High profile climate un-changer Professor Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun School of Thought Homogeneity, is well known for his contention that the temperature rise of the planet has stopped. He’s been saying it for years. 
Today, Professor Bolt wrote that a leaked IPCC report concedes that warming is only half what it ones was (so half way there for Mr. Bolt). He quotes liberally and approvingly from Britain’s favourite birds-in-bikinis and saucy-celebs news website The Daily Mail, where fellow climate conspiracy theorist David Rose, who has obtained the leaked document claims that “Scientist accept their computers “may have exaggerated”.
It’s all over bar the shouting apparently with the whole IPCC edifice set to crumble because this leaked copy of the report pretty much throws in the towel. The IPCC apparently has got a hell of a lot wrong in the past and therefore this soon to be released bombshell will result in “scientific reputations being destroyed” and the great scare collapsing.
Rupert Murdoch’s rampant Organ of Influence, The Australian, plays in harmony with the Bolt braggadocio quoting approvingly from The Daily Mail and alleging that the
IPCC computer (They’ve only got one?) drastically overestimated rising temperatures, and over the past 60 years the world has in fact been warming at half the rate claimed in the previous IPCC report in 2007.
Because, The Organ offers, the IPCC in 2007 said that the earth was warming at 0.2 degrees per decade, but has wound back the prediction to a paltry 0.12 degrees per decade. A case of the eggheads seriously over egging the pudding.
But wait. Publicly funded highly influential left-leaning elite media in the form of Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat mounts a challenge to the News Corporation orchestra, and seeks the view of Australian Climate scientist Dr. John Cook who says:
I find that actually quite extraordinary that they say that. I went straight to the 2007 report this morning to have a look at what the IPCC actually said and they say that the linear warming trend over the last 50 years was .13 degrees celsius per decade, which is almost exactly the same as the accurate value that the Australian is talking about. So they just seem to have made up this .2 C per decade number. Even the Australian in this article aren’t disputing that carbon dioxide causes warming.
In other words, if we are to believe Dr. Cook, The Daily Mail, and by extension Mr. Bolt and the Australian are all reporting that the IPCC said something that they did not in fact say. No? Really?
But further investigation by your humble correspondent adds to the doubts and confusion because in the very first section of the 2007 IPCC report it does clearly say:
The linear warming trend over the 50 years from 1956 to 2005 (0.13 1°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the 100 years from 1906 to 2005.
Perhaps David Rose of The Daily Mail was reading a different 2007 IPCC report, or perhaps was briefly distracted by a fine set of breasts in a close fitting bikini top whilst he was reading this report, or perhaps somewhere else in the report the number 0.2 does crop up and well, these numbers can be very confusing.
Whatever the truth of it, we shall all excitedly wait the 30th September when the actual IPCC report comes out. Then we will know if the great scare has begun its collapse, and we can all agree to sensibly work together with Mr. Bolt to decide if Climate Change has stopped, has half-stopped, or is in the process of beginning to stop.
- 0.10 to 0.16[↩]
Soon we’ll be hearing that the it was the IPCC who were behind the recent upset in Sophie Mirabella’s electorate of Indi. But who’ll break the news first – Andrew Bolt at The Hun or David Rose at The Daily Mail?
Isn’t the real story that
– the world isn’t really warming up that much; and
– we are now even more certain that we don’t really know how climate change works and our models can’t really predict it very well? Eg http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/realism-in-the-latest-ipcc-climate-report-by-bj-rn-lomborg
From this one might conclude that we should do less more slowly with less conviction?
It is worth remembering that even a relatively small increase in the frequency of extreme weather, in the parts of the world that produce most of our wheat and rice could have massive consequences.
So are you suggesting we go from pretending to do nothing to seriously ramping up efforts to do little slowly?
I meant, pretending to do something….. but maybe pretending we aren’t accelerating the problem to actually doing nothing might be progress.
?
Sorry – multitasking gone wrong. What I was attempting, and obviously failed to convey, was that Patrick’s veiled contention that a lot was being done to tackle climate change – a contention based on what are obviously misrepresented uncertainties in climate science we should do less, slower. In other words some kind of cautious conservatism. This is not the case – much less than what would be prudent action to tackle climate change is already where we are at. Somehow we seem to be living in a post fact, post satire world.
Tom Lehrer retired from writing and singing satire when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize …. because : “irony is no longer possible”.
