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Discussion point – has the recent very hot weather in the UK made anyone reconsider their views on global warming? I know the spectrum of views on this topic among Samizdata folk varies widely, from “Hell, yes” denialist to, well, me. That is, to someone who climate alarmists would call a climate denialist but who does not self-identify as such.
Anyway, on Monday and Tuesday it was hot. I mean really hot compared to the UK average. I remember 1976, and it was hotter than that. We have often poured justifiable scorn on predicting the climate by computer models and quoted versions of Groucho Marx’s line from Duck Soup: “Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” – or in this case, your own epidermal thermo-receptors. The evidence of my own senses said it was the hottest two days of my life and that’s still true even if the BBC said the same.
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Is the reference to climate change or catastrophic anthropogenic global warming? Big difference.
I deliberately chose my wording to be ambiguous so as to garner responses from a wider range of people. As to my own view, if I may quote a post from 2019,
Were I in Australia, I might be a new proponent of the idea that we’re about to see another Ice Age.
Last winter in my home state of Minnesota, they had record (low and long) cold snaps.
Weather patterns might be disrupted – as they are from time to time – but “global” remains part of “global warming.” Averaged out, I see no reason to think our global temperature is increasing.
Er, no.
I concluded it was all bollocks around 1990.
Up here in Scotland, Tuesday was warm but not the warmest day I’ve ever had north of the border. Monday was warm and, thanks to the weather forecast, we decided to go swimming in Loch Lomond next day. During the morning drive there, I found myself thinking that it wasn’t that warm (I didn’t regret wearing a T-shirt but I was OK to leave my car window closed), enough that getting into the water was going to require summoning my resolution. 🙂 I went horizontal the first moment I had depth to get my whole body under, sounded a bit squeaky for a moment and then, as always, the water ceased to feel freezing and started to feel pleasant. In the afternoon it did indeed feel warm, but Wednesday was not so warm, and today I sympathised with a US woman hiker we met that she was having such poor weather for her highland holiday. We had some decent weather earlier this summer, but I find myself hoping Monday and Tuesday will not prove the best that global warming will do for Scotland this summer.
Anecdote not being the singular of data, I also looked at Watts Up With That. Watts shows a weather map indicating it was cold in Eastern Europe when it was warm in Western Europe on those two days. “Weather is not climate” was the mantra used by many a warmenist whenever the weather was cold in the last two decades; Watt’s take is a more specific form of that:
If global warming can manage a heatwave as long as 1976 with consistently higher temperatures, one might re-review this ‘localized heatwave’ thing. I don’t think the warmenists’ whose faith it kept untroubled by the Gore effect, the beast-from-the-east and all between would reconsider in reverse, but one might. For now, after two very warm days in the west during colder-than-usual weather in the east, it works for me.
Undoubtedly. Alas, it is being suggested that the BBC undermines even the most factual statements about the temperature when it chooses to present them like this:
The red-marked right does look a little warmer in the far north of Scotland and the south-west tip of Cornwall than the decade-ago left, but as one passes south to Edinburgh or east to London, one gets the impression that the BBC’s will to preach global warming has heated up more than the temperature in the last decade.
Nope
Niall patriot Kilmartin cannot present my graphic above about the British Broadcasting Corporation without saying that other countries look even worse. 🙂
On the top is what midsummer day’s German weather forecast is stated to have looked like in 2017. Underneath is what the same day is stated to have looked like 5 years later. (I didn’t see either broadcast, of course. Any readers who view German television are welcome to comment.)
No. Warmer daily lows, warmer winters and warmer temperatures at high latitudes and altitudes is emblematic of global warming,not record high temperatures at noon in temperate and tropical regions close to sea level.
The highest number on the 2022 map is 33C (or 91F). Right now it is 104F (40C) in Missouri. So I walk today instead of run. Just burn more fossil fuels (or uranium) and ramp up the air conditioning.
No, global warming is emblematic of higher daily lows, winter temperatures and temperatures at high latitudes and altitudes, not temperate summer daily highs near sea level.
