency, I am sure (sarc) that the BBC will be declaring the paid work Emmanuel has undertaken for the reinsurance industry on weather events.
another "event" and still making it up as they go along…
26 March: BBC: Richard Black: UK carbon measuring centre ‘to improve climate future’
The Centre for Carbon Measurement will be based at the National Physical Laboratory in south west London.
It will raise accuracy of climate data, support better emissions monitoring to ensure a fair carbon market, and verify claims made about low-carbon products.
It will be formally launched at the Planet Under Pressure event in London.
The four-day conference will see thousands of delegates discuss various aspects of social and environmental sustainability in the run-up to the Rio+20 summit in June…
“Data from ground based stations and satellites is fed into climate models, and they spit out conclusions on things like sea level rise and other climate impacts,” said Jane Burston, the CCM’s (Centre for Carbon Measurement)head.
“So the better data we have, the better we can make the models,” she told BBC News…
Scientists have previously shown that there can be wide disparities between emission levels reported by companies – which are usually based on calculations involving, for example, how much fuel they burn and the efficiency of their plant – and what is measured in the atmosphere…
“We need to make sure that our measurement infrastructure matches our level of ambition,” said Ms Burston.
“As the carbon market takes off and carbon becomes more expensive, we’re going to want to measure things better.”…
The centre will help manufacturers develop their products and measure their performance, in order to make sure that companies’ claims for “climate-friendliness” are based in reality…
David Willets, Minister for Universities and Science, whose government department manages the UK’s various national measurement programmes, said the science of measurement was essential in underpinning the transition to a low carbon economy.
“As the UK is a world leader in both measurement science and the centre of the global carbon market it is only right that we develop the right infrastructure to support this transition,” he said…
Richard will be at the Planet Under Pressure conference on Monday and Tuesday…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17488932
Mar 25, 2012 at 10:34 PM | Jack Hughes: Don't worry, Bazza.
PS: You made some good points to Tamsin on her latest Science Exhibition thread.
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Just been over there and can honestly say that I've never read so much crap (our PM in Oz says its ok to use this word) in my life about the impacts on corals and crustacia. For the apparent academic qualifications of these "ocean acidification" proponents they certainly did not learn much in the way of common sense.
Having propagated small polyped stony coral in captive environments for around 20-something years, I can attest to their thriving in pH as low as 7.7 . CO2 levels indoors in winter easily exceed the wildest claimed atmospheric concentrations and has not resulted in "acidification" of any of my display tanks ... not even when using a calcium reactor driven by pressurised CO2 to boost calcium levels.
Tamasin is indeed misrepresenting the science to innocent young minds incapable of discerning the impossible scenario that is being embedded in their minds. What is the content of CO2 being disbursed into the water ( seawater ? ) through the straw ... is it even vaguely close to what is modelled by the xbox climate models ?
The simple reason so many people believe weather is getting more extreme across the world? Something called television. Added to by satellite television, video cameras, video phones, internet, YouTube, etc. Decades ago, extreme weather in a far part of the world - without any dramatic pictures, at best would merit a few lines on an inside page.
And the IPCC itself finds very little evidence for increased extreme weather. At best "low to medium confidence"
http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/
I have to say I thought this gem from Tamsin on the "Science Exhibition" thread was wonderful
"Revising predictions and theory in the light of new evidence is what science is all about – we’re not going to sit on our hands refusing to give an answer until we know everything, because that will never happen…"
If only the first part was true of climate modelling.
Judging by the description of the exhibition, the second part means - we maintain the right to be as scary as we need to get the "cause" over.
The destruction of science is truly scary.
"Something weird seems to be happening to our weather"... But wasn't it UNSW's Prof Matthew England who said recently:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/13173650/scientists-fear-climate-confusion-after-wet-summer/
It's a funny old consensus.
Planet under pressure. Organised by stakeholder forum. All roads lead to Rio and the bbc is along for the ride.
