Household pests? Blame CO2

Mike Steketee, who writes for The Australian, believes in Keynesian economics and in man-made global warming. No inconsistencies there.

Writing just before the climate extravaganza he said, “whatever the price, it’s a timid first step”.

He quotes, in support of man-made global warming, some research by brothers Jorgen and Carsten Frederiksen for the CSIRO and the BoM. This among other things sheds “light” (you be the judge) on the decline in rainfall in the southwest of Western Australia since 1975. Jorgen reportedly noticed a 17 percent reduction in the peak southern hemisphere sub-tropical jet stream. He also reports a 2 percent rise in temperature over the Southern Ocean and a fall in the temperature gradient, which apparently is the difference between temperatures in the southern and sub-tropical parts of the hemisphere. Similar factors apparently account for the 10 percent decline in rainfall in southeast Australia “although the story there is more complicated” (yikes, as Oakeshott might say) because we have to deal with “northwest cloud bands, which have increased, and east coast lows”. Is that clear to you dunderheads out there? If you were not convinced about global warming before you surely must be now.

The brothers also plugged stuff into their model and predicted that CO2 will bring further reductions in rain during the next fifty years. Is that anything to do with the model’s design which has CO2 and global warming strongly related? Questions like that are out of order and will not be tolerated.

Elsewhere in this melange of scientific titbits we are told that Paul Fraser of the CSIRO, who has been studying greenhouse gas for “more than thirty five years” (must be right then), says that some Arctic ice has melted and that CO2 levels are at the highest level for more than a million years. You might have the temerity to ask – how come Arctic ice was melting in the 1940s without much CO2, after the warm period of that era before growing again as the earth cooled – how come the medieval warm period was warm sans CO2? If you were to ask these inconvenient questions, enough would be enough, and you would be summarily dealt with.

Just in case we are under any misapprehension about the plant-growing qualities of CO2 we are told by the CSIRO’s Ken Hennessy that any positive effects will be more than offset by warmth, droughts and “pests”. Pests are a nice touch, giving a sense of biblical proportions to the whole future catastrophe.

Nothing that Steketee reports says anything about what has caused the warming since the late 1970s. The conjecture is that it is mostly CO2. It is pure scientific conjecture. But, once that conjecture is accepted, of course the models will show catastrophic warming as CO2 emissions rise. Catastrophic warming will be a catastrophe; by definition.

Maybe we need loudhailers because the warmists are clearly hard of hearing; assuming they are not complete imbeciles or, perhaps, treating us as though we were. Yes, there has been warming. Yes, this has produced weather of some kind – bound to. Yes, hotter weather causes ice to melt and sea levels to rise. The question is what hard evidence is there that CO2 is responsible for most of the warming. We have had warming since the late 1800s, mostly without significant CO2 emissions. The only period in contention is the very brief period (in climate terms) between the late 1970s and 2000.

I don’t know about you but I want this exact question addressed. What use is it to be told about southern hemisphere sub-tropical jet streams? It makes me think that left-wing journalists like Steketee are snake oil merchants. I don’t like to harbour such unkind thoughts.