Warble gloaming will cut your feet off

The mind just boggles sometimes, it really does. The Real World Libertarian notes the latest warble gloaming related insanity has resulted in some very strange construction regulations in a Victorian town.

Port Albert, on the southern coast of Victoria has to go even further to meet the challenge. There is a fascinating story from a couple of days ago about how, owing to two sets of regulations, they have to lower their height.
That’s right, residents of the town have to get shorter.

Because of the requirement that sea level rises have to be planned for, new housing has to be built on stumps 1.5m above ground level, despite the fact that the town’s original colonial buildings have survived on ground level since the 19th century. Normally, this would not present that much of a problem, other than for the infirm who would now have to climb steps.
Unfortunately, heritage rules prevent rooflines being built higher than the roof of the pub, which may be Victoria’s oldest continuously licensed hotel.

Once heritage listings come into effect, its damn near impossible to get rid of them. You see where this is going, …

Yep. The difference is near as dammit five feet, so either lower ceilings for two storey buildings or single storeys which either have pointlessly high ceilings or aren’t built up as high as they could be. And this just as research has emerged which found that sea level rise is decelerating and has been the whole time the world has been soiling its pants over Goracle predictions of 6m sea level rise (presumably not calculated from his condo a few hundred metres from San Francisco Bay).

And on that topic I’m adding another warble gloaming date to the list, courtesy of a commenter called Roy UK over at Watts Up With That a few days ago in response to a post asking for some help.

I’m looking for pronouncements in press and blogs from prominent players and scientists in the AGW issue where they’ve said “We’ll have an ice free Arctic by the year xxxx”.

Very much like my occasional ‘warble gloaming dates for your diary’, and Roy UK found a corker from 2007 (my bold).

Louis Fortier, scientific director of ArcticNet, a Canadian research network, said the sea ice is melting faster than predicted by models created by international teams of scientists, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
[…]
“The frightening models we didn’t even dare to talk about before are now proving to be true,” Fortier told CanWest News Service, referring to computer models that take into account the thinning of the sea ice and the warming from the albedo effect – the Earth is absorbing more energy as the sea ice melts.
According to these models, there will be no sea ice left in the summer in the Arctic Ocean somewhere between 2010 and 2015.
“And it’s probably going to happen even faster than that,” said Fortier, who leads an international team of researchers in the Arctic looking for clues to climate change.

So we’re a third of the way into that six year time frame and it has not yet occurred, not forgetting that Fortier said that it would probably be even sooner than that. Given that the article comes from 2007 I’m not sure how much sooner Fortier was expecting since there were only two years to go before the earlier end of his no-ice time frame but if he was serious then we’re probably about halfway through the period in which he predicted the Arctic Ocean would become ice free. Being harsh this looks like it’s already a fail, and even being charitable and treating it as a prediction to occur by 2015 it’s looking decidedly shaky.

So the revised list now looks like this:

• Probably should have happened by now, or failing that should be possible to observe a very large change in that direction – New York’s West Side Highway impassable due to being underwater – Dr. James Hansen (1988/89 interview)
• Probably should have happened around 2005 ± 1 yr – British children will not know snow in their own country – Dr David Viner (Independent, Mar 2000)
• “Imminently” – loss of world’s coral reefs – David Attenborough in July 2009 (‘world’s tropical reefs face ‘imminent destruction’ unless CO2 levels are slashed’)
• By 2010 – 50 million refugees climate refugees (UN Environment Program – currently no link for UNEP site but Watts Up With That has details and evidence of claim)
• Between 2010 and 2015, probably earlier – ice free Arctic – Louis Fortier, director of ArcticNet, speaking to Canada.com in 2007
• Late 2013 – ice free Arctic – Al Gore (North Pole will be ice free in five years’)
• 2014 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – WWF.
• Dec 2016 – the whole world and everything all fucked up beyond repair – the Prince of Wails and the 100 months mob
• Dec 2016 – loss of ‘the levers of control’ for the climate – the Prince of Fails… again.
• Late 2019 – ice free Arctic – Pen Hadow (ten years to Arctic ice loss)
• Late 2019 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – UK Met Office.
• Late 2029 – loss of Great Barrier Reef – marine scientist Charlie Veron (‘global warming will destroy the World Heritage site within just 20 years’)
• By approximately 2040 – ice free arctic yet again – NSIDC director Mark Serreze

