The climate denial machine has gotten desperate. Among the many signs is that the British newspaper Sunday Telegraph still publishes the work of Christopher Booker. And Booker is still making arguments like this one (referring to the U.K. met office, scroll down to find it):
Only gradually since 2007, when none of them predicted a temporary fall in global temperatures of 0.7 degrees, equal to their entire net rise in the 20th century, have they been prepared to concede that CO2 was not the real story.
First of all, CO2 is the real story.
More to the point, Booker’s narrative about a “fall in global temperatures of 0.7 degrees” is such a blatant case of misleading cherry-picking, even Dr. John Christy (whom I consider another denier) couldn’t swallow it. He wrote quite a rebuttal of the notion that it was meaningful on none other than the WUWT blog.
Which is doubly ironic, because it’s likely Booker got his “fall in global temperatures” from another desperate denier, Anthony Watts of WUWT.
Let me put the “fall in global temperatures” in some context. Here’s the global average temperature, month-by-month, according to NASA data:
Here’s what Chrisopher Booker is talking about (blue circled dots):
Here’s a close-up of what Booker tells you about:
You have to be desperate to try making that the story.
Actual climate scientists already know that temperature shows fluctuations, up and down and all around, but that over the long haul those fluctuations don’t go anywhere. What’s important is the trend, the change that persists and is a harbinger of things to come. That’s why they tell you about it, sometimes like this (red line):
I put it to you thus: who should we be listening to, the actual climate scientists, or Christopher Booker?
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Open Mind 
“who should we be listening to, the actual climate scientists, or Christopher Booker?”
Looks like the answer is clearly included in the question!
I’m not sure denial is a serious scientific effort – rather it is a form of social control. . After all, banks, insurance and military sectors understand global warming. And their attention is now continuous. It seems denial is all a campaign to inflict ignorance on the greater populace. Those who accept denial will continue to be plundered. The better informed are greatly advantaged. Denial is more of deliberate infliction of ignorance. It is brandishing a weapon to mug the innocent and ignorant.
“I’m not sure denial is a serious scientific effort …”
Ya think?
Yes. And it has been a total succes.
Now deniers serve to deflect attention from the real climate revisionist policies popping up in govt after govt these days.
Recently a poll showed 77% of Australians in favor of climate mitigation efforts by government. It is a farce. Those same Australians chose the coal shills in govt for the second time.
Today’s attention to clownesk climate revisionists e.g. Watts automatically implies the go ahead for Turnbull et al, May et all, et cetera.
Of course climate change was no issue in any presidential debate and hardly even in Hillary’s campaign. That is the true measure of climate change deniers’ succes. And so is the Keeling curve.
The fact that banks and insurances companies have accepted climate change actually adds a new kind of deniers into the mix: the political ones who want to distance themselves from “the mainstream” – no matter how.
In Germany, where official politics have accepted climate change and its causes for some time, denial has always been common on the political right fringes. It’s either considered as a scheme to get rich by scientists or as part of a vast conspiracy by the usual suspects.
This year, the leading right-wing party even put “no warming since 18 years” and an absurd mischaracterization of the IPCC into their public agenda.
Of course they don’t talk about it in primetime television. It is just there to pick up voters from the “alternative science” crowd and, most importantly, to distance themselves from the “mainstream” and the “lying media”.
So, the more man-made climate change is confirmed and accepted, the more they will oppose it. Not because they care about it, but because it serves their anti-mainstream agenda. (Up to a breaking point, when it will cause a net loss of voters, I guess.)
each night he pass is the proof denier needs ! :)
Has anyone offered him cream with his freshly-picked cherries?
Christopher Booker in his Daily Telegraph article also misrepresents what the UK MET Office stated in its seasonal forecasts.
Booker stated,
” the seasonal and medium-term forecasts […] turned out to be 180 degrees wrong: such as that “barbecue summer” of 2009 when it hardly stopped raining; that “warmer than average” winter of 2010 when December was the coldest on record; or that “drier than average” winter of 2013 …”
But what the MET Office actually stated was as follows:
Summer 2009:
The UK is “odds on for a barbecue summer” [ie odds of greater than 50%]
see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8026668.stm
Winter 2010:
“the Met Office forecast in autumn 2010 that there was a 40% chance of a cold start to the winter, with a 30% chance of a mild start, and a 30% chance of an average start.
The summary of the advice to government said: “There is an increased risk for a cold and wintry start to the winter season.”
