Our regular reader(s) will no doubt recall the good old days when several times each month an opportunity would present itself to debunk some “skeptical” nonsense from one or more of the usual suspects?
That all changed when Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. He was of course much more amenable to lobbying from fossil fuel interests than Barack Obama, and everything went (comparatively!) quiet.
Now that The Don has sailed off into the proverbial sunset and Joe Biden is top dog all that has changed. A return to the (not so) good old days comes as no surprise, and the porky pies have started coming off the denialospheric production line once again.
There have already been a few contrarian ripples on the surface of the climate science seas, which we may well come to in due course. However a set of substantial waves are now visible on the horizon. The proximate cause is the forthcoming summit of the G7 nations, which as luck would have it is taking place just down the road from the Great White Con winter holiday residence in North Cornwall. Then in November the COP26 conference is being held in Glasgow.
In June, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will welcome fellow G7 leaders to one of the most beautiful parts of the UK: Carbis Bay in Cornwall.
Other parts of the region will also play a key role in the Summit, including neighbouring St Ives, Falmouth and Newquay airport.
With over 400 miles of coastline, Cornwall’s stunning landscape provides a perfect setting for world leaders to come together and discuss how to respond to global challenges like coronavirus and climate change.
Here’s one of my recent pictures of some of that coastline, including part of Cornwall’s industrial heritage and some large waves!
Climate change is top of the G7 agenda along with Covid-19, and you can rest assured that vested interests will not miss any opportunity to promote those interests over the next two months and beyond. By way of example, one of our long standing “usual suspects”, Judith Curry, “tweeted” the following message to her followers on April 17th:
Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7 million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago…despite Al Gore’s prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now
Seven years after former US Vice-President Al Gore’s warning, Arctic ice cap has expanded for second year in row.
In the first paragraph of his article Mr. Rose continued:
The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. ‘The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,’ he said. ‘It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.’
Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning on climate change.
But seven years after his warning, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession – with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between 43 and 63 per cent since 2012.
Would it surprise you to learn that when it comes to reporting Nobel Prize acceptance speeches Mr. Rose has as much difficulty separating fact from fiction as he does when reporting on the state of the sea ice in the Arctic? What do you suppose Mr. Gore actually said in his Nobel lecture in Oslo in December 2007? It’s not hard to find out. Here’s a picture of the former US Vice-President at the time:
Skip to 4:30 minutes into the video and you will discover that what Al actually said was:
Last September 21st, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented alarm that the North Polar ice cap is, in their words, “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.
For those who, like David Rose, apparently have difficulty in understanding English I suppose I now need to point out that the “falling off a cliff” phrase should be attributed to some unnamed scientists, not to Al Gore. You will no doubt have noted that Mr. Gore didn’t actually say the words put into his mouth by Mr. Rose, and that the sentiment that “it could happen in as little as seven years” is not in fact “Al Gore’s prediction” at all, and should instead be attributed to some unnamed “U.S. Navy researchers”.
For the hard of hearing amongst you:
Al Gore never “predicted” that the Arctic would be ICE-FREE by now!
Would it surprise you to discover that David Rose has misrepresented the “new study” that Al Gore referred to in 2007 as well, by some strange coincidence at around this time last year? I refer you to our article on that topic from September 15th 2013, and reiterate for the benefit of those who seem unable to understand either English or Mathematics that a “projection” is not the same thing as a “prediction”, and that Professor Wieslaw Maslowski’s statement that “if this trend persists the Arctic Ocean will become ice-free by around 2013” is not at all the same thing as David Rose’s (mis)interpretation that “The Arctic will be ice-free in summer by 2013”.
The obvious conclusion, or so it seems to me at least, is that Mr. Rose should stop pretending to be an investigative reporter and concentrate in future on his evident talent as a writer of speculative fiction.
[P.S. September 2nd 2014]
For some strange reason this post seems to have attracted a lot of interest over on Twitter. Here are the edited highlights!
After having a brush with the “Real Science” censor last month I’ve really gone and done it now. Steven Goddard’s blog has been badmouthing Al Gore recently. I’m afraid I couldn’t let that slight on Al’s predictive abilities go unchallenged. Steve evidently didn’t care for my suggestion that he “is fond of poetic license”, so my alter ego is “now spam” there too:
I’ve cut out much of the gratuitous abuse in the ensuing conversation, but you can peruse an archived version if you so desire. Note amongst other things that Al Gore never mentioned “16 foot thick ice in the Beaufort Sea”. Here are the expurgated highlights:
Them:
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Al Gore says that the 16 foot thick ice in the Beaufort Sea will all melt in the next few weeks.
“Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months will be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” Gore said in 2009.
There’s still plenty of time left for some of the models to be proved 75% correct!
Them:
“Some models suggest.” I love that – so very scientific. Some do, others don’t.
Us:
I realise Steve is fond of poetic license, but my point is that in the article Steve references Al Gore did not “predict an ice free Arctic in 2014″. He didn’t even “predict an ice free Arctic by 2016 at the latest”
Steve – My Gore quote from April 15, 2014 at 10:41 am is cut/pasted from the article you just linked to. Here’s another quote from the same article, presumably a journalist’s interpretation of Gore’s words:
“Today at the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, Al Gore said there is new computer modeling that suggests the Arctic Ocean may be nearly ice-free in the summertime as early as 2014.”
Them:
“Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months will be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” Gore said.
Attack Gore for being an idiot. Not me for reporting on it.
Us:
Unpublished comment on the “Real Science” blog from Wednesday April 16th at 12:55 UTC
Them:
They have so far neglected to publish the above comment.
Us:
We’ll keep you posted!
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