Still, we’re getting a carbon tax anyway for all the good it’ll do.* Reality generally trumps modelling but when it comes to political decisions it’s the other way around.

* My prediction is none at all, or at least nothing that can be measured.

Ice free arctic now predicted to occur no less than three separate times

Just a quick one, this. Yes, folks, it’s another warble gloaming date for your diary, though this one is a little way off.

SEA ice in the Arctic is melting at a record pace this year, suggesting warming at the north pole is speeding up and a largely ice-free Arctic can be expected in summer months within 30 years.
[…]
Global warming has been melting Arctic sea ice for the past 30 years at a rate of about 3 per cent a decade on average. But the two new data sets suggest that, if these trends continue, a largely ice-free Arctic in summer months is likely within 30 years.
That is up to 40 years earlier than was anticipated in the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report.

This prediction comes from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, a body which I’m certain owes absolutely nothing to the large political and public concern, albeit dwindling in the latter case, about warble gloaming and would get exactly the same amount of government funding to the cent if nobody at all believed a word of it. If all the predictions I’m collecting come true it will be the third such ice-free arctic after the ‘Gore ice-free arctic’ of 2013 and the ‘Hadrow ice-free arctic’ of 2019. I haven’t quite worked out how this latest ice-free arctic is four decades earlier than expectations of the same thing happening just two years from now and six years after that – perhaps ice travels in time if there’s enough carbon dioxide above it. It might explain previous ice ages if much of our present day ice has travelled into the past, though I feel that we urgently need to find out if it’s being replaced by water from then travelling forward. Just a matter of funding, further research is always needed.

Anyway, whatever the cause of time travelling ice the list of warble gloaming dates for our diaries can be updated to read:

• Probably should have happened by now, or failing that should be possible to observe a very large change in that direction – New York’s West Side Highway impassable due to being underwater – Dr. James Hansen (1988/89 interview)
• Probably should have happened around 2005 ± 1 yr – British children will not know snow in their own country – Dr David Viner (Independent, Mar 2000)
• “Imminently” – loss of world’s coral reefs – David Attenborough in July 2009 (‘world’s tropical reefs face ‘imminent destruction’ unless CO2 levels are slashed’)
• By 2010 – 50 million refugees climate refugees (UN Environment Program – currently no link for UNEP site but Watts Up With That has details and evidence of claim)
• Late 2013 – ice free Arctic – Al Gore (North Pole will be ice free in five years’)
• 2014 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – WWF.
• Dec 2016 – the whole world and everything all fucked up beyond repair – the Prince of Wails and the 100 months mob
• Dec 2016 – loss of ‘the levers of control’ for the climate – the Prince of Fails… again.
• Late 2019 – ice free Arctic – Pen Hadow (ten years to Arctic ice loss)
• Late 2019 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – UK Met Office.
• Late 2029 – loss of Great Barrier Reef – marine scientist Charlie Veron (‘global warming will destroy the World Heritage site within just 20 years’)
• By approximately 2040 – ice free arctic yet again – NSIDC director Mark Serreze

So, er, do I need sunblock and my bathers for the rest of winter or what?

Climate memory hole – UPDATED

Watts Up With That has caught out the UN in another bit of climate exaggeration followed by a clumsy attempt at revisionism.

In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010. These people, it was said, would flee a range of disasters including sea level rise, increases in the numbers and severity of hurricanes, and disruption to food production.

