By Paul Homewood
It appears that the Mail have given up any pretence of balance as far as climate change is concerned.
David Rose regularly published sceptical articles in the past, but I am led to understand that he has now been banned from this. Instead we are fed with a succession of infantile pieces from young Joe Pinkstone, and now today one from Michael Howard, former Tory Minister and apparently now turned climate scientist:
Parched fields in East Anglia, moorland fires in Derbyshire, scorched parks across the nation, depleted reservoirs in the West Country, drying lakes in the North.
This blistering summer, during which we sweltered for weeks on end, reminded many of the great heatwave of 1976.
But there is a significant difference: this year’s heat has not been limited to the United Kingdom.
In Sweden, forest fires blaze as far north as the Arctic Circle. Californian firefighters battle the biggest conflagration they have ever seen.
Japan has experienced its highest temperatures on record. So has Africa. Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, is entirely in drought.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that something unusual is disturbing our weather.
Although we should not rush to assume it is man-made climate change, common sense demands that we ask the question.
Are the dramatic events unfolding around the world being shaped by the greenhouse gases that we are adding to the atmosphere, and which stop heat escaping from the Earth into space, as scientists have repeatedly warned would happen? And if these events are a manifestation of climate change, what does that imply for our future?
It is amazing how a bit of hot weather can frazzle the minds of otherwise sane sensible people.
First, let’s look at the UK, to see if there is anything unusual about this summer so far:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/actualmonthly
June was not as hot as 1976 or 1940, whilst July was also not a record month. The whole record shows how variable British summers are, even though average temperatures may be slightly higher than they used to be a century ago. There is no evidence at all that this summer’s heatwave will become the new norm.
But what about his claim that the heat is worldwide?
It is very easy to cherry pick a handful of weather events and claim that they are part of a global pattern. But even his examples fail to come up to scratch.
For instance, he talks about forest fires in Sweden. The idea that you don’t have wildfires in and around the Arctic is a schoolboy error. Once trees start burning, it does not matter how cold it is outside. The Arctic also tends to be very dry, which is also highly relevant.
For instance, the biggest wildfire in recent decades in the US was the Taylor Complex fire in Alaska in 2004, which destroyed 1.3m acres. The chart below shows that wildfires in Alaska are not getting worse.
https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_statistics.html
The idea that you cannot have high temperatures in the Arctic is also a false one. The official all-time high temperature for Alaska was 100F set at Ft Yukon in 1915:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/scec/records
As for the wildfires in California, they have more to do with decades of fire suppression and failure to thin forests than climate.
July temperatures there last month were not unprecedented:
And rainfall in the last year, whilst below average, has not been unusually low:
As for heatwaves, temperatures in the US as a whole last month were far from unprecedented:
He cherry picks a record in Japan, which was based on a highly urbanised site, and one in Africa, which was at the time declared to be very dubious.
Struggling to finish off his list, he points to a drought in NSW. But as the BOM show, rainfall in the last 12 months has been at similarly low levels many times in the past:
And the current drought has nothing at all to do with “heat”:
Meanwhile, across Australia as a whole, rainfall has clearly been on an increasing trend over the years:
A handful of weather events does not prove that something unusual is disturbing our weather. You could go back to any year in history, and make similar claims.
Howard then goes on to bang the drum about renewables, spouting the usual rubbish we continually hear from Claire Perry. He even suggests we all ditch our petrol and diesel cars, and buy electric (even though they are utterly unsuitable for the vast majority of drivers). Interesting question – what happens to the second hand market when we all decide to sell our motors, and nobody wants to buy them? Is Mr Howard suggesting we merrily accept scrap value for them?
He also rings the praises for China and India, who he claims are serious about switching to renewable energy and reducing emissions.
Could these be the same two countries which have tripled and doubled their emissions since 2001?
BP Energy Review
Or the same two countries where wind and solar still only supply less than 3% of total energy?
It was inevitable that the likes of Michael Howard would crawl out of the woodwork, as soon as we had a hot summer.
But the real question is – why is the Mail now so keen to give space to their bogus propaganda?
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August 16, 2018 at 10:10AM
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