When I became Reuters global Science and Technology Correspondent in the mid-1990s, the global warming story was top of my agenda. Already by then the BBC was scaring us saying we would all die unless humankind mended its selfish ways. Carbon dioxide (CO2) was the culprit and had to be tamed, then eliminated. I had no reason to think this wasn’t established fact. I was wrong.
My Reuters credentials meant that I had easy access to the world’s finest climate scientists. To my amazement, none of these would say categorically that the link between CO2 and global warming, now known as climate change, was a proven scientific fact. Some said human production of CO2 was a probable cause, others that it might make some contribution; some said CO2 had no role at all. Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years as the ice age retreated, but most weren’t really sure why. The sun’s radiation, which changes over time, was a favoured culprit.
My reporting reflected the wide range of views, with Reuters typical “on the one hand this, on the other, that” style. But even then, the mainstream media seem to have run out of the energy required, and often lazily went along with the BBC’s faulty, opinionated thesis. It was too much trouble to make the point that the BBC’s conclusion was challenged by many impressive scientists.
Fast forward 20 years and firm proof CO2 was warming the climate still hasn’t been established, but politics has taken over.
“Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years as the ice age retreated, but most weren’t really sure why.”
Javier Vinos is pretty sure he knows what causes “climate change.” He explains in his book
“Climate of the Past, Present and Future.”
https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Past-Present-Future-scientific-ebook/dp/B0BCF5BLQ5/ref=sr_1_1?crid=24NWKXM9TMAGH&keywords=climate+of+the+past%2C+present+and+future+by+javier+vinos&qid=1677254035&sprefix=vinos+clima%2Caps%2C120&sr=8-1
To be more accurate, the climate rapidly warmed to a high point at the Holocene optimum (meaning warmth) thousands of years ago and has been on a fluctuating but long term cooling trend ever since. Judging by this trend, we will descend into another ice age before ever reaching the warmth of the Holocene optimum.
Totally agree, Robert A.
Over the past two thousand years there has been a Roman Warming period, the Dark Ages (cooler), then the Medieval Warming period, then the Little Ice Age and now the present warming period. Each stage lasted around 500 years.
Since 1850 we have warmed and cooled with each period lasting around 30 years. The period from late 70s until 2005 was warming until the cooler/plateauing started. The climate alarmists got over this problem by beginning to adjust the temps from 2010 so goodness knows what the truth is now. Here’s an example.
Check the light yellow temp data (unadjusted) in the background to the homogenised data for Ottawa.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show_v4.cgi?id=USC00116526&ds=14&dt=1
And this was the original raw data before they began the Great Adjustment around 2010.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=425724560010&dt=1&ds=1
Nice try! Lat/Long is such a useful system of measurement.
The first reference is to Ottawa, KANSAS, while the second is to Ottawa, ILLINOIS!
Other than that … good points! 😉
WHOOPS. Thanks, b_C. Not being NA, I didn’t know there were so many Ottawas.
So here’s an example with which I’m familiar.
Darwin, Australia. Check the adjustments made especially before 1960.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show_v4.cgi?id=ASN00014015&ds=14&dt=1
Here’s the original data prior to adjustments.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=501941200004&dt=1&ds=1
Anyway, we can definitely call it ‘man-made’ warming.
“It was too much trouble to make the point that the BBC’s conclusion was challenged by many impressive scientists.”
Hence, you were part of the problem we arrive at today, not part of the solution. As part of your penance, you may commit ritual seppuku w/ a dull butter knife. At that point, apology accepted. Until then, FOAD.
In about 20 years he’ll also let us know that masks, vaccines and lockdowns didnt work
Yeppers. And that it was too much trouble to address Fauci’s BS.
Warming they say. Look at the snow and cold across the USA and tell me it’s warming? Oregon, Calif, Alaska have seen record levels of snow.
Snow in Los Angeles and Las Vegas? That’s weather. Climate is completely different!
/sarcasm
HAHAHA.. Oregon got this much snow back in the 1940’s OOPS…
I think the major importance of that piece is not in the offering above, but the details down in the bows. CCN (Covering Climate Now) is a partisan grouping of zealots who serve as advisors on over 350 media outlets and publications. Their stringent (don’t give the deniers any press space to state their case) is a hallmark of how they “advise.” It is why the media seems so united in their efforts to promote the “humans are killing all of us” schtick. Essentially, CCN is a primary reason their is no debate on the issue and why the public is so misinformed.
Winton’s own ex-employer Reuters was a primary and one of the earliest media outlets to sign on with CCN. It is rather nice insight as to how media outlets all seem to be on the same left of the aisle page. Take any major issue and you will find a Progressive “thinktank” advising on the substance of the issue. Add to that the biggest “lobbyist/advisor” of them all to the press, the Democrat Nationalist Party (DNC) and you will get an idea of how it all works behind the curtain.
Progressives, and their unthinking followers, cite global warming the same way a medieval cleric would invoke their Christian God, or a modern Imam praises Allah. There’s always the flavor of religion in any widely held belief, even supposedly secular ones.
geoih
BINGO!
He was Step 1″
Step 1: fire all the old guys who might know basic math
Step 3: hire recent liberal arts grads who last took (not even passed) a math class in 10th grade
Step 7: give them titles such as “senior science writer” who report to a 30 year old “senior science editor”
Step 7: have them re-type press releases from Big Green for clickbait
Step 44: print a small “editor’s note” on page 521
Repeat as needed until we reach some sort of Green 1984.