…

It so happens that just a few of these islands and other places most at risk have since had censuses, so it should be possible for us now to get some idea of the devastating impact climate change is having on their populations.

The short version is that far from crashing populations as the people living there escaped their drowning and/or parched lands and fled Gaia’s fury, populations in the examples given have gone up. Hardly evidence of a number of climate refugees as large as the population of England.

After Asian Correspondent posted the story on April 11th, it was picked up by news outlets around the world such as Investor News, American Spectator and was cited in the Australian newspaper. It was also a report on Fox News.

Since that story appeared, the “handy map” he cites in his original story, which has this URL:

http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/fifty-million-climate-refugees-by-2010

…seems to be gone down the memory hole.

Yep, they 404’d it. But as WUWT reports it’s not 404’d by Google Cache, which still has a copy of the original albeit minus the map. However, WUWT also points out that the page where the map lives has not been deleted and so it can still be downloaded from http://maps.grida.no/library/files/storage/11kap9climat.png – at least it can until they wake up on Monday, have a look at their feeds for WUWT and rush to memory hole the map as well. Bit late since Anthony Watts has already put both it and the page up on WUWT.

Click to biggerfy

Go read the whole thing, including how the 50 million climate refugees by 2010 claim has been quietly repackaged and re-released as 50 million by 2020 – a nice touch that – and I’d suggest you grab copies of the map and the page while you’re at it so you have the evidence at hand with which to call bullshit when some warmist ecolyte regurgitates this claim at you.

Of course this means I need to update my too infrequently revisited list of bogus claims of ecotastrophic carbon driven warble gloaming disaster. The list is now as follows:

• Probably should have happened by now – New York’s West Side Highway impassable due to being underwater – Dr. James Hansen (1988/89 interview)
• Probably should have happened around 2005 ± 1 yr – British children will not know snow in their own country – Dr David Viner (Independent, Mar 2000)
• “Imminently” – loss of world’s coral reefs – David Attenborough in July 2009 (‘world’s tropical reefs face ‘imminent destruction’ unless CO2 levels are slashed’)
• By 2010 – 50 million refugees climate refugees (UN Environment Program – currently no link for UNEP site but Watts Up With That has details and evidence of claim)
• Late 2013 – ice free Arctic – Al Gore (North Pole will be ice free in five years’)
• 2014 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – WWF.
• Dec 2016 – the whole world and everything all fucked up beyond repair – the Prince of Wails and the 100 months mob
• Dec 2016 – loss of ‘the levers of control’ for the climate – the Prince of Fails… again.
• Late 2019 – ice free Arctic – Pen Hadow (ten years to Arctic ice loss)
• Late 2019 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – UK Met Office.
• Late 2029 – loss of Great Barrier Reef – marine scientist Charlie Veron (‘global warming will destroy the World Heritage site within just 20 years’)

We are now a third of the way down that list. Please remember that I don’t put vast amount of time and effort into this so I’m sure this list of warble gloaming dates for your diaries is far from complete, not least because we probably won’t have long to wait before one of them predicts something else that then doesn’t happen. I’d like to add to it if either of my readers knows of a catastrophic warmist prediction that isn’t on the list and which has already been proven wrong by dit of the predicted date passing by with nothing at all happening, or which is only a few years off and can be waved at the doom mongers if (I’ll allow the possibility and not say ‘when’) it proves as false as NY’s West Side Highway being underwater and covered in the boats of climate refugees. Let me know in the comments or via the contact me form.

UPDATE – starting with the 50 million climate refugees claim Watts Up With That has added a permanent feature along similar lines to my list of warble gloaming dates for your diary. The WUWT Climate Fail Files will detail specific claims with link(s) to where it was made – or evidence that it was – and by whom, in what way it has failed to materialise, and if applicable how the goalposts have been shunted to account for the fact that disaster hasn’t happened on schedule… again. I’d still like to add to my list but WUWT is a more specialised site and gets much more traffic than I do, so if you do have anything along these lines please consider sending them to WUWT, currently via the comments section of this post, either instead of or as well here. Cheers.

