Animals’ body sizes shrinking from climate change, study finds, based on a group of wagtails?

Another climate classic today: Animals’ body sizes shrinking from climate change, study finds
by University of Cape Town

Nice theory if you can get funding for it:

“All else being equal, larger animals can tolerate cold conditions better than smaller animals, so one could expect that a warming  is relatively more advantageous for smaller animals,” said Professor Altwegg.

There are 8.7 million species on Earth and this is based on “one” of them:

To investigate this idea and whether it could be true, the research team looked at a group of wagtails living along the Palmiet River.

It’s “a” group — just the one — and a temperature change of less than one fifth of a degree over 23 years:

Based on data from a local weather station near the Palmiet River, the researchers knew that temperatures in the area had increased by 0.18 °C. But they didn’t know how this had affected the birds’ size.

What they found supports the idea that  can shrink Earth’s animals.

“Supports” the idea? The study’s big achievement was only that it didn’t extinguish the idea at the “back of envelope” stage…

Their results showed that as temperature increased along the Palmiet River, the mountain wagtails living there had become lighter. Specifically, they found lighter individuals were replacing heavier ones in the population and that they survived better under high temperatures. This indicated that an evolutionary pressure was acting on the birds to become lighter.

Or maybe food, predators, fertility, rainfall, and disease were more important than 0.18 degrees C which may or may not be larger than the error bars of South African meteorology. Who knows. Australian meteorology has larger “adjustment bars” than this.

But this is definitely evolution. Look closely and we can see evidence that smaller minded researchers are outcompeting larger ones.

This appears to occur in every soft left environment there is, no matter what the climate.

REFERENCE. Seriously?

Jorinde Prokosch et al. Are animals shrinking due to climate change? Temperature-mediated selection on body mass in mountain wagtails, Oecologia (2019). DOI: 10.1007/s00442-019-04368-2

(What are the odds this is pure spoof? I mean, a bunch of wagtails….  fergoodnesssake– Jo)

h/t oldbrew in a comment somewhere at Tallblokes.

9.7 out of 10 based on 72 ratings

152 comments to Animals’ body sizes shrinking from climate change, study finds, based on a group of wagtails?

  • #
    TdeF

    It seems Climate Change caused entirely by the industrial revolution and farming and farm animals can happen without any change in temperature, rainfall or the weather.

    Species are changing rapidly to adapt to this Change of Climate and species extinction is probably widespread, especially species we do not know exist which are vanishing at an alarming rate. It’s a Climate Calamity heading towards a Climate Disaster. Researchers say.

    211

  • #
    graham dunton

    Well we are animals, and every time I look at the local younger generation, I wonder what the hell they have trodden in, as they tower above me.

    Good nutrition a big part, thanks to CO2

    220

    • #
      Curious George

      Those huge dinosaurs must have lived in extremely cold climates.

      100

      • #
        Greg in NZ

        And let’s not forget gravity, man. I mean, pterodactyls fergoodnesssake!
        Giant flying fingered lizards, Batman!
        Sounds more like yer average CCCash-strapped scientivist on the hunt…
        Wag (in the) tail = tail waggin’ the Dog, methinks.

        31

      • #
        sophocles

        Curious George said:

        Those huge dinosaurs must have lived in extremely cold climates.

        What do think caused the evolution of feathers? Can you imagine T-Rex with a suit of feathers? There’s no evidence which I know of which even suggests the ballerina of titanosaur predators did, but others around it weren’t so shy.

        A feather is a modified scale. Birds, being small dinosaurs, found them really handy for helping them get around as well as keeping them warm.

        Yes, there was an ice age in the Cretaceous – just a small one. Nir Shaviv shows the timings in his paper Ice-Ages on his blog site:

        http://sciencebits.com/ice-ages

        The Ice Age table is quite a revelation. And no, volcanoes don’t start Ice Ages. (hint: read his paper!).

        10

    • #
      Geoff Sherrington

      Graham,
      As I have often blogged, rising CO2 in the atmosphere correlates closely with tooth size in people born in year 2000 or later. Just look at TV during the lunch break in the cricket. Youngsters with huge white teeth, grinning through sitcoms.
      It remains for study, whether the larger teeth are an adaptation to allow more meat to be toothed off the ever-diminishing size of the cooked wag tail bird. Nature is full of complexities awaiting study grants. Geoff°

      70

      • #
        Bill in Oz

        Laughing out loud here !
        🙂
        🙂
        🙂
        Thanks Geoff !

        30

      • #
        sophocles

        … of course you’ve written a paper about this `fact.’ Geoff? When’s it go up for pre-publication `peer review?’ (I could peer at it but I’m not so sure about the review …) 🙂

        10

    • #
      Salome

      Climate change certainly isn’t causing me to shrink, more’s the pity.

      10

  • #

    (Greenberg, et al, 2019)

    This new study finds that
    climate change has a high
    positive correlation with
    lower sperm counts,
    smaller male genitals,
    and less interest in sex,
    resulting in significantly
    lower birth rates
    in many nations.

    The study, released a few days ago,
    made me suspicious, but I can’t find
    any fault with the science.

    The lower sperm counts, and lower
    birth rates, are old news.

    And I knew of another recent study,
    published in the Washington Post,
    finding that record numbers of Americans
    are not having sex, based on data
    compiled by the General Social Survey,
    done by the National Opinion Research
    Center at the University of Chicago,
    since 1972.

    The portion of Americans age 18 to 29,
    reporting no sex in the past year,
    more than doubled between 2008
    and 2018.

    But “smaller male genitals”
    from climate change
    is a brand new claim to me,
    and one that will get a LOT
    of attention from men !

    I was wondering how the
    measurements were done ?

    No one with sense would trust
    men to do measurements
    themselves … unless the
    scientists later “adjusted”
    the numbers to be smaller
    ( like global temperature
    “adjustments”, used to make
    the 1930’s cooler, and cooler,
    so in a few more decades,
    I expect the “1930s Dust Bowl”
    will have been “adjusted”
    into the “1930 Snow Bowl” ! )

    But seriously now, never mind the
    measurement methodology,
    — this new claim has
    HUGE implications:

    This claim may cause
    male climate change skeptics
    to change their minds !

    If men think their favorite organs will
    shrink from climate change, they are
    likely to support the Green New Deal
    — they may not even want to wait
    until 2030 for full implementation
    of the Green New Deal !

    This could significantly weaken
    climate change skepticism !

    Unfortunately, the math was too
    complicated for me to understand,
    so I was unable to summarize
    the study in simple language.

    But I did a “cut and paste” of the study
    report, and you can read the relatively
    easy to understand Executive Summary,
    at the link below:

    https://elblog2019.blogspot.com/2018/10/gilmore-car-museum-photographs.html

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  • #
    Kinky Keith

    An interesting sideline to this topic is the physical morphology of people living in contrasting climates.

    Hot tropical Africa: people are tall, thin and have dark skin.
    At the other extreme those living in places of almost perpetual ice and cold have bodies that are shorter, stouter and with whiter skin.

    All to do with the retention of body energy for Eskimos and the dissipation of excess energy by Africans.

    What does this mean for our future as the world gets hotter and hotter and the oceans rise alarmingly; but only around the Pacific Islands.

    KK

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    • #
      Phoenix44

      Skin colour is to do with UV absorption not heat. And the Pygamies and San?

      40

      • #
        Kinky Keith

        And the Australian aborigines have a response to the daily extremes in desert regions. In a climate that has blistering Sun during daylight and near freezing at night they are able to develop a subcutaneous insulating layer that helps deal with the extremes. Reports say it takes about a month to develop the layer.

        A low UV environment means that you can have a skin colour that’s appropriate.

        That said. Pygmies live in low UV rainforest environments.

        40

      • #
        Kinky Keith

        And the Australian aborigines have a response to the daily extremes in desert regions. In a climate that has blistering Sun during daylight and near freezing at night they are able to develop a subcutaneous insulating layer that helps deal with the extremes. Reports say it takes about a month to develop the layer.

        A low UV environment means that you can have a skin colour that’s appropriate.

        That said. Pygmies live in low UV rainforest environments.

        30

  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    That would explain this:

    There Are Now More Obese People Than Skinny People in The World

    https://www.sciencealert.com/there-are-now-more-obese-than-skinny-people

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    • #
      Kinky Keith

      Does that mean the world is cooling?

      90

      • #
        Travis T. Jones

        “Does that mean the world is cooling?”

        If it was cooling, people would be smarter?

        Children are being born less intelligent because mothers experience extreme weather events, a new report suggests.

        https://7news.com.au/news/climate-change/light-shone-on-climate-change-health-pains-c-374540

        After all, it was the 12th driest July on record, and the level of stupid is possibly peaking …

        “Frequent rain in Western Tasmania, parts of Northern Queensland and the gulf coast, resulting in higher than average falls there, but overall the nation was overwhelmingly dry.”

        https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/last-month-the-12th-driest-july-on-record/ar-AAFaSFS?li=AAgfIYZ

        How high must a carbon (sic) tax be before rainfall is uniform over all of Australia?

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        • #
          Travis T. Jones

          Drought now officially our worst on record

          18 Jul 2019

          Speaking during a BOM seminar on climate, BOM climatologist David Jones said the drought had now exceeded the Federation Drought, the WWII drought and the Millennium drought in terms of its severity through the MDB.

          https://www.theland.com.au/story/6281386/drought-now-officially-our-worst-on-record/?src=rss

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          • #
            Bill in Oz

            So farmers in the Northern Murray darling basin are doing it tough.
            With low Winter rainfalls NOT YET
            Making up for the very poor Summer 2018-19 rainfalls
            Which is when the Northern Murray Darling Basin area gets most of it’s rain
            SUMMER TIME.
            Ummmmm ?
            Let’s wait & see what happens next Summer
            Before going weak at the knees.

