Tag Archives: Chris Packham

Chris Packham Packs on the Pseudoscience to Promote Climate Collapse “Terror”

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

By the final programme of his five-part Earth series, broadcast last year by the BBC, Chris Packham had perfected the art of taking imprecise proxy data from the geological record and comparing it to more accurate modern measurements to draw dubious conclusions about imminent climate collapse. One sudden spike in temperatures about 56 million years ago over “just a few thousand years” is said to be “incredible but sobering”. Scientists, he says, regard this as “analogous” to what is happening today. Some might, but a lot of others are more circumspect about relying on geological data that has a resolution of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and comparing it with today’s measurements.

Packham draws conclusions from events in the PETM, or Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a warming period that began sometime around 56.3 million to 55.9 million years ago. Briefly, it appears global temperatures shot up to around 25 or 26°C, compared with about 14.5°C today. In a published essay, science writer Andy May studied the evidence around the PETM and noted the proxy temperature measurements with lengthy resolutions “are not comparable to today’s monthly averages”.

But this lack of temporal precision does not stop Packham waxing lyrically about the PETM. “Violent storms ravaged the planet with flash floods and protracted drought,” he says. “What is scary is how it happened – each event triggering the next until it pushed the Earth past some serious tipping points,” he claims.

The ‘tipping point’ trope is the go-to climate-modelled message for today’s Armageddonists. Alas, there doesn’t appear to have been time in the programme to state what these ancient tipping points were, but in case the viewer doesn’t pick up on this current fashionable scare, Packham claims “and that is our nightmare”. Towards the end of the programme, he doubles down on his own claimed scientific precision and states: “Today, climate is changing faster than at any time in the last 66 million years.” This might what Packham understands ‘the science’ to say, but there is no way that anyone can know this, let alone prove it. He later told the Guardian that he hoped the “terror factor” generated by the series would “spur us to do something about the environment crisis”.

So what caused this spike in temperatures in the PETM? Since this is a propaganda film aimed at persuading the viewer that burning hydrocarbons and releasing ‘greenhouse’ gases like carbon dioxide into the air is potentially catastrophic, the answer Packham provides is simple. In this case methane, which he says started venting from deep within the Atlantic ocean. Again, the lack of precision around dates is a problem when it comes to attributing a rise in temperature over an imprecise period to a gas that has warming properties but stays in the atmosphere as briefly as 84 months. Marine geophysicist Professor Tim Minshull is less sure that methane release was the main cause of the global warming at this time. In a study published in 2016, he suggested methane release was slower and more modest than some researchers have hypothesised.

About 40 million years ago, ‘hothouse’ Earth, when alligators basked under palm trees in the Arctic, started to cool, a process that Packham attributes to falling levels of CO2. The rocks in newly-formed mountain ranges started to weather and react with the air to remove the gas from the atmosphere – or something. There are a number of problems with this hypothesis, not least the fact that CO2 levels had already been falling steadily for 150 million years from the end of the Jurassic, while temperatures remained as high as they had ever been in the geological record going back 600 million years. As the graph below shows, temperatures remained high, while CO2 levels began their long descent to the low, near denudation, levels seen today.

Meanwhile, scientists dispute the notion that rock weathering only acts as a carbon sink, suggesting that the process also releases amounts of CO2 to rival volcanoes. In a paper published last year, a group of Oxford University scientists led by Dr. Jesse Zondervan said their work on the carbon release had important implications for modelling climate scenarios. At the moment, the CO2 released from rock weathering is not included in the modelled work. Neither it seems are such inconvenient findings included in the Net Zero promotional work of Chris Packham.

The Earth presenter is a green activist and naturalist who holds the view that eight billion humans are wrecking the natural world in their attempts to sustain life on a difficult, dangerous planet. Some of his efforts to draw attention to the fragility of natural habitats are laudable. But as we have seen, he uses something called ‘the Science’ to promote the view that humans should stop industrial progress and return to a mythical natural state. The fact that the unexploited natural world could not sustain anything like eight billion souls is just one of the many reasons why his fantasies will never be adopted. His science starts with a pre-determined narrative, unlike the scientific process which draws conclusions after a ruthless examination of all the available evidence. Mainstream media such as the BBC have largely given up on the scientific process when it comes to climate change, and simply promote political messaging around the Net Zero project. In doing so, they ignore large swaths of scientific knowledge that are likely to trouble the ‘settled’ opinion. But then, this knowledge lacks the “terror factor” so beloved by Packham.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor

Chris Packham’s BBC Series Warning of “Mass Extinction” by CO2 is Propaganda, Not Science

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

Last year, Chris Packham hosted a five-part series on the BBC called Earth, which compared a mass extinction event 252 million years ago to the small rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide seen in the last 150 years. He said he hoped the “terror factor” generated by his programme would “spur us to do something about the environment crisis”. But as we shall see, the only terror factor is having to sit through an hour-long film consisting of cherry-picked science data and unproven assertions in the hope of persuading us that the increase in global temperatures in the last 150 years or so is comparable to the rise in temperatures over a considerable swath of geological time. Great play was made of a 12°C rise in average global temperatures 252 million years ago as CO2 levels started to rise, although Packham fails to report that CO2 levels were already at least four times higher back then than in modern times. The ‘science’ that Packham cloaks himself with on every occasion is hardly served by terrorising the viewer with what is little more than a highly personal political message.

Think of all that suffering and wastage, he says about the fourth great mass extinction. I don’t think we want a comparable extinction to the one that happened 252 million years ago on our conscience, he adds. Of course, Packham is not the first person to politicise the end-Permian extinction when most plant and animal life disappeared to be replaced eventually with what became known as the age of the dinosaurs. As we can see from the graph below, even though that extinction event coincided with an uptick in CO2 levels, the general trend over a 600-million-year period was downwards ending in the near denudation currently experienced today. But scientists note that the rise started some time before the extinction event, with most of the Permian characterised by very low levels of CO2.

It is obvious why the three other great extinctions are of little interest to modern day climate alarmists. The Ordovician extinction 445 million years ago occurred when CO2 levels were 12 times higher than today, the Devonian wipe-out happen 372 millions ago when CO2 levels were falling, while the later Triassic/Jurassic event 201 million years ago occurred at a time of stable CO2. Hard to see a pattern there suggesting rising CO2 levels equals a mass extinction event. The disappearance of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago is generally attributed to the impact of a giant meteorite, while the current sixth mass extinction exists only inside the head of the Swedish doom goblin, and need not detain us at this point.

Since Packham was essentially making a BBC political film promoting Net Zero, he inevitably started with the fixed view that all our current environmental problems are the fault of CO2. An intense period of volcanic eruptions that led to huge coal deposits catching fire increased CO2 levels and almost instantly sent temperatures soaring at the end of the Permian period. About 20 million years of rain subsequently followed, he observed, taking some of the CO2 out of the atmosphere and order it seems was restored. Certainly, CO2 resumed a small descent but levels remained almost as high, or for some periods higher, as those at the end of the Permian period for another 120 million years. Packham does not provide an explanation of what happened to the average global temperature at this time.

The graph above shows why he avoided the subject. Temperatures did rise at the end of the Permian period after a long decline, but only as far as previous highs recorded 200 million years earlier. They then stayed at those levels for most of the next 200 million years, throughout the age of the dinosaurs. Helped by the increased levels of CO2, this is considered one of the most verdant periods in Earth’s history.

Is it likely that volcanic eruptions triggered the substantial rise in temperature around 252 million years ago, as Packham claims? In a paper published in 2022, a group of European scientists said their data showed seawater temperature began to rise at least 300,000 years before the main volcanic eruptions. “Gradual warming by approximately 12°C was probably responsible for initial environmental degradation that eventually culminated in the global and Permian extinction,” they wrote. The scientists reviewed much of the published evidence and concluded “a temporal link between volcanic activity, environmental changes and biological impacts remains controversial”.

Carbon dioxide, of course, is the main cause of global warming in Packham’s world. Promoting his film to like-minded activists at the Guardian, he said it was the “urgency that makes me despair”. As we can see, this “despair” is the result of comparing events hundreds of millions of years ago with a small temperature rise in the past 150 years or so of around 1°C – and this after a short-term period of global cooling. You can of course argue about all this, but it is a bit rich to claim the science of recent global warming is ‘settled’ and refuse to debate anyone who disagrees with you.

From such a shaky base, Packham claims we’re all becoming far too complacent about pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. “It’s an experiment we have been running for over 100 years,” he told the Guardian. “The more the CO2, the more the heat is locked in and the hotter our Earth becomes.” But if Packham really believes that, how does he explain those geological periods when temperatures fall as CO2 levels rise? And if a rise in temperatures and mass extinction is inevitable when CO2 rises, how does that work in the current period when CO2 levels are as low as they’ve ever been?