Brrrr.

And as WUWT points out, it looks exactly the same as it did last winter – actually only 48 weeks ago. All of which makes this March 2000 prediction in The Independent that’s been waved around on various blogs all the more – what’s the phrase I’m looking for? Oh, yeah – fucking wrong.

Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London’s last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.

Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by 0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

And now they’re getting a whole country-load of snow twice in the same year in the latest in a series of consecutive cold winters. Rare and exciting, Dr Viner? Relatives back in the UK are telling me it’s becoming a real pain in the arse, not to mention the fact that people are actually fucking freezing to death in these rare and exciting events.

So although it’s obviously retrospective I think this is time to update my list of Warble Gloaming Dates For Your Diary, which is something I haven’t done for quite a while. Granted it’s not a particularly solid prediction but I think there’s enough to work with: children wouldn’t know snow “within a few years” of March 2000. The word “few” is generally considered to mean a pretty small number but if 2-3 was meant then “a couple of years” or something similar would probably have been said instead, as would something like “ten or twelve” if something along those lines was meant. So I’m going for the middle and assume “a few years” means 4-6. The updated list now reads:

• Probably should have happened by now – New York’s West Side Highway impassable due to being underwater – Dr. James Hansen (1988/89 interview)
• Probably should have happened around 2005 ± 1 yr – British children will not know snow in their own country – Dr David Viner (Independent, Mar 2000)
• “Imminently” – loss of world’s coral reefs – David Attenborough (‘world’s tropical reefs face ‘imminent destruction’ unless CO2 levels are slashed’)
• Late 2013 – ice free Arctic – Al Gore (North Pole will be ice free in five years’)
• 2014 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – WWF.
• Dec 2016 – the whole world and everything all fucked up beyond repair – the Prince of Wails and the 100 months mob
• Dec 2016 – loss of ‘the levers of control’ for the climate – the Prince of Fails… again.
• Late 2019 – ice free Arctic – Pen Hadow (ten years to Arctic ice loss)
• Late 2019 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – UK Met Office.
• Late 2029 – loss of Great Barrier Reef – marine scientist Charlie Veron (‘global warming will destroy the World Heritage site within just 20 years’)

So in addition to the imminent destruction of the world’s coral reefs per David Attenborough in July 09, which is presumably due any second (checks… nope, they’re still there) and the ice free North Pole per the Goracle due in almost exactly three years we have two predictions for which the due date has already come and gone. Mark your calendars for the others, especially the real catastrophic stuff from the WWF and Prince of Fails Chuckles FcKnuckles and especially as Japan is pissing on the Cancun party by telling everyone they don’t want to extend Kyoto. At the same time as one of Britain’s delegates to the conference is delayed by snow.

If people weren’t dying I might actually laugh.

Yeah, right.

I can’t think of any reason to doubt this, can you? Oh, well, if you’re going to count Climategate, and the fuckup with the Himalayan glaciers, and the various connections of the IPCC chief and the other Big Eco vested interests including those behind the claim that the last decade was a record scorcher, and various other doubts not least of which is that this is James Hansen again, the man who claimed the fucking Hudson river would have risen to drown New York’s West Side Highway by now, then yes, maybe there might be one or two reasons to doubt it.

Still, nice to see that The Telegraph is staying upmarket by illustrating the topic with a picture of a pretty girl with nice tits.

Your super, soaraway, er…. Telegraph.

Glacial guesswork.

I saw this the other day on WUWT and haven’t sussed out how to fit it in to the warble gloaming dates for my diary.

Told ya so… IPCC to retract claim on Himalayan Glacier Melt.

