Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Intellectual Chaos

... is what happens when you mix mountains of government funds available for climate research with a pro-warming political agenda. The UK's Meteorology Office claimed the winter was going to be mild.
The Met Office’s forecasts of warmer-than-average summers and winters have been so consistently at 180 degrees to the truth that, earlier this year, it conceded that it was dropping seasonal forecasting. Hence, last week, the Met Office issued a categorical denial to the Global Warming Policy Foundation that it had made any forecast for this winter. Immediately, however, several blogs, led by Autonomous Mind, produced evidence from the Met Office website that in October it did indeed publish a forecast for December, January and February. This indicated that they would be significantly warmer than last year, and that there was only “a very much smaller chance of average or below-average temperatures”.

The New York Times tells us that the harsh winter was a foregone conclusion.
In Brooklyn and Newark, it exceeds 24 inches, and, in Boston, which has received 18.2 inches, the story has not yet fully been told. Nor is this a freak accident. Seven of the last nine winters in the eastern United States and Eurasia have been exceptionally cold.

And what do we learn from the Grey Lady? Listen to Judah Cohen – “director of seasonal forecasting at” a suspiciously nameless “atmospheric and environmental research firm,” which, as you might guess, depends on government funding to support its research – who writes in that estimable journal that “the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes.”

Got that? “We’re freezing not in spite of climate change but because of it.”
What did you expect? Climate forecasting is notoriously inaccurate, but there were millions up for grabs if you claimed you could do it or if you just claimed you could predict some kind of consequences. What we've ended up with is a hodgepodge of contradictory research papers that can be used to find anything you wish.

There was another comment thread somewhere on the web where the original article claimed the cold winter disproved global warming. In the comments, activists posted links to journal articles which had predicted that global warming would cause such winters. These were immediately countered by journal article links claiming it wouldn't. This is a natural outcome of politicizing science.

The global warming industry used the press to peddle tales of doom in order to get more politically-based funding for research. Now those (contradictory) tales of doom can be used by either side to prove anything you want since the predictions were all over the map. Meanwhile, reality provides one refuting data point after another to each of them.
Nils-Axel Morner, head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden, argues that any concerns regarding rising sea levels are unfounded. "So all this talk that sea level rising, this comes from the computer modeling, not from observations. ... The new level, which has been stable, has not changed in the last 35 years. ... But they [IPCC] need a rise, because if there is no rise, there is no death threat ... if you want a grant for a research project in climatology, it is written into the document that there 'must' be a focus on global warming. ... That is really bad, because you start asking for the answer you want to get."
The end result of all of this will be cynicism from the press, the politicians and the public. Anyone standing with the global warming alarmists will end up looking like a fool, just like the UK MET Office.


It's another mild winter in England due to global warming.

6 comments:

Sissy Willis said...

Where is the cynicism from the press and most pols? They're in on the deception. It's only that part of the public that is paying attention that sees behind the curtain.

Anonymous said...

The cynicism of the press extends only to conservatives. Any person or cause to the left of Whoopy Goldberg and Joy Behar get a pass.

K T Cat said...

I'm going to disagree with both of you. The data conflicting with the assertions of doom is a cognitive dissonance that won't last forever. As an example of this, I offer the recent 60 Minutes piece on the States' crumbling financial situation. Any MSM piece showing how government was overspending would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Now, reality is forcing some of them to rethink their positions.

The members of the MSM aren't stupid or evil, they're just ideological and ideological people can change.

Have faith.

San Diego DUI Attorney said...

So much for global warming! The earth cools and heats over long cycles, this is to be expected.


San Diego DUI Attorney

Dean said...

There will be a tipping point. I think I might be able to see it in the distance, we just aren't there yet.

I don't think we see that 60 Minutes piece even 2 years ago. I think it was the EuroZone crisis (and unbelievably, not our own wreckless debt-inducing federal spending) that finally forced Big Media to acknowledge the ticking time bomb at the state levels.

Unknown said...

Let's see... millions of dollars of my funding depends on me finding the conclusion the guv'ment is hoping to hear. Guess what my research is going to find?

Can anyone but me see the problem here?