NAFTA flu - a dilemma

I am uncertain how to respond to NAFTA flu.

On the one hand, my natural reaction is phlegmatic. It is something largely out of my hands. I can't stop the spread of it, because the people of the world have foolishly neglected to give me powers to determine every aspect of their behaviour. If they had, twe wouldn't be in this fix now ... Also, I'm in a first world country and I'm comfortably off and enjoy good health. During the SARS crisis, I flew through Hong Kong airport en route to New Zeland. A gentleman wearing a paper mask stuck a thermometer in my ear. No big deal.

On the other hand, Christopher Booker is telling us not to panic (1). For those of you who do not know him, Booker is a columnist for the Telegraph and Daily Mail, who specialises in contrarian tosh and conspiracy (2). One of my rule of thumb that the truth is likely the opposite of what he says.

So if he says not to panic, it is time to head for the hills.

1 - "Pandemic of panic - After salmonella, bird flu, the Millennium Bug... should we actually be scared this time?" by Christopher Booker, published in the Daily Mail, 1st of May, 2009. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1175197/CHRISTOPHER-BOOKER-After-salmonella-bird-flu-Millennium-Bug--scared-time.html)
2 - "Christopher Booker: scientific views," wikipedia article, viewed 3rd of May, 2009. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Booker#Scientific_views)

Polar Bearshit

Christopher Booker has contributed another rant somewhat dressed up as reasoned commentary to the 'debate' about climate change (1).

As usual, Booker mixes up specious reasoning, sleight of hand and a bit of rhetoric. His theme is the meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group in Copenhagen. He claims the purpose of this meeting is "will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming," a remarkable assertion and a direct attack on the objectivity and honesty of all the members of the PBSG, which he makes without providing any evidence to back it up (2).

Without back up, it is just flim-flam, an exagerated, disingenuous claim without any grounding in fact - which is exactly what he accuses the "global warmists" of the PBSG of doing.

The scaremongering continues in the next paragraph, where Booker claims the meeting "is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December" (3).

Again, this is scaremongering by Booker. What evidence does he provide of the conspiracy he implies is afoot? None. Setting aside the Protocols of Zionesque paranoia about a vast conspiracy that has crept into his column - and we're only into the second paragraph - can he provide some evidence that the meeting of the PBSG is intended to "stoke up alarm"? As opposed to people meeting to discuss things they think are important? Of course he can't. But that won't stop him putting the suggestion out there, to delude the gullible or ideologically inclined to reject science in favour of balderdash.

And, for what it is worth, "a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference" is an apalling example of metaphor mangling. A drizzle is a light shower of rain. But you "stoke up" a fire. So how the two can work together is beyond me. Even bettter, this remarkable fire that burns more readily when stoked with rainfall is burning in an athletics stadium, which is where you would expect to see people taking a "run up." Booker's science might be lousy, but at least it is better than his journalism.

Booker's complaint is that an expert on Polar Bears, Dr Mitchell Taylor, has been refused permission to attend the conference. This is attributed to his views on climate change:

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea. (4)

This is a bit of intellectual smoke and mirrors. Booker, or Taylor, is not being entirely straight with us. What he is describing as a cause of Arctic ice melt - the changing currents bringing in warm water which is melting the ice - is actually no such thing because it doesn't actually indicate what is causing the changing oceanic conditions. Unless it is an Act of God, he needs to identify a mechanism which explains why this is happening as the situation he describes is begging the question - why is the ice melting? Because of the changing oceanic conditions. Why are the oceanic conditions changing? Because of ... um ... climate change, perhaps?

This is all by-the-by, because Booker is more interested in one of his favour themes - the sensationalism and pseudo-science that he claims is being forced on the world by pro-AGW lobby, through their willing stodges in the media, befuddling the dim and gullible public:

He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists' agenda as their most iconic single cause. The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the wind-sculpted ice they were standing on made such a striking image. (5)

Yeah, so?

I'd like to have cited examples of when Gore and the WWF used the image, as opposed to pig ignorant sensationalist journos.

And, anyway, what's wrong with using it as an 'emblem'? It carries a strong symbolic message about the shrinking habitats of wild animals. A Christian might wear a cross - guess what, Chris? It isn't actually the one that Jesus got nailed to.

As for the main meat of the article, the alleged banning of Taylor for heretical views on climate change, I refuse to accept Booker's word for it, based on the selective quoting from an email he claims to have received from an unidentified source. He's been too unreliable in the past - making stuff up, withdrawing it when challenged and the repeating it - for him to be taken on trust now.

It is also worth noting that Taylor is not actually a member of the PBSG - Booker suggests he is ("his PBSG colleagues") but he isn't (6). Given that they invite several experts to address their conferences, and they have limited time, why the scandal that one has been refused? I imagine they refused several applications to speak. I also suspect that a lot of these applications were made in the expectation of being declined, so a follow-up fuss about 'censorship' could be generated. Drummed up faux persecution, a la Nick griffin and the BNP, typical of the self important wannabes on the fringes.

