Posts Tagged ‘climate deniers’

Don’t Fly Ryan Air

Monday, September 13th, 2010

With a man this ignorant [Michael O'Leary] heading up an airline I wouldn’t feel safe in his aircraft.

In an interview with The Independent littered with expletives, the chief executive of Europe’s largest airline branded the scientific consensus that man-made pollution is heating up the planet with potentially grave consequences for the future of humanity as “horseshit”.

He agreed the climate was changing but denied it was caused by man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, such as those from his planes. “Nobody can argue that there isn’t climate change. The climate’s been changing since time immemorial,” he said.

“Do I believe there is global warming? No, I believe it’s all a load of bullshit. But it’s amazing the way the whole fucking eco-warriors and the media have changed. It used to be global warming, but now, when global temperatures haven’t risen in the past 12 years, they say ‘climate change’.”

“Well, hang on, we’ve had an ice age. We’ve also had a couple of very hot spells during the Middle Ages, so nobody can deny climate change. But there’s absolutely no link between man-made carbon, which contributes less than 2pc of total carbon emissions [and climate change].”

He suggested scientists had invented and perpetuated the theory in order to gain research grants. “Scientists argue there is global warming because they wouldn’t get half of the funding”

* * *

Mrs. O’ Leary’s cow has been unfairly blamed as the cause of the great Chicago Fire but if Mr. O ‘Leary’s idiocy spreads it will surely be the cause of a much greater catastrophe.

For more, see Climate Progress, including this comment:

Tens of thousands of walruses have come ashore in northwest Alaska because the sea ice they normally rest on has melted.

Federal scientists say this massive move to shore by walruses is unusual in the United States. But it has happened at least twice before, in 2007 and 2009. In those years Arctic sea ice also was at or near record low levels.

The walruses “stretch out for one mile or more. This is just packed shoulder-to-shoulder,” U.S. Geological Survey biologist Anthony Fischbach said in a telephone interview from Alaska. He estimated their number at tens of thousands.

Climate: Hot and Getting Hotter

Friday, December 18th, 2009

From Climate Progress

Fast on the heels of the hottest June to October on record, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies reports that last month was the hottest November on record, which should be no surprise to CP readers — see my November 24th post:

If November’s anomaly is the same as the anomaly for the last two months, then November will tie for the hottest November in the temperature record.

In fact, last month’s anomaly slightly exceeded that of September and October, which isn’t a big surprise since, as NOAA reported recently, “El Niño strengthened from October to November 2009.”

It seems increasingly likely that 2009 will be the second hottest on record in NASA’s dataset, which is superior to the Met Office/Hadley/CRU dataset (see “Why are Hadley and CRU withholding vital climate data from the public?” and Hansen essay below).  The figure above, from GISS (here), which updates the temperature of 2009 through November shows 2009 just edging out 2007.   As my 11/24 post also noted:

This year is currently on track to be the 5th warmest year on record, but, in fact, if the monthly temperature anomaly (compared to the 1951 to 1980 average) stays near where it has been for the last two months, then 2009 will surpass 2007 as the second hottest year on record.

Given how warm November was, December merely needs to be of average warmth (for this decade) for 2009 to be the second warmest in the temperature record.

Unlike NOAA, which announced its November global analysis with a major “State of the Climate” monthly update, NASA just quietly updates its data set (here).  NASA will doubtless wait until January to make its big announcement on where 2009 fits in the historical record.  NOAA uses a somewhat different temperature dataset, so, for it, November was only the fourth warmest on record.

Hansen just posted on his website, The Temperature of Science — a must-read piece about the purloined emails and his experience with temperature data…

The Hansen piece, referred to, is here. [pdf]