This is something WUWT have been on for a while, the long and short of it being that the IPCC, and later by extension various other warble gloaming doom mongers, claimed in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) that Himalayan glaciers are at risk of melting away by 2035. The trouble is that that estimate seems to be based on little more than a bit of guesswork and some sums on the back of someone’s organic fag packet. The head of the IPCC, the infamously independent er, heavily networked Rajendra Pachauri was having none of it of course – he even called an Indian government minister who’d expressed doubts ‘arrogant’ – but as WUWT says that now looks more applicable to Pachauri himself.

It’s now taken almost a month for the Times to catch up to this issue, and now it has made MSM news…

The Times, January 17, 2010


World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown


Jonathan Leake and Chris Hastings


A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.


Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.


In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.

More evidence of how much bullshit there is, but do I add it to the list as glaciers in the Himalayas not to melt by 2035 or what?

Met office weather failcast.

On 25th September 2008, the Met Office said:

The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.

Sorry, what the fuck did you mean ‘again’? Last winter was fucking freezing! Or did we all imagine all that snow and that plane sliding off the taxiway at Heathrow? And the winter before got pretty cold, as did 2005 if my recollection of freezing my bollocks off is accurate. Christ, if you can’t even get what has happened right it doesn’t bode well for predictions, which goes some way to explaining this (my emphasis):

Britain is bracing itself for one of the coldest winters for a century with temperatures hitting minus 16 degrees Celsius, forecasters have warned.
They predicted no let up in the freezing snap until at least mid-January, with snow, ice and severe frosts dominating.
And the likelihood is that the second half of the month will be even colder.
Weather patterns were more like those in the late 1970s, experts said, while Met Office figures released on Monday are expected to show that the country is experiencing the coldest winter for up to 25 years.

Add to that the repeated predictions for dry, scorching summers that end up being chilly washouts, especially last year’s infamous ‘barbecue summer’ foot in mouth PR. Never mind, fellas, it’s like flipping a coin and only ever calling heads. If you keep saying that same ‘hotter’, milder’, ‘drier’, ‘warming’ stuff eventually you’ll be right eventually.

Thank you for choosing the warble gloaming obsessed Met Orifice for all your weather forecasting needs. Sorry, no refunds.

Dopenhagen.

What’s really going on there? We’re told it’s going tits up, but as the Cat Counter mentioned the other day there is a pattern of playing up the importance of talks before every climate related junket, then encouraging a media beat up about how hard it is to get agreement, before finally banging something together to sign, supposedly at the last minute, which is hailed as pulling an important victory for the planet from the jaws of defeat. Rah rah! But on the other hand maybe the African nations really have spat the dummy, and now it appears China is joining in. And then there’s the hilariously inconvenient – sorry for nicking your meme, Gore – timing of the CRU emails and, just in case people were starting to forget, a reminder from the Russians with a PR to the effect that yes, some data games were being played as far as they’re concerned.

On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.
The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

I’m seriously wondering if the pattern breaks here and the usual ‘historic agreement’ is not reached after all.

Still, it’s all to play for because an extremely compelling figure has, not for the first time, added their voice with a warning of what we’re in for if we don’t wise the fuck up and stop doing, well, almost everything that living in the Twenty First Century involves.

The world has only seven years before climate change causes a “point of crisis” that will drive food shortages, terrorism and poverty, the Prince of Wales has warned.

Oh goody. I can actually update the warble gloaming diary dates. Go on, Charlie, don’t let me stop you.

“The future of mankind can be assured only if we rediscover ways in which to live as a part of nature, not apart from her,” he said. “The grim reality is that our planet has reached a point of crisis and we have only seven years before we lose the levers of control.”

No, on second thoughts I am going to stop you. ‘Lose the levers of control?’ Tell me, you sanctimonious, inbred, radar-eared twat, when do you think we first got the levers of control? I’m not too picky, so to the nearest decade when did we first become able to control – excuse my lack of a straight face – the 150 million km² of land and its albedo, the 5 quadrillion tonnes of atmosphere, the 1.4 quintillion tonnes of water, the 2 octillion tonnes of fusing hydrogen a few light minutes away from here as well as the plant’s orbit around it, and on top of that lot the possibility of cosmic rays from far away stars that carked it when our species wasn’t even a dirty thought in what passed for the mind of some ancient gibbon? Fucking hell, but the idea that we ever had our hand on the climate’s ‘levers of control’ doesn’t even pass the giggle test. Go back to your beehives or whatever over-priced tat you’re knocking out these days.