Hmm, you’re comparing last Monday and Tuesday (2 days) to the summer of 1976 (all of it, apparently). I remember that year too, and if I remember correctly the previous year was much like it. By my recollection those 2 days here were about the same as that summer (on the other side of the country, although a similar latitude) or, maybe, hotter.
I’d expect though that there were days during summer ’76 that were hotter than Monday and Tuesday, at least where I was in each case. Can’t be sure; my memory is not that clear over a 47 year span and I wasn’t keeping records either time.
Short form: that was weather, not climate, so no.
I predicted correctly that the weather would not exceed the previous record high on the Monday but was less sure about the Tuesday given the overnight temperatures forecast and actually in evidence on Monday night. Still, the 40°C new hottest record was recorded at Heathrow airport, hardly representative of the climate of southern England, let alone the whole country
Several of the weather stations are in locations with significant heat island effects. It is pretty unsurprising to me that these stations are recording a steady increase in temperature on average. Whether that can really be taken as evidence of climate change is debatable.
The area I live in has got warmer in recent years (according to my own measurements, too) but I strongly suspect this to be a microclimate caused by excessive development and significant tree loss. The area is getting more built up, with more concrete and hard materials in the landscape and fewer trees. As elsewhere people are replacing their lawns with plastic grass, or paving over it to provide car parking space. It seems utterly predictable that higher temperatures in the immediate area will result.
Unfortunately the Met Office only publish a subset of their weather station data, and many of the stations appear to only have one record per day! It is difficult to assess such data and establish the real weather recorded. Their weather station network is also a lot less comprehensive than you might think. The nearest one to me is 26 miles away, not much surprise that their forecasts for my locality are rarely correct.
Versus your lying epidermis I believe 43 years of weather satellite measurements, validated by voluminous weather balloon records, and the 15 year record of the Argo global ocean float system, all showing a modest < 1.4C per century rate of warming.
“the hottest two days of my life”
The word ‘life’ and the phrase ‘in my life’ appears in my comment and in the post and nowhere else, so far.
Kinda sorta like ‘in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye’, no?
Yes. Two hot days like last week, and the hysteria around that weather, should make us ready to refresh our arguments that refute the claims made about the alleged ‘climate emergency’. Part of the reason for those claims: to keep us in fear.
Slightly O/T but related to the fear aspect of the news: the next thing we should all be afraid of is Monkeypox, declared by the WHO. to be a global reason to be greatly concerned.
The point is not if any actual change in climate has occurred, is occurring, but has any of it got anything to do with us?
The only thing which says that it is are these massively flawed climate models (and before anybody starts, they’re not actually flawed as such, they are incomplete and they simply do not – cannot – include every pertinent parameter because we simply don’t know what all those parameters are and how they might interrelate).
In the good old days, when it started as “global warming”, it was very easy to explain, and any hack “science correspondent” could perform the requisite arm waving: Cue simple diagram of globe with sun in distance. Sunlight heats ground, ground obligingly re-radiates IR. More C02 absorbs this re-radiated IR, atmosphere heats – simples.
I don’t really need to list the myriad bizarre claims of the “climate emergency” cult, but the absolute inability of its priesthood to explain any of these changes with a simple graphic, as they could with “global warming” is striking.
They would if they could but they obviously can’t.
I didn’t believe the claimed record temperature at the Cambridge Botanical Garden a few years ago. Thanks to Google Maps (Satellite View) I could see that the garden was at that time severely heat polluted by buildings and plantings very close to the temperature recording station. It was so uncompliant with World Met Organisation siting standards as to be a joke. But the UK Met Office ‘certified’ the record.
The position today? There has been even more construction even closer to the recording station.
I don’t have all the information to know whether people are changing the climate.
What I do see is that the reporting is substantially agenda-driven.
A Sky News story asking whether people will now believe in climate change (subsequently changed to ask what will make people care about climate change).
Which starts sounding religious and coercive.
I notice no media coverage is given to cause of the wild fires burning around Europe other than to link them to the heatwave and thus CAGW.
Fires don’t usually start themselves except in specific circumstances such as spontaneous combustion from decaying, damp, vegetation.