            Meanwhile here in Mt Barker SA
            We got 80 mm of rain in July
            As measured by the shonky rain gauge
            Over my back fence 150 meters away.
            And the mean July rainfall is supposedly 107 mm.

            But it’s SHONKY !
            The rain gauge is nicely sheltered
            By a couple of houses, a fence and trees.
            So it is certainly NOT measuring rainfall
            According to BOM guidelines.

            But it will do in BOM WORLD
            To scare us all of future catastrophe.

            80

          • #
            PeterPetrum

            Well, if this drought is worse than the 1898-1905 drought I am still waiting to see the trains pull into Blackheath and Katoomba stations loaded up with elderly and very young people from out West who are suffering badly from the elevated temperatures – not.

            The BOM just makes it up as it goes along. Anyway, how does it know what happened during the Millenium Drought – their records start in 1910 – when the temperatures were below average.

            50

            • #
              Bill in Oz

              I think you mean the Federation drought Peter
              !897-1903
              The Millennium drought was around 2000.
              But as illustrated by Ken’s posts
              On Ken’s Kingdom
              the BOM lives in “BOM World”
              Which is an all falsified version of our real weather & climate

              70

        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Maybe it means adults dont police thier kids screen time enough….just sayin’….

          I also have a theory that the proliferation of screens is an intelligence ( or in some cases -lack of it ) amplifier.

          Smart people can research educational stuff easier and get smarter, stupid people can feast on brain rot easier and get dumber over time…?

          Good research paper….a rehash on the influence of the new version of what we used to call tv i.e. the idiot box….

          80

          • #
            PeterS

            Have a room full of monkeys and give the each a computer and you will get nothing but rubbish.
            Have a room full of dumb programmers and give the each a computer and you will most likely get crap applications full of bugs.
            Have a room full of intelligent smart programmers and give the each a computer and you can get useful mostly error free applications.
            They key thing here is not the computer but the entity in front of it.

            70

    • #
      Greg in NZ

      Travis T. Jones,
      you have indeed raised an issue of fatastrophic gravitas – namely 0.04% CO₂ is now increasing the effects/force/suckability of gravity, resulting in ever-expanding waistlines of wagtailed obese-ophiles (often found waddling outside fass-food outlets day-and-night).

      Meanwhile, UAH’s Global Temp Anomaly for July dropped to 0.38˚C of nothing-burgers. Eat that!

      http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/08/uah-global-temperature-update-for-july-2019-0-38-deg-c/

      30

  • #

    “All else being equal, larger animals can tolerate cold conditions better than smaller animals, so one could expect that a warming climate is relatively more advantageous for smaller animals,” said Professor Altwegg.

    So now we have Jurassic denialists?

    150

  • #
    AndyG55

    UAH down a bit to +0.38C

    SCARY HOT !!! 😉

    60

  • #
    Graeme No.3

    Those ‘scientists’ chose the wrong species to study. The right choice to show proof of Global Warming** would be the Drongo. Climate ‘scientists’ should be able to find them close, very close.

    **nice to see the old term in use. Is this another climate change?

    90

  • #
    TdeF

    From Dr. Ed Berry.

    “Climate alarmists make four invalid claims:
    1. Human CO2 has caused all the increase in atmospheric CO2 above 280 ppm.
    2. Increased atmospheric CO2 causes global warming.
    3. Global warming causes bad stuff to happen.
    4. Therefore, human CO2 causes bad stuff to happen.

    Simple physics shows that human CO2 causes about 18 ppm of today’s 410 ppm level of atmospheric CO2, while natural CO2 causes 392 ppm. Human CO2 is insignificant to climate.”

    I could not agree more.

    As a corollary to #4, he could add that human CO2 causes male genitalia to shrink.

    It is possible that the explosion in people who call themselves scientists has to be addressed. Al Gore is not a scientist. Tim Flannery’s degree was in English. The creation of endless ‘science’ degrees in the 1970s to cope with the booming demand for free government sponsored education has led to a collapse in standards.

    A scientist used to be competent at a tertiary level in chemistry, mathematics, physics as a basis and before being qualified in any dependent science.
    On this basis Australia’s Chief Climate Commissioner was not a scientist and with zero qualifications in meteorology. None of the CLimate Commissioners had any qualifications in meteorology while we Australians paid 500 qualified meteorologists in the BOM, none of them Climate Commissioners.

    Now we put up with an endless list finished with ‘scientists say’. That is a wrong statement. A degree in the Science department does not make you a scientist any more than a PhD allows you to practice medicine.

    140

    • #
      TdeF

      Really where can an ecologist find a job in Australia except in Climate alarmism? How many people hire a toad expert or a extinct giant kangaroo expert like Tim Flannery? Or someone who can lay out a plan for a coal mine to preserve the habitat of the black thoated finch and earn a good enough living to have a family and service a mortgage? No wonder there are so many environment editors welded to the Climate Change crisis.

      We have seen the collapse of trade skills in Australia while creating a huge number of tertiary educated people with no employable skills at all. This used to be a minor problem but that the last graduation ceremony at RMIT I attended, they awarded 200 PhDs and in the most obscure things. Where else but Climate Change alarmism.

      Even a few year ago for the VFT from Brisbane to Melbourne, Labor planned $400Million allocated to ‘environmental studies’. Over 2,000km that’s $200,000 per km to study frogs and finches and who knows what else. And of course they would find something threatened by the VFT. In jobs alone, that’s 2,000 people on $200,000 per year for a year. No one blinks at these huge ‘ecology’ costs. It makes Malcolm Turnbull’s gift without even application or oversight of $444Million for Lucy’s friends acceptable. To save the Great Barrier Reef, somehow, as yet unspecified.

      150

    • #
      Peter Fitzroy

      do you have a reference for the 18ppm claim, or failing that, a reference to the mechanism by which we went from about 300 pmm to about 400 ppm in 100 years, after being stable (under natural conditions) for millennia?

      212

      • #
        TdeF

        No, it’s well known and easily calculated. From the figures for total world consumption of oil, gas, coal.

        The argument is not that total man made yearly CO2 output is tiny, which it is, but that fossil fuel CO2 is somehow special and stays in the air forever and takes 80 years for even half to enter the ocean (IPCC reference figure)

        So over 100 years with simple arithmetic you get 1800ppm or a +0.18% increase. That is the core argument of man made CO2 and thus man made Global Warming.

        The real proven figure for the half life is only 14 years, so it’s not true. In fact in the 1950s it was the startling fact discovered by Dr. Suess who was one of the inventors of radio carbon dating when he showed industrial CO2 at only 2.1%. His opinion then was a 5 year half life for CO2 absorption by the oceans.

        What is also surprising about the argument of man made CO2 is that CO2 is not absorbed into the vast deep oceans which cover 75% of the planet when CO2 is 40x as soluble as oxygen. Everyone knows the oceans is stuffed with oxygen because most life breathes, including fish. So why would CO2 not be in rapid exchange and even more absorption? It is also highly compressible, which we also know because we do it all the time and the oceans have one atmosphere per 10 metres, so CO2 has a hard time escaping.

        Your argument is that the coincidence of increased CO2 is significant, the old correlation equals causation fallacy. Even then assuming they are related, I could ask whether CO2 increases the temperature or temperature increases CO2. Why choose only the first when you know the ocean is stuffed with CO2? Of course CO2 comes out of the ocean if you warm the surface. That is simple physics, Henry’s law of dissolved gases. The flat beer effect in daily life.

        140

        • #
          Bobl

          You should also account for the fact that human Co2 is emitted pretty much at ground level and is heavier than air. It is absorbed for photosynthesis first.

          Then there is the fact that only 50% of the measured human CO2 actually appears in the atmosphere a year later which shows the NET half-life is only one year, that is the human pressure on photosynthesis causes increased photosynthesis which absorbs 50% in just one year that’s a net half-life of just ONE year, 5 years assumes the biosphere doesn’t grow!

          81

          • #
            AndyG55

            “5 years assumes the biosphere doesn’t grow!”

            And it most definitely has been expanding 🙂

            This is GOOD by the way.

            TREES LUV CO2

            60

        • #
          Peter Fitzroy

          Even if I were to accept those figures (for example 35 billion tons of CO2 a year while your claim of 14 years for residence time is also wide of the mark, as Individual carbon dioxide molecules have a short life time of around 5 years in the atmosphere. However, when they leave the atmosphere, they’re simply swapping places with carbon dioxide in the ocean.

          Now to the second an as yet unanswered point – if not anthro, then what? Your ocean warming hypothesis doe not match the speed in which atmospheric CO2 is increasing at least according to New Scientist and NOAA. But climate records from the end of the last ice age show that as temperatures climb, the trend reverses and the oceans emit CO2, which exacerbates warming. Previous studies have suggested that it takes between 400 and 1300 years for this to happen. “But climate records from the end of the last ice age show that as temperatures climb, the trend reverses and the oceans emit CO2, which exacerbates warming. Previous studies have suggested that it takes between 400 and 1300 years for this to happen.”

          27

          • #
            AndyG55

            No body care if you accept FACTS. You live in a lie anyway

            “at least according to New Scientist and NOAA.”

            that’s funny, PF.. you have got to be joking !!

            Haven’t you yet figured out that as the planet warms NATURALLY from strong solar cycles, a lot of dead matter produced during the LIA will start to decay. Plus the natural ocean outgassing.

