As inevitably as night follows day, the cause of the torrential rain and consequent flooding in Britain is being attributed to our old friend man-made global warming. No matter that the reason for the flooding lies in man-made political and administrative incompetence — money-starved flood defences, badly maintained drainage systems, irreponsible over-building of houses so that the water cannot seep into the ground through its ever-spreading concrete overcoat. No –according to newspaper stories, a paper being published in Nature this week fingers global warming as the culprit. The Times reports:

Global warming is generating heavier rainfall over Britain of the sort that has triggered this week’s floods, scientists have confirmed for the first time. While it has long been suspected that climate change is contributing to increased precipitation over mid-latitude countries such as Britain, research has now conclusively linked greenhouse gases to heavier downpours.

But read on and you find that the paper is not saying that global warming is reponsible for the current deluge. Indeed according to one of the paper’s authors, Dr Peter Stott, a climate scientist at the University of Reading:

It is currently impossible to say whether the current bad weather is a result of global warming, and more research is needed into the origins of such extreme events.

Confused already? Wait — it gets worse. Because the researchers are saying that global warming is responsible for overall increases in rainfall, on which these researchers have found

an unambiguously human fingerprint.

So our activities are the cause of the increase in rain in general… but not the increase in this particular rain.

Uh-huh.

So what’s their evidence for saying that overall increases in rainfall are down to global warming?

In the study, which is to be published in the journal Nature, the scientists compared recorded changes in rain and snowfall over land with changes that are predicted by climate models that account for global warming caused by greenhouse gases. The actual pattern of changes, with increased precipitation in latitudes north of 50 degrees, corresponds remarkably closely with the patterns that emerged from 14 different models. This suggests strongly that human-induced climate change has been responsible.

So let’s get our heads round this. They compared actual recorded rain and snowfall levels with computer predictions. Those computer predictions, however, are themselves generated by highly dubious computer models drawing on selective and inadequate data. They are in themselves no more than guesswork. Yet these researchers found they correlate ‘remarkably closely’ with observable weather patterns (but only in latitudes north of 50 degrees). That is the ‘unambiguously human fingerprint’. Oh really? The only unambiguous thing about it is the absurdity.

Hang on, you murmur: in any event, aren’t we simultaneously being told that global warming will mean parched summers and winter deluges? Sure — but global warming is a truly miraculous theory. It means that, without a shadow of a doubt, we will have dry summers and wet winters, and wet summers and er, well, wet winters. As Dr Stott says:

‘In the UK wetter winters are expected which will lead to more extreme rainfall, whereas summers are expected to get drier. However, it is possible under climate change that there could be an increase of extreme rainfall even under general drying.’

(my emphasis)

As it gets dryer, it will get wetter. Truly, this global warming theory has some extraordinary properties.

Bewildered? Wake up at the back there —haven’t you got it straight yet? We’re going to be frying and freezing, drowning and dehydrating at the very same time. And carbon emissions will be to blame for the planet getting hotter and getting colder, getting wetter and getting dryer. Because global warming means that whatever happens to the weather, wet dry, hot, cold— it’s all our own fault.

Those who still nurture an old-fashioned regard for facts as opposed to tendentious and indeed ridiculous hypothesis might like to bear in mind that these torrential downpours are not unprecedented in Britain at all. Indeed, we have had worse in the past. As Michael Hanlon reports in the Daily Mail:

On May 29, 1912, nearly five inches of rain fell in three hours near the town of Louth in Lincolnshire. The flood-water practically razed the town and killed 22 people. Even more spectacular was the deluge that occurred three months later in Norfolk: Brundall, near Norwich, experienced more than eight inches of rain on one hellish August day — roughly double the total measured anywhere in the recent floods. Much of Norfolk was still under water six months later.
And on August 15 that year, a depression moving up the Bristol Channel deposited nine inches of rain over Exmoor, spawning the lethal flood that was nearly to wash away the village of Lynmouth. More than 30 people were killed. The record for rainfall in one 24-hour period occurred on July 18, 1955, when nearly 12 inches of rain fell on parts of Dorset. So there is certainly nothing unprecedented about these floods, and similar deluges occurred long before we worried about global warming.

But then global warming theory represents the ultimate triumph of hypothesis over experience, as the latest distinguished scientist in the Canadian Financial Post’s series of climate change sceptics recently made clear. Tom V. Segalstad, head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo and formerly an expert reviewer with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says the whole theory is nonsense.

