A good down to earth article in the Daily Sceptic.

https://dailysceptic.org/2023/04/03/ipccs-role-in-politicising-climate-science-increasingly-called-into-question/

Mailman,

ABC was certainly breathless about the unprecedented impending charges on Trump. As you say, there have been plenty of precedents, amongst the banana republics. Still, firing squads are a bit South American, and maybe a closer model is Malaysia back when Mahathir and Anwar were rivals and Anwar ended up in chokey on charges of sodomy.

DaveS,

Certainly true that a 10-year span will give steeper trends than a 30-year one, and it's an abuse of statistics to play such games, but who made 30 years the magic number? Why not 50? Or 1000? And it seems to me that the instantantaneous value is the real one. The averaging over n years is using an odometer and wrist-watch to measure speed for want of a speedometer needle.

But in the end it's all wankery. A global mean surface temperature is a useless theoretical figure. In a car there are a few places where temperature is really important — e.g. cabin, cylinder head, brakes, diff — and many places where it's less critical. What would be the sense of sticking thermometers all over the car and then averaging them?

The Earth system is much more complicated than a car, but there seem to be two kinds of place where the temperature is critical: where people live, and the places that weather systems are driven from. I think we have a good enough handle on the first, and hardly any handle at all on the second. Let's hope meteorologists are on the case and that the world will be better instrumented in future with little models all over for predicting monsoon failures, wet years, dry years, etc., all based on localised weather patterns.

And let's cast into the pit all the idiot climatologists whose whole mission is to average away the useful information and use the resulting number to berate us for our evil ways.

tomo,

That Hector Drummond tweet is rather close to the "sheeple" barb that I dislike. Anyway, he's blaming people acquiescing in the climate change folly for draconian measures that have been justified by the COVID-19 folly. In a way that's fair enough — they both have been inducements for the totalitarians among us — but it seems to me that the trend for that runs back *many* years before climate alarm.

Anyone considering a Chinese EV?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yOA7qKMcjcE&t=835s

The latest IPCC synthesis report attempts to mislead by defining its temperature anomaly metric as a 30 year average but then repeatedly uses a 10 year average value. They've already tried to brush this off, but the repeated use makes it certain that it was deliberate. As explained in this video and the previous one from the same channel

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-c86QFtrP9A

As expected, Grant Shapps has been out spouting drivel on net zero. He's on a par with Ed Milliband's level of intelligence.

Id suggest staying away from the news for a couple days as the liberal media beats its self self off with giddy expectation at Democrats deciding to charge trump with the crime of touching them right in the feelz [rolling eyes].

Also, come get yourself some banana republic shit.

DaveS,
I agree on all points. The farmers in the Netherlands (and ongoing gilets jaunes action in France) are more significant in pulling down the climate nonsense and also in eating away at EU overreach.

Things might come to a head quicker than you think if my latest electricity bill is anything to go by. Hitherto, the quarterly bill has hovered between $380 and $450 (depending on aircon/heating use), but the latest arrived demanding $746. kWh was slightly up on usual, but it's still at least a 50% price hike. If that's across the board we'll have yellow vests here.

Was listening to a propaganda piece from the ABC this morning where three climate activists were agreeing with each other that carbon offsets were meaningless. That's one of the very few points on which I'd agree with them. I said here recently that the "Net" in Net Zero tells you that it's just an accounting exercise. Confirmed when one of the activists quoted Woodside Petroleum's fine print (near the bottom) on how they count their emissions:

Target is for net equity Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions, relative to a starting base representative of the gross annual average equity Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions over 2016-2020 and may be adjusted (up or down) for potential equity changes in producing or sanctioned assets with a final investment decision prior to 2021.

Can recommend Brendan O'Neill's interview with Joel Kotkin on the rise and fall of Silicon Valley. Nice contrasting of the engineers and technicians who built Silicon Valley against the MBAs who are destroying it.

Robert

A small step in the right direction in Berlin, if nothing else it shows that the majority of people have more pressing concerns. I sense that the rise of the Farmers Party in the Netherlands is of greater significance, at least in the short term, as they've managed to reach a point where they can influence government decision making. Here in the UK I suspect that our current crop of elected 'representatives' will regard this as an opportunity for yet more infantile virtue-signalling, so engrained is eco-loonery across all political parties - "Look at us", they'll cry, "we're pressing ahead with banning ICE vehicles in the UK irrespective of what the EU does, we are taking the moral lead!". For this lunacy to end will require current incumbents to lose their seats and be replace by people with sense, but that's easier said than done.

Jo Nova has some good news from Berlin. No doubt there's going to be blanket coverage from BBC, ABC, etc., they're always so keen that we not fall behind.