Jul 28, 2020 at 10:01 PM tomo

Iran is desperate to sell oil, and China needs as much as possible. A connecting pipe would be a union made in hell.

For fellow irony fans ...

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/industry-and-energy/2020/07/coal-mine-flooded-melting-glacier

For fellow irony fans ...
Aug 3, 2020 at 12:14 AM Phil Clarke

How many "Awards" will Mann get this year?

Gavin's been busy …

Climate Model Update

Odds-on for a record year

For fellow irony fans:

"National Grid fires up coal power station for first time in 55 days
Heatwave brings wind turbines to standstill and causes gas plants to struggle"

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/12/national-grid-fires-up-coal-power-station-for-first-time-in-55-days

"...Electricity supplies have become tighter than expected during the heatwave because gas-fired power stations have struggled to generate electricity at their maximum capacity owing to the unusually high temperatures. At the same time wind turbines have slowed because of low wind speeds....".

Ah, so generating electricity from coal is now a newsworthy event.....

...as is the fact that relying on unreliable "renewables" isn't good for the grid.

PS we also import quite a lot of electricity from Europe via the interconnectors, and guess what? Much of it is generated by burning coal.

French Nuclear is reliable, provided the French don't turn off the switch.

The Germans are colluding with Russians for some reliable oil and gas because Energiewinde has been a disaster.

Do you read and check these things before posting?

Hmmm.

No.1 That august and weighty academic journal the Saskatoon Star Phoenix reports James Hansen as predicting a global temp increase of 'between one-half and one degree Celsius by the end of the ’90s.'. Which is odd as Hansen in his own testimony to Congress said no such thing, and even his worst case Scenario C showed around a 0.3C rise over the period. Good science, sloppy journalism.

2. A 1978 prediction that if current trends continue CO2 would double by 2020. But they didn't continue, we've had Kyoto, the fall of the Soviet Union, a financial crash, etc etc. You should only evaluate a conditional prediction if the conditions are met. They weren't.

3. In December 2009, The Springfield News-Leader reported that India and China had pledged to cut emissions by 2020.

The Springfield News Leader? The list claims as the countries' emissions have risen this counts as a failed prediction. When in fact the pledge under the NRDCs was to reduce the amount of CO2 per unit of GDP (energy intensity) and AFAIK, both countries are on track to meet their targets. Whoever compiled (and reposted) this point is clueless.

4. The Vancouver Sun reported Lonnie Thompson as saying that At this rate, all of the ice will be gone between 2010 and 2020. Another conditional prediction. 5 million trees were planted to slow the rate of recession, something Thompson could not have foreseen.

5 Two foot rise in sea level around Florida. Go to the (blurry) original and you see the list has removed the word 'possible'. Deceitful.

6 Is the famous Viner quote about kids not knowing what snow is. Again, look carefully at what Viner actually said and what was added by the journalist. The article is totally at odds with contemperaneous primary sources, the lesson is perhaps not to get your climate science from an opinion filler piece written by a business journalist.

7. Is another conditional (could cause) and is a media report of a Greenpeace study. Why not go to the actual study itself? Ah because then you would see the media report once again chose a worst case scenario and removed all the caveats.

8. In 2004, The Guardian reported on a Department of Defense report predicting that climate change could be America’s greatest national security threat. 

The study was never a prediction, it was an analysis of the military implications in the event of abrupt climate change at the very worst case scenario. The subtitle is 'Imagining the Unthinkable'.

We have interviewed leading climate change scientists, conducted additional research, and reviewed several iterations of the scenario with these experts. The scientists support this project, but caution that the scenario depicted is extreme in two fundamental ways. First, they suggest the occurrences we outline would most likely happen in a few regions, rather than globally. Second, they say the magnitude of the event may be considerably smaller.

The Lancaster Eagle Gazette? Come back in 20 or more years. There have been some outliers, however mainstream predictions on Arctic ice have routinely been proved too optimistic.

10. A blog tucked away in the back pages of the LA Times incorrectly predicting the demise of the glaciers in Glacier Park. In fact the number of glaciers fell from 150 in 1850 to 26 in 2017. I am not sure the fact that that the second number is small rather than zero is much grounds for celebration….

So, some conditional predictions, secondary reports, some bad journalism in small town local papers, some lies. Official published mainstream predictions proven incorrect: zero. Intellectual poverty indeed.