There is clearly an attempt to create belief rather than report facts.
That, alone, causes me to be sceptical.
Alex. While agreeing with most of what you said, here in Lincolnshire it was Coningsby that had a high of 40.7C. I live five miles away and it was hot. I suspect it was measured at RAF Coningsby.
No one ever mentions 1911 when they had a two and a half month heatwave with temperatures in the high 90s.
I’m still waiting for someone to tell me why co2 gets the blame when water vapour is as potent a greenhouse gas but is 1000x the volume of co2 in the atmosphere.
Ah, thank you – I was out of date. I was following it with interest on Monday and Tuesday and saw that Coningsby had recorded 38℃ on Monday (IIRC) but didn’t see the 40.3°C announced by the Met Office later on Tuesday (it’s 40.3°C according to the Met Office website). For a time on Tuesday afternoon the BBC news website was using the Heathrow record, which has now been exceeded by the new high record at Coningsby. It was certainly a very warm couple of days.
Indeed. During the 19th century a huge area of North America that was previously semi-arid (the Great Plains) was watered extensively by huge amounts of water previously stored away in aquifers. A significant reintroduction of a large volume of water into the climate. I would think that could have a significant effect on the climate.
I am not a climate change “denier” (itself a ludicrous, emotive term designed to equate scepticism about climate claims with abhorrent Holocaust revisionism). I fully believe the climate is warming, but I am not satisfied with “belief”: I prefer to actually inspect the evidence carefully. I hate the alarmism in the media (I distrust alarmism in general) and when I see problems with the facts being proffered as indisputable proof of climate change I naturally can’t help question how many of the other indisputable facts are based on dodgy foundations.
decnine (July 24, 2022 at 7:57 am), I agree with you about the Cambridge Botanical garden site. Watts Up With That website got started on that very issue. He was researching temperature data issues, came across some examples of degraded sites, and started the website to show and ask for pictures of ill-sited recorders. His most egregious picture that I recall (this was pre-2010; a worse example may have surfaced since) was one that decades ago was in open country and now (having never been moved or changed, just built around) was next to the exhaust heating vent of a large building.
Buildings are not the only potential contributors to unsafe data trends. An airport runway makes a great heat sink – RAF Coningsby’s runway, for example.
My views on global warming do not rely on daily temperature in my town, they do not rely on Greta Thunberg, Al Gore or Donald Trump, they rely on basic laws of physics discovered back in the 19th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fourier#Discovery_of_the_greenhouse_effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tyndall#Main_scientific_work
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_Newton_Foote#Circumstances_Affecting_the_Heat_of_the_Sun's_Rays
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect
If someone shows to me that greenhouse effect does not exist, that great scientists of 19th century were Chinese cultural marxist secret agents tasked with destruction of Western capitalism, I will reconsider.
https://i.imgur.com/0Mzqkzg.png
The theory that global cooling can be caused by whatever puts dust in the upper atmosphere (volcanos, meteors, whatever) is, like the greenhouse effect, not generally attributed to Chinese cultural marxist secret agents. This does not mean the narrative was correct back in the early 1970s, when it predicted a new ice age and promptly got the heatwave of the mid-1970s instead.
Well the planet has warmed a bit since the coolest period of the last few thousand years – circa 1750, so not surprising. At some stage the planet will cool off a degree or so, dunno when, dunno why. We do know there are wobbles due to ocean currents, again, we dont really have a handle on how/why – the positive AMO at the moment is keeping night temps high in europe…as it goes negative over the next few years we will prob see a reduction in temps of maybe half a degree C perhaps. And of course if we compare to Minoan, Roman, & maybe MWP, the planet is cooling on the larger timescale.
So that said…is manmade CO2 adding to temps. No, no it isnt…or more accurately, to paraphrase Prof Lindzen, trivialy yes, statisticaly no.
