Professor Michael Oppenheimer on the "high level of certainty" in the new IPCC assessment

Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, and a leading member of the IPCC, boasts about the level of certainty in the new climate report in a PBS interview:

There's a big central focus on this issue on many facts, that the Earth is warming, that the warming will continue, that the dangerous warming is coming close, and that if we don't do something about emissions, we will be there pretty soon.
All of that is now known with a -- there's a consensus about all of that. Scientists are very careful. Scientists tend to be skeptical, of course, and here we have thousands of them getting together and being able to agree on this high level of certainty.
There is no environmental problem that is characterized by that level of certainty.

Somewhat later in the interview Oppenheimer addresses the issue of the lack of global warming during the last 15 years (which he prefers to call a "slowdown"):

And that is believed to be because the climate is quite variable. If you look at the long-term record, there are bumps upwards, there are bumps downwards, and there are plateaus like this one. After every bump downward or every plateau, the climate change then accelerates again. Now, we can't be sure that is going to happen, but it's a good bet.

The best possible -- the best -- the leading explanation of this is that heat tends to hide in the ocean sometimes. But when heat hides in the ocean, it later comes out and reappears in the atmosphere, and then warming resumes faster than before. We don't know this for certain. We will find out over the next few years.

(bolding by NNoN)

Oppenheimer's reply pretty well summarizes the "high level of certainty" that characterizes the science behind the new IPCC report.

I, for my part, prefer this "summary" of the new IPCC report:

"All the computer models the IPCC has used in its 25 years have predicted global warming much greater than has been observed.

"This represents a problem because what it means is all these insistent claims they have been making that we need to take urgent measures now to deal with this unprecedented problem seem to be based on junk science.

"The IPCC stands or falls on its computer models. There is no other evidence out there that global warming is any kind of problem. That it exists only in the imagination of the people who programme those computer models and the scientists who contribute to the theory that anthropogenic CO2 is a problem

"What we see in this report is that the models aren't working, which suggests the entirety of AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) theory is flawed."
 

The sad truth:"Russia, not America, is now the dominant power at the Security Council for the first time in the history of the UN"

The sad truth - Dictator Vladimir Putin's mafia state is now the dominant power in the UN Security Council:

The real story from this week's UN General Assembly is that Russia, not America, is now  the dominant power at the Security Council for the first time in the history of the UN.
This dramatic shift in the power balance at the UN seems to have been completely overlooked by many of those covering the meeting, who are more interested in wittering on about the proposed Security Council resolution on disarming Syria's chemical weapons stockpile (it won't work) or Iran's utterly transparent charm offensive (they are desperate to get the sanctions lifted) towards some of the world's more gullible world leaders.
But the key to this disturbing realignment in the global power structure is clearly visible in the draft of the Security Council resolution on Syria, which entirely reflects Russia's interests at the expense of those of the Western powers. America, Britain and France, the three Western members of the five permanent members of the Council, wanted the option to take punitive action against the Assad regime if, as most observers expect, Damascus does not fully comply with the U.N.'s requirements. (Nor has anyone considered how U.N. inspectors can be expected to examine and neutralise stockpiles of chemical weapons in the midst of a civil war.)
But Russia is determined to prevent any form of military intervention in Syria, and to that end insisted that the resolution be watered down to the effect that, if Assad fails to comply, then the issue will be referred back to the U.N. where, as we know from history, it will be subsumed by the organisation's bureaucratic complacency.
In short, Russia has won the diplomatic battle, and the Western powers, after all their threats to bomb Assad into submission, have been made to look weak and impotent.

Read the entire article here

This is what you get when you have a weak and incompetent "leader" of the Free World.

Even warmist George Monbiot admits that the scaremongering is failing: The IPCC report is "greeted with indifference and guff"

Great news: The IPCC scaremongering is failing:

GeorgeMonbiot ‏@GeorgeMonbiot 1h

It's one of those days when I feel I got off on the wrong planet. Terrifying report on climate breakdown greeted with indifference and guff.

 

The IPCC warmists think that they can get away with their hoax

The IPCC warmists made it easy for themselves:

One of the most controversial subjects in the report was how to deal with a purported slowdown in warming in the past 15 years. Climate skeptics say this “hiatus” casts doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change. --

In the end, the IPCC made only a brief mention of the issue in the summary for policymakers, stressing that short-term records are sensitive to natural variability and don’t in general reflect long-term trends.

This is supposed to be cutting edge science? They must be joking!

IPCC cannot explain why global warming has stopped

No matter how much the IPCC and the alarmist media try to spin the new Assessment Report, they cannot produce a convincing explanation for why global warming has stopped.

James Delingpole's column is - as always - worth reading:

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 CO₂ – 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.--

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 the entire article here

Die Welt on the real result of the German election: The "social democratization" of the Bundestag

Last Sunday's German election was a victory for Angela Merkel's (formally) conservative CDU/CSU. However, Dorothea Siems, writing in the conservative German Daily Die Welt discloses the real result of the election:  The "social democratization" of the German Bundestag.  The fact that the conservative business friendly wing has virtually disappeared from the CDU means, according to Die Welt, that there will be three social democratic parties and a socialist party in the German parliament.

