Climate panel: Time for a refit?
In the past few weeks, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has received a vast amount of advice on how it should be reformed, ranging from minor structural tinkering to immediate self-immolation.
So it must inevitably be when powerful political interests come to blows over what is supposed to be a body dealing with science independently and impartially.
This week's edition of the journal Nature publishes five short and varied recipes for a new and better IPCC - or some other set of organisations set up to do the same basic jobs, but better.
The writers are all working scientists, and have all contributed - some heavily - to IPCC reports down the years.
None of them concludes that the job does not need doing at all, even though Nature's chosen title - The IPCC: cherish, tweak it or scrap it - appears to allow for that option.
The most conservative analysis comes from Thomas Stocker of the University of Bern in Switzerland, a co-ordinating lead author on the third and fourth assessment reports and co-chair of the climate science working group for the fifth (AR5), due out in 2013.
Dr Stocker falls firmly into the "cherish it" camp. An "honest broker" is needed, he argues, in such a turbulent field as climate change; and "From my perspective, the IPCC has fulfilled this role with remarkable rigour and integrity."
His prescription is, basically, more of the same: "Only with strict adherence to procedures and to scientific rigour at all stages will the IPCC continue to provide the best and most robust information that is needed so much."
But, argues Jeff Price from the environmental group WWF, more frequent and more pointed reports are what the world needs now. Reports could even be annual, he says; and the principals should always be the best available people, forgetting the current proviso that authors are also selected so the panel encompasses "a range of views, expertise, gender and geographical representation".
Eduardo Zorita, from the GKSS Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany, advocates a little more reform by turning the IPCC into an international agency somewhat akin to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Its reports should emerge every couple of years, and should only concern peer-reviewed studies - not the "grey" literature such as the now (in)famous WWF report on Himalayan glaciers.
The University of East Anglia's Mike Hulme - a prolific commentator on the troubles of climate science recently, not least on these pages - advocates disbanding the IPCC after the fifth report.
Instead, he proposes establishing a global panel to evaluate and produce frequent reports on tightly-defined scientific issues of interest.
A series of regional "evaluation panels" would then sift the basic scientific messages and sort out what they imply for various parts of the world. A further body - something akin to a global science academy, if I interpret correctly - would examine policy options.
And John Christy from the University of Alabama in Huntsville - who despite long-standing reservations about the IPCC has consistently chosen to contribute his expertise to the organisation - suggests removing the panel from UN oversight altogether.
A "Wikipedia-IPCC" could be set up, he suggests, with leaders being selected by learned societies, serving on a rolling basis as the organisation grapples with a series of specific science and policy questions.
All food for thought; and though it appears likely that the IPCC will remain working roughly in the way it has done until the fifth assessment report (AR5) is complete, with minor tweaks to take account of Himalayan and other issues, it is entirely within the gift of governments to make whatever changes they see fit once that process is over.
But there are several other factors to throw into the mix, as politicians and scientists and concerned observers debate the organisation's future.
Firstly, the IPCC speaks directly to governments. They endorse its reports - and all members, including the climate-sceptical US under George W Bush, have endorsed them - basically because they own the process.
One lead author observed to me in 2007, as the fourth assessment report (AR4) came out, that without such direct involvement, the reports would carry much less weight in the corridors of power; and that caveat is surely as correct now as it was then.
Secondly, there is the question of resources.
Virtually all of those contributing to the assessment reports do so voluntarily. They may be "volunteered" by their home government, they may receive some logistical support, but essentially they give their time and expertise for free; and the process is so gruelling that many of the leading lights will do it once and once only.
Are the financial and logistical resources sufficient?
According to one academic with a long knowledge of the organisation, sometimes they're not; with adequate backing, he said, issues such as a debatable date for Himalayan glacier melt or the correct figures for the costs of sea level rise in the Netherlands would have been checked and double-checked, and would not have made it to the final report, with the embarrassment that has now followed their publicisation.
Would the resource issue improve if the IPCC's tasks were split between different bodies, perhaps some working on a wiki-basis, or perhaps under the aegis of science academies? It is hard to envisage.
Would funding have to come from a few governments, providing even more opportunity for the perception that findings were being tweaked to suit certain agendas?
A third issue is the relationship between developed and developing worlds. Clearly, most expert scientists work in rich countries, and that's also where climate-relevant data (such as temperature records) is most abundant.
Yet if scientists from developing countries are marginalised, if Western scientific academies (or other organisations) take control, if the evidence there is of climatic changes from poor countries is neglected because it comes in a form other than peer-reviewed literature, how can this process achieve a global balance, and why should developing countries buy into it?
It's perhaps unfortunate, in retrospect, that none of Nature's chosen five contributors dealt with these very real developing world concerns.
On the one hand, apologies for devoting a whole post to this somewhat technical issue; I know how much the whole IPCC-gates thing and all the vitriol that goes with it bores and frustrates some regular readers.
On the other hand, no apologies - there's a strong case, I feel, for arguing that IPCC occupies an absolutely pivotal role, and it's well worth taking time to get the form and structure right so that it, or some other arrangement, can play the role as effectively as humanity needs it to.
If its projected ranges of temperature rise, sea level rise, rainfall change and so on do map out our planet's immediate future, then we need the best interpretations of impacts, costs and benefits - that's what the IPCC is for, and however it's constituted or whatever replaces it, it's vital that the organisation(s) performing that role must inspire trust among not only governments but the wider public.
What's your prescription?
I'm Richard Black, environment correspondent for the BBC News website. This is my take on what's happening to our shared environment as the human population grows and our use of nature's resources increases.
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~40~RS~)
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The science needs re-examined based on the true principles of science rather than the hyped politics.
It seems unlikely that the IPCC can do this because that is not why it was conceived. The IPCC was created to inform(persuade)policy makers that warming was happening and mitigation was needed. If it can be reborn well and good
While promoting Manns new interpretation of global climate it also failed to realise that there was little evidence for cause and effect as there was not enough scientific rigour in the reports. Numbers of references not being the same as the quality of the science. There is little doubt that a small and influential clique had a profound and disproportionate effect on the course of events and the reports themselves . This can not be allowed to happen again and balance is required. A few sceptics are needed to give balance.
It was simply assumed a little warming at the end of the twentieth century meant AGW was happening and radical carbon saving changes to our cultures economies and personal lifetstyles would solve the problem
The sensible people in the world are sceptical but concerned so more and better science is the answer
Like the Chinese comments
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/09/chinese-climatologist-ipcc-reform
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Well - here's an opportunity..!
Firstly - the name - and therefore its remit - needs to change. Forget 'Intergovernmental' - how about just 'International'.
Secondly - why Climate CHANGE..? Why not just Climate RESEARCH..?
Thirdly - the 'circular' approval process of the IPCC needs to to be junked. This just causes the politics to get in the way of the facts - not once, but several times.
Next - the science needs to be properly funded - strictly on the basis of impartial results - in other words, whatever the findings of the scientists, the funding stays in place.
Perhaps most crucially, contributions must be from any relevant source, but COMPLETELY transparent, and any computer modelling, homogenisation, etc, needs to be clearly explained, and the 'peer review' procedues need to be fully documented and the reviewers identified.
Finally, the management of the process must be by a committee made up of individuals who demonstrate NO conflict of interest whatsoever.
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The politics of politics. Some believe that by not looking at the problems they will simply go away. A global problem should be looked at globally. The governments are all looking for revenue so they came up with ETS and that is a political decision not one of science...nor does it address the problem. Because monies are being allocated there will be no shortage of those wishing to investigate and the proposals are more a distribution of funding than addressing the research. With the vast majority of scientist supporting the impact of fossil fuels on this matter the minority needs to present some proof of their beliefs and give up on their conspiracy theories. The consequences could be great and defining those consequences should be the goal. This is a complex issue and will evolve like every other science has, the building of information based on research.
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Prescription?
The IPCC Parrot is toast. Well and truly dead. 'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!
IPCC has completely lost all credibility.
"Peer-review" has now the same connotations as "Enron".
There is nothing worth saving anyway as none of the IPCC work was ever in the least bit "crucial for humanity's future" - it was all just another big waste of taxpayers' money and a poor excuse to misdirect government funds.
Buried under Record Snowfall
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/80485-climate-bill-buried-under-record-snowfall
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The Wiki-IPCC looks like a good idea, using new communication tools and traceability technology (including comments and criticisms by panel scientists). Could then still use 'grey' papers - just flag them accordingly.
Definitely the way to go - copy the model that is doing the damage at the moment - social media, blogs, hypertext links and aggregator-news-sites.
Open and transparent! Sounds as fair as you can get.
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@Shadorne #4
Yep, dead as a Dodo - Parrots are probably copyrighted - The warmists will be annoyed ;-)
Without at least a little bit of American support all of this rubbish is going nowhere. It's quite fitting that it's all been brought to halt by a snow storm. You seriously, couldn't make this up!
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The problem is in 'peer review'. Climate science is reviewed by apostles of climate science and because they want the money fro their mortgaged and departments they are forced to maintain the orthodoxy.
Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn's works describing a sociology of paradigm change talk about this problem of scientists being wrong (the CO2 mob) and the mechanisms of change to rectify the situation. Essentially this takes about as long as the scientists have already held the wrong idea. So you, and we, will have a good number of years until this bad error is fixed.
We will waste huge sums on reducing CO2 and expensive alternative energy generation that would otherwise be being used to ease the plight of the poor. On the upside: future generations will still have access to vast quantities of cheap coal to provide their energy! But it is a pity that we will make billions suffer (and at the margins, die) unnecessarily in our generation.
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To my mind, climate science tends to have a built-in bias.
Think of it this way: why would anyone who is sceptical of AGW want to make a career of climatology?
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Time to scrap it.
Perhaps those seeking world domination can have another go in a few years time - maybe pick something like asteroids or aliens as the new threat.
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Richard, interesting you don't mention the recent remarks of Sir David King, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government (and a believer of AGW). He outlines what many think is the problem with the IPCC.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7170299/Sir-David-King-IPCC-runs-against-the-spirit-of-science.html
Sir David King: IPCC runs against the spirit of science
“Faced with the social need to tell the world what the science says, the IPCC was set up as a means of seeking consensus. My concern has always been that it runs against the normal spirit of science.”
"In science, people are supposed to rock the boat. If someone challenges your findings, you make measurements, check the arguments, and see if they might be right. Well-established theories such as evolution and relativity have survived this process. The ideas you don’t hear about are the ones that didn’t make it through this ordeal by fire.
If you depart too far from this in your desire for consensus, the consequences can be disturbing. The emails from scientists at the University of East Anglia suggest that certain members of the IPCC felt that the consensus was so precious that some external challenges had to be kept outside the discussion. That is clearly not acceptable. "
The IPCC are advocates, not scientists, they have a belief and they are trying to persuade. What is needed is a real scientific body that is capable of looking at all the evidence in a dispassionate way, ie real science.
And the exact same thing is the problem with the BBC reporting on this issue. The have moved from journalism to activism. They see it as their duty to persuade us of their belief system. But recent polls show that, thank goodness, the public are not fooled. We know when we are being fed half-truths and biased stories, and the internet has allowed us to find the stories that don't even make it to the pages/airtime of the BBC. The reporting on the various climategate stories is a prime case of this. The BBC had to be dragged screaming and kicking to even skim the surface of some of these stories.
Proper science, and proper journalism is all we ask!
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"Buried under Record Snowfall" #4
Oh dear, someone else that doesn't know the difference between weather and climate, or much about earth's natural climate variability systems.
(For those that want a reminder of the difference between climate and weather: http://sites.google.com/site/weatherandclimate/ )
According to records going back to 1950, this is one of the strongest El Ninos combined with the most negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Arctic Oscillation (AO) yet seen during a winter.
The northern polar region is thus colder than usual, but the equatorial Pacific is warmer than usual.
The NAO index for the month of December 2009 was -1.93, which is the third lowest NAO index since 1950 for a winter month (December, January, or February).
It went even lower in early January 2010. The only winter months with a lower NAO index were February 1978 (-2.20) and January 1963 (-2.12).
January 1963 was one of the coldest months on record in the both United Kingdom and the eastern regions of the USA.
We're seeing a repeat of those conditions.
The Arctic Oscillation (AO) also plunged in early January (when the UK had its big freeze). When negative large anticyclones push cold arctic air away from the Arctic towards NW Europe and eastern USA.
The AO became positive again on 17th Jan, that's when Britain came out of its really cold spell.
The AO currently is back in a negative state, but not as low as a few weeks ago.
The current El Nino is at its strongest since at least 2002.
The Australian Meteorological Bureau reported (6th Jan. 2010):
“Central Pacific Ocean temperatures remain well above El Nino thresholds. Trade wind strength returned to near normal over the past fortnight, slightly reducing the excessive warmth of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. However, significant areas remain more than 2 degrees C above average at the surface, and over 4 degrees C warmer than normal at depth."
If you've played attention to the weather blogs in the past few weeks:
"The El Nino pattern over the last several weeks has been very strong, prompting many major blizzards for the mid-Atlantic region. This pattern should fade by the end of winter.
As the eastern half of the U.S. is seeing more snowfall, South-eastern Canada is suffering a major lack in snow. The 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver is also suffering from warm, dry conditions as a result."
http://www.accuweather.com/news-weather-features.asp
e.g. "Warm El Nino water in the tropical pacific is both putting more moisture into the atmosphere and also changes wind patterns across the U.S., driving the Polar jet stream to the north and southern jet just to our south. Storms forming over the west coast are being driven east into the Tri-State by the southern jet stream.
These storms are capable of also drawing in moisture from the Gulf and dropping heavy snow over the eastern third of the U.S.A."
http://www.wfie.com/Global/story.asp?S=11953432
Interestingly January overall was anomalously warm, over the oceans in particular. In fact JANUARY 2010 WAS THE WARMEST JANUARY IN THE 32-YEAR SATELLITE-BASED DATA RECORD.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2010/02/january-2010-warmest-on-record.shtml
If you know of the sceptic Roy Spencer; even he (and John Christy) have confirmed that "this is the warmest January in the 32-year satellite-based data record."
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/02/january-2010-uah-global-temperature-update-0-72-deg-c/
Coldest winter? In some regions perhaps, but by no means everywhere - some regions have had warmer than average conditions e.g.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010954521_warmjanuary02m.html
- and not globally.
I've maintained (and updated) a web-page looking at and illustrating what's been going on globally methodologically-wise the past few months; it explains the above in more depth.
http://sites.google.com/site/whythe2009winterissocold/
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Mike Hulme's perspectives are easy to understand. Probable motivation in his case is that he hasn't been a big deal in past IPCC reports. But he'd like to be. So what better than to suggest the terms of his own future engagement.
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The whole IPCC thing is unravelling before our eyes.
Thousands of scientists have had a decade to find convincing evidence for their climate change ideas.
Why did they end up in this mess ?
Couldn't they find any real evidence ?
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Maybe the IPCC could use Mike's Nature trick to, err, hide the decline.
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The problem is credibility.
The IPCC hasn't got it any more.
Without credibility, it will always be open to criticism.
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@11 SheffTim,
You are in danger of being kicked out of the alarmists camp, you posted some reasonable explanations of current weather/climate fluctuations , but you didn't mention CO2 !!!
Try harder , your letting the side down !
Most of the regular "so called" denialists/sceptics/flat earthers on here , in no way deny that climate changes, always has , always will , but as your own long list shows , there is no anthropogenic signature in it.
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When everyone knows the IPCC as the International Pack of Climate Crooks, you know it's time to disband the complete edifice and start concentrating on society's real problems.
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...... but back to RB's post .
Get rid of the politicians, get rid of the lobbyists ( from both sides) and lets have proper scientific research and the scientists arguing both sides cogently.
Perhaps the worlds governments should set up a fund which can be split 50/50 between outwardly pro/sceptical scientists thereby removing the funding battles?
A thoroughly INDEPENDENT research institute not dependent on grants or lobbyists funding ?
I can but dream.
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11. At 8:03pm on 10 Feb 2010, SheffTim wrote:
"Buried under Record Snowfall" #4 Oh dear, someone else that doesn't know the difference between weather and climate, or much about earth's natural climate variability systems.
SheffTim,
I quite agree with you. Of course this cold winter and the non "met office BBQ summer" of 2009 and the rapid arctic ice recovery since 2007, the non-catastrophic melting of Himalayan Glaciers and countless other completely NON-unprecedented weather patterns indicate that climate is just varying naturally - nothing unusual at all. It got colder in the 70's too and then warmer in the 80's and 90's - none of that was unprecedented either. We even had a Medieval Warm Period and even further back we had an ice age.
I quite agree with you - there is no absolutely no justification for alarmism. There is no reason at all to suspect that man-made CO2 is anything more harmful than extra plant food. A warming effect, if any, seems negligible compared to the natural factors you mention.
This is why we don't need an IPCC. They only fabricate alarmist problems where none exists.
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It’s a very difficult area deciding who should endorse the science. Making it politically correct is unfortunately how the science gets distorted
I can’t help feeling a UN body is the correct path to keeping the global community involved. The harsh reality is that a lot of good science is terribly expensive and will not easily be produced in developing countries. That does not mean it’s impossible.
One clear misunderstanding is that everything published is good or that gray literature is bad, just that the reports have to explain how the evidence is graded and its significance scientifically. Gray literature may indeed be the basis for the next ground breaking study
Richard has avoided all discussion recently of how the BBC has failed to genuinely help explain climate science. I think other departments seem to have allowed much more debate of the data v facts v cause and effect. The CRU emails demonstrate exactly how the IPCC was overtaken by a small group of zealots who had a disproportionate input into the reports. Their science (as read in the emails is discussed less and less as the politics takes over)
In the modern world the mainstream media must be involved in balanced sceptical reporting of all new ideas for that is what we require to test an idea. As Copenhagen approached for example reporting by the BBC of the global temperature at the end of this century simply got higher and higher.This kind of reporting is not impartial and quite obviously damages the public image of science. While weather is not climate we have listened for years as extreme weather events were attributed to AGW.
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I believe that the Einstein paper on Photoelectic Effect was around 1905 and the Nobel Prize was awarded in 1921.....such is the role of deniers in science. Science is petty at times and the academics are always jealous of who gets attention. Those who do the work, are questioned...those who question hardly ever do the work.
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@SheffTim #11
I'd recommend that you actually read the article on the end of the link, rather than making yourself look like a.................
Other than that, thanks for pointing out what the differences between weather and climate are - It was news to me and I found it very informative.
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I do believe part of that refit, is the uses of computer software in science: Auditing, qa, peer review, does not appear to happen of the software.
If you're going to do good science, release the computer code too:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/05/science-climate-emails-code-release
Some concerns on the Climate Gate scandal in respect to
the IT software involved:
3) As this is government (public) funded in should not any software
developed to manipulate, adjust the raw global data, follow the same standards, methodologies, qa, version control, auditing processes, etc as any other HM government IT project.
Tim Mitchell with a GEOGRAPHY degree, gets his climate science Phd at the
Climate Research Unit – East Anglia...
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timm/personal/index.html
(the Dr Tim Mitchell in – Harry_Read_me.txt)
He apparently learns fortran and writes a lot of the code to process, adjust the weather station data in HADCRU datasets..
(ie Tim's labyrinthine software suites)
(one of three GLOBAL datasets, used in man made climate change research)
Lots of interesting hard coding, adjustment, data integrity issues, etc..
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/climategate-the-smoking-code/
"what did Tim do? – says Harry (trying to produce hadcru 3.0))
Dr Tim Mitchell:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timm/data/index.html
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timm/data/index-table.html
All the AGW supporters downplay the climate gate scandal just a few private emails with scientists being rude:
Yet the climategate whistleblowing, released, 1000's of other documents and computer code as well.
Including - Harry_Read_me.txt - a programmers notes, as he is looking at what has gone before, trying to produce HAdCru 3.0 (
CRU provides one of three datasets (Hadcru) for OTHER researchers:
(we have since seen that the 3 are more interlinked than previously thought)
"An important part of my work is to develop climate data-sets. My intention is that these data-sets will then be used by researchers investigating the impacts of climate change. Here I provide access to these data-sets."
CRU TS 1.2 10′ Europe 1901-2000 time-series pre, tmp, dtr, vap, cld MITCHELL et al, 2003 this site
CRU TS 2.0 0.5° globe 1901-2000 time-series pre, tmp, dtr, vap, cld MITCHELL et al, 2003 this site
(full list see the link)
There are three centres which calculate global-average temperature each
month.
link: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/...
•Met Office, in collaboration with the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UK)
•Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is part of NASA (USA)
•National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (USA)”
“Do the EAU/CRU scientists:
1) "understand" the statistics (ie mcintyre, and others think not - climateaudit ) in the model, and
2) certain that their statistical method has been properly programmed into their model? Of course this carries over into the peer review process; if the software programs and data are not made available for public scrutiny, then the peer review process is relegated to joke status.”
3) As this is government (public) funded in should not any software
developed to manipulate, adjust the raw data, follow the same standards,
methodologies, qa, version control, auditing processes, etc as any other HM government IT project.
4) The Computer code should be made availbale for Peer Review and a Software Development audit
5) The raw data used should be provided to allow other to reproduce the
work.
6) The assumptions, statistical methods, algorithms should be described, and the reasoning for adjustments explained..
7)CRU, have routinely denied any access to the raw data, excpet to their
inner circle
8)In the climate gate emails, following freedom of information requests,
they state would rather delete the weather station data, that supply it to someone who would just try to pick holes in it(ie the whole point of peer review – test it)
9)They have admitted, losing the raw historic data. All that is available is their adjusted data.
10)In light of the following information there are of course additional
concerns about the raw data supplied to CRU
6000 weather stations previously used – reducing to ~1500.
Russian weather stations cherry picked ( a large number of rurals not used)
Darwin station: unexplained adjustments show rise in adjusted data vs ‘flat’ raw data
New Zealand: Unexplained adjustemnts show rise in adjustmed data vs ‘flat’ raw data
USA: loss of rural weather stations:
USA: weather stations do not comply with standards
Etc. (see watts up, and others)
Tim Mitchell left Tyndall in 2004 and went to study at LTS - London
Theological Seminary
He left without apparently leaving much documentation, on HADCRU 1.2, 2.0
And if you read - the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file. You can see that Harry is trying to WORK out what had gone before, for anybody, in the IT industry who has tendered on work in a government funded IT project. this is Shocking.
My concern is not about any individual, but a department and science,
that would appear to either not understand, or do not think the following applies to Climate research: coding standards, procedure, methodology,documentation,qa processes, data handling and data integrity.
I imagine an audit of the software development processes would be interesting to see.
Steve Mosher sums it up:
“So, I take a hard hard line on this.
If you dont freely release your data and freely release your code
in all cases then I am not rationally bound toeven consider your claims.
You haven't produced science, you've just advertised it.
The real science, is not the paper describing the data, its not the words
describing the algorithm. the real science is the data AS YOU USED IT
and the code AS YOU RAN IT.
To check your science in the most efficient way, we need the data as used
and the code as ran.”
Considering how many trillions are going to be spent and the billions that have been spent.
Maybe, it is time for a pause, and review everything with an 'open mind',
Like the Chinese:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7067505/China-has-open-mind-about-cause-of-climate-change.html
So we have the time, as no political agreement is likely to happen any time, this year anyway...
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Refitting the IPCC?
This would be just more procrastination, rewarding the scepto-politico ‘business as usual’ brigade for their disgraceful conduct and on-going smear and disinformation campaign.
What’s more, a few more years would pass and they wouldn’t believe the new data any more than the old – that’s what they do!
And after all, the science isn’t going to tell us anything different than what we already know and have known for many years. See below:-
This, for instance, is what Richard Leakey was referring to, in his lecture in Edinburgh, in relation to the Antarctic peninsular.
0.5 deg C warming per decade, in the area, since the 1940’s equates to about 3 deg C total to date, leading to the Larsen B Ice Shelf Collapse in January 2002.
Quote:-
‘….This is the largest single event in a series of retreats by ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula over the last 30 years. The retreats are attributed to a strong climate warming in the region. The rate of warming is approximately 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, and the trend has been present since at least the late 1940s. Overall in the Antarctic Peninsula, the extent of seven ice shelves has declined by a total of about 13,500 square kilometers (43,800 square miles) since 1974. This value excludes areas that would be expected to calve under stable conditions…’
http://nsidc.org/news/press/larsen_B/2002.html
This is also interesting from Walter N. Meier who is a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, CIRES.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTfrUCOkefc
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"Thousands of scientists have had a decade to find convincing evidence for their climate change ideas. Why did they end up in this mess ? Couldn't they find any real evidence ?" #13
The properties of greenhouse gasses can be demonstrated in any high school lab; their existence is not doubted.
The role of GHGs in maintaining earth's atmosphere at a temperature higher than it would otherwise be (around minus 18 degrees C) without them had been known for well over a century.
The logic that increasing their quantity in the atmosphere will have an effect on temperature, resulting in consequent climate change is to my mind infallible.
It has been borne out by isotopes from sea bed drill cores going back deep into geographic time, the geological record etc
They show that much warmer periods in earth's history e.g. Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum, were associated with higher levels of CO2 and CH4 etc; cooler periods with low concentrations of GHG's.
http://sites.google.com/site/thepaleoceneeocenethermalmaxim/home
The mainstream climate science community has provided a well-developed, internally consistent theory that explains and accounts for the warming during the 20th century and makes an honest attempt, based on the known physical properties of greenhouse gasses and of what is known of earth’s climate systems, to predict what could happen if they rise significantly further.
(I guess you haven't sat down and read both the 1,000 page IPCC reports: The Scientific Basis & Impact Assessment. No? Quelle surprise. (I have btw, and a fair bit more.)
Where is the sceptic community's model, hypothesis or case that CO2 and other GHGs do not and will not affect global temperatures, with consequent impacts on ocean/atmosphere interactions and therefore climate variability systems.
The sceptics also need to come up with a convincing explanation for why a 35% increase in the second most important greenhouse gas would NOT affect the global temperature?
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Is the IPCC 'unravelling', a 'dead parrot' etc. hardly.
I haven't seen anything in the various recent 'gates' that even dents the GHG hypothesis.
Glaciergate. One IPCC author pointed out and corrected an error by another IPCC author. Hardly a conspiracy, and only one small part of a much, much larger report
Jone's use of the word 'trick' in his email?
I've certainly explained things, on many topics, to people by using the expression 'the trick is'. I'm sure many readers here have too.
Use of the word 'trick' is used widely in many fields, including, science to denote a 'technique', not deceit. Below is an example from a calculus exercise.
"How would I take the derivative dy/dx of the function x^2y+xy^3-3x=6. x=4, y=1?
The Trick Is to always add a dy/dx whenever you differentiate a function in y."
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Calculus-2063/2009/6/Taking-derivative-function-variables-1.htm
As for the ‘decline’ - it's known that K. Briffa’s ring density proxy (but only this one in this region) diverges from the temperature records after 1960.
In other words the summer temperature record for that region records rising temperatures after 1960, but the tree-ring data doesn't. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6668/abs/391678a0.html
This is known as the “divergence problem” and has been discussed in the literature since, e.g. Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682).
The authors always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, whilst undertaking further research to understand why this happened; so not using that data was a correct response.
Was it an attempt to hide a decline in temperature? Given the year the email was written, 1999, it can't be.
At that time there was no suggestion of a decline in global temperatures.
The previous year was the warmest on record, coming on top of a run of record warm years in the warmest decade of the century. Yet that is what sceptics claim.
Scientists are human too. Gosh, you'll be telling me teachers and the police are too next. That's not a reason to abolish them.
OK, we know politics is a rough and tumble business, and much of the climate debate is now ideologically driven (much as the creation vs evolution debate is), and not actually about the science, but I can tell which side is being most dishonest, and that which has most made up its mind -as most posts above show.
Still, if the Web had been around 100 years ago, this is how I imagine the debate over the (then unproven) existence of ice ages or tectonic plates would have been like.
"Perhaps the world's governments should set up a fund which can be split 50/50 between outwardly pro/sceptical scientists thereby removing the funding battles? A thoroughly INDEPENDENT research institute not dependent on grants or lobbyists funding ?"
Yeah, like funding creationist as well as biologists and geneticists and expecting to find 'the real facts of the matter'.
blunderbunny #23. Oh, I did :-)
I wouldn't want to look like a ...... now would I?
For what its worth I've stated before that I doubt we'll be able to really do much to stop GHG concentrations rising. There is no 'off the shelf' alternative fuel source readily to hand.
That isn't an argument not to try and find realistic alternatives; not least because at some point fossil fuels will become scarcer, harder to extract and more expensive so we need to try and plan for what will replace them - and with oil it could be this century.
Otherwise I think we're in the adaptation game climate wise.
So, we're running a real-world, real-time experiment. By the mid century we should be able to judge if the IPCC is right or wrong.
I disagree BTW with #19s assertion that its all down to natural variability - and one or two winters are weather remember, not climate that is judged over decades. See also the points I opened this post with.
If there's one indicator to watch it's precipitation patterns and how any changes impact on agriculture.
PS. I'm off to bed - I don't feel under any obligation to respond to any post; life is busy at the moment. But I'll look in.
PPS. LarryKealey, if you see this - I've seen you post here - did you make the Nationals (skydiving) last Nov? Hope you're on the mend.
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Peter317 at #8 says:-
‘…Think of it this way: why would anyone who is sceptical of AGW want to make a career of climatology?’
This could also be rephrased:
‘..Think of it this way: why would anyone who is sceptical of the link between smoking and lung cancer want to make a career in medicine?’
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Richard, Hi
Seems like whatever you write, there are those among us who just dive in with the same old verbal diarrhea.
You write:-
"I know how much the whole IPCC-gates thing and all the vitriol that goes with it bores and frustrates some regular readers."
I become "grumpy" when many totally ignore anything you report and fly headlong into some pre-determined opinion and agenda. No-one yet has answered your final question.
For instance (nothing personal here, Dempster, your comment happens to be handy and relevant to my point. There are many who hold the same view as you.)
15. At 8:44pm on 10 Feb 2010, Dempster wrote:
"The problem is credibility.
The IPCC hasn't got it any more.
Without credibility, it will always be open to criticism."
WITH WHOM?
AS Richard points out:-
"Firstly, the IPCC speaks directly to governments. They endorse its reports - and all members, including the climate-sceptical US under George W Bush, have endorsed them - basically because they own the process.
One lead author observed to me in 2007, as the fourth assessment report (AR4) came out, that without such direct involvement, the reports would carry much less weight in the corridors of power; and that caveat is surely as correct now as it was then."
In other words.........those that make decisions, (Governments) and those among us who establish "Policy" (Governments!) are STILL endorsing the IPCC.
So, if the IPCC have lost "credibility" with you, me, Blunderbunny, Bowman, LarryKealey or whoever, in the big scheme of things it doesn't matter diddly squat, they still have credibility with those that matter, the World Governments. Ample evidence of this is available on-line from the letters sent in to endorse the "Copenhagen Accords".
While the World (after all this is a Global matter) Governments endorse IPCC Reports, we will see them continue to follow their advice.
The second important point you raise, Richard, is that the IPCC members DO NOT GET PAID! Their job is to "assess" all the relevant information available (and that includes the "negative" information AND the "grey" information, much of which is produced by scientists and others many of whom (BUT NOT ALL) Do get paid.
So................who does PAY THEM?
That's where things get interesting.
Yes, many of them (probably the majority) are paid by Government. That of course means........you've got it'''''''''YOU AND ME!
Which of course brings us to the next point.
For those among us demanding "Better Science", this will require "Better Funding"! Please remember that old saying relating to peanuts and monkeys.
So Richard asks:
"Would funding have to come from a few governments, providing even more opportunity for the perception that findings were being tweaked to suit certain agendas?"
Now,.....guess which "few" governments would be prepared to front up to "funding" and guess where they would get the money from?????????
That's right...........you are way ahead of me..................YOU AND ME!!!!!!!!!
So, Richard asks at the end:-
"What's your prescription?"
Just to set the cat among the pigeons, here's mine.
Firstly .........Maintain the IPCC..........it's costing us nothing.
Secondly.........Re-define the Terms of Reference for Working Group 1 (see reasoning later)
Thirdly..........Maintain Working Group two...no change.
Fourthly.........Disband Working Group 3
Reasoning:
In 1988 IPCC was established with three objectives (in simple language)
One.....Is there a problem Wkg Gp 1?
Two ....If so, what are the consequences Wkg 2? and
Three...What options exist to mitigate the effects Wkg Gp 3?
Since 1990, Wkg 1 is to a large extent just repeating the same outcome....Yes there is a problem since no HARD evidence has been evaluated to change that decision. So.....change the Terms of Reference to read (words to the effect):-
"It is the responsibility of Working Group 1 to Research, Identify and Evaluate ALL Information that is Sceptical of the current Position"
In other words........Prove the Hypothesis of AGW wrong or (since that requires certainty where certainty cannot exist) Demonstrate that the Probability that GW is caused by Natural Causes rather than man-made activity is greater.
Working Group 2 is still evaluating new information all the time. The data available today is NOT the same as the data available in 1998 so their work will remain relevant as data gathering continues.
Now for Working Group 3! Once again here we find that essentially their recommendations for "mitigation" have not changed substantially. Basically their recommendation can be described as "Move away from dependence on Fossil Fuels" Nothing more, nothing less. Remember, it was not them recommended ETS and Carbon Trading or Carbon Taxes.
So........since one day we will be forced to follow that recommendation anyway, and since they can't come up with anything new and if anything new does arise out of technology advances in any case (IPCC are not there to "Invent" solutions),.....my recommendation is......simply...disband them!
Now.......... that's my tuppeny worth to Richards question.....so get stuck in and come up with yours!
In the meantime,.........Thank you Richard........interesting and well-balanced article.
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In a mere 2000 years, the Population of the World has increased at least 10 fold. When Jesus is said to have remarked, "go forth and multiply," I doubt if he meant as human destroyers of the Earth.
People=Factories=Pollution=Climate Change=Chaos=Global Degradation=Loss of Nature's Flora and Fauna!
And people say, "we are God's creatures."
We are a VIRUS on Earth.
Spreading people around the World is NO solution at all.
Populations must be reduced.
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The Climate Debate. Has nobody got the GUTS to speak the truth?
When I was 16 the World had 1/3 of its present population. (SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH.)
By all means cut emissions, in the mean-time. However, there is only ONE true way to cut Pollution.
CUT THE WORLD POPULATION EXPLOSION by restricting Families to a Maximum of TWO children per family.
Reward, with Tax incentives, any families with less.
Punish, by Tax hikes, and any other means, families with more than two.
Outlaw increasing GDP.
People=Factories=Pollution=Global Warming=CHAOS & Starvation= destruction of the World’s FAUNA & FLORA (OK! ANIMALS & PLANTS.)
HAVE OUR BRAINS ATROPHIED?
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This little film is a very interesting summary. Includes the concept of Arctic sea ice volume as well as ice extent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nruCRcbnY0&feature=video_response
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25. At 10:07pm on 10 Feb 2010, SheffTim wrote:
"PS. - I don't feel under any obligation to respond to any post; life is busy at the moment. But I'll look in.
PPS. LarryKealey, if you see this - I've seen you post here - did you make the Nationals (skydiving) last Nov? Hope you're on the mend."
Would just like to endorse both comments.
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#26:
And that's your idea of an analogy, is it?
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the IPPCC is always gonna be doubted by the people until someone with real scientific credentials, like sarah palin is in charge.
i say sack those biased university trained scientists. they have studied it far too much to see the BIG picture. keep replacing em until they tell us what we wanna hear!
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World Climate: HOT-COLD-WET-DRY. What the hell does it matter?
More than a third of species assessed in a major international biodiversity study are threatened with extinction, scientists have warned.
These included 21% of all known mammals, 30% of amphibians, 70% of plants and 35% of invertebrates.
At what point will society truly respond to this growing crisis?
Professor Jonathan Baillie,
Zoological Society of London.
This is caused entirely by the increase in Human Population!
It cannot go on. Spreading people around the world is NOT the answer.
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@Peter Wignall #28/29
Re: "We are a VIRUS" and "HAVE OUR BRAINS ATROPHIED"
Seriously mate, I think it's time for you to put down the keyboard and step away from the computer and if you're still drinking caffeine, now might just be a good time to quit.
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#28:
"Populations must be reduced."
Will you be the first to volunteer then? ;-)
Seriously though, most of the population explosion stems from poorer communities, because, historically, poverty and disease meant that few children survived to adulthood - so people had lots of children.
The solution is better education and living standards for those people - and restricting growth is hardly the way to achieve that.
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Peter Wignall at #29 says:-
‘…CUT THE WORLD POPULATION EXPLOSION by restricting Families to a Maximum of TWO children per family…...’
Peter, we’ve discussed this many times before and I know it sounds great as a sound bite. The truth is that, even with draconian measures on population control (that are, anyway, completely unacceptable to most people in the world for a myriad of reasons) the world’s population will not stabilise under 9 billion by mid century. Look under demographic momentum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_momentum
So we have to live with that as a fact.
In fact, fertility rates are falling quite rapidly all over the world anyway but that will not alter the reality above.
There’s no ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card except that each and everyone of us has to take personal responsibility for global pollution and resource depletion by individually consuming way less and rapidly phasing out the use of fossil fuels.
The rest of it is just passing the buck and talk (like this blog).
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"CUT THE WORLD POPULATION EXPLOSION by restricting Families to a Maximum of TWO children per family."
the masses really couldnt handle that one lol. imagine the denialism if that ever entered the mainstream!
the biggest taboo of all.
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GDP is the curse of the World and is the MANTRA of blind Politicians and MAD Businessmen and B/Women.
It OVERPOPULATES the World to increase Profits and expansion.
There must be a way of containing Factories at a Constant level of Production and fixed Divdend of 5%.
Now is the time to rearrange World attitudes to Capitalism.
Maybe China will look into it?
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@andy765tr
Absolutely fantastic, warmists are trying to do humour now. So, sceptics are poorly educated republicans from Alaska who insist on not listening to you, then?
It seems like you and Peter should get on like a house on fire. Rational climate debate seems to be bit of a common interest for both of you.
Maybe you might like to form your own replacement for the IPCC? You never know, in comparison to those currently in charge you might actually do alright.
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SheffTim: I disagree BTW with #19s assertion that its all down to natural variability.
You may disagree but the reality is we cannot model natural variability because we do not even begin to fully understand it. Since we cannot model natural variability we do not have a hope in heaven of calculating the "expected" small contribuition from man-made CO2.
In conclusion, either way it is all just a belief or idle speculation. Those who believe in the CO2 Bogeyman cannot prove that man-made CO2 is having any significant effect in the real world. Since there is nothing at all unusual or unprecedented about our climate then why jump to alarmist conclusions such as the IPCC have promulgated?
Clearly we don't need the IPCC Parrot.
Let's leave Dr Pachauri Parrot nailed to his perch and move on to worry about real issues - like overfishing and deforestation - rather than imaginary ones!
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#25:
Yet another person who assumes that sceptics know nothing about science, and can't tell the difference between weather and climate. Funny that, I have actually read the IPCC reports, and the more I read the more sceptical I get.
You focus on one little word, 'trick', which unfortunately was taken out of context and blown up out of all proportion in certain circles, while ignoring all the other goings on - like the deliberate attempts to control the peer-review process.
You make out that 'glaciergate' was a triviality - a small error. Wrong. It wasn't just slightly wrong, it was hugely wrong - in fact, completely implausible. And, while you're correct that it was pointed out by another IPCC author, that was BEFORE the report was published. It was published despite the fact that it had a glaring, and known, error. When, years later, another Indian scientist published a paper showing that the glaciers weren't disappearing at an anomalous rate, he was publicly accused by Dr Pachauri of being 'arrogant' and of practicing 'voodoo science'. The IPCC have subsequently been forced, by circumstances, to admit their error, but, to my knowledge, there's still been no apology from Pachauri.
Speaking of Pachauri, did you miss seeing the interview with him in which he, incredulously, accused Jonathan Leake of being a sceptic, intent on undermining climate science?
And did you miss seeing Al Gore stating, on television, to millions of people, that the temperature of the Earth's interior, a few kilometres down, is 'several million degrees'?
And, back onto the 'weather isn't climate' meme, how come almost every extreme weather event that comes along is seized upon by alarmists as being evidence of AGW?
Lastly, you say:
"The sceptics also need to come up with a convincing explanation for why a 35% increase in the second most important greenhouse gas would NOT affect the global temperature?"
I doubt that many knowledgeable sceptics would claim that. The big question is, by how much? And, with all the other forces at play, is it a significant amount?
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Hilarious. Billions of dollars already spent and the answer is more money. Who would have thought it.
I give up.
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SheffTim #25,
The real significance of the divergence problem is that it shows that paleodendrochronolgy is worthless. Why haven't they been able to explain the problems with Briffa's results since they recommended investigating 12 years ago? They didn't even bother looking. The reconstructions of past temperatures produced by the hockey team must be discarded. Similarly the 19th and early 20th century temperature products of GISS and CRU cannot be trusted in light of various agencies' adjustments (which serve to do little but make the past slightly colder and the present much warmer in comparison for arcane and sometimes forgotten reasons) and Phil Jones' continued insistence that the urban heat effect is vastly smaller than common sense and experience proves.
The fledgling science of climatology was destroyed by zealots who made the physical properties of the carbon dioxide molecule the foundation for a charlatan house of cards. Wiser men would have admitted how little they knew instead of petulantly dismissing and denigrating their critics as the hockey team and their cheerleaders did. The publication in the last month revealing an intense stratospheric water vapour forcing and the hugely overestimated oceanic CO2 outgassing feedback prove that humanity knows next to nothing about how our world's climate works. Climate sensitivity can't be as high as you believe or the 2007 Arctic melt (which the climatological elite unsurprisingly failed to predict) would have shown some sort of signal.
You say that the runaway AGW theory is "well-developed, internally consistent". So what? That is a characteristic of all but surrealist fiction. If an episode of Eastenders has a continuity error they get letters of complaint. Until the IPCC and CRU's multitudinous gaffes were exposed anyone who questioned them was equated with those who doubted the reality of the Holocaust. The IPCC's AR4 is riddled with errors and lies; here's the latest where they invented a problem that didn't exist and couldn't be proven to be AGW related even if it did:
http://climatequotes.com/2010/02/10/ipcc-burned-on-claim-of-wildfires-affecting-canadian-tourism/
It's not up to "skeptics" to provide alternative models or disprove hypotheses. The AGW fanatics must try to prove their case. Computer models don't cut it - not by a long shot - and right now their garbage-in-garbage-out "tell me what I want to hear" algorithms are the only leg they have to stand on. In the last half million years the Earth has spent the vast majority of its time in a glacial state. That is the only climatic threat we should be worried about as cold and famine would kill off a good deal of us.
The IPCC seems to have been set up purely to apportion blame to humanity and warn of dire consequences based on newspaper clippings. They should have stuck to stating what they could scientifically support - that is to say: very little. The Himalayan debacle is the least of their worries. Global tropical storm energy is at a 30-year low despite their hysterical warnings and Al gore photoshopping monster storms onto the cover of his book. Take this sensationalist rambling from a climatological Svengali, Kevin Anderson "If you have got a population of nine billion by 2050 and you hit 4C, 5C or 6C, you might have half a billion people surviving."
What nonsense. Anderson should be on the dole for stating alarmist rubbish like that. Even if every bit of ice on the planet were to melt the higher temperatures, increased precipitation and CO2 levels as well as the fertile soil newly thawed in the far North would likely leave us well able to manage despite the rising waters. In any case, at present melt rates the Antarctic will still be uninhabitably ice-bound in 300,000 years. But don't man your canoe just yet since we're due a couple of ice ages during that interval.
Satellite observations show that global temperatures haven't risen to a statistically significant degree for 15 years. And it has been colder than 1998 in every subsequent year.
Try reading AR4 again and this time check how many of their claims stand up to scrutiny. Then read through the CRU's emails and try to figure out how "human" they are. You should stop pretending that you have science on your side because you don't. Science isn't done by consensus. Luckily for us all democracy is.
