Rain, storm, flood; same old

The hype of the current period of wet and stormy weather is quite remarkable, but my perception is that the reality is rather more prosaic than the doommongers would have us believe. Some homes have been flooded; some stormwatchers have tragically lost their lives. But armageddon it most certainly is not.

And underlining this point, reader Martyn points us to the tale of the great storm of 1703, told at the time by Daniel Defoe and retold in this article in History Today.

The storm struck on a Wednesday evening and in London Daniel Defoe had a narrow escape in the street when part of a nearby house fell down. On the Friday, the 26th, the wind began to blow even harder and when he checked his barometer, he found the mercury sunk lower than he had ever seen it. After midnight the gale swelled to such force that it was almost impossible to sleep. The noise of the chimneys of neighbouring houses coming down made the family fear that their own solid brick house might collapse on their heads. But when they opened the door to escape into the garden, they saw tiles hurtling through the air, some travelling thirty or forty yards and then driven eight inches deep into the ground. The Defoes decided to stay inside and trust in God’s providence.

Calculated ambiguity

Take a look at the transcript of John Beddington's appearance on the Today programme a couple of days ago. It a masterful performance, replete with insinuation and devoid of explicit statements.

But what we have - what we can expect to see is an increasing frequency of extreme events.

That was neat wasn't it? Are we seeing an increased frequency of extreme events or is this just something that is seen in at the bottom of the climate teapot?

Click to read more ...

Fool in chief

I did wonder if applying the "Ship of Fools" tag to Chris Turney and his shipmates wasn't just a bit rude, but take a look at this video, recorded before his departure, in which he talks about the trip. You have to say that Turney does not come over well. And to spend most of the interview discussing the life and death nature of the expedition and the hardships they will face, before revealing that he is taking his wife and family along, is almost too much.

You can see how the trip might end in a shambles.

There must be some misunderstanding

The global warming debate is a tricky subject for leader and op-ed writers and you can always rely on there being some marvellous errors and misunderstandings when these generalists hold forth.

Today, the Sunday Times (£) carries a long opinion piece from Adam Boulton on the rise of the sceptics within the Conservative party. While we've seen hints of such a shift over the last few months, Boulton seems rather more certain than I am that it's a real phenomenon. He's also pretty sure that it's a mistake since swing voters are apparently more likely to be greens. I have no idea if this is true or not.

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Fish's water

With UK climatologists now generally on their best behaviour on the subject of a possible link between extreme weather and global warming, Channel Four news seems to have struggled to find someone credible to push the green line. They seem eventually to have persuaded the weather forecaster Michael Fish to give the sermon and you can see the results below. The line taken by the great man was, in essence, that although all the science has been unable to identify a link (unsurprising since there appears to be no actual evidence of adverse changes in weather extremes to explain), he could feel the causation in his water.  

Strewth.

Guardian: is totalitarianism the way forward?

Guardian Eco is, yet again, trying to set out its stall as the new home for totalitarianism in the international media, in an article questioning whether things would be a whole lot better if we didn't have freedom of the press any longer:

Should Australian newspapers, like Fairfax, publish opinion pieces that deny or seek to cast doubt on man-made global warming?

As the Guardian Media Group's financial black hole grows, its journalists will steadily be replaced by NGO activists. We should therefore expect more of this kind of thing in future.

Public losses

Updated on Jan 4, 2014 by Bishop Hill

The Mawson vacationers' exploits continue to amuse and appall in equal measure. After the happy campers were helicoptered to safety, the Chinese rescue ship itself became entrapped in the ice. There seems to be a suggestion this morning that they expect to free themselves imminently though.

The media have been far from supportive of Professor Turney's adventuring, with even a dyed-in-the-wool green like Andy Revkin highly critical of the need to divert resources away from serious research in order to rescue a team of public funded holidaymakers.

Click to read more ...

The bureaucracy's media defenders

The news this morning is that the Environment Agency is going to cut 1500 jobs in a bid to cut costs. In response. the mainstream media are beating their breasts and wailing about impending disaster. But there are flood warnings in force! Storm warnings! It's as if the whole metropolitan media elite are leaping to the defence of the public sector workers.

This news does, however, give me an opportunity to link to Inside the Environment Agency, a blog set up by agency insiders to expose the corruption, inefficiency and graft that goes on inside the agency. It's an amazing read and I thoroughly recommend it.

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Nature and the Sunday Sport

The paper by Steven Sherwood has been agitating those of a green disposition in recent days, with all sorts of wailing on Twitter about how we're going to hit four degrees of warming by the end of the century. This is certainly the story that Nature gave out in its press release:

Global average temperatures will rise at least 4°C by 2100 and potentially more than 8°C by 2200 if carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced according to new research published in Nature. Scientists found global climate is more sensitive to carbon dioxide than most previous estimates.

The research also appears to solve one of the great unknowns of climate sensitivity, the role of cloud formation and whether this will have a positive or negative effect on global warming.

Click to read more ...

Exeunt stage left

The evacuation of passengers from the Akademic Shokalskiy seems to have begun. The helicopter from the Chinese icebreaker, the Xue Long, is being used to transport them to the Australian ship, the Aurora Australis. It looks as if the passengers will get away in one piece. The crew of the Shokalskiy will have to wait and see.

You reap what you sow

Andrew Motion has quietly been composing five sonnets about climate change, which will be set to music by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the Master of the Queen's Music..."To me, climate change is so bleeding obvious. Anyone who thinks it's not happening should get outside more. It's such an appalling, huge, unapproachable subject...I've written a lament about it which has the air of a call to arms. Each sonnet tells a little story."

The Telegraph, May 2009

Wind farms have 'industrialised' the countryside, Sir Andrew Motion says. The president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England and former Poet Laureate condemns politicians' "gung-ho" emphasis on growth at the expense of natural landscape.

The Telegraph, January 2014

When the state acts the perverse incentives of the bureaucrats and the corruption of those that surround the government machine will be brought into play. So when Andrew Motion issued his call to arms he was effectively accepting that these forces would be unleashed.

He was playing with fire and now he must accept the part he played in the rape of the British landscape.

Happy new year, everyone

A toast to the successes of 2013 and to continued sweeping away of global warming dogma in 2014.

New Year's Eve Warmists' Party - Josh 254

Click image for a larger version

The Akademik Shokalskiy is much in the news, see here, here and at WUWT with an update here. So what better way to summarise the CAGW movement this year. And last year, and the year before that...

A Happy New Year to you all!

Cartoons by Josh

Winter jolly

The saga of the stricken Antarctic expedition continues to fascinate and intrigue. The news overnight is that all the passengers are to be evacuated by helicopter, leaving only the crew on board.

Meanwhile, Richard Tol has been noting the backgrounds of some of the researchers on board:

Ben Fisk

Ben is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Rural Emergency Medicine, Deakin University, researching rural and urban differences in traumatic brain injury outcomes.

James MacDiarmid

James trained as a Primary school teacher, with a Masters degree in Educational Leadership. He is currently completing his doctorate in educational sciences with a primary focus on the early years of both pre-school and primary students.

And so on. To be fair, there are some genuine climate scientists on board too, but with many of their fellow travellers clearly occupying the "free holiday" category the impression you get is of a carbon guzzling boondoggle rather than a research trip.

Slingong

Congratulations to Julia Slingo, who has been damed (if that's the right word) in the New Year's honours list.