“It was too much trouble to make the point that the BBC’s ( or WHO, CDC, PHAC, CBC, CNN) conclusion (insert re: Covid here) was challenged by many impressive scientists.”
It’s that simple.
And this is something you will never see on CBC.
The 26er
Blackrock, Vanguard, JP Morgan, they control the advertising $$$$$$$!
I know a guy, lets call him Noah Guy, who is quite effective at shutting down the hysterical Gobal Warmists who now often hide under the guise of ‘climate change’. He waits for the frenzied discussion to come to low boil and then commands the floor declaring:
“I know what’s causing the weather to get hotter! I call it the ‘Generalized Theory of Glowball Warming’.
At this point most of the warmists are listening and using grand gestures and drama he explains the theory.
“The Generalized Theory of Glowball Warming goes like this: In the morning I get up and shortly thereafter there is a Glowball that rises in the east or south east and the temperature is cold at first but quickly as the Glowball appears over the horizon the earth gets warmer and then … hold on I know this will blow your mind, and then … the Glowball goes higher moving into the south and then west and the earth gets even warmer and in the late afternoon and evening the Glowball still burning delivers the highest temperatures of all. And that folks is my Generalised Theory of Glowball Warming. It’s astounding and atmospheric I know but it warms me just basking in it’s glow!”
Noah Guys Generalized Theory of Glowball Warming
Out of the mouth of the court jester often comes a stinging rebuke of truth.
Doesn’t matter. It is a religion now.
It’s a doomsday cult and the children (anyone under 40) were all raised in it.
This. David Koresh would be impressed.
It was always about politics.
OK
Politics and religion, are one and the same!
Hey! Look, Daniel Ream! More bullshit from the BBC. Terminated Jeremy Clarkson and his EVIL resistance to global warming hysteria. He even BLEW UP a Prius! …. Ohhhhhhhhhh mammmmmmaaaaaa … but the BBC fired him for … “putting his hands on a BBC Producer” … right? He wasn’t TERMINATED for denying the narrative. Ohhhhhhhh noooooooo.
Politics has entered. That is a true statement and the reason being is the politicians are trying desperately to justify their existence while the bureaucrats are trying to increase their power. A perfect solution to both problems. Sadly science the hobby whore of the left ‘serves’ her purpose.
What we actually have had is 65 Million years of cooling -> https://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the-big-picture-65-million-years-of-temperature-swings/
For basically 90% of the last million years in North America, we have had glacial ice sheets down over most of Canada and the northern US. The interglacial warm periods last about 11,000 years+-. There is no definitive explanation of *why* this happens, but solar cycles +- obliquity +- precession +- eccentricity is likely the answer (Milankovic cycles).
The last interglacial in eastern Canada retreated very rapidly when the ice dam created by a lobe of the Laurentian Ice Sheet was breached near Covey Hill Quebec. (Covey Hill is just north of the Canada/US border about 10 miles north and west of Clinton, NY which is north of Plattsburgh, on Lake Champlain. Lake Iroquois (precursor to Lake Ontario) rapidly dropped almost 400′ in height. The massive flood of icy fresh water is believed to have triggered the Younger-Dryas cold period.
Gauging from the regular length of the previous 9 interglacials, we are presently due for another ICE AGE.
And emissions from cars have nothing to do with it.
So are you telling me. AOC is wrong?
Nice to see a f**king journalist finally admit what I was publishing in peer reviewed scientific papers 12 years ago – that there is “no empirical evidence to substantiate the hypothesis that carbon dioxide of human origin is even a detectable driver, much less the primary driver, of global average atmospheric temperature.”
4300 days late and several trillion wasted dollars short, mate.
Trodwell ..
Winton truly is an ignorant journalist who seriously believes CO2 is a toxin irrespective of the fact it is essential for all plant life and indirectly human life. The only reason the SOB is confessing is to preserve his unwarranted credentials and future pay cheque.
“… Carbon dioxide (CO2) was the culprit and had to be tamed, then eliminated. I had no reason to think this wasn’t established fact. I was wrong. …”
The guy is a stupid jerk … end of story.
Trodwell? Where have you been? Maybe I’ve missed them but haven’t seen a comment from you in years. It was like you just disappeared one day. Always loved your comments. Glad to see you back.
Then politics took over? No, my dear useful idiot, politics was always the driver of the Climate Crusade.
The inspiration was Ronald Reagan’s speech where he said that it will take an outside existential threat to unite humanity in a single cause. Initially, the communists and socialists were just using it as a wedge issue to cause chaos in western society. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and without a cold war to get rich of off the corporate class and their bought and paid for politicians needed a new source of public revenue to consume. Enter the Goreacle. It hasn’t looked back since.
For too long, Neil was earning a living as part of the problem.
Next time he writes about the truth, he should leave it in a suicide note.
Seem too harsh?
Look around.
They want us cowed and, sooner than later, dead.
Obama opened the global warming door with promises of green monopolies.. Then Trump won and put academia and leftist business interests into a frenzy.. Ram it through overdrive..
Bogus elections and bogus leaders and bogus pandemics and bogus wars.. If its not gay its black and if you don’t like it your a transphobe racist.. Everything and the kitchen sink.. Rammed through..
I have very low expectations that the far left shopping spree is going to end well.. Ram it through is never the answer..
Winton?
I misread it as Winston Smith.
Yup,give this “Ace Reporter” another hundred years and he might discover written history.
Another Cockatoo going “Squawk”.
The future of planet earth. It will someday be a cold, dead , dry rock.