            You can’t have it both ways, saying that warming will release extra methane etc as places warm, then say that human CO2 is causing more than a small amount of the HIGHLY BENEFICIAL rise in atmospheric CO2.

            The whole Carbon Cycle has increased in vigour, the biosphere is expanding after a long period of starvation rations. Of course there is more CO2 to go around.

            That little nudge us humans have given with the relatively small amount of CO2 we release has been an absolute boon to all life on Earth.

            “oceans emit CO2, which exacerbates warming”

            There you go AGAIN with your UNSUPPORTABLE junk-science.

            You have no empirical evidence that increased atmospheric CO2 causes warming, just agenda driven hearsay.

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          • #
            bobl

            The simple answer is that CO2 follows warming since almost ALL life likes it warmer, warmer climates produce more biological activity, biological activity on the whole emits Methane that breaks down to CO2, especially termites and microbes outdo humans by a huge margin as the CO2 emission champs. So a simple answer to human CO2 (should it be sensible to reduce it – which it is not) could be mass termite extermination. Certainly that would be much more effective than grid scale solar panels and windmills which save no CO2 at all.

            Given a natural warming from the depths of the little ice age one would expect CO2 emission to pick up both through ocean warming (Henry’s law) and biosphere expansion, neither of which are treated properly in modelling. Too much assumption – for example climate science assumes the world is uniform, flat and constantly illuminated by 1/4peak insolation, it’s not it’s a craggy oblate spheroid illuminated by an intermittent rotating and pulsating with unstable frequency distribution energy source that is constantly interfered with by atmospheric chemistry (Mostly Ozone, Nitrates, Sulphates and Water) modulated by the moon and suns gravity and 90 percent covered by a triple phase compound capable of shifting terrajoules around. That oblate spheriod is largely layered with vegetation that is capable of absorbing up to 60% of incoming sunlight extracting that incoming energy and converting that to biomass.

            No, water doesn’t cover 75 % of the planet it evaporates from over 90% of it and vegetation extends to ocean plants and plankton.

            Do you think the mere computer models can do this math properly, nup, not even close, they don’t even do terrain (Elevation) properly so each cell doesn’t properly model the angle of incidence well, let alone intracell conduction or photosynthesis energy extraction or shading loads. If you are in the shadow of a mountain or a tree, its colder.

            Frankly the basic AGW equation is nonsense because temperature is used in the feedback term which implies temperature can move between output and input of the system which is wrong, Energy moves, not temperature. The equation also assumes that the feedback is not some function of temperature – which is also wrong, it is, and that function is non-linear and saturates at the dew point.

            This is all obvious to anyone who cares to think and apply some primary school science.

            Peter we also know for a fact that as the climate gets warmer it gets LESS extreme, for example Melbourne’s temperature range varies from about -3 to 40 (a range of 43 degrees and average of 18) while Brisbane’s warmer climate varies from about 3 degrees to about 39 degrees a range of 35 degrees and average of 21 , This is because water absorbs heat and warmer water evaporates faster, so a warmer world is a more tropical, less extreme and more productive world. We know this, but all the pronouncements fly in the face of this obvious reality that warmer, less extreme weather, is better for almost everything. Its also why people move from Melbourne to the Gold Coast, cold – bad, warm – good.

            100

          • #
            el gordo

            ‘ … as temperatures climb, the trend reverses and the oceans emit CO2, which exacerbates warming.’

            They call that a positive feedback, but its not happening.

            60

            • #
              Tdef

              At all times the ocean both emits and absorbs CO2. As it heats more is emitted on average than absorbed. This is the underlying principle of equilibrium in all
              exchanges and reactions.

              70

          • #
            Tdef

            Simply swapping? No it means there is a thing called rapid equilibrium operating. Henry’s Law. A real law in physical chemistry for all dissolved gases.

            So the amount of CO2 in the air is not settable by man. No matter how much CO2 we output it is dwarfed by the total amount in the system and we have no control of CO2 levels.

            70

            • #
              Graeme No.3

              TdeF:

              No, No. Henry’s Law only operates when the Gullibles want it to. (not very often).
              Likewise Archimedes Principle doesn’t work (for arctic ice melting).
              The Beer-Lambert Law is reversed to get increasing heating effect from CO2.
              And don’t get me started on Thermodynamics.

              Science is very simple if you believe in Invisible, odourless, negative weight and negative volume phlogiston.
              People in the early eighteenth century all believed, and look how wonderful life was then (apart from smallpox, cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, starvation, freezing to death through poverty etc.) so no wonder they want us to go back to that lifestyle.

              40

      • #
        AndyG55

        Physic and links have been given to you often enough, PF

        You are either incapable of following or incapable of comprehension, or just wilfully ignorant.

        You have yet to supply scientific links to warming by increased atmospheric CO2.

        Who says its been stable.? https://i.postimg.cc/dVq6fDRL/callCO2fudge.jpg

        Went up and down the Vostok cores, following the temperatures, between values of plant non-growth and plant just surviving.

        Yes CO2 levels have been DANGEROUSLY LOW for a long time.

        Be VERY THANKFUL that current levels have lifted from that base-line barely surviving level.

        The NATURAL warming after a period of cold and much plant death, human death and famine, with a little bit of help from humans has ENHANCED the carbon cycle to a much more active and fertile level.

        And the biosphere is LUVING IT !!

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      • #
        el gordo

        ‘ … after being stable (under natural conditions) for millennia?’

        Law Dome data is dodgy and cannot be relied upon.

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    • #
      • #
        AndyG55

        David Appell is a FAILED JOURNALIST.

        Nothing more, and probably considerably less..

        More like a mindless toad actually. !

        Sort of place you would expect PF to visit.

        The maths from Ed Berry is far beyond anything the rotten appell could comprehend.

        60

      • #
        Tdef

        That’s just nitpicking rubbish. As well as being simply abusive. Accusing a Caltech physics PhD of a lack of simple arithmetic skills is unbelievable nonsense. Both numbers are right.

        40

      • #
        Peter C

        From David Appell:

        What can you even do when climate deniers won’t agree to the basic rules of arithmetic??

        Ed Berry is a physicist who earned his PhD back in the Mesozoic era.

        Errr?

        40

  • #
    Mal

    All these studies merely identify a possible correlation.
    Jumping to a temperature change by a fraction of a degree as the cause is purely a leap of faith, not science.
    Then Further morphing from a minor temp change to climate change as the cause is totally illogical and completely unscientific.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    I think Climate Change (TM) is causing the size of brains of Climate Change (TM) activists to shrink.

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    • #
      toorightmate

      Not much to drain from those brains.

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    • #
      Bobl

      More likely the constant socialist propaganda of all flavors. Was just discussing how eliminating special schools has made the lefties “feel good” about diversity but actually hurt quite badly the disabled people they were trying to “help” as well as the able children denied support while the teacher deals with disabled people issues. Not politically correct at all but true.

      Sometimes the old ways were the right ways.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    (Sorry, O/T.)

    It looks that the Climate Change™ Elites are having a good time at your expense. I hope they don’t run out of private jet parking places like they did at the climate conference in Bali in 2007.
    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/07/31/irony-alert-global-elites-take-to-the-sea-skies-for-more-climate-talks/amp/

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    • #
      Bill in Oz

      The Sicilian mafiosi
      Are sorting out that problem
      For Goggle invitees.
      Such an opportunity
      To rub shoulders
      With the young & beautiful
      Alarmist Glitterati

      PS I think the Sicilian Mafia Mobs
      Are watching in total amazement
      At how the Climate Changers
      Acquire huge fortunes
      From governments
      Without any collateral risks
      Of jail, murder or gang wars.

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  • #
    toorightmate

    I think they are right on the money.
    Everyone knows that animals are much smaller at night than during daylight hours AND THAT’S NOT ALL:
    They are miniscule in winter.

    50

  • #
    Mal

    Wagtail or a “wags tale”?

    50

  • #
    Maptram

    Which of BOM’s temperatures did they use, the temperature or the apparent temperature. Most (99.999%) of the time the apparent temperature is lower than the temperature, and the apparent temperature can change with other climate variables such as wind, higher wind speed, same temperature, lower apparent temperature. In Redesdale, Vic yesterday morning at 5:00am the temperature was 1.7°C while the apparent temperature was -0.2°C, the wind was calm. At 8:00 the temperature was 1.7°C and the apparent temperature was -0.3°C, wind speed was 2kph. I presume the birds live in the apparent temperature. And there was no mention of the effect on the birds of scientists constantly trapping and weighing them.

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    • #
      Bill in Oz

      I wonder if Ken has looked at Redesdale
      BOM weather station ?

      It is possibly not complaint
      With it’s own guidelines
      And this just producing
      False temperature readings
      Whether apparent or not.

      50

  • #
    Ruairi

    Any skeptic should not be surprised,
    When alarmists so rashly surmised,
    That some warming they think,
    Caused a few birds to shrink,
    Leaving wagtails a tinch undersized.

    130

  • #
    Maptram

    Did the scientists establish that the wagtails they studied did not interbreed with other populations of wagtails that may have had the lighter body weight.

    60

    • #
      Greg in NZ

      Now yer using that ‘logic’ thingy by referring to ‘research’ or whatever – were talkin’ climate science here! Classified under Comedy/Horror in the B-grade Sci-Fi movie section. Step right up, folks! Money for jam…

      60

    • #
      Bill in Oz

      Or did they interbed with the “Spectacled drongos ” ?
      With catastrophic mini sizing effects
      On the progeny ?

      30

    • #
      AndyG55

      could be stress from being caught and weighed the first time !

      How do they know they aren’t just catching younger birds ?