Clive Best: Further to your list of UK temperatures - or rather anomalies - the scaremongers want us to concentrate on the roasting Arctic rathet than the sheer normality of where we live.
The Arctic data is being shamelessly fiddled. Some forensics at: http://endisnighnot.blogspot.com/#!/2012/03/giss-strange-anomalies.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9166540/BBCs-Television-Centre-infested-with-rats.html
Oakwood - the internet also makes it easy for researchers to find information on current an recent events/examples of extreme weather. But to find information on notable historic events and their magnitude and/or frequency takes much more time, as it inevitably involves looking up books or newspapers etc.. Who wants to spend hours looking through micro-fiche archives nowadays when it is much easier to use a browser and search engine? That said Stephen Goddard at Real Science has made a good effort to find historical examples of floods/droughts/hurricanes from old newspaper articles, and put them on the web, to make the point that extreme weather events are not peculiar to contemporary times.
Watch them all come out of the woodwork as Rio and the prospect of Agenda 21++ approaches.
That the BBC are promoting 'the agenda' using my taxes really needs to be 'looked at' should the campaign fail. As does the charitable status of the useful idiots fuelling what is so obviously a global political movement. This isn't going to end well.
Indeed. As for the recent extreme rainfall events in Cornwall (Boswell), Gloucestershire and Cumbria, (the latter of which has been regularly cited as evidence of AGW by Jon Snow on Channel 4 news) these were absolutely nothing exceptional given some historical context.
In terms of river flow, it is very likely that by far the most extreme rainfall events in the UK occurred on the River Findhorn catchment in 1829, where flows have been calculated (from comparisons with the high water mark in the 1970 'muckle spate') to have exceeded 2500 cumecs (both events greater than the River Tay flood of January 1993, which followed a succession of Atlantic systems bringing heavy rain and snow over the entire and much larger catchment, the last of which was very mild and and led to the rapid thaw of both high and low level snow). There have been greater historical floods on the Tay, but it is probably the much smaller River Tyne (Newcastle) which holds the record in the scientific era; the peak flow during the flood of 1771 has been calculated to have been greater than 3000 cumecs. A truly astonishing figure to have been generated by a summer rainstorm event.
The point being missed here is that so called "freak weather" has been forecast to happen at some time in the future at the hot-end of the climate spectrum.
Now anyone who has followed this debate will note that the above is one big lie.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL047711.shtml
The viewing public are to be deliberately misled if that lie is to be broadcast on BBC's Horizon.
Mac; the climate models are bunkum because they are based on incorrect physics for the claimed GHG warming.
Thus the IR absorption by the atmosphere has been exaggerated by a factor of 4.3 and the claimed experimental proof, pyrgeometer measurements, have been badly misinterpreted.
As for the intrinsic thermalisation, that appears to bee much lower than claimed.
Quite frankly, anyone who accepts the IPCC case is a case of sausages short of a pretty pathetic barbecue.
MDGNN
10 years ago climate scientists forecast that there WOULD be no more cold and snowy winters and to prepare for deluges.
10 years on we are being told that by the same climate scientists that they DID forecast more cold and snowy winters, and droughts.
10 years hence we will probably be told by the same climate scientists that they DID forecast the world would cool.
Honestly Mystic Meg does a better job than this mob.
And she cost the public purse much less.
Great the ministry of truth should be doing this sort of well sexy/scary not the truth but a better kind of truth programming I mean up here on Anglesey we are all burning to death 2 whole days of sun? ye gods the rapture is upon us ! but to ease my troubled mind, what are these extreme events ? where are happening see cos I can find little if anything about mass death, destruction Armageddon, cats sleeping with dogs ? is the BBC hiding this from us ? .
I also have no doubts storm chasers are a great ref on beer and the best motel rooms but they only see tiny parts of storm systems and mainly run about on vids shouting "oh my god" "oh my god" a lot I'm not sure they are truly on the ball on this !
