Here’s why women are more likely to care about the climate

Everything is a gender equity issue. Who knew the climate was sexist?

“…women have good reason to be worried, given that climate change will affect women around the world the most. Climate change is often framed as an ecological disaster, less frequently as a key crisis for global gender equality.”

In the current climate men have shorter lifespans and higher suicide rates. The very caring women at “Women’s Agenda” don’t seem to care about that. Nevermind.

Why do women care more? They’re more obedient, less willing to take risks

Even the writers and editors of a “liberated” emancipated women’s magazine reveal more than they realize about their own belief. They’ve been told last year was the hottest year on record, and parts of the Great Barrier Reef are bleached. These things would happen no matter what caused climate change, but Annika Blau is an obedient woman and she believes that our power stations and cars cause the bleaching. Indeed she is so well trained, she is even convinced her position is “logical” and says so, without providing any logical reason that events which probably occurred hundreds of times before are proof of anything. (It’s been hotter for thousands […]

How to cripple an army. Fight the wrong war. Obama orders military to prioritize climate change

Looking back to Feb 7th, check that vision:

Obama orders military to prioritize climate change

Because guns should be carbon neutral right?

When we kill people we still care about the footprint.

[Washington Post]

The Pentagon is ordering the top brass to incorporate climate change into virtually everything they do, from testing weapons to training troops to war planning to joint exercises with allies.

A new directive’s theme: The U.S. Armed Forces must show “resilience” and beat back the threat based on “actionable science.”

Yes, previously the Armed Forces only had to be resilient across a 90 degree range. Now it could be 91.

The answer is a new layer of bureaucrats (it’s always a new layer of bureaucrats):

It says the military will not be able to maintain effectiveness unless the directive is followed. It orders the establishment of a new layer of bureaucracy — a wide array of “climate change boards, councils and working groups” to infuse climate change into “programs, plans and policies.

Perhaps bureaucrats make a better layer of insulation.

Though not all military types were enthused:

Dakota Wood, a retired Marine Corps officer and U.S. […]

New Science 23: Four mysteries and The Force-X Hypothesis

What is Force x? The Sun could influence Earths climate through magnetic fields, solar particle flows, or spectral changes. | Image: ESA

What’s going on with the Sun?

In the last post in the climate research series we described David’s major finding that changes in total sunlight lead Earth’s temperature by one sunspot cycle. But what’s going on with the Sun — what is the mechanism? In this post David lays out four puzzling clues about solar influence on our global temperature, then puts forward a hypothesis. What force (or forces) are required to resolve all these odd points?

To recap: Both his Fourier analysis and many independent papers suggest there is a delay between total solar irradiation (TSI) and global temperature. David reasoned that the delay is a true delay, not just a smoothing effect while increased heat propagates around the planet. Because the timing is so tied to solar cycles, the trigger for the delay must start on the Sun, not on the Earth. This is not just a case of our oceans slowly absorbing the extra energy from the Sun — and there simply isn’t enough, in any case. Something quite different […]

Easter Unthreaded

Wishing a Happy Easter to everyone.

Jo

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It’s “special” science where one Hot Month is the signal, and years of The Pause is just noise.

Click to enlarge

 

We can always rely on Peter Hannam of the Sydney Morning Herald to accidentally advertise the unscientific stars of the Climate Church.

“Spike in global temperature fuels climate change fears”

It used to be that science was symmetrical — the laws of physics worked every day. You know, thou shalt not create nor destroy energy, it’s one of those unarguable things. But UNSW has a new “special” kind of science where the global temperature can pause for years and billions of quadrillions of joules of energy can disappear and who cares? In politically correct science this is noise. But one hot month, caused by an El Nino and strap yourself in, glue on the Armageddon-helmet. Panic-now, Panic-later, Fear and Hellfire. The Mystical Sign has cometh!

Prof Rahmstorf seems a bit confused about what’s “noise” and what’s “signal”:

“It’s important to take this hot spike as a reminder that this is a really urgent problem” said Professor Rahmstorf, who until last week was also a visiting professorial fellow at the University of NSW. “We are running out of time to avoid a 2-degree world.”

Try and imagine him saying […]

It’s “irresponsible” to research health effects of wind-farms says Prof Chapman, USyd

Welcome to the cult of climate control where it’s responsible to spend $10 billion of Taxpayer dollars to change the weather with windfarms and such, but it’s irresponsible to spend $3.3 million to check if that harms anyone.