Die Welt is of course on the spot. Angela Merkel is, and has never been, a real conservative. She and finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble will be more than happy to include the second largest social democratic party, the SDP, in the next cabinet, although it will all be preceded by a performance of political theatre in order to give the impression of difficult negotiations. (Of course there is a certain element of competition between the leaders of the two "social democratic" parties)

PS
There are still a number of  real conservatives in the Bavarian sister party CSU, but their influence on the policies pursued by Merkel's "social democrats" will be minimal.

Daily express columnist Leo McKinstry: The euro "is demolishing the very foundations of economies"

Daily Express columnist Leo McKinstry has written an excellent piece on why the euro is doomed to fail:

IT was meant to be the engine of growth, discipline and stability across Europe.
But the single currency has fast become a wrecking ball that is demolishing the very foundations of economies. As the product of a fanatical political ideology it has piled up colossal debts, fuelled inflation, reduced living standards and lengthened dole queues.
When the single currency was first established in 1999 the leaders of Europe promised that it would usher in a new era of prosperity.
The Eurosceptics, who predicted that it would cause disaster, were treated as nothing more than a bunch of deluded extremists, cranks and xenophobes.
But the critics turned out to be absolutely right. The EU zealots are the ones gripped by self-delusion and extremism.
Even now as the eurozone implodes the oligarchs of the EU and their cheerleaders still cling on to their dream of European integration. They show no shame for the misery they have inflicted on us, no willingness to recognise their dangerous dogma is absurd. They are like members of a cult.

Read the entire column here

Nicholas Stern, Lord of Climate Alarmism is again attacking "sceptics"

Nicholas Herbert Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford

Nicholas Stern, the Lord of Climate Alarmism has again spoken:

Lord Stern says governments should treat as 'just noise' what sceptics say on climate change

"It is astonishing, irrational and unscientific to suggest the risks are small. How can they say they know the risks are small? The clear conclusion from 200 years of climate science and observations show a strong association between carbon dioxide rises and global surface temperature.
He added: "The science is unequivocal and shows there is serious danger. What is coming from [sceptics] is just noise, and should be treated as noise."
He said some sceptics were in the pay of hostile industries, with a vested interest in contradicting the science, and were being "deliberately naive" in claiming the world could wait decades to deal with rising emissions.
"It (the sceptic response) looks very well-organised," he said. "They are deliberately distorting the way we understand risk."

The only things that is "astonishing" is that there still are people who listen to this self-conceited poseur, whose worthless "study" has been trashed by a e.g. this report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation:

The new study shows the Stern Review to depend critically on “selective choice of facts, unusual economic assumptions and a propagandist narrative – which would never have passed peer review”.
Describing it as “policy based evidence”, Peter Lilley argues the government can no longer rely on it to justify expenditure of many billions of pounds and calls for a return return instead to “evidence based policies”.
Stern’s central conclusion that “If we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year now and forever” whereas “the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of GDP each year” is found to be entirely fallacious.

Putin's mafia state threatens Ukraine

Russia has warned Ukraine that if the country goes ahead with a planned agreement on free trade with the EU, it faces inevitable financial catastrophe and possibly the collapse of the state.

This is Vladimir Putin's mafia state in action:

The Kremlin aide added that the political and social cost of EU integration could also be high, and allowed for the possibility of separatist movements springing up in the Russian-speaking east and south of Ukraine. He suggested that if Ukraine signed the agreement, Russia would consider the bilateral treaty that delineates the countries' borders to be void.
"We don't want to use any kind of blackmail. This is a question for the Ukrainian people," said Glazyev. "But legally, signing this agreement about association with EU, the Ukrainian government violates the treaty on strategic partnership and friendship with Russia." When this happened, he said, Russia could no longer guarantee Ukraine's status as a state and could possibly intervene if pro-Russian regions of the country appealed directly to Moscow.
"Signing this treaty will lead to political and social unrest," said the Kremlin aide. "The living standard will decline dramatically … there will be chaos."

New warmist research: Record Antarctic sea ice due to winds (probably caused by global warming)

Isn't it amazing how scientists (who believe in global warming) always find a way to explain away facts which do not fit their computer models!

The latest numbers suggest the Antarctic sea ice may be heading toward a record high this year.
While changes in weather may play a big role in short-term changes in sea ice seen in the past couple of months, changes in winds have apparently led to the more general upward sea ice trend during the past few decades, according to University of Washington research. A new modeling study to be published in the Journal of Climate shows that stronger polar winds lead to an increase in Antarctic sea ice, even in a warming climate.

“The overwhelming evidence is that the Southern Ocean is warming,” said author Jinlun Zhang, an oceanographer at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. “Why would sea ice be increasing? Although the rate of increase is small, it is a puzzle to scientists.”

His new study shows that stronger westerly winds swirling around the South Pole can explain 80 percent of the increase in Antarctic sea ice volume in the past three decades.

And guess what is causing the stronger winds? Of course it must be global warming!:

Some scientists have theorized that it could be related to global warming ..

For a true believer of human induced global warming, like this Jinlun Zhang, it is still clear that the ice will finally melt in spite of the chilling winds (caused by global warming):

Eventually, Zhang anticipates that if warmer temperatures come to dominate they will resolve the apparent contradiction.
“If the warming continues, at some point the trend will reverse,” Zhang said.