Could it be that the end-Permian extinction was actually caused by CO2 starvation? During the Permian, it was the first time in Earth’s history that CO2 concentrations fell below 1,000 parts per million, perhaps as dangerously low as 200 ppm at some points. This may well have started to stress plant life since 1,000 ppm is a concentration that supports maximum photosynthesis productivity. This is the view of Jim Steele, Director Emeritus of San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus. In a recent paper, he noted that many researchers have pointed to competition between different plant species for declining CO2 during the Permian period. This was said to result in “severely reduced photosynthesis, the collapse of primary productivity and a significant malfunction of the global food webs”.

The truth is that the scientific jury is still out and the ‘science’, as with most climate science, is unsettled. Perhaps inadvertently, Packham has simply drawn attention to all the observational evidence that suggests CO2, the gas of life, ‘saturates’ at around 300-400 ppm, and its warming effect is greatly diminished beyond that concentration. But “fear is motivating” he claims, and in the BBC he seems to have a compliant megaphone for whatever green propaganda he cares to promote.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

There’s Nothing “Scientific” About Climate Models

From The Daily Sceptic

BY PAUL SUTTON

On Sunday’s BBC Politics, Luke Johnson asked for evidence that the recent Dubai flooding was due to climate change. Chris Packham glibly responded: “It comes from something called science.”

This simply highlighted his poor scientific understanding. The issue is his and others’ confusion over what scientific modelling is and what it can do. This applies to any area of science dealing with systems above a single atom – everything, in practice.  

My own doctoral research was on the infrared absorption and fragmentation of gaseous molecules using lasers. The aim was to quantify how the processes depended on the laser’s physical properties. 

I then modelled my results. This was to see if theory correctly predicted how my measurements changed as one varied the laser pulse. Computed values were compared under different conditions with those observed. 

The point is that the underlying theory is being tested against the variations it predicts. This applies – on steroids – to climate modelling, where the atmospheric systems are vastly more complex. All the climate models assume agreement at some initial point and then let the model show future projections. Most importantly, for the projected temperature variations, the track record of the models in predicting actual temperature observations is very dubious, as Professor Nicola Scafetta’s chart below shows. 

For the climate sensitivity – the amount of global surface warming that will occur in response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentrations over pre-industrial levels – there’s an enormous range of projected temperature increases, from 1.5° to 4.5°C. Put simply, that fits everything – and so tells us almost nothing about the underlying theories. 

That’s a worrying problem. If the models can’t be shown to predict the variations, then what can we say about the underlying theory of manmade climate change? But the public are given the erroneous impression that the ‘settled science’ confirms that theory – and is forecasting disastrously higher temperatures.

Such a serious failing has forced the catastrophe modellers to (quietly) switch tack into ‘attribution modelling’. This involves picking some specific emotive disaster – say the recent flooding in Dubai – then finding some model scenario which reproduces it. You then say: “Climate change modelling predicted this event, which shows the underlying theory is correct.”  

What’s not explained is how many other scenarios didn’t fit this specific event. It’s as if, in my research, I simply picked one observation and scanned through my modelling to find a fit. Then said: “Job done, the theory works.” It’s scientifically meaningless. What’s happening is the opposite of a prediction. It’s working backwards from an event and showing that it can happen under some scenario.

My points on the modelling of variations also apply to the work done by Neil Ferguson at Imperial College on catastrophic Covid fatalities. The public were hoodwinked into thinking ‘the Science’ was predicting it. Not coincidentally, Ferguson isn’t a medical doctor but a mathematician and theoretical physicist with a track record of presenting demented predictions to interested parties.

I’m no fan of credentialism. But when Packham tries it, maybe he needs questioning on his own qualifications – a basic degree in a non-physical ‘soft’ science then an abandoned doctorate.

Paul Sutton can be found on Substack. His new book on woke issues The Poetry of Gin and Tea is out now.

How Many Billions of People Would Die Under Net Zero?

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

BBC oddball Chris Packham has hit back at claims reported on Neil Oliver‘s GB News show that half the world’s population could die if Net Zero was implemented in full. “So Ofcom can you please explain how you allow this utter BS to be broadcast,” he wails. Running to Ofcom would appear to be a trade protection measure – millions will die has been the tried and trusted modus operandi of climate catastrophist Chris for decades.