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Peter317 and Pachauri. "It's worth remembering that he was appointed to run the IPCC after the Bush administration had his predecessor, Bob Watson, booted out at the behest of ExxonMobil. On 6 February 2001, 17 days after George W Bush was sworn in, AG (Randy) Randol, ExxonMobil's senior environmental adviser, sent a fax to John Howard, an environmental official at the White House. He asked:
"Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the US?"
The US government immediately complied. Once it had extracted Watson, it accepted Pachauri as his replacement. The very qualities which made him acceptable to the climate change deniers in the White House – he wasn't a climate scientist, he had friendly relations with business – are now being used by climate change deniers as a stick with which to beat him."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/feb/02/climate-change-hacked-emails
Pachauri should go. Put a scientist back in charge of the IPCC. Hes the cause of many of these problems.
I'm not a fan of Gore, but I do know volcanoes are real.
"Between 100 and 200 kilometers below the Earth's surface, the temperature of the rock is near the melting point; molten rock erupted by some volcanoes originates in this region of the mantle."
http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/interior/
You said " The big question is, by how much? And, with all the other forces at play, is it a significant amount?"
Ok, we could set up a body to look into this, lets call it - the IPCC.
Don't you find it odd that most people that study the planets past, climate, weather and life and so on tend to go along with the IPCC?
Its mainly the type of bloke you meet in a pub that doesn't.
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Science isn't done by consensus. Luckily for us all democracy is.
You mean a vote on evolution/creationism in Arkansas, or Saudi Arabia, or here, settles the matter! Science as a public opinion poll, that'll be fun. Back to the dark ages.
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1) If it is replaced with a Wiki, then the administrators must be squeaky clean. (Google Wikipedia and William Connelly.)
2) Any replacement panel would need a balance of distinguished scientists who would be agnostic, but failing that an equal number of sceptics. Maybe they should all be sceptics, as long as their criticism can be scientifically justified. That is the basis of good science.
3) As stated before, there must be no vested interests. No participant can benefit financially by investments in recommended outcomes.
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#46 jayfurneaux,
You shouldn't just misrepresent what I wrote.
I trust everything but the last 2 sentences is fine by you?
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It would be nice to think that the exposure of the IPCC scam will have far reaching implications for alarmists in our media (BBC gets top marks for alarmism).
Sadly, this is probably unlikely and a new "end-of-the-world" scenario (or a multitude of them) will come and hanut us in the near future.
As this article points out, "Exaggeration and alarmism have been a chronic weakness of environmentalism since it became an organized movement in the 1960s. Every ecological problem was instantly transformed into a potential world-ending crisis, from the population bomb to the imminent resource depletion of the “limits to growth” fad of the 1970s to acid rain to ozone depletion, always with an overlay of moral condemnation of anyone who dissented from environmental correctness."
http://article.nationalreview.com/424508/climate-gtterdmmerung/the-editors
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For once, please, do it in less dirty way. Where everyone in the panel put their money on the energy saving company stocks or similar and hope it will rise with their "climate change claim".
I'm hoping for IPCC reform. The panel should be international panel.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
The press reports on this issue have got things wildly and irresponsibly out of perspective.
The Himalayan Glacier claim didn't make it into the Summary for Policy makers (or SPM), which is the document that policy makers such as governments go on and base their policy on. So it had absolutely no impact on policy - yet most of the press reports have pretended that it was a central feature of the IPCC report. It wasn't. It was a small and insignificant paragraph in a several hundred page report.
Had it been in the draft SPM, it would have been subjected to far more scrutiny than it actually was, and would not have got through.
The Amazon claim has been backed up as being accurate by many rainforest experts. It's true that it cited "grey literature" rather than peer reviewed papers, but that fact does not make it inaccurate. And in any case, it, too, was NOT included in the Summary for Policy Makers, so had no effect whatsoever on policy.
Working Group I of the IPCC (on the physical science of climate change) is based entirely on peer reviewed literature. Working Group II (on the likely impacts) is not, and for the reasons Richard gave in his article, it would be a retrograde step if it were. But non-peer reviewed citations are (rightly) given a lot less weight in Working Group II than are peer reviewed ones.
As for the so-called "Climate gate", there are no valid reasons for associating anything in the stolen emails with a serious criticism of the IPCC. While it is true that in one of the emails, Phil Jones said that he'd like to keep a couple of (very poor quality) papers out of the IPCC report (not because he disagreed with them but because he considered them to be very poor quality), the fact is that both papers WERE included in the IPCC reports - so the email actually illustrates the integrity of the IPCC process, by showing that even when some IPCC authors would like some papers to be excluded, they don't get their way.
There are very good reasons why the IPCC has been organised in the way that it has, some of which Richard mentions in his article, and most of the propsosed changes would be a very serious retrograde step. The glacier episode illustrates that there is a need to tighten up its review process, but one inaccurate paragraph in a 500+ page report is not a reason to pretend that its credibility is seriously in question among anyone who doesn't have an agenda, or who hasn't been misled by the highly misleading reporting in most of the press.
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With the recent revelations about EAU, the intransagence of China, India and others in cutting back CO2 emissions at Copenhagen, the weakness of the American economy, and now the unseasonably harsh winter in the Eastern United States, It's time for a makeover. Not only will the faces need to be changed but so will the name. Henceforth the religion will no longer be called "global warming" it will from here on out be known as "climate change."
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Dave Redo,
The Himalayan nonsense was rattled off at speeches by various dignitaries as if it were true. Do you think many politicians actually read the SPM?
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A New Record for Snowfall in Washington. It is a frozen wasteland out there.
http://www.youtube.com/user/M4GW#p/a/u/0/u03QcymdCtg
If there is a God then surely she is laughing right now at the silly insignificant humans who proclaim they control the global climate!!!
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The notoriously liberal New York Times has now cast its long dark shadow of doubt on the IPCC. This was a surprise.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/science/earth/09climate.html
In the United States for the time being, the argument for climate change is for all practical intents and purposes dead. If those scientists who still have any credibility left are concerned and want to do something about it, they had better start all over again and this time make a convincing scientific case for it instead of a political one. They should also be working with a lot of other people including economists to come up with practical plans that will work and will be agreeable to all major elements in the problem instead of just pointing accusatory fingers and telling some people they have to go back to living in the 19th century or the world will end. Unless and until they do, nothing of impact will happen. Not in the US at least.
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Richard, thank you for the piece. Once again, excellent – even if I am one of those readers who fits into the category you mention (“I know how much the whole IPCC-gates thing and all the vitriol that goes with it bores and frustrates some regular readers”).
One thing I think you missed is how the reports of the IPCC formally feed into the decision-making processes of the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol meetings. Some of the concerns and criticisms voiced about the IPCC seem to ignore the separation between scientific advice the IPCC produces and the processes for actual policy-/decision-making by the Parties.
Perhaps it would have been useful also to reflect on some of the emerging conclusions from the discussions concerning the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Interface on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), as these also reflect more generally on the role of science advisory bodies in international environmental agreements. These discussions have included an extensive review of the strengths and weaknesses of existing science-policy interfaces (a “gap analysis”), including the scientific subsidiary bodies of the six biodiversity related multilateral environmental agreements and processes and the Convention to Combat Desertification, as well as those established in other fields and conventions, such as climate change.
At the 2nd IPBES meeting last October, there was strong support expressed for a new intergovernmental mechanism to strengthen the science-policy interface on biodiversity and ecosystem services, provided that it did not duplicate or substitute the mandates or programmes of work of existing multilateral environmental agreements or mechanisms, where the strengthening of existing mechanisms was inadequate. Most participants endorsed the importance of ensuring the scientific independence of the new intergovernmental mechanism by having its governance structure separate from, but responsive to, the governance structures of multilateral environmental agreements and United Nations bodies. There was a divergence of views as to whether such a mechanism would respond only to the needs of multilateral environmental agreements and their scientific subsidiary bodies, with full and equitable representation from developing countries, and the reports subject to peer review by experts and Governments, or whether it should also respond to the needs of other stakeholders, e.g., United Nations agencies. There was agreement that any reports should have value for the full range of stakeholders. While participants agreed that it should be intergovernmental, there were divergent views as to whether interested stakeholders (appropriate United Nations organizations, the scientific community and other stakeholders, such as relevant non-governmental organizations, the private sector and civil society organizations) should be invited as observers or participants.
The meeting made specific reference to the IPCC in its conclusions. It agreed that an intergovernmental mechanism might play a role in the field of biodiversity and ecosystem services similar to that played by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the field of climate change, but adopt a more holistic approach that included not only assessing knowledge but also catalysing improved collaboration and coordination for the generation of knowledge for a common and shared knowledge base; supporting policy implementation by identifying policy-relevant tools and methodologies to meet policymakers’ needs; and building capacity to mainstream biodiversity and ecosystem services for human well-being.
More details and documents, including the “gap analysis” can be found at http://ipbes.net/en/2ndMeeting/index.asp.
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Shadorne at #55
Indeed!
Snow shifted to Vancouver Olympic ski site - Organisers have been forced to transport snow to one of the Vancouver Olympic sites because of unseasonally high temperatures.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympic_games/vancouver_2010/freestyle_skiing/8494794.stm
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why not do what is best and get rid of this silly anachronism completey. I see India is making a fuss that industrialized nations are not making efforts to cut carbon emissions. seeing as carbon dioxide is a harmless plant food and we cannot get enough o iot, nor make enough of it, how ever we burn fossil fuels, then this whole debate is descending into the utter ludicrous state of Monty python. it may be sufficient to stop pouring scorn on these AGW believes and simply start laughing at them the public are far more intelligent than the who try to convince them of man made global warming.
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Dave Rado at #52
Thanks, I agree.
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@Peter317 #8 who wrote...
"Think of it this way: why would anyone who is sceptical of AGW want to make a career of climatology?"
More importantly, there are a LOT of greens attracted to the field of climatology because it fits with their political agendas. Also, since it's a "soft" science it's a lot easier for "less gifted" individuals than things like chemistry/physics...so you get a lot of people that quite frankly have no business in science.
If a normal person (lol, or climatologist ;) pushes a button and gets shocked...they think "I'll never touch that again." If a scientist touches the button and gets shocked he thinks "I wonder if it does that every time."
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@SheffTim #11 who wrote...
"Oh dear, someone else that doesn't know the difference between weather and climate, or much about earth's natural climate variability systems."
But sometimes weather IS an indication of climate. These sorts of events (not so much the El Nino) are typical of the cold period of the ocean currents (and the PDO has switched). Much of the public's perception of "global warming" has been based on the mild winters. We know precious little about the various things that have driven many, far larger changes during this interglacial. It is entirely possible that this entire warming period is essentially "weather" and that "climate" is really more of a 200+ year sort of thing.
While CO2 should have SOME impact, the amount is still very much up for debate. In spite of the idea of poweful positive feedbacks being en vogue...there's just no way the climate would calm down so much during interglacials (much smaller fluctuations) and be so consistently slapped away from antarctic deglaciation if feedbacks weren't quite weak or negative.
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@thinkforyourself #24 who wrote...
"This would be just more procrastination, rewarding the scepto-politico ‘business as usual’ brigade for their disgraceful conduct and on-going smear and disinformation campaign."
When you guys had plausible deniability on your side (what's their motive?) it wasn't so bad. Now that they're caught and the masses of shoddy science are being exposed, its you guys that sound like conspiracy theory nuts.
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@Peter Wignall #29 who wrote...
"CUT THE WORLD POPULATION EXPLOSION by restricting Families to a Maximum of TWO children per family. Reward, with Tax incentives, any families with less. Punish, by Tax hikes, and any other means, families with more than two. Outlaw increasing GDP."
You haven't studied the problem. The rich, industrial nations already have cleaner air/water and standards in place to keep it that way. Also the industrial nations seem to have reached a plateau in CO2 emissions in recent times.
The most polluted places with the highest population growth have one thing in common...POVERTY. You cannot tax them because they have nothing. You cannot threaten them with gloom and doom scenarios because their life IS a gloom and doom scenario. Their average life expectancy often under 50 even when they ignore the insanely high child mortality rate.
Your solution reminds me of the ban on DDT in africa...which resulted in such a huge increase in malaria that basically...it's killed 40 million people and harmed millions more.
Later in #34 you point out there are a lot of threatened species. Yes, this and ACTUAL pollution are reasons many SKEPTICS oppose this witch hunt for CO2. It will actually make things worse.
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Richard, as you rightly said in your opening statement, "So it must inevitably be when powerful political interests come to blows over what is supposed to be a body dealing with science independently and impartially"
Politics and Science have never mixed and NEVER WILL OR EVEN CAN.
Politics is about managing expectations, economic consequences, social engineering and raising taxes to implement policies.
Science is about determining facts, discovering new 'things' and identifying and then TESTING theories (new or old).
They are mutually exclusive. Politicians will "cherry pick" science for "items of interest to support policies".
Scientists (normally) don't get too involved in politics. They prefer "well defined, tried and tested" careers and the "certainty and rigourous analysis of everything" that goes with it.
What infuriates many is that the IPCC isn't all about politicians or scientists.
There are too many "interested parties" (those that stand to make a buck) purporting to be "climate experts" that have blotted the copy book.
In an ideal world(!) I'd say, scrap the IPCC, get on with living life and caring about those around us, let the green "live life in a wooden shed with eco wooly socks on" brigades walk around freely with their billboards "we're all doomed" or "end of the world is nigh" and let the "climate coalitions" or "green financial lobby groups" make their living selling "their wares" on soap boxes on street corners.
Perhaps a "green elixir" might cure your ailments, sir?
In other words, no-one really ever gave a damn about the IPCC, why should they give one about another body?
Consensus amongst 7 billion differing points of view?
How long before the Solar System expires?
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The same issue of Nature to which Richard refers for the views on the future of the IPCC, also contains a "Perspectives" review in which climate change researchers describe a new coordinated parallel climate change research process that integrates the tasks of developing scenarios, making projections and evaluating their impact. According to the authors, these 'next generation' scenarios should make for faster, more rigorous assessment of proposals for climate mitigation and adaptation.
See: "The next generation of scenarios for climate change research and assessment", Richard H. Moss et al., Nature, 463, 747-756, 11 February 2010.
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@ richard.
Interesting piece.
Unfortunatley the IPCC has lost all credibility, as has it's director. I am not arguing for one second that an institution like it is not necessary, however i think the way this one was set up (it's primary mission statement is very telling- and of course long since removed)was p-poor.
There is also an unavoidable conflict of interest with the ipcc, it is backed by governments that have invested in the AGW theory. IF it turns out that the theory is wrong, or incomplete even, the funding is immediatley under threat. With the state of politics in this country and the US i would be amazed if that didn't influence things.
So, what do we have? The need for the utter dissolution and scrapping of the IPCC. BUT, we also need an alternative, but it needs to be a scientific one, not a political one. It also needs to be fully independant of mainstream political funding. I.e. the money needs to come from scientific budgets, not individuall allocated funds (if that makes sense).
For me the New body MUST be independant, and based on climate research NOT climate change (a distinction). It must also-
-Have other scientists- stasticians, physics experts, biology experts, marine experts etc etc.
-All RAW data must be published alongside each report. Along with the models used, and the list of programmable variables.
-ONLY peer reviewed material should be used and Any material from an author of the report is immediatley ignored (but corroborative independant work isn't).
-The reports must then be publicly available, again with all the data.
-ALL the data must be re-evaluated strenuously. ANY abnomalities in the data sets invalidates said data set. This is what we do in ALL other fields of science. It should apply to climate too.
There's a tonne more, but you get the gyst.
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Re. 54, FergalR, the Summary for Policy Makers is the only section of the IPCC reports that policy makers (including government ministers) read. As for the first sentence of your post, I have no idea what you are talking about, if anything; but if you are making a substantial point, then I suggest you provide a link to the quotes you are referring to, and I will be happy to comment on them.
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Re. 55, are you aware of the fact that we're talking about global warming? Temperatures in Washington are irrelevant in that context. Globally, January 2010 was the third warmest month in the last 32 years.
Global temperature change (over a significant period) is caused by a change in the balance between energy being absorbed by the atmosphere (from the sun) and energy escaping from the atmosphere. Greenhouse gas levels are one of the main factors that determine where that balance lies. The amount of energy being generated by the sun in another, and some other factors include aerosol levels, and long term changes in global cloud cover.
Whereas short term regional temperature changes are caused by changes in wind direction or intensity, or changes in ocean currents, or other changes in the distribution of energy within the atmosphere.
In the case of Washington (and the UK), the recent cold weather was simply a result of Arctic winds blowing into Washington (and the UK) - and as a result of those same winds, the Arctic and Canada both had a much warmer January than normal.
Try to show a bit of scepticism (in the true sense of the word), instead of accepting at face value what the so-called sceptics (who are mostly just propagandists) are telling you.
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@poitsplace #61
To dismiss the matter of overpopulation by pointing to the poor nations is a fallacious argument. There is nothing to stop the developed nations doing as was suggested, subsidising replacement of population and taxing increases in population.
I'd go one further and make long term unemployment benefits for parents of 2 children comfortable if they agree to become sterilised or basic subsistence if not. (Pause for hysterical screaming of human rights)
If people are really worried about polluting gases of any kind in the atmosphere, they should realise that they are directly proportional to the number of people in the world (duh!). When I was a kid there were fewer than 50 million in this country, and now we are heading for 70 million. A 40% increase!! Which means our contribution to polluting gases will be increased by at least 40%.
If we had not allowed our population to have grown to that extent, we wouldn't have lunatics raving that we need to return our civilisation to the horse and cart!
Whose human rights are more important? Yours, to breed us to extinction, or mine, to provide a future for my sustainable family size? (And yes, I have 2 kids).
Global Population Speak Out http://gpso.wordpress.com/resources/
"It took virtually all of human history for our numbers to reach 1 billion in the 1800s. It took only about a century to add the second billion in 1930. We added the third billion in just 30 years and the fourth in only 15 years. We are now at 6.7 billion with projections of over 2 billion more to come in the next 40 years."
But we mustn't tamper with the right to breed, must we? We actually visualise a world with no meat products because (a) cows vent methane, (b) we could produce more food for a vegetarian world. Why? So we'll be able support the conveyor belt of even more useless drains on the economy? Until we push ourselves into the sea?
Has anyone worked out how many people we could squeeze onto this island if we had just enough arable land to support them and each person had sufficient room to live? I wonder how many that would be. Exercise for the reader.
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Re. #64, LabMunkey: taking into account the points I made in #52, on what are you basing your statement that the IPCC has lost its credibility (other than among people with an agenda or among people who have been misled by the irresponsible and wildly exaggerated reports in the media)?
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Re. #67, Brian, your argument is fallacious because pollution levels are not proportional to population levels. When I was a child, pollution in our cities was far worse than it is now (because of the Clean Air acts). The London smog used to be famous throughout the world and there is no smog in London now.
It is perfectly feasible, using existing technology, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (and pollution levels generally) dramatically while the population continues to rise.
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@68
let me see, clear evidence they 'hid' or 'failed to correct' KNOWN errors in the report prior to copenhagen.
Questions over the validity of one of their main data sources.
Questions over the chairmans integrity, scientific credentials and honesty (declaiming the CORRECT himalayian conclusions as 'Voodoo science' despite knowing HIMSELF it was correct).
Huge conflicts of interest?
False claims over scientific consensue?
Massive over use of incomplete and un-reproducable models?
need any more?
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Re: 69 Dave, trading fallacies?
There is a difference between gases, which I referred to, and mostly particulate matter, to which you refer.
You argue that we should invest huge resources in somehow extracting greenhouse gas from the atmosphere and confining it.... where exactly? ... so that we can continue to breed irresponsibly until it's some other generation's problem to suffer Draconian measures.
If CO2 is the monster that people say it is, surely the best way of confining it means more trees. Unfortunately people compete with trees for space.
Gosh, looks like population again.
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One of the OTHER three global data sets:
Australiagate: Now NASA caught in trick over Aussie climate data
http://www.climategate.com/australiagate-now-nasa-caught-in-trick-over-aussie-climate-data#comments
"..Here is Eschenbach’s comment on the data about Darwin:
YIKES! Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celcius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celcius per century. And the adjustment that they made was over two degrees per century … when those guys “adjust”, they don’t mess around. And the adjustment is an odd shape, with the adjustment first going stepwise, then climbing roughly to stop at 2.4C.
The similarities in degree and extent of fakery found separately by Eschenbach and Stewart proves a consistent fraudulent objective: make older temperatures appear artificially cooler and exagerrate recent temperature data."
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There’s a more basic issue than the structure of the IPCC: if it is to become credible and trusted, climate science needs to behave like proper science and PUBLISH its data and computing methodology. There is no place for secrecy, for undisclosed data “adjustment”, for mysterious statistical manipulation, in studies paid for by the public and having potentially enormous impact on public wellbeing.
The CRU e-mails, coming as they do from a group central to “The Consensus”, show absolutely that the world cannot rely on the scientific integrity of this group. Their word, indeed their observance of the law, is now not to be trusted.
There is no place left for Secret Science, for Science That Dare Not Show Its Data, in the public domain. Climate science needs to grow up and behave like proper science, by fully disclosing its work so that others may closely examine it and validate or challenge its findings, because that is how science should work. That fundamental reform must come before rearranging the deckchairs of the IPCC.
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John O'sullivan: (reply, to a reply from a government minister of state)
http://johnosullivan.livejournal.com/5241.html
"..But as to the science, we know, at minimum, from the admissions contained in the leaked emails that the climate data analysis by CRU between 2006-2009 was ‘fudged.’ This has been confirmed by the latest peer-reviewed literature that I shall present further on.
For your information my associates and I contribute to a fast-growing website called www.climategate.com. We have been undertaking our own analysis and frankly, Minister, we are deeply shocked at what we have uncovered so far. Firstly, I wish to refer to the leaked emails and the ‘documents/HARRY_READ_ME.txt’ files. These files covers CRU’s latest work from 2006-2009 and CRU scientist, ‘Harry’ admits the climate data CRU possesses is unusable:
“getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data. so many new stations have been introduced, so many false references.. so many changes that aren't documented... “
‘Harry’ then later adds, “I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was.”
Clearly, from the evidence to hand, these climatologists are poor data handlers. When you then go beyond the 1,000+ emails and look deeper at the meta data coding within the rest of the leaked 62MB goldmine things get far worse. ‘Harry’ admits he has no training in FORTRAN. He muddles by attempting to teach himself and gamely trying to analyse so much “poor” and “false” data. As we have read, for Harry matters go from bad to worse."
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COLD’ WEATHER STATIONS LEFT OUT OF CLIMATE DATA
tv report: show:http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/81557272.html)
original link: http://johnosullivan.livejournal.com/4521.html
"...Over 800 worldwide ground thermometer stations have been dropped unannounced from the official global record in the space of one year despite the ongoing climate controversy.
It’s now been revealed that a cull of world ground temperature stations first began by stealth in 1990, just two years after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed by the United Nations.
The IPCC’s sole task is to prove that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing global warming (AGW). Sceptic scientists have denounced the mass cull of ‘cold’ stations as a disgrace and a cynical attempt to skew the world temperature records upwards.
Over $50 billion has been spent on climate research over the same period. There can be no good financial reason for shutting down any ground thermometer stations with such a vast international climate budget ( paid by world taxpayers).
At the end of this article we list the 800+ thermometer stations recently removed from the climatologists’ records."
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'Climate Science' is not science at all, at least not in any form that a non-scientist would recognise. That is the foundation of this interminable squabbling over minutiae between those who think that AGW is a provable theory and those that know that it can never be.
That is not to say that proposers of AGW have no useful contribution to make to the debate on proper use of the Earth's resources, but every day that they continue to describe their view's as 'science' will produce more scepticism, with possibly disastrous consequences.
Even worse, 'real science' risks being tainted in public perception because of its association with climate-change opinion.
This is important because we need public trust in real science to be maintained, as this form of science is vital for our future decision-making regarding proper use of natural resources.
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@Brian #67 who wrote...
"To dismiss the matter of overpopulation by pointing to the poor nations is a fallacious argument. There is nothing to stop the developed nations doing as was suggested, subsidising replacement of population and taxing increases in population...
...When I was a kid there were fewer than 50 million in this country, and now we are heading for 70 million. A 40% increase!!"
The problem is that the developing nations have MUCH higher birth rates. In most of the developed nations the birth rates have leveled off...with a substantial chunk of any increases in population actually coming from immigration (usually from less developed nations) and they're perfectly able to feed their people. The US has taken about 40 years to have a 20% increase in population. Japan's population is falling fast.
So again...the developed nations already have low birth rates, doubling taking several centuries (some are shrinking) and low pollution. Developing nations have huge, fast growing populations and much higher pollution. Ironically the only thing that seems to stop developing nations from reproducing so fast...is for them to become a developed nation.
The ONLY social change that has ever proven to be successful at drastically decreasing pollution growth, reducing unchecked habitat loss and lowering pollution...is DEVELOPMENT. Essentially...the only way out is through. We will actually develop faster technologically (and therefore find out solution faster) by leaving things as they are. Your no GDP solution will cause technological advancement to slow to a crawl and leave the developed nations in their horrible state.
Even if we were causing the amounts of climate change the alarmists say (and we most certainly are not) we would STILL be better off just going ahead as we are and dealing with the consequences when alternative energy sources are cheaper. Its only going to take a couple decades anyway. Why rush to pay a hundred trillion dollars for insufficient amounts of unreliable power when we could wait a decade or two and pay a fraction of that cost for more flexible, reliable and less resource intensive solutions?
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"I know how much the whole IPCC-gates thing and all the vitriol that goes with it bores and frustrates some regular readers."
Why no mention of the people who are more than happy that there is a chance to open the debate again now?
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#73 mikethepensioner wrote:
"Climate science needs to grow up and behave like proper science, by fully disclosing its work so that others may closely examine it and validate or challenge its findings"
Agreed, and I would add that its supporters must also stop pretending to be in possession of something that has magical powers. For example, on last week's A Point of View, Lisa Jardine said that science did not deliver certainties, just "strong probabilities" -- as if this "scientific theory", unlike any other scientific theory, were somehow able to estimate its own likelihood of being true.
Ridiculous! And dishonest.
Well, to be charitable, maybe she's just not too bright. Either she is conceptually confused -- in which case, why is she presenting a programme that purports to inform the general public about science? -- Or else she is being grossly dishonest. In which case, it's time she and others like her came clean.
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52. At 01:40am on 11 Feb 2010, Dave Rado wrote:
You are papering over the cracks and only fooling yourself.
"The Himalayan Glacier claim didn't make it into the Summary for Policy makers (or SPM), which is the document that policy makers such as governments go on and base their policy on. So it had absolutely no impact on policy - yet most of the press reports have pretended that it was a central feature of the IPCC report. It wasn't. It was a small and insignificant paragraph in a several hundred page report."
You are completely misleading people here. It was a massive claim, and was mentioned during a widely publicised speech by Dr Pachauri. So hardly an "insignificant" factual error as it was trumpeted by the head of the IPCC!
The Amazon claim has been backed up as being accurate by many rainforest experts. It's true that it cited "grey literature" rather than peer reviewed papers, but that fact does not make it inaccurate. And in any case, it, too, was NOT included in the Summary for Policy Makers, so had no effect whatsoever on policy.
So it is fine for a document relied on by decision makers around the world, at all levels, to rely on grey literature for its references, as long as "someone" reckons its all accurate? Come on, you know that is no way to do this. If this was any other public body you would be disgusted.
As for the so-called "Climate gate", there are no valid reasons for associating anything in the stolen emails with a serious criticism of the IPCC.....
HadCRUT is one of three datasets used to produce the graphs the IPCC use, which then form the policy of the IPCC and world Governments. The fact that the UEA CRU gets massive funding is precisely down to the fact they supply one of the main datasets. To try to separate one from the other is simply ridiculous.
There are very good reasons why the IPCC has been organised in the way that it has, some of which Richard mentions in his article, and most of the propsosed changes would be a very serious retrograde step. The glacier episode illustrates that there is a need to tighten up its review process, but one inaccurate paragraph in a 500+ page report is not a reason to pretend that its credibility is seriously in question among anyone who doesn't have an agenda, or who hasn't been misled by the highly misleading reporting in most of the press.
ONE INACCURATE PARAGRAPH. Would you like to retract that ludicrous statement?
The length of the document is irrelevant, accuracy should not diminish due to document length!
How about this from the key synthesis report:
by 2020, "in some countries of Africa yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent". - Dr Pachauri Sept 2009.
I will leave you to read up about the errors behind that apocalyptic lie.
Finally I will quote from Dr Andrew Lacis, whose comments apper in AR4, but were rejected. To claim the IPCC is fine as it is, in the light of comments such as this is just simply breath taking. The IPCC is a politicised body that is pushing ONE view, and is lying, twisting and cheating in order to publish material that only fits that agenda - AGW.
"There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department."
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65. At 09:15am on 11 Feb 2010, Dave Rado wrote:
Re. 54, FergalR, the Summary for Policy Makers is the only section of the IPCC reports that policy makers (including government ministers) read.
So their advisors do not reat the whole thing? So nobody listens to the speeches by people like Pachuari then? So the pulic are not fed embellished claims based on the already embellished facts?
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OFF TOPIC
richard-
as an aside. i'd love you to do a piece on the rainforests, the conservation projects and potential goevenment intervention in protecting them.
WHy has noone tried paying off the logging companies?
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Glad you mentioned Wikipaedia since a recent post by myself runs as follows:
Global warming is driven primarily by heat output from the sun - as related to solar magnetic flux, aka sun spots - together with rotational and orbital anomalies in the earth's trajectory; and secondarily by the H2O cycle. Co2 levels are secondary to other factors and have been cosiderably higher than now, both during glaciations and during the highly beneficial interglacial phases [warmings]. The IPCC "hockey stick" graph showing runaway warming has airbrushed out [1] the Roman warming 100 B.C. - 450 A.D. during which grapes grew as far north as York [2] the Dark Ages cooling 450 A.D. - 900 A.D. which saw off the Roman and South American civilisations [3] the Medieval warming 900 - 1300 when most of our monastries and cathedrals were built and [4] the Little Ice Age 1300 - 1850. Warming is beneficial; cooling can be catastrophic! Let's get real and condemn this CO2 focused Greenhouse Gas religion to a page on Wikipaedia where it belongs!
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72. Barry Woods wrote:
All of your posts cherrypick single stations. Note that they haven't performed an overall global analysis of the data.
Stations dropping out in GHCN in the 90s is public knowledge - the reason why is published. That your source calls it "stealth" just goes to show they are spinning propaganda and smear. They also falsely claim that dropping out of cold stations, when the record doesn't work by averaging absolute temperature, but anomalies.
You'll have to do better to convince anyone rational that the surface temperature records are wrong - especially as they agree well with the satellite records and sea surface temperatures. Of course I am sure you'll manage to mislead the idiots of the world. Good luck with that.
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80. At 12:38pm on 11 Feb 2010, jasonsceptic wrote:
"HadCRUT is one of three datasets used to produce the graphs the IPCC use, which then form the policy of the IPCC and world Governments. The fact that the UEA CRU gets massive funding is precisely down to the fact they supply one of the main datasets. To try to separate one from the other is simply ridiculous."
HadCRUT, NASA GISTEMP, NOAA and the JMA temperature records all agree with the 20th century temperature pattern. UAH and RSS satellite records agree with those surface records for 1979 onwards.
In otherwords we could ignore HadCRUT completely and you'd still have the same results. So you are simply nitpicking for no apparent reason. Ridiculous? Yep
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83. At 1:11pm on 11 Feb 2010, PETER CLOSE wrote:
"as related to solar magnetic flux, aka sun spots"
Perhaps you need to understand what you are talking about before spouting complete drivel. The solar magnetic flux is not "also known as" sun spots. Go read a bit. This is the least of the errors in what you just wrote.
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It seems to be the calls for an IPCC reform are based more on its inability to further embed climate change into the social conciousness. Indeed i believe a lot of the pro-climate change community have become frustrated with the IPCC's inability to produce data that would sway more people onto the climate change band wagon.
If this is the case and the reason calling for the IPCC to reform is because the climate change community isnt happy with the data they are producing, then thats just sad and patheitic and would simply prove that its no longer about being objective and producing facts and has became a petty "we are right and you are wrong" argument.
It basically appears to me that the climate change community have spat the dummy out because the IPCC isnt reinforcing their opinion enough and that reporting data in the most unbiased possible way is no longer an option for any body which is set up to monitor climate change.
It all comes back to the main sticking point on the climate issue and thats that both sides are digging their heals in, adamant that they are right and everyone else is wrong - this has became the real issue imo. Where there is no substantial data to substantiate either claim - its a matter of opinion and even living in the 21st century it seems that the climate change community has deaf ears for anyone who doesnt share their opinions. I could be wrong, but the only feedback i seem to recieve from the pro-climate change community is that data and reports are only valid if they fall in line with their opinions and meet their ends. It seems to me that the IPCC's findings arent doing that at the moment and in the eyes of the climate change community should be reformed to a body which does.
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The problem is not what's wrong with the IPCC and the Science in question, the problem is where do you start?
Just looking at the science and the evidence from the more recent temperature records, you've got problems with shared datasets and stations, the wholesale biased removal of cooler stations, the inclusion/exclusion of the urban heat island effect to distort the appearance of recent warming, the interpolation of missing stations - Bolivia is good example of this - Nicely warm, even though there's no station there at all, the deletion of source data, the avoidance of FOI requests, the application of fudge factors and smoothing algorithms, the over simplified models (what no clouds), the inclusion of the PDO and NAO only as they are going negative - completely ignoring any positive effects that they might have on temperatures and finally and perhaps most importantly, the complete inability to adequately explain or address the apparent/observed lack of climate sensitivity to C02.
I did post much of this on an earlier thread, with apparently little warmist response.
When all of this is combined with the well known problems with the historical proxy based records, it really makes a mockery of the word science. What we’ve actually got here is more akin to political alchemy.
If the IPCC is to be reformed, then much as others have stated on this thread, it needs to be more open, less political, vested interests would need to be divested, which would mean goodbye to certain railway engineer and quite a few others, it would need to be more stringent in accepting some of the "grey" papers that it's been including, unadjusted datasets would need to be published and its peer review processes would need to be made more transparent - it would be no good moving forwards with the same little club of reviewers.
A return to the debate, less political scare mongering and the dropping of the "consensus" are the only ways that they are going to re-build public trust and they may even have to face up to the fact that, that trust is already damaged beyond repair.
The strange thing is that many warmists don't seem to have noticed/realised that the "jig is up", so to speak. The repeated trotting out of the same old links, by many of our pro-AGW posters, is just not going to cut it any more. As our friend Shadorne put it so eloquently.
"This parrot is dead......."
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Mr Black, I can understand why you would be frustrated that every post you make is hijacked by arguments over "Climategate". Unfortunately, it is one of the few outlets on a very partisan BBC for those of us who have doubts about the whole thing.
Remember that when the whole story broke on the internet last year, your attitude was "Move along, nothing to see here" and an almost complete blackout of information on mainstream BBC news. Since then the BBC has been forced to pay it a little more attention but without continual pressure would no doubt happily consign the story to the wilderness again.
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Question parts does not mean the whole is wrong. Fossil Fuel advocates and their right-wing followers profess that any research on the impact on climate and health should be halted. We had "cold Fusion" and this proved wrong, but that did not undermine fusion. Science is a process of trial and error but in this case there is big business involved and the influence thoses industries have with governments. If the projections of the climate change advocates are correct we have serious issues. Carbon emissions create many different both environmental and health. Even the deniers should understand that alternative fuels that are clean are in the interest of evryone. Unfortunately, governments are directed by coal and oil and without substantial evidence to show negeative impacts the governments will take little or no positive actions. This is still about money and influence and the sceince is just a discussion. It should be stated that the vast majority of scientist in the fields researching climate change agree with the impact of carbon on temperatures and the minority has been given much more influence than the numbers deserve, but a lot of lobbyists and money and little sceince can go a long way with governments when being pressed to change the political status quo..
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You all may be right, you all may be wrong. Its a worthless discussion because we will never know until Doomsday (whenever that may be).
What we should all be in favour of, however, is clarification and accuracy of the data.
Its in our collective benefit to know what is happening.
Surely, just because the climate change may not be due to Man's abuse of resources and lack of emission management, means we should go back to pouring poisons into the sea and atmosphere? Just as we shouldn't destroy our economies for unsubstantiated climatologist dogma.
What we (the people of this good Earth) need is a supply of good accurate data, clearly disseminated and presented, so we can determine the best solution, locally and globally.
Lots of research, lots of data, managed by an International Board who sit on the fence and act as referee to all those opinionated 'scientists' whose MO is just to confuse.
The climate (and the weather) affect everyone, everywhere, not just the scientific community. They are there to provide us with the data and clear guidance.
Maybe they can agree on that, at least.
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In the past I've said the IPCC should be disbanded, but i've had a re-think
The IPCC for better or worse is probably the best body to look at this phenomena, but there needs to be a thorough purging of all the political elements and a larger influx of sceptical scientists to look at the issue. By sceptical I don't mean "deniers" as pro-AGWer's like to claim, but scientists who, regardless of which side of the fence they sit on, will look at each and every piece of evidence with sceptical eyes.
The peer-review process also needs reform to ensure that friends of the papers author cannot put undue pressure on reviewers. Perhaps the review process could be an open process to allow all interested bodies to comment. Not sure how this would work, but the process needs reform.
All data, including computer code etc must be published exactly as used in any papers for the paper to be allowed into the IPCC process - no exceptions.
A team of reference checkers must be employed to ensure no more stupid errors appear as "peer reviewed". I'm due to retire in a few years, so i would happily volunteer for this job.
Above all else, the whole IPCC process must be transparent. No more reviewers comments rejected without explanation. No more refusal to publish correspondence between the IPCC and contributors. Total transparency
JMHO
/mango
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@ghostofsichuan #90
I wouldn't completely write off cold fusion just yet:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16820-neutron-tracks-revive-hopes-for-cold-fusion.html
They may be a little out on the edge, but they're not quite dead yet.
Unlike our ever popular parrot ;-)
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Off topic
Computer modelling
Virgin F1 have produced the first F1 car to be entirely designed by computational fluid dynamics and computer-aided design. It has undergone no wind tunnel testing.
It has just run for the first time and the wing has snapped off.
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this totally irrational (if you are an AGY believer)
person, thinks this obvioulsy totally irrational person may have a point
Note the university..
Head of the Stable Isotope Laboratories at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia.
Paul Deniss - would not sign Met office - round robin, saying science is not by consensus (the press thought he was the climategate whistleblower a few days ago)
has a new blog.
http://harmonicoscillator.wordpress.com/
"..The only approach we can take is that of the scientific method and use our knowledge of physics and chemistry to develop plausible hypotheses which we can test. If an idea cannot be developed into a testable hypotheses it remains just an idea. The theory of CO2 induced catastrophic global warming is just that: an idea that cannot be experimentally falsified. In the absence of any direct ability to test the idea we must apply common sense or Occam’s razor. For example the principle of uniformitarianism suggests that if CO2 is the dominant forcing component in the climate system then there should be abundant evidence of temperatures scaling with CO2 levels. As a first order test we can look at the Eemian intergalcial about 125,000 years ago. During this period CO2 levels were about 280ppm (100ppm below present day levels) and temperatures several degrees warmer than present. Here we see immediately that temperature is not a simple function of atmospheric CO2 levels and we have to look at other components in the climate system to explain the Eemian climate."
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nit picking - infinity?
Another global dataset caught out..
Australiagate: Now NASA caught in trick over Aussie climate data
http://www.climategate.com/australiagate-now-nasa-caught-in-trick-over-aussie-climate-data#more-3821
"Here is Eschenbach’s comment on the data about Darwin:
YIKES! Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celcius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celcius per century. And the adjustment that they made was over two degrees per century … when those guys “adjust”, they don’t mess around. And the adjustment is an odd shape, with the adjustment first going stepwise, then climbing roughly to stop at 2.4C.
The similarities in degree and extent of fakery found separately by Eschenbach and Stewart proves a consistent fraudulent objective: make older temperatures appear artificially cooler and exagerrate recent temperature data."
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@SheffTim
The situation is a little worse than your take on the "hide the decline" email suggests.
Please check Fred Pearce's stuff over at the Graun. It's the most in depth piece of analysis that I've come across that takes both sides seriously. Fred Pearce also writes for New Scientist.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/series/climate-wars-hacked-emails
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You can re-arrange this committee as much as you want - but it will change nothing. The zealots already convinced, the normal folk are not going to be convinced.
What you need to change is the message.
Even people like Richard Branson and other business leaders are saying we need to find an alternative to fossil fuels - they are not going to meet demand long term.
No matter what you do with this committee I am not going to give up my car and make myself unemployed. Give me a non-fossil fuel and I will happily buy it.
Stop the climate of fear rhetoric - normal people are not buying into it - just start developing/offering alternatives to fossil fuel.
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Even if the IPCC findings were found to be true and credible, both of which look increasingly unlikely, the proposed mechanism for correcting the apparent crisis is flawed.
Below is an analogous way to consider how the mechanisms of the Carbon Trading Exchange do OR don't work. It is slightly tongue in cheek - but then again, many a true word is spoken in jest! I hope the AGW alarmists don't pick up this as their next idea!
In light of the economy overheating and causing chaos in the economic climate, government economists have declared that the science is settled and that the overheating is due to those evil excess profits successful companies make. Profits have long been suspect of being a green house mass linked to much of the turmoil in the economic atmosphere. The proof of Antidisestablishmentatrian Geo-Economic Warming (AGW) is proven beyond a doubt.
Forthwith there will be the establishment of a profit credit exchange. It is very simple. A government panel will be established to decide just the right amount of profits companies should produce according to their size, such as they see fit to make the economy work. The risk of too much success could drive the world to an economic meltdown!
On an arbitrary basis, but favoring companies researching green money technology (such as growing money on trees and end of the rainbow enterprises etc) the less economically viable companies will be awarded profit credits. The more successful companies will be able to buy these credits to offset their excess profits and the poorer performers will benefit from the sale proceeds to prop up their unviable propositions that a venture capitalist without connections to the crony-capitalist cabal, wouldn't touch with a barge pole.
Of course the desired reduction in profits will be achieved, not because the green money technology will succeed but because the successful companies will have no incentive to succeed where, ever decreasing profits are subject to ever more punitive profit credits allocated to unviable companies. Some suspect that the eradication of the successful companies, the survival of the unviable ones and the destruction of the free market system was the plan all along. Left with no successful companies to tax or for the unviable one to compete with, the green-money technology companies are now forced to raise their prices in a strangely monopalistically market driven approach which leads to an economic collapse, where upon the politicians blame it on an after effect of the previous overheating.
to be continued...
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@Barry Woods #96
nice post
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#97 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
"It's the most in depth piece of analysis that I've come across that takes both sides seriously."
I stopped reading when I saw this headline:
How the 'climategate' scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics' lies
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Mostly off Topic, but for those of you that have previously expressed an interest in the feasibility of a hydrogen based economy. We have a new contender:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18511-sunpowered-water-splitter-makes-hydrogen-tirelessly.html
And from a most unlikely source the UEA..... See, they’re not all bad
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@LabMunkey #64
Entirely agree with your ideas on a replacement organisation... politicising science was an incredibly bad move!
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#64 LabMunkey wrote:
"So, what do we have? The need for the utter dissolution and scrapping of the IPCC. BUT, we also need an alternative, but it needs to be a scientific one, not a political one."
The trouble is, who would decide who is a scientist and who isn't? The word 'science' has become such a positive word of approval that everyone wants to call himself a "scientist", and the public seem to accept that as a self-description, unwarranted it may be.
I would argue that no political decision should be made by anyone pretending to be anything other than a politician. And I would urge everyone to avoid the word 'science', as science was done better before the word was in circulation, and there was no priesthood of supposed "experts" to look up to.
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#1 and #10 pretty much say it all.