I'm sure Horizon will mention Indur Goklany's painstaking work on deaths from extreme climate events over the last hundred years. I'm not aware of any attempt to find fault with this research so one has to assume that the experts accept Goklany's findings that such fatalities have been falling since the 1920s, with all that entails for the catastrophic in CAGW. I'm sure that nobody in the BBC would wish to use a few anecdotal disasters in the run-up to Rio+20 to give a misleading impression to viewers without reference to the necessary attendant research.
Saw Roger Harrabin on BBC news 24 interviewing some green author, Harrabin looking rather haggard (you been getting at him, Bish?), author not being too OTT - obviously not enough for Harrabin. When he couldn't get the author to forecast Armageddon, he finished lamely with "But surely Climate Change is the biggest problem facing the planet". He didn't get much change out of that either.
lapogus 10:15 AM
The Great Flood marker at Randolph's Leap is a prime example that extremes of weather in modern times are tame in comparison with historic occasions - and we still see truly spine-chilling spates on the Findhorn.
One of my favourite walks is along the river Thames at Twickenham, and there's an old wall with a small plaque about 8 feet from the ground which marks the water level on 12th March 1774, when the river flooded, apparently due to a hard frost and heavy snowfall, followed by a very rapid thaw and heavy rain. The water is said to have risen 10 feet above its normal level, on that day - and came close to that mark several times in decades after that.
I'm old enough to (just) remember the winter of 1946/7, the Lynmouth flood of 1953 and the winter of 1962/3 - so extreme events are increasing are they?
As for Horizon, it became excoriatingly unwatchable many years ago. (fortunately Radio 4 still does some quite good science now that they've rid it of the IPCC mouthpiece of Leading Edge)
I have yet to see an experiment purporting to show negative side effects of decreased pH that isn't seriously flawed. Ocean pH will slowly decrease over decades, and yet these experiments often more than double the amount of CO2 in a few hours to days and then examine the effects over a couple more days, if that, leaving little time for any serious long-term adaptation to take place. Even after these extreme changes, the effects, if any, are usually relatively modest.
- It would be funny if before & during the twisting of reality show the twittersphere was full of links to real #GlobalWeirding weather events in ancients times like starting from the extreme drought of 1947 & working backwards in time.
- Anyone see them hyping up the drought on BBC Countryfile at Rutland Water ?
.....here's the 1947 Pathe video http://liberalengland.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/1947-drought-on-leicestershirerutland.html
- The BBC Enviro dept propaganda machine picks up again on Thursday morning with 5 live Breakfast's energy summit special. you can be there in the audience in Salford
http://www.bbc.co.uk/5live/energysummit/
Twitter : @bbc5live
I live in Texas. I have not yet seen a single hurricane wander overhead, and, as has been posted before, the things are kind of large and obvious. I do remember the predictions, back in the day of Katrina & Rita, that hurricane incidences would increase in size and severity, which, of course, they did not, but that hasn't stopped anyone from rabbiting on about them.
Rita went right over us and was a fairly impressive storm, so I think I'd be able to tell from simple observation out my front door if a hurricane went by again. If nothing else, cars floating by would be a signal, although that didn't happen in my neighborhood.
I'm pretty certain the scientists on this show have mistaken hurricanes for tornadoes, which, for those who don't know, are rather smaller. There have not really been that many of those either here in Texas, although there have been lots more than normal elsewhere in the US, one having taken out power at my father's house in Tennessee for something like a week.
Sadly, for the alarmists, Texas hasn't really had much at all in the way of weather for a year or so. The whole state was on fire for most of last summer as a result of no real storms. We've had a bad rain storm or two during the winter, and are possibly getting hail tonight or tomorrow night, but none of the weather has been particularly extreme by Texas' standards. Don't get me wrong; the state will get around to trying to kill us sooner or later, it just hasn't for a while.
I am getting ever more tired of news outlets getting facts wrong, especially when some simple fact checking could uncover the error. I bet nobody but us evil skeptics (valid US spelling) even notice the fact that the BBC believes Texas is being hammered repeatedly by a massively increased hurricane season, no matter how laughably inaccurate the assertion is...