Pictures that tell a thousand stories

The story behind these pictures is told on Watts up with that. In a nutshell, these are “before and after” pictures of the Dye 2 radar warning station in southern Greenland, one taken in 1967 and the other in 2006, after it had been abandoned due to the encroaching snow.

At a direct level, this gives the lie to the oft’ repeated mantra of the warmists that the Greenland ice cap is melting, adding to the growing body of evidence that suggests that their alarmist creed is totally misplaced.

The wider lesson, however, is that despite the evidence, not only does the warmist creed survive and prosper, but it is embedded so deeply in the body politic that it has driven out any discourse and has become the received wisdom amongst all the major political parties, not only in this country but elsewhere, not least in the United States.

View full article here

We are supposed to take this seriously?

Next year in the UK is set to be one of the top-five warmest on record, according to the Met Office. The average global temperature for 2009 is expected to be more than 0.4 degrees celsius above the long-term average, making it the warmest year since 2005. The Met Office also says there is also a growing probability of record temperatures after next year.

View full article here

Take it seriously? We all are supposed to fall on our knees and greet it with gladsome hosannas, as for any religious revelation.
Note that The Independent refers to a prediction as "evidence." Not in any beginning logic lesson.

Only in that it is costing us billions.

AGM is as unlikely as Helen's having a 'commennt' section....where intelliget minds & a few supermensas are denied probably cogent & germaine detail especially when she heads her scribbling with a question...rhetorical of course!...how could it be otherwse?
I Log-in these days & skim down what is new since my last visit...easily identify Helen's quaint prose...and ignore it, as she does her potential readers.

These few words appearing here have taken an inordinately long time to type as my keyboard has been morphing into a Sanskrit model....Thereto, one & a half liters of good German beer chased down with 3 shots of ice-cold Wubryovka 'Buffelgras' Vodka are speeding up the dispersion of a slightly vicious sleeptab...I shall have an early levée at around 11:30

Richard,

I am delighted that someone at Anthony Watts has reported on the data from the Telegraph report. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/30/m ... #more-4741

The Telegraph article puzzled me when i first read it and so I posted,as below, in the comments section of "The Worst Climate Predictions of 2008"

Perry Debell (14:53:16) :

As it’s still 2008, how about this prediction from the Telegraph 30th December.
———————————
“The average global temperature is expected to be more than 32.7F (0.4C) above the long term average, making next year warmer than this year and the hottest since 2005, researchers from the Met Office and the University of East Anglia said. The warmest year on record is 1998, which saw an average temperature 32.9F (0.52C) above the 1961-1990 long-term average of 57.2F (14C).

Professor Phil Jones, the director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia, said: “The fact that 2009, like 2008, will not break records does not mean that global warming has gone away.
“What matters is the underlying rate of warming - the period 2001-2007, with an average of 57.99F (14.44C), was 32.38F (0.21C) warmer than corresponding values for the period 1991-2000.”
———————————

Prof P. Jones is a desperate man these days, after all he has been quoted as saying that 32.38F is 0.21C. Now it’s more than possible that Duncan Gardham and Jon Swaine are rubbish reporters, but they updated their article at 5:56PM GMT. What does P. Jones mean? Anyone?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthn ... eland.html

The article was updated again at 10:42PM GMT 30 Dec 2008, but I still ask how can 32.9F be the same as 0.52C? That's what is written. 32.9F (0.52C) It still does not make sense to me. Explanation anyone?

Some prat has taken .5C as an absolute temperature which X 9 , / 5, + 32 is an absolute temp of 32.9F. If, as here, one is talking temp. difference then you don't add the 32F so a difference of .5C is a difference of .9F. I'd guess the figures were supplied in C and some moron used a calculator to convert. Then no-one thought about what had been written.
So a spell-checker counts as proof-reading these days?

My eyes had glazed over by the time I had got that far down the article, but I should have made that the headline! Warming is worse than we think .... 32.9 degrees! Wow!

The worst of it is that the hacks copy it all down ... they are as big a joke as the Met Office.

Slightly OT.

Meteo France keep predicting a min temperature of -3deg C for Lille (inland) whereas by the sea, in the same region, we are consistently running -4 and -5 deg C. Have checked with family in Bethune and Valencienes and sure enough their min temps are another -1deg C lower. Looks like the TV has a case of global warming.

Quite worrying, this is. If - as we know Hansen is - they are fudging the figures, then we have lost the ability to make objective judgements. Public policy is therefore governed by polemicists rather than rationality. This is the real effect of global warming.

I wouldn't mind a warm summer. I have forgotten what sunshine in London is like.

Sandy,

Well deduced sir. All we need to know is who is the moron, P Jones or one or both of the dorks from the Telegraph?

Professor Phil Jones, the director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia, said: “The fact that 2009, like 2008, will not break records does not mean that global warming has gone away.
“What matters is the underlying rate of warming - the period 2001-2007, with an average of 57.99F (14.44C), was 32.38F (0.21C) warmer than corresponding values for the period 1991-2000.” Did Jones really say those numbers?

Perry

>>>> “What matters is the underlying rate of warming - the period 2001-2007, with an average of 57.99F (14.44C), was 32.38F (0.21C) warmer than corresponding values for the period 1991-2000.” Did Jones really say those numbers?

A dead give away when someone is cherry picking data is when they compare periods of different length . So for example here ten years is being compared against 7 years. They might argue that this decade is not finished yet, so not all the data is available. It would still be more meaningful to compare ten years with ten years, but even then you are still fitting trends to arbitrary sized samples. See here:

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/Trends.htm

It is of course dubious if even a global average temperature is a meaningful thing. See here:-

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/Temperatures.htm

All I can say in response to Richard's piece is Bravo!

Just this afternoon I was treated to seeing the eyes of a family member (by marriage I hasten to add) glaze over in shock as I explained Polar Bears numbers have increased rather than decreased. The silence that followed my report that there has been no warming since 1998 and that we have seen cooling since 2006 was deafening. I confess to feeling rather pleased with myself as she was sent scurrying to a computer to check my assertions out for herself.

'But there is a consensus' I was told. 'What about the stories in the media?' I was asked. I gently asked her to think back to 1999 and the coverage of the Y2K Millennium Bug, the predictions of doom, the expert analysis, the billions of pounds/dollars/marks/francs devoted to software checks and equipment. What had the media reported by 5th Jan 2000? It just went quiet and pretended it had not hyped a hypothesis into a crisis of global proportions. 'Actually, come to think of it...'

Just like the Y2K bug, when the planet fails to burst into flames, oceans fail to wash over low lying land, temperatures do not jump 5c and life continues much as before, the AGW lobby will claim it saved the planet and the media will move on to the next story without barely a moment's consideration of its contribution to the hype we see today.

The climate is changing. It always has. There are natural forces at work that far exceed mankind's capacity to affect anything apart from its immediate surroundings. As the logic of this and the number of scaremongering projections that have failed to come to pass increase, the counter consensus might just finally permeate the thick membrane that insulates the political class from the real world outside.

On a personal note I hope to be blogging again in 2009. But for now, Happy New Year to all and stay warm!

A little correctionette on the pictures story, the DEW line stations were closed because if the collapse of communism and the peace dividend, not because of the snow.

It might have been better if that story was not attached to global warming, as I read it it is about the disconnection between the political class and everybody else. AGW is only one aspect. IMHO the prime facilitators of this are the MSM, only they would be able to break the trance, if they wished to.

Funny that if you try to express such an opinion on any of the MSM clogs, you won't get it added. If only one of them were brave enough...oh never mind.