IPCC cannot be a centre for real debate because it is responsible to politicians. With the UN and most governments openly proclaiming AGW as a fact, how can IPCC be anything other than an apologist for that view (with all due respect to the work by many of its contributors which is no more a fraud than that of the "sceptics"). We need a different body or even simply an IPCC free debate.
The response to the glacier mistake is instructive; ok we made a mistake but that doesn't mean the rest of the report is wrong. Set aside questions about process. Shouldn't the response be that given such a major prediction change the IPCC is going to focus on all possible causes of glacier melt in the Himalayas? This might lead to quite different conclusions and possible remedies.
Of course that type of response is the antithesis of UN operating procedure. It is very hard for the UN to sponsor work that might end up criticizing a regional subset of its members. That is the appeal of AGW; one theory conveniently explains it all and spreads the blame and remedies wide enough that it can get some form of consensus among UN members. Politicians love simple solutions; one cause, one fix, easy to soundbite and sell. Scientific debate, localized solutions, individual responsibility are not good politics. Look at India, for example, calling for much more CO2 action by the G11 while ignoring the obvious link of its own pollution, deforestation etc with the Himalaya glacier melt.
IPCC is not the right body for debate. Ironically the longer it continues the more damage it may do to the reputation of AGW, which is shame because the backlash to the silly obsession with CO2 and the "model" is going to damage much more useful work in preserving our environment and natural resources.
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96. At 2:31pm on 11 Feb 2010, Barry Woods wrote:
"nit picking - infinity?"
Cherrypicking also. The people you cite are looking for stations that show positive adjustments for propaganda. In science that's known as selection bias. If they want to do proper science like climate scientists do, then they need to put things in context by looking at all adjustments. The forest from the trees so to speak. What if, for example, there are polar opposite stations to Darwin which have spurious negative adjustments? What if spurious adjustments are found in just 2% of stations? If so, it would be much ado about nothing. Ie nitpicking.
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"How the 'climategate' scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics' lies" -- Fred Pearce, The Guardian
The more I think about this, the more I think its author must have completely lost touch with reality. Please note that I have repeatedly said that the climategate scandal has been exaggerated, that there are dodgy practices in all branches of science just as there are dodgy practices in all branches of business, and that we shouldn't make too big a deal out of what might be a reasonably isolated case of dodgy practices. But dodgy practices they certainly are.
The idea that there has been no misconduct at all, that "nothing was hidden", and that the whole thing is just "lies" made up by sceptics is completely barking mad.
What would make someone say such a thing? -- I would say moral narcissism. When people get carried away with their own virtuousness, their critical faculties are suspended. Fred Pearce has clearly gone over the edge here. This is unfortunately a chronic problem of the left: we tend to think we are better endowed morally than those on the right, with the result that we lose our grip on reality and decend into a fantasy world.
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#106 infinity wrote:
"If they want to do proper science like climate scientists do"
Note to infinity or anyone else on the blog who can help me:
I'd be interested to know more about what people who approve of climate science regard as "proper science". Could anyone direct me towards a book or similar source that describes what climate scientists would regard as an accurate account of their scientific methods?
This is not to "get at" anyone on the blog. I spent many years working and teaching in philosophy of science, with some of the best people the discipline, and I'd like to know what "the other side" considers proper methodology. Although I left academia, I'm thinking of writing a book about the methodology of climate science. At the moment, my attitude would be highly critical, but I'd like to think I'm open-minded. I'm probably not, but I'll sure try!
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Blunderbunny:
Hydrogen is the way to go. Unfortunately the research is focused on the development of maintaining those in power. The governments want a "plug-in" that will not alter the grids and infrastructure and hydrogen has the capability for direct consumer production and control. The fears related to an airship explosion of 90 years ago still seems to be the rationale for not developing this but I think that is just another excuse by the powers that be. The Japanese are forward thinking on the development of hydrogen and because of political influence development of a clean alternative fuel will probably come from one of the countries that does not have access to fossil fuels. The confrontational politics of the West prevents any alternatives from being developed as the legislative bodies are basically run by big business and banking and anything that might benefit citizens is simply a coincidence.
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\\\ A Few Good Men ///
I haven't posted for awhile, as I find the 'noise' increasingly distasteful. I was reading an article recently which suggested that the media is being in a sense negligent in allowing comments such as appear all too frequently here. Outrageous contrarian statements with virtually no basis in fact.
Freedom of the press?
Perhaps. Nevertheless, let me relate a story from one half hour ago:
I was at the bank, talking to a middle aged teller about the weather and climate change. We discussed the unusual winter snowfalls on the United States East Coast.
She told me that she had heard, from the scientific community, that the world was getting colder, not warmer, that climate was cyclical, and that those same scientists had given her the impression that a new ice-age was the real threat.
---------------------------------------
\\\ The Interacademy Panel on International Affairs /// should increasingly assume the functions of the IPCC, in my opinion.
Let the IPCC function in some other than scientific capacity, to relay the findings of the Inter Academy Panel to the world governments.
Or perhaps simply replace it with the IAP.
For you in the United Kingdom, Lord Martin Rees is president of the Royal Society - he is your Astronomer Royal, and Dr. Lorna Casselton is Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society, and responsible for the Royal Society as a member of the IAP.
-------------------------
\\\ H-A-T-E ///
Holocene - Anthropocene - Thermal - Extinction
I have coined this acronym to characterize our times for three reasons:
1) To paraphrase the American writer Henry David Thoreau:
'A man who travels alone can leave today, while he who travels in groups must await their pleasure.'
2) It accurately depicts the current state of the planet vis a vis the considered opinions of two of those 'good men' the title of this post refers to:
- James Lovelock, "The Vanishing Face of Gaia," (2009)
- James Hansen, "Storms of My Grandchildren," (2009)
3) Hate appears to this observer to increasingly characterize our world.
We are at war, literally, on many fronts.
Figuratively, we are at war with each other - at home, in the family, in church, at work, etc..., in an overpopulated and increasingly super-competitive, and unnatural world.
We are at war with the natural world, having decided to perceive it rationally, instead of instinctively, in some sense a consequence of increasing urbanization.
This will not stand - everyone instinctively knows this.
Finally, I would point to another 'good man,' who wrote an opinion piece for the national newspaper in Canada, the Globe and Mail, just the other day:
\\\ "Your square-jawed hero is, in fact, the scientist" ///
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/your-square-jawed-hero-is-in-fact-the-scientist/article1461995/
-------------------------------------
I am thinking of applying to the World Wildlife Fund for a job as a consequence of this article - \\\ blogging is not enough! ///
- Manysummits, Calgary, Canada, a few days before the Chinese Year of the Tiger -
(my sign, 'ghostofsichuan')
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Interesting how the only thing on the table these days is the ETS. The real colors of the fossil fuel industry will appear as they push for this with their governmental handmaidens. The final frontier: the governments will tax the air and the bankers will be there to collect the money..for a "slight" fee of course.
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#110 manysummits wrote:
"I haven't posted for awhile, as I find the 'noise' increasingly distasteful."
Do you speak of the "noise" of off-topic posts, or the "noise" of disagreement?
I find the "noise" of off-topic posts a pleasant distraction, and the "noise" of disagreement a vital ingredient in our struggle to get to the truth.
I find the "silence" of uniform opinion extremely distasteful.
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It is no use submitting a "peer reviewed" paper. It has to a SCPETICAL peer reviewed paper. Otherwise it is very likely to be biased, in the same way as a boy who appeals for a penalty when playing football and his father is the referee.
The infamous "hockey stick" graph showing a sudden rise in temperature over the last couple of hundred years would not have appeared had it been sceptically reviewed, and probably neither would the Himalaya glaciaer report.
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People should worry less about the IPCC and more about the complete lack of action by governments on AGW.
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@ghostofsichuan #109
I thought you might like that link.
Not sure that I agree with the rest of your assessment, but I'm glad that you saw the link - It's quite a breakthrough. Combined with some other recent hydrogen storage breakthroughs, we might just be on the brink of cheap, eco-friendly and portable energy for all.
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Unfortunately I think it's unlikely this debate will arrive at a rapid conclusion. So politicised has this subject become that there is no body, international or otherwise, that can now convince the sceptic masses.
The most likely scenario will be an increasingly numerous -- and vocal -- sceptic and denial lobby, until such time as the sun's activity reverts to 'normal' and El Nino does its worst, to produce a global record hot year. At that point the sceptics will vanish overnight leaving just a few die-hard deniers.
For the sake of our grandchildren, let's hope that record hot year is 2010.
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@manysummits #110
"I haven't posted for awhile, as I find the 'noise' increasingly distasteful. I was reading an article recently which suggested that the media is being in a sense negligent in allowing comments such as appear all too frequently here. Outrageous contrarian statements with virtually no basis in fact."
Are you seriously suggesting the wholesale supression/censorship of any views that are contra to your own?
Essentially, as the final arbiter of what might be right or wrong you're claiming to be infallible - I'm not sure even the Pope lays claim to that one anymore.
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=== Breaking News =====
Climategate inquiry: one man down already
Editor of "Nature" magazine fails impartiality test. D'oh.
"Within hours of the launch of an independent panel to investigate claims that climate scientists covered up flawed data on temperature rises, one member has been forced to resign after sceptics questioned his impartiality."
"Dr Campbell has now withdrawn his membership of the panel, telling Channel 4 News: 'I made the remarks in good faith on the basis of media reports of the leaks. "
Channel 4 news has the story.
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@JRWoodman #116
Looks like you're echoing Richard's idea:
"One cold winter doesn't mean global cooling,
but one warm summer does mean global warming"
Am I missing something?
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Interesting to see the members of the Russell review:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/2/11/russell-review-under-way.html
Fortunately someone has already seen sense since the announcement of the panel:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/2/11/campbell-resigns.html
It is beyond belief that some of these names were “ …. selected on the basis they have no prejudicial interest in climate change and climate science …. “
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@Jack Hughes #118
did you notice the story said the resignation was prompted by a well organised sceptic campaign?
these guys should be the ones wearing the tin foil hoodies
/mango
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Yawn.
Barry at #96 cuts and pastes from sceptic blog which cuts and pastes from WUWT about NASA climate data for Darwin, Australia.
Here’s the actual instrument record from the Australian government bureau of meterology:-
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/hqsites/site_data.cgi?variable=meanT&area=nt&station=014015&dtype=anom&period=annual&ave_yr=13
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Another Russell panel member chosen for his lack of 'prejudicial interest in climate change' is Geoffrey Boulton who has said:
“We have the evidence, we have a consensus on scientific interpretation, we have the investment, we know that mitigation now rather than later is cheaper. But, we have not sorted out the politics and started to adapt behaviour to minimize risks. We cannot do this without public support. If we fail, we will be risking the consequences of catastrophic climate changes.”
No 'prejudicial interest' indeed.
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The only fake in this debate is the sceptic blogosphere.
As yet I haven’t seen a single cogent or well argued remark from these guys.
No data to support what they’re saying.
Just ever more contradiction.
Nothing else.
How easy is that.
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Brian at #113 says:-
‘..Otherwise it is very likely to be biased, in the same way as a boy who appeals for a penalty when playing football and his father is the referee.’
This could be rewritten:-
‘..Otherwise it is very likely to be biased, in the same way as a boy who appeals for a penalty when playing football and the goalkeeper’s father is the referee.’
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The only fake in this debate is the consensus.
As yet I haven’t seen a single cogent or well argued remark from these guys.
No data to support what they’re saying.
Just ever more consensus.
Nothing else.
How easy is that.
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@thinkforyourseld #124
what an ironic name
/mango
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Unbelievable...
I guess this is a 'sceptic' blog as well..
sound like a scientist, oh he works at UEA...
I’m Paul Dennis, an isotope geochemist and Head of the Stable Isotope Laboratories at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia.
http://harmonicoscillator.wordpress.com/
"...The only approach we can take is that of the scientific method and use our knowledge of physics and chemistry to develop plausible hypotheses which we can test. If an idea cannot be developed into a testable hypotheses it remains just an idea. The theory of CO2 induced catastrophic global warming is just that: an idea that cannot be experimentally falsified. In the absence of any direct ability to test the idea we must apply common sense or Occam’s razor. For example the principle of uniformitarianism suggests that if CO2 is the dominant forcing component in the climate system then there should be abundant evidence of temperatures scaling with CO2 levels. As a first order test we can look at the Eemian intergalcial about 125,000 years ago. During this period CO2 levels were about 280ppm (100ppm below present day levels) and temperatures several degrees warmer than present. Here we see immediately that temperature is not a simple function of atmospheric CO2 levels and we have to look at other components in the climate system to explain the Eemian climate."
The guardian thought he was the climategate whistleblower..
It appears the science is not even settled at East Anglia University...
I await the usual replies...
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Replace? Reform? Eliminate is the best choice. There has been so little attention paid to the DATA instead of the MODELS that one simply cannot trust the conclusions. Are these the same folks that boo-hooed the Ozone "crisis"? What's up with that. We destroyed an entire industry based on so little real science. Nobody wants to report on the fact that the "hole" is as big as ever. Oops!!!! The Political and Social paradigms have totally hijacked the "Science" of climate. Scrap it all and start over and let the DATA speak for itself!!
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Barry at #95 allegedly quotes Paul Deniss from a sceptic weblog, with reference to the ‘Eemian’ temperatures.
Wikipedia, with citations, says this of the Eemian period:-
‘…Changes in the earth's orbital parameters from today (greater obliquity and eccentricity, and perihelion), known as the Milankovitch cycle, probably led to greater seasonal temperature variations in the Northern Hemisphere, although global annual mean temperatures were probably similar to those of the Holocene……
..…Kaspar et al. (GRL, 2005) perform a comparison of a coupled general circulation model (GCM) with reconstructed Eemian temperatures for Europe. Central Europe (north of the Alps) is found to be 1–2 deg C warmer than present; south of the alps conditions are 1–2 °C cooler than today. The model (forced with observed GHG concentrations and Eemian orbital parameters) generally reproduces these observations, and hence they conclude that these factors are enough to explain the Eemian temperatures. ‘
So not ‘several degrees warmer’ as the quote from your sceptic weblog would have us believe, Barry, but ‘probably similar to those of the Holocene’, i.e up until the anthropocene when we started raising the level of CO2 in the atmosphere from 280 ppm to 390 ppm by burning fossil fuels.
Just more disinformation from the sceptic blogosphere.
That’s all.
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RobWansbeck at #126 says:-
‘…Just ever more consensus.’
Exactly Rob.
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@bowmanthebard #101
(@SheffTim)
That's a shame.
You should have read it. You could then have told Fred Pearce that the title of that chapter was wrong. Perhaps "fake scandals mixed in with real scandals" might be better.
[Fake scandals mixed in with real scandals]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/09/climategate-bogus-sceptics-lies
[Contents]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/series/climate-wars-hacked-emails
That particular chapter was about the gross mistakes made about the "hide the decline" email and similar. People here on this thread know that the "hide the decline" email is about Hockey Sticks. That the temperatures being "hidden" are tree ring proxies. But Senator Inhofe and Sarah Palin thought it was about thermometer temperatures.
Look at the date on Palin's Washington Post article. 9 December.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/08/AR2009120803402.html
Which is interesting. Because Climate Audit had the correct Hockey Stick interpretation published as early as 20 November, which was mirrored the same day by Watts Up With That?
http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/20/mike%e2%80%99s-nature-trick/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/20/mikes-nature-trick/
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As mentioned by the above,
'Biased CRU Inquiry Member Forced To Resign
Thursday, 11 February 2010 20:18 Tom Clarke, Channel 4 News .Within hours of the launch of an independent panel to investigate claims that climate scientists covered up flawed data on temperature rises, one member has been forced to resign after sceptics questioned his impartiality.'
Drifted of topic but its interesting.. this resonates with so many failed enquiries of the past and it hasn't even started!
Its so very obvious if this investigation is fudged or whitewashed the sceptics will gain ground without even trying, and they will deserve to.
Muir Russell himself has close ties with the Royal Society of Edinburgh who believe
'The science that indicates that climate change is resulting from greenhouse gas emissions is well established, with the only real uncertainty being the scale of the future changes.'
Any attempt to hide the decline in public confidence will be highly counterproductive
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Addendum to my #110, \\\ A Few Good Men ///
My new acronym for this time: H-A-T-E
Let's add an 's':
Holocene-Antrhropocene-Thermal Extinction(s)
------------
The 'IAP' - possibly a replacement for the IPCC:
"The Interacademy Panel on International Issues"
http://www.interacademies.net/CMS/About/3143.aspx
Note: The last two 'statements,' as pdf's, are very direct and to the point, and very classy:
1) 16 December 2009: IAP releases a statement on Tropical Forests and Climate Change
2) IAP Statement on Ocean Acidification - released on 1 June 2009
- Manysummits -
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@119. Jack Hughes wrote:
@JRWoodman #116
Looks like you're echoing Richard's idea:
"One cold winter doesn't mean global cooling,
but one warm summer does mean global warming"
Am I missing something?
* * *
Yes. It's sceptics who endlessly repeat that the world has been cooling since 1998. My point is that a record globally-warm year in 2010 will undermine their argument and they'll slowly disappear. I, and others who share my trust in what the climate scientists say, will continue to take no lessons from specific weather events; only general long-term trends.
However since some sceptics are so keen to draw attention to the cold winter we're having up here in the UK, it's interesting to read that according to Paul Hudson -- who some of you were recently calling one of your own -- January was the warmest for 30 years: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2010/02/january-2010-warmest-on-record.shtml
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callisto #91.
"What we (the people of this good Earth) need is a supply of good accurate data, clearly disseminated and presented, so we can determine the best solution, locally and globally."
I'd suggest that this would lead to -- nothing.
not while "We are at war, literally, on many fronts.", as manysummits puts it at #110.
for instance:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/10/binyam-mohamed-torture-mi5
http://www.out-law.com/page-9228
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8510471.stm
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/rwandas-army-accused-of-killing-civilians-after-mass-grave-of-hundreds-is-uncovered-in-congo-509623.html
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/a-13-2009-05-11-voa9-68643522.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001-present)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_conflict
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/42a/123.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BNO/is_2000_Sept/ai_64769669/
many more of such disturbing reports and analyses can be found easily IF one is willing to look (and not too busy bickering over which scientist or agency can be blamed for the IPCC side-show).
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blunderbunny #115.
"Combined with some other recent hydrogen storage breakthroughs.."
the crystal story you linked to a few days ago mentioned storage capacity of 5.1% by weight, a beginning perhaps but not yet 'economical'.
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#4: "Buried under Record Snowfall"?
You know, you can't project world climate just by looking out of your office window.
It's pretty hot here in Australia.
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it's been a while peeps. glad to see thinkforyourself is still failing to live up to his nom de blog etcetc....
dude it's summer in australia lol, course it's warm.
can't you guys smell the sea change in public opinion? our kind host can i think! AGW is sunk, kaput. an embarrassing example of what group think can lead the ignorant to believe, an historical anomaly that in 20 years time even its greatest adherents will deny ever having beleived in and will compare to the tulip bubble from all those years ago.
i've got better things to do with my time than try to deprogram ++good truebeleivers. i've done a lot of reading on how people try to combat scientology and other (alleged :P) cults and i've concluded the same as most ex-scientologists: all you can do is drop them a note saying 'get well soon' and get on with your life.
Get Well Soon People.
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ps lol @manysummits.
i've suspected from your posts for a long time that you are a minor member of the AGW priesthood. you used to be sufficiently subtle/oblique/pretentious to necessitate a certain amount of doubt (you could have just been a trendy idiot) now you're just self-betrayingly comedic! H-A-T-E rofl! what does desperation smell like? oh yeah...
get well soon
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The IPCC is dead in the water. The scientists, politicians and journalists involved in this disingenuous scare mongering for profit and control should be prosecuted.
The people should be told the truth.
Here's a good place to start, give this guy an Oscar and a Nobel Prize:
http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2010/01/catastrophe-denied-the-science-of-the-skeptics-position.html
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Assuming the IPCC is reformed and transparent, here is the type of paper they should seriously look at
New Paper in Science: Sea level 81,000 years ago was 1 meter higher while CO2 was lower
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/11/new-paper-in-science-sea-level-81000-years-ago-1-meter-higher-while-co2-was-lower/
In the Cretaeous period, around 81,000 years ago the global temperature was around 22C and the sea level was at least 1m higher than it is now. All this despite CO2 levels being around what we are experiencing today
http://www.global-samizdat.org/Global-Samizdat/GS8-GlobalLie1/ImageFiles/GlobalTempAndAtmospheric.gif
/mango
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Science this week also features a piece on the IPPC.
"IPCC Seeks 'Broader Community Engagement' to Correct Errors" by Eli Kintisch, Science 12 February 2010: 768-769.
This piece presents excerpts from a 5th February 2010 phone interview with Christopher Field.
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#132 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
"Senator Inhofe and Sarah Palin thought it was about thermometer temperatures."
Politicians on both sides know next to nothing of science, which presumably is one of the reasons they went for a career in politics instead! We can agree that there is a mutitude of Sarah Palins and Ed Milibands on both sides, busily misinterpreting what scientists on both sides of the "divide" are doing.
I don't think that diminishes the fact that there was misconduct, at least on a moderate scale, among people working at the CRU. For example, attempting to prevent one's data from being scrutinized by one's opponents is very unscientific, no matter what your understanding of scientific method.
In my view, the climategate "scandal" has some remarkable affinities with the MPs' expenses scandal (I don't have to use inverted commas for that one) in that its scandalousness depends on how you understand the rules. Some of the transgressions involved breaking the rules. We all agree that those were transgressions. But other transgressions involved complying with rules that some -- only some -- think are corrupt rules. We often hear MPs defending their behaviour by saying they "didn't do anything wrong", meaning they didn't break the rules. Some of us react to that by saying, "they just don't get it, do they?!"
In my view, the use of "proxy data" as a basis for extrapolation is completely wrong. In the view of most of the CRU people, it's an acceptable part of they would call "scientific method". But even if you don't agree with me on that, you can agree with me that some of what even they would call "scientific" rules were broken. So why does Fred Pearce seem to think that everyone at the CRU is completely exonerated?
There's far too much opinion-forming on the basis of "I agree with X's politics, therefore I agree with X's scientific opinions". I think Fred Pearce has become a blind evangenist for AGW simply because he's against Sarah Palin!
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@142 Mango Chutney wrote: "In the Cretaeous period, around 81,000 years ago...".
Really? Can I suggest you take another look at the axis of your graph in your second link? Events which happened 81 MILLION years ago are not relevant to what is happening now. The make-up of the atmosphere and the global temperature were very different from today, but so were the life forms that had evolved to live at that time. There were no humans around to experience -- what would probably have been to us -- hostile conditions.
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@bowmanthebard re: our ongoing discussion on modelling
First and foremost an apology for previously falling into the trap of describing an ensemble of projections as a probability distribution. This is obviously the case with a little thought on the matter.
(An aside to anyone else who might still be following this sub-thread: this is an example of the "self-correcting" nature of science: if the evidence says something ain't so, then it ain't so! Accept it and move on!)
However (there's always a "however"), that is not to say that climate models have no value whatever. Rather than turn this post into a[nother] long-winded discussion of climate models, I refer the interested reader to a discussion from 2008 on the topic of climate modelling. Of particular note is the sceptical voice of Leonard Smith who puts forward a view very similar to my own and which he expresses far more succinctly than I can manage. To quote:
"Do we believe that today's [climate] models can provide decision-relevant probabilities [D_O: I think we should read 'projections' here] at a resolution of tens of square kilometers for the year 2060--or even 2020 for that matter? No. But that does not suggest we believe there is no value in climate modeling. Since the climate is changing, we can no longer comfortably base our decisions on past observations. Therefore, we must incorporate insights from our models as the best guide for the future. But to accept a naive realist interpretation of model behaviors... is... to mistake an abstract concept for concrete reality."
The discussion can be found at:
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/roundtables/the-uncertainty-climate-modeling
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@ dave and bowman.
I'm really enjoying this discussion. It's been very informative.
Re- whoever posted the 'sceptic' scientist publishing data that seemed to counter his position.
That's evidence of a good scientist right there. You post your findings REGARDLESS of the outcome. Maybe HE should head the new IPCC/CRU.
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#144 bowman
"a mutitude of Sarah Palins and Ed Milibands on both sides, busily misinterpreting what scientists on both sides of the "divide" are doing."
i think this is the essence of the contrarian argument. equate climate science with the output of the heartland institute, equate the risks of changing the climate with the risks of an economic downturn and equate a politician with a journalism degree from the university of idaho with one that went to oxford and did postgrad study at mit.
reminds me of the slide from that superb al gore film 'an inconvenient truth', a set of scales, on one side a big bag of dosh mmmmm, and on the other.....well the whole planet :o)
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@JRWoodman #145
It’s a fair cop – I mis-read the graph
Want to comment on the paper now?
/mango
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@jr4412 #137
"The crystal story you linked to a few days ago mentioned storage capacity of 5.1% by weight, a beginning perhaps but not yet 'economical'."
Once again, you're right on the button, but you've got to start somewhere and they are a new class of crystal with some interesting properties. I guess it's more of a hint at other things to come, as there may be even more exotic twins lurking around out there. They didn't know they existed before, so no-one was looking for them. If hydrogen is going to be used widely as a fuel then we need to be able to store it safely and relatively low pressures. Turning every car into a disaster waiting to happen, is just not an option.
I'd still argue that you're not that far away from commercially viable hydrogen powered vehicles, efficient production was the biggest problem, but I have often been accused of unhealthy optimism in the past ;-)
It should also be noted that crystal lattice storage is only one of many promising lines of enquiry as far as safe storage goes, but I'll leave those that are more interested to the tender mercies of Google. Think of it as homework ;-)
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@rossglory #148 who wrote...
"reminds me of the slide from that superb al gore film 'an inconvenient truth', a set of scales, on one side a big bag of dosh mmmmm, and on the other.....well the whole planet :o)"
Except the economic downturn caused by a premature switch to still pricey renewables is a certainty...while most of the IPCC's work seems to be falling apart. Most importantly, all but the lowest projections are disproved by their own criteria with the actual temperatures at the lower limits of the few remaining model runs.
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@blunderbunny RE:hydrogen storage
There's really no need to use hydrogen. Making hydrogen loses more energy than charging batteries. Liquefying or compressing hydrogen loses more energy than charging batteries. Transporting the hydrogen often loses more energy than charging batteries. The BEST case scenario would be to produce the hydrogen on site under high pressure electrolysis.
Why would we bother with that? Even less exotic batteries are higher densities than these safer forms of hydrogen storage. We might as well just use large, removable batteries if we're going to go on and on about efficiency and infrastructure that doesn't use fossil fuels.
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#148 rossglory wrote:
"i think this is the essence of the contrarian argument. equate climate science with the output of the heartland institute"
I'm doing the very opposite, by keeping politics out of the discussion as much as possible. Let's banish Ed Miliband and Sarah Palin to their rooms, so we can have an adult conversation about climate science, scientific method, probability, statistics, and all that stuff!
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Clearly the best way to go is to scrap the IPCC and replace it with a panel of the people who contribute to this blog.
After all, the contributors here have proved beyond doubt that there is no such thing as AGW. That's great news! That means we don't have to worry about CO2 emissions and can all carry on as usual.
Why listen to all those pesky scientists when we can get a much better answer from bloggers?
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Mango at #142, and #149; Bridget at #145
The paper refers to 81,000 years ago and so has absolutely nothing to do with the Cretaceous period. If you had read and understood the paper, why did you post that graph at all?
Turning to the paper itself, R. Lawrence Edwards presents a detailed assessment of it in "Climate Change: Ice Age Rhythms" in this weeks issue of Science (Vol. 327. no. 5967, pp. 790 - 791, 12 February 2010). His piece focuses on the implications for the discussion on ice-ages and their causes and notes that Doral'e et al. work highlights again the rapidity with which large ice sheets can come and go. On sea-level, his article concludes with the following:
"A number of previous studies have estimated sea level 81,000 years ago. Some of these estimates appear to agree with Dorale et al.'s findings, whereas others appear to disagree. One problem with comparing these studies is the possibility—and in some cases probability—that discrepant sea-level elevations may represent different sea levels at different times, given plausible dating errors. Future studies that determine sea levels at different times at the same place may help to resolve the discrepancies. Regardless of the ultimate verdict on sea level 81,000 years ago, Dorale et al.'s findings will stimulate ideas, discussion, and new studies of ice age history and causes."
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@rossglory
bowmanthebard is correct in seeing that there is a problem with 2 political ideologies using this debate as a battleground. Ultimately, they are in danger of developing and supporting an 'Us against Them' zeitgeist.
From childhood we create 'Out-groups' as opposed to 'In-groups' - it is easy to create superior 'In-groups' and inferior 'Out-groups'. And once these group differences are established, in the wrong circumstances, a leader can exploit people for their own ends.
This is step 1 of the 5 'Steps to Tyranny'.
Step 1 = ‘Us’ and ‘Them’
Use prejudice to foster the (fictional) notion of the existence of superior and dominant in-groups and inferior and powerless out-groups
Step 2 = Obey Orders
Insist that all people under your wing are to obey your orders
Step 3 = Dehumanize the Enemy
Emphasize on making inimical factions look less than human
Step 4 = ‘Stand up’ or ’Stand by’
Suppress dissenting or opposing opinions to your own
Step 5 = Suppress Individuality
Foster the development of group identities while suppressing the individual
The BBC did an excellent documentary on this as part of their 'Human Rights & Human Wrongs' Series.
Very scary stuff. Let's not fall into the trap - everyone can fall into it.
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An apolgy re #155. Sorry JRWoodman (#145). Don't know where the other name came from. In any case, the criticism was directed toward Mango, not yourself. Muy apologies.
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@LabMunkey #147
"@ dave and bowman.
I'm really enjoying this discussion. It's been very informative."
Yep, I'd echo that, this particular thread definitely falls into the more than a little interesting category.
And,
"Re- whoever posted the 'sceptic' scientist publishing data that seemed to counter his position."
I'd echo that too. That's the best kind of science, start from an initial premis, find it's not so, publish the results and at the end of that process you've actually discovered something - Science in action.
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@poitsplace #152
Yep, I agree with you too - That's all currently true. But the original point, of the original link is that they've used sunlight and inorganic catalysis to produce hydrogen, essentially for free and at a 60% efficiency rate.
A similar feat has been accomplished before using organic materials, but these we're slowly bleached by the reaction and rendered non-functional after a number of weeks of continuous operation.
Starting to feel like Sheldon, which can't be good! I won't ask if anyone fancies a little m/p-brane or string theory, intead I think I'll stop typing and get back to work.
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#154 DisgustedOfMitcham2 wrote:
"Why listen to all those pesky scientists when we can get a much better answer from bloggers?"
Perhaps you are so impressed by your own command of the sarcastic idiom that you have forgotten logic.
Some of us on the blog are calling the authority of climate "scientists" into question. To respond by simply appealing to their supposed authority, you not only commit the fallacy of appeal to authority, you also commit the fallacy of begging the question. The very question at issue is whether or not the opinions of climate "scientists" can be considered authoritative.
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159. At 10:44am on 12 Feb 2010, blunderbunny
Hydrogen may or may not be the best future non-fossil fuel, but I am convinced you are right on the basic principle: we need to find alternatives to fossil fuels.
I would like to see every penny spent on this worthless committee diverted to research projects such as you describe.
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For those of you that are interested, there is an interesting paper i came across in Nature titled " A safe operating space for humanity"
Nature link (subscription)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html
Science Daily link (no subscription)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090923143339.htm
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MangoChutneyUKOK wrote:
@JRWoodman #145
It’s a fair cop – I mis-read the graph
Want to comment on the paper now?
/mango
* * *
Without going into excessive detail I would suggest that sea level variations recorded at a single location cannot be extrapolated to provide evidence of a global variation in sea level.
According to the entry on sea level in Wikipaedia [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level ], uplift or subsidence of Earth's surface is a local effect and can happen at a rate of up to 10mm/year; which would mean that a metre change in sea level at the location in question could have happened in as little as 100 years -- perhaps even quicker as a result of an earthquake. Given that parts of the Mediterranean are areas of high volcanic activity the scenario is quite possible.
So it's a bit like weather: a single local weather event provides no evidence of a global trend.
For an example nearer to home; consider that even as we speak the UK is tilting at a rate of around 1mm a year, which means 1 metre every thousand years.
I hope that helps.
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@simon-swede #155
I did state I had mis-read the graph in #149, so why the attack?
OK, the paper:
Global sea level and Earth’s climate are closely linked. Using speleothem encrustations from coastal caves on the island of Mallorca, we determined that western Mediterranean relative sea level was ~1 meter above modern sea level ~81,000 years ago during marine isotope stage (MIS) 5a. Although our findings seemingly conflict with the eustatic sea-level curve of far-field sites, they corroborate an alternative view that MIS 5a was at least as ice-free as the present, and they challenge the prevailing view of MIS 5 sea-level history and certain facets of ice-age theory.
The take home message from this paper is sea level was 1m higher than present despite estimated temperature of up to -5C below baseline and estimated CO2 levels of in the region of 220 ppmv, both taken from the Vostock ice core.
/mango
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Sesambo at #162.
Yes, it is a good paper. You may also like to see the discussions related to it on this blog from Septemebr and October last year.
See, for example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/10/limiting_growth_of_people_and.html
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#160:
"Perhaps you are so impressed by your own command of the sarcastic idiom that you have forgotten logic."
Yes, you're right, I have forgotten logic. It could be to do with my command of the sarcastic idiom, but then again it could be because I've spent too much time reading the posts here and some of the so-called scientific arguments people come up with in an attempt to show that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas / the global temperature isn't rising / CO2 is a greenhouse gas but its effects are completely negated by clouds / CO2 levels aren't significantly increasing anyway / a big boy did it and ran away (or whichever argument the particular poster is going for today).
Anyway, if we're going to talk about logical fallacies, if you say you're calling the authority of the climate scientists into question, isn't that just a classic example of the ad hominem fallacy?
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It is becoming increasingly obvious that many believers in AGW are very uncomfortable about having their ideas subjected to the sort of scrutiny that any scientific hypothesis would receive. That is possibly because they have an aversion to scientific method.
Some thinkers in the AGW camp have concluded that science is not fit for their purposes. It does not yield results quickly enough, mostly due to the comparatively slow pace of scientific method. They suggest that scientific method should be rejected and knowledge of AGW should be gained using a new philosophical process. This would not only not apply scientific method but would allow anecdotal data.
This is a perfectly legitimate view, but it is not science. Describing the outcome of this process as 'science' is dishonest. A scientist would have no difficulty in recognising that this process does not yield 'scientific facts', as is clearly demonstrated on this thread and others.
The real danger is that, in the general public, science receives a high degree of trust. Non-scientists assume that a fact presented to them as 'scientific' has been subject to the scientific method.
In order for knowledge gained by the new 'anti-science' philosophy to be honestly presented to decision-makers and others, its proponents must give the new method a name that makes no reference to 'science'. This would remove the possibility of accidental misrepresentation.
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@ 166
"Anyway, if we're going to talk about logical fallacies, if you say you're calling the authority of the climate scientists into question, isn't that just a classic example of the ad hominem fallacy?"
it would be yes, were they not under numerous investigations for scientific fraud, illegal FOI avoidance and peer-review highjacking.
in this instance i'd say treating what they say with a little health... shall we say... scepticism, is only right and proper.
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DisgustedOfMitcham2 #166: "..or whichever argument the particular poster is going for today"
Ah. You mean these...
101 reasons to deny AGW
/davblo
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#167:
"Some thinkers in the AGW camp have concluded that science is not fit for their purposes. It does not yield results quickly enough, mostly due to the comparatively slow pace of scientific method. They suggest that scientific method should be rejected and knowledge of AGW should be gained using a new philosophical process. This would not only not apply scientific method but would allow anecdotal data."
That's a pretty worrying accusation. Do you have any evidence that it's a mainstream view in the AGW camp? Is there, for example, anything in any of the IPCC reports saying that the IPCC rejects the scientific method?
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Disgusted of Mitcham2 may or may not have forgotten logic in his report (#166 et al).
However no one can claim that he has forgotten his "straw men"
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#169:
Yes, they would be the ones. Although you seem to have left out the one about "a big boy did it and ran away". Very careless!
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So.
I post a comment from the head of a department in environment sciences, AT the University of East Anglia..
Ie a very qualified scientist with different theories than his colleague Phil Jones at the SAME university.
He has a blog, to try and open debate to the general public, he advocates putting data, and science on the web for the public to see, and get involved in..
The response, from thinkforyourself!!!!
"allegedly quotes Paul Deniss from a sceptic weblog, with reference to the ‘Eemian’ temperatures."
It is Paul Dennis,
you can check for yourself..
It is not some comment on a 'sceptic' blog...
It is Paul Deniss' personal Blog!!!!
Or does that make it, he does not believe in agw, HERETIC, ignore him!!!!
and the response is then to check WIKI....
(and of course william connelly and others - real climate founders haven't been caught manipulating wikki)
Unbelievable!!!
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#170 DisgustedOfMitcham2 wrote:
"Is there, for example, anything in any of the IPCC reports saying that the IPCC rejects the scientific method?"
Do you think that people who stray from proper scientific methods proudly announce it to the world?
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@DisgustedOfMitcham2 #166
"Anyway, if we're going to talk about logical fallacies, if you say you're calling the authority of the climate scientists into question, isn't that just a classic example of the ad hominem fallacy?"
Leaving aside, all the stuff that most of us here would disagree on, I'd just like to focus on the "calling the authority of the climate scientists into question" bit.
Some of these people have been trying to erase both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age from the historical record and it's only very recently that they've been forced into a dramatic U-Turn and had to acknowledge that they were wrong all along.
If you're able to think back a year, I'd like to ask what position would both you and they have been authoritively defending then?
You may think that this particular problem with the pro-AGW case is unimportant, but it strikes at the very heart of the "authority of climate scientists" and it should, at the very least, give a logical man pause for thought. Belief and Consensus combined with the very thin veneer of scientific authority are very dangerous things.
I might humbly suggest that you may need to study both your logic and the sarcastic idiom just a little deeper, if you are to fully appreciate your position.
Still, what do I know? I’m a sceptic and therefore I’ve got a very limited grasp of both logic and science.
Thankfully, the same could not be said of my grasp of sarcasm ;-)
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@170
how about knowing something in our report was factually incorrect, publicly and aggressively attacking people who question that fact and only admitting it was a mistake after a major political conference that our report was fundamental in creating/informing?
Doesn't sound particulary scientific to me.
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As a practising scientist (BSC and PhD Geology) I sincerely hope that the current investigations into the alleged climate science frauds do not produce a politically expedient whitewash. Scientists are not immune from the attractions of political power as anyone who has experience with a university Senatus or learned Society will know. Science must transcend mere political power to seek scientific (i.e. testable and repeatable) truth to maintain the respect of wider society. I, amongst others, despair at the headlong rush over the last decade or two by so-called climate scientists to interpret various, often short-term (in a geological sense), observations as "proof" of anthropogenic global warming. Announcements of "proven" AGW satisfies only the disaster-hungry press, so-called eco-activists, tax and spend politicians and redistributionist political philosophers. Any scientist worth his salt knows that such proof cannot be obtained in a decade or two but requires much longer periods of consistent and independently verifiable observations made with calibrated instruments under standard conditions. Such scientific observation has NOT been done so the IPCC and Hadley Centre "scientists" cannot claim that AGW is proven and political and economic decisions based upon their pontifications are without foundation and represent a serious threat to future human economic development and living standards.
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@LabMunkey #176
I think you are way behind the times. The process you describe is the Nu-Scientific Method used throughout the Nu-Sciences
/mango
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175. At 12:32pm on 12 Feb 2010, blunderbunny wrote:
"Some of these people have been trying to erase both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age from the historical record and it's only very recently that they've been forced into a dramatic U-Turn and had to acknowledge that they were wrong all along."
If anyone has tried to erase the MWP or the LIA they have obviously never succeeded as the MWP and LIA are present in all reconstructions.
What climatologists have questioned is the magnitude and timing of the MWP on a global scale. Neither of those questions had been addressed 15 years ago, there were no temperature reconstructions covering the MWP back then, there was simply some dogma that the world was much warmer than today during some vague MWP (dates not provided). That dogma was primarily based on europe being throught to have been warmer back then.
This dogma was challenged by the scientific community and was discovered to be unfounded.
First of all they pointed out that a lot of people were mistakenly extrapolating regional warmth for global, ie even if western europe was warmer than present 1000 years ago, it doesn't mean it was warmer globally, let alone over the entire northern hemisphere. Second they observed that a lot of the warmer MWPs cited in various regions were not chronologically simulataneous.
As a result of developing reconstructions, temperatures today were found to be near, or even greater, than those over the past 1000 years.
The recent Mann study pushes that back further to 2000 years and therefore captures the full magnitude of the MWP.
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173. Barry Woods wrote:
Not all interglacials are equal from a point of view of the orbital forcing, so comparing this one with the Eemien as if the sole difference should be co2 is a fallacy.
If anything the Eemian being 2C warmer than the present interglacial suggests that the climate is not dominated by negative feedback.
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170. DisgustedOfMitcham2 wrote:
No he doesn't have evidence. He's bluffing. Push harder and he'll just flop right over.
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DrKnow #177.
"..the headlong rush over the last decade or two by so-called climate scientists to interpret various, often short-term (in a geological sense), observations as "proof" of anthropogenic global warming."
not disagreeing with your point of view per se but ALL human activity (and even history) is very much short-term "in a geological sense".
no doubt, politics (rather, vested interests) has gotten in the way of science but the "..serious threat to future human economic development and living standards" does not come from a few dodgy scientists or institutions -- that comes from our colluding with an endemically corrupt and morally bankrupt society.
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@infinity #179
There is so much in your post that is ridiculous, I really don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Even if Mann is correct about his precious Hockey Stick, it doen't tell us what caused the recent warming, does it?
/mango
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#174
Some of them do. This article may be of interest to you;
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/climate-change-and-the-death-of-science/
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@Infinity
You might like to try this obviously, not quite caught up with the whole "Nu-Science" program, web site from yesteryear for a collection of reasonably unmolested/non retro-fitted graphs and surprisingly un-bumpy graphs:
http://home.iprimus.com.au/nielsens/medieval.html
What, no MWP, no LIA. Well, I wonder where they went then?
If you're, as a group, going to cover your tracks you'll have to start making a better job of it - the web is a little bigger than wikipedia and things have a pesky habit of hanging around......
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Re 183. MangoChutneyUKOK:
It isn't just Mann is it? It's all those other reconstructions too. Even Lohle's reconstruction shows temperature today equivalent, or perhaps higher than the MWP.
"Even if Mann is correct about his precious Hockey Stick, it doen't tell us what caused the recent warming, does it?"
And even if Mann (and others) are incorrect, it still doesn't tell us hwat caused the recent warming.
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I did an off the cuff visit to a geothermal power station in the hope of finding out more about the type of energy used. I was really disappointed because they did not have a visitors centre. The one I looked at is owned by a French company and they also have one in Paris. These have been around for years and yet no one seems to notice them. They run on a shoestring and everyone takes the resource for granted. Isn't it about time that these places were given more government funding to increase their output? Isn't it about time that these places had visitors centers near by, so that the population can see models of how the system works and how it heats the city for them? If ordinary voters cannot see alternative energy systems for themselves, how can governments expect to get the voter to accept these systems, if they have no concept of them? Education about our energy systems should be available for everyone, in formats of increasing complexity, to suit the enquirers level of need. I would like to see an information centre incorporated into the city's plan for developing the cultural centre. Energy use is part of our culture. I would also like to see more information locally available about the concept of anaerobic digestion and the energy derived from it.
The trip was worthwhile if unproductive, as it showed me just how much the ordinary public are kept out of the learning loop. I hope that there is a government energy spokesperson reading this blog and taking note of what is needed.
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#177 Dr Know
"Any scientist worth his salt knows that such proof cannot be obtained in a decade or two but requires much longer periods of consistent and independently verifiable observations made with calibrated instruments under standard conditions."
