Flying Falsehoods and the Value of Numbers
18 hours
Ivor Williams
Part One: Flying Falsehoods
‘Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceived, it is too late.’ That was Jonathan Swift in 1710. You do wonder whether he might be referring to the more lurid descriptions of the Great Storm of 1703, which is still the by far the worst weather ever to have hit this country since written records were made. However, back to the twenty-first century.
Take, for instance, the claim quoted by Reuters: ‘This year is “virtually certain” to be the warmest in 125,000 years, European scientists said on Wednesday’ (8 November). We have recorded temperatures only for the last 150 years, but this irresponsible and totally fallacious comment then set off around the world, picked up by CNN the following day, featured on dozens of sites over the next week or two, and even turning up on the South China Morning Post in January..
Another version was ‘The world hasn’t been this warm for 100,000 years.’ Here is an announcement that had been decided back in July with the year still only six months old. The ‘expert’ in this instance did admit that ‘records are based on data that only goes back to the mid-20th century … [but] they are “almost certainly” the warmest the planet has seen … for at least 100,000 years,’ according to Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center.
That’s how the damage was done. Perhaps even worse was the comment from that august and well-respected scientific journal Nature. ‘Earth boiled in 2023,’ they proclaimed, 2023 was ‘officially the hottest on record.’ Note the use of that word ‘hottest’ rather than ‘warmest’ whenever an editor wants to ramp up the panic, and you might wonder about that ‘boiled’ when you read the next paragraph.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/01/20/flying-falsehoods-and-the-value-of-numbers/