      30

  • #
    theRealUniverse

    Gimme the money! Ill prove everything is related to ‘klimate change’.
    As for the article, possibly animals do change slightly due to changing environments, probably very slowly.
    These studies are just gravy train garbage.

    60

  • #
    pat

    finally skipped through the following which I posted recently, and found –

    (paraphrasing)
    26min23sec: Dr Anthony Ashbolt – Senior lecturer in Politics, University of Wollongong: you can’t absolutely predict how thing will happen, but look at changes… the rise of vegetarianism etc. the ecological consciousness, which was really promoted quite fervently by the hippies in the 1960s, still has resonance today and is taking on an added importance, of course, today.
    it seems to me the politics of climate, at the moment, are generating something that might develop into the counterculture, which was so associated with the youth revolution of the 1960s..er..something like the conterculture so associated with the so-called youth revolution of the 1960s and we see it not only in something like Extinction Rebellion protests in Britain, but also in the high(?) school strikes internationally, because there we are finding the agenda, politically, being set by younger people, by high school students, that is so reminiscent of the late 60s, when high school students became very much involved – and I myself was involved – in the struggle against the American war in Vietnam.
    it seems to me that we might just be seeing the rebirth of a counterculture with the kinds of cultural and political sensibilities that we saw in the 1960s.

    AUDIO: 29min05sec: 28 Jul: ABC Future Tense: Antony Funnell: Counterculture, consumerism and the far right
    https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/counterculture/11338590

    the academic:

    The Conversation: Anthony Ashbolt
    School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong.
    Anthony Ashbolt is the author of A Cultural History of the Radical Sixties in the San Francisco Bay Area, Pickering & Chatto, London, 2013 and co-author (with Glenn Mitchell) of Music, The Political Score and Communism in Australia, in R. Adlington (ed.), Red Strains: Music and Communism Outside the Communist Bloc, Oxford University Presss, Oxford, 2013. He is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Wollongong.
    https://theconversation.com/profiles/anthony-ashbolt-115072

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    • #
      pat

      following: Protest PIC: banners – Stop the racist Ramsay degree and (UOW) University of Western (Supremacy) – approx 25-30 protesters. why “THE SHORT MARCH” in the caption, if not as a reference to the Chinese Communist Party’s LONG MARCH?

      1 Mar: Illawarra Mercury: Protests on campus as UOW Ramsay Centre fire still burning
      by Ben Langford
      PIC: ***THE SHORT MARCH: Students take their message to the University of Wollongong administration building. Picture
      Protests continued on Friday over the University of Wollongong’s deal to set up the Ramsay Centre’s degree in Western Civilisation.
      A fortnight after academics voiced their anger and handed over a 3000-strong petition, about 80 people joined a student-led protest which marched to the administration building.
      Several speakers argued the $50 million deal was regressive, created a “bubble of privilege” on campus, and was a threat to academic freedom.
      Politics lecturer Anthony Ashbolt said the privately-run and funded Ramsay school was part of “an ideological mission” which would “start corroding the university from inside”.
      “It is about cementing their interests in the power structure,” he said.
      “It’s a private institution corroding our very public institution.”…
      https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/5932071/protests-on-campus-as-uow-ramsay-centre-fire-still-burning/

      Ashbolt will be disappoint to hear:

      31 Jul: Esquire: Woodstock 50 Is Officially Canceled, Which Is Kind of a Bummer, But Not a Huge Surprise
      The massive tribute festival scheduled for next month has been plagued by issues since the very beginning
      by Matt Miller
      And now, after months of difficulties, Woodstock 50 is officially dead, according to Variety.
      Most recently, the festival was supposed to take place at Marriweather Post Pavilion outside of Baltimore, Maryland from August 16 to 18…
      As Michael Lang, co-founder of Woodstock, said in a statement to Variety:

      “We are saddened that a series of unforeseen setbacks has made it impossible to put on the Festival we imagined with the great line-up we had booked and the social engagement we were anticipating.”…
      We formed a collaboration with HeadCount to do a smaller event at the Merriweather Pavilion to raise funds for them to get out the vote and for certain NGOs involved in fighting climate change…

      “We released all the talent so any involvement on their part would be voluntary. Due to conflicting radius issues in the DC area many acts were unable to participate and others passed for their own reasons. I would like to encourage artists and agents, who all have been fully paid, to donate 10% of their fees to HeadCount or causes of their choice in the spirit of peace. Woodstock remains committed to social change and will continue to be active in support of HeadCount’s critical mission to get out the vote before the next election.”…
      https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a28567806/woodstock-50-canceled/

      50

      • #
        pat

        typo – should be Ashbolt will be disappointed…

        30

      • #
        Bill in Oz

        80 protesters ?
        What is the enrolled student population
        At Wollongong Uni ?
        And of the 80 at the protest
        I wonder how many were actually enrolled students ?

        40

        • #
          Mal

          In 2017, there were over 32000 students and 2500 staff

          50

          • #
            Bill in Oz

            So the protesters were an awesome 0.0025 of the student population

            And our protest leader Tony Ashbolt represented an awesome 0.0004 of the staff…

            Such an awesome protest !

            NOT !

            60

    • #
      Another Ian

      Pat,

      How about they do a study on something like “Puritanism in the UK” and check their conclusions?

      40

  • #
    pat

    ramping it up – watch all.

    video is set up to begin near the 4-minute mark, where Mark Carney interview begins. however, the CAGW ALARMISM begins from the start of the video:

    VIDEO: 11min20sec: 31 Jul: Channel 4 UK: Jon Snow: Mark Carney: ‘Capitalism is part of the solution’ to tackling climate change
    In an exclusive interview with Channel 4 News about climate change, Mr Carney challenged the view of some environmental campaigners that the pursuit of GDP growth is incompatible with tackling climate change.
    He told Channel 4 News: “Capitalism is part of the solution and part of what we need to do. Remember what we need to do in going from here to where we need to get to – these are tens of billions, in fact trillions, of pounds of investments that take place in the UK, across Europe across the world.”

    He added: “If you flip it around, there is risk but there is huge opportunity. One of the first things we went out and did was to create a framework, a way of providing the right information. Now there is a $120 trillion of capital behind that framework that is saying to companies ‘tell us how you are going to manage these risks’ – that’s the first thing.
    “The second thing the capitalist system needs to do is to manage the risks around climate change, be ready for the different speeds of the adjustment.
    “And then the most important thing is to move capital from where it is today to where it needs to be tomorrow. The system is very much part of the solution.”

    Mr Carney said: “Companies that don’t adapt – including companies in the financial system – will go bankrupt without question. [But] there will be great fortunes made along this path aligned with what society wants.”

    Mark Carney said the government has told the Bank of England that one of its responsibilities was to look at the risk that climate change posed to the stability of the financial system.
    With the UK parliament having legislated for net zero carbon emissions by 2050, the speed of adjustment will mean the bank needs to stress test the financial system to see how ready it is to cope with climate change…

    Banks, insurance companies and asset managers also had to look at how exposed they were to fossil fuels and petrochemicals, he said, as it was a “mistake” to think the footprint of fossil fuels won’t be reduced.

    ***Channel 4 News interviewed Mr Carney at Coutts Bank on Tuesday evening, where he had been joined by Sir David Attenborough to address an audience of bankers, financiers and city businessmen about the risks and rewards posed by climate change.
    Sir David told them the planet and the creatures that inhabited it were in mortal danger and they “simply must act”.
    https://www.channel4.com/news/mark-carney-capitalism-is-part-of-the-solution-to-tackling-climate-change

    11

  • #
    pat

    1 Aug: Guardian Editorial: The Guardian view on climate breakdown: an emergency for all, but especially the poor
    Record temperatures in Europe and the US have reinforced the danger of global heating for many inhabitants. But others are and will be far worse hit
    Last week the UK had the hottest day on record: 38.7C in Cambridge. New records were set in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands in July, and June was the hottest month in US history. The Met Office says that the UK’s 10 hottest years on record have all been since 2002.

    Heatwaves naturally occur in summer, but they did not used to be so hot, or so frequent. Experts say that the UK’s sweltering weather last summer was made 30 times more likely by global heating. That link has sunk in: in a new survey (LINK JULY YOUGOV), 77% believed the recent heatwave was partially or wholly caused by the climate crisis. As temperatures reach unprecedented levels, so does public concern about the environment (LINK JUNE YOUGOV)…

    For many people, even a small rise in temperatures will be catastrophic. A new report from Monash University in Melbourne warns that the climate crisis is already causing deaths (LINK); one of its authors said almost 400 people died from heat stress and heatstroke during fires in Victoria 10 years ago. It predicts climate-related stunting, malnutrition and lower IQ in children within the coming decades…

    It is the duty of richer nations to do all they can to hold back the soaring temperatures which they did most to produce, and to take what action they can to mitigate their impact – abroad as well as at home. It is also in their self-interest.
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/31/the-guardian-view-on-climate-breakdown-an-emergency-for-all-but-especially-the-poor

    FROM JULY YOUGOV LINK (WHICH LINKS TO FULL RESULTS FOR THE ONLY QUESTION ASKED). BTW WASN’T THE DODGY CAMBRIDGE TEMP THE ONLY RECORD-BREAKER IN UK?