Steyn vs. Mann warms up assd. docs here

I see Anthony Watts has launched his threatened climate reference site, promising it will be 'entirely a factual website'

Of course, it is not. It is just a retread of the Heartland Institute 'Climate at a glance' nonsense. Watts being a Senior Fellow at The Heartland Institute. Not that a casual visitor could know this, the site is completely anonymous. The deceit runs deep.

Just save us all some time and admit defeat.

Heartland
Watts

No comment on Mann - v- Steyn, Phil? How many years has this been grinding on now? Perhaps Mann's using it to write something about glaciers. After all, they move more quickly than his litigation.

Not that interested, tbh, after all, although some have tried to paint this as 'AGW on trial', it is not….

The Court is particularly careful and mindful not to step into the substance or merit of the policy debate on global warming. . . . The broader question of global warming is never before this Court. . . . Plaintiff is not the scientist representing the entirety of the science behind global warming

And Steyn's bogus arguments about the Hockey Stick being fraudulent have been hashed out ad nauseum, and in the literature rather than a law court.

If you look at the document trail, a large portion of the delay was the courts responding to various motions to dismiss by Steyn and his co-defendents.

Apparently, if you remove the warming during El Nino years from the record you get less warming. No sh*t. Somebody needs to remind Watts what the O in ENSO stands for.

I mean really? Is this where denialists are?

https://everythingclimate.org/climate-change-is-causing-accelerated-21st-century-surface-warming/

Phil, my comments weren't really aimed at the hockey stick (though the documents do make interesting reading, and personally - as a lawyer - I trust rigorous Court procedures more than "the literature"). Rather, as we've discussed before, they were aimed more at the endless delays.

To that end, many thanks for the link showing what has happened, and when, in the course of the litigation to date. As a lawyer, that simply confirms me in my opinion that Mann has done absolutely nothing to move the case towards trial, which in turn confirms me in my own view that the litigation is about punishment, where the never-ending Damocles-sword and expense of the case is the punishment, and I believe that Mann has no interest in proceeding to a final hearing. If that's how the defendants view it, then who can blame them for bringing applications to dismiss. After all, it worked for Tim Ball when Mann apparently tried the same tactics in that piece of litigation.

That's a novel interpretation, Mark. Long-running court cases are hardly new, ask Dickens. For someone keen to get to court, Steyn sure made a lot of attempts to avoid doing so, including launching a $10m counterclaim in 2013. That failed, with the Judge ruling that Mann's case met the legal standard of 'likely to succeed on its merits'. Notwithstanding that apparently clear judgement, Steyn and his codefendents launched a series of appeals that got as far as the Supreme Court - who also rejected the appeal. That whole process took six years and none of it was Mann's doing.

Steyn himself described the court's handling of the case as a 'train-wreck'. (From the unlawyerly language I am guessing this was after he decided to represent himself, describing a Judge as 'zombie-like' is hardly likely to endear you to the judiciary.)

Remember also, that Steyn is not the only defendant, the National Review places the blame for the delay firmly on the courts:

Mark Steyn posted the blog item in dispute in July of 2012. Mann sued in October of that year, and we filed our first motion to dismiss in December of 2012.

When that was denied by the trial court, we filed a motion to reconsider. When that, too, was denied, we appealed to the D.C. Court of Appeals — twice. This brings us to 2014. After oral arguments, the Court of Appeals sat on the case for two years. Then, the court denied our appeal. This was in December of 2016. Because the opinion had myriad obvious flaws, we petitioned for a rehearing. Incredibly enough, the court then delayed for yet another two years. When the court finally issued an amended opinion, all it did was add one footnote and amend another.

Because the amended opinion didn’t fix any of the flaws of the original opinion, we petitioned for a rehearing yet again. This, too, was denied. Then, last May, we filed a cert petition before the U.S. Supreme Court. All indications are that the court seriously considered it, before denying the petition

Seems the only winners here so far are the lawyers!

Phil - "Seems the only winners here so far are the lawyers!"

On that we can certainly agree. The US system of litigation makes the system in the UK (well, In England & Wales - I have less knowledge of the Scottish system) look stream-lined and highly efficient. Of course, in the USA, the lawyers are also allowed to take a percentage (which is often a significant percentage) of the winnings, and this, IMO, has led to absurdly high damages awards in cases which, had they been litigated in the UK, would have seen damages awarded at a fraction of the level they are in the US.

Still, when all's said and done, if Steyn doesn't succeed in his strike-out attempt, this is another Court case, with Mann as plaintiff, heading towards its second decade (this one was commenced in 2012). Jarndyce-v- Jarndyce could well have serious competition, at this rate!