So its established science that doubling co2 from 280ppm (circa 1880) to 560ppm should give us 1-1.5c warming. Nothong to worry about. The alarm comes from the idea that our co2 can ‘pass on its heat’ (unscientific shorthand) to water vapour…
The reason this is a legitimate worry is that if indeed co2 could ‘pass on its heat’ (sorry…) to water vapour then indeed there could be major issues (Venus effect). Lets ignore for the moment the fact that the planet has never gone off into Venus scenarios even when co2 was in the thousands ppm…thats just inconvenient logic…lets give the alarmists arguement a fair run.
Ok…gw theory as it affects water vapour in an easy to understand way.
So Mr Co2 is floating around in the sky collecting sumbeams in a little bucket. But he can only get 10 sunbeams in his bucket and cannot collect any more. But he bumps into Mr Water Vapour who ask him if he would give him a sunbeam. Sure says Mr Co2, that means I can put another sunbeam in my bucket. Mr Water Vapour tells all his mates so Mr Co2 has a mice little business going clearing his stock of sumbeams before he ever fills his little bucket.
That folks is the positive effect theory of GW.
Now…if the above did actually happen in nature we could detect it by seeing a big rise in the areas of the planet where we have a lot of water vapour – ie above the tropics. This is the infamous ‘tropical hot spot’ that was supposed to be the canary in the mine back in the 90s when this alarm really took off in the mainstream. But…it aint there. Nada. Nuffink. Nilch. Hmmm…so…if we cannot get accelerated global warming without water vapour helping co2 exceed its physical limits, and we cannot detect any warming in the tropical layers…then sorry but there is something very very wrong with the theory.
Most educated people acknowledged that the idea of high sensitivity to co2 was a busted flush around 2010 when it became obvious that observations did not match the theory. By then of course the agw movement was big business – between the corporates wanting a trillion $ carbon trading scheme, the anti capitalists & the usecul idiots the thing has a life of its own.
Eucalyptus trees – we began planting these in europe back in the 80s to feed the paper imdustry of the warmer climes – it grows quick so it can be cropped quicker than pine.
And its spread…you see it everywhere in Portugal, its like a weed. Anyway…its very very high in oil….guess what happens to eucalyptus when it gets hot (ie near a fire)….😏
The more one looks at all this – the more insane it all is.
For example – Australia has lots of uranium, it also has an establishment that (like most of the West) talks endlessly of the horrors of C02 (which is plant food – but leave that aside), so Australia has lots of nuclear power stations?
Wrong – indeed I am told that Australia has no nuclear power stations, and that the so called Greens are opposed to building any.
None of it makes any sense.
‘If someone shows to me that greenhouse effect does not exist, that great scientists of 19th century were Chinese cultural marxist secret agents tasked with destruction of Western capitalism, I will reconsider.’
The greenhouse effect leads to moderate global warming which is easily within humanity’s capacity to adapt. All of the extreme predictions are based on unproven postive feedbacks. It’s an issue of mole hills an mountains. It’s scarcely more of a problem than Y2K.
None of it makes any sense.
If you assume that enivironmentalists don’t like people and want them to die, it makes a great deal of sense
“If someone shows to me that greenhouse effect does not exist….”
Why do government agencies, especially in the United States, change historic temperature data (to, for example, get rid of the cooling trend from the 1930s to the 1970s). And why does the international establishment elite practice systematic censorship and smearing of “deniers” (i.e. trying to associate scientists with different opinions on climate, with Nazi Holocaust denial)?
If your position is so strong “just a lurker” why does your side practice systematic fraud (data fraud – and data suppression), refuse all debate with scientists who do not agree with you, and seek to censor dissenters and smear them as Nazi “deniers”?
However, thank you for mentioning China (by the way “Cultural Marxism” refers to the Frankfurt School – not to the Chinese, indeed the Chinese rightly despise the Frankfurt School “Woke” types) – as the People’s Republic of China produces vastly more C02 than anyone else.
If you are sincere then you will protest against the People’s Republic of China regime.
However, if you totally insincere – you will pretend that destroying what is left of the British economy will make some sort of important difference to world CO2 emissions.
The standard approach of the establishment with people with whom they disagree (on C02 or-anything-else) is to censor and persecute the people with whom they disagree – try and get them dismissed from their jobs.
