Drought — the big dry
• Guest post •
— by John McLean
TV One’s great “climate change” campaign continued last Thursday, featuring a medley of nonsense about “extreme events” and New Zealand’s future scorching temperatures before sounding off about Donald Trump’s foolishness in withdrawing the USA from the Paris Climate Agreement. As we have come to expect, TVNZ was wrong on each point.
Extreme events have been with us for millions of years. When I was young we had heatwaves, droughts, floods and storms. We called them “weather”, talked about them for perhaps a day or two and then forgot about them. They often occurred with no-one to see them. These days the media claims that everything other than sunny or mild conditions is somehow an extreme event. It has turned us into “weather paranoids.”
It doesn’t take much research to discover that the number of hurricanes and cyclones has decreased in recent years, and to learn that they are more common under La Nina conditions (globally cooler) than El Nino conditions (globally warmer).
Did TV One make any effort at all? It’s easy to find that we had very few El Ninos in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s but considerably more after that, and that it’s highly likely this is a major reason for recent global warming.
Hurricanes and cyclones are driven in part by a difference in temperatures between the tropics and elsewhere, so we can expect them to decrease in number and severity if global temperatures increase. The rationale behind that is that the tropics won’t rise much at all but the mid to high latitudes will.
Manmade droughts? Don’t make me laugh
Manmade drought is the biggest joke of all. The simple fact is that higher temperatures don’t cause drought — drought causes higher temperatures. Evaporation of water is a mighty cooling process. Among other things, it helps keep tropical sea temperatures at a remarkably constant 30-31°C. But when there’s no surface moisture to evaporate, none of the sun’s energy is used by that process and it all goes into heating the Earth’s surface.
The predictions of New Zealand’s temperatures are another joke. The latest IPCC report discussed serious failings in climate models (chapter 9, text box 9.2) and comparing predicted and observed temperatures since 1990 supports what it says.
Climate alarmists make wild claims based on the output of climate models that they must know do not accurately embody every climate factor — and if they don’t know, they must be incompetent.
Consumer affairs watchdogs would take prompt action over false claims about consumer products and financial watchdogs likewise. Are we the only ones interested in broadcasting standards? TV One has been totally irresponsible in broadcasting unsubstantiated nonsense about climate change.
Trump quite sensible, really — no, really
With climate change, Donald Trump could be described as a courageous and sensible national leader. He said that he’d be interested in low-cost alternative methods of electricity generation but he would not cripple the US economy with high-cost systems. He’s defied the world and taken the US out of the Paris agreement.
US carbon dioxide emissions have fallen a long way. From 2005 to 2017 (12 years), absolute CO2 emissions fell by 12.4% and per capita emissions by 19.9%. The enormous irony is that its foreign critics have not reduced either their emissions or their criticism.
In contrast, emissions by Germany, a world leader in installing huge amounts of renewable energy, have not been reduced in nine years. Germany looks certain to fail to meet its 2020 targets, despite its ‘Energiewende’ (transition to green energy) doubling electricity prices since the year 2000, costing households 35 billion euros annually with 55% of their electricity bills made up of taxes and feed-in tariffs — which are subsidies for rich owners of wind turbines and solar panels.
We expect honesty. We want the complete story, the whole truth, and TV One is letting us down on climate change.
Views: 656
http://futureearth.org/news/cop23-10-science-must-knows-climate-change?utm_source=Climate+News+Network&utm_campaign=c77f2bbcf8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_11_13&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1198ea8936-c77f2bbcf8-38805141
Read a new statement from Future Earth and the Earth League called “The 10 Science ‘Must Knows’ on Climate Change” delivered at the Bonn Climate Change Conference on 13 November. [summary]
Where do we stand?
1. Evidence shows that Earth has entered a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – with profound implications for humanity and the relative stability of the Earth system.