1 - "Polar bear expert barred by global warmists," by Christopher Booker, published in The Daily Telegraph, 27th of June, 2009. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5664069/Polar-bear-expert-barred-by-global-warmists.html)
2 - ibid.
3 - ibid.
4 - ibid.
5 - ibid.
6 - A list of the current members of the Polar Bear Specialist Group, viewed on the 30th of June, 2009. (http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/members/index.html)

Oh, really?

Someone tried to draw my attention to an article purporting to reveal how climate data has been systematically manipulated to increase the warming trend in recent decades.  They failed, largely because the article was in the Telegraph behind a firewall, but I did glimpse enough to see that it was penned by Christopher Booker, of whom I have spoken before.

Christopher 'bullshit' Booker? Really?

Sorry to respond in such a predictable and Pavlovian vein, but the author is a serial crap-merchant.

For that reason if no other, I feel inclined not to bother reading it.  The Telegraph should be ashamed that it is giving space to a man who propounds biased and disingenuous nonsense masquerading as scientific criticism.  That said, the telegraph seems to know no shame these days.

In the extract from the article that was sent to me, I saw mention - positive - of John Christie's satellite temperature record at the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH).  No mention, though, of how the UAH figures are constantly being manipulated and adjusted as well; the ItsNotCausedByPeopleEvenIfItIsHappeningWhichIsNotToSayItIsHappeningButItIsHappeningOnMarsAndTheDinosaursDidn'tDriveSUVsDidThey crowd (deniers, for short) don't see bothered about that. Because UAH continually undercuts the surface temperature and allwos them to claim there is no warming because blahblahblah. Even though, I think, the UAH figures are continually being revised UPWARDS for the reasons indicated above.

Sceptics? My arse!

The Indie has reported that a quote, commonly bandied about by so-called climate change sceptics, is completely inaccurate. Though reproduced on more than a million websites, and in The Real Global Warming Disaster by Charles Booker, there is no confirmed source for the quote. The man to whom it is attributed - - denies having said it:

Sir John Houghton, who played a critical role in establishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), was roundly condemned after it emerged that he was an apparent advocate of scary propaganda to frighten the public into believing the dangers of global warming.

"Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen," Sir John was supposed to have said in 1994.

The quotation has since become the iconic smoking gun of the climate sceptic community. The words are the very first to appear in the "manual" of climate denialism written by the journalist and arch-sceptic Christopher Booker. They get more than a million hits on Google, and are wheeled out almost every time a climate sceptic has a point to make, the last occasion being in a Sunday newspaper article last weekend written by the social anthropologist and climate sceptic Benny Peiser.

The trouble is, Sir John Houghton has never said what he is quoted as saying. The words do not appear in his own book on global warming, first published in 1994, despite statements to the contrary. In fact, he denies emphatically that he ever said it at any time, either verbally or in writing.

In fact, his view on the matter of generating scare stories to publicise climate change is quite the opposite. "There are those who will say 'unless we announce disasters, no one will listen', but I'm not one of them," Sir John told The Independent. (1)

I'm sure this remarkable story will receive just as much coverage as the recent stories about errors in AR4 did, and opprobrium will be heaped upon the discredited 'sceptic' goons who have used this false quotation, and all true doubters will abjure them utterly.

I am sure everyone truly interested in the science of climate change, and promoting truth rather than propoganda will henceforth regard all those reproducing the quote as discredited in all ways and never rely on them again for any information whatsoever.

After all, if one petty error in an obscure part of AR4 can invalidate the efforts of the IPCC, then surely sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander applies, and pretty much the whole 'sceptic' movement has now disappeared up its own credulous arse.

Gosh, not one of these people had bothered to check the veracity of the quote? I thought they were meant to be sceptics?

1 - "Fabricated quote used to discredit climate scientist," by Steve Connor. Published in The Independent, 10th of February, 2010. (http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/fabricated-quote-used-to-discredit-climate-scientist-1894552.html)

New AGW denier meme?

I'm wondering if - having lost the scientific battle, and failed to sneak a victory through Climategate releases - AGW deniers are attempting to win the war using semantics.

I've noticed a trend in the last couple of weeks - okay, a couple of references, nothing more - toward dismissing climate change as a fad which which has run its course.

Exhibit One, m'lud. Here's Christopher Booker in the Telegraph:

Since the fading belief that the world is in the grip of runaway man-made global warming still threatens us with the biggest bill in history ...

And from rather closer to home, the cringe inducing Mathew Hooton made a similar claim on Nine To Noon the other day - that interest in Climate Change was dying away as exaggerated scare stories faded to be realised.

Sounds like a meme that denier propagandists are trying to plant in people's minds, hoping it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think we'll hear a lot more of this "old story, last years problem" in the future, as Climategate2 failed so miserably.