So, yes, “just a lurker”, the approach of the international elite is Frankfurt School “Cultural Marxist” – in that it is based on censorship and persecution, i.e. standard “Woke” tactics. Even pointing out basic facts, such as that the Polar bears are NOT dying out, and the Artic and Greenland ice is NOT less than it was a few years ago (and is much MORE than the level of ice in the Artic and Greenland thousands of years ago), is responded to with a tidal wave of hate and persecution.
And, I repeat the point, why are there no mass protests outside Chinese embassies and other places associated with organisations controlled by the People’s Republic of China – the PRC is the power that is actually producing vastly more C02 emissions than anyone else, yet it is ignored. Or even praised – for example by the WEF, UN, and other international bodies (which see the People’s Republic of China Communist Party tyranny as a model for the whole world).
Britain produces about 1% of C02 emissions (and British emissions have been dropping for years – whereas the emissions of China have greatly expanded), yet it is always death-to-Britain or death-to-America – never death-to-the-PRC from these establishment activists.
The insincerity of the campaign is obvious. If the people involved were sincerely worried about C02 emissions they would be denouncing China and pushing nuclear power – and they are doing neither of these things.
So whatever this campaign is really about (whatever its real objective is) – it is NOT about a sincere concern in relation to C02 emissions.
Were 19th century scientists agents of the Chinese Communist Party – no they were not, as the Chinese Communist Party did not exist before the 1920s (by the way that shows one of the many lies of Chinese history books – when they imply that the 1911 Revolution was inspired by the Communist Party, it did not exist in 1911).
However, many important people in the West, including Mr Joseph Biden and many other important people in the United States, have been paid by the People’s Republic of China for years. They may not be ideological agents (although their “education” leads them to hate the foundational principles of the West) – but they are certainly agents of influence for MONEY.
I am well aware of the old leftist tactic of trying to pretend that their opponents believe things we do not believe – in order to shield themselves from charges that are actually true.
“You paranoid people believe the squirrels in the trees are Soviet agents” – No Mr Philby, I believe YOU are a Soviet agent Sir”.
The Soviets were masters of the long game – for example, the campaign of infiltrating the Roman Catholic Church started in the 1920s but it did not really bear fruit till the 1960s (it took 40 years of work). Sometimes ignorance was as important as formal agents – for example Saul Alinsky (the “Rules for Radicals” person who was an inspiration to both Mrs Clinton and to Barack Obama) found it deeply amusing that the philosopher and theologian Jacques Maritain and the future Pope Paul VI were so easy to fool – just pretend to “care about the poor” and they would believe any LIE he told. They were incredibly trusting – as long as one sang the “care about the poor”, “Social Justice” song. But agents were also of importance.
For example, Cardinal McCarrick was an agent-of-influence – he was recruited back the 1940s (when he was of no importance at all – just a young chap who could be helped into a senior position at some future time).
Cardinal McCarrick had the habit of abusing boys (as did many others – indeed a special effort was made to get such people to infiltrate the Catholic Church and other organisations), and that was useful in that it meant that if he tried to break his loyalty to the Soviets (although there is no evidence that he ever had doubts about his activities) they could have blackmailed him to continue his work – and when the Soviet Union collapsed at the start of the 1990s – he just carried on working (for the People’s Republic of China).
The deal between the Chinese Communist Party and the Vatican was one of the fruits of Cardinal McCarrick – and it meant the betrayal of the Underground Church in China.
No doubt “just a lurker” is laughing at this point – but it was not funny for people who found themselves in the torture chambers of the PRC – because they had been betrayed by their own Church.
“Kim” Philby is said to have met British intelligence officers before sending them off to torture and death in Albania and other places, supposedly he got a kick out of meeting them first (knowing that he had betrayed them – and what was going to happen to them).
I suspect Cardinal McCarrick was much the same sort of person.
At a certain point formal agents are NOT needed – because the education system is so saturated with hatred of the West (of free enterprise, private property, the traditional family, and-so-on), that the products of the education system go on to do damage to the West without any need to pay them to do so.
