10 out of 10 based on 1 rating
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March 9, 2025 at 09:53AM
Last year the UN Secretary-General António Guterres visited the Pacific island of Samoa and was filmed by a deserted house that he claimed had been abandoned due to climate change-related sea level rises and increasing storms. It was a porkie that quickly put its hat on and travelled around the world. The journalist Ola Sandstig reporting on Swedish public radio recently tracked down the owner of the house and found the dwelling was abandoned due to the 2009 earthquake and tsunami. Sadly, Samoa is still experiencing sea level rises about six times higher than previous levels but scientists explain it is due to the after effects of the earthquake. There has been no increase in tropical storms in the area and earthquakes and tsunamis are not caused by humans.
Guterres stood by the house and stated that “if we are not able to stop what is happening with climate change, the problem that we see in Samoa will not stay in Samoa”. The arrogance on display here is astonishing. Most Pacific islands have been inconveniently increasing in size of late due to natural forces such as sand and coral accretion along with land movement. The unfortunate case of Samoa was obviously chosen for maximum psychotic effect. This despite clear evidence that has been presented by the distinguished geophysicist Professor Shan-Chan Han that showed land subsidence in the wake of the 2009 earthquake was causing sea levels to rise up to six times faster. Sadly, this effect is “likely to continue for decades” leading to “regular nuisance flooding”.
This arrogance, common to many climate activists, might be summed up by the attitude: “Come and check us, we don’t care, what are you going to do about it?” It was on display at a recent World Economic Forum ‘disinformation’ seminar when the UN’s chief publicity flak Melissa Fleming stated: “We are becoming more proactive, we own the science and the world should know it.” The science writer Roger Pielke Jr. was unimpressed with Guterres’s Samoa stunt, stating that his photo op and press release “can only be described as an intentional effect to mislead”.
Another misleading UN stat that has been doing the rounds for decades is the claim that women and children are 14 times more likely than men to die in a climate disaster. Needless to say, the claim has been a favourite staple of activists for years. Last May, the alarmist echo chamber the Conversation headlined the 14 times claim and stated: “A growing body of evidence demonstrates women and gender-diverse people are disproportionately vulnerable to the changing climate and the consequences it brings.” Roger Pielke reports that the claim, which can still be found on the UN main website, along with the internet sites of many linked operations, has been debunked by Professor Henrik Urdal of the Peace Institute in Oslo, who called the 14 times figure a “mythical number”. In 2014, he traced the claim back to a 2013 Save the Children report, which in turn cited a 2013 Plan International report, which quoted an article published in Natural Hazards Observer in 1997. This article turned out to be two-page opinion piece authored by Pastor Kristina Peterson of the US-based Church World Service.
The sleuthing Sandstig from Sveriges Radio tracked down Pastor Peterson in Louisiana, who expressed surprise that her unsourced opinion was being touted as scientific fact in 2024 by the UN as well as other mainstream organisations. The journalist is reported to have asked for a comment from the UN, but none was forthcoming, possibly because Ms Fleming was busy elsewhere claiming ownership of all the politically correct facts.
Finally, Sandstig investigated Guterres’s claim in 2022 that the number of weather, climate and water-related disasters had increased by a factor of five over the last 50 years. This was covered by the Daily Sceptic at the time where the graph below up to 2022 was published.
As the graph shows, there is no evidence that the number of major disasters going back to the turn of the century is becoming more frequent. In fact, the evidence presented suggests that recent disasters are around 10% less frequent than those recorded in the 2000s. In reality, the increase in disasters recorded by CRED EM-DAT from 1970 to 2000 was due to vastly improved reporting procedures. Deborati Guha-Sapir, who oversaw the widely-consulted database for decades, told Swedish Radio that you can argue that climate disasters or natural disasters have not actually substantially increased but the reporting has been “much, much” easier, better and quicker.
Antonio ‘boiling’ Guterres’s constant hysterical pronouncements are risible. But he is still the head of the UN – the parent-organisation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – and Roger Pielke worries about the effect of all the false claims and bad science. “The climate science community should care that the UN has been systematically misrepresenting climate science, because it could affect how the IPCC is viewed, fairly or unfairly,” he noted. As reported by the Daily Sceptic in 2022, Pielke noted that he had seen “a concerted and successful” effort by climate advocates to create and spread disinformation about disasters, “knowing full well that virtually all journalists and scientists will stay silent and allow false information to spread unchecked – and sometimes will even help to amplify it”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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March 9, 2025 at 08:06AM
Natural cycles drive our climate
The latest video by the Germany-based European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) looks at CO2 and the troublesome Medieval Warm Period, which has long been a thorn for climate alarmists.
