Donna Laframboise, a prominent Canadian sceptic and investigative journalist, scourge of the various IPCC reports, has set the wags alight on the blogosphere with her just released book. It pummels the IPCC mercilessly – piece by piece and author by author. The IPCC are given a roasting – and they have come under a lot of criticism after their last couple of reports became an object of derision amongst some sections of the populace. This is the kind of thing real investigative journalists should be doing – gathering the facts the authorities don't wish to let the general public know about. Instead, the mass media, as a whole, have pounced on the ridiculous AGW scare stories like a faithful buddy lapping at the heels of their masters. This is destined to be a best seller – among sceptics, and has the odd title, A Delinquent Teenager who was mistaken for the worlds top climate expert.
Meanwhile, Martin Durkin, another investigative journalist in the true mould of the animal has posted an interesting bit of political 'stab and see what screams the loudest' kind of article at his blog, www.martindurkin.com/blogs/green-superstate-what-global-warmers-really-w… and may cause some hyperventilating in certain quarters. Martin Durkin is no stranger to such controversy as he is the creator of the TV documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, that was televised a few years back and ruffled lots of feathers amongst the AGW lobby and its financial backers. As a result Durkin was subsequently muzzled – and has been quiet of late. He started his blog earlier in the year, concentrating on the political side of AGW rather than the science, and in that respect his piece is outside the remit of SIS. Anyone that puzzles about AGW, and why such a fuss is being made about a small amount of warming, may get some idea of the kind of thing that could be driving it – or not.
Illustrating just what a huge hurdle that confronts the likes of Durkin and Laframboise, minnows in a sea of sharks, is a piece presented in all seriousness at www.physorg.com/print238057516.html in which 'the Team', that clique of climate scientists that are responsible for the computer models that make AGW tick, accuse sceptics of all manner of things, most of which have been debunked on numerous occasions but are still eschewed from the lips of purportedly sane people. Of course, they know it's all a smokescreen – it's a stone walling tactic that works.
Nonsense is regurgitated time after time about global warming, or climate change if the meme is deemed more appropriate, and no more prominently than in the case of malaria. This is a disease that was once widespread all around the world – not just in hot parts of Africa. Likewise, they also claim that dhiarrhea will be more prevalent if temperature increases. Another bit of scaremongering that is repeatedly recycled is the ozone hole. It just happens that ozone above the Arctic has suddenly declined in the last couple of weeks – and the scaremongering has been taken out of the cupboard and dusted down and trotted out – with a serious facial expression. They might not be able to laugh but the rest of us should as the ozone hole has been debunked so many times by science they must be fed up with repeating themselves. To find out what ozone actually is go to http://drtimball.com/2011/holes-in-the-recent-arctic-ozone-hole-story/ and we may note the scaremongering began due to a piece of consensus science that was never cross checked. It was assumed that ozone was a constant. When it varied some people got the wind up, so to speak, and environmentalists seized on the uncertainty, not giving science a chance to study the problem, and as a result CFCs were banned. They are still banned even though science has proved it was all hype – part of the green avalanche of misinformation. Basically, ozone at the Poles can be thinned by the solar wind – following sun spot activity. As the solar wind strikes the Poles it creates aurorae and disperses the ozone to lower latitudes – it does not disappear. In fact, after a time it reappears at the Poles as if nothing had happened – happily passed over as irrelevant by the green movement.
Here endeth this weeks lesson – more in weeks to come. It's all a bit boring nowadays as the financial crisis, it would seem, is bringing green spending plans to the cusp. Politicians are worried that poor people will not be able to pay their heating bills once the green levies already in the pipeline, and still to come, start to bite – in a couple of years. Meanwhile, those with funds to install turbines on their land or solar panels on their roofs, are being paid subsidies that are added to the fuel bills of the rest of the population. Politicians are getting worried – what is surprising is that they didn't see this coming. Is the end in sight? No. It will go on … and on.
See also Joe D'Aleo, at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/20/daleo-on-ozone-hole-it-is-very-lik… which is a bit of a different take on ozone – but as a meteorologist he is perhaps looking at terrestrial reasons. Interesting though.