Take someone educated in Argentina under the Social Justice regime of General Peron, and then getting his theological training in Germany in the late 1960s – was well as in the Jesuit Order.
There is no point, none, in making such a man a formal agent – as he will sing whatever song the “International Community” (the Agenda 2030 crowd) want him to sing, WITHOUT being ordered to do so. He will do so automatically – because of so many decades of education and training.
It would not occur to the Gentleman to do anything else. Ditto the Legion of others in so many organisations (government, corporate, whatever) in the Western World.
>”michael freeman”
>”we dont really have a handle”
Speak for yourself.
Everything you posted is wrong, for flat earther equivalent of wrong. Everything.
I could refute you point by point, show you sources and links, but why bother.
Instead of trusting oil industry talking points, why not take on faith anonymous shitposting lurker?
>”Paul Marks”
>”why does your side”
I am not on anyone’s “side”, because there is no side worth taking.
The whole debate about climate change looks from the outside like this:
L: The house is on fire, and you must eat the bug to stop it.
R: I will not eat the bug, there is no fire, and fire is completely natural event anyway, nothing to worry about.
>”Wrong – indeed I am told that Australia has no nuclear power stations, and that the so called Greens are opposed to building any.
“None of it makes any sense.”
Exactly. If we were living in sane world, we could get 80% of baseload power from nuclear, worldwide since the 70’s.
Alas, we do not.
hmmm….looks like Just a Lurker does not really understand the science at all. Oh well. I’l fwd his comments on to the climate phds to show them how wrong theh are 😂
….I remember the kool kidz from Skep Science tying themselves in knots over this about 8yrs ago – the failure of the hotspot caused them some problems –
Firstly they said it was observational problems & once the correct (🙄) obervations wete made the hotspot would appear in the data.
Then the tack changed to how the hotspot didnt matter and was a ‘misunderstsnding’ of the science..
But then there were a couple of studies which showed the hotspot, and these were seized upon to show the skeptic arguement was falsified (and by inferrance therefore the hotspot did exist & the theory was intact).
But then those studies proved to be (cough) less than perfect, and the hotspot dissapeared again in the data. So the alarmists now had a problem – having first said the hotspot didnt matter, they then said it did matter when new data supported thier theory, then did another pivot when the data swung the other way.
The skeptics were peeing themselves with laughter. Poor old Gavin was wheeled out to one of his 1000 word hand waves, with the explanation that the hotspot was not a feature of co2
and water vapour alone would have the same effect (Gavin likes to argue a point one has not made).
What a mess….or….what a tangled web we weave when we set out to deceive.
I’ve been following this for over 20yrs now, from the orig hockeystick malarky, Yamal, Steigs Antartica, the screaming climbdown in tbe IPCC over sensitivity issues, the model f-up that is rcp8.5…..it really is a joke.
Meanwhile the planet carries on doing not a lot. Ocean cycles causing variable mini shifts that we do not fully understand.
Poor old co2 is a bit like Virgil Tibbs…got off the train at the wrong station.
I’m 80 years old, and except for a few years in Massachusetts, I’ve lived in Minnesota all my life. I’ve seen it hotter. I’ve seen it colder. Of course I live in the middle of a continent, where the weather can get enthusiastic.
As belief goes? I believe in the Little Ice Age. I’m glad I didn’t live then.
@Just a Lurker
Could you repost in English please.
In addition to other natural variations (Pacific Decadal Oscillation, etc), we know Solar Cycle 25 is heating up. It will peak between 2023 and 2026.
Solar activity is, was and will always be the prime determiner of global temps.
Some cool imaging of recent CMEs, sunspots at Solar Ham.
Ellen, I not only believe in the Little Ice Age, I also believe in the Mediaeval Warm Period. And, though I saw it was being oversold, I assumed there was some valid science underneath the AGW story through 2006. It was in spring 2007 that some UN claims prompted me to investigate how much science there was underlying it (which I came to realise needed to be rephrased as ‘how little science there was underlying it).
