“Global warming” is all a left wing plot? That’s the view of some people. It would be more persuasive if they were to assert it was some sort of grand mistake, a miscalculation that got out of hand and couldn’t be dialed back simply because there was a possibility it might be correct.

I read the commentary at the right carefully and there is one important element notably missing: facts. It is mainly a series of assertions followed by opinions and more assertions. The writer says that the original computer program that was used as the basis to project global warming was incorrect, but he doesn’t say how and where it was wrong. He doesn’t say whether the problems he perceives with the program have been corrected.

One reason that global warming is such a nice, big fat target for argument is that we don’t have enough data. The detailed records of weather and climate have been kept for less than 200 years and, in some cases, only go back about a hundred. The earth works on a different scale: 10,000 years is but a moment in world time. Without detailed data for the last   100,000 years or so, we are, to an extent, stabbing in the dark. Data can be drawn from ancient ice, the surface of the earth and other indicators, but those results are subject to interpretation, which means everything can be disputed.

At times, this whole thing comes down to a matter of what you want to believe, not what can be projected or even demonstrated. If you want to believe it is a hoax, then you read people who “back-up” your views. If you believe otherwise, your reading reflects that desire, too. Yet, the idea that the “left” around the world engages in this kind of far ranging plot to get its way borders on freaky paranoia.  It is equally interesting that the right has taken climate change denial as a reason to exist. In both cases, left or right, none of us will be around long enough to see the results or know who was right.

I don’t find non-scientists’ trying to counter scientific argument worthwhile, unless they are willing to get down in the details and show the supposed errors. Meanwhile, the TerryReport will fact check some of the quotes and other claims in the Delingpole commentary in the coming days and post the results. Stay tuned.

Doug Terry, 2.17.14

Below is an anti-climate change screed from the London Daily Telegraph by James Delingpole, who is joining the “Breitbart News Network” as it opens a London presence. The Breitbart websites represent a new type of “journalism”, not merely opinion driven, but sites with an open political objective, in this case electing “conservative” Republicans and preventing the growth of Democratic strength in places like Texas.

On Friday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivers its latest verdict on the state of man-made global warming. Though the details are a secret, one thing is clear: the version of events you will see and hear in much of the media, especially from partis pris organisations like the BBC, will be the opposite of what the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report actually says.

Already we have had a taste of the nonsense to come: a pre-announcement to the effect that “climate scientists” are now “95 per cent certain”€� that humans are to blame for climate change; an evidence-free declaration by the economist who wrote the discredited Stern Report that the computer models cited by the IPCC “substantially underestimate”€� the scale of the problem; a statement by the panel’s chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, that “the scientific evidence of climate change has strengthened year after year”€�.

As an exercise in bravura spin, these claims are up there with Churchill’s attempts to reinvent the British Expeditionary Force’s humiliating retreat from Dunkirk as a victory. In truth, though, the new report offers scant consolation to those many alarmists whose careers depend on talking up the threat. It says not that they are winning the war to persuade the world of the case for catastrophic anthropogenic climate change, but that the battle is all but lost.

At the heart of the problem lie the computer models which, for 25 years, have formed the basis for the IPCC’s scaremongering: they predicted runaway global warming, when the real rise in temperatures has been much more modest. So modest, indeed, that it has fallen outside the lowest parameters of the IPCC’s prediction range. The computer models, in short, are bunk.

To a few distinguished scientists, this will hardly come as news. For years they have insisted that sensitivity, the degree to which the climate responds to increases in atmospheric CO‚   is far lower than the computer models imagined. In the past, their voices have been suppressed by the bluster and skulduggery we saw exposed in the Climategate emails. From grant-hungry science institutions and environmentalist pressure groups to carbon  traders, EU commissars, and big businesses with their snouts in the subsidies trough, many vested interests have much to lose should the global warming gravy train be derailed.

This is why the latest Assessment Report is proving such a headache to the IPCC. It’s the first in its history to admit what its critics have said for years: global warming did “pause” unexpectedly in 1998 and shows no sign of resuming. And, other than an ad hoc new theory about the missing heat having been absorbed by the deep ocean, it cannot come up with a convincing explanation why. Coming from a sceptical blog none of this would be surprising. But from the IPCC, it’s dynamite: the equivalent of the Soviet politburo announcing that command economies may not after all be the most efficient way of allocating resources.

Which leaves the IPCC in a dilemma: does it fess up and effectively put itself out of business? Or does it brazen it out for a few more years, in the hope that a compliant media and an eco-brainwashed populace will be too stupid to notice? So far, it looks as if it prefers the second option – a high-risk strategy. Gone are the days when all anybody read of its Assessment Reports were the sexed-up “Summary for Policymakers”. Today, thanks to the internet, sceptical inquirers such as Donna Laframboise (who revealed that some 40 per cent of the IPCC’s papers came not from peer-reviewed journals but from Greenpeace and WWF propaganda) will be going through every chapter with a fine toothcomb.

Al Gore’s “consensus” is about to be holed below the water-line, and those still aboard the SS Global Warming are adjusting their positions**. Some, such as scientist Judith Curry of Georgia Tech, have abandoned ship. She describes the IPCC’s stance as “incomprehensible”. Others, such as the EU’s Climate Commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, steam on oblivious. Interviewed last week by the Telegraph’s Bruno Waterfield, she said: “Let’s say that science, some decades from now, said: 'We were wrong, it was not about climate, would it not in any case have been good to do many of the things you have to do in order to combat climate change? If she means needlessly driving up energy prices, carpeting the countryside with wind turbines and terrifying children about a problem that turns out to have been imaginary, then most of us would probably answer “No.”

Read more by James Delingpole on Telegraph Blogs

**Both right and left have the same problem in regard to climate change: what happens if one side is proven wrong beyond any shadow of doubt? Since the argument is based on predictions of the future, both sides are relatively safe from such an event, but if it were to happen, what would the right do? Most likely, say nothing and move onto the next issue, pronto. This entire commentary is a bit of a neat trick, an attempt to refute the next report on climate change before it comes out. Don’t worry if you read something unpleasant, we’ve got your back (and your front) seems to be the promise of this commentary.

In the New York Times:

MEDIA

Breitbart News Network Plans Global Expansion

The online news organization said it was adding at least a dozen staff members as it opens operations based in Texas and London. It also plans several regional sites.

TerryReport note:

It is a mystery to me why the Times believed that the expansion of this right wing media/political action group was worthy of news coverage. I have seen no stories in the Times detailing the overall growth of online news sources. Further, this group, should likely be covered as a political action story rather than one of media, since they readily admit they are actively working for Republicans and they are planning their expansion around certain right wing targets. The story belongs in political coverage more than one on news media.