Starting from a point so ridiculous and away with the fucking fairies it’s not even worth fisking the rest of it. I’ll just add it to the list while trying not to snort tea and spray it over the monitor.

• Probably should have happened by now – New York’s West Side Highway impassable due to being underwater – Dr. James Hansen (1988/89 interview)
• “Imminently” – loss of world’s coral reefs – David Attenborough (‘world’s tropical reefs face ‘imminent destruction’ unless CO2 levels are slashed’)
• Late 2013 – ice free Arctic – Al Gore (North Pole will be ice free in five years’)
• 2014 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – WWF.
• Dec 2016 – the whole world and everything all fucked up beyond repair – the Prince of Wails and the 100 months mob
• Dec 2016 – loss of ‘the levers of control’ for the climate – the Prince of Fails… again.
• Late 2019 – ice free Arctic – Pen Hadow (ten years to Arctic ice loss)
• Late 2019 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – UK Met Office.
• Late 2029 – loss of Great Barrier Reef – marine scientist Charlie Veron (‘global warming will destroy the World Heritage site within just 20 years’)

And to think I thought he was off his head when it emerged that he talked to plants.

That’s that then.

We’re all fucked.

The key decision on preventing catastrophic climate change will be delayed for up to six years if the Copenhagen summit delivers a compromise deal which ignores advice from the UN’s science body.

World leaders will not agree on the emissions cuts recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and are likely instead to commit to reviewing them in 2015 or 2016.

The delay will anger developing countries who, scientists say, will face the worst effects of climate change despite zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Look, I’ll spare you the rest, which is all fairly predictable fare anyway. But the important bit is this: ‘2015 or 2016’. Now having had one or two things on my plate I’ve been a bit busy for much blogging, let alone having time to cast around the interwebs for more dates for my warble gloaming diary of disaster, so I’ll have to put up with it being a whole month old.

• Probably should have happened by now – New York’s West Side Highway impassable due to being underwater – Dr. James Hansen (1988/89 interview)
• “Imminently” – loss of world’s coral reefs – David Attenborough (‘world’s tropical reefs face ‘imminent destruction’ unless CO2 levels are slashed’)
• Late 2013 – ice free Arctic – Al Gore (North Pole will be ice free in five years’)
• 2014 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – WWF.
• Dec 2016 – the whole world and everything all fucked up beyond repair – the Prince of Wails and the 100 months mob
• Late 2019 – ice free Arctic – Pen Hadow (ten years to Arctic ice loss)
• Late 2019 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – UK Met Office.
• Late 2029 – loss of Great Barrier Reef – marine scientist Charlie Veron (‘global warming will destroy the World Heritage site within just 20 years’)

So by 2016 we’ll be halfway down that list and New Yorkers will be swimming down the Hudson to get to work according to Hansen, the world will be sans coral reefs according to David Attenborough, the north pole will be ice free according to the Goracle and finally, according to the Prince of Fails and the WWF, everything will be completely screwed… two years in succession* in fact.

Which of these fucknuts can we sue if we get to 2016 and none of it’s happened?

H/T to the Moggie Audit Department.

* Apologies. I realise it’s a bit insensitive to use the word ‘succession’ in the same sentence as mentioning Prince Charles.

Another warble gloaming date for your diary.

From the Met Orifice, ten years to ‘control global warming‘ or we’re all fucked.

Pollution needs to be brought under control within ten years to stop runaway climate change, according to the latest Met Office predictions.

