More climate-change pratfalls
E. Thomas McClanahanAll that ice in the Himalayas that was supposed to be vanishing because of climate change? Never mind. The Guardian reports that a recent study found no such loss.
From the story: “The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows. The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.”
Elsewhere, Walter Russell Mead looks at a recent Energy Information Administration report and concludes that climate “science” is poppycock. He notes that not too long ago, EIA predicted carbon emissions would rise by 37 percent by 2035. Now the agency says CO2 output will be 6 percent LOWER in 2025 than in 2005, thanks to developments like shale gas and more renewables.
Which means that “the people who put these forecasts together have no idea what they are doing,” Mead writes. Couple this with the slipperiness of economic forecasts, and the whole notion that temperature increases — or decreases — can be predicted decades in the future is laughable.
Mead: “The truth is that forecasts about greenhouse gas emissions are basically worthless. These recent forecasts certainly were; the difference between 37 percent growth and 6 percent decline is 43 percent. That is about the level of accuracy you could expect from a blind monkey throwing darts at a wall. But without those worthless forecasts, climate math falls to the ground. If we can’t predict the future level of greenhouse gas emissions, we can’t predict the future temperature of the earth — even assuming that our atmospheric models work perfectly and haven’t left anything out.”
Finally, Der Spiegel reports on a prominent German climate-change advocate who has gone over to the dark side. In a book due out next week, Fritz Vahrenholt writes: “The climate catastrophe is not occurring.”
It was a bad week for climate-change “believers.”
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Steve Alleman
Kansas City
3 months agoIs Walter Russell Mead a scientist? No, he’s a conservative pundit. Excuse me if I don’t care what an unqualified ‘expert’ thinks about this issue. What’s next, asking chemists about economics?
Chuck Close
3 months agoIn all honesty and candor it has been an awful two or three years for the AGW zealots.
First came the climategate explosion. Like most earthquakes their were aftershocks of a similar magnitude that burst their cash filled bubble.
The oxymoronic “scientific consensus” has long been made up of co committed scientists whose sugar daddy has been irrational governments and organizations led first and formeost by the UN.
But the Gore-bots will continue to defraud the people of the world of as much as they are able.
It is the same template utilized by virtually all the environmental based groups. Not all of them….but certainly the vast majority.
The rational thinkers can finally hope that the freight train of cash consuming nonsense has been severely slowed….hopefully stopped.
Kay Fox
Kansas City
3 months agoE.T. if you were close enough I’d give you a big smacker.
Kansas City thanks you for the truth.
What’s the big deal, the truth is pretty rare these days and it’s a welcome change.
Adieu
George Hunsucker
Northland
3 months agoOnce again the ecofreaks are left with nothing else but to keep being gore bots and say the sky is falling. Luckily America will for once and for all stop the nonsense after November 6. Then, jimmy obama and his cast of chicagoians will be led back to chicago to do bad things there again….
Sam Woods
3 months agoAll those mosquitoes biting me in January? Nevermind. I’m sorry you’re in big oil’s pocket, but I’d like the studies to continue. Can you possibly not make it into a political issue? I didn’t think so. Climate science is not black and white. Please study, and not just quacks, or weathermen.
Pappy Jeanneret
3 months agoSam Woods demonstrates why there is no reasoning with the AGW fanatics. Any questioning of the liberal accepted theory and you are immediately accused of being bought off by BIG OIL. Any scientist who questions is immediately called a quack. Of course to people like Sam, mosquitos are undeniable proof of their fear. What’s amazing is their staunch defense of science and then when they witness scientist practicing the scientific method they freak out. Sorry Sam but the AGW theory you and others on the religious left believe so viciously in is falling apart. Use the internet to research those “quacks” and you will find out most of them are extremely well qualified to question the science of AGW. Questioning of science doesn’t hurt anybody, and only strengthens the science if it is correct. Refusing to let the science be questioned will possibly hurt, if not hold back all of mankind.
Sam Woods
3 months agoOf course aside from the personal insults - to be expected from this anti science group, they have nothing else - i agree with more scientific study. - every time deniers complete scientific climate studies, they end up agreeing with every other climate study (see Berkeley). However the deniers would like to stop all grants for climate science. Those people are in the pockets of big oil. We learned the lesson from deep throat, did we not? Follow the money. It doesn’t follow the guy who traipses to the top of a volcano every day to collect C02 levels. Don’t be so incurious.
Mark Hastert
3 months agoIt’s easy to dismiss the indications of climate change in the name of what, Money? What if you’re wrong the the science is right? If the science is wrong we’re out some money. If you’re wrong all the money in the world won’t fix it. In the risk reward calculation how is that a smart bet? C’mon, you guys are smart capitalists, make the smart play.
Chuck Close
3 months agoEarth to Mark…If the “science” is RIGHT, all the money in the world will not put a dent in the problem.
The published goal of one of the groups was to spend 20 trillion over forty years to move the average temperature on the planet six tenths of one degree over 40 years!
Where oh where is the logic or wisdom in that cost benefit ratio?
No one that I have read is dismissive of the unending indications of climate change. They are undeniable. They are also not new and do not appear to many to be anything beyond rather historically routine cycles.
George Hunsucker
Northland
3 months agoand that’s what pisses the left off Chuck…
the fact that govt. cannot, in its infinite “wisdom” and bottomless, so it seems, pocketbook, move the dial on this NATURAL HAPPENING..
Tbe left will continue to push regulations to give themselves overpaid govt. jobs or govt. slush funds to “study” the problem as long as we on the right let them. Luckily a new day is dawning Nov. 6!!!!!