Costing the Earth 31.iii.15

[charmbrights]

In a few minutes I shall listed to Costing the Earth on Radio 4 which looks interesting. However I am remembering the last beatitude: "Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed".

Costing the Earth

Climate Change: Inconvenient Facts?


With arctic sea ice shrinking and Antarctic sea ice growing, Tom Heap asks what is happening to the climate.

Despite the consensus of scientists around the world, there are still some anomalies in the computer models of the future climate. Tom Heap is joined by a panel of experts to tackle some of the difficult questions that lead to uncertainties in our understanding of the changing climate.

The perceived wisdom in the scientific community is that the climate is warming but evidence shows that even though Arctic sea ice is melting, there has actually been a growth in Antarctic sea ice. That, along with a documented slow down in the warming of the climate since 1998, has been a 'stone in the shoe' of the climate change story. So what is happening?

Tom is joined by BBC and Met office weather presenter John Hammond to put these 'difficult' climate scenarios to a team of experts: Mark Lynas is an author and environmental campaigner, Mike Hulme is professor of Climate and Culture at Kings College London and Dr Helen Czerski is a broadcaster and 'bubble physicist' at UCL.

With the help of this panel, Costing The Earth discusses how best to communicate anomalies that don't appear in climate models and make the science sometimes hard to comprehend.

[Teddy Bear]

Sounds like the BBC 'experts' will be explaining why 2+2 really = 5.
I haven't checked any of the credentials of those invited but I presume none of them are AGW sceptics to create some balance and impartiality. It's only 'inconvenient facts' when you have a certain agenda you want to push.

[charmbrights]

There were some interesting points made.

First they admitted that climate models were complex and "not perfect". However the reason quoted for these models giving answers which do not match the real world measurements ranged from problems combining different small models to the fact that the data we have from pre-satellite times are not fully compatible with more recent data.

Another comment about the growth of antartic ice but not of arctic ice which sounded ludicrous to me was that the thickness of the ice in the antarctic was much less than that in the arctic. This was attributed to melt water being pure and therefore floating on top of salt water and freezing more easily. The "elephant in the room" which nobody answered was the problem that all the models give the same answers predictions for north and south icecaps.

Clearly this programme was designed to allow the BBC to claim balance and impartiality, ignoring the fact that all of the contributors make their living from the "climate change industry".

The three experts were:-

"Mark Lynas is an author and environmental campaigner". He says on his web site:

Climate change is real, caused almost entirely by humans, and presents a potentially existential threat to human civilisation. Solving climate change does not mean rolling back capitalism, suspending the free market or stopping economic growth.
With those two rather innocuous statements, I have just alienated most people on either side of the climate debate. Today, climate change is no longer just a scientific or an energy problem. Instead, one’s position on global warming has become a badge of political identity in a debate riven by ideological and tribal conflicts. This bodes ill for humanity’s chances of addressing the threat before it is too late.
[This article was published in the Guardian on 12 March 2015]

"Mike Hulme is professor of Climate and Culture at Kings College London". He was formerly professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia when the scandal of faked data on climate change there blew up (see anther thread on here).

"Dr Helen Czerski is a broadcaster and 'bubble physicist' at UCL". She says on her web site:

Her research interests are the optics and acoustics of ocean bubbles, the structure of the bubble plumes caused by breaking waves, and the influence of ocean bubbles on the atmosphere.
Helen is an enthusiastic supporter of ScienceGrrl which celebrates real women doing great science. She was featured in their 2013 calendar as a Bubble Physicist.
We're surrounded by fascinating science all the time, but we don't notice most of it. Helen loves playing with everyday science, and she writes a monthly column for BBC Focus magazine called 'Everyday Science'. They let her write about things like why wet paper bags are rubbish and why blueberry jam is pink.

[Teddy Bear]

Excellent post Charm.
The panel and programme appears to be pretty much what I predicted.
I wonder if Booker or Delingpole will have something to write about it?

[Teddy Bear]

Sure enough, it looks like Christopher Booker has noticed this programme and refers to it in the following article with this excerpt:
I particularly enjoyed one on the World Service explaining, with the aid of a psychologist, why people these days seem to be going on about global warming much less they did a few years ago; and even more the one on Radio 4 in which a studio-full of devout warmists tried to dismiss some of the more awkward scientific objections raised by “climate sceptics”, without having a single “sceptic” present.

Why the BBC’s preaching on global warming is getting louder
The global 'climate treaty' many are so desperate to see signed in Paris next December is just not going to happen

By Christopher Booker

In wishing you all a happy Easter, I was planning to discuss what exactly the fact that this Easter we have fewer primroses in Somerset than usual has to do with “climate change”. But I have had to hold this over because I need to send a message of sympathy to the BBC for how they have lately had to treat us almost daily to programmes trying to defend the collapsing case for global warming.

I particularly enjoyed one on the World Service explaining, with the aid of a psychologist, why people these days seem to be going on about global warming much less they did a few years ago; and even more the one on Radio 4 in which a studio-full of devout warmists tried to dismiss some of the more awkward scientific objections raised by “climate sceptics”, without having a single “sceptic” present.

But if you were wondering why the BBC has recently been so keen to preach to us on this subject even more relentlessly than usual, this is, of course, because of that global “climate treaty” they are so desperate to see signed in Paris next December. Unfortunately, this coming of the long-awaited Messiah is not going to happen, for exactly the same reason that made such a fiasco of their last great religious rally in Copenhagen in 2009. China, India and Russia, three of the world’s top five “carbon-emitting” nations, aren’t going to have it.

The greatest “sinner” of all, China, laughing behind its hand, tells President Obama that it might do something to curb its emissions; but only after 2030. India says it might do something even sooner; but only so long as the developed world steps up to the plate with the $100 billion a year they promised five years ago to developing countries. Now the Russians say they have already pretty well done enough by closing all those polluting old Soviet industries after the fall of Communism in 1990.

So despite the BBC looking ever more like a little band of true believers huddled on a mountain top waiting for the Second Coming, that treaty they’ve so fervently been praying for just ain’t going to be. A happy Easter to them all just the same.