Monthly Archives: February 2011

The Real Climate Deniers (Plus A Prediction On Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature's Results)

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For as long as predictions will be difficult, especially about the future, “denialism” will as a matter of course remain appropriate only in the context of past facts, i.e. in the “denial” that they actually occurred.

So let’s set aside the widespread, idiotic name-calling against anybody having any question regarding impending climate catastrophes: because the real Climate Deniers are very easy to spot.

And it’s the people that to this day still live in the fantasy world where Climategate was a non-event and had no consequence (esp. on the science of climate change). You know, the people that haven’t read Andrew Montford‘s GWPF report, or the findings of the Muir Russell review, or Lord Oxburgh’s comments about reconstructing temperature trends for the past 1,000 years (Q36 in the link) (or, erm…my preface to the Italian translation of Montford’s report).

Or they have read the lot, but due to their denialist attitude they can’t fathom the meaning of what’s written in there.

Everybody else might have instead noticed by now that a major. widely-funded, “independent, replicable, inclusive, transparent…approach [to] estimate…global temperature change” (and “the uncertainties in the record“) is expected to come to fruition sometimes next year. And yes, Climategate had an important role in getting Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) up-and-running.

QED…all those labelling of non-believers as “deniers” has simply been a kind of preventative attack. And finally, it has backfired.

ps my predictions on the BEST results:

  • According to the Berkeley group, the Earth’s surface temperature will have risen (on average) slightly less than what indicated by NASA, NOAA and the Met Office
  • Differences will be on the edge of statistical significance, leaving a lot open to subjective interpretation
  • Several attempts will be made by climate change conformists and True Believers to smear the work of BEST, and to prevent them from publishing their data
  • After publication, organised  groups of people will try to cloud the issue to the point of leaving the public unsure about what exactly was found by BEST
  • New questions will be raised regarding UHI, however the next IPCC assessment’s first draft will be singularly forgetful of any peer-reviewed paper on the topic
  • We will all be left with a slightly-warming world, the only other certitude being that all mitigation efforts will be among the stupidest ideas that ever spung to human mind.

Perche’ Rifiuto L’Anonimato

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(commento postato su ClimateMonitor riguardo il rifiuto di uno dei migliori commentatori, tale “antistrafalcione“, di fornire alcun dettaglio riguardo la sua vera identita’)

Insomma abbiamo capito che in Itaglia ci sono i vasi di coccio che sanno ragionare, ma hanno troppa paura di essere fatti, appunto, di coccio. D’altronde fatemi spezzare una lancia in favore del “coniglio” che si firma “antistrafalcione” e non vuole comunicare neanche in privato una sua email vera: bisogna avere una pellaccia molto dura, in Itaglia, per tirare avanti dopo “averci messo la propria faccia”.

Io, giusto per fare un esempio, dovrei passare giornate intere a smentire le numerose dichiarazioni false all’estremo fatte nei mie confronti da Sylvie Coyaud in arte Oca Sapiens. Nonostante la mia assenza da lungo tempo dal suo blog, continua infatti a citarmi continuamente e senza indovinarne una. Per i miei fidati lettori: non ho mai seguito il pensiero di Lord Monckton; non sono disoccupato; non ho mai seguito il pensiero di Frigerio. Etc etc.

Ora, e’ chiaro che un “antistrafalcione” qualunque si sentirebbe in difficolta’ di fronte a una campagna incessante fatta di bugie, invenzioni e disinformazione. Direbbe “tengo famiglia”, terrebbe la testa giu’, si occuperebbe di postare nel piu’ rigoroso riserbo magari usando un anonimizzatore (manco l’Italia fosse la Corea del Nord).

Quindi, lo capisco. Invito dunque gli Admin a manifestare la loro solidarieta’ promuovendo il suo commento a blog, per dire a tutte le anime infelici che non sanno come parlare senza aver paura che l’oca di turno si dedichi al carattericidio a mezzo blog, che ClimateMonitor e’ l’isola felice dove ognuno puo’ avere diritto ai suoi cinque minuti di liberta’ di espressione.

Per me, invece, dal basso della mia ingenuita’, tutte quelle attenzioni alla di mia persona devo confessare che titillano l’ego e non poco. Ma cio’ che ritengo piu’ importante e’ il fatto che la prima volta che ho esperito una situazione del genere, e’ stato quando il mio nome e’ apparso in un sito di sciachimisti, dov’ero bollato come Disinformatore. E la mia seconda esperienza del genere e’ stata in un sito di Creazionisti.

So dunque due sole cose: di non sapere, e di aver capito quali forme di pensiero portino delle anime belle a cercare di uccidermi come abitante della Rete, con nome, cognome, faccia, CV e tutto.

Permettetemi dunque di continuare a rifiutare di anonimizzarmi.

Have Things Changed Much From 1969?

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“Expert Says Arctic Ocean Will Soon Be an Open Sea; Catastrophic Shifts in Climate Feared if Change Occurs“. Yes, it’s 1969.

What else has changed?

Well, one thing is that at the time, Walter Sullivan of the New York Times could still afford to write “Other Specialists See No Thinning of Polar Ice Cap” in mid-size letters near the title. As for the rest:

  • Arctic sea ice cover is “vulnerable“
  • An ice-free Arctic Ocean is presented as harbinger of European “deserts” with “great ice sheets…farther north“
  • “Focal point” in the research is “the use of giant computers to simulate the world’s weather patterns“
  • Climatologists keep following the latest trends, wildly extrapolating them in the future. For example, there is a Soviet-American consensus among specialists around prediction of “continued cooling in step with an expected decline in sunspot activity through the nineteen-eighties“, after a “climate cooling during the last decade or two“. Likewise, “until recently there was a suspicion that the warming trend of the century preceding 1940 was a by-product of the industrial revolution” (yes, CO2 emissions)

However, there are other interesting details:

  • Sullivan presents as common knowledge ideas such as “progressive shrinkage of the Arctic pack ice over the last century“
  • “About one quarter of the Arctic pack melts each summer“…that would be very peculiar, since according to Cryosphere Today even in 1979 it was more like two thirds
  • Nortber Untersteiner is interviewed about a report of his in Naval Research Reviews showing that “the climatic trend in the Arctic has turned toward cooling“
  • There is a mention of a 1893 Fridtjof Nansen report of “43 feet thick” Arctic pack, followed by others “indicating a steady thinning of the pack that, the data suggest, could vanish by 1970 or sooner“. These conclusions are not supported by “under-ice journeys of American nuclear submarines” (why don’t they use submarines nowadays, instead of clowning around for Catlin?)