The probability of cold increased to 45% as November started.
And the heavens indeed despatched the UK a brutal blast of cold, plunging Wales into its lowest-ever recorded November temperature of −17.3C (0.9F) in Llysdinam.”
see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19584302
Winter 2013:
“The Met Office planner said: “There is a preference for below-average precipitation during December. For the December-January-February period as a whole there is a slight signal for below-average precipitation.
“The probability that UK precipitation for December-January-February will fall into the driest of our five categories is around 25 per cent and the probability that it will fall into the wettest category is around 15 per cent.”
see: http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/461082/Winter-will-be-drier-than-normal-Met-Office-claimed-but-the-Express-knew-truth
Booker has consistently failed to acknowledge (or understand) that ALL of the forecasts to which he endlessly refers were PROBABILISTIC. No doubt if he went down to the bookies and put money on a horse odds-on to win, which then failed to do so, he would be writing a column in the Telegraph complaining that he was sure he was going to win and that the race must have been rigged … (or would that be Trump?).
My gripe against the UK MET Office is that its website is so labyrinthine and obscure that it is well nigh impossible to find past forecasts therein, and I have to resort to second-hand reports of its statements, as evident above.
I suppose that Booker having seen that three tosses of a fair coin came up heads, that he had discovered that statistician’s had been wrong about their 50/50 theory of coin tosses.
Booker also completely messed up when he wrote:
“Only now is their new computer programmed to allow for the key part played in shaping weather by shifts in ocean currents, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation.”
The NAO is an ATMOSPHERIC phenomenon, not directly related to ocean currents.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/teledoc/nao.shtml
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_oscillation
Looks like the fact checkers at the Tory-graph aren’t doing their job. Oh wait, maybe allowing this sort of disinformation to slide thru IS in their job description…
> Dr. John Christy (whom I consider another denier) couldn’t swallow it. He wrote quite a rebuttal of the notion that it was meaningful on none other than the WUWT blog.
I don’t think that’s correct. Christy’s article appeared on ICECAP. “NOTE: This was posted on ICECAP today, and I’m copying it here. See my further notes below.” is by AW, not Christy. There’s no indication that Christy authorised the copying that I can see.
One only need look at his employer to realise why his crap is published. Murdoch…any crap will do as long as casts any sort of obfuscation.. Murdoch is the individual that bares most single handed responsibility for the destruction of this planet.
So true. Murdoch still has incredible influence, employing many “very serious people” to push his agenda.
Unfortunately, deniers tell the public what they want to hear. Realists and climate scientists don’t. Thus, the denialists are shaping policy.
My sister is a journalist, she doesn’t want to kno to know about climate change, this way she can avoid asking reluctant polititions difficult questions and her pay cheque and murdoch benefits keep on coming. I call it the sgt schulz school of journalism..I know nothing!!!
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bullshit “The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”
Graham Readfearn explains why those among us hopeful that we can outgrow idiocy are mistaken:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2016/oct/21/we-are-approaching-the-trumpocene-a-new-epoch-where-climate-change-is-just-a-big-scary-conspiracy?CMP=share_btn_tw
In the Trumpocene: “There’s now a whole media ecosystem that climate science denialism can exist inside, where there’s little scrutiny of the views of deniers. US-based sites like the Drudge Report, Infowars, Breitbart and Daily Caller are part of that ecosystem.”
My favourite Booker Telegraph article was one where he questioned the evidence for Evolution and the general “superiority complex” of scientist
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/4550448/Charles-Darwin-zealots-have-made-science-a-substitute-religion.html
So far so batsh1t crazy
The really interesting thing was the comments at the end of the article – a few Booker acolytes, who presumably buy into his nonsense about AGW seem visibly shocked he peddles such ignorant nonsense
(obviously there was a fair amount of anti-knowledge peddled)
“Thank you for this article Mr Booker, as it illuminates clearly your level of ignorance on scientific matters. Whilst you may still be able to write articles on the perils of socialism with some gravitas, your credibility with respect to the sciences, is now completely shot.”
—————-
“Me too, I am shocked to learn that what I though to be an educated man like Booker thinks of evolution as a theory and feels it to be as equally valid to suggest there is some form of grand design taking place, though there is absolutely no evidence to support such a belief.
Evolution is evidence based and the other is faith based, which is an ability to place belief over evidence: the two are not comparable or of equal merit.
Like you, I am now doubting the main body of Booker’s work.”