This would appear to be the same Chris Packham who told the Telegraph in October 2010 that there were too many humans on the planet, and “we need to do something about it”. In 2020, he informed the Daily Mail  that “quite frankly” smallpox, measles, mumps and malaria were there “to regulate our population”. Over his broadcast career, untroubled by Ofcom interest, Packham has claimed mass extinctions of all life on Earth unless humans stop burning hydrocarbons. Of course there are those who point out that these popular mass extinctions only seem to exist in computer models. Hydrocarbons, meanwhile, have led to unprecedented prosperity and health, unimaginable to previous generations, across many parts of a planet that now supports a sustainable population of humans numbering eight billion.

Of course Net Zero is not going to kill four billion people because Net Zero is never going to happen. Day-by-day, support is crumbling around the world as the political collectivisation project, supported by increasingly discredited computer-modelled opinions, is starting to fall apart as it bumps into the hard rock of reality. History teaches us that tribes that grow weak and decadent are easy prey for their stronger neighbours. But the suggestion that four billion will die if Net Zero should ever be inflicted on global populations is worth examining. After all, it is likely to be true.

The four billion dead noted on GB News came from a remark made by Dr. Patrick Moore, one of the original founders of Greenpeace. Interviewed on Fox News, he said: “If we ban fossil fuels, agricultural production would collapse. People will begin to starve, and half the population will die in a very short period of time”. Four billion dead if artificial fertiliser is banned is not ‘BS’, it is an almost guaranteed outcome. In a recent science paper, Emeritus Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen of Princeton and MIT respectively noted that “eliminating fossil fuel-derived nitrogen fertiliser and pesticides will create worldwide starvation”. With the use of nitrogen fertiliser, crop yields around the world have soared in recent decades and natural famines, as opposed to those local outbreaks caused by humans, have largely disappeared.

Much of the luxury middle class Net Zero obsession is based on a seeming hatred of human progress. It is a campaign to push back the benefit of mass industrialisation, although it is doubtful that many of the ardent promoters think the drastic reductions in standards of living will apply to them. It is narcissism on stilts and based on an almost complete ignorance of how the food in their faddy diets arrives on their plates. It shows a complete disregard for the central role that hydrocarbons play in their lives. It is based on a profound distaste for almost any modern manufacturing process. These days, they do not know people who actually make things, and when they meet them they often dislike them. Nutty Guardianista George Monbiot recently tweeted that ending animal farming is as important as leaving fossil fuels in the ground. “Eating meat, milk and eggs is an indulgence the planet cannot afford,” he added.

Leaving fossil fuels in the ground will mean the following products will largely disappear.

Circulated on social media and recently published by Paul Homewood, the illustration is a wake-up call to the importance of hydrocarbons. Without it, humans would struggle to make many medicines and plastics. Similar difficulties would be found in the manufacture of common products such as clothing, food preservatives, cleaning products and soft contact lens.

Alec Epstein, the author of the best-selling book Fossil Future, agrees that Net Zero policies by 2050 would be “apocalyptically destructive”, and have in fact already been catastrophically destructive when barely implemented. A reference here, perhaps, to the wicked policies conducted by Western banks and elites in refusing to loan money to build hydrocarbon-fuelled water treatment plants in the poorer parts of the developing world. Billions still lack the cost-effective energy they need to live lives of abundance and safety, notes Epstein. Many people in developing countries still use wood and dung for cooking. Like Happer and Lindzen, he believes that if Net Zero is followed, “virtually all the world’s eight billion people will plunge into poverty and premature death”.

Much of what is planned is hiding in plain sight. The C40 group, funded by wealthy billionaires and chaired by London mayor Sadiq Khan, has investigated World War 2 style rationing with a daily meat allowance of 44g. Reduced private transport and massive restrictions on air travel have all been considered. Labour party member Khan has already made a cracking start on his elite paymasters’ concerns having recently driven many of the cars of the less affluent off London roads with specialist charging penalties.

Honesty rules the day at the U.K. Government-funded UK FIRES operation where Ivory Tower academics produce gruesomely frank reports showing that Net Zero would cut available energy by around three quarters. They assume, rightly, that there is no realistic technology currently available, or likely in the foreseeable future, to back up power sourced from the intermittent breezes and sun beams. No flying, no shipping, drastic cuts in meat consumption and no home heating are all discussed. A ruthless purge of modern building material is also proposed with traditional building supplies replaced by new materials such as “rammed earth”

A move back to primitivism is also foreshadowed by a recent United Nations report which suggested building using mud bricks, bamboo and forest ‘detritus’. It might be thought that mud and grass huts will hardly be enough to deter unfriendly foreign hordes that hove into future view on the horizon. And no point in asking the last person to turn out the lights, because there won’t be electricity anyway.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Chris Packham issues legal challenge against Rishi Sunak

Lower CO2 emissions to limit global warming and climate change. Concept with manager hand turning knob to reduce levels of CO2. New technology to decarbonize industry, energy and transport

From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

October 6, 2023 by oldbrew 

Climate lawfare by carbophobes again. ‘The ball is in your court, Prime Minister’. At the same time the Scottish Nationalists have reported the PM to the police over comments in his conference speech.
– – –
Chris Packham has sent a legal challenge to the Prime Minister over his decision to delay the phase-out of new gas boilers and petrol and diesel cars, reports The National (via Yahoo News).

