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Discussion > Extreme Weather

A new pattern seems to be emerging whereby the AGW theme is changing from increased temps to just more extreme weather events. I don't intend this thread to be discussion only but also a log of these new media events so we can track the new version of AGW.

My first encounter was BBC Radio 4 Today's programs interview with John Beddington on 4th Jan.

Jan 5, 2014 at 11:45 AM | Registered CommenterBreath of Fresh Air

The BBC have lapsed into what I call "passive AGW reporting" - instead of mentioning Climate Change at all, they simply big up any and all weather events, so that the idea is fostered that "extreme weather is getting worse" - proof by showing, if you like. look at the top banner coverage of this week's storms (which were not very exciting at all, and just more of what you expect from low pressure fronts and spring tides)

One of their tactics is for any weather report to seek out one local who will say "this is worse than I've ever seen", thus giving the 'unprecendented' tag to the whole thing. There will always be one local who says that, because some people love saying things are better/worse than they've ever seen. No doubt the reporters have to interview a dozen or more before someone will be prompted to say such a thing, or who fall back on the local eco-nutter who will say anything for the cause.

So while it's good that Climate Change doesn't get much of a mention on the BBC any more, the proselytising has simply changed tactic into weather-obsessed alarmism.

Jan 5, 2014 at 12:14 PM | Unregistered CommenterTheBigYinJames

As I posted on Unthreaded, Helena Kennedy confidently pronounces that "deny as they will" climate change means that we're in for more extreme weather. Marr effortlessly concurs.

Marr show

From 10:50 to 11:30 in.

I get the impression they're just spouting what they've heard within the circles they mix rather than being deliberate sources themselves. So yes, the "extreme meme" is being successfully propagated.

Jan 5, 2014 at 12:33 PM | Registered CommenterSimonW

My son has just said that he thinks today was the hottest he has ever experienced it.

He may be right too....

Then again aren't all 12 year olds?

Lucky for us the air-con worked perfectly throughout.....

He's also of the view that CO2 is just plant food.

He also seems to know that there are no concerns over global ice coverage.

Neither is he worrying about the polar bear population. He feels they are actually not that cuddly and view humans as being a starter on the menu.

Nothing to do with me.

Honest.

Guv.


.

Jan 5, 2014 at 12:56 PM | Unregistered Commenterjones

May as well have a record of the Bish's Fish's water post.

"There is no doubt we are going to have to get used to this extreme weather"

Jan 5, 2014 at 2:05 PM | Registered CommenterSimonW

The weird weather kick was another version of the meme. My favourite is when they say 'British weather is now so unpredictable'. Why do they think the British are famous for being obsessed with the weather?

Jan 5, 2014 at 11:53 PM | Unregistered CommenterTinyCO2

Very good idea for a thread, BoFA. Here's Welsh Assembly Minister for Natural Resources Alun Davies in Aberystwyth yesterday, as reported by the Beeb:

"Our coastal flood defences have been severely tested by these storms and it is vital to look at how our sea defences have managed to stand up to the power of the recent storms.

"That is why I have asked NRW to carry out this swift review with the immediate priority being to identify and assess any damage caused so that we can prioritise repair work and see what lessons we can learn to be well prepared for future severe weather.

"Particularly given that these events are forecast to become more frequent as a result of climate change."

But 'these events' haven't been getting worse and in October Roger Pielke Jr. gave IPCC AR5 good marks in this area for the first time:

I have now read IPCC AR5 WGI Ch2 on extreme events. If this does not slay the climate change-->disasters meme nothing ever will - Kudos IPCC

Well, it hasn't slayed the meme, has it? Not yet. Here's another RPJ tweet a minute later (fast typer obviously):

IPCC AR5: Increasing hurricanes? No. Floods? No. Drought? No. Tornadoes/thunderstorms? No. Extreme weather meme now firmly zombie science.

One area of AR5 we should be quoting back to ignorant alarmists all the time. But logging the opposite here should help greatly to show the disconnects.

Jan 6, 2014 at 3:34 AM | Registered CommenterRichard Drake

Beddington Transcript

https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20140104_r4

Jan 6, 2014 at 9:51 AM | Registered CommenterBreath of Fresh Air

5th Jan ref BH

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/1/6/king-says-met-office-has-it-all-wrong.html

"The important thing to get across is the simple notion that storms and severe weather conditions that we might have expected to occur once in 100 years, say, in the past may now be happening more frequently," he told BBC Radio 5 Live.