Now let’s just stop here and consider that most of the CO₂ in the air is natural and that it’s essential for plant life. On top of that unless the world has some magical way of telling the difference between a CO₂ molecule that was produced by a power station and one that was exhaled by a baby dolphin it’s hard to see how it can be a pollutant. Then let’s remember that the sum total of all the time in the history of human existence during which we have controlled the climate is zero, and while we’re streets ahead in our understanding of these things than at any time in our history the chances of us developing a complete understanding in the next ten years are too remote to take even slightly seriously. And finally the idea of stopping ‘runaway climate change’ – ever heard of anything more ridiculous? If it’s not under our control now and never has been then it won’t be in ten years that we’ll see runaway climate change, it’s a reality right now. Not only that but since the climate has always changed and it’s never been under active control by us or anyone/thing else on the planet ‘runaway climate change’ has always been a reality for the past 4+ billion years. And of course the is the Met Office we’re talking about. You know, the barbecue summer mob. Their track record of predictions lately is pretty poor.

Anyway, adding that to our list of disaster we get:

• Probably should have happened by now – New York’s West Side Highway impassable due to being underwater – Dr. James Hansen (1988/89 interview)
• “Imminently” – loss of world’s coral reefs – David Attenborough (‘world’s tropical reefs face ‘imminent destruction’ unless CO2 levels are slashed’)
• Late 2013 – ice free Arctic – Al Gore (North Pole will be ice free in five years’)
• 2014 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – WWF.
• Dec 2016 – the whole world and everything all fucked up beyond repair – the Prince of Wails and the 100 months
• Late 2019 – ice free Arctic – Pen Hadow (ten years to Arctic ice loss)
• Late 2019 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – UK Met Office.
• Late 2029 – loss of Great Barrier Reef – marine scientist Charlie Veron (‘global warming will destroy the World Heritage site within just 20 years’)

Well I don’t know about anyone else but with such consistency I’m sold.

More warble gloaming dates for your diary.

From Watts Up With That? comes a couple more dates for warble gloaming to have buggered things up by. Apparently Dr. James Hansen gave an interview around 1988-89 in which the interviewer gestured out of the window of Hansen’s New York office and asked if the view would look different in twenty years. The reply:

“The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.”

Twenty years from 1988-89 would be coming up in around, ooooh well, now actually. Watts Up With That? makes use of Google Earth to show how not under water the West Side Highway is as well as a graph showing the lack of obvious sea level rise at Manhattan. Anthony Watts gives Hansen a little bit of leeway here, though not very much:

When did [Dr. Hansen] say this will happen?

Within 20 or 30 years. And remember we had this conversation in 1988 or 1989.

…

Even if we give Dr. Hansen the benefit of 30 years, I’ll point out that satellite measurement of global sea level has slowed significantly in the last few years, and is not likely to rise enough to meet Dr. Hansen’s prediction even 30 years out. See this story.

Yeah, well, the original question was

“If what you’re saying about the greenhouse effect is true, is anything going to look different down there in 20 years?”

And made in 1988 or 89. Hmm, on that basis I’d say that late 2009 is a fair date to hold him to. At the extreme edge of the outside a very generous soul might give Hansen’s prediction another decade to see if it pans out, but I’d say a couple of months at the outside and possibly it should have happened already.

So the updated hard predictions list should look like this:

Probably should have happened by now – New York’s West Side Highway impassable due to being underwater – Dr. James Hansen (1988/89 interview)

“Imminently” – loss of world’s coral reefs – David Attenborough (‘world’s tropical reefs face ‘imminent destruction’ unless CO2 levels are slashed’)

Late 2013 – ice free Arctic – Al Gore (North Pole will be ice free in five years’)

2014 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – WWF.