Perhaps you should read Spencer Wearts book on the History of Global Warming. The research has been going on for more than 2 decades..
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
"Such scientific observation has NOT been done so the IPCC and Hadley Centre "scientists" cannot claim that AGW is proven and political and economic decisions based upon their pontifications are without foundation and represent a serious threat to future human economic development and living standards."
As far as I am aware the IPCC reviewed and referenced independent scientifically funded research from peer reviewed journals, they didn't actually do their own research. Also, i think the scientific observations are better than you think..including satellite data. Plus recent changes in climate and projections are not the only information used. Paleoclimate data suggests that CO2 and CH4 including O2 and H2S have all played important roles in climatic variation and the data we have for that is significantly longer than 20 years! Of course, the uncertainty and errors involved are larger but conclusions can still be discussed. For example, we know that the sun was 70% less intense than now. Greenhouse gases explain why water was liquid on the surface of the Earth. Mars and Venus have atmospheres that are in equilibrium. The Earth's atmosphere is in disequilibrium because of life and other biogeochemical processes such as rock weathering (CO2 drawdown), volcanoes, oxygen production etc etc. There are some interesting articles in New Scientist regarding oxygen evolution and Snowball Earth. From all this it becomes apparent that even microbes had a massive impact on climate via their production of waste products (O2, H2S, CO2, CH4). So it follows that the production of greenhouse gases on industrial scales is probably going to impact climate now.
See Richard Alleys excellent video at the AGU on CO2 and climate:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
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@187
i love the idea of geothermal. If i ever get around to building my dream house, i'll use it.
Why isn't it used more mainstream? It seems the ideal alternative
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The article that prefaces all of these comments discusses the quality of the science contained in IPCC reports. It would be valuable if more of these comments addressed the quality of the science, rather than debating whether AGW exists and, if so, who's fault it is.
Few sceptics here are arguing that some body such as the IPCC is not required, or that no research is required into AGW. Most are concerned at the quality of that science.
Believers in AGW have every right to their political, philosophical and religious opinions and every right to express them here. They do not have a right to describe those opinions as 'scientific' if they have not been subject to the scientific method. This method has been repeatedly and clearly described in this thread and rejected by many of those of an AGW opinion.
Why still cling to the 'science' banner, when they clearly regard it as unfit for purpose?
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Let's delve a little further into \\\ H-A-T-E- ///
(Holocene-Anthropocene-Thermal-Extinctions) or,
(Holocene-Anthropocene-Terminal-Event)
Any preferences as to the name??
---------------------------------
Lest I be accused yet again of something hateful?, I will reassert my role here - a blogger, presenting the views of the world of science - an 'impressario,' as it were, of scientists.
To illustrate:
"We do not seem to have the slightest understanding of the seriousness of our plight... (p.4)
My pessimism is shared by other scientists and openly by the distinguished climate scientist James Hansen... (p.5)
Most of all I am pessimistic because business and governments both appear to be accepting uncritically a belief that climate change is easily and profitably reversible." (p. 5 - my emphasis)
"The Vanishing Face of Gaia," James Lovelock, 2009.
----------------------------------------------------
To seasambo
You can find the entire 'Planetary Boundaries' article for free at the Stockholm Resilience Centre - the 'pdf' is available on the sidebar, including Supplementary Information:
http://www.stockholmresilience.org/planetary-boundaries
-----------------
To continue:
Holocene: [1] The last ~ 11,600 years, since the terminal event of the last ice-age, the 'Younger Dryas.'[2]
Mankind had by the close of the ice-age travelled to most habitable areas of the globe, save the remote ocean archipelagos. The climate had ameliorated, and, having by then perfected our big game hunting techniques, we had hunted many of the 'big and easy' game to collapse or extinction. [3]
We then turned to farming a few suitable crops, none of which is the natural food of mankind. We are now entirely dependent upon these same crops to sustain our numbers.
The Anthropocene [4]
Paul Crutzen coined this name in the year 2000. It fits.
We are now, in my opinion, in the transition phase between the Holocene and the new 'hot state' so forcefully described in James Lovelock's "The Vanishing Face of Gaia" and James Hansen's "Storms of my Grandchildren."
We are possibly in the mathematical 'critical slowing down' phase before a change of state - a chaotic bifurcation.
Thermal Extinctions or Terminal Event (Your preference???)
At this time, we humans have overrun the planet, and the rate of species extinction is from 100 to 1000 times above background. Many are the 'biodiverse' voices who have elaborated on this, including James Lovelock, James Hansen, Johan Rochstrom, Richard Leakey etc etc... Richard Leakey wrote a book, "The Sixth Extinction," long ago.[5]
------------------
I would at this time urge a rethink on tactics.
Are we to continue playing the game of the lobby, responding and 'explaining' to them?
Or are we to take a leap of faith, and place our confidence in the final wisdom of the people.
If the first, I see little hope for us.
If the second, then things can change for the better.
But you might have to get your hands dirty - can you do this?
- Manysummits -
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Progress
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene
[5] http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780385468091.html
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\\\ A personal Note /// to ghostofsichuan:
I am off tomorrow to attempt a winter ascent of a minor peak in the Canadian Rockies, near Lake Louise.
A young man I met some time ago is 'searching.' He has a Ph.D. in physics, and can fix or fine tune your very large institutional 'optical telescope.'
We, and possibly two others, are off to do something truly useful and important tomorrow morning at 5 am.
We are off to 'be ourselves,' and to become part of the 'scary' natural world of avalanche and winter weather, with only our selves to decide the course of action and to suffer the consequences.
If I could, I would like nothing more than that each and every blogger here accompany us. But as my favorite balladeer of the West sings, "wishin' don't make it so."
But I will go in your stead, and if we and Lady Luck are together tomorrow, I will report on our 'investigation of things.'
All the best Ghost,
Manysummits
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@manysummits #191
I will reassert my role here - a blogger, presenting the views of the world of science - an 'impressario,' as it were, of scientists
But you are not presenting the views of the world of science or scientists. You are presenting your views based on a handful of scientists that you have selected, whilst dismissing the views of other scientists whose views differ from your select few.
I’m not saying that I am representing the views of sceptical scientists either. I try to present my interpretation of the evidence against CO2 and where, in all sincerity, I believe it is wrong or inadequate
/mango
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@manysummits #192
We are off to 'be ourselves,' and to become part of the 'scary' natural world of avalanche and winter weather, with only our selves to decide the course of action and to suffer the consequences.
I may not agree with most of what you right, manysummits, but you be careful out there and don't take risks. Sometimes the PP is the right way
Have a good weekend
/mango
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To thinkforyourself et al; \\\ Arctic Sea Ice ///
Here is something from a Canadian researcher, David Barber at the University of Manitoba, two provinces to the east of Alberta. I wrote to David Barber, and have obtained permission to quote from his article, a rough draft sent to me by the University of Manitoba:
"It is already in press and yes you can use it.
Cheers...David Barber"
--
David Barber, PhD, CRC
Director, Centre for Earth Observation Science
CHR Faculty of Environment, Earth and Resources
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB. Canada.
[Personal details removed by Moderator]
---------------
"Our results are consistent with ice age estimates (Fowler and Maslanik, http://nsidc.org/news/press/20091005_minimumpr.html) that show the amount of MY [multi-year] sea ice in the northern hemisphere was the lowest on record in 2009 suggesting that MY sea ice continues to diminish rapidly in the Canada Basin even thought 2009 aerial extent increased over that of 2007 and 2008." (p. 10, rough draft sent to Geophysical Research Letters; [my insert])
- David Barber et al (see link below for abstract)
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL041434.shtml
---------------
- Manysummits -
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oops #194
"write" not right!
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@manysummits #195
Arctic Sea Ice
Does the paper tell us the cause of the ice loss or just record it's low?
The thing that always interests me about sea ice is why they choose to leave out the 2000-2006 period? Does this affect the 30 year average or not?
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
/Mango
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To Mango #197:
Thanks for the good wishes re the 'winter mountain.'
As for the Arctic Sea Ice, I will excerpt from the actual article in 'Geophysical Research Letters', moderators permitting:
"Observed changes in annual sea ice extent and thickness in the northern hemisphere are commensurate with increasing regional temperatures, increased mass fluxes from northern hemisphere glaciers, increasing permafrost temperature, increasing air temperature and increasing ocean mixed layer depth temperatures in summer [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007]."
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36, L24501, doi:10.1029/2009GL041434, 2009
--------------
As for the ultimate 'cause':
I do not wish to beat the proverbial dead horse, yet again, Mango.
The chances that the ultimate cause is not manmade global warming are in my opinion, vanishingly small.
That's good enough for a mountaineer.
Climbers have actually been killed by avalanche whilst painstakingly digging a a snow pit on an avalanche slope to evaluate the condition of said slope.
Wisdom comes in many forms, not all easily explained.
Our global society is in a shambles, that much is clear.
Powerful vested interest is alive and well - that is clear.
Our needs are ever growing as our population expands and 'progresses' - that is clear.
Unless we find 'the sacred balance' soon - 'we' are those foolish mountaineers digging their own grave on that avalance slope.
- Manysummits -
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Guardian: Climate sceptics denounced by Brown as he launches climate change group
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/12/gordon-brown-climate-change-fundraising
"Gordon Brown has launched a new UN climate fundraising group, and says sceptics go 'against the grain' of science"
"The group aims to raise $30bn (£19bn) over the next three years - rising to $100bn annually by 2020 – to help poor countries limit their contribution to global warming and adapt to its effects"
"Cash raised from state and private sources will fund measures to halt deforestation, encourage low-carbon development and adapt to rising sea levels, extreme weather events and higher temperatures"
Quite a good idea all in all - dare I say?
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#198 manysummits wrote:
"The chances that the ultimate cause is not manmade global warming are in my opinion, vanishingly small."
But how do you "calculate" these "chances"? It's easy to calculate the chances of throwing doubles with a pair of dice: of 36 possibilities, 6 are doubles, so if the 36 possibilities occur with roughly the same frequency in the long run, roughly one sixth of them will be doubles in the long run.
Estimating those "chances" is easy because it's an estimate of relative frequency -- in other words, it's a numerical measure of the proportion of a class ( = the results of repeatedly throwing fair dice) that have a particular property ( = being doubles).
But estimating the "chances" of some phenomenon's "ultimate cause not being manmade global warming" is completely different: it doesn't even make sense to talk of numbers here, still less numbers that are "vanishingly small". The cause of the phenomenon in question either is manmade global warming, or else it is not. So when we talk of "chances" here all we really mean is "how much it ought to be believed", and that differs from one person to the next, depending on what he already believes.
When you talk about the "chances" being "vanishingly small", really all you mean is you think it's very unlikely. Why dress it up to look like you've done some frightfully difficult arithmetic, or that you have some amazing but arcane mathematical powers?
You are just guessing -- like all the rest of us!
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bowmanthebard #200.
"..just guessing -- like all the rest of us!"
not everybody thinks ah, Hegel! when a cliché is used.
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Manysummits at #195
Thanks for that item from David Barber.
Yes, the situation in the Arctic is not good and the winter refreeze is not going well either.
Here is Dr. Barber talking about the state of the Arctic sea ice.
http://umanitoba.ca/news/blogs/blog/2009/11/27/news-release-thick-arctic-sea-ice-goes-missing/
Did you see the short film summary I posted earlier?
It includes the concept of Arctic sea ice volume, as well as ice extent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nruCRcbnY0&feature=video_response
The ‘sceptics’ are not doing us any favours by continuing to undermine the science, showing the multiple fingerprints of anthropogenic warming.
This item was in the ‘Independent’ newspaper yesterday describing how global warming sceptics have misrepresented the views of Sir John Houghton, who played a critical role in establishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Quote:-
‘…The trouble is, Sir John Houghton has never said what he is quoted as saying. The words do not appear in his own book on global warming, first published in 1994, despite statements to the contrary. In fact, he denies emphatically that he ever said it at any time, either verbally or in writing…..’
And
‘…..Even though the quotation appears on about 130 thousand (sceptic) web pages, no one seems to know where it originated. On the few occasions a reference is cited, it is listed as coming from the first edition of Sir John's book, Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, published by Lion Books in 1994. But Sir John does not say it in this edition, nor in subsequent editions published by Cambridge University Press….’
But most tellingly of all the article goes on:-
‘…Christopher Booker, a newspaper columnist, considers the quotation so important that he lists it at the top of the first page of his most recent book on climate scepticism, The Real Global Warming Disaster, published last year.
Mr Booker also cites the 1994 edition of Houghton's own book on global warming as the source of the quotation, even though there is no mention of it there.
Mr Booker did not respond yesterday to enquiries by The Independent….’
And
‘….Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University, also cited the 1994 edition of Sir John's book as the source of the quote, which he used last Sunday in an article denouncing the alarmism of climate scientists.
Dr Peiser admitted to The Independent that he had not read the book recently and had only used the quote "from memory" because it is so widely cited in other books on climate scepticism….’
And yet they demand absolute infallibility from climate scientists.
Read the whole article here:-
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/fabricated-quote-used-to-discredit-climate-scientist-1894552.html
Meanwhile, as Dr Barber finds, the Arctic sea ice is turning to slush.
Manysummits, have a good time in the Rockies. I shall look up Lake Louise on Google earth.
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#201 jr4412 wrote:
"not everybody thinks ah, Hegel! when a cliché is used."
Having read not one word of Hegel, neither do I!
But I think there is a more widespread "appeal to numbers" going on, something much more serious and insidious than anything in manysummits's messages, which I usually read with interest.
Every now and again I hear claims like "it is 90% likely that global warming is happening" -- spoken in the same spirit as "the science is settled". I'd be interested to hear from anyone who can tell me where this figure comes from, and what it is supposed to mean.
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#202 thinkforyourself gave us a link to an article in the Independent which contains the following passage:
'"Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen," Sir John was supposed to have said in 1994.
'The quotation has since become the iconic smoking gun of the climate sceptic community. The words are the very first to appear in the "manual" of climate denialism written by the journalist and arch-sceptic Christopher Booker. They get more than a 100,000 hits on Google, and are wheeled out almost every time a climate sceptic has a point to make'
I can't remember ever coming across the words "Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen" in my entire life! I have certainly never used them myself. I can't remember reading them in this blog, which seems to be predominantly sceptic, or at least sceptic-leaning.
I haven't read Christopher Booker's book though. As a sceptic, I regard him as a liability, much as intelligent non-sceptics regard George "Respect" Monbiot!
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#202 thinkforyourself wrote:
"And yet they demand absolute infallibility from climate scientists."
If you're referring to some sceptics' requests for "scientific proof", I wholeheartedly agree. Please, my fellow sceptics, no more claims or requests for "proof" or "prove it"!
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Mango at #197 says:-
‘….The thing that always interests me about sea ice is why they choose to leave out the 2000-2006 period? Does this affect the 30 year average or not?...’
A thirty second search, Mango, and you’ll find it’s all here, in the public domain.
Scroll down and choose any year.
http://nsidc.org/news/index.html#2006
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bowmanthebard #203.
"Having read not one word of Hegel.."
you do surprise me, again! :-)
"But I think there is a more widespread "appeal to numbers" going on ... claims like "it is 90% likely that global warming is happening" -- spoken in the same spirit as "the science is settled". I'd be interested to hear from anyone who can tell me where this figure comes from, and what it is supposed to mean."
agree that it is insidious and (guessing here) would say that we, all of us, like numerical certainty, feel reassured by it.
while I cannot comment on the 90% figure, I refer you to a Radio4 broadcast (moreorless, second half of last year) where Tim Harford looked into how the government came to use a figure of "7 million British people illegally download music from the internet" to support their 'crackdown' driven by the RIAA; like the example cited by thinkforyourself in #202, it snowballed from a single (biased) source being quoted repeatedly and out of context.
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moi wrote:
"Every now and again I hear claims like "it is 90% likely that global warming is happening" -- spoken in the same spirit as "the science is settled". I'd be interested to hear from anyone who can tell me where this figure comes from, and what it is supposed to mean."
And if no one gives me an answer, I'll assume that no one knows what it means!
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#207 jr4412 wrote:
"all of us, like numerical certainty, feel reassured by it."
Agreed -- this is what enables the government to act with impunity in all sorts of areas. Let us rise up against it!
(I was going to say "comrade", but I deleted it because I really do not mean the above in any ironic or sarcastic sense.)
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Bowman misquotes at #205:-
‘…if you're referring to some sceptics' requests for "scientific proof"….’
No Bowman, I was referring to the fabrication of ‘quotes’ by ‘sceptics’.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/fabricated-quote-used-to-discredit-climate-scientist-1894552.html
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Also in the ‘Independent’ article was this.
Quote:-
‘…..Although Lord Monckton replied to an email asking him for the source of the quotation, he did not reply to a second email pointing out that it does not appear anywhere in Houghton's 1994 book…..’
So it seems that all the contrarians have to do is just sling bucket loads of mud and make up any stories and then sit back and watch the sparks fly.
That seems to be their contribution.
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@bowmanthebard #208
Well, I'm with you mate, that's always struck me as a bit odd too.
Unfortunately, you do need at least a very basic grasp of maths and you've only got to take a quick squint at their models to see that they're not quite upto it ;-)
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Dear all,
Can anyone please direct me towards the best account anyone can give, in print, or epub, or the web, of AGW methods and its own understanding of its own scientific methods?
I'll be honest and admit that my urge is to take them apart, but I'm genuinely interestesed to find out, and I have an honest record of changing my mind quite a bit and acknowledging my own frequent errors.
I would really appreciate any directions from anyone on this blog, or from any other blog, for or against.
Thanks!
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#203/8 bowman
"And if no one gives me an answer, I'll assume that no one knows what it means!"
make sure you ask 'everyone' before making that assumption :o)
wrt to hegel, i found his work impenetrable (maybe it lost something in the translation) and according to russell almost all his doctrines were false anyway, which is good enough for me. btw marx was supposedly an hegelian so i imagine he wouldn't be your cup of tea. just a hunch.
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#204 bowman
"in this blog, which seems to be predominantly sceptic, or at least sceptic-leaning.".....only because you, poitsplace and mango seem to have an inordinate amount of free time.
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blunderbunny #185.
have looked back over a number of your recent posts, trying to find the one where you said 'I am a sceptic' but cannot find it (must have remembered wrong); still you use 'warmists' and say "call me a denier if you want to"(10 Feb 14:11), which leads me to wonder how you reconcile this with these quotes from the link you provided:
"The Northern Hemisphere data for the last millennium show a clear net drop of 0.2°C in the mean surface temperature in the first 900 years, followed by an increase of 0.8°C in the last 100 years. Records for the Southern Hemisphere display a similar pattern."
"In contrast, the last 100 years show a clear and distinct rise in the surface temperatures reaching now significantly higher values than in the past two millennia."
sensiblegrannie #187.
"Energy use is part of our culture."
very much agree with the sentiments expressed in your post; basic education and the engagement of the general population are sorely missing from the equation.
bowmanthebard #209.
"I was going to say "comrade", but I deleted it.."
phew! [mops sweat from brow]
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#177 drknow
"IPCC and Hadley Centre "scientists" cannot claim that AGW is proven"
not sure what you mean by 'proven'. do you have a reference to a paper that claims agw is 'proven'?
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BBC Q&A: Professor Phil Jones
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8511670.stm
Not quite convincing. And I thought I was sceptical before!?
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persuademe #190.
"Why still cling to the 'science' banner, when they clearly regard it as unfit for purpose?"
the sciences are the only 'objective' tools we have, without them we'd have to rely on faith in various authorities.
the problem you highlight can be attributed to commercial and political interests using scientific knowledge selectively to achieve their aims.
both 'sides' do a fair bit of cherry-picking and the only, truly important issue -- a balanced development which benefits the majority -- falls by the wayside.
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@jr4412
I think you'll find that I was illustrating the fact that warmists have previously denied the existence of the MWP and LIA. If you go and look at wikipedia you'll get the impression that (Mann et al) never tried to erase them. Wikipedia and the odd other site may have been altered in line with the current consensus, but the site I gave the link for hasn't been altered since 2005.
The graphs in question are the original non-bumpy ones, with no MWP or LIA. Infinity, claimed that no attempt had ever been made to erase these periods and that is simply untrue!
Hope that clears it up.
I'm very sceptical, always have been, always will be.
I don't appreciate being lied to and I don't appreciate a bunch of quasi-religious and obviously ............. challenged indviduals trying to tell me that it's science.
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If you look at this video you can learn about Henrik Svensmark's efforts at trying to understand the sun's role in influencing climate.
You can also find him being attacked by John Mason (Head of Met Office) - Svensmark's theory does not fit the CO2 "settled science" - as shoudl be obvious by now the "Met Office" has all the answers (from BBQ summers to above average warm winters):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv06IyygoUs
Watch from 2:45 onwards.
You can find the entire Danish 1 hour documentary about this Danish Physicist.
Part 1 starts here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1qGOUIRac0
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BBC Q&A: Professor Phil Jones
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8511670.stm
Not quite convincing. And I thought I was sceptical before!?
Indeed - it is pretty clear that there is NOTHING unprecedented about the recent warming. Statistically INSIGNIFICANT compared to several other periods where the climate warmed and where man-made CO2 was NOT a factor. It is pretty obvious that CO2 is NOT the scary monster that IPCC claim.
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ScudLewis #218.
"Not quite convincing."
personally, I have only one problem with the answers given, relating to question (Q):
"..composite representation of long-term temperature changes made up of recent instrumental data and earlier tree-ring based evidence, where it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 ... were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were."
this begs the question why 'tree-ring based evidence' should be acceptable before 1960 but not after, nothing to do with atmospheric nuclear testing, I trust?
blunderbunny #220.
"Hope that clears it up.
I'm very sceptical, always have been, always will be."
explains post/reference yes, thanks; still, am no wiser re what you make of those quotes.
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Shadorne #222.
SHOUTING or not, your post makes clear you either didn't read the Q&As (A thru D) or you didn't understand them.
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Jr4412,
What is their to understand?
1860-1880 0.163 degc/decade rise
1910-1940 0.15 degc/decade rise
1975-2009 0.161 degc/decade rise
Man-made CO2 was a HUGE factor in 1975-2009....SO WHY NO THERMAGEDDON? Why does temperature variation look just like the other recent historical warming periods (when CO2 was irrelevant)?
ANSWER: CO2 has an INSIGNIFICANT effect on Climate because these variations are totally within the normal range of climate warming periods seen in the past. The whole climate is behaving normally. No cause to spread alarm and cry wolf (at least not yet or until we see temperatures rising in a manner that is unusual)
Pretty obvious don't you think?
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At one time, was it claimed that the Medieval Warming Period (circa 900 to 1300 A.D.) and Little Ice Age were local phenomena, only observed in Europe? Or perhaps just isolated incidents, not worthy to be considered by scientists in the 1980s to the current year, when we have thousands of temperature recording stations and regular satellite photos from which the ice coverage of the polar regions can be accurately determined?
Certainly the hockey-stick graphs ignore both of these reported events, each of which did last for several centuries.
Is southern Greenland now warm enough to grow the type of crops that the Viking colony was able to raise during the MWP? The AGW enthusiasts seem to ignore these events, making AGW less credible in my view.
TeaPot562
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There is increasing evidence of an inverse correlation between recent global warming and the number of thermometers used to assess Earth's average temperature.
Perhaps we could avoid catastrophic global warming simply by using more thermometers.
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@jr4412 #223
I think you might find that the tree ring data has never matched or been related to temperatures and rainfall. If you thumb back through some of my posts you'll find a link to some research that implies the only thing that they might be related to are number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere.
It's a very good bit of research actually.
That along with Biffra's little divergence problem and you can kiss goodbye to everything you know about both dendrochronology and dendroclimatology. So that's you main proxy gone for the last millenia,
I could go on, but honestly what's the point.
All I'd ask of anyone is that they use a little critical appraisal. Ask yourself would you buy a used car(probably a bad example on a green blog site) from this person? If he's lying to you about the mileage or the one careful lady owner, then that should be enough for you to doubt the rest of what he/she/them/it are saying to you.... if you're going to lie, you've got to be good at it and I'm afraid that these guys aren't.
Even if you don't believe my assessment (or Biffra's that is why he stopped using it afterall) of the tree ring data you only need to look at the removal of the MWP and LIA, which is still documented if you look outside wikipedia and realclimate to see that you're dealing with a bunch of snake oil salesmen.
I've always quite liked you, so I'll leave it there............
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202. At 7:07pm on 12 Feb 2010, thinkforyourself wrote:
“The ‘sceptics’ are not doing us any favours by continuing to undermine the science, showing the multiple fingerprints of anthropogenic warming.”
Come on, thinkforyourself, live up to your name and think for yourself. When did you ever think that those on this site who call themselves “skeptics” ever intended to “do us any favours” That certainly isn’t their intention. Neither is it their intention to debate the issue. You will observe from the language that is used that IN THEIR OPINION, the whole AGW hypothesis is based on “rubbish science” promulgated by “pseudo-scientists” . Much of their campaign is directed as a “smear” attack on a person or persons who have spent many years learning their science and practicing it in a responsible and ethical manner. Not to mention, of course, referring to those on this site that acknowledge the AGW science as being valid as "Religio-nuts". This is called “playing the man….not the ball” and says a lot about the author.
However, if you don’t know “how to play the ball” it is so much easier to “play the man”!
Their actions here can best be described as “disruptive” but let me assure you, to date, they have NOT undermined the SCIENCE.
There is a very clear clue in Richards article, quote:-
“Firstly, the IPCC speaks directly to governments. They endorse its reports - and all members, including the climate-sceptical US under George W Bush, have endorsed them - basically because they own the process.
One lead author observed to me in 2007, as the fourth assessment report (AR4) came out, that without such direct involvement, the reports would carry much less weight in the corridors of power; and that caveat is surely as correct now as it was then.”
Why do the governments continue to endorse the IPCC Reports?
Not just because they “own the process” and agreed in 1992 to adopt the Rio Accord, but also:-
Because, to date, no genuine “skeptical” scientist (and there are many out there but they are not contributing to this debate) has come forward with any substantial and convincing evidence that the multitude of scientists that contributed to the IPCC assessments (and there are literally hundreds of them not as Mango would have us believe, a handful, a claim he makes despite the statement he made in response to one of my debates with him that he had perused the list I gave him in link, in which there were over 250 scientists in that list alone. Big “handful!”) that those scientists have got it all horribly wrong.
Until that happens, the governments will stick with the IPCC.
That means that as far as they are concerned (and regrettably for the nay-sayers on this site, it is them that will make the decisions) the “science” is far from being “undermined”.
Let me once again suggest an imaginary, very simple conversation between a Minister for the Environment and a senior (and honest) scientific advisor.
Minister…..”Is the Science settled?”
Honest advisor…..”No Sir, not yet”
Minister…..”So…when will it be settled?”
Honest advisor……”We haven’t the vaguest idea, Sir”
Minister…….”So what do you advise me to do in the meantime?”
Now, thinkforyourself, How would you answer that one? WE know that the so-called “skeptics” on this site would say:-……..”Carry on as usual, Sir!”
So ……What would you do if you were that Minister?
Have faith, thinkforyourself, check on the number of Governments that have pledged their ongoing support for the “so-called” Copenhagen Accord. Their letters are in the public domain. Do you think they would do that if the “science” had been undermined?
The best way to deal with someone making a lot of noise is to ignore them.
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@RobWansbeck
An Excellent and very well made point. Relatively cheap too - Perhaps, we can pop one in the post to Bolivia - I may even stick my hand in my own pocket to pay for it.
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The Jones interview!
Claiming climategate didn't matter is now immaterial. We have a BBC journalist asking pertinent questions regarding climatic variations.
'Unprecedented' (at 90% confidence level ;)
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228. At 01:30am on 13 Feb 2010, blunderbunny wrote:
".........to see that you're dealing with a bunch of snake oil salesmen."
Judge not lest ye be judged.
This is typical of the calibre of comments that are only acceptable on a blog site where you can hide behind a pseudo-name. Cannot you raise your level of contributions above the gutter?
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Happy to be judged, happy to be maybe found wanting - I'm not, never have been and never will be perfect. But, neither have I tried to erase any historical periods recently and Biffra's one of your guys, not mine.
Irrational belief or faith, seems to play a large part in the AGW argument. So, I would contend that phrases like quasi-religious and its many varients are acceptable. I'm happy to tone down the humour a little, but it looks like I'm still having smugness issues.
As to the gutter, if that's where you think my contributions are - Then I'm sorry about that.
What's your opinion of Mann's body of work?
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Oops, sorry I forgot. If it was "snake oil salesmen" that hit a nerve, what would you prefer that we call them. I'm happy to accept suggestions (sadly this is still sounding smug as I read it back - sorry) for a mutually acceptable form of words?
Anyways, it seems like it's time for me to go to bed
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@xtragrumpymike2 - agreed, name calling is not required in this debate.
I had a look at what Phil Jones gives as answers to the following:
A - Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
"...So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other."
E - How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
"I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity."
H - If you agree that there were similar periods of warming since 1850 to the current period, and that the MWP is under debate, what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?
"The fact that we can't explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing"
So in essence (let me know what you think):
* Warming rates has shown to be historically consistent (even though Man-made GHG have been rising year on year) - is this expected as CO2 relation to temp is non-linear?
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/images/fig-2.jpg
* He is confident that warming has taken place (as many Sceptics do) and that Man is mainly responsible (evidence?) - would have liked to see how they work this out.
* The fact that warming can't be explained by natural forcing rules out them as the major influence (go back to Man made as a reason - why not do more research then?) - is this what the models projected too?
N - When scientists say "the debate on climate change is over", what exactly do they mean - and what don't they mean?
"There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well."
Everyone has to agree with Jones there. Also - a question about the projections of warming (2 degrees +) would have been a useful inclusion.
Thanks BBC for this interview.
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@thinkforyourself #206
A thirty second search, Mango, and you’ll find it’s all here, in the public domain.Scroll down and choose any year.
http://nsidc.org/news/index.html#2006
That's not what i am looking for.
We have 30 years of satellite data showing the Arctic sea ice. Instead of producing a 30 year average, NSIDC choose to show a 1979-2000 average, 2006-2007 season and then a 2009-2010 season.
Where is the 2000-2005 data? Where is the 2008 data? Is in inconvenient?
The data is available, why don't they show a 30 year climate period instead of a 20 year average?
@xtragrumpymike2 #229
When did you ever think that those on this site who call themselves “skeptics” ever intended to “do us any favours”
If you call pointing out the lack of evidence for CO2 being a primary driver of significant global warming, then I think we are doing you a favour, since you guys seem incapable of grasping this inconvenient truth. whenever you would like to engage in a discussion on CO2 and global warming, I would be happy to listen and answer any misconceptions you may have.
(and there are literally hundreds of them not as Mango would have us believe, a handful, a claim he makes despite the statement he made in response to one of my debates with him that he had perused the list I gave him in link, in which there were over 250 scientists in that list alone. Big “handful!”)
It's a figure of speech, mike
/mango
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It is now 9.00 pm here in NZ making it about 8.00 am in the UK.
When I left this site a while ago, for my part to watch the opening of the Winter Olympics, Blunderbunny was off to bed.
He left me with a challenge for which I am only too happy to oblige. Usually I refrain but since the offer is there, I feel it would be discourteous to not reply.
He asks:- What's my opinion of Mann's body of work? (I presume he means Dr. Michael E. Mann) Quite obviously he has not bothered to read any of my previous contributions (par for the course for this character) where I have stated on more than one occasion, that my qualifications are in a totally different discipline and therefore I am NOT QUANTIFIED to comment. This is not a cop out it is merely a statement of fact. I don't take my car to a dentist for a diagnosis (or vice versa).
My understanding is that DR. Mann is a very well qualified scientist with more than 80 "peer reviewed" papers under his belt.( I don't have one.) Apparently, Pennsylvania State University consider him good enough to promote him to "Professor" in the department of Meteorology.
How do your qualifications stack up to Dr. Mann's, Blunderbunny? Bit of the "green eyed monster" at work here? If I needed an expert witness in a court of law in relation to "climate" behavior, who do you think would impress the court the most? You or Dr. Mann?
Now, lets come on to Blunderbunny himself, who apparently is ........"Happy to be judged, happy to be maybe found wanting"
"Irrational belief or faith, seems to play a large part in the AGW argument." says Blunderbunny.
From my reading of his contributions so far, that is those directed at the "science", together with many other contributions from others like him, the same can be said for the "anti-AGW" campaign. Much of what is put forward here to justify the anti-AGW argument is totally unsubstantiated verbal diarrhea. At the same time that you denigrate the likes of Al Gore (possibly with good reason) you ("royal" you here) champion the likes of Lord Monckton (The "high priest of Climate Sceptism), Barron Lawson and David Bellamy (who flip flops from one side to the other as the "weather" changes, pun intended.)
Please convince me this isn't "blind faith" but in the other side of the argument!And you want to call the pro-AGW lobby...."quasi-religious"!!!!!! (glass houses, Blunderbunny)
As to your actual scientific qualifications, since you have never disclosed these to my knowledge, I can only judge you on your contributions.
I would like to tell you exactly how I judge you (since you ask) but then we would have to meet face to face outside this forum otherwise I would upset the Moderators
which I have no intention to do.
So, with respect to those moderators:
I don't find you a very nice person (understatement)
I find you a to be an expert in innuendo and insult (referring to well respected scientists as "snake oil salesmen") Incidentally, I don't care a hang what you call me, I've been around long enough and have been insulted by experts.
You also rely on divisiveness and dismissive comment ( referring to Dr. Mann as "Mann")
All of which means that many of your contributions don't rise above gutter level.You are not being "smug" you are being deliberately insolent and you are far from sorry.
However
And this is the important part.
What I think and how I judge you doesn't matter a hoot.But if you have a genuine point to make (which you may well do) and you wish those that do matter (and that doesn't include ANYONE on this site) to listen to you, you will fail miserably unless you change your attitude. And the sooner the better.
Getting late here in NZ . Goodnight.
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The IPCC makes absolutely no mention of the main driver for climate change: human overpopulation. There are simple low-tech methods for tackling this now. Such as free family planning advice and contraception for all coupled with major improvements in the education of women. It is not just the climate that will be affected. As the projected 9 billion people eat and burn their way through what is left, the ecosystems will fail and many species will be gone for good. All this in the next 40 years! As such I think that the IPCC has failed.
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Listened to the BBC this morning. How I wish I could wave a magic wand which could make all of the missing papers suddenly reappear from storage because someone thoughtfully saved them for posterity. That they were found, in their dog eared and imperfect state, photocopied and published freely on line for people to analyse. That the raw data sets were complete as far as possible, including ones with coffee stains and crossings out. How I WISH. Do you believe in fairies?
Whatever happens, governments and organisations are on track to change culture for the future. They want to see a more responsible society and they want to find ways of engaging ordinary people to take up the challenge. I would say, beware of those waving pots of gold as incentives because there is no pot of gold. If there is to be change, it will have to be from the people, by the people.
Bankers who accept the pot of gold incentive, you represent a great and powerful organisation which uses the hard earned wage of the ordinary man as your bread and butter source. If you accept the big bonus, you go against everything good governance is trying to achieve and you take away the incentive of the people to try change for the better.
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#219 jr4412 wrote:
"the sciences are the only 'objective' tools we have, without them we'd have to rely on faith in various authorities."
And how do you personally judge what is -- and what isn't -- a "science"?
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#238 John Lilley wrote:
"As the projected 9 billion people eat and burn their way through what is left, the ecosystems will fail and many species will be gone for good. All this in the next 40 years!"
I ask again: Why do you think this huge rise in the population is a recent phenomenon?
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236. At 09:08am on 13 Feb 2010, MangoChutneyUKOK wrote:
"whenever you would like to engage in a discussion on CO2 and global warming, I would be happy to listen and answer any misconceptions you may have."
Do you actually have any eyes to read Mango?
How many times have I mentioned that I am a Chemical Engineer with many years experience in Risk Management but know diddly squat about "climate science".?
Remember?
Let me repeat once more I DO NOT DEBATE ISSUES I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT.
I suggest others would do well to copy my example. And that's NOT a figure of speech.
Some time back I had thought you might be amenable to "debate" and in the process asked you two very simple questions. You chose to ignore those and replace them with questions of you choosing.
Here you are demanding that persons answer YOUR questions.You insist on people convincing you that CO2 is a "problem".Are you so sure that you can convince them it isn't?
You see, if you can, you are a very clever person,. In fact you would be unique. The first person (be it you or whoever) that can prove with certainty that CO2 isn't a problem would bring the whole debate to a conclusion.For once and for all we would be able to declare :"Sir, the Science is now settled. There is NO problem"
"Congratulations, Mango, You've saved the world" says Gordon Brown as he recommends you for a Knighthood.
That's just a figure of speech!
Goodnight.
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#237 tragrumpymike2 wrote:
"I find you a to be an expert in innuendo and insult (referring to well respected scientists as "snake oil salesmen")"
Aw lighten up -- this is a blog for goodness' sake! "Snake oil salesman" is a standard -- and rather mild -- expression of suspicion about someone's credentials.
If you ask me, the real vitriol and wounded sense of righteous indignation is all coming from you, not blunderbunny.
Really, where is it coming from? Had blunderbunny blasphemed, according to your theology? Must we treat your preisthood with reverence and never say bad things about them? Must we abjectly pull our forelocks in the presence of your "well respected scientists"?
Yuck-a-rama!
If they're already "well respected", then they deserve a hefty dose of disrespect. They sure sound like snake oil salesmen to me, protected by a loyal coterie of snake oil salesmen's assistants.
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@xtragrumpymike2 #242
What I find very strange, Mike, is you say you know nothing about climate science and yet you still accept the pro-AGW version of climate science, despite there being sufficient evidence of alternative views by sceptical climate scientists to, at the very least, throw doubt about the robustness of the claims.
/mango
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xtragrumpymike2 perfectly expresses the attitude that I've seen too often, and find very hard to swallow in so many AGW believers. They regard "well respected scientists" as people who are worthy of respect!
These "well respected scientists" should not be questioned, apparently. We must take their word for it. To call them rude names is to blashpheme.
Well, as a blasphemer I suggest that anyone who is already "well respected" is someone whose opinion is allowed to pass without enough critical scrutiny. Watch those people carefully -- those are the ones who are most likely to be corrupt.
The whole Western world seems divided over AGW, and I see now that we're going through a repeat performance of the Reformation. There are those who respect authority and refuse to question it, and others who have the overwhelming urge to overturn it and get people to think for themselves.
Please, please: think for yourselves! And treat the authorities with the disrespect they deserve.
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Shadorne #225.
"Man-made CO2 was a HUGE factor in 1975-2009....SO WHY NO THERMAGEDDON? Why does temperature variation look just like the other recent historical warming periods (when CO2 was irrelevant)? ... No cause to spread alarm and cry wolf (at least not yet or until we see temperatures rising in a manner that is unusual)"
compare volumes (atmosphere vs emissions) and account for lag; I think that before we see 'temperatures rising' significantly we will observe (experience!) increased atmospheric turbulence -- driven by the added energy.
blunderbunny #228.
flattery will get you everywhere ;-)
still no idea what your thoughts are re the conclusions quoted.
sensiblegrannie #239.
"They [governments] want to see a more responsible society.."
so disagree. sheeple is what they want, sheeple is what they breed -- by doling out poor education and skewed taxation and encouraging the growth of faith.
bowmanthebard #240.
"And how do you personally judge what is -- and what isn't -- a "science"?"
by sticking with the measurable, verifyable.
(#245)"Please, please: think for yourselves! And treat the authorities with the disrespect they deserve."
hear, hear!
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#241 bowmanthebard
Check out all the facts at the OPT: http://www.optimumpopulation.org/
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@John Lilley #247
What's interesting about the Optimum Population Trust is buried deep within their website there is a spreadsheet (http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.sustainable.numbers.html for spreadsheet)
This spreadsheet sets out the population that each country will be allowed. From my cursory glance they show the following:
WORLD Population (1999): 5,962, Ideal pop: 3,055 (millions)
High Income Countries : 907, Ideal pop: 949
Middle Income Countries: 2,941, Ideal pop: 1,559
Low Income Countries : 2,114, Ideal pop: 551
It breaks down these figures to cover each country and, you've guessed it, it seems the Optimum Population Trust favour high income countries over low income countries.
Isn't this just good old fashioned racism masquerading as "Save the Planet"?
Presumably each country is then broken down into high, middle and low income families, and in the UK, which is allowed 29 million people, presumably it will be the low and middle income people who will be culled.
It would seem the Optimum Population Trust is just elitism with the trusting face of a man I used to look up to - David Attenborough. Why he would front such an outfit as this is beyond me.
/mango
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@jr4412 #246 who wrote:
"compare volumes (atmosphere vs emissions) and account for lag; I think that before we see 'temperatures rising' significantly we will observe (experience!) increased atmospheric turbulence -- driven by the added energy."
Ok, first off this would actually break down the gradient you're expecting from CO2...negating much of it.
Second, you're not trying to blame current cold weather on global warming, are you? I've noticed that even though Richard Black (and other warmistas) will acknowledge that a specific air current has been allowing cold, arctic air to sweep across the continents...what they DON'T acknowledge is that the wind current in question has a long term pattern. It generally allows this sort of weather for decades at a time and then generally prevents this sort of weather for decades at a time.
How much of your perception of the impact of CO2 is based on the changes caused by this current and the other two that switched to warming mode before it?
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Xtragrumpymike2 says at #229:-
‘…..Come on, thinkforyourself, live up to your name and think for yourself. When did you ever think that those on this site who call themselves “skeptics” ever intended to “do us any favours” That certainly isn’t their intention. Neither is it their intention to debate the issue…..’
You’re right, Mike, I may have appeared a little naïve there but……..’Hope springs eternal’.
Thanks for your post. Totally agree.
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@A very xtragrumpymike2 #A number of them
It seems that I've been kicking puppies or something. I'm sorry that you don't like my writing style, I've always tried to be humorous in my comments, but I guess humour is a matter of opinion.
I happily stand by all of my statements and I'm happy to enter into debate on all of them.
I've only really been asking for a couple of answers when you really get down to it. So, without any humour, further ado or innuendo these are:
1. Where did the MWP and LIA go for a number of years and what does that tell us about some of the individuals involved in making them disappear?
2. If the tree proxy data appears to have been mis-interpreted, what does that in general mean for the case for AGW and the hockey stick?
3. There's an observed lack of climate sensitivity, how does one reconcile that with the theory of Man Made Climate Change?
These are relatively simple questions to ask, so they should be easy to answer.
Other than that, I won't seek to defend myself. You obviously dont like me and given our diametrically opposed views, that's very unlikely to change.
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Those with little understanding of the methods used by Dr. Michael E. Mann should be made aware of the following:
Referring to 'Mike's Nature trick' Prof. Jones responded:
“The phrase 'hide the decline' was shorthand for providing a composite representation of long-term temperature changes made up of recent instrumental data and earlier tree-ring based evidence, ...”
That is temperature series reconstructed from proxies were removed and replaced by thermometer data. This has been described as grafting the thermometer record onto the reconstruction.
They may then wish to explain the following quote from Dr. Michael E. Mann in the days when the 'decline' was still hidden outside of blogland:
“
No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, “grafted the thermometer record onto” any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation websites) appearing in this forum.
“
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"But he agreed that two periods in recent times had experienced similar warming. And he agreed that the debate had not been settled over whether the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the current period."
The MWP is back. The hockey stick is a lie, Jones seems to have decided to stick it to Mann. The BBC has finally been objective. Well done.
The science is not settled, Jones says so, and there may have been a comparably warm period that was not C02 driven, meaning, the game is still very much on.
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All credit to Jones in my opinion for being so honest at a difficult time. I think more attention should have been paid to the collective story told by the emails rather than just focussing on CRU in any case
The BBC surely feel able to provide us with some intersting analysis now. No one is asking them to take sides but while the UK papers (and some BBC TV) I think its a shame Richards articles can not explore the murky depths of global warming a little deeper
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post 246 jr4412
baa baa
Oh well, if we are all being bred as sheeple then the government can't blame us if we c... and. s... all over the place (metaphorically speaking of course) The film Shaun Of The Sheep now springs to mind. ;-)
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@bowmanthebard #144
"But even if you don't agree with me on that, you can agree with me that some of what even they would call "scientific" rules were broken. So why does Fred Pearce seem to think that everyone at the CRU is completely exonerated?"