As for the climate stuff it is true that the climate is not conforming to the more drastic predictions (thankfully). And the reason for this is not known. A possibly related matter is that it is looking like our understanding of the sun (and sunspot cycles) is not as firm as was thought.
Where I tend to agree with some of the ‘sceptics’ is re the effectiveness of Carbon trading/tax schemes, but I am no expert :-)
‘Numeric dyslexia’ is dyscalculia. It is a serious and troubling disability.
What Patrick said.
I wouldn’t pay much attention to either Bolt or Cook. They’re both polemicists of known and obvious bias.
BTW, “Australian Climate scientist Dr. John Cook” is not a climate scientist, as he himself makes clear on his website:
Ta
But Fyodor, Rex’s post did not take Dr Cook at his word. There was no argument from authority – Rex looked at what the IPCC actually said (as Bolt could easily have) and compared it with what Bolt claimed they said.
And guess what? Dr Cook and Mr Bolt differed from each other in one crucial detail: Dr Cook got his facts right and Mr Bolt didn’t. Perhaps that’s because Dr Cook, polemicist or not, cares about facts rather more than Mr Bolt does – in which case you have a good guide to which of the two you should actually ignore.
Fucking hell. How tedious.
Bolt quoted the Daily Mail. From your own link above, what the Daily Mail wrote is that,
Now, as Rex and Cook point out, the IPCC 1997 synthesis report (see here, as Rex’s link dinnae work) states in Section 1.1 that,
According to Rex, Cook, DD et al that is the end of story, thanks for coming.
HOWEVER, Section 3.2 of the same report, named [guess what?] “Projections of future changes in climate” ALSO SAYS,
See? Clear as mud. The Daily Mail is not clear about whether it was discussing the IPCC’s backcasting or forecasting, hence you can argue the toss, if you give a toss.
Not only but also: DD if you’re going to get het up over the verisimilitude of your preferred polemicist, be aware that he’s recently been accused of misrepresentations of his own, relating to his claim that “97% of scientists think Teh Warmageddon is On Like Donkey Kong”, or something blah blah blah. Not worth going into, as his accusers are similarly biased axe-grinders, but worth keeping in mind when you read his stuff.
@Fyodor
Sayeth the Australian:
Looks like ‘backcasting’ to me.
Your me.
This is what Bolt wrote:
Rather easy to understand; Bolt is comparing a forecast made in 2007 with what has been reported in 2013 to have happened. That’s the crux of science, being able to make forecasts, and then checking those forecasts against measurements. The forecast was higher than the measurement. End of story.
Fixed thanks.
OMG, Professor Dr. Lightning Bolt caught whipping up outrage in stark contrast to evidence! What will they think of next?
Does this mean I should also not trust the views of other journos, such as Piers Akerman, Judith Sloan, Dennis Shanahan, Jo Nova, Michael Stuchbury, Paul Sheehan, etc.? Say it ain’t so! How will I get my facts?
Result of a quick search:
http://www.wmo.int/pages/themes/climate/climate_projections.php
So who are these numerically dyslexic goons, the WMO? Must be some whacko fringe, owned by Rupert Murdoch… wanting to take over the world or something.
A little more searching:
From a document that calls itself, “A report of Working Group I of theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate, Change Summary for Policymakers” which can be found here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf
The Daily Mail has modified its original claim.
The Guardian sets the record straight by leaking a little piece of the upcoming draft report itself.
Here’s the original line from the Daily Mail quoted dutifully by Mr. Bolt
here’s the Daily Mail’s new line
In the process of this backflip though the Daily Mail has doubled their assessment of amount of IPCC wrongness by arguing that the predictions are now not HALF right but only a QUARTER right. All performed with the trickery of numbers and shortening their previous 50 year claim to a more suitable 15 year claim.
People were quoting the 0.2°C per decade figure as the prediction for future warming… a prediction that did not happen. Just listen to this guy who explains it quite clearly:
http://clubtroppo.lateraleconomics.com.au/2004/05/26/warming-scepticism-a-death-sentence/
John Cook is happy to say, “So they just seem to have made up this .2 C per decade number” while you are saying “was briefly distracted by a fine set of breasts in a close fitting bikini top whilst he was reading this report” but that’s just plain rude.
The number was out there, the alarmists were putting it out there and they got their prediction wrong. Moaning won’t fix it.