I hear that in houses kilometers away from a wind tower, the water in a glass can ripple, along with the water in the toilet bowl. Obviously since humans have no water molecules it couldn’t possibly …

Is it news that this research will finally be done? Not according to the ABC where the headline is about how much money is being wasted.

Millions in funding for research into wind farm illness criticized

IMOGEN BRENNAN: Sheep farmer Donald Thomas has lived near Waubra in Victoria for more than 50 years.

Since wind turbines were erected nearby about seven years ago, he says he and his family have had headaches, pressure in their ears and many sleepless nights.

DONALD THOMAS: It’s extremely frustrating. But the thing is, what the point they’re missing is the fact that yes, it is affecting us and it’s extremely unpleasant and so many of my neighbours have actually had to leave. It’s […]

Renewables industry collapsing in Europe — still a $329 billion subsidised global cash cow

The EU has led the way to convert to “clean energy”. But the subsidies ran out. Investment in Europe in renewables is plummeting:

Thanks to Bloomberg, Euan Mearns and h/t to GWPF for that graph.

Europe’s once world-beating clean technology industry has fallen into a rapid decline, with investment in low-carbon energy last year plummeting to its lowest level in a decade.

Michael Liebreich, chairman of the BNEF board, said the global financial crisis and its aftermath were to blame only in part. “Europe’s failure to respond [to the crisis was a factor and] global investors, scared about the survival of the euro, had plenty of reason to hesitate about putting money into euro-dominated clean energy projects,” he said.

What bad luck – it’s nearly, almost, really competitive. Any day now:

Liebreich … “The tragedy is that Europe lost its renewable energy mojo just as costs were plummeting to the point where green power is fully competitive without subsidies in more and more parts of the world.”

Shame investors are too stupid to see how renewables are going to make lots of money. Only governments have that kind of vision, […]

Garth Paltridge offers a solution to CSIRO climate scientists suffering from the “settled” syndrome

Letter to The Mercury published 18/3/15

Keeping quiet about the uncertainty of climate prediction has at last come back to bite the climate research community on its collective bottom. The obvious question has finally been asked in public – namely, if the science behind disastrous climate change is so settled, why continue to spend money on it? It is not surprising that CSIRO is now cutting the number of its staff involved in climate research.

May I suggest to the remaining staff that they might profitably spend their time attempting to disprove the theory of disastrous global warming rather than simply finding data to support it? There is more than enough uncertainty about climate change to give them a very good chance of upsetting what must be one of the world’s greatest scientific applecarts. Since the upsetting of applecarts is what scientists are paid to do, it shouldn’t be long before they are once again showered with money and roses. Just think of it – massive reward simply by returning to a research philosophy fundamental to scientific progress. It is known as scepticism.

Garth Paltridge

Sandy Bay, Tasmania

_______________

Garth Paltridge is a former CSIRO Chief […]

Sheep entrails and the Cult of Thermageddon

Commenter Kratoklastes finds this pointed parody of modern peer review.

Kratoklastes:

There is an excellent chapter (Chapter 9) in an excellent book (How Not To Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg) that gives a very good description of inherent biases in research – taking John Ioannides’ 2005 paper (“Why Most Published Research Is Wrong”).

The chapter starts with a parable, which is clever and funny…

Imagine yourself a haruspex; that is, your profession is to make predictions about future events by sacrificing sheep and then examining the features of their entrails, especially their livers. You do not, of course, consider your predictions to be reliable merely because you follow the practices commanded by the Etruscan deities. That would be ridiculous. You require evidence. And so you and your colleagues submit all your work to the peer-reviewed International Journal of Haruspicy, which demands without exception that all published results clear the bar of statistical signficance.

Haruspicy, especially rigorous evidence-based haruspicy, is not an easy gig. For one thing, you spend a lot of your time spattered with blood and bile. For another, a lot of your experiments don’t work. You try to use sheep guts to […]

Weekend Unthreaded

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The worst possible thing for discovery is to throw more government money at it

The story of three kinds of curiosity — two genuine, one “induced”

Several wise men foresaw the decline of organized science. Here, a man called Gordon Tulloch was inspired by Popper to look at the social organisation of scientists to try to figure out what made it work. He noticed there were three kinds of researchers, one driven by curiosity for the truth, another on a mission to solve a problem, and a third with an “induced” curiosity created by demand from elsewhere — boss or government. He predicted that the system would fail if those who were induced outnumbered the truly curious, as the “induced” curiosity was not well connected to reality, whereas the other two types were. The primary aim of the induced researcher was not to solve a problem or uncover an answer but just to keep their jobs, and there were many ways to “keep their jobs” that did not involve actual discovery. Indeed for some jobs, thinks Jo, actual discovery could be a catastrophic event.