2. Earth is approaching tipping points due to human pressures.
3. Risks of extreme weather are increasing.
4. Rising sea levels and ocean acidification are growing threats.
Why should we care?
5. The costs of climate change are already being felt today and will increase in the future.
6. Human health is at risk from air pollutants that alter the climate, and the impacts of a changing climate, which are decreasing food security and increasing the risks of disease and heat stress.
7. Climate change is likely to exacerbate the risk of large-scale migration and civil unrest.
How can we avoid dangerous impacts?
8. The world needs to act faster: deeper cuts are needed to reduce risk of global average temperature rising 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. A pathway of halving global emissions every decade is consistent with this goal.
9. Analyses suggest that it is possible for the world to meet Paris Agreement targets if nation states cooperate and coordinate mitigation efforts. Carbon pricing is an important policy tool that would create substantial revenues amounting to potentially several percent of GDP.
10. Adaptation and resilience building are necessary even if the world succeeds with aggressive international action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
[Why not read some science and learn instead of regurgitating standard denier bullshit?]
Ah Dennis dear boy,
Did they mention how all the climate models have failed when compared to the empirical temperature datasets? ‘Why not read some science and learn instead of regurgitating standard denier bullshit?’
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/figures/WGI_AR5_FigTS-14.jpg
And no, the 2015/16 isn’t evidence of warming due to AGW, it was due to the recurring natural weather phenomena called an El Nino.
If it’s such a big threat then why do you spend your weekends burning copious amounts of aviation fuel flying planes badly as a hobby?
Get with the times Magoo. The three warmest years on record have all occurred after 2013.
Prof. Dave Frame and others have recently developed a live climate tracker at http://www.globalwarmingindex.org/ which isolates the anthropogenic and natural warming components. There is evidence of an acceleration in warming with no pause.
Simon,
Ah yes, the 2015/16 El Nino, your temporary saving grace, but we both know it’s a natural weather event & not evidence of AGW. We also know that it’s a cooling event as the ocean vents heat to space via the atmosphere. Tell me, if an El Nino is evidence of anthropogenic global warming, will the current La Nina that has just begun be evidence of global cooling when the temperature drops?
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml
You can’t have it both ways Simon.
Frame’s graph shows a single warming period from approximately 1980-1998 since 1950 (2015/16 was an El Nino that is now cooling). 18 yrs of warming out of the last 68, and that was approximately 20 yrs ago – utterly pathetic. If they know how much of the warming is human induced and how much is natural, then why have all the climate models failed? Don’t give me that El Nino line again either please, we both know it’s dishonest.
Who do you think you’re kidding other than yourself? BTW, as someone employed in the forestry industry Simon Papps, do you and your industry have anything to gain from the AGW scare? $$$?
Keep “huffing out insulation”, Dennis. It may make your AGW Koolaid saturated brain a bit fuzzier…but a paper bag over your head will remedy that…and your goony face.
Simon Papps?… is it Magoo? well it looks as if Simon has M. Phil. in Engineering Science and a BSc in Computer Science and Mathematics….and you see from his picture, he’s a very young and bright man….top of the class material.
I find it fascinating that such an intelligent person can be so gullible as to adamantly go along with the AGW hoax group think, without a whisker of individual open minded enquiry.
But , I think you’re right Magoo…it’s $$$. and who can really blame him. Like James Renwick, Tim Naish, Dave Frame etc etc. they have food to put on the table, and a roof overhead.
It’s only that I wish they’d just STFU with their babbing of their AGW tripe to the public and media. ..Just quietly go to work, and keep their pseudoscience to themselves.
But “Greenhouse” is now a religion. The AGW religion is believed by those who consider themselves too smart for religion.
I still agree with the below statement on AGW. It’s from the Oregon Petition in 1998.
” We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
Manmade droughts?
The major warming drive in climate models is assumed positive feedback from increases in water vapour. Although no increase in humidity has actually been observed to be correlated with temperature changes, the modellers have clung to this assumption for 30 years, on the basis that warmth increases the atmosphere’s *maximum capacity* to retain water.