Sir David King,

Jan 6, 2014 at 9:52 AM | Registered CommenterBreath of Fresh Air

6th Jan ref BH

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/1/6/julian-huppert-says-the-met-office-has-it-all-wrong.html

...we are seeing a changing climate, partly due to manmade CO2 emissions, we are seeing changes in the weather patterns which are bringing more storms. It's no accident that this is the stormiest December that we've had for 40 years or something and we're seeing around the world changes like that.

Julian Huppert, the UK Parliament's only PhD scientist, on the Daily Politics (around 3 mins)

Jan 6, 2014 at 4:57 PM | Registered CommenterBreath of Fresh Air

What we are actually seeing - for the first time - is the point at which the eco-loons depart from the actual underlying science which has hitherto supported their blather.

They think they are on-message.

They don't realise the message has changed.

Jan 6, 2014 at 5:17 PM | Unregistered CommenterTheBigYinJames

BigYin
Which means they haven't been copied in on the memo.
Which means they're not as important as they thought they were.
|;¬) !

Jan 6, 2014 at 8:33 PM | Registered CommenterMike Jackson

There is absolutely no statistical evidence for it at all and the Metoffice knows it. At least the BBC's Paul Hudson doesn't seem too impressed by this latest BBC agitprop, judging by his tweet picture today of Aberystwyth in Oct 28th 1927, but the absence of refutation from the climate science community in general speaks volumes.

Jan 6, 2014 at 10:24 PM | Registered CommenterPharos

BBC news at 10 was full of it. Some official bloke rabbiting on about Extreme Weather TM.

Switched over to BBCNews24 to see who it was but caught the Paper Review (why is one reviewer always from the low circulation Guardian?). In between general sneering at Osborne, broadcaster Penny Smith (?) said "without a shadow of doubt extreme weather is increasing with CC" accompanied naturally by much nodding.

And to top it off: "tune in at 11 to see our special report on the Extreme weather."

You've still got time to catch it if you're quick.

Update: The talking head was Prof David Balmforth from the Institute of Civil Engineers (gawd I was sticking up for engineers last week!):
"I don't think we've woken up to the increased threat of flooding due to CC".

Jan 6, 2014 at 10:56 PM | Registered CommenterSimonW

David Shukman's report on the flooding that SimonW saw is now here. To be fair, the reporter talked of the risks going up because of increased population and the pressure to build on low-lying areas (fair enough) "especially if climate change makes extreme weather more likely." I appreciated the 'if'. But there was none of that from Professor Balmforth. And nobody mentions, day after day, the findings of the latest IPCC report. The consensus is ignored if it doesn't induce alarm.

Jan 7, 2014 at 1:28 AM | Registered CommenterRichard Drake

This interaction on Twitter is also worth recording, after Tom Chivers' excellent article yesterday:

Roger Pielke Jr: Scientifically accurate and nuanced discussion of climate/extremes in the media is possible, @TomChivers shows how

Chris Hope: But there is a difference between 'more storms' and 'more intense storms' which @TomChivers avoids.

Tom Chivers: nope. The WMO found no anthropogenic signal at all - ie not in frequency or in intensity.

CH: I read your piece as focusing on frequency not intensity. Apologies if I missed something

TC: the piece did focus on that. But, as it happens, the WMO found no human influence on intensity either.

RPJ: Not just WMO, but also IPCC SREX, IPCC AR5.

RPJ: Assuming that a signal is there & emerging, here is the math on when it can be detected

CH: Thanks. But it looks as though you are using classical stats in the article, not Bayesian.

RPJ: Thx, but in this study that distinction is irrelevant as we know exactly the signal we are identifying as emerging

That told him. We should hold up Tom Chivers as a great example in this area - despite him confusing our excellent GWPF with the much more American and much less cross-party Heartland Institute.

Jan 7, 2014 at 2:38 AM | Registered CommenterRichard Drake

This has stuck with me all my life. I went to a De La Salle school in Liverpool (no sexual abuse, but extreme brutality) and at one Religious indoctrination lesson we were discussing the Apocolypse and Matthew 24.7 when a boy called McBrinn piped up and said something to the effect that wars, famine, drought, pestilence etc. were always happening. Brother Alban looked over his glasses at him and said something to the effect of:

Well spotted McBrinn, there's a lesson for all of us there. If you're going to make a prophecy, prophesise the commonplace and say it's going to be worse. That way your prophecy will always come true."