Didn't think he did. There are at least five chapters in his report that are mainly about them breaking the rules in language that makes it clear that it is rule breaking.
He shows motives for their behaviour, he does not condone it, on the contrary he shows how their misbehaviour caused problems all round.
You did read his "Shakespearean tragedy" line in his first chapter, didn't you?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/series/climate-wars-hacked-emails
"There's far too much opinion-forming on the basis of "I agree with X's politics, therefore I agree with X's scientific opinions". I think Fred Pearce has become a blind evangenist for AGW simply because he's against Sarah Palin!"
Palin's a newcomer on the scene. Perhaps he's a fan of Margaret Thatcher.
No seriously. He isn't selling AGW in this piece. If he were selling AGW there'd be a lot more on the actual case for AGW. His commentary on the state of AGW science is merely showing why he thinks the scandal hasn't debunked AGW.
As it happens I don't think he has gone far enough to show that. But then his piece is not about that aspect of the scandal, and a full discussion would involve a whole new article.
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#256 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
"His commentary on the state of AGW science is merely showing why he thinks the scandal hasn't debunked AGW."
If that's all he's saying, then I agree with him. As you know already, I don't think the scandal is all that big a deal, and I have independently sufficient reasons for thinking AGW is pseudoscience.
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There's an interesting interview with Robert Winston (the fertility specialist and TV presenter) in the magazine section of today's london Times. In it, he makes the claim that chlamydia -- the sexually transmitted disease that is supposed to cause infefertility -- is all just urban-myth/scaremongering.
The reason I mention it here is that if it really is just a groundless panic, it's an example of the government puttting large quantities of money into fixing something that "ain't broke", for no ulterior motive such as profit.
Even if it isn't all just a panic, it's interesting that a well-known "expert" in the field of fertility would call something like that into question.
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In that the IPCC has accepted as fact the hypothesis of two scientiest (Callendar and Keeling) and ignored 150 years of data, plus the fact that most CO2 production is natural (20-1), it is clear that the IPCC never was a scientific organization so there really isn't anything to reform. It would be like arguing the reformation of a politician into a scientist.
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#259 Joe wrote:
"In that the IPCC has accepted as fact the hypothesis of two scientiest (Callendar and Keeling) and ignored 150 years of data"
In my view, that would be an improvement. All "extrapolation" does is mindlessly amplify details in the "data", most of which are extraneous "noise". In other words, it delivers louder garbage.
If they've finally cottoned on to the fact that you've got to actually HAVE an idea -- a bit of guesswork -- then if they are blessed with great good fortune they might eventually stumble upon the further insight that next thing is you have to TEST the idea.
I'm not holding my breath, but I welcome the thought that climate "science" may have reached the seventeenth century. Onwards and upwards! Baby steps!
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USA: Snow in 49 of 50 States
On track to break a record for snow since 1978.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100213/ap_on_re_us/us_united_states_of_snow
Of course, the article gives a requisite nod to "Global Warming it says "A snowy winter doesn't disprove — or prove — global warming, Petersen and Robinson said. This is weather, which is variable, not long-term climate, and there is a huge difference. "
This statement is strange and highly conspicuous. How often have you seen this kind of qualification or disclaimer added to an article about a heatwave - with record breaking heat? Also one must understand that the author must mean ""man-made" global warming because warming or cooling is a given natural state of the climate (temperature never stays constant).
A bit of context: SETH BORENSTEIN, AP is a "man-made global warming acolyte who has trumpeted every scam the IPCC or Al Gore ever fabricated.
As "Richard Black" is to BBC. Seth is to AP.
BTW - Me thinks record snow is not exactly what one should expect if man-made CO2 was causing thermageddon! However, one might expect extra heavy snow occasionally if one was of the opinion that the climate was still varying naturally in the chaotic fashion it has always done.
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So little of what "skeptics" are arguing makes sense. I don't know where to begin. There are layers upon layers of utter rubbish being said.
I have to somehow put into words the errors and tangle of contradictions I am reading from skeptics. A whole bundle of stuff that doesn't make sense. Internal contradictions. How can I do this concisely? I'll just make a davblo style list I think. We'll see how it goes.
1) My overriding point here is that there is something rotten in the "skeptic" community. There are growling contradictions in the background and glaring mistakes on top.
2) What Joe says about (20-1) co2 is a common fallacy. But nevermind, lets just write off an entire field of science over our own misunderstanding of the carbon cycle.
3) It is claimed above that AGW is merely an extrapolation of data. This is outlandishly false. AGW is based on explanation of how the climate works, not data extrapolation.
4) The claim about AGW being a hypothesis of Callendar and Keeling is just historically false.
5) The claim that the IPCC have ignored 150 years of data is bizarre, slightly comical and at the same time slightly unnerving to imagine the poster might actually believe it.
6) I see comments by skeptics claiming that the early 20th century warming is an argument against AGW. Yet think about it - "skeptics" are keen to accuse the climate scientists that produce the temperature records of willingness to commit fraud to further AGW. Why then would such scientists leave an early 20th century warming in the temperature records? That's right, "skeptics" want to both claim scientists willingly modify the surface record to support AGW and that also they've put in something that falsifies in it. The skeptics want to have their cake and eat it too. It just doesn't make sense. I submit that the "skeptics" often don't even realize their own contradictions, for their position is born of little more than downright contrarianism that requires little thought than to simply oppose ideas and generate conspiracy theories.
7) The climate models that are widely known to show AGW also show much of the early 20th century warming due to natural causes. How then can "skeptics" even begin to claim that warming in the early 20th century contradicts AGW when the very models that show AGW also show early 20th century warming?
3) "Skeptics" are trying to pour doubt on the early 20th century temperature record. That's right - they are trying to claim the early 20th century temperature record is inaccurate, but at the same time they want to use it for an argument! It's sheer ridiculous. Yet stranger-than-fiction - it's happening all over the internet.
The problem here is that "skeptics" only engage one single simple concept at a time and they seemingly lose track of the big picture, of how the different concepts tie together and how things make sense overall.
This is what science does - it makes sense of the world by trying to explain it. This is not what the skeptics are doing, they are playing a contrarian game wherein they try to knock down single concepts, one at a time. That's why they so often knock down concepts they later try to rely on to knock down others. Internal inconsistency.
If "skeptics" are making this many mistakes can we really trust they have their conclusions in order? How about instead of doubting the science because some skeptics make wild claims (20-1 co2! extrapolations!), we start doubting the "skeptics" have anything useful to bring to the subject?
I went back in hindsight and put the word skeptics in double quotes. I may have missed some.
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262. At 10:51pm on 13 Feb 2010, infinity wrote: So little of what "skeptics" are arguing makes sense.
262. At 10:51pm on 13 Feb 2010, Infinity wrote: How about instead of doubting the science because some skeptics make wild claims (20-1 co2! extrapolations!), we start doubting the "skeptics" have anything useful to bring to the subject?
Let me try to follow your logic, Infinity;
A) Skeptics make little sense
B) Infinity is starting to doubt the skeptics
According to B, it follows that Infinity is a skeptic.
If statement A is true, then Infinity makes little sense.
Anyone else agree that Infinity makes little sense?
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@xtragrumpymike2
I've been considering all day if I should re-enter the fray, as far as you're concerned. I've been back though all of my posts and I've been back through all of yours.
You accuse me of playing the Man and criticise me for calling Michael Mann, simply Mann. Yet your own posts frquently do the same, indeed you've done it here in this very blog, where you referred to Dr. David Bellamy without his honorific. You claim I've had a go at Gore, I haven't, but for the record I think that the man's and idiot. You claim that I've quoted Munkton and Lawson, which is also untrue.
BTW, I never mentioned David Bellamy either, but he's a very nice chap and he once, very many moons ago, bought me a drink down the pub - so, as far as I'm concerned he's a top chap.
You also complain about my use of the term "quasi-religious", but you make use of very similar terminology, in this very blog with the "high priest" comment.
You frequently denigrate people on the other side of the argument, our resident bloggers, Monkton, Lawson, Bellamy, Pilmer (it's a long list) and you've then got the sheer bared faced cheek to complain about me....
Put your own house in order before atacking me.
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@infinity
You may not think that us sceptics have anything useful to say or indeed bring to the debate, but even if that is so, it's not you guys that are winning the hearts and minds at the moment.
If you want to win this one, then you're going to have to work a little bit harder on it.
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World may not be warming, say scientists
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026317.ece
“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.
...gosh more IPCC scientists leaving the IPCC Titanic.
...it looks like Roger Harrabin has made his way to the life boast station (with that last Q&A interview with Dr. Jones who now admits there is nothing unprecedented about the recent warming and that there may actually have been a Medieval Warm Period that was much warmer)
It may not be too late Richard Black, please untie yourself from the mast and don a life jacket...that is assuming you aren't determined to go down with Capt. Pachauri.
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I see Blunderbunny is awake and at it in his usual rather pathetic manner.
"If you want to win this one, then you're going to have to work a little bit harder on it."
Please remind me what exactly was the question posed by Richard in his article? Did you actually READ the article in it's entirety? Have you evaluated it and the inference of it? Have you bothered to follow up on the current political state post Copenhagen, as of 31 Jan/Feb1? Or did you just see another opportunity to wade in with your rather warped sense of humour.
Back to your #251
Whether I like you or not is not the issue.
When you put your point of view and your concerns in the manner of #251 1,2,3 etc.I have absolutely no objection at all but unfortunately, as I always mention, I personally cannot debate the issues as that is not my area of expertise. If no-one else answers your queries to your satisfaction it could be that there is no-one on this site with the appropriate knowledge.
However, when you lace your contributions with references to "snake oil salesman" and quasi- religio nuts, I don't find that at all humerous and I doubt anyone else really does.I find this behaviour totally unacceptable even though the moderators have no complaint (their judgements are limited to the house rules)and will make my opinion blatantly obvious.Maybe you think you are being "smart" but believe you me you are far smarter when you stick yo your #251 1,2,3 style.
Back to who's winning.
Perhaps you are winning the debate on the blog, not too sure how you are measuring the score, but if you had bothered to read and more importantly, understand what Richard said regarding endorsement of IPCC reports, you will very quickly realise that WHERE IT MATTERS, the sceptics aren't even in the match.
However, feel free to keep on trying. Just remember now nice it feels when you stop bashing your head against the proverbial wall.
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Re 265 blunderbunny:
The ends justifies the mean huh? Your side are only convincing people by distorting the truth. Eg 266 Shadorne who tries to claim John Christy is a recently made skeptic to reinforce the "scientists leaving the IPCC Titanic" meme. These memes such as "scientists are leaving the IPCC", "climategate proves fraud", etc are loaded by lots of individually false components like that. If you took away all the BS, there would be no claim left.
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And the funny thing about 266 Shadorne is that it contradicts one of the disclaimers skeptics make before they start blathering. You know the one I mean, something like:
"Skeptics accept the world has warmed, we just [blah blah blah]"
Next time I see that, I'll post the link Shadorne gave, which claims the world hasn't warmed.
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264. At 11:14pm on 13 Feb 2010, blunderbunny wrote:-
Put your own house in order before atacking me.
Wow.....getting you to bite now! Go for it.
Now......since you have read everyone of my previous contributions, please itemise those that have denigrated the regular bloggers.
Are you actually suggesting that those you quote are "regular bloggers" on this site? I certainly don't remember any contributions from them.On the other hand I am happy that you finally noticed my deliberate comment to "high Priest" Monckton (sorry it wasn't my own but plagiarised from Wiki)
If you had bothered to read between the lines you would realise that much of the anti-AGW argument on this site is based on "belief". Sheer unadulterated "belief". The ONLY difference between the pro-AGW lobby and the anti-AGW lobby is the "High Priests"that you choose to believe in. This is nothing more than idolatry.
Please do a little research on those you choose to believe in.
The pro-AGW put their belief in qualified scientists.Lets look at your witnesses.
"I met Dr (I apologise for not giving him his title earlier, I had forgotten his area of expertise which isn't climate science or anything to do with it but he is still entitled to his qualification) Bellamy in a pub" you say. So therefor anything he says has to be "gospel" (again pun intended)The fact that he happens to be a "nice guy" is totally irrelevant. The question remains, does he have any expertise in the subject trhat qualifies him to debate the issues OBJECTIVELY with the scientists with qualifications who have spent years in the discipline.
Monckton (Sorry, down here in the antipodes we have very little respect for people who don't earn their title, especially when they launch into print on sciences they also have no qualifications for)(and you choose to criticise Richard as being a "biased" journalist!). Please explain why you find him (and the others you quote) to be trustworthy? And BTW when I quoted "You" as being someone who refers to these persons,I also defined "you" as being "Royal You"" (as in "royal we")meaning not necessarily you in person but the anti-AGW lobby in general.
Since you didn't bother to tell me anything about yourself in relation to your qualifications and expertise in "climate science" and since you appear to swallow all the information presented by likes of those you mention I now have a very clear picture of where you are coming from.
There have been many references on this site of "big business" having an unhealthy involvement.
Have you done any research on Professor Ian Plimer? (incidentally another man with no qualifications in "climate sciences' however very vocal on the topic. I wonder why?)
Putting it bluntly, either you have a personal financial agenda or you have been totally indoctrinated. I choose to believe the latter.
An eminent American diplomat,many years ago, made the statement:-
"Where a person stands on an issue, depends on where they sit on that issue"
Never was a truer word spoken.
Whenever someone tells me ...."you must read so and so" I go looking for where so and so comes from and I can pretty much tell what I am going to read.
Keep digging, blunderbunny.
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@shadorne #266
Er, except most of the recent warming has been since 1980. Since when we've had satellite measurements that show a very similar warming trend to the disputed surface measurements. And the UAH satellite temperature measurements have been overseen by sceptic Roy Spencer.
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Most would agree that CO2 has the potential to raise surface temperatures yet Phil Jones states when questioned about present warming compared to earlier episodes:
“So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other”.
Add to this increasing evidence that recent warming has been exaggerated and historical warming suppressed we have the possibility that the recent rate of warming is significantly less than earlier episodes.
This is a fascinating possibility.
What could be responsible for this potential lack of warming?
Do we need to abandon the concept of “average temperature” as a reliable metric for radiation balance?
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269. At 01:31am on 14 Feb 2010, infinity wrote: Next time I see that, I'll post the link Shadorne gave, which claims the world hasn't warmed.
It gets warmer. It gets colder. It gets warmer. It gets colder. It gets warmer. It gets colder. etc. etc.
That is what has happened for hundreds of millions of years...at any point in time it may be getting warmer or colder...capisce?
So if you are an alarmist, we are either headed towards melt down or being buried in an ice age.
Yawn, lets put it all in perspective shall we:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_hi-def3.gif
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271. At 01:59am on 14 Feb 2010, JaneBasingstoke wrote: @shadorne #266 Er, except most of the recent warming has been since 1980. Since when we've had satellite measurements that show a very similar warming trend to the disputed surface measurements. And the UAH satellite temperature measurements have been overseen by sceptic Roy Spencer.
Indeed, Jane, bit I am sure you also know that satellites show half the warming that ground based temperature records show. So it may be warmer in 1998 versus 1980 but not as much as claimed using analysis of ground based stations. Which just emphasizes how completely NOT unprecedented the recent warming has been.
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@shadorne #274
"bit I am sure you also know that satellites show half the warming that ground based temperature records show. So it may be warmer in 1998 versus 1980 but not as much as claimed using analysis of ground based stations."
No, I don't know "that satellites show half the warming", unless you are referring to the fact that satellite measurements only start in 1979/1980. And your comment about "1998 versus 1980" doesn't fit with what I can see here:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from%3A1979/compress%3A12/plot/uah/from%3A1979/compress%3A12/plot/rss/from%3A1979/compress%3A12/plot/gistemp/from%3A1979/compress%3A12
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from%3A1979/trend/plot/uah/from%3A1979/trend%3A%20/plot/rss/from%3A1979/trend%3A%20/plot/gistemp/from%3A1979/trend
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@shadorne #274
Unless of course you want to cherry pick the hot El Niño year 1998 as the end of a relatively short range.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from%3A1980/to%3A1998/trend/plot/uah/from%3A1980/to%3A1998/trend/plot/rss/from%3A1980/to%3A1998/trend/plot/gistemp/from%3A1980/to%3A1998/trend
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http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-natural-or-manmade/
"Believe it or not, very little research has ever been funded to search for natural mechanisms of warming…it has simply been assumed that global warming is manmade. This assumption is rather easy for scientists since we do not have enough accurate global data for a long enough period of time to see whether there are natural warming mechanisms at work."
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Jane,
Ok agreed - I should qualify as "roughly" half - or perhaps I should just say less.
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qualified scientists
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/HansenModel.htm
Tarnished Head Of CRU Admits Current Warming Not Historic
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/12764
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@xtragrumpymike2
You very keen to put words in my mouth aren't you?
I'd just keep going mate, you're making both yourself and your cause look very rational!
Plus, there happens to be a comma between "our resident bloggers" and "monkton" - but regardless of any punctuation issues that either you or I might have, that fact remains that you've abused all of them.
I'll leave it there, as I don't want to be accused of playing the Man or even the Mann ;-)
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#270 xtragrumpymike2 wrote:
"If you had bothered to read between the lines you would realise that much of the anti-AGW argument on this site is based on "belief". Sheer unadulterated "belief"."
And what is the AGW alternative to belief? Do you understand how the word 'belief' is being used by sceptics? Do you understand how the word 'sceptic' would be defined?
I get the impression that many people on the blog seem not to realize that the word 'belief' does not have any special connection with religion. To believe something is nothing more nor less than being committed to its truth. It doesn't have to be a permanent commitment, nor an irrational one because it wouldn't normally be a commitment without reasons (i.e. other beliefs which justify the belief in question).
Many people have religious beliefs, of course, but most people also have scientific beliefs. No science could ever be done without beliefs (such as the belief that a datum is accurate, than a hypothesis is true, and so on). The word 'think' (as in "I think the needle points to the five") is nearly always shorthand for "believe". So my point might be re-stated as "science cannot be done without thought". Are you denying that? -- It certainly looks as if some people think climate "science" requires no thought!
If supporters of AGW generally believe [sic] that belief is "unscientific", then their position is even shallower than I thought. That would be a monumentally pretentious and unthinking position.
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@infinity, xtragrumpymike2 and others warmers
You just dance around the issue, completely oblivious to it. The AGW hypothesis has been rammed through as if it was some kind of proven fact. In reality its the result of a green political movement and very bad science from an already poorly established science. It has not been subjected to proper peer review...proper peer reviews have been systematically ignored and suppressed.
You've deluded yourselves. The hypothesis of significant AGW never got remotely close to being proven...they just swept all the criticisms under the rug. YOU view these criticisms as people simply trying anything to disprove the theory as if they were trying to be negative for the sake of being negative. In reality, they're just pointing out all of the variables that climatologists never even attempted to explain.
For almost the entire holocene temperatures have been fluctuating by more than it has today. The relative stability of the little ice age wasn't the rule, it was the EXCEPTION. Odds are the temperature was going to fluctuate up or down...the climate system doesn't often stay still.
There are numerous other factors that skeptics have pointed out. They don't necessarily think that these other factors are what caused all of the warming. They just think there's a good chance those factors might have caused some amount (possibly but not necessarily all) of that warming. Basically, until the AGW hypothesis undergoes any real scrutiny...the unexplained bits of the climate system will keep coming back to haunt the hypothesis.
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@Shadorne #274 who wrote...
"Indeed, Jane, bit I am sure you also know that satellites show half the warming that ground based temperature records show"
Its an easy mistake to make and I made it early on. What you're referring to is the "anomaly". The satellite record shows very similar warming since 1980. While it may indeed be true that the surface temperature data is inaccurate and could be showing temperatures higher than they are, this is completely unrelated to the satellite record's "anomaly". (Which BTW is considered a first order measurement...and is NOT corrected by ground temperatures)
The actual difference between the GISS, Hadley, RSS and UAH anomalies are...the period of time used as the base period. With GISS they basically use the trough of the cold period as their base...so obviously its going to be the highest. Hadley uses a more recent period and therefore includes some higher temperatures in its average...the divergence from that higher average is a smaller number. Same with the satellites. The biggest problem with the satellites (and our data collection in general) while it is VERY detailed, its also covering a very short period of time.
On somewhat related topic...I think many of the prevailing ideas about the impacts of warming are going to be utterly destroyed over the next few years. Most of the changes in the climate system were likely the result of natural cycles.
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#282 poitsplace wrote:
"You've deluded yourselves. The hypothesis of significant AGW never got remotely close to being proven..."
No scientific hypothesis ever, ever gets "proven". So I'd like to distance myself from this claim, which sounds to me as naive as xtragrumpymike2's idea that AGW is somehow better than mere belief.
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The barrage of dissent from the AGW hypothesis continues in today's Sunday newspapers.
to mention but the two I have read -
Jonathan Leake in the Sundaay Times reports that John Christy a professor of atmospheric science and former lead author on the IPCC says that"the apparent temperature rise (in most of the popular reports)is actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations such as land development".
On the Sunday Telegraph Chritopher Booker tells of how scary estimates of a potential 50% reduction in rice yields due to warming were arrived at.
The important point in regard to the latter is the Pachauri is deeply implicated. It suggests that whatever the options for the future of the IPCC as referred to by Richard may be appropriate, Pachauri's resignation should feature in all.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
The IPPC should be disbanded forthwith because it is patently not fit for purpose and is engaged in institutionalised alarmism. Just as the BBC.
All research grants to self named Climate Scientists should be withdrawn and diverted to proper scientists.
The only dangerous global warming is man made up and the BBC needs to ask itself a question, why is it giving air time to Professor Jones from sympathetic alarmist reporters?
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@Shadorne #274
@myself #276
OK, I made a mistake in that last post.
The 1998 El Niño was not involved in the discrepancy that I looked at.
An artefact of using the Wood For Trees site is that 1980 - 1998 appears to include 1980 (from year is first year inside range), but exclude 1998 (to year is first year outside range).
UAH picked up the hot 1998 year very strongly. The discrepancy between UAH and other temperature sets seems to involve other years especially 1980 (UAH found 1980 warmer than the other data sets found it).
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@poitsplace #283
Thanks for that.
@Shadorne #278
Firstly please check poitsplace's post at #283. This is indeed another source of confusion. It may resolve your question. If not ...
""roughly" half"
Shadorne, 18 years is a very short range, lop a few more years off and the trends aren't statistically significant. And the range 1980 - 1998 particularly exaggerates the discrepancy between UAH and the others.
It's a cherry pick, albeit an accidental one.
"perhaps I should just say less"
I am happy with "less". So long as it is clear that we are not talking massively less. Enough "less" to mean there may be accidental bias. Not enough "less" to debunk warming since 1980.
UAH slope = 0.0129122 per year
HADCRUT slope = 0.0157117 per year (UAH slope is 82% of this)
RSS slope = 0.0154382 per year (UAH is 84% of this)
GISS slope = 0.016151 per year (UAH is 80% of this)
(Trend slopes calculated by software at Wood For Trees using Least squares)
(Note, the long numbers (e.g. "0.0129122 per year") do not signify precision in measurement, they signify precision in intermediate calculations.)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from%3A1979/trend/plot/uah/from%3A1979/trend%3A%20/plot/rss/from%3A1979/trend%3A%20/plot/gistemp/from%3A1979/trend
http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/hadcrut3vgl/from%3A1979/trend/plot/uah/from%3A1979/trend%3A%20/plot/rss/from%3A1979/trend%3A%20/plot/gistemp/from%3A1979/trend
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@bowmanthebard #284 who wrote...
"No scientific hypothesis ever, ever gets "proven". So I'd like to distance myself from this claim, which sounds to me as naive as xtragrumpymike2's idea that AGW is somehow better than mere belief."
This sort of stuff annoys me. It is a clear indicator that you're really more hung up on the technicalities...as if this was some sort of organized debate in which TRUTH (in as much as we can determine it) is completely irrelevant. I could be wrong on this but you've given no indication that you went beyond the term with which you disagreed. So there we are, stuck with your unilateral statement about the whole post.
Most informal debates are actually ruined by this sort of thing...often with both parties actually arguing different and minor aspects of the same concept, neither of which is mutually exclusive (ie, they might both be right). In this case pretty much everyone admits that 100% certainty is not possible. Even if I did believe this were true, it was simply side comment. It really didn't impact the main concept that I had covered in greater depth.
I understand its difficult and takes a bit more work on your part...but in future you should probably try to understand what people actually intended and not get as hung up on technicalities.
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#290 poitsplace wrote:
"This sort of stuff annoys me. It is a clear indicator that you're really more hung up on the technicalities..."
Sceptics have been accused of demanding "absolute proof" of AGW. If you claim that what's wrong with AGW is it hasn't been "proven", that accusation seems quite telling.
If you call yourself a sceptic, this issue is not a mere "technicality" at all, but the very heart of the matter.
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Well we all know that "peer-review" means nothing in man-made warming science. (it is rigged or references can come straight from a mountaineering magazine or a rabid green NGO)
Now we are learning how "independent review" also means nothing in man-made warming science. (also rigged)
Have our governments and institutions no moral compass or ethics?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100025934/climategate-the-official-cover-up-continues/
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I'd suggest we stop arguing over technicalities and perhaps step back from the personal line.
Sceptics are convinced that (apart from the cru/giss/nasa/NA/AUS fraud issues) there are major holes in the AGW 'theory'.
The AGW supporters are convinced that the theory is sound, or at least the most credible option, and that the 'sceptics' are nitpicking for personal or financial reasons.
Firstly, the 'in the pay of x,y,z' argument is irrelevant, as both sides have POTENTIAL access to serious money- however i'd say the AGW side has the better outlook in this regard long term, so it can be discounted as an argument.
Secondly, the 'belief' that sceptics are only nitpicking / trying to trash the argument through some sort of cause is also nonesense. It's the proper scientific procedure.
Thirdly, relying on soundbites/quotes/reports released by an individual from one side of the debate, to discredite everyone on that side of the debate is not only pathetic, but shows the kind of mind at work from who posts it (i.e. someone not interested in debate- only in enforcing thier beliefs). This goes for BOTH sides.
The big issues, as i see them, are:
-unexplained co2 effect. Simply saying we don't know what else it could be so it must be CO2 is not good enough.
-temperature record anomalies. Independant of the argument that the world has warmed (which i think it has) and by how much (i think less than thought by IPCC) there is a very serious issue over the validity and integrity of ALL the temp data.
-The link. This is the holy grail in this argument. Can the link between co2 and temp rises be proven? Laboratory tests and theoretical extrapolations are frankly, insufficent to base any conclusions on. Anyone who's worked in a lab/the scientific environment will understand this. SO what else is there to link the two? All i can see are conicidental, not, causal relationships.
-The political side. Completely detremental to either side of the argument, and should be removed (surgically ideally) as soon as possible. Politics is frankly, the bane of anything- but ESPECIALLY science.
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Indur M. Goklany has an interesting take on the Phil Jones interview:
Neither the rate nor magnitude of recent warming is exceptional.
There was no significant warming from 1998-2009. According to the IPCC we should have seen a global temperature increase of at least 0.2°C per decade.
The IPCC models may have overestimated the climate sensitivity for greenhouse gases, underestimated natural variability, or both.
This also suggests that there is a systematic upward bias in the impacts estimates based on these models just from this factor alone.
The logic behind attribution of current warming to well-mixed man-made greenhouse gases is faulty.
The science is not settled, however unsettling that might be.
There is a tendency in the IPCC reports to leave out inconvenient findings, especially in the part(s) most likely to be read by policy makers.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/14/phil-jones-momentous-qa-with-bbc-reopens-the-science-is-settled-issues/#comment-318151
WARNING: Sceptical blog Alert!
/Mango
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i must say, two forced resignations from the much touted 'independant review' for conflict of interest doesn't exactly instill confidence in the proceedings now does it.
I'd love you to comment on this richard.
Whitewash anyone?
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poitsplace #249.
disclaimer first: am no scientist, no letters after my name, simply an interested layperson; hope you'll overlook inconsistencies in terminology, etc (cf #290 ;))
"Ok, first off this would actually break down the gradient you're expecting from CO2...negating much of it."
CO2 helps retain more heat (energy) in the system, large amounts added simply excacerbate ('amplify') effects.
"Second, you're not trying to blame current cold weather on global warming, are you? ... what they DON'T acknowledge is that the wind current in question has a long term pattern. It generally allows this sort of weather for decades at a time and then generally prevents this sort of weather for decades at a time."
when laminar flows (jet streams, say) begin to lose coherence, very different conditions (== weather) can/will exist side by side. not sure but the 'wind current in question' may well approach this point (ie going turbulent).
"How much of your perception of the impact of CO2.."
not sure which 'other two' you're referring to but will hazard the guess that added CO2 (plus other 'impurities' like methane) may already have resulted in sufficient heat retained to upset the 'naturally' slower progression of change; looking at recent weather maps: striking differences between parts of Canada and Alaska.
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"There was no significant warming from 1998-2009. According to the IPCC we should have seen a global temperature increase of at least 0.2°C per decade."
Where does the IPCC claim that every 10 year period, including ones following super el ninos, must show at least 0.2C warming?
It's all very well to pretending the IPCC say something. It's called erecting a strawman. Watts up with that?
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"i must say, two forced resignations from the much touted 'independant review' for conflict of interest doesn't exactly instill confidence in the proceedings now does it."
You've heard the fact there is a consensus in the scientific community that manmade global warming is true? In fact most scientists understand that rising greenhouse gases cause significant warming. Even Lindzen and friends suggest warming from doubling co2 is comparable with the entire warming over the 20th century (so even according to them human emissions will dominate temperature trends this century).
That's why it's virtually impossible to find someone "independent", where skeptics idea of independent is someone who is willing to ignore the scientific evidence.
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@infinity #298
You've heard the fact there is a consensus in the scientific community that manmade global warming is true? In fact most scientists understand that rising greenhouse gases cause significant warming.
Could you define what you mean by "significant warming" and how this is achieved?
Thanks
/mango
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#248 Mango.
Reading your comments is like watching Fox News, it's all untrue. The theory is that if you publish the wrong facts on reputable forums enough times then weak minded people beging to accept them.
For the adults in this audience.....
The OPT spreadseet figures come from the WWW study into biocapacity. They looked at the amount of land that each country has and what population that amount of land could sustainably support. All manner of factors are taken into account such as climate, topography, soil and levels of lifestyle/consumption. For example the UK had a population of 59 million (in 1999) but can only sustainably support a population of between 19.7 and 28.5 million, depending on what lifestyle is adopted. Too bad that we now have a population of 61 million, expected to rise to 71 million by 2033 (Another 10 Birminghams!).
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298 Infinity: That's why it's virtually impossible to find someone "independent", where skeptics idea of independent is someone who is willing to ignore the scientific evidence.
Firstly, skeptics are worried about manipulation of the science towards a political agenda in a way that exaggerates man-made warming. Most skeptics do not dismiss the possibility of CO2 having some minor effect, however, most skeptics have a problem with the alarmists' blatantly exaggerated dire scenarios (dramatic sea level rise and general catastrophic claims etc.)
Secondly, since the independent review is looking for fraud, data manipulation, corruption of peer review and FOI obfuscation by researchers then you do not even need a climate scientist to evaluate it - least of all a climate scientist with a history of promoting "man-made" global warming.
What part of "conflict-of-interest" do you not get?
Are you really naive as to what is going on?
The politically correct alarmist science goes high, very high, to the top of many government institutions, such as the Met Office. Many institutions would not enjoy the large research budgets that they do without this scaremongering.
Do you really support the idea that a poacher makes an excellent game keeper?
The "independent review" is not supposed to "prove" or "disprove" man-made global warming - it is supposed to investigate unscientific and unethical and substandard practices. No need for a climate expert. A statistician or mathematician can easily see whether the science supports the dire man-made conclusions in a statistically meaningful way. They can easily check if the disappearance of the Medieval Warm Period is statiscally justified and whether the data has been properly analyzed. (Actually it doesn't)
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You really have to laugh about this "independent review". Here is a good one.
http://www.inscriptdesign.com/josh/TheInquiryTeam_scr.jpg
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John Lilley #300.
"For the adults in this audience....."
ok, I got my great-grandmother to read the rest of your post. ;)
"For example the UK had a population of 59 million (in 1999) but can only sustainably support a population of between 19.7 and 28.5 million, depending on what lifestyle is adopted."
I'd like to see you break down these figures, what kind of life-style can we expect after two-thirds of the population have been culled (and assuming, both you and I are among the 'chosen' survivors)?
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Shadorne #301.
"What part of "conflict-of-interest" do you not get?
Are you really naive as to what is going on?
The politically correct alarmist science goes high, very high, to the top of many government institutions.."
whereas the other 'side' are all down-trodden urchins? get real.
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Take Richard Lindzen - he estimated doubling co2 causes 0.5C warming. And that's just about the lowest estimate available.
Yet 0.5C is equivalent to most of the warming seen over the 20th century. So by doubling co2, something that human activity is lined up to do this century, we can drive global temperature a significant amount. In fact a few tenths of a degree warming is enough for co2 to possibly be the dominant driver of temperature this century (why should any other single factor have a bigger warming or cooling effect?)
Now most studies find the warming even greater than 0.5C. Which is why most scientists - a consensus if you will - can easily accept that human greenhouse gas emissions will be the driving force of temperature over the 21st century. It's hard to not accept that if you look at the science, even Lindzen would be hard pressed to deny it even if he only accepted his own estimates.
Yet all of the above contradicts the position of most of the skeptics online who I see on comments on blogs, news sites, etc who make up what I have come to see as a political movement. Most of these skeptics will claim co2 is just a big fraud, that it's not proved to have any effect on climate, that co2 is insignificant with regard to climate, just something to tax us with, or impose world government, or some other conspiracy. That the science has been corrupted for grant money or communism or something. They won't accept that co2 may be the dominant driver of the temperature trend this century. Yet that is what the science very strongly suggests.
It gets to the point where many skeptics online are actually claiming co2 causes no warming. Reid Bryson, famously quoted manmade global warming skeptic, meteorlogist, said: "you can spit and have the same effect of doubling co2". It's a wrong, scientifically unsupported idea. It flies in the face of the science. It's just plain ignorance. Yet we have professional meteorologist saying it in public, because this anti-science political movement is made up of all sorts.
And this is the makeup of the political movement that is behind climategate. This skeptic crowd will never be happy with the choice made for the investigation team, because these skeptics are completely divorced from scientific reality and the investigation team cannot.
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Gordon Brown is out gunning for deniers...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/12/gordon-brown-climate-change-fundraising
And just in case you had any doubts that all the alarmist propaganda is NOT about money just read the quote at the bottom of the article;
" Asad Rehman, senior international climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: "$10bn a year might sound like a wave of new money for poor countries to tackle climate change, but in reality it's a drop in the ocean compared to what is required. What's worse is that most of this money from rich countries will be plundered from existing aid budgets." Last month the UK government admitted that its £1.5bn contribution to the 2010-2012 funding would be taken from its existing overseas aid budget. "
10 BILLION is a "drop in the ocean" according to climate campaigners!!!
Indeed, they make Bernie Madoff look like a small time two bit crook.
I suppose the climate campaigners are looking to divert TRILLIONS of our taxpayers money to their cause (I wonder how much of these funds will ever actually reach the poor after all the stakeholders have taken their "administration expenses")
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Infinity: This skeptic crowd will never be happy with the choice made for the investigation team, because these skeptics are completely divorced from scientific reality and the investigation team cannot.
It is NOT about "scientific reality" as that is NOT the task of the independent review.
The independent review is supposed to be investigating shoddy and unethical scientific practices - such as manipulating peer review or use of statistical methods that "hide the decline" or help create the illusion of an unprecedented hockey stick.
You are conflating things. The science is NOT settled - no independent review is going to be able to "settle the debate" and that is not what should be expected from a review panel.
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Interesting. The BBC have decided that "the debate is over" yet Prof Jones says indeed it is not.
Will Richard and the BBC be sticking to their line now? If so on what evidence?
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Shadorne #306.
"10 BILLION is a "drop in the ocean" according to climate campaigners!!!"
"I suppose the climate campaigners are looking to divert TRILLIONS of our taxpayers money to their cause (I wonder how much of these funds will ever actually reach the poor after all the stakeholders have taken their "administration expenses")"
well, $10bn isn't all that much, really -- just about the combined amount of bonuses paid out in the City of London to traders in 2008.
as for "TRILLIONS" -- in 2008 our governments spent $1.646tn on controlling and killing us (source SIPRI), how does that benefit 'the poor'? would you object to the monies required being taken from defense budgets?
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@John Lilley #300
Reading your comments is like watching Fox News, it's all untrue.
Which part is untrue?
Are you saying the Optimum Population Trust doesn't have a spreadsheet allocating the ideal population on a country by country basis and it seems third world countries have to reduce their population significantly, whilst western societies, with the exception of the UK, will be able to increase?
Or that the results appear to be elitist?
Or perhaps the middle and low income families will be culled? What would be the basis of this cull? Everybody who earns over £100K is allowed to live and everybody below has to be humanely disposed of? But who will valet the car and do the cleaning for these people?
Ridiculous
/Mango
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@infinity #305
Could you explain why Lindzen shows a rise of 0.5C for a doubling of CO2, when it is generally agreed that a doubling of CO2, without any other factors taken into account, would produce a temperature rise of 1.1C?
/mango
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307. Shadorne wrote:
"You are conflating things. The science is NOT settled"
Then please explain which scientists are expecting less than 0.5C warming from coming co2 rise. Seems like the science on that matter has settled down to me.
And yet in the world of politics and he-said-she-said nothing in science is settled. The center of the sun may be made of iron. Something I learnt from a climate skeptic "paper" published on the internet.
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#312 infinity wrote:
"Seems like the science on that matter has settled down to me."
From time to time science does seem to settle down on this or that hypothesis, which does give the impression that it is actually true, but the science settling down is not quite what postmodernist types have in mind when they say the science is settled -- sans "down" -- as if mere agreement among supposed "experts" determines what is true or false.
'The center of the sun may be made of iron. Something I learnt from a climate skeptic "paper" published on the internet.'
And as far as I recall, I disabused you personally of this intellectually dishonest claim some time ago.
If you cannot direct me to where a genuine sceptic said this, you should be ashamed of yourself, because it's clear you make things up for political effect.
I demand that you direct us -- NOW.
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Yes of course the IPCC should be abolished, and all legislation connected with the climate fraud cancelled. Then we can prosecute the fraudsters and their leftist media lackies. Then Mr Black will have to get a proper job, because the BBC will have been broken up and sold off.
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@blunderbunny #251
Disclaimer. I am not an expert in these areas. But, to answer your questions.
1. The MWP and LIA never went away.
They are not visible in some Hockey Sticks and are shallower than sceptics expect in those Hockey Sticks where they do appear. This is because Hockey Sticks are an attempt to be either global, or at least attempt to cover most of a hemisphere, and include temperatures from other areas.
The warm temperatures of the MWP and the cool temperatures of the LIA are clearly visible in some temperature proxies such as Greenland ice cores. But they are as clearly absent for some other parts of the world.
You can find discussions of the MWP and the LIA at RealClimate dating back to RealClimate's start in 2004. You can also find them discussed in IPCC literature. To repeat, the MWP and LIA never went away.
2. Hockey Sticks and associated tree ring temperature proxies are not the main part of the case for global warming.
If proved reliable Hockey Sticks make the AGW case stronger. But if proved false they don't debunk AGW. Hockey Sticks didn't exist before 1998. And obviously AGW science is a lot older than 1998.
Tree ring temperature proxies are controversial. However they are only really part of AGW when used in Hockey Sticks.
Note, this New Scientist article is from 2006.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18925431.400-climate-the-great-hockey-stick-debate.html?full=true
And here is Michael Mann making it quite clear that AGW science does not rely on Hockey Sticks. Back in 2004.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/
3. Not quite sure what you are referring to here.
IPCC literature makes it quite clear that climate sensitivity is still up for debate.
"The equilibrium climate sensitivity is a measure of the climate system response to sustained radiative forcing. It is defined as the equilibrium global average surface warming following a doubling of CO2 concentration. Progress since the TAR enables an assessment that climate sensitivity is likely to be in the range of 2 to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C. Values substantially higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded, but agreement of models with observations is not as good for those values."
Climate sensitivity is a much debated topic. So perhaps you could provide the source of your claim that climate sensitivity is low.
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#315 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
"If proved reliable Hockey Sticks make the AGW case stronger. But if proved false they don't debunk AGW."
It's a win-win situation eh?
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robert baird #314.
"Yes of course the IPCC should be abolished, and all legislation connected with the climate fraud cancelled. Then we can prosecute the fraudsters and their leftist media lackies. Then Mr Black will have to get a proper job, because the BBC will have been broken up and sold off."
was it really worth your time to create an account to write this rubbish?
are you as 'fired up' on prosecuting other fraudsters? or did you just feel a 'right-wing' rant come on?
LOL
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#310 Mango strikes again!!!!
Previously........
What's interesting about the Optimum Population Trust is { buried deep within } their website there is a spreadsheet (http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.sustainable.numbers.html for spreadsheet)
This spreadsheet sets out the population that {each country will be allowed}. From my cursory glance they show the following:
WORLD Population (1999): 5,962, {Ideal} pop: 3,055 (millions)
High Income Countries : 907, {Ideal} pop: 949
Middle Income Countries: 2,941, {Ideal} pop: 1,559
Low Income Countries : 2,114, {Ideal} pop: 551
It breaks down these figures to cover each country and, you've guessed it, {it seems the Optimum Population Trust favour high income countries over low income countries.}
{Isn't this just good old fashioned racism masquerading as "Save the Planet"?}
{Presumably each country is then broken down into high, middle and low income families, and in the UK, which is allowed 29 million people, presumably it will be the low and middle income people who will be culled.}
---------
'Mango',
I have enclosed your misquotes and stuff you have just made up in {} brackets. Not much left outside the brackets! Of course that then leaves all the stuff you have missed out as you cherry-picked your way through the OPT website.
This is a serious subject 'Mango', we are facing full ecological collapse within your lifetime. Nature takes no notice of what people say or believe, it just gets on with it. Currently it is moving towards a more stable hotter state, driven by the activities of man. As it does so it won't take any notice of any numbers in spreadsheets or blogs on websites. The land will dry out, food and water will become scarce and people will die in their billions. Watch the OPT clock, in the next few days it will reach 6.9 BILLION. We need positive action, not more toothless IPCC conferences. I suspect that you get a kick out of your subversive drivel, but at the end of the day can you really say that you have made a difference?
Bye for now
John
It would seem the Optimum Population Trust is just elitism with the trusting face of a man I used to look up to - David Attenborough. Why he would front such an outfit as this is beyond me.
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John Lilley #318.
"I suspect that you get a kick out of your subversive drivel.."
and there I was, reading MangoChutneyUKOK's well argued contributions for months without once noticing this important fact!
where would the world be without well informed opinions, such as yours?
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@bowmanthbard #316
No. Win:Neutral.
The reason why Hockey Sticks can't disprove AGW is because the important rise of temperatures since the mid 20th Century is covered by direct temperature measurements.
The fact that they can never disprove AGW is why they are peripheral to the case.
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This is the kind of thing that needs to be investigated by an independent review.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/jo-nova-finds-the-medieval-warm-period/
"In 1995 everyone agreed the world was warmer in medieval times, but CO2 was low then and that didn’t fit with climate models. In 1998, suddenly Michael Mann ignored the other studies and produced a graph that scared the world — tree rings show the “1990’s was the hottest decade for a thousand years”. Now temperatures exactly “fit” the rise in carbon! The IPCC used the graph all over their 2001 report. Government departments copied it. The media told everyone.
