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Andrew Gillett

Listed below are comments made by Andrew Gillett between Wednesday, 21st January 2009 and Tuesday, 22nd December 2009.

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COP15: (No) Hopenhagen? 5:14pm on 22 Dec 2009 474 "The real killer blow to the theory of AGW was not a few dodgy emails and dirty dealings, but the fact that the last ten years of non-warming looks so inconclusive to the untrained eye"

You are correct that the science can look inconclusive to the untrained eye. Perhaps those eyes could do with some more training. The reality is that science is despite the warming trend, natural variability still exists, and periods of stasis or slight cooling are not unexpected by climate scientists. No scientist claims that global warming means every year will be slightly warmer than the last. Ironically, if 1998 had not been so far above the trend, the average of recent temperatures would be cooler but there would likely be less public uncertainty over the science because skeptics would not have been able to cherry pick 1998 as a starting year for their comparisons.
Believer or Sceptic? 11:54am on 18 Dec 2009 Re. population, there was a Horizon programme on BBC2 recently where Sir David Attenborough covered this topic. The best way of slowing or stopping the population rise is thought to be better education, better access to contraception and improvements in living standards.
Believer or Sceptic? 11:26am on 18 Dec 2009 #8, the writers of those blogs you linked to aren't as honest as you may think, e.g.:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/steve_mcintyre_down_in_the_quo.php

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/02/whats-up-with-that/

I find this to be a more reliable source:
www.skepticalscience.com

I don't know if 5 Live read out the text I sent them earlier, if not here it is:

Many skeptics seem to think that climate scientists have missed something really obvious, e.g. that there has been climate change in the past, or that the sun affects climate. In reality, scientists are well aware of such things, and they have been taken into account.
COP15 Copenhagen climate summit: Day 5 10:40am on 12 Dec 2009 "So how did the Vikings colonize Greenland"
http://www.skepticalscience.com/greenland-used-to-be-green.htm
Climate doctors say 'feel the pain'... 2:19pm on 15 Oct 2009 @Jack_Hughes_NZ 94

"This was written in April 2009 - so I don't think it counts as a prediction of the flatlining this century."

I don't know if anyone did predict the so-called (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/a-warming-pause/) flatlining. The second graph at the link in my first post shows the kind of variation being discussed occurring in the 20th century, so if flatlining did occur, it wouldn't necessarily be a surprise even if the exact timing hadn't been predicted in advance.

"Ten years - or maybe twenty - or maybe a bit more ... or a bit less - or maybe something."

Natural variation is, as the name suggests, variable.

@Fnfcst 95

http://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect.htm ("Is the CO2 effect saturated?")
Climate doctors say 'feel the pain'... 12:14pm on 14 Oct 2009 @Jack_Hughes_NZ #78, re "flatlining of global temperatures"

http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2009/04/what_goes_up_must_come_down.php

"the climate over the 21st century can and likely will produce periods of a decade or two where the globally averaged surface air temperature shows no trend or even slight cooling in the presence of longer-term warming."
It's climate change dynamite! 5:28pm on 23 Feb 2009 @skflyfish
"Irregardless of climate change which could be more a function of solar activity rather than CO2"

See here:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/28/090/30666

Quote:
"There has been work done reconstructing the solar irradiance record over the last century, before satellites were available. According to the Max Planck Institute, where this work is being done, there has been no increase in solar irradiance since around 1940. This reconstruction does show an increase in the first part of the 20th century, which coincides with the warming from around 1900 until the 1940s. It's not enough to explain all the warming from those years, but it is responsible for a large portion."
Ethical Man is reborn 4:56pm on 16 Feb 2009 jpstrikes: "Since the latest news reports show that world temperatures have been falling for the last 8 years"

Which news reports?

A quick search for temperature graphs found this one, which doesn't support what you said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Satellite_Temperatures.png
Restoring science to its rightful place 1:28pm on 22 Jan 2009 tawse57, when I asked about your source, I was asking for the source of your claim that CO2 levels were higher in the last few million years (when humans evolved).

Your argument seems to be:

1) Humans need a certain level of CO2 to live. I don't dispute this.

2) Low CO2 in the air can lead to asthma/hyperventilation. Don't know if this is true or not, the first result on Google for 'hyperventilation co2' does not support it.

3) Therefore, levels of CO2 were higher during the early stages of human evolution. This does not follow - especially since CO2 is currently rising, so under your hypothesis, fewer people should be having problems with asthma.
Restoring science to its rightful place 5:30pm on 21 Jan 2009 "When Human Beings first walked upright on the planet there were much higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere than today."

What is your source for this? From what I've read, it appears that CO2 levels are higher now than they've been in 20 million years. See:
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig3-2.htm

"without CO2 none of us would be here."

That's true, no-one disputes that. Without any CO2 or other greenhouse gases, the Earth would be too cold to support human life. You don't want too little, and you don't want too much.

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Andrew Gillett