The quality of climate change research appears to be ever more hysterical. We have had one missive suggesting we should not have dogs and cats as pets as they eat meat – and cows and sheep eat grass and are prone to flatulence. Instead, they suggest we should have a hamster for a pet instead, even though they might be less attentive or loyal. A hamster won't sit at your feet when reading or writing, and a hamster won't stay by your side if you are unfortunate enough to have a heart attack while on a walk in the local woods. A hamster might make a lot of noise in its cage if you provide the right kind of toys but this will only grab occasional attention. Most of the time you will ignore a hamster – but can you ignore a dog?
In another paper we are told heat waves are going to kill many thousands of people – not just the elderly odd one. Again, sea levels are going to rise dramatically but empirical evidence is completely lacking. Sea levels rise in the models but not in real life. They have been spinning this line since the 1990s but the sea still comes in at the same level – or nearly so. They have been rising very slowly since the beginning of the 20th century and show no sign of catastrophic rise – at all. In a recent study we are informed two recent volcanoes, since 1850, were followed by surface winter warming – which is contrary to the grand view that volcanoes cause a crop in temperatures for a couple of years. It may be that volcanic debris blown into the upper atmosphere acts somewhat like clouds in the lower atmosphere, reducing the effects of normal winter behaviour. See for example https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/05/volcanic-northern-winters/ … where it turns out only two volcanoes were involved – Krakatoa in the 19th century (1883) and Pinatubo (in 1991) and statistically, the warming is so slight it is virtually non-existent. It seems the authors of the study did not look at the climate record itself but at models. As the models have a warming bias it is not surprising they found warming even though mainstream geologists would say a cooling is more likely. It has for years been standard belief that volcanoes generate cooling by the simple method of blocking out sunlight as a result of an opaque sky. Perhaps the models know better. However, the study is only looking at tropical volcanoes and one suspects other latitudes do not agree with the CAGW skewed findings, so more than one factor may have led to the results as published. If the research is solely concerned with the tropics one has to wonder what worth it has not just for the man in the street but for climate science itself as the tropical zone would be the first, and possibly only zone on the planet, where warmth would return relatively quickly. The article itself is paywalled and mostly out of reach of ordinary people – but easily accessible to climate scientists.
The global warming scare stories are given a rumble in the tummy by a journalism professor – see http://notrickszone.com/2017/08/03/new-paper-investigative-journalism-pr… … an Australian investigative journalism professor with a research interest in ecological science has published a scathing indictment of climate science journalism in the academic journal Asia Pacific Media Educator. He lamblasts them for relying on theoretical models as evidence, so called experts making alarmist predictions, and authoritative 'consensus' statements from higher up the food chain, rather than on empirical observation and real world physical temperature measurements, in their reporting on stories on global warming. Todays journalists appear to reflexively accept the most dire of alarmist statements and press releases rather than evaluate what is actually been said.
A few days later there is a good example of this process at the same web site – go to http://notrickszone.com/2017/08/07/since-1993-greenlands-ice-sheet-melt-… … since 1993 ice melt on Greenland has added just 0.39 of a cm (less than half a centimetre) to global sea levels. How alarming is that? In another story in the Washington Post it reports that sea levels have risen by an inch – since the early 1900s. However, the puny nature of this figure is hidden in an avalanche of alarmist terminology which spouts words like staggering, massive, alarming, disturbing, trillions, all designed to raise the temperatures of the readers. The Washington Post has serial history of doing this kind of thing – and the same applies to most of mainstream media and television news stories. The fact is if they told the truth, sea level rise is miniscule and probably natural nobody would take the scam seriously. They have to exaggerate as the truth is painfully unspectacular.