...the statistics were so flawed that you could feed in random data, and still make the same hockey stick shape ...
...Astonishingly, Nature refused to publish the correction.....
...The sharp upward swing of the graph was due to one single tree in Yamal.
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JaneBasingstoke #315, #320.
perhaps you can shed light on why 'tree-ring based evidence' should be acceptable before 1960 but not after.
found in the answer to question 'Q' at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8511670.stm
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#320 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
"Win:Neutral.
"The reason why Hockey Sticks can't disprove AGW is because the important rise of temperatures since the mid 20th Century is covered by direct temperature measurements.
"The fact that they can never disprove AGW is why they are peripheral to the case.
But if they're "peripheral to the case", and can never disprove AGW (which I agree with by the way) then they can't give AGW any support either. If they're peripheral to the case, then they're just irrelevant. That's how evidence works.
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A man after Infinity's heart.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/02/shroud-waving.html
"The evidence is hugely for there being substantial climate change due to man's activities and if you want to argue against that case you have to produce some evidence," he said."
Well Peter Liss, isn't that just it, the "evidence for substantial climate change due to man" - well, where is it? Where is "The evidence"? Just because it has become warmer since 1980 hardly proves that man has anything to do with it! After all, as Dr. Jones points out in his Q & A interview with Roger - there is nothing at all significant about recent warming compared to two other similar periods in the past (before man-made CO2). Besides, the climate hardly ever stays stable and without change anyway - so why the leap of faith to a man-made cause? So tell us how do you alarmists "know" that substantial change has to be man-made?
The answer is they don't know - in fact nobody does - may have opinions but the science isn't settled. Truth of the matter is that as long as there is nothing alarming or unusual about the current climate then warming or cooling - man-made or natural - this is all entirely speculation! Why should we allow speculation to be used to frighten everyone and fuel research funding from taxpayers pockets?
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313. bowmanthebard wrote:
"'The center of the sun may be made of iron. Something I learnt from a climate skeptic "paper" published on the internet.'
And as far as I recall, I disabused you personally of this intellectually dishonest claim some time ago. If you cannot direct me to where a genuine sceptic said this, you should be ashamed of yourself, because it's clear you make things up for political effect."
I demand that you direct us -- NOW."
It's at least nice that you recognize such a claim is so scientifically ridiculous that it's a slur for me to raise the fact a skeptic has published the claim. I can only hope you will be equally ashamed when you find out it exists.
I made only one mistake. I said it wasn't peer reviewed. Alas it is, but that only goes to reinforce our (warmists) arguments against the substandard journal it is published in.
EARTH’S HEAT SOURCE - THE SUN
Oliver K. Manuel
ABSTRACT
The Sun encompasses planet Earth, supplies the heat that warms it, and even shakes it. The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assumed that solar influence on Earth’s climate is limited to changes in solar irradiance and adopted the consensus opinion of a hydrogen-filled Sun—the Standard Solar Model (SSM). They did not consider the alternative solar model and instead adopted another consensus opinion: Anthropogenic greenhouse gases play a dominant role in climate change. The SSM fails to explain the solar wind, solar cycles, and the empirical link of solar surface activity with Earth’s changing climate. The alternative solar model—molded from an embarrassingly large number of unexpected observations that space-age measurements revealed since 1959—explains not only these puzzles but also how closely linked interactions between the Sun and its planets and other celestial bodies induce turbulent cycles of secondary solar characteristics that significantly affect Earth’s climate."
The rest of the paper goes into how the core of the sun is made of iron. The statement "adopted the consensus opinion of a hydrogen-filled Sun—the Standard Solar Model (SSM)" in the abstract is just the taster of where he is coming from. It is of course steeped in the kind of language climate skeptics use.
Where was this published? Wait for it:
Energy & Environment, Volume 20, Numbers 1-2, pp. 131-144, January 2009
How did I find it? It was in the "500 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of "Man-Made" Global Warming" list. Ie the skeptic media machine was more than happy to include this paper to beef up their propaganda.
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324. Shadorne wrote:
"Well Peter Liss, isn't that just it, the "evidence for substantial climate change due to man" - well, where is it? Where is "The evidence"?
After all, as Dr. Jones points out in his Q & A interview with Roger - there is nothing at all significant about recent warming compared to two other similar periods in the past"
Amazing. If you actually read what Dr Jones wrote you would have seen this surely:
"I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity."
and
">>what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?
The fact that we can't explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing - see my answer to your question D."
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Re 313. bowmanthebard
Earth's Heat Source - The Sun
Published in Energy & Environment.
Claims the core of the sun is made of iron. and a bunch of stuff about how therefore warming is caused by the sun and how the IPCC has just followed the "consensus" of the standard solar model. Etc etc the usual stuff.
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Interesting article about some bad media reporting on the climate subject. Not from the BBC. It's nice that the BBC has stayed neutral on this subject and kept to good journalism. Yes I know a lot of skeptics keep claiming the BBC is biased, etc, and they should talk about climategate more. But that's really code for "the BBC should print our accusations as headlines" which would turn BBC news into nothing but a trashy tabloid if they had their way.
IPCC errors: facts and spin
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/ipcc-errors-facts-and-spin/
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#327 infinity wrote:
"Claims the core of the sun is made of iron."
Which sentence?
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re 329:
The real giveaway is the title of section 2.6
"2.6 The Link of Earth’s Climate with the Iron Sun"
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@bowmanthebard #323
You would be right if there had been no previous idea of the climate during the last 2000 years, although it would still only be a mild impact on the case either way, not enough to prove or disprove.
However before the Hockey Sticks it was assumed that the climate was very variable, that today's warmth was only abnormal because of its association with AGW, not because of the actual temperatures involved.
If proved reliable Hockey Sticks show recent warming to be out of the ordinary. This adds weight to AGW theory with our GHG emissions also being geologically out of the ordinary.
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\\\ Is it time for a refit ? (IPCC) ///
First, I'm back from the mountains, all in one piece, as is my newfound climbing partner. Real mountain weather - a bit of everything, but in the end a lot of Sun, gentle wind, good powder and a successful ascent of a 2600 meter peak; 6 hours up, two down - skiis are nice!
And we're off ice-climbing tomorow - Underacanoe and Cloudrunner will visit in Canmore while one of us renews his acquaintance with the ice, while the other makes his first acquaintance with it.
---------------
I wrote down a few points I woud like to see addressed by the "Interacademy Panel on International Issues [1]," in the form of one of their short, concise 'statements:'
\\\ Planetary Boundaries [2] ///
1) Where are we now?
2) Where are we headed?
3) How bad can it get?
----------------------
We definitely need an appeal to authority - why not the International Academy on International Issues?
Pure science, on something like the three questions posed above, which would of course include Anthropogenic Global Warming, a newly quantified 'Planetary Boundary'[3], but would include perhaps all nine proposed boundaries of the Stockholm Resilience Centre's paper, and I would very much like an updated statement in this 'new' statement as to the carrying capacity of Earth vis a vis population now and projected, under different scenarios.
Why don't we on this blog turn our attention to something like this proposal, instead of continually playing into the hands of the lobby and the contrarians. It is really counter-productive in my opinion, boring and of little interest to those whom we are trying to reach.
- Manysummits -
[1] http://www.interacademies.net/CMS/About/3143.aspx
[2] http://www.stockholmresilience.org/planetary-boundaries
[3] Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, P. Kharecha, D. Beerling, R. Berner, V. Masson-Delmotte, M. Pagani, M. Raymo, D.L. Royer, and J.C. Zachos, 2008: Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim? Open Atmos. Sci. J., 2, 217-231, doi:10.2174/1874282300802010217.
Rockström, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, Å. Persson, F.S. Chapin, III, E. Lambin, T.M. Lenton, M. Scheffer, C. Folke, H. Schellnhuber, B. Nykvist, C.A. De Wit, T. Hughes, S. van der Leeuw, H. Rodhe, S. Sörlin, P.K. Snyder, R. Costanza, U. Svedin, M. Falkenmark, L. Karlberg, R.W. Corell, V.J. Fabry, J. Hansen, B. Walker, D. Liverman, K. Richardson, P. Crutzen, and J. Foley, 2009: Planetary boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity. Ecol. Soc., 14, no. 2, 32.
Rockström, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, Å. Persson, F.S. Chapin, III, E.F. Lambin, T.M. Lenton, M. Scheffer, C. Folke, H.J. Schellnhuber, B. Nykvist, C.A. de Wit, T. Hughes, S. van der Leeuw, H. Rodhe, S. Sörlin, P.K. Snyder, R. Costanza, U. Svedin, M. Falkenmark, L. Karlberg, R.W. Corell, V.J. Fabry, J. Hansen, B. Walker, D. Liverman, K. Richardson, P. Crutzen, and J.A. Foley, 2009: A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 461, 472-475, doi:10.1038/461472a.
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@bowmanthebard
@infinity
Here's another "iron sun" paper by Oliver K Manuel
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609509
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
This one seems to have inspired Ian Plimer.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/story-e6frg8no-1225710387147
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OK, this time without the problem link
(sorry mods, hadn't spotted the contact details in one of my links in my #333)
@bowmanthebard
@infinity
Here's another "iron sun" paper by Oliver K Manuel
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609509
This one seems to have inspired Ian Plimer.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/story-e6frg8no-1225710387147
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infinity worte: I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity."
LIke I said WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE ? Where is it? They keep referring to EVIDENCE...or do they mean "belief" because serious scientists have yet to see any evidence.
and Infinity wrote
">>what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?
The fact that we can't explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing - see my answer to your question D."
Well if THAT is EVIDENCE then I am floored. You can't explain the warming therefore it MUST be man-made! What kind of scientist uses this backwards logic? (A man-made global warming scientist obviously)
Sorry Infinity but this is NOT evidence this is called "jumping to conclusions"
Duh, I am flabbergasted that this nonsense flies. I mean a child can see that this logic is so full of holes! Scientist can't explain it - so he will assume his pet theory of man-made global warming is correct! Oh yeah, sure and I was born yesterday.
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@John Lilley #318
I suspect that you get a kick out of your subversive drivel, but at the end of the day can you really say that you have made a difference?
Judging by your Optimum Population Trust ideas on culling the human race, I have just saved the lives of 3,000,000,000 people and I've not even had breakfast yet! Looks like this is going to be a good day.
310. At 6:02pm on 14 Feb 2010, you[Mango] wrote:
@John Lilley #300
Reading your comments is like watching Fox News, it's all untrue.
Which part is untrue?
Your response is to highlight the parts of my post #310 which you think are untrue, without actually answering the question. Each of the parts of my post, which you highlight, are within the OPT website or can easily be inferred by their statements and the spreadsheet. For example, if the culling is to happen across the spectrum of families instead of, as inferred, the low income families, why don't they say so explicitly?
Please tell me how you and your friends are going to cull 50% of the population of the UK. As a 60 something, white male, on low income, with kids and grand kids, I'd be fascinated to know which category I fall into.
Should I encourage my grandchildren to get good jobs with high income or is it too late for them, because they will be culled alongside me? Will it be a mass grave or individual plots? I need to plan ahead for the great day, when I will have the pleasure to sacrifice my life for the greater good of the select few or will i receive a visit in the night?
BTW, will the elite be allowed to breed or will babies not measuring up to the ideal be left out in the woods for the animals to feed on?
You're still being still ridiculous, John
/Mango
PS Apologies for playing the morality card, i have no excuse and for the sarcasm in my tone
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#334 JaneBasingstoke wrote:
"Here's another "iron sun" paper by Oliver K Manuel"
I stand corrected -- there is someone crazy enough! I guess I should have known.
But is this a typical "sceptic paper on the web" that infinity just happened to be stumble upon as part of his open-minded research into the case for scepticism, or is it something he (and you) looked up on Google specifically to show that such a paper actually existed?
To claim the Sun is made out of iron sounds bonkers to me. To claim heavy elements such as iron have to be formed inside stars is part of the theory of the "Big Bang", which isn't quite as bonkers (although I don't think I believe it myself).
I'm sure I'd be able to find equally bonkers stuff from AGW believers -- if I could be bothered.
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@JaneBasingstoke #315
IPCC literature makes it quite clear that climate sensitivity is still up for debate.
"The equilibrium climate sensitivity is a measure of the climate system response to sustained radiative forcing. It is defined as the equilibrium global average surface warming following a doubling of CO2 concentration. Progress since the TAR enables an assessment that climate sensitivity is likely to be in the range of 2 to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C. Values substantially higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded, but agreement of models with observations is not as good for those values."
Climate sensitivity is a much debated topic. So perhaps you could provide the source of your claim that climate sensitivity is low.
May I interject here, Jane?
Climate sensitivity is the trillion dollar question.
As you know, if climate sensitivity is low then pumping CO2 into the air will not raise the global temperature significantly, whereas, if climate sensitivity is high, then raising the level of CO2 in the atmosphere will raise the global temperature significantly.
I came across this site, whilst i was looking into the question of climate sensitivity. The author is a part time writer of science fiction and clearly a AGWer, but he does give some useful references, albeit not up to date and clearly to show his view is "correct". Useful nonetheless, because he lists the papers, references and climate sensitivities recorded in each paper:
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ClimateSensitivity.html
The climate sensitivity in these papers ranges from 0.1C to 9.6C. Arrhenius himself calculated climate sensitivity to be 5.5C, although in 1906 Arrhenius re-calculated and suggested a figure of 1.6C, which is not mentioned on this website. This paper is in German, so I can't give the reference.
The problem with the papers i have looked at, and i haven't looked at all of them, is the calculations do not include water vapour / clouds. As I think you are aware, the cloud feedback is the the biggest unknown in climate sensitivity and is recognised by the IPCC as the big unknown. What is interesting, from the website above, with the exception of Wetherald and Maneba, whenever the papers authors try to include clouds, climate sensitivity appears to be lower than the IPCC range, although not much lower.
In terms of empirically derived climate sensitivity, we are a little sparse on the ground, but I have a few for you:
"An empirical evaluation of earth’s surface air temperature response to radiative forcing, including feedback, as applied to the CO2-climate problem " Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, Volume 34, Numbers 1-2 / March, 1984.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/f6678m7lr6u33856/ (click on the pdf for access) or http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/idso98.htm
In this paper Sherwood Idso uses several natural experiments (repeatability!) to show climate sensitivity in the region of 0.1C. I haven't seen any papers to show Idso got it wrong.
"On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data" Lindzen, R. S., and Y.-S. Choi (2009), On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL039628.shtml
In this paper, Lindzen examines the ERBE data to suggest a climate sensitivity of 0.7C. Please note Roy Spencer has issues with this paper, which he has spelt out on his website, and the paper only deals with the tropics.
Shaviv also has good work on climate sensitivity, but i would have to re-read his work to be able to tell you the figures and method used.
As I have said before, sensitivity calculations that do not take into account water vapour, especially clouds, tend to calculate climate sensitivity to be high. Calculations and observational evidence that do take water vapour into account show climate sensitivity to be low.
Doubling of CO2 will raise the temperature by ~1.1C with an increase or decrease depending on the climate sensitivity assumed by calculation / observation. My argument is calculation alone without taking into account water vapour / clouds is simply incorrect, therefore the calculation / observation evidence which include water vapour / clouds is more likely to be correct.
Unless somebody has a link to a paper that shows high sensitivity, which includes water vapour / clouds (which are an overall negative feedback), calculations showing high climate sensitivity cannot be correct.
One final point - the hotspot predicted by the IPCC models showing the effect of AGW gases is still missing according to the observational evidence. There is no hotspot, therefore the cause of any warming cannot be the additional green house gases, due to the unique signature.
/Mango
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336. At 06:42am on 15 Feb 2010, MangoChutneyUKOK wrote:
Blah blah blah etc.etc.etc
Hi. Mango. I'm back
Any chance of you getting back..........to the topic raised by Richard?
Sorry, forgot you just like blasting off "Shrapnel fashion" as soon as the words CO2 or similar are mentioned.
Answered any questions yourself yet? Or are you still answering questions with that age-old avoidance technique, by asking other questions?
As to your contribution here now I've really heard some "alarmism"!
However, if the "culling" does come to pass, don't worry Mango, I'll be lined up long before you! However in my case it may come as a blessed release.
Since you chose to play the "moral" high ground may I take this opportunity of reminding you of an earlier discussion re-CFCs and their potential effects on human health.May I remind you of our (royal "our") years of "blase" habits, in the name of progress of pumping numerous chemicals into the atmosphere in the belief that "there wasn't a problem". May I remind you that I have reported on this site that I too, as a chemical engineer in industry also contributed to that scenario. May I remind you that way back there were "sceptics" preaching the "there's no problem" sermon from their pulpit. There was one in particular who climbed on the "smoking isn't a problem" bandwagon and the "CFCs aren't a problem" bandwagon and believe it or not,that person was one of the eminent sceptics you quoted on the "Co2 isn't a problem" list you gave me some "blogs" back.
Thousands of people world wide have died from Lung Cancer, probably due to "smoking". Many people are suffering health problems from "passive smoking". Here in the Antipodes, and particularly here in New Zealand the statistics for Melanoma, probably from our earlier indiscriminate use of CFCs is higher than anywhere else in the world and is treated by the authorities for priority surgery.
But when you are asked, along with others on this site, to PROVE that CO2 isn't a problem, your stock answer is...."No. You prove it is"
That's not how the real world operates today. So let me repeat, in simple words so that everyone can understand.
There is NO proof (conclusive proof) that CO2 is causing dramatic climate change.
There is NO proof (conclusive proof) that CO2 ISN'T causing dramatic climate change.
There NEVER will be either. This is NOT the kind of science that can be determined by experiments in the safe confines of a laboratory. Unfortunately.
What is happening at present is a real-time experiment on a global scale whereby some time in the (undisclosed) future we will find out which hypothesis is true, IF we choose to continue the experiment.
This state of affairs does not help anyone charged with a decision making responsibility to make rational decisions. (thank you Blunderbunny for acknowledging that I am being rational "you're making both yourself and your cause look very rational!" Post # 280. Now don't complain that I am putting words in your mouth. Simple "cut and paste" technology at work here)
By the way, those "decision/policy makers are in fact the governments who you elect.Not only that, but changing your respective elected government may slow the process but that's the best you can hope for.
In the meantime those same decision makers have endorsed the many IPCC reports
( Firstly, the IPCC speaks directly to governments. They endorse its reports - and all members, including the climate-sceptical US under George W Bush, have endorsed them - basically because they own the process............Richard.....above) and acknowledge that the "science" has made a REASONABLE case that CO2 and other "greenhouse gases" are MOST PROBABLY responsible and are thereby OBLIGED to take some form or other of remedial action.(please note my emphasis here.)
Back in 1988, the governments "invented" the IPCC, then in 1992 they accepted AND endorsed the initial report. Now they are stuck with it. Simple as that.
Unless , of course, someone can prove them wrong which so far hasn't happened (despite all the comments here on this "blog")
The real question is What Action?
Now, Blunderbunny, if your reading ability has improved in the last 24 hours while I have been enjoying the Winter Olympics in Vancouver (incidentally where the temperatures have been unseasonally hot!) (from memory of my geography which wasn't my best subject, Vancouver is still in the Northern Hemisphere, isn't it?) (But I digress)
Back to you, Blunderbunny (I just love that name, so descriptive) the above is "my cause" as you call it.Always was, and still is. It may seem I am pro-AGW. I am neither Pro-agw nor anti-agw. I am merely pointing out the basis for the current scenario and in that I am entirely in agreement with Richards contribution here.
I have also stated previously and again here that I sincerely hope the IPCC have got it wrong ....but I certainly won't hold my breath. You see, as far as the decision makers are concerned ,the ball is in the "sceptics" court to prove the IPCC wrong (despite what Mango would like to believe) and so far they haven't done very good job and the way they are going, they never will.
By the way, Blunderbunny, I am ignoring para #3 post #280.In the heat of the moment, you got a bit carried away with your use of hyperbole. You're forgiven.
ps. thinking of changing my name. I'm feeling much less grumpy!
My friends tell me I don't "treat fools gladly". do you think they're right?
Back to the Olympics.Mum will be home soon and she gets real grumpy if she can't get onto Facebook!
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Mango #338
Sounds very plausible to me but as I have said before, I know nothing about any of the many disciplines that make up "climate science".
So I have a question for you (would be absolutely scarpered if I got a meaningful response.)
"Why don't you write a paper and submit it for peer review?"
Bet I'm one step ahead of you for your answer!
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manysummits at post 332
You are so right. I get totally bored with the continuous cat fight, churning over the same old argument over and over again.
I did find myself looking more closely at John Lilly's observations, probably because it was something different from the usual stuff. It is quite obvious that optimum populations numbers are being discussed somewhere and at some time. There are probably many organisations discussing this very issue. I hope sincerely hope that those who are discussing these things are not planning to intervene in population control themselves.
Nature, will decide and it will not divide. As far as nature is concerned, the very rich, the very poor, the very gifted and talented are all the same and there will be no discrimination when nature eventually decides. I personally resent the idea of man deciding who is overpopulating the planet.
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@jr4412 #296 who wrote...
...in response to increasing turbulence in the atmosphere
"CO2 helps retain more heat (energy) in the system, large amounts added simply excacerbate ('amplify') effects."
My point was that increased turbulence is a negative feedback. The claims about CO2's greenhouse effect require that it change the gradient of the temperature of the atmosphere...making it hotter on the ground but cooler at the top of the tropopause. The increasing turbulence bypasses this. I'm just pointing this out because you brought up turbulence and didn't appear to realize that the turbulence partly counteracts any greenhouse warming.
----------------
...referring to the turbulence perhaps causing recent weather
"when laminar flows (jet streams, say) begin to lose coherence, very different conditions (== weather) can/will exist side by side"
Were all other things equal this might be something to consider. However all things are not equal. This sort of change has been seen before in response to changes in long term ocean and atmospheric cycles like the Atlantic multidecadal Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation, etc.
My point about your perception of "warming caused by CO2" is that all of the impacts that have been attributed to CO2's supposed warming were actually observed in the early part of the 1900s. After the warm period plateau of the 40s it appears the climate behaved in a way that was analogous to today's odd weather...increasingly bitter winters even though it was warmer than it had been previously.
How much of your perception of the world's warming had nothing to do with warming at all? How much of it was actually these long term currents or whatever drives them...simply modifying the way warm, cold, dry and moist air masses were distributed?
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Good morning everyone.
I've been thinking about some of these issues over the weekend, and I have a suggestion to make to all the climate sceptics/deniers/truthers (or whatever the PC term is these days).
One of the big credibility problems with the sceptics' arguments as far as I can see is that they are so inconsistent. And I don't think I'm alone in seeing this as a problem: see posts #169, #262, #269, and probably others. If the AGW hypothesis is indeed wrong, it would be great to have this established through honest and open scientific debate, but that's never going to happen while the sceptics can't agree among themselves on what basis it is wrong.
So, my suggestion is this. Why don't all you sceptics get together and produce a kind of shadow IPCC report. You could review all the peer-reviewed literature (and maybe other sources as well if you want, but you'd need to justify why you are including them in a transparent way) and address all the various issues in turn, for example whether the world is warming, whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas, whether man-made emissions are significant as a cause of CO2, all that sort of thing. Your conclusions would be free of all the malign influence of the politics of the IPCC, as you would be completely outside the IPCC. You would explain how the peer-reviewed literature leads you to your conclusions, and then everyone could read your report, read the IPCC report, and judge for themselves which is more credible.
Then, if someone says "why don't you believe in AGW", you could point them to this thoroughly researched and coherent report, rather than simply making up a whole load of different reasons as you go along.
If you did that, I promise that I would read it with a completely open mind. I'm sure others would too.
How about it?
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To sensiblegrannie #341:
Thank you for your reply!
It has long been my observation that 'common-sense' is not so common.
And it is increasingly clear to me that there is all too little of the 'open mind' on either side of the 'confrontational' posts here on this blog.
I sense a lot of 'ego,' a lot of writing to an agenda, on both sides, and precious little of moving forward.
The Interacademy Panel on International Issues' first statement in 1994, available on their website (see my #132) was on population, and I read it with great interest, for it was 'first' on my version of the 'Mayday Declaration' which three of us wrote (jr4412 & davblo2), but was moved to second place behind climate change as a result of our cooperative deliberations.
In both our declaration and in the IAP's 'statement' on population, pains were taken to negate the idea of government intervention in population control measures. But it is so sensitive a subject, I get the impression people just see the world population and their back is up. Such is our world.
A good friend of mine just sent me this, a twenty minute talk from Karen Armstrong, a comparative religion scholar whom I have long admired.
I am not sure if the link will work, but I found the talk very informative and simplifying.
I am looking for some way to break the deadlock that I see, that James Hansen sees, that James Lovelock sees, but that each sees in a different way.
This talk offers hope as a unifying force - and that is even rarer than 'common-sense.'
http://www.ted.com/talks/karen_armstrong_makes_her_ted_prize_wish_the_charter_for_compassion.html
- Manysummits -
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To sensiblegrannie (addendum to my #344):
I'm sure I've told the story around Richard Black's virtual campfire, but it may have been so long ago that you have not seen it.
On a trip across Canada and then down to Key Largo in the USA in '94, a six months sojourn, I came across, I'm not sure where, a plaque on the side of the road, which had on it the 'eagle feather' of aboriginal North America.
The plaque went on to explain that in order to 'earn' the right o wear the eagle feather, a warrior had to demonstrate the twin virtues of courage and compassion.
It would seem that here again, the wisdom of the aboriginal peoples' is in tune with the thinking of Buddha, the three Abrahamic religions, etc., as detailed in the talk by Karen Armstrong.
Interesting!
- Manysummits -
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@ 343.
Has already been done
http://www.climatechangereconsidered.org/
The NIPCC report goes through and systematically affirms/debunks the IPCC reports.
As for the "One of the big credibility problems with the sceptics' arguments as far as I can see is that they are so inconsistent" statement. You are aware how ludicrous that is?
Should we ridicule and dismiss the AGW theory just because of Al gore?
It doesn't matter one hoot if 'sceptics' come up with many thoeries/problems with the AGW line, many can be discounted (almost immediatley), but that doesn't mean you can just dismiss the others. To do so is dishonest and disingineous.
I can understand the need to believe your theory is right, but frankly, if you can't answer the sceptics questions (and many, good, scientifically sound objections haven't been addressed) trying cheap political tricks won'r work.
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#346:
"It doesn't matter one hoot if 'sceptics' come up with many thoeries/problems with the AGW line, many can be discounted (almost immediatley), but that doesn't mean you can just dismiss the others."
Totally agree, but it's quite hard to spot which are the sensible ones from all the dross.
Anyway, thanks for the link to the NIPCC report. I promise I shall read it. Mind you, if it's so authoritative, I can't help wondering why the climate sceptics don't refer to it in forums like this one more often.
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#343 DisgustedOfMitcham2 wrote:
"If the AGW hypothesis is indeed wrong, it would be great to have this established through honest and open scientific debate, but that's never going to happen while the sceptics can't agree among themselves on what basis it is wrong."
In my opinion, it wouldn't be a scientific debate but a philosophical one. In fact I find the supposedly "scientific" debate with its tedious technical details as boring as it misses the point.
I think the real debate should be over how theory stands to data. I would argue that theory is not based on data, but tested by data. It seems to me that that is how it is in all real sciences. Unfortunately, as many opponents as supports of the AGW position seem to assume that theory is based on data.
"that's never going to happen while the sceptics can't agree among themselves on what basis it is wrong."
The fact that you're looking for a "basis" here says it all.
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#348:
I have to disagree with you there. It absolutely should be a scientific debate. Either the observed data support the AGW theory or they don't. That's a scientific argument, not a philosophical one.
As for your statement that a theory should be tested by data rather than based on data, I think you're missing the point. Theories should of course be tested by data. But where do you think the theories come from in the first place? It's an iterative process: you observe something, you come up with a theory to explain it, you think of ways to test the theory and collect some more data, you refine the theory, etc etc.
"The fact that you're looking for a "basis" here says it all."
Says what exactly? If someone is going to tell me that the AGW theory is wrong, is it unreasonable to expect them to tell me why they think it's wrong?
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#347 "but it's quite hard to spot which are the sensible ones from all the dross."
Exactly what the skeptics say about the climate science stories!
The term "Climate skeptic" covers a very broad range of views, and your suggestion that they should all be saying the same thing is rather ridiculous. Again, one could say the same thing about the AGW believers.
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@349. i'm going to have to go with you on this one.
It absolutley HAS to be a scientific debate. Anyhting else is jsut politics.
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Oliver 'Iron Sun' Manuel does have some good points, e.g. this quote:
“Conclusions drawn from observations do not alter what is. Future experiments, rather than personal opinions, decide the validity of conclusions.”
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#349 DisgustedOfMitcham2 wrote:
"Either the observed data support the AGW theory or they don't. That's a scientific argument, not a philosophical one."
It certainly IS a philosophical debate, even if you don't know it, because the word 'support' is ambiguous. It's a big mistake to think that data form the basis for a theory -- in other words that they (more or less weakly) imply it like the axioms imply a theorem in mathematics.
You can see what a big mistake it is because it pretends there is no creativity in science, and that's obviously wrong.
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No, bowman, it doesn't pretend there is no creativity. Faced with the same data different people applying different levels of creativity could come up with different theories. There's nothing wrong with that.
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#351 LabMunkey wrote:
"@349. i'm going to have to go with you on this one.
"It absolutley HAS to be a scientific debate. Anyhting else is jsut politics."
That's generally what people say if they don't have a training in philosophy and they don't want to be seen to be "out of their depth". But really, anyone who has a scientific background and a bit of commonsense can hold their own in the debate that really needs to take place.
I'm not talking French postmodernism (apologies to French postmodernists on the blog) -- but just a few practical applications of logic. I'm afraid it's vitally important that people see that a scientific theory does not "rest on data" the way a building rests on foundations or a theorem rests on axioms. That mistaken idea is what makes people suppose that scientific theories can be "proved", and they just can't.
We need to be honest about it.
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@JaneBasingstoke #315
Thanks Jane, these would be my observations re: your very eloquent post
"The MWP and LIA never went away.
They are not visible in some Hockey Sticks and are shallower than sceptics expect in those Hockey Sticks where they do appear. This is because Hockey Sticks are an attempt to be either global, or at least attempt to cover most of a hemisphere, and include temperatures from other areas. "
I took this from Real Climate
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/medieval-warm-period-mwp/
"Period of relative warmth in some regions of the Northern Hemisphere in comparison with the subsequent several centuries. Also referred to as the Medieval Warm Epoch (MWE). As with the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA), no well-defined precise date range exists. The dates A.D. 900–1300 cover most ranges generally used in the literature. Origin is difficult to track down, but it is believed to have been first used in the 1960s (probably by Lamb in 1965). As with the LIA, the attribution of the term at regional scales is complicated by significant regional variations in temperature changes, and the utility of the term in describing regional climate changes in past centuries has been questioned in the literature. As with the LIA, numerous myths can still be found in the literature with regard to the details of this climate period. These include the citation of the cultivation of vines in Medieval England, and the settlement of Iceland and southwestern Greenland about 1000 years ago, as evidence of unusual warmth at this time. As noted by Jones and Mann (2004) [Jones, P.D., Mann, M.E., Climate Over Past Millennia, Reviews of Geophysics, 42, RG2002, doi: 10.1029/2003RG000143, 2004], arguments that such evidence supports anomalous global warmth during this time period is based on faulty logic and/or misinterpretations of the available evidence."
Apparently, it would seem that realclimate think that there were no such things as the MWP and LIA – well at least they did in 2004 (myths, faulty logic and misinterpretations)
So with regard to one of those myths - Viking settlement of Greenland:
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/
And one of the others, vineyards in the UK – A nice little map that illustrates previous wine growing areas in Britain:
http://www.winelandsofbritain.co.uk/lecture.htm
They do enthuse a little about how much wine we’d be able to grow in future, if certain IPCC predictions come to pass, but their database of ancient vineyards, nicely illustrates that the vineyards did indeed exist in Britain in the periods claimed.
So, as you can hopefully see neither of these are myths, misinterpretations or the results of faulty logic.
With regard to the graphs themselves, the link I provided to an earlier circa 2005 pro-AGW site shows, not only the perceived wisdom of the time (myths etc) as illustrated from the realclimate link above, but also the graphs in question in a relatively unmolested form both and also for both northern and southern hemispheres.
http://home.iprimus.com.au/nielsens/medieval.html
As you can see there are no anomalous wiggles in any of them that one might call either a MWP or an LIA. And before jr4412, chips in, these are included merely for the purpose of illustrating the previous warmist position and not because I subscribe to any of the beliefs illustrated on that page.
So, I refute the premis that no attempt has been made to erase these from the historical record, the evidence of this attempt is there for all to see with just a few simple mouse clicks.
Embarrassingly, it seems that even the real climate people haven’t fully got with the whole nu-science program, as yet.
I’ve no doubt that there will be a small tantrum going on somewhere as a result.
And so to,
"Hockey Sticks and associated tree ring temperature proxies are not the main part of the case for global warming.
If proved reliable Hockey Sticks make the AGW case stronger. But if proved false they don't debunk AGW. Hockey Sticks didn't exist before 1998. And obviously AGW science is a lot older than 1998.
Tree ring temperature proxies are controversial. However they are only really part of AGW when used in Hockey Sticks. "
Sadly, and I do say this with genuine regret, New Scientist at least in relation to anything AGW related is no longer a reliable source of information. Occasionally, Fred does a decent piece, but Michael Le Page and the general editorial meme are firmly entrenched towards the wackier end of the spectrum.
Many articles would sit quite comfortably on realclimate, indeed many seem to have been cut and pasted from this resource.
But back to hockey sticks, these are key to the argument because they are used to illustrate that today’s warming is both unusual and unprecedented. With the re-appearance of the MWP, obviously this claim looks more than a little dodgy.
Especially, as whatever was driving that warmer period could not have been man made CO2. (Note also: That whilst the world warmed in this period, we are all still here to talk and blog about it – manysummits please take note).
Now we get to tree rings, you know by now that they stopped using these in 1960 because of the divergence problem. In other words they stopped fitting in with what they thought the temp and precipitation should be…. Rather than at this point thinking hang on a minute, maybe we’ve been misinterpreting the data all this time, they went with we’ll just stop using it. But almost all of your temp proxies for the last millennium are tree ring based. There are others, ice cores, bore holes, coral growth and sediments, but I believe that I’m right in saying that most of the record is based on tree rings.
Those that haven’t yet, should read this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8311000/8311373.stm
Also, I might be wrong and I’m happy to be corrected, but I think coral growth was calibrated against tree ring data.
Ice cores, I believe these have problems because of the solubility of CO2 in ice, a quick Google should bring you some results. These would not only affect the temperature proxies for the last millennium, but also those from before.
Oops, almost forgot lake sediments. Also Calibrated against tree rings and frequently displayed upside down ;-)
I think that leaves you/them/they, with just boreholes. Not much of a record to base any predictions on really….
That’s about it for the minute, thanks again for the response. I think Mango covered sensitivity better than I would have done so I’ll leave that one to him…
Oh, and whilst I think about it jr4412 – "Laminar Flows and Decoherence"
Couldn’t resist....
Never did so much rest on something so happily unpredictable….. Modelling in Fluid Dynamics/Mechanics just doesn’t cut it on its own, even in very tightly constricted small scale systems, Google Virgin and Formula 1 Testing for a quick illustration of what happens when you don’t use a highspeed windtunnel ;-)
Not sure people would actually fly, if they knew how poorly understood it all was, still we can averagely or even mostly say that you wont fall out of the sky and that seems good enough for them.
It’s decoherence and the descent into chaos (turbulence) that’s the big problem, some of it can be averaged out (Reynolds, Navier-Stokes etc), but it’s a very bumpy road and the amount of computing power required can go off the charts ;-)
Essentially, there are lot of different ways of approximating the behaviour of fluids in a dynamic environment, but they are all just that, approximations....
When you try to scale these simple models up to help predict the weather and you add in convection and thermodynamics it just gets worse and worse and that’s the inherent problem with models.
You might accept an only vague idea of what the weather might be within a 100Km radius, but that sort of level or percentage error would not be acceptable in the design of a car or a plane.
As the systems you model get more and more complex the results of that modelling and their potential accuracy gets worse and worse. A lot of it is based on your initial assumptions, if these are way off beam or misguided then your predictions will also be way off beam. Much is made of model training to try and correct this and it can help to improve accuracy, but your still way out on a limb when it comes to giving any real life predictions.
End of Lecture, couldn’t resist, sorry….
I’m not even sure what I’ve told you accept that modelling on its own is not considered to be good enough as is, when it comes to things like cars and planes….
Unless of course, you’re the Virgin Formula 1 team and you listened a tad too intently to an over enthusiastic modeller ;-)
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#354 DisgustedOfMitcham2 wrote:
"Faced with the same data different people applying different levels of creativity could come up with different theories. There's nothing wrong with that."
There's nothing wrong with it -- it just shows that the data don't imply the theories, that's all!
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@xtragrumpymike2 #339
Any chance of you getting back..........to the topic raised by Richard?
It wasn’t me who took the thread off topic, Mike. I was on topic until others, I forget who, took us off topic.
Answered any questions yourself yet? Or are you still answering questions with that age-old avoidance technique, by asking other questions?
As I said on a previous thread, if I missed the questions, please direct me to them and I will do my best to answer
However, if the "culling" does come to pass, don't worry Mango, I'll be lined up long before you! However in my case it may come as a blessed release.
Sorry, Mike, but as far as I am concerned, culling 50% of the population is simply wrong. Population may be a problem, but this as a solution? No thanks.
May I remind you… and believe it or not,that person was one of the eminent sceptics you quoted on the "Co2 isn't a problem" list you gave me some "blogs" back
It isn’t just Lindzen who thinks high sensitivity is incorrect, Mike, there are other climate sensitivity who have shown climate sensitivity to low. Just because Lindzen was wrong on other things doesn’t mean he is wrong on climate sensitivity does it?
But when you are asked, along with others on this site, to PROVE that CO2 isn't a problem, your stock answer is...."No. You prove it is"
I have stated several times why I think CO2 as a primary driver of global warming is incorrect. My reason essentially boils down to the fact that observational science shows us climate sensitivity is low and the IPCC’s unique signature of AGW is still missing despite over 2 decades of searches. Please refer to my post #338 for details.
Back in 1988, the governments "invented" the IPCC, then in 1992 they accepted AND endorsed the initial report. Now they are stuck with it.
They’re not stuck with anything. The politicians will blow with whatever wind they think will get them re-elected.
@xtragrumpymike2 #340
So I have a question for you (would be absolutely scarpered if I got a meaningful response.)
"Why don't you write a paper and submit it for peer review?"
Bet I'm one step ahead of you for your answer!
Bet your not!
My understanding is for a paper to be accepted for publication, it has to be original work. My comments are based on existing peer-reviewed literature.
/Mango
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Ugh, it is so hard to get this across. Let's say...we have extremely limited data on the functionality of a car. For some odd reason, we only have rough approximations of the clutch usage verses speed through history and ONE set of real measurements from an actual person doing a quarter mile run...but again, we only have clutch usage verses speed. We know NOTHING else of the car or its functionality.
One would rightfully observe that when the clutch was pressed quickly and repeatedly that the car accelerated. You could come up with the vehicle's possible "sensitivity" to clutch use. You could even construct models showing how clutch use caused acceleration. They wouldn't be perfect but one could reasonably argue that there were some minor subsystems that we weren't properly aware of on deceleration but that the relationship was still roughly correct. There could be a consensus among the scientific community that clutch use...while poorly understood...was understood well enough that we knew it was almost certain that rapid clutch use would result in rapid acceleration.
Of course some crazy denialists would point out that there were times in our rough data that showed wild variations that did not fit with acceleration. Of course it has been modeled so they're just crazy. After all...the models all showed the correlation (but because unfortunately that was the assumption of how it worked and the only correlation they knew of). SURELY one of the crazy old denialists could provide a model of their own in which clutch sensitivity was low (keeping in mind, the ONLY data we have is clutch verses acceleration data, and not very much good quality data of even that)
Can anyone here, without evoking the concept of an accelerator or some other unknown...explain the acceleration verses clutch use??? This is the problem with computer models and quite frankly the whole hypothesis of substantial AGW. We in fact have many records that show the climate fluctuating without any response by CO2 at all. The temperature fluctuations of this entire interglacial period are completely unexplainable with CO2. It is only when one puts on blinders and looks at the temperatures from the little ice age (which was relatively stable) to present that any sort of relationship seems to function.
The elephant in the room here is...what the heck caused all the rest of the temperature fluctuations? The ENTIRE interglacial period, temperatures appear to have fluctuated by more than they have recently. The odds that warming could have been natural are pretty significant. Even if we split it into 33% chance of temperatures (naturally) remaining relatively constant, 33% chance of an increase, 33% chance of a decrease...the IPCC's 90% certainty just falls apart. It is simply impossible to know to near 90% certainty that this warming is from CO2. Anyone that says different is TRULY in denial or simply has no real understanding of the concepts.
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@355
i think you're trying to over complicate the issue.
An observation is made (via data, be it visual, recorded etc etc), a theory is made, theory is then tested, theory is then ammended/discarded as required.
That's how it works.
The only other way it can work is via something theoretical (advanced physics etc), but even then, the calculations can be classed as a 'data' of sorts.
Science is a tool, a tool we use to try understand our surroundings. It's 'basis' can be used as a school as thought, but otherwise it is just that; a tool. nothing more, nothing less.
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#355:
"I'm afraid it's vitally important that people see that a scientific theory does not "rest on data" the way a building rests on foundations or a theorem rests on axioms. That mistaken idea is what makes people suppose that scientific theories can be "proved", and they just can't."
I think I detect a straw man here. Is anyone claiming that AGW is "proved"? I'm certainly not, and I don't think anyone else is either. You are right that, other than in pure maths, scientific theories are never proved. But they definitely do "rest on data". What else would they rest on? A theory is either supported by data or it's not. If you are lucky, a theory may be so blatantly contradicted by the data that you can disprove the theory (think black swans), but it's unlikely that a scientific theory could ever be sufficiently well supported that you could legitimately claim it had been proved.
However, data can definitely support a theory. If enough data support a theory and no data have been found that contradict the theory, then most reasonable people would consider that the theory is probably true.
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Pachauri says it all:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/14/quote-of-the-week-5/#more-16436
“If the IPCC wasn’t there, why would anyone be worried about climate change?”
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thank you manysummits at posts 344 and 345,
The link you have pointed out represents my real feelings about religion. I have expressed this on several occasions using the words from the fairy tale 'The Waterbabies.' If one wishes to explore 'the path' in a non religious way, 'The Waterbabies' is a light and pretty good way of exploring this idea. Sometimes profound truths appear in the most unlikely of places.
There are a few,
Who would unite.
A legion who,
Create, divide.
Both have a stance,
You must decide.
safe journeys my friend
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#361 DisgustedOfMitcham2 wrote:
"Is anyone claiming that AGW is "proved"?"
Quie the opposite -- I have been disagreeing with some sceptics who have claimed that AGW is not proved. I've been telling them no scientific theory ever gets proved, so that's a mistaken avenue of criticism. There are other legitimate criticisms -- which is why I remain a sceptic -- but it's not being proved isn't one of them.
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i hate to post it from this newspaper, but
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html?ITO=1490#ixzz0fVzW40CV
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/7236406/Climategate-academic-Professor-Phil-Jones-admits-he-lost-track-of-vital-data.html
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7231386/African-crops-yield-another-catastrophe-for-the-IPCC.html
a goodie this
anyone there still think the IPCC is credible?? Anyone??? Hello???
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poitsplace at post 359,
There is a label that we attach to young children, namely 'egocentric.' . Perhaps we as an earth community are 'Earthocentric.' (a made up name). Some of us believe that everything that happens on Earth has no effect on things outside of Earth, or that other bodies in space do not have an effect on Earth. I could take this idea a lot further but some of you may have a better way of explaining things.