    Q: To what extent, if at all, do you think ***record-breaking heatwaves like the one the UK has experienced are to do with climate change?…

    YouGov: That climate change is at least in part responsible for the sizzling temperatures is widely accepted across British society. Liberal Democrat voters and Remain voters are the most likely to attribute it to global warming (both at 88%), while even among the least likely to do so – Leave voters, working class people and Northerners – seven in ten people (72% in all three groups) still say climate change is at least partly responsible…
    Yet while global heating is just that, its impact varies even within countries. Most people surveyed in July considered the weather too hot. But, while 73% of people in the east of England judged it too hot, in chillier Scotland only 47% of people agreed – and a slightly larger proportion thought it just right or not warm enough. Some may look forward to warmer staycations and the chance to grow grapes in their back garden.

    1 Aug: Guardian: Godfrey Boyle obituary
    Godfrey Boyle, who has died aged 74, was founder-editor in 1972 of Undercurrents, a magazine of “radical science and people’s technology”, which inspired a variety of sustainable energy, housing, transport and community projects. In its founding year he led the editorial team of Undercurrents (known affectionately as Undies) to the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, where they distributed a special issue on energy and organised an exhibition on alternative technologies. The publication lasted 10 years before merging with Resurgence magazine.

    In 1975 Godfrey co-edited (with Peter Harper) Radical Technology, a book with contributions from many of the Undies stable that was perhaps best known for the series of Visions drawings by the anarchist artist Clifford Harper. In the same year Godfrey published his influential book Living on the Sun, which advanced the then novel idea that industrial countries could make a transition to renewable power.

    In 1976 he joined the Open University, where he created and led the Alternative Technology Group (later the Energy and Environment Research Unit), which pioneered teaching and research into renewable energy. His own research concentrated on wind and solar systems (and involved some fun with early electric bikes). He edited the first three editions (1996, 2004, 2012) of Renewable Energy: Power for a Sustainable Future, the bestselling introductory textbook on renewable energy…
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/31/godfrey-boyle-obituary

    12

  • #
    DonS

    Hi Jo

    Talking about junk did you see the BOM via their useful idiots at the ABC are pushing another climate scare this morning? The ABC weather guy presented 2 maps of Australia clearly showing as he said that July was the hottest month in 110 years and also the driest.

    Seems that they have taken temperature and rainfall from about 1909 at a time when the continent was returning from a big drought i.e. a time of lower temps and higher rainfall and used it as the starting point to compare with the rest of the time up to now right in the middle of a big drought in the East. Why not start from 1890 or 1900? I think we can guess why.

    I know anecdote is not evidence but since I moved to Perth in 2011 this is by far the coolest winter I have seen here and also the wettest. Something does not add up about this stuff they are pushing.

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    • #
      Another Ian

      DonS

      “I know anecdote is not evidence ”

      Maybe not but sound anecdote beats junk science hands down (IMO)

      90

  • #
    Penguinite

    The author of this inane report hasn’t read Darwin’s Origin of the species! If he had he would see that birds frequently adapt to their environment. On the Galapagos Islands, for instance, he noticed that some shore birds had a beak that curved to the left to enable them to turn shell fish and crustaceans over in order to reveal the soft under side.

    40

  • #
    Elgorza Narce

    If anyone would like further explanation of the scientific method and statistical analysis used by these “scientists” you can write to them at the addresses below.

    Please be respectful in anything you say to them. (They are saving the planet from a catastrophic climate emergency after all)

    [email protected]

    [email protected]

    40

  • #
    el gordo

    Breaking Nooze

    ‘AGL delays closure of Liddell power plant after battle with government.’ SMH

    70

  • #
    pat

    big on ABC today, but the authors seem to have been reporting this claim since 2011 (see ***PNAS link at Science Mag):

    first five-minutes plus:

    AUDIO: 9min15sec: 2 Aug: ABC Breakfast: Science with Jonathan Webb: Reptile’s sex determined by temperature
    But for many species of reptile – including lizards, snakes and turtles – the trigger for that developmental determination is not genetics, but temperature
    Only eggs that are incubated above a certain temperature produce females. And now, a study published in the journal Current Biology suggests that tiny turtle embryos can influence this process, by moving around inside their eggs.
    https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/science-with-jonathan-webb/113736

    1 Aug: ScienceMag: Turtle embryos may determine their own sex—by seeking the perfect temperature
    By Katie Camero
    Now, scientists have evidence that these embryos have some power over their sexual destiny: By moving to slightly warmer or cooler spots inside their eggs, freshwater turtle embryos can help determine their own sex. Not everyone is convinced. But if the new finding holds, this behavior could potentially save some turtle species from extinction by balancing their sex ratios…

    Wondering whether turtle embryos could respond to rapidly changing temperatures, scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing examined the behavior of the Chinese soft-shelled turtle (Pelodiscus sinensis). They discovered that the embryos could in fact move (LINK ***PNAS) between cooler and warmer spots inside their paperclip-size eggs, they reported in ***2011 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…

    But evolutionary biologist Gerardo Antonio Cordero, a postdoc at the University of Tübingen in Germany, says such conclusions are “bold,” given that the researchers don’t know how long the embryos can move within their eggs. “I don’t want people to get the impression that embryos are moving freely during the [entire] time of development,” says Cordero, whose own 2017 work suggests turtle embryos cannot control their body temperature from inside their eggs…

    Evolutionary ecologist Fredric Janzen, who has been studying temperature sex-dependent organisms for 35 years, says the findings are “pretty impressive.” But he adds that it’s troubling that the authors imply the embryos have some knowledge about what sex they should become and when to avoid certain temperatures…
    He also says turtles have already adapted to climate change by choosing cooler nesting sites or months to lay their eggs, so embryo thermal regulation likely does not—and will not—play a role. “If it’s true, it’s astonishing, I just have no clue how that’s remotely possible.”
    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/08/turtle-embryos-may-determine-their-own-sex-seeking-perfect-temperature

    2 Aug: ABC: Tiny turtle embryo’s temperature shifts could help buffer it against climate change
    ABC Science By Genelle Weule
    Last year, it was reported that 99 per cent of Australian green turtle hatchlings (LINK) on beaches in the northern reaches of the Great Barrier Reef were female.
    But it appears there is a little wriggle room for at least one species of freshwater turtle…

    The embryos of the Chinese pond turtle (Mauremys reevesii) can change the temperature that influences their sexual destiny by moving around the egg, according to a new study published today in the journal Current Biology (LINK).
    “We have always regarded embryos as passive little organisms that don’t have any control over their own environments until after they hatch out of the egg,” said study co-author Rick Shine of Macquarie University.
    “Our study shows that even a tiny embryo is able to detect the world around it and respond accordingly.”

    Modelling by the team suggests the ability of an embryo to find the temperature sweet spot could help some species maintain sex ratio balances and help buffer against rising temperatures.
    But other scientists say this “fascinating phenomenon” is likely to have a minimal impact in the face of climate change and other threats…ETC
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-08-02/turtle-embryos-shift-temperature-to-determine-sex-buffer-climate/11369148

    it sounds like having a bet both ways in case CAGW hasn’t resulted in an overwhelming number of female turtles!

    40

    • #
      Kinky Keith

      OK

      I’ll believe that when male and female components of the mating process meet there is direct genetic impact on the future animal being constructed.

      I will also believe that the destiny of a phoetus in utero can be altered at various stages during development as a result of maternal adjustments to immediate lifestyle factors such as stress, starvation, alcohol and the like.

      The two most prominent examples in humans being diabetes type 11 and gender dysphoria.

      But, I have great difficulty believing that turtle embryos can actively move around within the egg to seek a convenient temperature.

      That said, I admit to not reading the papers and based on the knowledge of human phoetal disruption do not discount the possibility of external temperature changes of sufficient impact causing disturbances in development.

      From my own viewpoint there’s a serious need for research to get off the turtles back and try to see a way forward for ordinary humans to have a better life than at present.

      After two centuries of well documented wars, plagues and strife the average human, being under intense stress needs urgent relief.

      That should be the principal focus of research not the current “blame the human” type research currently in vogue.

      KK.

      20

  • #
    Brian the Engineer

    Contrary to this study I can confirm my body size is getting larger.

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  • #
    Serp

    Sorry for the off topicality but d’Ambrosio’s truculent reaction to federal criticism of Victoria’s having descended to being a nett importer of electrical power has astounded me; her riposte is get on board because you’re frightening renewables investors in blatant disregard of the forecast of imminent summer power outages.

    Yep, investor confidence trumps provision of a reliable power supply; isn’t there some racketeering offence this Victorian government minister can be charged with?

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  • #
    pat

    30 Jul: UK Times: Green group Reclaim the Power left red-faced after blockading wrong building
    by Will Humphries
    Climate change activists chained themselves to the wrong building in the City of London after failing to realise that the fossil fuel company they wanted to disrupt had moved last year.
    The protesters instead brought chaos to the entrance of a building that houses the offices of a leading renewable energy company.
    About 200 members of the group Reclaim the Power, dressed in white boiler suits, targeted the building in Moorgate during rush hour, unfurling a banner that read: “No Borders, No Nations, No Gas Power stations.”