He foresaw a degenerative spiral which appears to have come to pass. Once induced researchers are managed by people without enough skill to read and assess […]

Oil giant Venezula, Green giant Tasmania – both running out of electricity

Venezuela Shuts down

In a land where energy makes up 25% of their GDP and most of their exports — it takes some management to run out of electricity. Apparently the land of oil needs some fossil fuel generation.

Venezuela to Shut Down for a Week to Cope With Electricity Crisis

The government has rationed electricity and water supplies across the country for months and urged citizens to avoid waste as Venezuela endures a prolonged drought that has slashed output at hydroelectric dams.

The socialist solution? Blame the weather:

The ruling socialists have blamed the shortage on the El Nino weather phenomena and “sabotage” by their political foes, while critics cite a lack of maintenance and poor planning.

And hope for help from heaven:

“We’re hoping, God willing, rains will come,” Maduro said in a national address Saturday. “Look, the saving is more than 40 percent when these measures are taken. We’re reaching a difficult place that we’re trying to manage.”

Looks like Venezuela will be doing its bit for the Paris agreement then.

h/t Willie

The Green state — Tasmania — has an electricity crisis and is now running on dirty diesel

Due […]

Cold water in vast Western Pacific, record water vapor, clouds, rain — super big El Nino things going on

Indo-pacific-warm-pool (IPWP) | NotricksZone

A very striking pattern of records is happening at the moment. Data is going “off the chart” on several factors at once. As well as record high temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere in Feb 2016, the water is far cooler than usual in the Indo Pacific, while there is increased water vapor and cloud all over the world’s oceans. But windspeeds are slow, slow, slow. It has the hallmarks of a very Big El Nino. Bigger by many measures than 1997-98.

The cooler Indo-Pacific

P Gosselin at NotricksZone has got some very interesting graphs about the ocean around the vast Western Pacific. Frank Bosse and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt noticed that ARGO buoys are recording a very unusual cooling in the Indo-Pacific Western Pacific.

Is something fishy and odd going on there? Hard to say, but while the globe set a record last month, it is interesting to know that over the last couple of years temperatures have declined in the Western Pacific by a whole degree. The Indo-Pacific Warm Pool (IPWP) covers 20N to 20S across a full quarter of the circumference of the Earth. According to Bosse and Vahrenholt it’s around “16 million cubic […]

Hottest seasonally adjusted month EVER! Hyperbole runs wild.

Who needs a trend when you can have a hot month?

The news is all over the media — Feb 2016 was a record hottest ever month — and the Global Worriers are saying “Meltdown“, “Planetary Crisis” and “Terrifying Milestone.”

But the Pause is still there. No matter what happens now, the world didn’t warm for 18 years, and that shows the models can’t predict a thing. (Unless they take solar factors into account, which they don’t).

One big El Nino didn’t fix the climate models now. (They can’t predict El Nino’s either).

Nothing that happens after 2015 can change the amount of energy that went missing during the Pause that no mainstream modeler predicted. Remember these models are supposed to be coupled ocean and atmosphere models, but none of them understand what causes shifts in the PDO, or many other natural cycles and currents of the ocean. So with every natural spike up, modelers unscientifically leap in glee, and with the other 99% of the data, they blame internal variability. But a real scientist is scientific every month. Trends, guys, trends. That’s what this debate was supposed to be about. Not spikes. Not noise.

During the last whopper El […]

Australian Rainfall Zones have moved (if you cherrypick the right years)

The headlines are out, telling us the unnerving news that the climate has changed, “zones are on the march”. How ominous.

Too-tricky graphs show how different everything is in the last 16 years “compared to the 99 before that”. But since our weather comes in cycles of 30, 60 or 200 years, as well as longer ones, almost any 16 year period is likely to be not the average of the century beforehand. Thus this technique can be applied to any noisy cyclical dataset as a Handy Headline Generator.

It’s a tad shameless to present it as if it means something given our short knowledge of the Australian climate and the hyper variability within. You’d think our last century had a constant climate, then there was a “shift”. Spot the hockeystick?

AEGIC — New Australian Climate Developing

 

Is someone graphing noise?