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@bowmanthebard #337
There were a few points with my post.
Firstly you had demanded evidence of a sceptic that believed in an iron sun.
Secondly infinity's reference was only properly visible via a PDF link. And these Beeb threads don't allow PDF links.
Thirdly OK, Manuel is a very obscure sceptic. But Ian Plimer is a well known and influential sceptic. Plimer seems to like the iron sun paper enough to partially quote from its abstract in his bestselling "Heaven and Earth" (not an exact quote, I presume the actual iron sun line is missing) (on page 120 apparently).
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/story-e6frg8no-1225710387147
Plimer is already notorious for his "volcano burp" line.
There are a lot of competent sceptics out there, including some climate scientists. I think we both want to hear more from them.
There are incompetents on both sides of the argument. Some of them damage the credibility of their side of the argument. I believe this has contributed to the unpleasantness in the debate. (Disclaimer, even the most competent can make mistakes. And even the incompetent are sometimes right.)
I personally am upset with Al Gore. They show his film in British schools. Gore oversimplifies the situation with Milankovitch cycles. British schoolteachers are legally obliged to debunk Gore's oversimplified argument. The debunk is also oversimplified (there is no way round this, the situation with Milankovitch cycles is complicated) and in the sceptics' favour.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimmock_v_Secretary_of_State_for_Education_and_Skills#The_nine_inaccuracies
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Mango at #358
You wrote: My understanding is for a paper to be accepted for publication, it has to be original work. My comments are based on existing peer-reviewed literature.
Then submit a review paper.
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Labmunky
I'd take the words of real scientists over media sceptics like the Daily Mail and Telegraph any day.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/ipcc-errors-facts-and-spin/
Sceptics still haven't provided a peer review of decades of evidence to support their hypothesis! Is that what you call science? Sounds more like religion to me...
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@seasambo #370
Sceptics still haven't provided a peer review of decades of evidence to support their hypothesis! Is that what you call science?
Or at least as far as you are aware
Please read my post #338 for an example of a sceptical, peer reviewed paper that is 25 years old.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/02/rejigging_the_climate_panel.html#P92411392
/mango
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@370
i did qualify the daily mail link by the way- it was for the quote- nothing else.
the decades worth of evidence that you're reffering to has now- in the own words of the CRU (ex)head- been admitted to show no statistically significant warming from 1995, despite continued CO2 level rises.
Kind of destroys the correlation don't you think?
That sounds like a reasonably scientific conclusion to me....
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@seasambo #370
I agree you shouldn't take the Daily Mails word, but how about the BBC from their interview with Jones:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8511670.stm
B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009.
/Mango
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#364:
Right. So we're all agreed that AGW, just like any other scientific theory is not "proved", and probably never will be.
Since we all seem to be agreed about that, I really don't see what your point is.
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#359:
Nice analogy. Clearly, in your analogy, the accelerator pedal is the real driver for increased speed of the car. In your analogy, CO2 emissions are analogous to the clutch, ie a complete red herring.
So far, so good. Now, why don't you complete the analogy by telling us what the climatic analogue of the accelerator pedal is? If it's as obvious as an accelerator pedal, it should be easy enough to find, shouldn't it?
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#361 DisgustedOfMitcham2 wrote:
"A theory is either supported by data or it's not."
It's much more complicated than that.
No one is denying that a theory can be supported by data. The difference I am trying (unsuccessfully so far) to bring to your attention is between a theory being tested by observations, versus a theory being specially constructed to fit observations, so that it cannot but agree with them, and hence is not tested by them.
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Mango
Your post is very interesting but the way i see it is one or two papers on climate sensitivity compared to significantly more papers (1000s) reviewed by the IPCC on topics including sea level rise, artic sea ice, glaciers etc. What RealClimate say is right...the science still holds up despite all the nonsense the media like to spin.
I am ALL for reading up on sceptical papers on climate sensitivity and other major issues surrounding recent climate change, but ALL the evidence still suggests man is influencing climate dramtically. I am still waiting for a substantial peer-reviewed report by leading scientific sceptics that proves that man is not responsible for recent change.
Labmunky
There are many other pieces of evidence in the scientific literature that point to recent climate change over the last 30-40 years...ice loss, sea level change. But this doesnt mean i doubt the temperature records we have accumulated either. University of East Anglia is not the only place to be studying climate change you know. You need to disprove thousands of papers reviewed by the IPCC and then provide an alternative explanation with evidence. It may not be perfect (science never is perfect...its always a probability) but the hypothesis of man made CO2 and recent temperature variation fits the evidence better than any sceptical hypothesis which are far as I am aware hasnt been published to the extent of the IPCC and if it has, has probably not been reviewed by a significant number of independent scientists from International universities.
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@seasambo #377
Your post is very interesting but the way i see it is one or two papers on climate sensitivity compared to significantly more papers (1000s) reviewed by the IPCC on topics including sea level rise, artic sea ice, glaciers etc.
The thousands of papers reviewed by the IPCC show the earth has warmed, but doesn't tell us what caused the warming.
Climate sensitivity is the key to whether or not CO2 is able to raise the temperature significantly. Calculations that show high climate sensitivity do not include clouds.
If anybody can show me a convincing paper that is observational based and includes clouds, or the missing AGW signature appears, then I would have to conceed defeat. As it stands the papers that are observational based and include clouds show low climate sensitivity
/Mango
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#375:
Ah, I think I've finally understood the point you're trying to make.
Your point, if I've understood correctly, goes like this. A whole bunch of data have been collected on the climate. A theory that man-made CO2 emissions are causing the climate to change has then been postulated, based on those data. The scientific method would then demand that further data be independently collected to test the predictions of the theory. However, since further data have not been collected, then the AGW theory has not been subjected to a rigorous scientific process.
Have I now understood your argument correctly?
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@DisgustedOfMitcham2 #375 who wrote...
"So far, so good. Now, why don't you complete the analogy by telling us what the climatic analogue of the accelerator pedal is? If it's as obvious as an accelerator pedal, it should be easy enough to find, shouldn't it?"
I have not claimed to know what caused the numerous warming and cooling periods of the holocene. We appear to be in a warming trend. It started before there was any significant increase in CO2. We can, however see impacts of shorter scale climate subsystems (or whatever drives them).
It is highly likely that much of the recent warming was part of a natural warming trend from a group of climate subsystems with "short" (but long to us) periods of several decades. These are reflected in the temperature record, proxy records, fish populations (which is how the PDO was discovered).
BUT...I have no clue why it appears to have (more or less) been warming since the late 1700's. If it was CO2 then the climate has actually been showing drastically decreasing sensitivity... since there were only very small increases in CO2 in the 1700s. The sun probably contributes in some way but the mechanism is not known. There may be longer term interactions between those shorter term subsystems, but its hard to say.
My point is, I don't know with any confidence what has caused the warming and cooling of the interglacial period...and neither does anyone else. This also applies to the recent warm period and that lack of confidence must be factored into the probability for AGW. That 90% figure people sometimes throw around is clearly wrong. It reminds me of that line from The Naked Gun, "Doctors say that Nordberg has a 50/50 chance of living, though there's only a 10 percent chance of that"
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@DisgustedOfMicham2 #379
Oops, noticed that as I was posting the other :D
Its along those lines. The problem is not that the hypothesis doesn't seem to explain anything in this interglacial AT ALL. All the fluctuations seem entirely unrelated to CO2. We have very sound evidence that there is something causing temperature swings as great as 2C within the interglacal periods (and this interglacial period) but have no idea what that driving force is. Yes, I'm repeating myself here but its an important point. Without being able to explain the other warming and cooling periods...the models are likely missing a crucial component that is quite literally capable of explaining ALL observed warming and then some.
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@MangoChutneyUKOK #338
Mango, if you look at blunderbunny's #251 question 3 you will see that blunderbunny thought that climate sensitivity is effectively not up for debate.
Sherwood Idso's climate sensitivity work has very little respect. I found a conversation about his more recent work in the comments at RealClimate. Unfortunately the link they gave has a paywall. But I think it gives the picture.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/09/friday-roundup-3/
Lindzen's work on climate sensitivity is important. And it is not ignored.
Perhaps I could direct you to Hansen et al, January 1992. (Stress "January".) This is a prediction of the timing and extent of the cooling caused by the eruption of Pinatubo in 1991. Cooling gets amplified as well as warming.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/1992/Hansen_etal.html
Climate sensitivity is also involved in the amplification involved in Milankovitch cycles seen in ice cores, the temperature changes would be smaller than observed with low sensitivity. There is another problem with low climate sensitivity, it would be expected to give much bigger swings in CO2 than observed on the scale of hundreds of millions of years.
You can see some of that shown here. Sorry, it's a video clip. But Richard Alley is extremely watchable.
(thanks to seasambo for the link)
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
As for the calculated hotspot, I gather that it comes with caveats, and was therefore never meant as a "signature".
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#379 DisgustedOfMitcham2 wrote:
"The scientific method would then demand that further data be independently collected to test the predictions of the theory. However, since further data have not been collected, then the AGW theory has not been subjected to a rigorous scientific process.
"Have I now understood your argument correctly?"
Now you've got it! (Or very nearly -- the idea is not to "collect" more data but to check the theory against observations of the world -- to genuinely test it, in other words. Merely collecting data and shaping the theory to fit them has the effect of "amplifying extraneous noise" in the data.)
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Quote: #142
Assuming the IPCC is reformed and transparent, here is the type of paper they should seriously look at
New Paper in Science: Sea level 81,000 years ago was 1 meter higher while CO2 was lower
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/11/new-paper-in-science-sea-level-81000-years-ago-1-meter-higher-while-co2-was-lower/
In the Cretaeous period, around 81,000 years ago the global temperature was around 22C and the sea level was at least 1m higher than it is now. All this despite CO2 levels being around what we are experiencing today /Quote
Watts doesn't mention the Cretaceous if one follows the link. You certainly cite a "hothouse" average global temperature (22C you say).
I'll have a try at clearing things up. I'm a geologist BTW.
81,000,000 years ago (notice the extra naughts) WAS in the later Cretaceous, the planet DID have a hothouse temperature, it is very doubtful whether there was any polar ice at all and what is now the UK was extensively submerged. Yup. Underwater. Hint: the late Cretaceous Chalk is a limestone that was formed on the beds of clear warm seas.
Research publications I have read indicate CO2 levels at the time of 550-690 ppm (yes they did fluctuate, apart from slight differences from model to model) (e.g. Cheng Quan et al, 2008).
What I find annoying is that people are ready to rail against climate science individuals and bodies without a second thought, but the minute they start trying a bit of science themselves it is clear that there are difficulties in grasping some very basic issues and principles, hence statements like "In the Cretaeous period, around 81,000 years ago the global temperature was around 22C and the sea level was at least 1m higher than it is now."
I would say to anyone who has been called-out for such basic mistakes that their time would be better spent in their nearest decent library with a set of up-to-date Earth Science textbooks, rather than lashing about at any climate scientist who is unfortunate to be close enough.
Finally - read Climate Cover-up if you have a serious interest in the politics of climate. If you google the title you'll find copies of this fascinating 250-page book, published in 2009, on how the massive disinformation campaign evolved over the past 30-odd years. Pretty much every negative, anti-climate change post one reads these days had its origins in one of many shadowy think-tanks during those three decades. That's why so many of them are so remarkably similar: it is not far off copy-and-paste. I often wonder how many posters on here are in fact Astroturfers (google it).....
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To sensiblegrannie:
I'm off with the family to the mountains in just a few, and I thought to send a song from the West about the Old West, by the fellow whom I often quote as saying, "wishin' don't make it so." (Ian Tyson)
Back to the fray, hopefully tomorrow!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAZR8fQIL6o
- Manysummits -
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To sensiblegrannie:
Just was watching this one - it has pics too, from around Calgary, and is about my favorite bird:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7o9-Anzrso&NR=1
I sure wish we could all travel more, and argue less!
The real solution, in my heart, has always been to reconnect with the natural world, and become a part of it again.
- Manysummits -
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#378:
"If anybody can show me a convincing paper that is observational based and includes clouds ... then I would have to conceed defeat."
Well, here's an observational based paper, and unless you think they somehow contrived to banish all clouds from the earth's atmosphere for a large chunk of the 20th century, then it pretty much had to include clouds. But let me guess: you don't find it convincing?
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#383:
OK, bowman, I think we're getting somewhere. So you believe that since the theory of AGW was first proposed, no-one has sought out new data against which to test the theory?
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@blunderbunny #356
The "myth" isn't the evidence. The "myth" is the interpretation of the evidence, and the exaggeration of some (stress some) of the Greenland evidence by mediaeval spin ("come to Greenland with me, it's green with vegetation"). You are using the evidence as temperature proxy. And it is a very crude temperature proxy, although possibly not as bad as some of the tree rings.
You are also ignoring their use of the word "global". They clearly acknowledge a MWP in "some regions of the Northern Hemisphere". Their complaints about myths apply to "anomalous global warmth during this time period" (emphasis mine).
PS you will love the last line of my next post.
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@jr4412 #322
(@blunderbunny)
"perhaps you can shed light on why 'tree-ring based evidence' should be acceptable before 1960 but not after."
I could answer blunderbunny's questions because they were straightforward, and didn't need an expert.
You are talking about something they call "divergence", when some tree ring proxies give the wrong temperature, normally much colder than the thermometer temperature taken at the same time nearby.
I don't know what causes "divergence".
I don't know if somewhere in the papers they have established good reasons why the affected tree rings aren't affected by "divergence" before 1960ish.
On the one hand if there was anything to reliably prove "divergence" was confined to 1960 onwards it would have been well publicised rather than the mealy mouthed "well, we have mentioned it, we have discussed it, we call it divergence".
But on the other hand if that's their only answer why weren't Hockey Sticks downgraded a long time ago, before all the fuss?
For the record, you can see what "divergence" looks like here
(scroll to bottom of page)
(thermometer temperatures in black)
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/CRUupdate
And here
(thermometer temperatures in black)
http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/29/still-hiding-the-decline/
Not good, is it.
Meanwhile it is interesting to turn to IPCC AR4 after the Climategate revelations
"In their large-scale reconstructions based on tree ring density data, Briffa et al. (2001) specifically excluded the post-1960 data in their calibration against instrumental records, to avoid biasing the estimation of the earlier reconstructions (hence they are not shown in Figure 6.10), implicitly assuming that the ‘divergence’ was a uniquely recent phenomenon, as has also been argued by Cook et al. (2004a). Others, however, argue for a breakdown in the assumed linear tree growth response to continued warming, invoking a possible threshold exceedance beyond which moisture stress now limits further growth (D’Arrigo et al., 2004). If true, this would imply a similar limit on the potential to reconstruct possible warm periods in earlier times at such sites. At this time there is no consensus on these issues (for further references see NRC, 2006) and the possibility of investigating them further is restricted by the lack of recent tree ring data at most of the sites from which tree ring data discussed in this chapter were acquired."
which seems to paraphrase to this (I remind you I am not an expert)
"Briffa et al. (2001) ignored the post-1960 data when calibrating tree ring temperature proxies, and used this as an excuse to keep divergent tree ring proxy temperatures out of their Hockey Stick. This treats ‘divergence’ as only applying after about 1960ish, which is the same approach as Cook et al. (2004a). Others, however, say that divergence is caused by warm weather related drought stress (D’Arrigo et al., 2004). If true, this would interfere with identifying historical warm periods at such sites. At this time the experts are still arguing (for further references see National Research Council, 2006) and there aren't enough recent tree rings to investigate divergence properly."
which seems to paraphrase to this (I remind you I am not an expert)
"Some mainstream climate scientists think Hockey Sticks that use tree rings as temperature proxies could accidentally reduce or even get rid of a global Mediaeval Warm Period. Mainstream climate scientists are still arguing with each other about it. There isn't enough evidence to "rescue" tree rings."
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-6.html
As debunks for a global Mediaeval Warm Period you can consider Hockey Sticks with tree rings not just broken but thoroughly smashed.
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#388 DisgustedOfMitcham2 wrote:
"So you believe that since the theory of AGW was first proposed, no-one has sought out new data against which to test the theory?"
Not nearly enough. But anyway, any new data has to be a genuine prediction, not mere "extra detail for a model to accomodate" -- the latter is no test at all. As a result, huge details such as the recent ten-year hiatus in warming went wholly unpredicted.
The main focus has been on shaping computer models to fit past records better and better instead of coming up with some simple hypotheses that can be tested by making genuine predictions (of the future).
It's important, because the record as we have it is bound to be extremely "noisy". It's analogous to a recording of Edison singing Mary Had a Little Lamb. Instead of carefully taking into account every little scratch and hiss and rumble, we should be asking "was that Mary Had a Little Lamb we just heard?" -- if so, the next thing we hear should be "it's fleece was white as snow"!
In other words, we should be devising tests that cut through the extraneous noise instead of painstakingly, diligently amplifying it.
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#386 manysummits wrote:
"I sure wish we could all travel more, and argue less!"
Nothing closes the mind like foreign travel -- nor opens it like argument.
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@MangoChutneyUKOK #373
(@seasambo)
The thing about AGW climate trends is spotting them through other known climate influences such as the 11 year sunspot cycle and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.
So the rest of Phil Jones's reply about the statistical significance of temperature trends during a 15 year period is also important:
"B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8511670.stm
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@Bowman #391
I'd just like to pick up on a point from this entry, namely:
"...[that scientists should be] coming up with some simple hypotheses that can be tested by making genuine predictions (of the future)."
Whilst I agree that this is a good, simple, description of the scientific method, it raises a particular question regarding climate science. It has been noted on this blog that the climate system is so complex as to defy a simple description, i.e. that the best description scientists can currently come up with consists of an ensemble of hugely complex semi-empirical models which, as you have made clear previously, are unacceptable to you on, what I am prepared to agree are, perfectly valid philosphical grounds given the strictest of definitions of the scientific method.
If we accept this is the case then the simple interpretation of the scientific method stated above precludes any theory currently at our disposal, or that we may formulate in the near future, being acceptable to the strict philosophical interpretation you have given.
The question then is how do we reconcile these two points? On the one hand we need a simple, testable, theory (inaction being wholly unacceptable to everybody - on that point I think we can all agree), on the other there is no way to create a simple theory.
Would love to hear opinions from any interested readers.
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@DisgustedOfMitcham2 #387
Well, here's an observational based paper, and unless you think they somehow contrived to banish all clouds from the earth's atmosphere for a large chunk of the 20th century, then it pretty much had to include clouds. But let me guess: you don't find it convincing?
They don't banish clouds when making these calculations, they simply don't understand enough about the way clouds work, as confirmed by the IPCC themselves.
The paper you linked to was “An Observationally Based Estimate of the Climate Sensitivity”, Gregory et al, 2002. This paper gives a various estimates for climate sensitivity based on different parameters. With 90% confidence level, they tell us the lower bound is 1.6K, the median is 6.1K, whilst the mode is 2.1K, but they point the lower bound would fall to 1.1K, if they included all the known forcings. They do not include clouds, but they do add:
We consider that the lower bound is an important constraint on climate sensitivity, because it is objectively derived, and independent of GCM results for [delta or difference]T2×. Although the lower bound does not lead us to reject any of the AOGCMs used by Cubasch et al. (2001) in projections for the twenty-first century, it does exclude substantially smaller values. Improved understanding of physical processes of climate change and refinement of climate models is essential to reducing uncertainty in climate prediction
This means by observational methods the authors show low climate sensitivity, independent of climate models, is a distinct possibility even without clouds, if clouds were included, we would be closer to Idso’s work in my opinion.
/mango
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@390, JaneBasingstoke referring to the divergence problem wrote:
“
On the one hand if there was anything to reliably prove "divergence" was confined to 1960 onwards it would have been well publicised rather than the mealy mouthed "well, we have mentioned it, we have discussed it, we call it divergence".
But on the other hand if that's their only answer why weren't Hockey Sticks downgraded a long time ago, before all the fuss?
“
I would ask why were they ever published in the first place although, in this case, I do have some sympathy for the reviewers who were perhaps intimidated by talk of novel statistics.
At the risk of oversimplifying, beneath the hard sums the worth of a data series as a temperature proxy is determined by its correlation with an instrumental temperature record.
This is a questionable technique when data series have a low signal to noise ratio; if the signal is less than the noise then any significant correlation must be with the noise and therefore spurious.
The alternative is that a specific data series with a significant correlation has an unusually high signal to noise ratio compared to other proxies.
This would require an unusually high temperature sensitivity or an unusually high noise immunity.
If the statistics were valid then inspection of the physical characteristics of the selected proxies would give reasons for this unusually high signal to noise ratio.
Unfortunately the opposite is the case. The 'signals' giving the correlation include physical damage, upside-down building work and teleconnection. These all indicate spurious correlation as does divergence.
For a Hockey Stick manufacturer this is a double bonus. The noise giving the correlation not only allows a better match over the calibration period but also reduces amplitude variation prior to this giving a straight shaft. One reason for this is because the noise, mistaken for a signal, has a higher amplitude than the signal and when it is normalized the real signal is reduced leaving the noise (outside the calibration period) to average towards zero.
The divergence problem shows that the selected proxies are not reacting significantly to temperature at present and the methods used in their selection give no evidence that they ever were.
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The problem with a great deal of research is that the data which supposedly underpins it is not processed properly.
This problem also arises in other areas, e.g. finance and medical research.
This probably arises because the processing of data is not perceived as a particularly glamorous activity, and thus many researchers fail to deal with: issues connected with managing the impact of measurement uncertainty / noise on the parameters that they extract from their data sets; issues appertaining to algorithm choice and numerical analysis and the potential impact of poor choices of algorithms on the numbers that are obtained from their measurements, or from measurements that have been obtained from the academic literature.
There are several examples of poor research / work in general relating to naive statistical / numerical activitities.
I have noted a couple of links below:
EuSpRIG: http://www.eusprig.org/ [accessed 15/02/10]
Spreadsheets in Clinical Medicine - A Public Health Warning: G. Croll, R. Butler, Spreadsheet
Engineering Ltd, UK / EuSpRIG: [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator] [accessed 15/02/10]
The Importance and Criticality of Spreadsheets in the City of London, presented by Grenville Croll
presented at EuSpRIG 2005: [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator] [accessed
15/02/10]
On the climate front. I am not surprised to hear that great deal of it is based on data that has not been processed properly and dodgy calculations.
There are however some scientists that are very aware of the issues involved with processing data properly, and the need for us to obtain good data if we are to get a better understanding of the impact that our activities are having on the climate. An example of this is the work being pursued by Nigel Fox and collaborators, e.g
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator] [accessed 15/02/10]
http://www.npl.co.uk/optical-radiation-photonics/environment-climate-change/research/truths [accessed 15/02/10]
One of the most serious failings of a great deal of the numerical work is its failure to deal properly, (if at all) with the uncertainty that arises in the measurements that are used to determine the parameters on which they base their analysis. This is a serious failing and may render their numerical work null and void, and make any predictions that are derived from this work a useless waste of time.
These issues are dealt with by bodies such as standards laboratories such as the National Physical Laboratory in the UK and The National Institute of Standards and Technology in the USA.
In my opinion many of the problems with the climate data can be fixed. The people involved in processing complex data sets and disseminating their findings, should be open about the processes that they use to obtain their numbers. If they don't have in house expertise in areas such as:
Statistical analysis of measurement uncertainty and noise
Numerical analysis
Database development
They should collaborate.
For many academics in the climate arena. This will involve getting out and meeting people in academic departments such as their Mathematics Department.
For people that work in large international bodies this could involve collaborating with people that work in national standards laboratories such as the NPL and NIST.
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Commenting on 393,394
I think the heart of the matter is the scientific method and the public understanding of it.
Observational sciences especially of complex systems(climate) commonly take many years to clarify. Historicaly there have been many false prophets and most with important work the science is not settled in one step.
The hypothesis requires years of observations to formulate robust theories and many more decades to gain a high degree of confidence. If that is even possible given that we are talking about multiple decadal natural changes which may hide the effect we are seeking to demonstrate?
Somewhere it became easier to pretend this was simply a story about carbon dioxide as everyone knew what that was. But there are many other manmade greenhouse gases many other potential warming mechanisms.
If you had to start from first principles would you not ask?
How much does CO2 by itself affect the global climate?
Why is the Hockey stick curve accepted as a model?
How abnormal is the warming? difficult with proxies! what about a little attetnion to some of the individual surface records for the last 200 years
Compare the significance of this warming to other periods and give us some good analysis for the statistical significance of 0.7 degrees per century. Can you even do this comparing a proxy to a measured record , not likely!
The problem is once a theory becomes so politised it so much easier to get published when your paper supports the consensus view.The peer review process needs re-examined, papers should not written or published a la carte
I think the story demonstrates how maintaining objectivity while using the modern media to tell the story is very difficult indeed
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a study in nature genetics has concluded that ocean acidification is rising 10 times faster than the last time the deep oceans became so acidic 55 million years ago.
that's an order of magnitude greater than 55 thousand thousand years ago!
i really don;t understand how anyone can feel so comfortable with what we are doing to actively try to debate that we should not do anything about it. and, it seems to me, primarily because govts may impose restrictions/taxes (which there are plenty of already).
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#389:
"You are also ignoring their use of the word "global". They clearly acknowledge a MWP in "some regions of the Northern Hemisphere". Their complaints about myths apply to "anomalous global warmth during this time period" (emphasis mine)."
Local temperature anomalies tend to last a few days (heat waves), or possibly a few weeks or months, if there's some powerful 'external' event (volcanic eruptions etc)
But it's very unlikely for local anomalies to persist for long without global influence, so it's unlikely in the extreme that 'local' conditions persisted for centuries without being more 'global'.
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@JaneBasingstoke #382
Sherwood Idso's climate sensitivity work has very little respect. I found a conversation about his more recent work in the comments at RealClimate. Unfortunately the link they gave has a paywall. But I think it gives the picture.
Does “very little respect” mean the same as “we have a published paper that totally refutes this work” or “we can’t really find anything wrong with this work, but we’re saying it’s rubbish, because we’re right and he’s wrong”?
Sorry, Jane, but “very little respect” doesn’t cut it.
As a comment on RC puts it:
Is Idso 98 taken seriously in climate circles? Gavin asserted that the paper’s flaws had been well vetted, but I find no such evidence.
.....
Perhaps I could direct you to Hansen et al, January 1992. (Stress "January".) This is a prediction of the timing and extent of the cooling caused by the eruption of Pinatubo in 1991. Cooling gets amplified as well as warming.
Douglas et al 2005, Climate forcing by the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo (GRL):
In summary, we have shown that Hansen’s hope that the dramatic Pinatubo climate event would provide an ‘‘acid test’’ of climate models has been fulfilled, although with an unexpected result. The effect of the volcano is to reveal a short atmospheric response time, of the order of several months, leaving no volcano effect in the pipeline, and a negative feedback to its forcing.
.....
There is another problem with low climate sensitivity, it would be expected to give much bigger swings in CO2 than observed on the scale of hundreds of millions of years.
You can see some of that shown here. Sorry, it's a video clip. But Richard Alley is extremely watchable. http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
I’d prefer something that has been published that I can print and read through, than something that is essentially an opinion piece. It actually annoys me that much of the good work done over at CO2Science is now on clips rather than written, but I guess I am just a little old fashioned.
As for the calculated hotspot, I gather that it comes with caveats, and was therefore never meant as a "signature".
Really? I didn’t know that, so why has it been in the IPCC reports since the first report?
/mango
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#390:
"I don't know if somewhere in the papers they have established good reasons why the affected tree rings aren't affected by "divergence" before 1960ish."
But they are. If you look at the graphs you linked to, you will see that the correlation between the proxies and the instrumental record exists for only a short period of time - 50 years or less. Before that, at least two of the three proxies shown diverge from the instrumental record by quite a large amount.
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for all of those happy to jump on the anti-ipcc bandwagon over the error wrt how much of holland is below sea-level, including some in the dutch govt, it's worth noting that the data came from.....the dutch govt.
so that just leaves one clear error in who knows how many thousands of lines of reports......and the ipcc needs to be disbanded. if that level of accuracy was required of my work i wouldn;t last 5 minutes in a job.....would you?
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@JaneBasingstoke #393
Jones still agreed that there was no significant warming between 1995 and 2009.
/mango
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#387:
"Well, here's an observational based paper, and unless you think they somehow contrived to banish all clouds from the earth's atmosphere for a large chunk of the 20th century, then it pretty much had to include clouds. But let me guess: you don't find it convincing?"
The word 'cloud' does not appear even once in the paper you linked to.
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The problem with a great deal of research is that the data which supposedly underpins it is not processed properly.
This problem also arises in other areas, e.g. finance and medical research.
This probably arises because the processing of data is not perceived as a particularly glamorous activity, and thus many researchers fail to deal with: issues connected with managing the impact of measurement uncertainty / noise on the parameters that they extract from their data sets; issues appertaining to algorithm choice and numerical analysis and the potential impact of poor choices of algorithms on the numbers that are obtained from their measurements, or from measurements that have been obtained from the academic literature.
On the climate front. I am not surprised to hear that great deal of it is based on data that not processed properly and dodgy calculations.
There are however some scientists in the climate arena that are very aware of the issues involved with processing data properly, and the need for us to obtain data, where we have a good understanding of the impact of measurement uncertainty on the parameters that we derive from our measurements (or from quantities that are derived from the academic literature).
An example of this is the work being pursued at the National Physical Laboratory, (NPL) by Nigel Fox and collaborators.
In my opinion many of the problems with the climate data can be fixed. The people involved in processing complex data sets and disseminating their findings, should be open about the processes that they use to obtain their numbers. If they don't have in house expertise in areas such as:
statistical analysis of measurement uncertainty and noise
numerical analysis
database development
They should collaborate.
For many academics in the climate arena. This will involve getting out and meeting people in academic departments such as their Mathematics Department.
For people that work in large international bodies this could involve collaborating with people that work in national standards laboratories such as the NPL and NIST.
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#403:
"if that level of accuracy was required of my work i wouldn;t last 5 minutes in a job"
Well, you wouldn't last 5 minutes in my job. (safety-critical embedded software)
That many errors should not get through the review process - that is, if there are more than one or two reviewers.
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@JaneBasingstoke #382
Apologies Jane, I meant to say:
Mango, if you look at blunderbunny's #251 question 3 you will see that blunderbunny thought that climate sensitivity is effectively not up for debate.
In my opinion, I actually think climate sensitivity is still up for grabs, although the observation based estimates give a low climate sensitivity, whereas the calculation based estimates, which omit the great unknown, show high sensitivity.
Call me old fashioned, but, in this respect, I think observational science trumps trumps calculation we can't even work out how clouds effect sensitivity
/mango
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>>Call me old fashioned, but, in this respect, I think observational science trumps trumps calculation we can't even work out how clouds effect sensitivity
The problem here is to connect observation and calculation in order to make reasonable predictions.
It is important to be aware of the impact of measurement uncertainties. In the short term this may limit the range of conclusions that we can reliably extract from a series measurements. But hopefully in the longer term this constraint will help us to improve our measurement processes, e.g. the proposed Traceable Radiometry Underpinning Terrestrial- and Helio- Studies (TRUTHS) mission·
One of the big failings of some of the academics involved in the climate debate, is that they didn't deal with the uncertainties (in simple terms error bars), that are associated with any real measurements.
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@JaneBasingstoke #382, Mango #408 and my own #251 post.
I might have chosen my words more carfully, but I'm in agreement with Mango.
Observed, sensitivity is low and observed trumps calculated/postulated.
Also, very happy with last line of #390.
The original hockey stick and dendroclimatology are finally dead.......... and MWP/LIA are back....
Happy, happy, happy
We can agree to differ over our opinions of the meanings of a few words here and there - I now consider the matter closed.
Unfortunately, I think that there might be a few people that will be unhappy about that. Still if the IPCC actually agree with me, they will face an interesting dichotomy - I might finally get to see what ambivalence actually looks like ;-)
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410, blunderbunny wrote:
“The original hockey stick and dendroclimatology are finally dead......”
I believe that all climatic hockey sticks are dead as I can't see any future reconstructions daring to manufacture such a flat shaft.
As for dendroclimatology being dead, you may be correct but I would find that disappointing.
I would hope that a more open approach would allow researchers to gain some knowledge of past climate.
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"335. At 03:07am on 15 Feb 2010, Shadorne wrote:
infinity worte: I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity."
"LIke I said WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE ? Where is it? They keep referring to EVIDENCE..."
Well it wasn't my words, it was Dr Phil Jones. And he just gave you a location. You shouldn't really keep saying "WHERE IS IT?" with a stuck capslock after someone gives you a location.
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#407
"Well, you wouldn't last 5 minutes in my job. (safety-critical embedded software)"
i've worked on software for 30 years and you'll find plenty of bugs even in the operating system, but generally they're not critical bugs. this is entirely true of the ipcc and the pseudogates, the few errors do not warrant the level of hysteria raised.
reminds me of an ex colleague who was a project manager for the uk's new (back then) air traffic control system. there was quite a stir when, after a few months operation, someone discovered the word 'chrysanthemum' in the object code. a developer had put it there for a bet.
in fact the best approach is to run multiple lines of independently developed code on multiple systems and take the consensus (like fly-by-wire). that is also why the ipcc takes the consensus of peer reviewed articles.
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#410 blunderbunny
"The original hockey stick and dendroclimatology are finally dead.......... and MWP/LIA are back.... "
where's that then?
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337. bowmanthebard wrote:
"But is this a typical "sceptic paper on the web" that infinity just happened to be stumble upon as part of his open-minded research into the case for scepticism, or is it something he (and you) looked up on Google specifically to show that such a paper actually existed?"
I wouldn't have heard of the paper but for a certain list of "450 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of Man-Made Global Warming" that was paraded around the internet by skeptics a year or so ago. Featured an article on WUWT etc and was posted on various blogs, etc. If you google the exact phrase "450 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of" you get 97,500 hits.
I bothered to trawl through some of the list to see what the papers were like. So I didn't so much as look for this paper up on google as had shoved in my face at the time.
Notice also the presence of strange contradiction in the title of the list itself. Skeptics tell us that climate scientists act as "gatekeepers" stopping anything skeptical of manmade global warming being published. But here they are claiming nigh on 500 papers have been published. Yet again they want to have it both ways - both claiming being persecuted and supressed, but they also want to claim a large number of skeptical publications exist. As the old adage goes heads we win, tails you lose.
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@rossglory #414
On the IPCC web site, that'll teach me to read stuff a tad more carefully.... Thanks again, Jane (You might not be too popular with some of our more beligerent contributors)...... So, for possibly the one and only time (from me at least) here's a link to the IPCC web site:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-6.html
Still quite happy........ I'm guessing it's only temporary, but what the Hell.
Watching how this one continues should be a hoot ;-)
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
@RobWansbeck
"As for dendroclimatology being dead, you may be correct but I would find that disappointing.
I would hope that a more open approach would allow researchers to gain some knowledge of past climate. "
It may not be all over, it might just require a bit of humble pie eating, the one link that does appear to have at least a little validity is to the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8311000/8311373.stm
As there is some work that suggests that this (cosmic ray flux) might be more directly linked to temps, than most warmists would have us believe (what not CO2), it may not be completely over for dendroclimatology.
Just a few text books to rewrite and jobs a good un - lots of unhappy warmists though, but I guess you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Whatever happens science will eventually win out.
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#404 mango
"Jones still agreed that there was no significant warming between 1995 and 2009."
what about 1980-2009 or 1992-2009 or ....
anyone that thinks this quote from prof jones means we should all sit back and relax should just look at the temps over the past few decades (try woodfortrees.org).
i have to agree that there is a chance that cloud feedbacks are going to save us.......but its's also wishful thinking. we're all test pilots on planet earth, pushing the envelope.....and i'm not crazy enough to have ever wanted to be a test pilot.
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More alarmist hype courtesy of Capt. Pachauri and the IPCC Titanic.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/15/hatton_on_hurricanes/
We now have Hurricanegate.
http://www.inscriptdesign.com/josh/ipcc_titanic.jpg
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#394 Dave_oxon wrote:
"Would love to hear opinions from any interested readers."
You've probably had it up to here with me, but I am genuinely interested, and you don't have to reply!
My answer is that when we meet something very complicated, our best hope of understanding it is not to try to construct a large-scale simulation (or model) of what it does, but instead to try to understand how its smaller, simpler parts interact with each other.
And we must add a healthy -- i.e. hefty -- dose of modesty, from an awareness that anything we can simulate is going to be a general version of the mere instances we can ever observe -- and different from each one of them individually.
As an example of something very complicated, take the human brain. Brain-states are very complicated (albeit in a different sort of way from states of the climate, which are also very complicated). In my opinion, looking at coloured areas in brain scans and trying to correlate them with what subjects report themselves as thinking is just completely hopeless -- it's no better than phrenology with wires.
But by getting a better understanding of agency, along with a better grasp of the evolutionary purposes of the larger structures of the brain as well as of the smaller structures (e.g. the way small numbers of neurons work together in simple networks), we can gain very much. Each of the above is the sort of thing we can grasp with simple, testable hypotheses. Then let us try to imagine how the whole thing might hang together. I recommend a reductionistic approach like that, because I think it is likely to be much more profitable than anything we can gain by just looking for correlations, extrapolating from the "data" we already have, or trying to model the whole thing without modestly accepting that every single state is utterly unique.
In much the same way as every single brain state (and brain) is utterly unique in many of its details, so too is every single "climate-state" -- and all of the "data" we already have (or think we have, or actually could ever get) of individual states would not help us much with the project of modelling the whole thing in one go, which is misguided.
So let us modestly consider the water molecule -- a fascinating, and as-yet not completely understood thing. Let us consider the greenhouse effect. Let us consider the Sun. Let us try to imagine how all of these things work together. Then let's honestly guess something, and then let's go for an honest test of our guess!
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415. At 9:33pm on 15 Feb 2010, infinity wrote:
#337 wrote:
"I wouldn't have heard of the paper but for a certain list of "450 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of Man-Made Global Warming" that was paraded around the internet by skeptics a year or so ago."
Fair enough. In my reply to JaneBasingstoke I said "I stand corrected", and I say the same to you now.
Hey, I hear Charles Manson believes in AGW! (-wink-)
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Boulton pulls the strings
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/2/15/boulton-pulls-the-strings.html
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#413:
"reminds me of an ex colleague who was a project manager for the uk's new (back then) air traffic control system. there was quite a stir when, after a few months operation, someone discovered the word 'chrysanthemum' in the object code. a developer had put it there for a bet."
I've seen worse, except that 'deliberate' errors such as that, are usually picked up rather sharpish - because they're quite obvious. It's normally the more subtle bugs that sometimes slip through the net at the review stage, but hardly any manage to escape the rigorous testing process.
We work by the well-worn (and very true) principle that if anything can go wrong, it will - and the very worst time to find out that critical bugs exist is when the software's being used in anger.
Multiply-redundant systems, such as 'fly by wire' are not to guard against software bugs so much as for hardware malfunctions - like when a RAM cell gets cleared by a cosmic ray.
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Mango, hi
"They’re not stuck with anything. The politicians will blow with whatever wind they think will get them re-elected."
You are of course referring to every politician/decision maker/including dictator(where appropriate)/governments world wide [over 150 present at Copenhagen]
Or are you just referring to your experience in the UK? With your local politicians?
See where I suggest that "changing you government will make little difference"
Check up on who (in the UK) has signed up to 10;10.
There was a time when "Britannia ruled the Waves" Not any more. Gordon Brown went to Copenhagen thinking "he" was going to "Lead" the world policy with his "accord" and be covered in Glory.He came away with egg on his face. China and America et. al. didn't even invite him to the party.
So, Mango, again feel free to believe what you may, whatever happens in the UK in this matter is of absolutely no importance on the global situation.We here in New Zealand are in a similar situation. We,too, are bit players.
However you may like to take a lesson from our recent experience.
20 months ago (may have been 18, time passes quickly) the Government then in power rammed through legislation endorsing the need to take action, our (beloved) [pardon me if I too resort to sarcasm] ETS scheme.
During the elections, the opposition (now the Government) as part of their proposed policy, campaigned AGAINST that legislation. Now they are in power, what have they done? Essentially they have still endorsed the policy but tinkered with the details.
The Rio Accord of 1992 is owned by ALL the countries who are signatories to it. NOT just any one of them and irrespective of any Government changes in any particular Country or Nation, it will take far more than the public of the UK or New Zealand or any other individual nation (where democracy as we know it exists) to change the situation merely by changing the government.
Whoever wins or loses an election in the UK, New Zealad, Australia etc etc is a non-issue.
When I put on my "Grumpy" hat, it is, NOT because of what I read on this blog (except when contributors insist on playing the man) but when I look back at what governments signed up to address at Rio, (take a few moments if you haven't already and see for yourself their so-called commitment to many of the problems that mankind faces, including your own concerns re-clean water) How much have they achieved in the intervening years? On any of the many things they signed up to tackle? It won't take a computer modeler to answer that one! It's blatantly obvious............very little. The reason behind that, though, is NOT so obvious.
Could it perhaps have something to do with this? Could it be that the Governments we elect do not have ultimate power of decision making? Could it be that there are more powerful pressure groups that influence the decision making process? How often has it been stated on this site "follow the money" In our world today, election campaigns cost a lot of money to run. Where does that money come from? What do they expect from their "campaign contributions"?
Someone once said to me, "Mike, if you want to know how important you are in the greater scheme of things, fill a bucket with water and stick your hand in. When you take your hand out, the size of the hole left behind will be a good indication of your importance"
Humbling.
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Further to xtragrumpymike2’s post #339:-
Even the Pentagon is factoring in climate change to its thinking for the future.
In their ‘Quadrennial Defense Review Report’ of Feb. 2010, they report under the sub-heading,
‘Crafting a Strategic Approach to Climate and Energy’ on page 84.
Quote:-
‘…Climate change will affect the Dept of Defense in two broad ways. First, climate change will shape the operating environment, roles, and missions that we undertake. The U.S. Global Change Research Program, composed of 13 federal agencies, reported in 2009 that climate-related changes are already being observed in every region of the world, including the United States and its coastal waters. Among these physical changes are increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the oceans and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows…’
You can read the report by going to this link and clicking on the document on the right.
http://www.defense.gov/QDR/
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@RobWansbeck #396
"I would ask why were they ever published in the first place"
Er, you do believe in scientists being allowed to work on new ideas, don't you? Without them having to be complete and perfect first.
Back in 1998 the Hockey Stick concept was a new powerful idea. It needed to be explored. And because science works by publishing, it needed publishing.
At the time it would have been quite reasonable to assume that the divergence problem would be obvious to those reading the paper. Also publishing meant that other people might find a solution, a real solution. The situation is similar with the statistics. Novel stats are more of a reason to publish, not less.
Nearly everything in the Hockey Stick saga has gone wrong. Data and programmes should have been available to any competent scientist that wanted to test them. The divergence situation needed to be made clearer to non-specialists. The Hockey Sticks got massively over inflated.
But publishing the Hockey Sticks was the right thing to do.
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@MangoChutneyUKOK #401
"Sorry, Jane, but “very little respect” doesn’t cut it."
Firstly you quote Idso 1984. Even Idso doesn't do that, he prefers Idso 1998. The only place I can find it is in "500 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of "Man-Made" Global Warming" where it seems to be padding.
Your link - Idso 1984
http://www.springerlink.com/content/f6678m7lr6u33856/
Idso's site - Idso 1998
http://www.co2science.org/subject/c/climatesensitivity.php
Secondly Idso's recognition on other sceptic sites doesn't seem to extend to them being interested in his climate sensitivity work (apart from the comments). Sceptic sites write articles on Idso's work on bristlecones. Sceptic sites write articles on Lindzen's work on climate sensitivity. But apart from Idso's own site I have not found a sceptic site with an article on Idso's climate sensitivity work.
http://climateaudit.org/2005/02/20/graybill-idso-1993/
http://climateaudit.org/2010/01/18/curry-reviews-lindzen-and-choi/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/30/lindzen-on-negative-climate-feedback/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/18/steve-mcintyres-iccc09-presentation-with-notes/
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#405, Peter317:
"The word 'cloud' does not appear even once in the paper you linked to."