    They thought they would be disrupting workers at the energy company Drax, which plans to build a gas power station in north Yorkshire. However, Drax has moved its London headquarters to Noble Street half a mile away.
    Bemused workers at Statkraft, a Norwegian hydropower company that describes itself as “Europe’s largest generator of renewable energy”, were confronted with the protest…
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/green-group-reclaim-the-power-left-red-faced-after-blockading-wrong-building-0fbn5z52q

    BBC avoids the farce by focusing elsewhere, while eventually mentioning the London Drax protest with no hint of what went wrong:

    30 Jul: BBC: Climate protesters target Lincolnshire gas power station
    The Reclaim the Power group said it had “shut down” building work at the Keadby 2 site in North Lincolnshire.
    The group claims the new power station would be a “climate disaster”…
    However, protester Ellie Groves said “new gas spells climate disaster.”
    “We need clean, cheap, community-controlled renewable power,” she said…

    ***The group has also been picketing outside the London offices of Drax, which has a power plant in North Yorkshire…
    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-49152523

    31 Jul: UK Express: Eco-warriors left red faced after protesting outside renewable energy firm by mistake
    CLIMATE change campaigners made a huge gaffe after protesting outside a renewables energy company in London instead of the offices of power company Drax.
    By Luke Chillingsworth…

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  • #
    pat

    Updated 29 Jul: UK Express: Climate change bombshell: Humans are NOT to blame for global warming claims shock study
    A SCIENCE journal is set to launch an investigation into a controversial study it published claiming global warming was not a man-made issue but one caused by the Earth moving closer to the Sun.
    By Gursimran Hans
    Scientific Reports published the research from academics from Northumbria University, the University of Bradford, the University of Hull as well as Azerbaijan’s Nasir al-Din al-Tusi Shamakhi Astrophysical Observatory. The authors claim the increase in global temperatures by 1C (33.8F) was due to natural solar cycles as well as the Sun’s movement around the barycentre, the centre of mass in the Solar System. The paper claimed that by the 27th Century, temperatures might increase by 3C (37.4F).

    The University of Edinburgh’s Ken Rice was one of a number of physicists to accuse the report of making basic errors: “It’s well known that the Sun moves around the barycentre of the solar system due to the influence of the other solar system bodies, mainly Jupiter.
    “This does not mean, as the paper is claiming, that this then leads to changes in the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
    “The claim that we will see warming in the coming centuries because the sun will move closer to the Earth as it moves around the solar system barycentre is very simply wrong.”
    Professor Rice said it was “embarrassing” the paper was published and called for Scientific Reports to remove it.

    Lead author Valentina Zharkova dismissed Mr Rice’s criticisms while speaking to New Scientist: “The close links between oscillations of solar baseline magnetic field, solar irradiance and temperature are established in our paper without any involvement of solar inertial motion.”
    The Independent have reported Ms Zharkova gave a presentation to climate change sceptic group Global Warming Policy Forum, a think tank and lobby group founded by former Chancellor and Energy Secretary Nigel Lawson.
    Scientific Reports have launched an investigation into the study.
    A spokesman said: “This process is ongoing and we cannot comment further at this stage.”

    Scientific Reports was founded in 2011 and it became the largest scientific journal in the world five years later.
    The journal has an impact factor of 4.525.
    This figure refers to how often a journal is cited by others.
    However, this figure is way behind some journals with Nature, who published James Watson and Francis Crick’s famous study on the double helix structure of DNA and the paper on Dolly the Sheep registers at 41.577.
    https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1156605/Climate-change-news-global-warming-hoax-fake-proof-study-research-science-sun-space

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    OriginalSteve

    O/T but Interesting reading :

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6946815/Whos-REALLY-16-year-old-Greta-Thunberg.html

    “* “Who’s REALLY behind 16-year-old Greta Thunberg? Ugly feud between her opera singer-turned-climate-activist mother and the green PR man who she accuses of exploiting her

    “* Greta Thunberg spoke to Existence Rebellion protesters in London, yesterday

    “* Reports claim Swedish teen’s rise to fame is more orchestrated than first thought

    “* Six months ago the unknown teenager camped outside Sweden’s parliament

    “She’s the 16-year-old schoolgirl who inspired a series of classroom walkouts when her message for faster action on climate change spread from Sweden across the continent.
    But while Greta Thunberg spoke to an animated crowd of Existence Rebellion demonstrators at Marble Arch, London, yesterday, reports emerged claiming the teenager’s rise to fame was more orchestrated than first thought.
    Six months ago an unknown 15-year-old Miss Thunberg camped outside Sweden’s parliament next to a hand-written sign that read ‘Skolstrejk för Klimatet’ (School strike for the climate).

    “”Miss Thunberg skipped school every Friday to sit on the steps of the Riksdag and soon became a global success following her first TED talk – which now has more than a million views.

    “But doubts have been raised as to whether the teenager’s newfound shift into the spotlight is really the creation of a carefully laid out public relations campaign.

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      Greg in NZ

      Greta Turn$tile’s suck•cesspool:
      “more orchestrated than first thought… creation of a carefully laid out public relations campaign”.

      SHOCKED! I’m absowootly shocked, I yam I yam I yam!

      Who will think of the children! Obviously not whacktivists nor shysters nor PR scum nor the UNions*.

      *UNions – millions of UN minions

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    pat

    can’t see a link to Delingpole’s podcast, tho clearly people could look it up:

    1 Aug: Newsbusters: NOAA Scientist Turns Climate Skeptic, Recounts Censorship
    By Joseph Valle
    Because outlets ignore and censor such scientists, curious individuals must turn to other sources such as English journalist James Delingpole’s columns or podcast, the Delingpod. On the July 25 podcast, he interviewed award-winning, former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist Dr. Rex Fleming about his conversion from global warming alarmism to skepticism…READ ON
    https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/business/joseph-valle/2019/08/01/noaa-scientist-turns-climate-skeptic-recounts-censorship

    INCLUDES DELINGPOLE PODCAST, BUT CONSERVATIVE WEBSITE WND CAN BE DIFFICULT TO OPEN:

    1 Aug: WorldNetDaily: Ex-NOAA scientist now ‘climate-change-denier’
    ‘I had to go to Europe to publish a paper’
    Rex Fleming admitted that while he worked for NOAA, he attributed global warming to carbon dioxide despite “having doubts.”
    “Eventually I just read enough to realize it’s a totally wrong direction,” he said in a podcast interview July 25 with British journalist James Delingpole.
    “And so, in the past 10 years, I’d say, I’ve been on the other side.”…

    Fleming has more than 50 years of experience as a scientist and manager in weather and climate research, noted Climate Depot.
    He published peer-reviewed scientific papers from 1971 to 2018 and represented the U.S. at several international science meetings.
    Fleming was awarded the Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award in 1980 for outstanding achievement in directing the U.S. role in the Global Weather Experiment. He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences in 1982 for contributions to atmospheric science…
    https://www.wnd.com/2019/08/ex-noaa-scientist-now-climate-change-denier/

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    Zane

    Climate change seemingly causes brains to shrink.

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    pat

    the writer below, Miranda Bryant: Miranda Bryant is a freelance journalist based in New York specialising in arts and culture. She has written for publications including Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The i Paper, ELLE and the London Evening Standard, where she was previously arts and showbusiness reporter – Unbound bio.

    31 Jul: Guardian: White House ‘undercutting evidence’ of climate crisis, says analyst who resigned
    Rod Schoonover, who was an intelligence analyst for 10 years, said the Trump administration halted his report on global heating
    by Miranda Bryant in New York
    But he said on Tuesday that the report was stopped by the White House because his findings “did not comport with administration’s position on climate change”.
    That prompted him to leave his post – one of a stream of scientists sidelined or forced out over what critics of the Trump administration characterize as a war on science, because warnings for the dangers of human-caused global heating conflict with the Donald Trump’s ***industrial objectives.

    “The decision to block the written testimony is another example of a well-established pattern in the Trump administration of undercutting evidence that contradicts its policy positions,” Schoonover wrote in an opinion article for the New York Times (LINK), published on Tuesday.
    “Beyond obstructing science, this action also undermined the analytic independence of a major element of the intelligence community.”…
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/30/rod-schoonover-trump-administration-undercutting-climate-crisis-national-security

    29 Jul: BusinessGreen: Green Tories Zac Goldsmith and Simon Clarke join ministerial line-up
    by Madeleine Cuff
    Two leading Conservative campaigners for bolder action on the environment and climate change were awarded jobs in Prime Minister Johnson’s administration over the weekend, in a move many campaigners will be hoping provides a signal climate action is set to be a top priority for the new leader.
    On Saturday Zac Goldsmith, Conservative MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston, was named as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for International Development (DFID), and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

    Meanwhile Simon Clarke, MP for Middlesborough South and East Cleveland, was on Saturday appointed Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury. Clarke is also a CEN member and played a leading role in the successful campaign to secure cross-party backing for the UK’s net zero emissions goal, which was made law in June 2019…
    https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3079711/green-tories-zac-goldsmith-and-simon-clark-join-ministerial-line-up

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    pat

    31 Jul: Bloomberg: Sweden’s Biggest Cities Face Power Shortage After Fuel-Tax Hike
    By Jesper Starn
    Sweden’s introduction on Thursday of a tax aimed at phasing out the nation’s last remaining coal and gas plants to curb global warming comes with an unintended consequence for some of its biggest cities
    Hiking threefold a levy on fossil fuels used at local power plants will make such facilities unprofitable and utilities from Stockholm Exergi AB to EON SE have said they will halt or cut power production.

    The move means that grids in the capital and Malmo won’t be able to hook up new facilities including homes, transport links and factories. While Sweden doesn’t have a shortage of power, there’s not enough cables to ship it to the biggest cities.
    “We don’t have a problem with generating enough power in Sweden, we have a problem with getting it to where its needed,” Magnus Hall, chief executive officer of state-owned utility Vattenfall AB, said in an interview. “This law was added with short notice and I am not sure a proper analysis of it was made.”…

    Because of the urbanization, demand for electricity in many Swedish cities is starting to outgrow capacity and some have already been forced to refuse new connections to avoid black outs…
    Some new daycare centers have to wait for months to be connected to the grid in Stockholm. A bread factory in Malmo was denied a license to expand because it would consume too much power…

    Ulf Kristersson, the moderate party opposition leader, said the capacity crisis fazing Swedish cities is enough reason to renegotiate a current five-party energy agreement to slow down the phaseout of nuclear and local plants burning fossil fuels. Without a solution, both Moderate and Christian Democrats are threatening to abandon the pact agreed in 2016…
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-31/sweden-s-biggest-cities-face-power-shortage-after-fuel-tax-hike

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    pat

    30 Jul: BBC: Centrica chief executive Iain Conn to step down
    Centrica reported a pre-tax loss of £446m in the six months to June. It made a £704m profit this time in 2018.
    The firm is also cutting its dividend and selling its investment in oil and gas exploration and production, but is launching a new partnership with Ford…
    Profit at the company’s consumer division, which includes British Gas, was down 44% to £240m.