In thousands of kilometers across the pink “summer dominant” areas of central Australia, it might rain more in summer, but it mostly doesn’t rain at all and when it does rain properly, it’s once in a decade. See Alice Springs in January. How’s that for noise? Did a remnant cyclone rain on Alice this year?

How […]

Weekend Unthreaded

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US Attorney General considers legal action against “climate deniers”

<img height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=”” style=”display:none” src=”https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=1626507807583041&amp;ev=PixelInitialized” />

You are not allowed to discuss climate science, nor have another opinion. Our airconditioners are heating the world, our cars make snow, and heaters cause droughts. If you question these Factoids, you may go to jail. Even if the investigation or “case” never gets any further, the message is lit in fire. It’s practically a crime to doubt man-made global warming. From MichaelSmithNews and Daily Mail:

Attorney General Loretta Lynch has considered taking legal action against climate change deniers.

The United States’ top lawyer told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that the Justice Department has ‘discussed’ the possibility of a civil lawsuit against the fossil fuel industry.

She said any information her office has received has been sent to the FBI in a bid to build a case.

Daily mail has the footage. Steel yourself for the usual fantasy about the fossil fuel apparatus and reasoning-by-tobacco-slur. The people inventing mythical theories of conspiracies are right at the top… Charles Krauthammer estimates that if skeptics are prosecuted, ”It would be an impeachable action.” He also has a great turn of phrase about the use of the namecalling […]

Strangled science: Govt asks dumb questions and scientists lie to get grants

It’s just another way the bureaucracy is throttling science. In grant applications the government asks scientists to tell us what impact the discoveries they haven’t made yet will have on the world. The scientists dutifully make something up, knowing the whole process is unscientific, but what does it matter? A little lie here, a little lie there and pretty soon we’re rewarding corruption.

Does Government-science punish the honest? Everyone behaves as if it does:

Another professor in Australia said: “It’s really virtually impossible to write an (Australian Research Council) ARC grant now without lying.”

Times Higher Education

Academics ‘regularly lie to get research grants’

Scholars in the UK and Australia contemptuous of impact statements and often exaggerate them, study suggests

A new study anonymously interviewed 50 senior academics from two research-intensive universities – one in the UK and one in Australia – who had experience writing “pathways to impact” (PIS) statements, as they are called in the UK, and in some cases had also reviewed such statements.

It was normal to sensationalise and embellish impact claims, the study published in Studies in Higher Education found.

We reward those who exaggerate, then […]

Climate numerology! Man-made CO2 caused heatwaves in 1930s,’40s, ’80s and ’90s

How convenient?! A new study shows that human influence on the climate started just before the major (and unerasable) heatwaves of the late 1930s, thus wrapping those awkward years under the banner of Man Made Climate. This study provides the handy peer reviewed link-bomb “answer” to that.

The inexplicable heat of the 1930s and 40s has been a constant source of pain for Global Worriers. Skeptics can point out that the decadal rate of warming was pretty much the same back then, even though CO2 was at the ideal, clima-perfecto level, of 310ppm. How could it be that massive 400ppm of CO2 was barely able to break the heat records set when CO2 was almost 25% lower?

Well, finally, mystery solved. A new Australian study compares models that don’t-explain-the-climate with CO2, to ones that-don’t-explain-the-climate without CO2. These models assume CO2 causes warming, so when they take out the CO2 factor that was added in to produce “the climate”, the models prove, ipso gloriousi, that CO2 causes warming. Indeed their method is so good, it can’t fail. As Anthony Watts says “it seems clear to me that the conclusion existed before the paper was written.” Quite.

Say hello to Climate Numerology […]

NSW State branch of Liberals calls for National Climate Debate

As with the US, Australian conservatives are fed up with the pandering to the pompous climate scare. Our PM might “believe” but many conservatives and libertarians don’t. There is growing unrest.

Here is the NSW state branch calling for real debate — trying to rein in Turnbull:

NSW Liberals call for national debates on climate change science

Fairfax Media understands the motion passed with support of more than 70 per cent of delegates at the state council meeting held on the Central Coast last weekend.

A motion passed at the party’s state council calls on the government to “arrange and hold public debates/discussions” between scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and “independent climate scientists”.

The motion says the events should cover “the global warming/climate change debate”; “the claims by the IPCC”; and the statement “is all the science settled”.

The motions – which were debated after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had left the room following his speech – reveal the level of climate change scepticism among the Liberal base in NSW.

Sources say Mr Turnbull – known to strongly support action on climate change – was heckled by […]