Clutching at straws

One of the favourite tricks of the Canutists - people who believe that man can control nature - is the way they will use localised events to demonstrate that climate change is real and then disparage earlier events that demonstrate that climate change is nothing new because they were localised events.

A prime example of this is the way Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) supporters frequently denounce the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) - a period when the climate was as least as warm, if not even warmer, than it is now - as being a non-global event as it only effected the northern hemisphere. As it turns out, evidence is mounting that the MWP was in fact truly global and was considerably warmer than now, but that doesn't seem to get much coverage in the MSM.

What does get huge coverage is last months "record" temperatures - in Britain - with the latest example of the above being the environment editor of The Independent, Michael McCarthy, claiming that the early emergence of native British butterflies is proof of climate change.

Britain's astounding April, the warmest on record, has produced an astounding effect in the natural world, with at least 11 species of butterfly making their earliest recorded appearances this spring in what will be seen as the most remarkable demonstration yet of the effects of climate change on Britain's wildlife.

Astounding. Equally astounding is the assertion that last April was the warmest on record. It wasn't. April was warmer in 1798, 1865, 1893 and as lately as 1943 - but let's not get facts get in the way of a good story, eh?

Spring, at least in southern Britain, has in effect been a full month early this year, and many wild flowers, such as foxgloves, are also appearing far in advance of normal.

And here we get to the crux. McCarthy is using the weather as recorded in southern Britain as evidence of a global climate event - even though much of the world did not experience abnormally high temperatures during April. Slightly to his credit, McCarthy himself does not suggest in his article that this is evidence of man-made climate change, but with the Independent's well rehearsed AGW propaganda routine it is clear that this is the assumption behind the article.

This strikes me as a prime example of straw clutching. Trying to portray a very local event - localised, as McCarthy notes, only to southern Britain - as evidence of impending global climate catastrophe reveals that the AGW crowd are struggling to justify their predictions and are now jumping on the flimsiest of "evidence" to support their cause and propagate the myths that global warming is both a long term trend (long term for climate means spanning many decades - even centuries, not a few years) and caused by man - neither of which is actually supported by real, hard evidence.