    It said the decline reflected the impact of the government’s price cap, which was brought in at the start of 2019.
    Profit at Centrica’s business division fell 89% to £11m, which it blamed on warm weather and outages at its nuclear power stations…

    Mr Conn said: “The most difficult thing has been the price cap coming in. It cost British Gas £300m in profits this year…
    “It’s always been said that the price cap is going to be temporary and we look forward to the day when it’s rolled back.”…

    “We have been shifting a company to one in tune with a lower carbon economy.”
    “We grew consumer accounts in the first half of the year in the UK. We did lose 178,000 energy accounts, but we more than made up for it in the accounts in the other businesses…

    Centrica also announced it was launching a partnership with Ford, as the carmaker seeks to expand its range of electric vehicles.
    Under the deal, Centrica will deliver a dedicated home charging installation service for the next five years.
    There will be special electric vehicle tariffs from British Gas and Bord Gáis Energy, which will allow Ford customers to benefit from lower energy prices for overnight charging.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49161966

    31 Jul: UK Times: Centrica boss Iain Conn to quit amid shares slump
    Profits fall by half and dividend is cut again
    by Emily Gosden
    Centrica is a FTSE 100 company that supplies gas and electricity to seven million households through British Gas and employs almost 30,000 people…
    He said that the company now planned to make £1 billion of annual cost savings by 2022, on top of £1 billion already delivered, with the intention to make it the cheapest supplier in the market. He confirmed there would be “material job impacts” and that it would incur £1.25 billion in restructuring charges.

    Justin Bowden, national secretary of the GMB union, said: “You cannot just cut your way out of crisis. More of the same — more job cuts on top of the thousands already gone and going — are panic measures, not a credible plan for recovery. There must be a pause under a new CEO, investment and a new plan for growth.” Yesterday’s results were affected by outages at nuclear plants, warm weather and low wholesale gas prices. Mr Conn said that it had been an “exceptionally challenging” first half…
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/centrica-boss-to-quit-amid-shares-slump-3trzx0n7d

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    pat

    1 Aug: TheNationalScotland: Warning over charges faced by Scottish renewables
    By Greg Russell
    RENEWABLE energy projects in the islands and north of Scotland could be hampered by charges they must pay to use the national grid, according to a new report.
    Costs for accessing the network have traditionally been based on a model that rewards generators for being close to centres of demand, with those on the margins paying more.
    This may have worked during the era of coal-fired power stations, but it fails to reflect the reality of a low-carbon system using our best renewable resources, which are often removed from large population centres.

    Consultants at Cornwall Insight have said the reasons behind the popularity of the Highlands and Islands among renewable companies – cheaper land and a more favourable planning environment than England – could dampen enthusiasm.
    James Brabben, from Cornwall Insight, said: “The significant amounts of generation in Northern Scotland are located away from areas of demand further south…READ ON
    https://www.thenational.scot/news/17807590.warning-charges-faced-scottish-renewables/

    31 Jul: MarketWatch: Andrew Yang urges Americans to move to higher ground because response to climate change is ‘too late’
    By Robert Schroeder
    Yang, debating his fellow Democrats on Wednesday night in Detroit, had this to say when the subject of climate change was in full swing:
    ‘We are too late. We are 10 years too late. We need to do everything we can to start moving the climate in the right direction but we also need to start moving our people to higher ground.’…
    Yang — a long-shot candidate — is best known for his universal basic income proposal: he has put a $1,000-a-month payout at the forefront of his platform.
    On Wednesday night, Yang suggested some of that money should be put into moving…
    Yang said the U.S. acts like it controls 100% of global emissions itself, and that, “the truth is even if we were to curb our emissions dramatically, the Earth is still going to get warmer, and we can see it around us this summer.”…
    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/andrew-yang-urges-americans-to-move-to-higher-ground-because-response-to-climate-change-is-too-late-2019-07-31?mod=bniir

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    pat

    endless nonsense:

    1 Aug: The Atlantic, Science: How Climate Change Could Trigger the Next Global Financial Crisis
    The Federal Reserve should act aggressively to reduce that risk, a leading economic historian argues
    by Robinson Meyer
    A few years ago, Mark Carney, a former Goldman Sachs director who now leads the Bank of England, sounded a warning. Global warming, he said, could send the world economy spiraling into another 2008-like crisis…
    Adam Tooze, a history professor at Columbia University, knows quite a bit about central banks—and the Great Recession. Last year he published Crashed, an award-winning account of the 2008 collapse and its aftermath. In that book, he argues that the U.S. Federal Reserve was the pivotal American institution in stopping a second Great Depression…

    Now, in an article this month in Foreign Policy, Tooze asserts that the Fed needs to battle climate change in the same way. “If the world is to cope with climate change, policymakers will need to pull every lever at their disposal,” he writes. “Faced with this threat, to indulge in the idea that central banks, as key agencies of the state, can limit themselves to worrying about financial stability … is its own form of denial.”…

    I talked with Tooze last week about whether climate change could really cause another global crash, how to think about climate policy in history, and what the Fed could do to decarbonize the economy. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity…
    Meyer: In your view, what do you see as the goal of climate policy? Is it only to reduce carbon emissions? Do you see any benefits to the economic transition that we scientifically have to make, beyond mitigating climate change?

    Tooze: I mean, that’s been the green-modernization agenda of climate politics, certainly in Europe, since the 1980s, right? This is not simply a zero-sum game; this is a structural transformation that has many very attractive properties. There’s loads of excellent jobs that could be created in this kind of transition.
    There’s no reason why, even by conventional GDP-type metrics, it need even be associated with the kind of feel-bad factor of slow GDP growth. Then [you could] also link it to a revival of social democracy for the United States. From a progressive political point of view, that’s obviously extremely attractive…

    Meyer: Given all that, if Jerome Powell decided that he wanted to intervene on the side of climate action, what could he do? What could the Fed do?

    Tooze: What I think the Fed should announce is that it enthusiastically supports the idea of a bipartisan infrastructure push focused on the American electrical network, first and foremost, so that we can actually hook up the renewable-generating capacity—which is now eminently, you know, realistic in economic terms…READ ON
    https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/595084/

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    David Maddison

    (Sorry, O/T)

    Does anyone know if the Fort Denison tide gauge data that is available is original raw data or has it been altered? If so, where can original unaltered data be obtained? Thanks.

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    pat

    2 Aug: ABC: Reuters: July may set global record as hottest in recorded history, UN says, with blame laid on man-made climate change
    The planet endured what may have been the hottest July in history, the World Meteorological Organisation has announced, just a week after a European heatwave shattered all-time records.
    The month’s first 29 days were marginally warmer or on par with July 2016, the previous hottest July, when average temperatures over land and ocean were 0.87 degrees Celsius above the 20th-century average, according to data from the WMO and the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

    “We have lived always through hot summers. But this is not the summer of our youth,” Antonio Guterres, the United Nations’ (UN) secretary-general, told reporters…
    Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are chiefly responsible for climate change, according to scientific consensus…

    The world’s top diplomat has been seeking support for a September summit at the United Nations dedicated to stoking political will to tackle the climate crisis.
    The NOAA says July’s global 20th-century average for land and ocean surfaces was 15.8C.
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-02/july-may-set-global-record-hottest-in-recorded-history-un-says/11378838

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    pat

    2 Aug: ABC: Greta Thunberg, the teen behind climate strikes, hits back at Andrew Bolt column
    By Michael Collett
    Ms Thunberg hit back on Twitter
    This is what she said:
    TWEET: Greta Thunberg
    I am indeed ”deeply disturbed” about the fact that these hate and conspiracy campaigns are allowed to go on and on and on just because we children communicate and act on the science. Where are the adults?
    LINK Herald Sun/Bolt
    1 Aug 2019

    The post got over 100,000 likes and saw hundreds tweet out in support…
    Bolt isn’t the only one who has questioned Ms Thunberg’s activism
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-02/thunberg-hits-back-after-being-called-deeply-disturbed/11376724

    same ABC writer – Michael Collett.
    headline on ABC “Just In” page:

    25 Jul: ABC: No, we haven’t experienced anything like this global warming in the past 2,000 years
    Explainer: By Michael Collett

    updated 26 Jul: ABC: Climate change: We haven’t experienced anything like this in the past 2,000 years
    By Michael Collett
    Climate scientists writing in the journal Nature have found there is no evidence for “globally coherent warm and cold periods” over the past 2,000 years prior to industrialisation.
    That’s significant, because climate change deniers have sometimes pointed to epochs like the so-called “Little Ice Age” or “Medieval Warm Period” to argue that the current global warming is one among multiple similar global climate events…READ ON
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-25/climate-change-nothing-like-this-over-past-2000-years-scientists/11345022

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    Zane

    Anything and everything can basically be blamed on climate change and by inference CO2 and fossil fuels. It’s a diabolically clever construct, I’ll give them that. It’s like a kind of unstoppable greenist kudzu weed that will eventually strangle the West to death. The Arabs, Russians, and Chinese aren’t doing anything green, as far as I can see… It’s export and pollute as usual and bank the cash in a tax haven.