He laments the paucity of geologic knowledge among IPCC scientists — a knowledge that is central to understanding climate change, in his view, since geologic processes ultimately determine the level of atmospheric CO2. ‘The IPCC needs a lesson in geology to avoid making fundamental mistakes,’ he says. ‘Most leading geologists, throughout the world, know that the IPCC’s view of Earth processes are implausible if not impossible.’

Catastrophic theories of climate change depend on carbon dioxide staying in the atmosphere for long periods of time — otherwise, the CO2 enveloping the globe wouldn’t be dense enough to keep the heat in. Until recently, the world of science was near-unanimous that CO2 couldn’t stay in the atmosphere for more than about five to 10 years because of the oceans’ near-limitless ability to absorb CO2.

‘This time period has been established by measurements based on natural carbon-14 and also from readings of carbon-14 from nuclear weapons testing, it has been established by radon-222 measurements, it has been established by measurements of the solubility of atmospheric gases in the oceans, it has been established by comparing the isotope mass balance, it has been established through other mechanisms, too, and over many decades, and by many scientists in many disciplines,’ says Prof. Segalstad, whose work has often relied upon such measurements.

Then, with the advent of IPCC-influenced science, the length of time that carbon stays in the atmosphere became controversial. Climate change scientists began creating carbon cycle models to explain what they thought must be an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These computer models calculated a long life for carbon dioxide.

Amazingly, the hypothetical results from climate models have trumped the real world measurements of carbon dioxide’s longevity in the atmosphere. Those who claim that CO2 lasts decades or centuries have no such measurements or other physical evidence to support their claims. Neither can they demonstrate that the various forms of measurement are erroneous. ‘They don’t even try,’ says Prof. Segalstad. ‘They simply dismiss evidence that is, for all intents and purposes, irrefutable. Instead, they substitute their faith, constructing a kind of science fiction or fantasy world in the process.’

In the real world, as measurable by science, CO2 in the atmosphere and in the ocean reach a stable balance when the oceans contain 50 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere. ‘The IPCC postulates an atmospheric doubling of CO2, meaning that the oceans would need to receive 50 times more CO2 to obtain chemical equilibrium,’ explains Prof. Segalstad. ‘This total of 51 times the present amount of carbon in atmospheric CO2 exceeds the known reserves of fossil carbon– it represents more carbon than exists in all the coal, gas, and oil that we can exploit anywhere in the world.’

Also in the real world, Prof. Segalstad’s isotope mass balance calculations — a standard technique in science — show that if CO2 in the atmosphere had a lifetime of 50 to 200 years, as claimed by IPCC scientists, the atmosphere would necessarily have half of its current CO2 mass. Because this is a nonsensical outcome, the IPCC model postulates that half of the CO2 must be hiding somewhere, in ‘a missing sink.’ Many studies have sought this missing sink — a Holy Grail of climate science research– without success. It is a search for a mythical CO2 sink to explain an immeasurable CO2 lifetime to fit a hypothetical CO2 computer model that purports to show that an impossible amount of fossil fuel burning is heating the atmosphere,’ Prof. Segalstad concludes. ‘It is all a fiction.’

Back in la-la land, the new head of the Science Museum in London, Professor Chris Rapley, turns out to be a global warming zealot. In an interview with the Telegraph, he not only asserts that that there is an ‘unequivocal’ link between mankind’s fossil fuel emissions and the global temperature rise seen over the past few decades, but he turns out to be an advocate of — guess what— population control.

It is Rapley’s view that the ‘jury is still out’ on the prediction by Thomas Malthus, the 19th-century demographer, that the human race would exceed its food supply by having too many children.

Hello?? The jury is not still out on Malthus. It came in a long time ago. Malthus has been proved wrong. Nevertheless, his highly unpleasant and dangerous philosophy – essentially, that mankind is the enemy of the good — which went underground in the wake of the eugenics and Nazi movements to which it contributed, has surfaced again in the apocalyptic green movement and man-made global warming theory. The real target of the global warmers is not carbon dioxide; it is not even the internal combustion engine; it is the human race. The Telegraph reports:

Last year, Rapley wrote an article on the BBC website saying that ‘if we believe that the size of the human “footprint’ is a serious problem’ (and there is much evidence for this) then a rational view would be that, along with a raft of measures to reduce the footprint per person, the issue of population management must be addressed’…He says people are not listening to what he is saying, which is that if there were a billion fewer people in 2050 there would be a big reduction in carbon emissions.

Yup, that’s the real message of the global warmers: the only thing that’s wrong with the planet is the human race. And the man who believes this is now running the Science Museum.