Saturday, February 05, 2011

Mike Carlton: a climate change primer for the simple-minded Lefty

Mike Carlton on what even the simple-minded should by now have noticed:
Pardon me for pointing out the bleedin' obvious but for those who have not been paying attention much of the planet has been devastated by extraordinary weather in the past year.
Climate change linked floods, droughts and blizzards are apparently ravaging the planet.
No reputable climate scientist claims the disasters listed above have been caused solely by global warming. Nor did the Green senator Bob Brown blame the coal industry for the Queensland floods; if you check the record, you will find he was thoroughly verballed on that one.

The argument, Brown's included, is simply that as the planet gets warmer, these rains and floods, droughts and blizzards will become more frequent and more destructive of life and the environment.
Carlton obviously wasn't paying attention to what Brown actually said:
It's the single biggest cause - burning coal - for climate change and it must take its major share of responsibility for the weather events we are seeing unfolding now.
Had Carlton done some research he'd be aware that floods and droughts – the really big killers – are today far less destructive of life than in the past, when natural disasters, unenhanced by human induced climate change, regularly killed millions.

And it could well be that with instant global communications, cameras in every mobile phone and 24/7 news reporting, natural disasters that in the past might have attracted little notice are now big news.

Also, as the population grows, floods and droughts that in the past would have affected few now affect millions.

It therefore seems likely that the perception of more frequent disasters is incorrect.

Update As cyclone Yasi approached the Queensland coast damn near every newscast and bulletin emphasised that the storm was the biggest, strongest, windiest, nastiest, most awesomest cyclone, not just in recent times, but in the whole history of the universe.

And Yasi was, of course, either attributed to, or linked to, global warming. The message is clear: either get those carbon emissions down or suffer more frequent extreme weather events – droughts, floods, cold snaps, you name it – which will become more common as the world warms.

Mother Nature, the fickle bitch, jumped the gun in 1899, however, a year of "unprecedented" weather extremes, amongst which:
  • Cyclone Mahina (lower barometric pressure and higher wind speed than Yasi; an estimated 400 killed – the greatest natural disaster death toll in Australian history)
People back then must have wondered what the Hell was happening, except that without either cable or the internet most people probably had no idea what was going on, unless they were directly affected. Best of all, the general public was not yet aware of climate scientists.

9 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

When you're an ivory tower armchair journalist, the media is all you have to go on.

6:24 AM  
Anonymous ar said...

Weather events aren't more common or severe... but now they get better coverage.

8:47 AM  
Blogger ev425128 said...

Don't expect the True Believer to consider history, JF. It is all about NOW.

Unprecedented! Except for the precedents.

Most destructive since... Yes, SINCE. Happened worse before, huh?

What climactic or weather conditions would these people accept as proof that AGW is not happening?

Are we to believe in a "natural" world which has no natural disasters?

What is the global climactic state which would disprove AGW? Simple answer - none. Every single whether event has at some time been predicted by someone and tied to AGW.

The True Believers deny nature.

2:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mike Carlton is a liar who outstayed his welcome years ago.

He'd be the last man left at Fairfax before the receivers moved in, convinced he has an adoring readership of millions.

Mike Carlton is the reason a number of people I know have cancelled their subscription to the Sydney Morning Herald.

3:23 PM  
Anonymous Jim said...

See, in 1899 people all over the world used coal to power their huge electricity plants and their oversize Ford coupes I mean pony carts. They just would not lower emissions or invest in wind farms. Boy, did they get what was coming to them.

8:51 PM  
Anonymous spot said...

I post something like this on Twitter, and I get piled on by Ecotards with comments like this.

I don't usually waste time responding to morons who are only on Twitter to attack conservatives and who are never interested in discussing things in good faith (there are Lefty/Greenie/Hippie types who are good value), but even if I had pointed out to dills like this that (a) it has not been "40 degrees 6 days straight in Sydney", that's just plain wrong, and (b) the 150-year-old "record" being broken was for consecutive days above 30C, which had previously been 5 days, or that (c) records in Sydney have only been kept for 153 years of Australia's entire 40,000+ year populated history, and (d) even if it could be shown that never in 40,000+ years has it ever been over 30 degrees in Sydney for 6 days in a row, there's no proof that man's carbon dioxide emission caused this weather...

...they'd pay no mind and just keep shouting their made-up "facts" into the aether anyway.

I like Evan's comment above - he hits the nail on the head.

And "Climate Science"? "The Science Is Settled"? Puh-lease. This is not anything like "Science". Warmies are the worst of one-eyed sports fans, soccer hooligans, political wreckers, snake-oil salesmen and militant fundamentalist religious evangelicals rolled into one.

9:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm waiting for the 'true believers' to argue that we should not be rebuilding infrastructure in Qld, or wherever, because Gaia will knock it all down next year anyway.

7:06 AM  
Anonymous Dan Lewis said...

Anonymous,

There are some pretty conservative people who've expressed similar views already, about certain areas which simply shouldn't have been developed.

The same can be said of New Orleans.

6:05 PM  
Anonymous TBS said...

You seriously expect Mike "ferocious Jewish Lobby" Carlton to write anything that doesn't come directly from his icky swollen ego?? What are you, nuts?

In other matters, I initially read your word "blizzard" as "lizard".
ON reflection, it's more fun that way.

A bas Mike Carlton, for he is a rogue, a beast in the zoo of journalism, a slimy beetle in the muddy tyre-tracks of reportage!

1:56 PM  

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