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    Ve2

    A warming climate is relatively more advantageous for smaller animals,”
    Has this clown ever been to the outback and seen the size of the wedgetail eagles?

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    Phoenix44

    But “the temperature” didn’t increase by 0.18 of a degree – the average did.

    And that average was an increase over an average.

    Comparing averages in this way is usually meaningless. What might make a difference is warmer winters or breeding or something real, because the average is not real, it is a human contrivance.

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      toorightmate

      The old analogy was that the head was in the freezer, the feet were in a hot oven, but the body’s “average” temperature was OK concluding that everything must be OK.

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    Greg in NZ

    Today’s brain-shrinking body-bloating govt-sponsored non-science nonsense:

    “the public should abandon any coastal activities planned for the weekend… waves of up to six metres [or 10 or 15] could become dangerous… Road snowfall warnings are in place for Crown Range road, Milford Road, Lewis, Arthur’s, and Lindis pass[es] as well as the Desert Road in the Central North Island”. Freezing snowfall and humongous surf? Yeehaah!!!

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/395820/massive-swells-could-breach-old-dump-filled-with-asbestos-industrial-waste

    Better get a bucket coz I’m gonna be sick: “Tuvalu, the canary in the coal mine for climate change, is shouting for more help as it battles rising seas and sweltering temperatures. But the small Pacific island country is refusing to be dragged down below the waves… They dream of sucking up sand from the lagoon and building a large new land mass, Dubai-style, in a pocket of shallows in the far south of the atoll… But scientists say it is going to face continued sea level rise, hotter temperatures, less frequent but more intense cyclones and increased ocean acidification”. Yeah nah.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/insight/audio/2018706787/tuvalu-s-fight-to-stay-above-the-waves

    “Work has been approved by the Green Climate Fund (GCF), an international funding facility”. WARNING WARNING!

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      Greg in NZ

      re: beowulf’s comment on Midweek Unthreaded #16 concerning the Child Queen of Delinquent Swedes and her Ventriloquist Father choosing to sail rather than fly to New York, Climate Depot linked to a timelapse of a similar class/style/price racing yacht during construction: think poly-para-phenylene terephthalamide Kevlar carbon-fibre and other wonderful modern oil and chemical-based products –

      Time Lapse de la construction de l’IMOCA Saint Michel-Virbac [3′ 30″]

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBTW63DuX_c

      If only Greta Bedwetter could see toxic fumes and dust and fibres and smell the – oh that’s right, somebody planted a tree somewhere so Earth’s still in balance and her non-existent conscience is totally carbon zero. With such friends in high places, who needs to travel economy cattle-class like the rest of us?

      Possible scenarios: they’ll get stuck in the doldrums, swiped by a hurricane, hit an iceberg, or a large whale will fall out of the sky directly on top of them. Ya never know, it’s happened before, and it’s a mighty big pond out there…

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    ramblingidiot

    The wagtails are large and fat where I live.

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    Roy Hogue

    So the bottom line is that the result was determined before the research was done and then some research was done to find something to validate the predetermined result.

    Does that sum it up accurately?

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    pat

    we’ll all be shrinking:

    1 Aug: Sky News: Global land use and exploitation threatens attempts to fight climate change – report
    A leaked report suggests that human exploitation of land contributes to more than a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.
    By Thomas Moore
    The rate and extent of global land exploitation by humans is unsustainable and undermines attempts to stop global warming, according to a leaked report by United Nations scientists.
    Sky News has seen a final draft of the report, being discussed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Geneva this week.
    Climate Change and Land warns that humans now exploit 72% of the planet’s ice-free surface to feed, clothe and support the growing population…

    Richard George, Head of Forests at Greenpeace UK, said: “The way we’re consuming is a disaster for the planet…
    Speaking ahead of publication of the finalised report next week – but before the draft was leaked to Business Standard – Dr Stephen Cornelius, WWF’s chief adviser on climate change, said: “We need to see an urgent transformation in how we use land in the future…
    https://news.sky.com/story/global-land-use-and-exploitation-threatens-attempts-to-fight-climate-change-report-11775117

    2 Aug: France24: AFP: Humanity’s next test: feed 10 billion without ruining Earth
    Next week the most detailed scientific assessment yet of how we use the land we need to survive will show in the starkest terms the unpalatable choices facing humanity.
    The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) special report on land use is expected to warn how industrialised food chains, rampant resource exploitation, and even efforts to stave off the worst effects of global warming, are jeopardising our future ability to feed ourselves.

    But it will also deliver a withering verdict on global inequality, depicting a planet where billions of overfed people throw away vast amounts of calories at the end of each day as hundreds of millions go to bed hungry.

    This report is coming out at a critical time because agriculture is both a victim and a driver of climate change,” Teresa Anderson, climate policy co-ordinator at ActionAid, told AFP…
    “The writing is on the wall for big agriculture corporations.”
    https://www.france24.com/en/20190802-humanitys-next-test-feed-10-billion-without-ruining-earth

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    pat

    I leave it to others to find what the figure actually is:

    2 Aug: BBC: Climate change: July ‘marginally’ warmest month on record
    By Matt McGrath
    A preliminary analysis of global temperature data for July suggests it may have “marginally” become the warmest month on record.
    Figures from the first 29 days of a month in which many countries had heatwaves are “on a par” or slightly higher than a record set in July 2016.
    The assessment was carried out by researchers at the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (LINK) (C3S).
    Confirmation of a new record must await a full analysis is released on Monday…
    Scientists say it’s the latest sign that Earth is experiencing unprecedented warming.
    The new data compiled by C3S incorporates observations from satellites and ground based stations…

    While researchers can’t directly link these new high marks to climate change, there is a wide sense among scientists that emissions of carbon dioxide from human activities are altering background temperatures and making new records more likely…
    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49165476

    31 Jul: BBC: How much warmer is your city?
    By the BBC Visual and Data Journalism team
    The world is getting hotter. July 2019 was one of the warmest months ever recorded – and July temperatures almost everywhere on Earth have been higher in the last 10 years compared with 1880-1900, as this globe shows. Scroll below to find out how the temperature in 1,000 major cities across the world has changed already and how much it could increase by in the coming years.
    Spin globe…
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-985b9374-596e-4ae6-aa04-7fbcae4cb7ee

    big climate summits looming.

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    pat

    AUDIO: 17min39sec: 2 Aug: 2GB: Rita Panahi slams Clover Moore’s climate change ‘scaremongering’
    Rita Panahi has slammed “climate emergency” workshops offered to school children by the City of Sydney.
    Lord Mayor Clover Moore has commissioned workshops at 19 inner-city schools to educate them on a “climate emergency”.
    The Daily Telegraph suggests they’re discussing ideas such as urban cool rooms, underground cars and bookless libraries in 2050…

    “Why in God’s name are we inflicting this nonsense on children?!
    “I don’t know why the parents allow it and school communities just uncritically accept this.
    “No wonder we’ve got kids wagging school, protesting in the street, when they’re exposed to this.”
    https://www.2gb.com/rita-panahi-slams-clover-moores-climate-change-scaremongering/

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    pat

    I leave it to others to find out who/what/how this was determined:

    Jonathan Sri: Woolloongabba community support climate change …
    Courier Mail – 16 hours ago
    Only 7 per cent of respondents said they believed he should not organise protests…
    CONSTITUENTS have backed Greens Councillor Jonathan Sri’s involvement in environmental and social activism and the use of his offices for protest groups to hold meetings…
    “The inconvenience of delayed traffic is nothing compared to the major disruption climate change will cause to our whole society if we don’t transition away from exporting thermal coal…

    another google result had the headline as “Community backs Brisbane city councillor Jonathan Sri’s radical style and support for…” which could have meant more than Woolloongabba.

    poll for public broadcaster says Germans want to pay more for CAGW policies:

    1 Aug: Deutshe Welle: Most Germans support drastic climate change measures
    More than 70% of participants in the Deutschlandtrend opinion poll for public broadcaster ARD by Infratest dimap said they think raising prices on flights makes sense.
    Some 60% said they support getting rid of combustible engines in cars, while 97% backed expanding renewable energy.
    But there still appears to be strong resistance to introducing a carbon tax, with only 35% of participants behind the measure…
    Concern over climate change has been growing in Germany, particularly in the wake of the latest heat wave in July which saw record-breaking temperatures across Europe.
    As a result, the Green party has seen a boost of support and is currently polling at 26% with voters, according to the poll…

    Russia more trustworthy than US
    With Boris Johnson becoming the UK’s new prime minister and with the United States pressuring Germany to take part in a naval operation in the Persian Gulf, many survey participants said the countries are not good partners for Germany…
    https://www.dw.com/en/most-germans-support-drastic-climate-change-measures/a-49856490

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    Clyde Spencer

    So can we conclude from this simplistic ‘research,’ that we can determine when a particular species first evolved simply by observing their average size? Or does the claimed relationship only work for wagtails? If so, then why only them? So many questions, so little time!

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      Graeme No.3

      Clyde:

      The Huge wagtail (Wagtail rex, 20metres long and weighing 6 tonnes) was wiped out by an asteroid 65 million years ago. The large wagtail (Protowagtail, 4 metres and 3 tonnes) was wiped out by ClimateChange© about 20,000 years ago. You see, all one way…it MUST be ClimateChange©.

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        Annie

        Now we have the modern wagtail…Wagtail Anthrominimus. I look forward to the micro version in 12 years’ time. Whoopee!

        20