If Rishi Sunak does not reverse the changes he announced last month, Packham said he will apply to the High Court to challenge this in a judicial review – arguing that such a delay is unlawful given the Government is required to follow a series of carbon budget plans on the way to becoming net zero by 2050.

The Prime Minister said the sale of new fossil fuel cars will not be phased out in 2030 but in 2035 and that only 80% of gas boilers will need to be phased out by that date, instead of 100%.

He said that because the UK has so far decarbonised faster than other developed countries, it can afford to relax its net-zero policies, telling the country that the approach to net zero is imposing “unacceptable costs on hard-pressed British families” that “no one was ever told about”.

Packham said this change of direction was made without any public consultation, without informing parliament or the Climate Change Committee (CCC) – which advises the Government on how to meet its carbon budgets.

He said the Prime Minister is “playing populist politics with the future of life on Earth”, adding: “Even before this spontaneous, ill-judged and – we contend – unlawful announcement, the UK Government’s plans to meet its legal net-zero commitments were shambolic and destined to failure.

“Its own Climate Change Committee’s last report said that continued delays in policy development and implementation meant reaching those targets was increasingly challenging.

“It also highlighted a lack of urgency across government, a worrying hesitancy and lack of political leadership on the climate issue.”

Full report here.

Breaking the Law for Climate Change?

From Climate Scepticism

BY ALAN KENDALL

Last week there was a television programme that I especially wanted to see; a programme that, if the past was any indication, most commentators at this site would have deliberately dodged.  The programme was Chris Packham, is it time to break the law?  You will have missed something good and worthwhile.  It gave a chance to evaluate a potential major opponent.

I was also interested in the programme because I had watched and, via Open Mic had strongly recommended watching, Chis Packham’s series Earth. This clearly established his ability to step into Attenborough’s shoes as a leading television personality with a mission to support wildlife and climate change.  Also a potential major adversary of anything vaguely critical of catastrophic climate advocacy.

The programme fully lived up to my expectations.  Packham came across as a dedicated advocate, someone very genuine (if misguided).  His thesis was that for his entire life he had supported wildlife and warned about climate change. He was now discouraged because of a lack of any real response and was pondering engaging with groups (like Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion) that conducted quasi-legal (like slow walking and holding up traffic) or even illegal acts.  Packham agonised over this conundrum, seeking advice here, there, and everywhere.  He got all sorts of advice ranging from don’t break the law (from Lord Deben) to sabotaging oil pipelines. He tried to interview relevant Tory Ministers but to no avail.  In the end Packham stated that he had come to believe that those who broke the law were engaged in laudable actions and that, after much reflection, he personally could break the law in support of climate change protests.

A fascinating and I believe very honest treatment of most of the entire subject.  Personally I don’t believe he covered the rights of the general public to be free of public nuisance with sufficient detail.  Also there was the nagging doubt as to whether Packham and the programme makers were engaged in incitement.  It was noticeable that when the list of credits at the end of the programme rolled it was headed by their legal advisor.

So why am I suggesting you might benefit from seeking out the programme and viewing it?  Well, I believe there has been a tendency to view those supporting climate catastrophe as not deserving our full efforts.  They are treated as lacking in reason or knowledge. Packham stands as an example of those we so dismiss at our peril.  He comes across as entirely honest, committed and knowledgeable, someone who cannot easily be dismissed and also one who will gather support. His only fault in the programme IMHO was to summarily dismiss Peter Lilley’s arguments regarding forest fires, waving his hands as he maintained that so much evidence (never given) supported the view that climate change was causing them to increase this year.

I found the programme fascinating and well worth spending the hour spent watching it.  It also generated much discussion afterwards with “she who must be listened to”.  We failed to agree upon a fundamental question: if you were convinced that climate change was a realistic threat, is it legitimate to break the law to support action to counteract it?  I was jail-bait, my wife would promise to visit me.