Dec 2016 – the whole world and everything all fucked up beyond repair – the Prince of Wails and the 100 months mob

Late 2019 – ice free Arctic – Pen Hadow (ten years to Arctic ice loss)

Late 2029 – loss of Great Barrier Reef – marine scientist Charlie Veron (‘global warming will destroy the World Heritage site within just 20 years’)

http://maps.google.com.au/maps/sv?cbp=12,9.28,,0,8.67&cbll=40.805845,-73.970547&panoid=&v=1&hl=en&gl=au
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Come on in – the water’s lovely.

Global warming – another date for your diary.

Hooray, another hard prediction. 2014. That one’s according to the WWF today. No, not the wrestling people, the other WWF. So to update what I listed here we now have:

“Imminently” – loss of world’s coral reefs – David Attenborough (‘world’s tropical reefs face ‘imminent destruction’ unless CO2 levels are slashed’)

Late 2013 – ice free Arctic – Al Gore (North Pole will be ice free in five years’)

2014 – the whole world and everything fucked up beyond repair – WWF.

Dec 2016 – the whole world and everything all fucked up beyond repair – the Prince of Wails and the 100 months mob

Late 2019 – ice free Arctic – Pen Hadow (see above)

Late 2029 – loss of Great Barrier Reef – marine scientist Charlie Veron (‘global warming will destroy the World Heritage site within just 20 years’)

I think five years is some sort of magic number for greenie doom prophecies because it’s undeniably popular. The trouble is we’ll soon reach a time when they say five years before the sky weeps blood or whatever and we’ll be saying ‘yeah, but you said that five years ago.’ Would that be what we could call a credibility tipping point?

Another date for your diary.

According to Pen Hadow there’ll be no ice in the Arctic in a decade.

“To all intents and purposes the Arctic will be ice free in a decade. I do find the implications of this happening in my lifetime quite shocking.”

Okay, so according to Pen Hadow, and giving him a few months leeway, the whole place will be fucked by the New Year 2020. Goodoh, not because I want it fucked but because I like greenies to make nice hard predictions that we can hold them to later on. So let’s see where Hadow’s prediction fits in with others like it:

• “Imminently” – loss of world’s coral reefs – David Attenborough (‘world’s tropical reefs face ‘imminent destruction’ unless CO2 levels are slashed’)
• Late 2013 – ice free Arctic – Al Gore (North Pole will be ice free in five years’)
• Dec 2016 – the whole world and everything all fucked up beyond repair – the Prince of Wails and the 100 months* mob
• Late 2019 – ice free Arctic – Pen Hadow (see above)
• Late 2029 – loss of Great Barrier Reef – marine scientist Charlie Veron (‘global warming will destroy the World Heritage site within just 20 years’)

So there you have it – according to the consensus, which my dictionary says means a general agreement, the science (‘settled’ remember’) predicts disaster in 4 years/20 years/7 years/kinda now-ish/10 years. And I have friends, relations and colleagues still asking why I don’t take it seriously. How the fuck am I supposed to take it seriously? Not only has the so-called consensus on this settled science failed to predict the period of cooling over the last decade or so, or adequately explain why it happened or agree on how long it will last, but some of the consensus can’t agree…..

Sorry but my oxymoron alarm has just gone off loudly enough to make

me temporarily deaf, the cats hide upstairs and the dog shit itself.

….. some of the consensus can’t agree on what disaster is to befall us and when. Settled science my arse – even if you take it seriously you only have to keep notes on what’s being said to see that in reality they don’t know. It’s also worth mentioning that the weight I give to Pen Hadow’s prediction in particular is reduced by the fact that he couldn’t get to the North pole earlier this year because of all the fucking ice.

More hard predictions will be added as and when I come across ’em and greenies are crazy enough to make ’em.

* It’s occurred to me for the first time that it may be a typo and these guys actually think that the world will be saved by 100 moths. Presumably they’re giant supermoths who will flutter around the sun and block some of the energy reaching our poor scorched planet. Or something. I’m not sure it’s much crazier to be honest.

UPDATE: Watts Up With That has ten reasons not to trust the data produced by the Caitlin Ice Survey led by Pen Hadow.