Antarctica was warmer during the Medieval Warm Period, enhancing penguin population. Image generated by Grok
Hat-tip: Klimanachrichten
The Medieval Warm Period, the natural warm phase between 700 and 1300 AD, cannot be reproduced climate models because the simulations react primarily to CO2. Back then CO2 was not a factor because its concentration level in the atmosphere was pretty much constant. That’s why people would rather keep the Medieval Warm Period quiet.
But the facts speak for themselves. Two studies now add further pieces to our knowledge of the medieval climate.
Antarctica
In October 2023, a paper by a team of researchers led by Zhangqin Zheng from the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei was published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews. It deals with historical changes in the Adélie penguin population in the Ross Sea region of Antarctica and their climatic influences.
Two atmospheric-oceanic circulation patterns, the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), have a major influence on the climate and marine ecosystems in the Ross Sea region. From a historical perspective, however, the influence of atmospheric-oceanic circulation patterns on penguin populations in this region remains unclear. The researchers analyzed sediment cores from abandoned penguin colonies on Inexpressible Island in the Ross Sea and reconstructed the changes in the populations of Adélie penguins over the past 1500 years. Zhangqin Zheng and colleagues found that the penguin population on Inexpressible Island peaked between 750 and 1350 AD, possibly due to habitat expansion in a warmer climate during the Medieval Warm Period.
After comparison with historical records of penguin populations from Cape Bird, Dunlop Island and Cape Adare, it was found that all penguin populations increased in the Ross Sea during the period 750 to 1350 AD. The population trend also coincided with extreme swings in the El Niño and SAM circulations.+
From this, the researchers concluded that SAM-ENSO could promote the inflow of circumpolar and modified circumpolar deep water into the Ross Sea and thus increase the influx of nutrient-rich deep water, together with a warmer climate, could promote the efficiency of open ocean areas, so-called polynyas, and the population increase of Adélie penguins.
The study shows the important role of ENSO and SAM as triggers of strong climate fluctuations.
These natural processes are still taking place today and have by no means ended with the start of the CO2 increase.
Poland
The other study comes from Poland. The research group led by Rajmund Przybylak from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland, published their work in the journal “Climate of the Past” in November 2023. The article presents current findings on climate change in Poland for the period from 1000 to 1500 AD. This period also includes the Medieval Warm Period. The scientists first studied all available quantitative climate reconstructions that have been produced for Poland in the last two decades. They also produced four new reconstructions using three dendrochronological series and an extensive database of historical source data on weather conditions. The growth of conifers in the lowlands and mountains of Poland depends on the temperatures in the cold season, especially in February and March. All available reconstructions based on dendrochronological data refer to this time of the year. Summer temperatures were reconstructed using biological proxies and documentary evidence. However, the latter are limited to the 15th century. The winter temperature was used as a proxy for the annual temperature proxies, instead of the usual use of the summer temperature.
The Medieval Warm Period probably occurred in Poland from the late 12th century to the first half of the 14th or 15th century. All analyzed quantitative reconstructions indicate that the Medieval Warm Period in Poland was comparable or even warmer than the average temperature in the period 1951-2000.
The coldest conditions in the entire study period were recorded in the first half of the 11th century (both in winter and summer) and in the second half of the 15th century (only in winter). The greatest continentality of climate occurred in the 15th century. A good agreement was found between the reconstructions of the Polish climate and many reconstructions available for Europe.
The two new studies from Antarctica and Poland indicate that the natural climate factors still need to be much better understood in order to be able to incorporate them faithfully into climate models. Currently, the simulations do not attribute a major role to natural climate events, which is a serious mistake.
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March 9, 2025 at 05:59AM
By Paul Homewood
Further to yesterday’s post on stranded assets, it is worth looking at BP’s Annual Accounts for 2024:
Three numbers stand out, which show the claims about stranded assets to be nonsense:
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First, equity stands at £78.3 billion:
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Secondly, BP has cash reserves of £39.2 billion. (Working capital is also similarly healthy).
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Thirdly, cash generated by operations last year was £27.2 billion. (CAPEX was £15.3 billion and dividends took another chunk of £5.0 billion).
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In simple terms therefore, half of the £78.3 billion of equity is covered by cash, and the rest can be paid back via less than two years of operational revenue.
The Telegraph story is just another attempt to scare the public away from investing in oil companies.
Shamefully they chose to give publicity to a report by the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association, a lobby group set up to promote the sustainable sector, as their website makes clear:
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March 9, 2025 at 05:38AM