FWIW, Mark (July 25, 2022 at 4:22 pm), I found ‘Just a Lurker’ comprehensible, indeed, very revealing. The claim that an abstract scientific principle, as true in the last ice age as now, is all you need to believe GW is happening on the (repeatedly extended) timescale, was informative. And
was a question that contained its own answer.
@just a lurker
Instead of trusting oil industry talking points, why not take on faith anonymous shitposting lurker?
One thing that has always fascinated me is this: if a study that advantages Big Oil is published it is sufficient to discredit it by pointing out that it is funded by Big Oil. However, if a study advantages Big Government is published it is not sufficient to discredit it by pointing out that it is funded by Big Government.
It is part of the big delusion that the Government is somehow the slave of the people, that it acts in their interest, and is almost entirely devoid of self interest. This belief is plainly delusional as anyone who actually looks at what they do would be readily aware of. FWIW, I think one should be highly skeptical of both. In fact I think we should be highly skeptical of every study published. There is a word for this way of approaching things: “science”.
This is not a comment but a meta-comment. I’d like to praise Natalie for this post.
Natalie asked,
– not “change their views”, I note, but reconsider – re-consider – their views.
If the question had used the word ‘change’ then a one-word summary of my answer would be ‘No’. But I had already begun some re-consideration before she posted, since it seemed possible that Tuesday down south would (just) break the 40 C threshold. (If I understand correctly – I may not – then whether it meaningfully did or not depends on the relationship between the Coningsby thermometer and the Coningsby runway heatsink.) Hence I had already checked WUWT and some other stuff by the time I saw Natalie’s post (see my first comment in this thread).
A philosophical reason for rejecting CAGW is its characterising of critics as ‘science deniers‘. People who talk like this do more than just deny science – they demonstrate they either don’t know or don’t care (or both) what science is. You should only give a scientific prediction more credence than a pile of well-augured entrails if the prediction is the result of the scientific process – of inviting people to try and prove it wrong, and its surviving that. Notoriously, the Mann, Jones, Briffa mob withheld their data even from FOIA requests till the climategate archive escaped them because, as one of them asked in these very words,
That kind of fundamental science denial makes Piltdown man look petty. Real scientists offer their data unasked and ask people to prove them wrong if they can, because (Feynman)
All this justifies treating every CAGW person who uses the phrase ‘science denier’ with great caution; if they tell you the time of day, check it. But it also justifies – indeed requires – re-consideration when data arrives from a less untrustworthy source (mother nature, for example). One swallow does not make a summer and two very hot days, paired with unusually cold days in Eastern Europe, do not make a catastrophically anthropogenically globally warmed summer for my money – nor does reaching 40 C while in the company of a dodgy heatsink. But I didn’t mind being asked to re-consider.
[All quotes from memory.]
I not only believe in the medieval warm period, I have strong suspicions about the existence of the Roman warm period, the Cretan warm period, and the Eocene climate optimum. There also appear to be cold periods (like the Little Ice Age) between the warm times. I suspect the volkswanderung between the Roman and Medieval warm periods came from people headed South for warmth. Thus the Dark Ages, and the fall of Rome.
@Niall Kilmartin
For these people, “science” is just a fig leaf. What you (and me) are denying is them, that is to say their self imposed right to occupy the moral high ground. You are challenging the natural order which naturally has them on top.
How exactly these people construct this natural order and put themselves at the centre of it is a whole field of study in itself, and as my frail dotage approaches and I consider what to do to keep the few remaining neurons I have firing, this is something that interests me more and more.
@Ellen
On a similar thread, forget the specific reference, but one intriguing proxy for the beginning of said little ice age, or an indicator that climate was taking a turn for the worse, was an increase in witch trials in central europe.
People being accused of all sorts of things as crop yields began to decrease, animals began to lack feed, could not be grazed as high as the previous year etc.
Reasonable chance of power cuts this coming winter. If so, I’m sure this will begin again.
Gore – truly fabulous hypocrite – looks to be making a bid for the post of subsidy finder general.
No: “The house will burn down in five minutes, and you must abandon everything you own! Hurry, we’re almost out of time!”
A week later, the house still stands, unscathed.