Jan 7, 2014 at 9:47 AM | Unregistered Commentergeronimo

geronimo: Terrific. Misunderstanding the apocalyptic has been a habit for centuries. Metaphor is key, the scholars now say - NT Wright likens it to cartoons where unphysical things happen like Tom being squashed flat by a steam-roller, only to pop back to pursue Jerry as before. But old Brother Alban had a great point about the modern misuse as a cut-price kind of fortune-telling. Same with any good astrologer in a tabloid newspaper: make it as vague as possible so you can always claim it came true. We are firmly in climate prediction territory here.

Jan 7, 2014 at 11:31 AM | Registered CommenterRichard Drake

Apologies for the delay in posting this, as I've been sorting out some broadband problems (caused no doubt by climate change in some guise or other), but here's the transcript for the Radio 5 Live segment with Sir David King:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20140105_r5

Readers may find this excerpt interesting:

Caroline Barker: I mean, why do you think we're seeing weather this severe that we haven't seen before?

Sir David King: Well, I think the important thing to get across is the simple notion that storms and severe weather conditions that we might have expected to occur once in a hundred years, say, in the past, may now be happening more frequently, and the reason is, as predicted by scientists, that the climate is changing and as the climate changes, we can anticipate quite a radical change in weather conditions. I mean, back in 2001, I revamped the government's Foresight system, and the first piece of work I did, I convened a team of 110 national experts to specifically investigate the threat of increased flooding and coastline vulnerabilities that the British Isles are likely to face from global warming. Now in that, we made full use of the climate predictions of the British Met Office - and I just have to say that the Met Office is the acknowledged weather and climate service of the world, I mean, it is the best there is - and it was concluded, back in 2004, this 3-year intensive report, that sea-level rise, increased storm surges, increased intensity of rainfall would penetrate further inland, would impact on our towns and cities, and that British coastal defences would be subjected to higher water levels and more energetic wave attack.

Jan 8, 2014 at 8:13 AM | Unregistered CommenterAlex Cull

Further to my last comment, just to say I've changed the transcript to show that Sir David was interviewed by Sam Walker and not Caroline Barker - I've listened to audio clips of them both, now, and it sounds more like Sam.

Also, on the BBC 24-hour TV news channel, on the evening of 2nd January, Martine Croxall and guests were reviewing the papers, and included was a headline in the Express about extreme weather. This was a comment by Robert Fox, Defence Editor of the London Evening Standard:

We are now in the middle of the phenomenon of the weirding of the weather pattern, and nobody really can explain it.

Jan 8, 2014 at 3:06 PM | Unregistered CommenterAlex Cull

Yeah, I heard Fox saying that Alex. He was scornful about Paddy Ashdown's reflex reaction to go for world governance given any problem, though, so I let him off. But weirding? From someone who should know a bit of history? That's the real weirdity.

Jan 8, 2014 at 4:06 PM | Registered CommenterRichard Drake

Well this lie has clearly worked FFS

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/10559114/David-Cameron-very-much-suspects-climate-change-causing-abnormal-weather-such-as-floods.html

David Cameron has linked the widespread floods and bad weather affecting the UK to climate change, saying he “strongly suspects” the phenomenon is causing more “abnormal weather events”.
In comments that are likely to anger some Conservatives who are sceptical of climate change, the Prime Minister told MPs: “We are seeing more abnormal weather events. Colleagues across the house can argue about whether that is linked to climate change or not. I very much suspect that it is."

Jan 8, 2014 at 6:12 PM | Registered CommenterBreath of Fresh Air

Think of Cameron as a PR person still BoFA. He wants to keep the soft greens on board - those that buy the extreme events link but don't want to pay more for their energy. What's crucial is the last part. Will Cameron and Osborne continue to fight against the Green Taleban on all kinds of green subsidies and for UK shale freedom, against the crony-capitalists of Euroland? The record is far from perfect but I don't take this latest statement as backing out of the correct policy climbdowns, with Owen Paterson's prominence continuing to reassure. Still something to play for.

Jan 9, 2014 at 12:56 AM | Registered CommenterRichard Drake

It's possible it's a ploy to switch from mitigation policies to adaptation policies. You could build a lot of flood defences with those green taxes.

Jan 9, 2014 at 9:05 AM | Unregistered CommenterTheBigYinJames

TBYJ:

"You could build a lot of flood defences with those green taxes."

With the money we've put into research we could have designed a clean thorium reactor by now.

Jan 9, 2014 at 12:01 PM | Unregistered Commentergeronimo