This modelling assumption drives the stream of predictions regarding increased precipitation. Flooding is forecast by the NZ Royal Society to be the greatest threat – 100-year floods will occur every other year by 2100!
The very same global warming is forecast to produce less precipitation and therefore cause droughts in 2100. Where it’s too wet now it will get worse, and where it’s too dry now it will also get worse – whatever sinks your boat. This custom-designed malevolent climate genie is a bit much for most people to swallow.
Simon
The Haustein et al (2017) paper that forms the basis for http://www.globalwarmingindex.org merely takes the standard IPPC attribution methods (which are based on “expert judgment”) to conclude that most observed warming is anthropogenic. If so, then the residue must be natural variation.
Same old, same old, but cast in graphic form. It offers no new information whatever regarding the measurement, causes, or future predictability of natural climate change.
However, unlike the IPCC in AR5, it does not recognise any pause. This is presumably because it adopts the Karl view that the pre-1998 SSTs were really cooler than was shown in the data recorded at the time.
This paper is based upon the HadCRUT4 time series. Tom Karl worked for NOAA which is responsible for the GISTemp time series. Each series uses a different dataset and completely different homogenisation processes. Both series are almost identical.
I become quite annoyed that tv1 is wasting tax dollars on promoting unscientific nonsense.
Should a complaint be lodged against TV1? I have no knowledge of the complaints criteria or mechanism. Just asking.
No, It’s a good suggestion, Mike. It’s fairly simple to do, and Bryan Leyland, a member of the coalition, has already made a complaint to TVNZ about these deceptive items. If you visit the broadcasting standards authority How to make a complaint page at https://bsa.govt.nz/complaints/making-a-complaint you could suggest the best grounds for a CCG complaint. We should put together a submission and show the corporation that the coalition isn’t alone in its criticism of TVNZ. We represent a large number of people — in the last 30 days, the CCG has been visited by about 21,000 people making 120,000 visits. Over a year, that amounts to over 250,000 people making 1.4 million visits. Average stay is 5 minutes, which is healthy. About 12% (30,000 pa) stay for up to an hour or more. There’s a lot of reading going on. Executives and politicians alike pay attention to numbers like these.
Reading the fineprint, this I think is the basis for a complaint:
I have not seen the article in question, so if you think a complaint could be made on grounds of lack of balance, I will do a bit more digging.
Mike,
I didn’t see the items we’re discussing either, so I went looking for TVNZ’s OnDemand service. What a nightmare! Installing the TVNZ OnDemand app took ages, then I found the News at Six goes back only a few days. I presume we’re looking for News at Six for Thursday 9 November. So I’ve sent them a message asking for all the global warming warming pieces from 6 to 10 Nov pretty please.
We’ll see what happens, unless in the meantime someone can come forward and offer us a recording for us to study. otherwise we’ll have to flag it, I guess. We can hardly speak confidently about a programme we haven’t seen. Pity, but I don’t see an alternative. We’ll just have to wait for the next one.
By the way, I don’t watch much television, so I rely on you guys to drop me a note about these misleading programmes (thanks).
I think they are all covered here:
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/climate-change
Yes, this is brilliant, Maggie, thank you. The TVNZ OnDemand app didn’t return any of these to my searches. But there’s nothing in this group for Thursday or Friday the 9th and 10th, though John wrote articles for them, so I guess I should search for others. Anyway, I have to view these stories first. I suspect it’ll be enough to criticise these, but I’ll wait and see.
I think this is the Thurs 9th – Extreme events one (& Trump)
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/warming-seas-fuelling-deadly-series-super-storms-in-atlantic-year
Here’s the Wed Nov 8th one – on the GBR
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/climate-change-ruining-natural-wonder-great-barrier-reef-in-australia?auto=5638931856001