That's true. So do you think that if clouds are not mentioned then they magically cease to exist? The paper is based on observational data, taken here on planet earth. I think it's reasonable to assume that clouds were present in the atmosphere while the observations were being made.
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#395, Mango:
"This means by observational methods the authors show low climate sensitivity, independent of climate models, is a distinct possibility even without clouds, if clouds were included, we would be closer to Idso’s work in my opinion"
2 points there. First, you're focusing on the lower bound of their confidence interval. You could equally have picked the upper bound and say that they show scarily high climate sensitivity is a distinct possibility. Why pick on the lower bound?
Second, you say clouds aren't included. But it's based on observational data, so the clouds must have been there (unless you think that they sucked them out of the earth's atmosphere for many years just to fiddle their experiment).
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#424 peter
"but hardly any manage to escape the rigorous testing process." - which is really what i was saying about the ipcc.
wrt the software, there was a stir when boeing announced it would only use one software team to design the multiple code lines for the 777 rather than separate teams like airbus. so software is an issue.
at the hardware level you are right. in fact you also bump into the strange quantum world where no amount of testing will be perfect!
hmmm, maybe i could work on safety critical systems after all. this all reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) story of the safety critical seminar where a presenter asked if anyone would fly in a plane using their team's software for control systems. only one guy put his hand up. you're very brave, says the instructor. not really, says the guy, with my team's software the plane probably wouldn;t get to the end of the runway :o)
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Climategate.com shows how the lie, 'global warming unprecedented' is finished: (AGW theory that is - leaving the planet to get on with it)
http://www.climategate.com/climate-quacks-professional-suicide-ends-lie-of-man-made-climate-change#comments
Some nice graphs, solar activity/temp:
As Professor Jones confessed to the BBC:
“the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.”
Jones was referring to those four distinct warming periods from modern ground thermometer records during 1860-1880, 1910-1940, 1975-1998 and 1975-2009.
The vast majority of scientists agree that the 20th century warming period of so much doom-saying and concern began around 1975. Firstly, that Jones admits warming stalled a mere twenty years later confirms skeptic’s analyses that there is no enduring statistical trend to prove a signal of man made global warming.
But, secondly, by conceding that there is no statistical difference between any of these four short warming periods, when in each them temperatures rose about 0.16 Degrees C per decade (under 2.0 Degrees C per century) before falling back, Jones, himself, debunks the hype that the Earth is set for any catastrophic global warming.."
Basically, AGW theory needs to show ANY human signature in the planets climate.
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#430 shadorne
oh no, not the register. i haven't followed the links (said goodbye to the register years ago, awful 'rag' imho) but if hurricanegate it's anything to do with pielke you can easily find authorative articles refuting what he has to say...just look.
probably similar to amazongate and africagate which were also media manufactured pseudogates.
all my money's still on the large band of smart, hardworking, dedicated (they work for the ipcc for free!) climate scientists. not the delingpoles, bookers, moncktons, moranos and their like, which is where most of the psudogates come from.
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@Janebasingstoke
Now that we and the IPCC seem to be in agreement over the demise of hockey sticks, the death of dendroclimatology and re-birth of both the MWP and the LIA…..
Still basking, not so quietly, in the glow of that one ;-)
I was just wondering what your thoughts are on all of this?
I think we might disagree over the importance to the general pro-AGW case of the demise of ‘hockey stick’ and the majority of the temperature proxies for the last millennia. As there’s the thorny issue of what happens to all those papers that reference that work and indeed the whole pyramid of papers that are based upon them. Are the IPCC about to see the number of papers that it can claim to its name, go into a sharp decline?
It’s odd that the IPCC apparently put all of this to bed in 2007 and yet we still see references and quotes from both these persons and papers reproduced even now….
If the IPCC had wanted to maintain any credibility as a ‘scientific’ organisation, shouldn’t it have made more of this stuff in 2007?
Perhaps, the higher echelons within the IPCC skim read this and just didn’t realise what they were being told by working group1?
(Personally, I know I saw the oft repeated graphs and then just disengaged my brain and re-engaged my clicking finger – perhaps they treated it in this in the same way)
Going back to basking now - I know it won’t last, so I’d best make the most of it ;-)
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#424 Peter317 wrote:
"It's normally the more subtle bugs that sometimes slip through the net at the review stage, but hardly any manage to escape the rigorous testing process."
It appals me when people use the word 'testing' like this. Testing what against what?
Get real. Literally, please.
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@Bowman #421, also Paul #398
Thank you for the responses - I am certainly not getting sick of it (yet!) there are some very interesting points coming out here.
Paul, I must agree with you that the topic of climate change has become far too politicised. Politicians like things that back their own agendas, which tends to mean exaggeration and distortion of the research they pick up on. However, this doesn't say anything about the integrity of the scientists who produced the research in the first place, or the quality of that science. The integrity of the scientists is a separate issue which has been debated at length on this blog but further muddying the waters with politics does nothing for the credibility and transparency of the science.
Returning to Bowman's comments on the way the science is carried out (and Paul's who, if I have interpreted the comments correctly, shares a similar reductionist view), I was intrigued by the comparison with brain imaging as there is a further idea to do with complex systems that your analogy didn't address: Emergence.
If I have grasped the idea of emergence (and I don't claim to know a great deal about it) the basic premise is that there are properties of a complex system that only appear when the system is treated as a whole. When considering the brain, for example, this would mean that we cannot deduce the existence of intelligence from knowing about the interaction of individual neurons as intelligence is considered to be an emergent property of the ~100 billion neurons that comprise a human brain.
Similarly, I would argue that global temperature must be considered an emergent property of the climate system i.e. we can only hope to describe it by consideration of the entire system as the study of individual parts will not provide any insight into the behaviour of this global quantity. Since the rising and falling of the global average temperature is the single most important quantity we are concerned with, surely that requires us to consider the system as a whole.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8516905.stm
as an aside, you should read this.
No clue that man.
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@DisgustedOfMitcham2 #430 who wrote...
"Second, you say clouds aren't included. But it's based on observational data, so the clouds must have been there (unless you think that they sucked them out of the earth's atmosphere for many years just to fiddle their experiment)."
Not exactly. The earth radiation balance satellite wasn't up back then so everything had to be worked out indirectly or guessed. If you'll look at the IPCC's own forcings and feedback lists you'll see two very disturbing things, first off the forcings/feedbacks often have ranges so high that even the sign may not be known and second...the LOSU (level of scientific understanding) is usually quite low
http://chriscolose.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/ipcc2007_radforc.jpg
As many here have pointed out before of course, the "high" understanding of CO2's forcing has never in fact been tested in any way that shows how it would act in a dynamic atmosphere. Its limited to bench testing in which convection plays no role at all.
You really have to wonder. How do you construct a climate model when the hypothesis on which it is based in no way explains ANY of this interglacial's fluctuations, when you have almost no direct measurements of the aspects of the phenomenon you're modeling, with an incomplete record of the history of what you're modeling, and with your guesses for the values only good to between +/-25% to possibly not even knowing the sign (but again, even those wide ranges could be wrong)? I mean seriously, how can you construct that model at all???
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Oops, I stand corrected...I must be thinking of another satellite. The ERBE satellites were launched quite a bit earlier. Need to see when it was they had full (as can be expected) coverage of the spectrum.
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@436.
I'd echo your sentiment on the perils of analyzing, or relying too heavily on small parts of larger systems to give some sort of predictive nature.
The very reason we today still have to rely on things like clinical trials (in animals and humans) is because regardless of knowing (theoreticall and lab-scale) how something may work (in-vitro), there are still large possibilities that unkown or mis-understood 'factors' can vastly change somethings behaviour 'in system' (in-vivo). These unknown factors are often (in this example) very dangerous- though i am not trying to draw parallels here, only suggest a possibility.
We know perilously little about our climate, it's interactions, feedbacks, regulations and state. We don't know what is normal, what is abnormal. We don't know what rates things should change, whether recent trends are fast, slow, or normal (regarldess of what governemnts will tell you).
The vast majority of climate 'scientists' are trying to make the best damned guesses they can of limited, incomplete and under-understood(!) data. I don't doubt for a second that the vast majority are just trying their best to understand the system, and make predictions off it.
However i cannot help but conclude that the suspect nature of their starting data (as a vast majority or research is performed/reliant on 'shared data- i.e. cru, nasa, giss- and why shouldn't it be) calls into question a lot of their findings.
The further politicisation of the issue adds a penalty for 'failure' (though being wrong in science is NEVER a failure), both financially and publicly and introduces a real worry that policy will trump and eventually lead the science, not the other way around.
The recent admission that no statistically significant warming from 1995 onwards is very telling. Were co2 to be acting in the way 'they' (IPCC etc) suggest, then this would not happen, the world would continue to warm at their predicted rates. The fact it doesnt, despite exponentially higher co2 release, suggests at the very least that they do not understand what they are trying to predict, or at the worst show's they were completely wrong.
the 'hiding' of data and procedure behind relevant qualifications, confidentiality and red tape is disingenous- firstly, any scientist, regardless of their field is eminently qualified to test the integrity of raw data. They may not fully understand the intricate mechanisms/specialities, but they can spot a faulty hypothesis, test,data set from a country mile. Their careers depend on it.
Secondly, any attempt to hide, alter, delete the raw data/ models automatically calls the work under suspision.
Full, unreserved openness is what this debate needs now. Release all the Raw climate data, release all the models, release all the 'peer review' information (who reviewed what). And some credibility may be salvaged from this mess.
Otherwise we run the real risk that climate 'science' will drag the other sciences down with it and permenantly damage the publics trust in all science.
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LabMunkey at #440: "Otherwise we run the real risk that climate 'science' will drag the other sciences down with it and permenantly damage the publics trust in all science."
I think some folks are already there...
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=124000
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Re 432.Barry Woods:
Your link is shocking Barry. Not only does their first graph of temperature omit the past 2 years (they end the graph in April 2008), but in the second graph they compare PDO+AMO with US temperatures. Not global temperatures.
Given that US and global temperature trends do not match up, this is an implicit omission that PDO+AMO cannot explain the global 20th century rise in temperature (ie if it matches the US record it cannot match the global record). Indeed the trend in PDO is flat over the 20th century, and declining over the past few decades.
climategate.com is evidentally a fine site for political psuedoskeptics and their fabricated psuedogates.
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#435:
Please don't confuse 'testing' within the context of what I was discussing with 'testing' in the context of climate models. The two are completely different.
'Testing', within the context of the software I work with, consists of ensuring that the software behaves precisely as specified under all specified conditions. Here, the conditions and operational parameters (albeit a large number), including all their interactions, are all known and precisely defined.
The same cannot be said for climate models.
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@442, to be honest i'd avoid any site that publicises any perceived 'mistakes' (climate gate etc). The name alone shows their intention, by nature making them prone to unimparitality.
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#443 Peter317 wrote:
"Please don't confuse 'testing' within the context of what I was discussing with 'testing' in the context of climate models. The two are completely different."
Yes, I was being unfair. But I'd like to lodge a complaint against other people who suppose a computer model is tested when it fits the "data" it was specifically designed to fit. It should only be counted as passing a test when it models reality by successfully predicting something that hasn't happened yet.
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#436 Dave_oxon wrote:
"I would argue that global temperature must be considered an emergent property of the climate system i.e. we can only hope to describe it by consideration of the entire system as the study of individual parts will not provide any insight into the behaviour of this global quantity."
Like the words 'reductionism' and 'holism', the word 'emergence' can mean various things, depending on whether we are referring to theories (i.e. bits of language) or things (i.e. bits of reality).
It's one thing to reduce a physical object to its parts (like taking an engine apart), another thing to reduce a theory to another theory (like the reduction of phenomenological thermodynamics to statistical mechanics).
Thanks to inter-theoretic reduction, we can say that temperature is the same thing as mean molecular kinetic energy. It's a "macroscopic" property in that we normally understand it applying to several particles rather than just one particle (so that an average has a familiar intuitive sense).
However, I hesitate to call temperature an "emergent" property -- the word is usually reserved for properties that can only be described in a theoretical idiom for which no inter-theoretic reduction is available, and which therefore present serious obstacles to explanation. A possible example might be my "planning a trip to Paris". Here, my brain state is describable in "intentional" mental language that might not be translatable into language describing the behaviour of neurons. (You can probably tell that I'm sceptical about the very existence of genuine "emergent" properties -- I think the concept trades on equivocation between the two types of reduction mentioned above).
Even though temperature is a property of "macroscopic" things, I don't think that precludes us explaining it in more "microscopic" terms. I would say the same applies to the climate. There may be insurmountable practical difficulties in deciding/agreeing which bits of the atmosphere and/or Earth's surface to count as contributing to the climate, and for that reason it might be practically impossible to talk meaningfully of the "global temperature", but I don't think it's because temperature is an "emergent" property that resists reductive explanation.
Richard Dawkins proudly proclaimed himself to be "a reductionist", but "not a baby-eating reductionist" -- the latter being someone who denies the existence of things that can be "explained away". I'm with him on that one!
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Infinity:
Your link is shocking Barry. Not only does their first graph of temperature omit the past 2 years (they end the graph in April 2008), but in the second graph they compare PDO+AMO with US temperatures. Not global temperatures."
For Goodness sake:
Phil Jones, in an Interview with the BBC, has just said (admitted)there is no difference between the recent warming, statistically, than in three previous recent periods.....
Can you imaginem he would have done that before, the climategate whistleblowing.
ie, the planet appears to be behaving, in a similar pattern to the historic past. ie the conclusion, no signature, of human agw warming.
He also said, no significant warming since 1995....
Climategate.com, was JUST reporting what the BBC had said!!!!
I guess, infinity still has faith...
I wonder if Richard Black, and Roger Harribin are as convinced anymore...
Phil Jones. Who says, all though t
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@rossglory #419
what about 1980-2009 or 1992-2009 or ....
What about all the things that Jones said, not what he didn't say? No statistical warming. Look at the periods that Jones gives as illustration.
i have to agree that there is a chance that cloud feedbacks are going to save us
wow, Ross, is that the sceptic in you trying to get out? ;)
@xtragrumpymike2 #425
I have to agree with much of your post.
There was a time when "Britannia ruled the Waves" Not any more. Gordon Brown went to Copenhagen thinking "he" was going to "Lead" the world policy with his "accord" and be covered in Glory.He came away with egg on his face. China and America et. al. didn't even invite him to the party.
Totally agree, unfortunately even with the UK's standing in the world. Many years ago i was a staunch labour supporter, but over the years, i've realised that labour has never really wanted to improve the lot of the working man. Like every other politician they just want to push their snouts into the trough. Brown is a laughing stock. I could say more, but i don't think the mods would allow it.
So, Mango, again feel free to believe what you may, whatever happens in the UK in this matter is of absolutely no importance on the global situation.We here in New Zealand are in a similar situation. We,too, are bit players.
agree again!
Could it perhaps have something to do with this? Could it be that the Governments we elect do not have ultimate power of decision making? Could it be that there are more powerful pressure groups that influence the decision making process? How often has it been stated on this site "follow the money" In our world today, election campaigns cost a lot of money to run. Where does that money come from? What do they expect from their "campaign contributions"?
careful, mike, somebody will accuse you of being a conspiracy theorist
@JaneBasingstoke #428
Perhaps, I didn't use the right words.
What I meant was Idso's work is out there to be refuted by people who can show he is wrong. 25 years after publishing his work, it still stands unrefuted. As far as I am concerned, a few AGWer's telling us his work isn't good is simply not a good enough reason not to take the work seriously. If the AGWer's think this work is rubbish then they should tell us why it's rubbish.
@DisgustedOfMitcham2 #430
you're focusing on the lower bound of their confidence interval. You could equally have picked the upper bound and say that they show scarily high climate sensitivity is a distinct possibility. Why pick on the lower bound?
The mode was 2.1K, this would suggest the likelihood that the actual figure is towards the lower end of the range than the upper and because that is the figure the authors give in their abstract
you say clouds aren't included. But it's based on observational data, so the clouds must have been there
Their method references papers which clearly state the referenced paper deals with cloud reflectivity but not the cooling effect of cloud aerosols, which due to enhancement in reflectivity associated with a decrease in droplet size and would contribute to a cooling of the earth's surface.
/mango
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To rossglory #399:
Fifty-five million years ago. I imagine they were referring to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)?
Ten times the rate of ocean acidiification!
The Interacademy Panel on International Issues released a 'statement' on ocean acidification. I will post the link to the 'statements' page, but the document is a 'pdf,' so you will have to click on it. I will excerpt the Headlines from it, moderators permitting:
"Headline messages (June 1, 2009)
• Oceans play a critical role in the global carbon cycle by absorbing about a quarter of the CO2 emitted to the atmosphere from human activities;
• The rapid increase in CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution has increased the acidity of the world’s oceans with potentially profound consequences for marine plants and animals especially those that require calcium carbonate to grow and survive, and other species that rely on these for food;
• At current emission rates models suggest that all coral reefs and polar ecosystems will be severely affected by 2050 or potentially even earlier;
• Marine food supplies are likely to be reduced with significant implications for food production and security in regions dependent on fish protein, and human health and wellbeing;
• Ocean acidification is irreversible on timescales of at least tens of thousands of years;
• Even with stabilisation of atmospheric CO2 at 450 ppm, ocean acidification will have profound impacts on many marine systems. Large and rapid reductions of global CO2 emissions are needed globally by at least 50% by 2050."
http://www.interacademies.net/CMS/About/3143.aspx
-------------
The PETM is why I coined the term H-A-T-E to describe our time - the HOLOCENE-ANTHROPOCENE-THERMAL-EXTINCTIONS, or perhaps the HOLOCENE-ANTHROPOCENE-TERMINAL-EVENT.
I was just out ice-climbing with a new friend yesterday. The mountains look the same as always. It is really difficult to return to 'reality' and realize that my acronym may be altogether too apt.
Did you see the link provided by simon-swede?
That's the 'H-A-T-E' part of our society, the reason sensiblegrannie posted her 'Waterbabies' quote.
It's true, and "wishin' don't make it [not] so."
As regards the IPCC - frankly I've never liked the idea. And I am not such a fan of volunteerism.
I'd rather see the Interacademy Panel on International Issues shoot from the hip - science only.
- Manysummits -
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\\\ The Foggy Foggy Dew ///
One more thing, from the BBC this morning:
"Fog decline threatens US redwoods"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8517035.stm
------------
It's extremely foggy here in Calgary. It has been extremely foggy here for a week - very unusual.
Just weather - of course. But in combination with the unusual weather now manifesting all over the world, for example the 'Redwood' article, etc..., it seems to this observer that we are seeing as well as normal variability in weather, an abnormal variability.
- Manysummits -
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#448, mango:
"but not the cooling effect of cloud aerosols, which due to enhancement in reflectivity associated with a decrease in droplet size and would contribute to a cooling of the earth's surface."
So why didn't the earth's surface cool then? The paper was based on observations of ocean temperatures. If you're right that clouds cool the surface (and that that cooling effect is increasing to negate the warming effect of CO2), surely that would have been observed?
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@Bowman, #446
To reduce (excuse the pun) your argument to its basic points (though I appreciate the analogies, they illustrate your argument very well) you are saying that, specifically in the case of temperature:
1. The macroscopic quantity "temperature" is the average of the microscopic quantity "kinetic energy" possessed by each particle in the system.
2. Since we can work at understanding the micrscopic parts of the system, this would allow us, with sufficient ingenuity, to calculate the relation to the macroscopic average.
I think I see a flaw in this argument which I would like to put to you.
Your argument above hinges on the fact that inter-theoretic reductionism allows us to say that temperature is the statistical average of molecular kinetic energy. This though only holds true for a closed system that is close to ideal, close to equilibrium, whose distribution of energies can be (reasonably accurately) described by a Maxwell-Boltzmann-like distribution.
This is indeed sufficient to give good predictions of behaviour of well-controlled systems like combustion engines and power stations. To anyone who is still reading at this point, I urge you to at least glance at the mathematics on the linked wikipedia pages keeping in mind the thought that these only describe a simplified, idealised system that does not exist in reality, only in the context of a mathematical approximation (which, before anyone complains, is how all science works... except mathematics ;o) ).
The climate however cannot be described by a simple distribution, indeed if any approximation is to be made it must consist of a huge number of inter-related, non-equilibrium distributions. Hence the concept of a simple statistical average does not apply and we're back to requiring a complex model to attempt to describe the dynamics of the energy-content (read "temperature") of the system as a whole.
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@blunderbunny #434
You must be familiar with the problems of communicating science ideas. The problems most of your classmates would have had in science and maths lessons. The problems some scientists have explaining even the easy stuff.
Perhaps people on your side can stop seeing Phil Jones as a panto villain and start seeing him as a scientist whose work has been abused by politicians and activists. And that this abuse was accidental, caused by the very different approaches to science of all three groups of people.
The Climategate scientists broke the rules. They definitely broke FOI rules. They definitely broke the related scientific rule of making it easy for scientifically competent opponents to examine their work. Some of them appear to have broken the rules in their misguided attempts to police peer review. (I hope the inquiry into this is thorough and transparently honest.)
But this rule breaking only occurred because of extreme political pressure created after activists and politicians on my side of the debate co-opted the Hockey Stick as an icon. And after certain politicians dumbed down the science.
Perhaps an old quote from Michael Mann might be pertinent in this instance. Highlights mine.
"MYTH #0: Evidence for modern human influence on climate rests entirely upon the "Hockey Stick" Reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere mean temperatures indicating anomalous late 20th century warmth.
This peculiar suggestion is sometimes found in op-ed pieces and other dubious propaganda, despite its transparant absurdity. Paleoclimate evidence is simply one in a number of independent lines of evidence indicating the strong likelihood that human influences on climate play a dominant role in the observed 20th century warming of the earth’s surface. Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence in support of this conclusion is the evidence from so-called “Detection and Attribution Studies”. Such studies demonstrate that the pattern of 20th century climate change closely matches that predicted by state-of-the-art models of the climate system in response to 20th century anthropogenic forcing (due to the combined influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations and industrial aerosol increases)."
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/
And something more recent from Gavin Schmidt
"The phrase “the science is settled” is associated almost 100% with contrarian comments on climate and is usually a paraphrase of what ’some scientists’ are supposed to have said. The reality is that it depends very much on what you are talking about and I have never heard any scientist say this in any general context – at a recent meeting I was at, someone claimed that this had been said by the participants and he was roundly shouted down by the assembled experts."
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/unsettled-science/
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@DisgustedOfMitcham2 #451
The paper essentially says they ignored the cooling effect of clouds. You would need to see the actual data to understand why.
Either way, your cited paper did not include the effect and is therefore only shows high climate sensitivity without clouds, which is my whole point.
Clouds may well "save the day" in the words of RossGlory
/Mango
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#448 mango
"i have to agree that there is a chance that cloud feedbacks are going to save us
wow, Ross, is that the sceptic in you trying to get out? ;)"
nope, the optimist :o)
as i've always said mango, i hope you guys are right......but i don't think the evidence supports it.
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@452,
thanks for explaining (quite well i might add) something that's well known from experimental feedback (clinical trials). That's basically the same point i'm making. We don't understand the system- ergo we can't model it- making all models (despite none of them even being remotley accurate) useless.
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Must be man-made warming like the fog in California - this is obviously all our fault.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6866173.html
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Here is the link to the raw Hurricanegate data (for those of you who hear no evil, see no evil and who won't read The Registry especially if the views happen not fit what you "know" to be the truth of the coming thermageddon)
http://www.leshatton.org/Hurricanes_2010.html
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@MangoChutneyUKOK #448
And perhaps I didn't make my #428 clear enough.
Even Idso, Idso and Idso aren't interested in the content of Idso 1984. And even in the sceptic community the content of Idso 1998 seems confined to below-the-line comments, except at the Idso family website CO2 Science.
Meanwhile the sceptic community as a whole does a lot of stuff on climate sensitivity.
This strongly suggests that the reason for the lack of an online refutation is that no one thinks it worthwhile. And that link in my #382 refers to a print refutation in "Climate Change".
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@JaneBasingstoke #453
Just a tad confused/puzzled by that post as I'm not terribly sure how it relates to my last one.
It may be a long time since I had any classmates, but I'm familiar with the concept of explaining complicated things to children in easily understandable examples - the model of what people traditionally think of when you start talking to them about atoms, is a good example of this - "Lies to Children" - I think Terry Pratchett coined the phrase in one of his books.
You're not suggesting that climate scientist have had to resort to this in their various papers, because it's all just too complicated for the rest of us are you? If that was the case then the science involved would be in serious trouble.
I'm really not sure what that had to do with our current discussion.
Also, I dont think that I mentioned Phil Jones, CRU or climategate in our particular thread. Are you sure this response was directed at me and not someonelse?
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How I love the bargain basement section of the public library. For 20p I picked up a hardback book about the UK environment, a dry statistical look at the environment by the Department of the Environment.
First published in 1992, it faithfully records statistics, chewed, condensed, and turned into little data pies, squiggly lines and bar charts. Guess what, CO2 although listed as a greenhouse gas with the most significant impact, 75% of the pie chart, doesn't get called 'poisonous.' Old publications don't get caught up in the use of contemporary propaganda words. Instead they have a strong bias towards the propaganda of their time of publication (I will leave you to guess what that was about 20 years ago)
I am not going to comment further because I am now going to have a good read of pre end-of-oil-age panic ( which as far as I can work out, occurred because someone got their sums wrong) environmental statistics.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
#454:
They may have ignored clouds, but are you suggesting that the temperatures they measured also somehow managed to ignore clouds?
Please remember that the paper is based on observational data, not on modelling.
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@Dave Oxen #452
Quite right. Might I also point out that 'temperature' is a very poor measure of energy content. Heat content of air is highly dependent upon humidity and pressure - temperature is not. It is interesting to me - the logic that leads people to use tree rings as a proxy for temperature - which is really just a proxy for energy (heat) content.
So, how can we possibly even define a 'global temperature' (read heat content)? How can we possibly say that the 'heat content' of the planet has increased by .75C in the last hundred fifty years? From a couple hundred point measurements at ground level - representing a small part of the globe? Please - we can't even define a 'global temperature', much less measure it.
On another note, I find it interesting that the climate scientists have so little apparent understanding of non-linear dynamic systems theory. We have these 'scientist' arguing that they can eliminate the 'chaotic component' of the system as if were so much noise.
A few words about non-linear dynamic systems theory - with regards to chaotic systems. It is well understood by mathematicians and engineers (and scientists in most disciplines) that a chaotic dynamic system is composed of three 'parts' or manifolds - the stable manifold, the unstable manifold and the 'center manifold'. It is well understood that the dynamics of the system can 'preserved' while reducing the complexity of the system to the center manifold (chaotic component). The celebrated 'Center Manifold Theorem' states this very clearly, and has been widely accepted for several decades.
These climate models of today seek to eliminate the 'center manifold' - this does not preserve the dynamics of the system. It is no wonder that the models show 'tipping points' and unstable behavior. (i.e. runaway warming, etc...)
It would seem that much of the 'work' which has been done over the last 20 years should be 'tossed out' - and start over. Dr. Ed Lorenz had it right some 60 years ago when he stated that while we can provide inputs to the system (Earth's climate system), we can in no way predict the results of those inputs. In other words, climate change is inheirantly unpredictable - and always will be.
That is not to say that models do not have their uses - they do - but prediction is not one of them. The models are much more useful in pointing to areas where we should focus more research. To many (super) ego's seem to jump ahead to 'predictive models'. Waste of time and money.
Cheers.
Kealey
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@blunderbunny #460
My #453 picked up on your acknowledgement that the IPCC was not quite as extreme as you had thought. It was an appeal for help from your side of the debate in rehabilitating the Climategate scientists, who are not as extreme as some people on my side of the debate would have you think. It provided further examples of people with Hockey Stick connections not being as extreme as sometimes painted. It was certainly not an accusation against your earlier posts.
I thought I made it clear in my post that the dumbing down was by politicians and, to a lesser extent, activists.
I don't want scientists made scapegoats when the real problem is pressures caused by communication breakdown.
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#458 shadorne
nothing personal, just dislike the register.
interesting short paper from computer scientist les hatton claiming hurricanes not getting stronger supposedly refuting the ipcc.
but the ipcc only mentions the north atlantic which les hatton accepts. so i'm not sure what the point is.
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#452 Dave_oxon wrote:
"The climate however cannot be described by a simple distribution, indeed if any approximation is to be made it must consist of a huge number of inter-related, non-equilibrium distributions."
This makes a computer model even less appropriate.
My main point was that temperature is not an "emergent" property, just a "macroscopic" one. Complicated aspects of the climate not "emergent" either -- they're just complicated. As a rule, without any exceptions that I can think of including brain states, macroscopic and/or complicated things can be understood by considering their smaller and/or simpler parts.
What we need is better understanding of the climate, not mimicry or the mere logging of correlations. The latter is all a computer model would do. To repeat an earlier example, getting a computer to mimic, say, the very fuzzy early recording (by Edison) of the first verse of Mary Had a Little Lamb would not result in the computer going on to recite the second verse of Mary Had a Little Lamb!
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#464 LarryKealey wrote:
"'temperature' is a very poor measure of energy content. Heat content of air is highly dependent upon humidity and pressure - temperature is not."
I must be missing something obvious, but Boyle's Law, Charles' Law, etc. relate volume, pressure and temperature, right? Air cools as it expands, right?
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#453:
"But this rule breaking only occurred because of extreme political pressure created after activists and politicians on my side of the debate co-opted the Hockey Stick as an icon. And after certain politicians dumbed down the science."
Well, what can you expect from an organisation called, "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change"?
"Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence in support of this conclusion is the evidence from so-called “Detection and Attribution Studies”. Such studies demonstrate that the pattern of 20th century climate change closely matches that predicted by state-of-the-art models of the climate system in response to 20th century anthropogenic forcing"
If the best 'evidence' they have is that they managed to get their hopelessly inadequate computer models to loosely correlate with a brief, recent period of temperature history, then they really have nothing.
"The phrase “the science is settled” is associated almost 100% with contrarian comments on climate"
No, it's associated almost 100% with politicians, activists and the media.
That phrase has been publicly uttered by Gore, Prescott, Milliband, and a host of others.
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@JaneBasingstoke #448
This strongly suggests that the reason for the lack of an online refutation is that no one thinks it worthwhile. And that link in my #382 refers to a print refutation in "Climate Change".
I disagree, there are very little observational papers on climate sensitivity. The ones that do include all factors show climate sensitivity to be low
@DisgustedOfMitcham2 #463
They may have ignored clouds, but are you suggesting that the temperatures they measured also somehow managed to ignore clouds?
Please remember that the paper is based on observational data, not on modelling.
The method given doesn't mention measuring temperature, they calculated a figure for climate sensitivity based on observation, but their calculations omitted several known negative forcings as previously stated.
Any more questions or are you now willing to accept this paper does not take into account clouds?
/mango
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@JaneBasingstoke
Okay, that makes more sense now that I re-read it. I don't want to give the impression that I think all the people that have views that are contra to my own are all loons. I may have given that impression in the past, but my personal opinions about who might deserve a place in a little rubber room and a jacket with extra generous sleeves is a little more restrictive that than.
Re: Dr Phil Jones - I agree that in interview his views seem to be far less radical/fringy than some media reports may have indicated that they were, plus climategate emails taken out of context, may give the wrong impression of things... but, there is a but coming, some of the things that they were getting up to might still be considered naughty (staying with the whole classroom idiom) or dubious in scientific circles.
Moving forwards, transparency in everything is really the key, if the pro side wish to salvage something out of all these gates then re-engaging is their only option.
I'd dispute that only our side of the debate, the politicians and the whackier warmists bandy around the phrase the 'the science is settled'. I've heard numerous TV debates where that phrase has been used by the climate scientist who's been wheeled/trotted out to defend the consensus position. Plus, I've seen in print in a number of locations that 97% of all climate scientists support the position of the IPCC - I certainly know of a few that don't.
Also, not sure I'd agree with the Mann quote. If you continue to read the rest of the quotes on the same page he then goes on to rubustly defend it and the related data that was used to construct it and it's definitely become the poster child graph, no matter what his personal opinions about it might be.
Science will hopefully be the ultimate winner in this debate, which way it will go?
I've got no idea.
Obviously, I have a strong sceptical bias, but as I've said before I'd be very happy to be proved wrong. Science is a journey of discovery afterall. You can't really turn around and complain about where it takes you ;-)
I'm very happy to agree, where we can, for the general/greater good and all that.
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If any AGWer's are interested in CO2, try here for a reasonably clear explanation. I've put the last part first as the order the author suggests. Links to all 6 parts are found within the text.
Could I suggest any comments are made on the authors blog, not here, because I don't want to be accused of hijacking ;)
http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/02/11/co2-%E2%80%93-an-insignificant-trace-gas-part-six-visualization/
I'll pop over there if any body wants to comment
/mango
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@Richard Black
Off topic, i know, but will you be covering the Muir Russell inquiry on a daily basis like you did Copenhagen?
/mango
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Climate change is not going to go away for some time, it is so interwoven with government, even our car taxation classes are set by CO2 measurement, it will take governments years to disengage, I do however think that we have seen the beginning of the end of all that nanny state propaganda on this issue. In a year from now the IPCC is likely to have been replaced by a new body with a much broader brief & more stringent supervision of its standards. We will see a more general acceptance that ACC was a theory worth investigating but took on a life of its own and became a monster that never was. What we must do now is to ensure that the many good things that ACC brought into focus are not lost with it. Developing renewable energy for energy security, population control, pollution reduction are important enough to stand on their own, they do not need ACC.
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@MangoChutneyUKOK #470
Mango, there aren't any direct measurements of climate sensitivity. It's too abstract a concept. There are papers that measure components and contributing factors. There are other papers that compare the results of models to observations. But there is no such thing as a climate-sensitivity-meter, certainly Idso hasn't created one.
Now I can't find any evidence that the sceptic community takes Idso's climate sensitivity work seriously. I suggest you prove me wrong by getting Anthony Watts to get a credible sceptic outside the Idso family to write it up.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/tips-and-notes-to-wuwt/
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\\\ How Bad Can It Get? ///
I asked the Interacademy Panel on International Issues to make a statement on the concept of Planetary Boundaries/Limits to Growth in my post #332.
On the off-chance that they may not see this post, or respond to it, I thought to pass on my thinking, in the words of James Lovelock, from his recent book, "The Vanishing Face of Gaia - A Final Warning," moderators permitting:
"We have enjoyed 12,000 years of climate peace since the last shift from the glacial age to an interglacial one. Before long, we may face planet-wide devastation worse even than unrestricted nuclear war between superpowers. The climate war could kill nearly all of us and leave the few survivors living a Stone Age existence..." (p. 21 & 22)
Except for those tropical places where mountains are close to a warm ocean and bring rain, greater heat means drought and a fatal loss of food production...
Like the foot of an elephant on an anthill, global heating will crush life from the continental plains." (p. 10)
------------------------------------------
If instead of the insipid need for concensus, we sought the opinion of the very best scientists, we might decide that the switch to a war footing is called for instead of endless and debilitating debate.
We might recall that Winston Churchill once declared that to wage war by committee was "fatuous."
------------------------
\\\ Merlin's Muse ///
"Then Arthur learned, as all leaders are astonished to learn, that peace, not war, is the destroyer of men; tranquillity rather than danger is the mother of cowardice, and not need but plenty brings apprehension and unease."
- From John Steinbeck's "The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights." (p. 207)
-----------
These last few days in the mountains have straightened out my thinking, and I am now switching to a war footing myself as regards climate change (AGW), Planetary Boundaries, Limits to Growth, and in general the avaricious and deadly assault on the scientific community by some business as usual vested interest groups and individuals.
And I am unhappy with many warmists, or perhaps luke-warm warmists.
Dante never said the following, I am led to believe, but no matter - it applies:
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of crisis, remain neutral."
Several polite and civilized posters have said on this weblog that they are 'not sure' if AGW is real.
Why not?
Did you leave your brain at University after graduation?
Or nail it to the wall beside your degree?
Have you been so 'civilized' that you are incapable of decision?
Do you believe Labmunkey or me?
Lindzen or Lovelock?
Hansen or Moncton, or whatever his name is?
"Straighten Up and Fly Right" gentlemen, or find some other means to entertain yourselves.
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
- Albert Einstein
- Manysummits -
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@MangoChutneyUKOK #472
Mango, if you are going to post links that contain the line "co2-%E2%80%93-an-insignificant-trace-gas-" you do need to explain that the sceptic who wrote the blog actually debunks the "insignificant trace gas" line that some sceptics come out with.
Otherwise people might think it's a dud and not bother with the site at all.
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\\\ Napoleon on War ///
"The first qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation. Courage is only the second; Hardship, Poverty and Want are the best school for a soldier."
\\\ Walt Whitman on War ///
"Knowest thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards? And that is the theme of war, the fortune of battles, the making of perfect soldiers."
----------
I wish it had not come to this. I'd rather teach my son Cloudrunner about the ways of the natural world, and go climb more mountains - explore other deserts...
But 'wishin' don't make it so.'
//////////////////////////////
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Allright - we'll try again. The moderators must have found my excerpt from James Lovelock's book too long - I'll shorten it:
\\\ How Bad Can It Get? ///
I asked the Interacademy Panel on International Issues to make a statement on the concept of Planetary Boundaries/Limits to Growth in my post #332.
On the off-chance that they may not see this post, or respond to it, I thought to pass on my thinking, in the words of James Lovelock, from his recent book, "The Vanishing Face of Gaia - A Final Warning," moderators permitting:
"We have enjoyed 12,000 years of climate peace since the last shift from the glacial age to an interglacial one. Before long, we may face planet-wide devastation worse even than unrestricted nuclear war between superpowers. The climate war could kill nearly all of us and leave the few survivors living a Stone Age existence..." (p. 21 & 22)
------------------------------------------
If instead of the insipid need for concensus, we sought the opinion of the very best scientists, we might decide that the switch to a war footing is called for instead of endless and debilitating debate.
We might recall that Winston Churchill once declared that to wage war by committee was "fatuous."
------------------------
\\\ Merlin's Muse ///
"Then Arthur learned, as all leaders are astonished to learn, that peace, not war, is the destroyer of men; tranquillity rather than danger is the mother of cowardice, and not need but plenty brings apprehension and unease."
- From John Steinbeck's "The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights." (p. 207)
-----------
These last few days in the mountains have straightened out my thinking, and I am now switching to a war footing myself as regards climate change (AGW), Planetary Boundaries, Limits to Growth, and in general the avaricious and deadly assault on the scientific community by some business as usual vested interest groups and individuals.
And I am unhappy with many warmists, or perhaps luke-warm warmists.
Dante never said the following, I am led to believe, but no matter - it applies:
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of crisis, remain neutral."
Several polite and civilized posters have said on this weblog that they are 'not sure' if AGW is real.
Why not?
Did you leave your brain at University after graduation?
Or nail it to the wall beside your degree?
Have you been so 'civilized' that you are incapable of decision?
Do you believe Labmunkey or me?
Lindzen or Lovelock?
"Straighten Up and Fly Right" gentlemen, or find some other means to entertain yourselves.
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
- Albert Einstein
- Manysummits -
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I have a question which somebody might be able to answer for me:
The satellite global temperature for January is apparently the warmest recorded since satellite readings began. At the same time a very large part of the northern hemisphere has been rather colder than usual. As the trees and vegetation growing in the colder than average conditions will ‘record’, in their growth rings, the lower temperatures which they are actually experiencing, how can these possibly be used to assess ‘global’ temperatures in the past? How can we know that similar situations have not existed before, i.e. that the growth rings bear no relationship whatsoever to the ‘global’ temperature?
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\\\ How Bad Can It Get? ///
I asked the Interacademy Panel on International Issues to make a statement on the concept of Planetary Boundaries/Limits to Growth in my post #332.
On the off-chance that they may not see this post, or respond to it, I thought to pass on my thinking, in the words of James Lovelock, from his recent book, "The Vanishing Face of Gaia - A Final Warning," moderators permitting:
"We have enjoyed 12,000 years of climate peace since the last shift from the glacial age to an interglacial one. Before long, we may face planet-wide devastation worse even than unrestricted nuclear war between superpowers. The climate war could kill nearly all of us and leave the few survivors living a Stone Age existence..." (p. 21 & 22)
Except for those tropical places where mountains are close to a warm ocean and bring rain, greater heat means drought and a fatal loss of food production...
Like the foot of an elephant on an anthill, global heating will crush life from the continental plains." (p. 10)
------------------------------------------
If instead of the insipid need for concensus, we sought the opinion of the very best scientists, we might decide that the switch to a war footing is called for instead of endless and debilitating debate.
We might recall that Winston Churchill once declared that to wage war by committee was "fatuous."
------------------------
\\\ Merlin's Muse ///
"Then Arthur learned, as all leaders are astonished to learn, that peace, not war, is the destroyer of men; tranquillity rather than danger is the mother of cowardice, and not need but plenty brings apprehension and unease."
- From John Steinbeck's "The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights." (p. 207)
-----------
These last few days in the mountains have straightened out my thinking, and I am now switching to something like a war footing myself as regards climate change (AGW), Planetary Boundaries, Limits to Growth, and in general the avaricious and at times slanderous assault on the scientific community by some business as usual vested interest groups and individuals.
And I am unhappy with many luke-warm warmists.
Dante never said the following, I am led to believe, but no matter - it applies:
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of crisis, remain neutral."
To wit:
Do you believe the contrarians or me?
Richard Lindzen or James Hansen?
Lord Monckton or James Lovelock?
"Straighten Up and Fly Right" jumps to mind.
-------------
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
- Albert Einstein
-----------------
- Manysummits -
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@manysummits
Might I recommend a change in reading material? The stuff that you're currently reading doesn't seem to be all that good for you.
@xtragrumpymike2
If you wanted an example of quasi-religious, then you don't have to look much further than post #481 above.
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Manysummits,
I suggest you do not have kids until you are over this phase. I remember reading about how David Suzuki's constant concerns for the environment and coming catastrophe had made life extremely depressing for his own daughter.
Just a thought but you might take a more optimistic approach. What I mean is that energy and fossil fuels have lifted mnkind from scratching out a poverty stricken meager existence and created the most luxurious lifestyle and longer lifespan that has, so far, been known to mankind. A few farmers with powerful technology and fertilizers grow plentiful food for everyone - it is actually amazing.
I even know of many people who live comfortably enough to afford to travel by fossil fuel powered vehicles up into the mountains to enjoy climbing and skiing and other non-productive but highly enjoyable pursuits.
Life is good and even better once you realize that the world is not ending in thermageddon.
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@manysummits #481
Both Hansen and Lovelock are heroes of mine. Although I think Lovelock overestimates climate sensitivity.
I think you are being unfair to Lindzen. He is a sincere and competent scientist. He has a named professorship at MIT, there's no way that an incompetent or a Big Oil stooge could hold down his job. Refuting his work takes the pro-AGW scientists into important areas that might have been ignored. And his scrutiny of their work is invaluable. This pushes the science forward which benefits everybody.
Here's a Lovelock quote that applies to competent opponents:
"Good criticism is like bathing in an ice-cold sea. The sudden chill of immersion in what seems at first a hostile medium soon stirs the blood and sharpens the senses." -The Ages Of Gaia, second edition (1995), page 31
Lovelock then goes on to describe how criticism was responsible for inspiring Daisyworld.
Monckton on the other hand ...
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@427, JaneBasingstoke wrote:
“
@RobWansbeck #396
"I would ask why were they ever published in the first place"
Er, you do believe in scientists being allowed to work on new ideas, don't you? Without them having to be complete and perfect first.
Back in 1998 the Hockey Stick concept was a new powerful idea. It needed to be explored. And because science works by publishing, it needed publishing. ….........
“
Yes, I believe in scientists being allowed to work on new ideas without first having to perfect them.
It appears that it is some of the more ardent climate scientists who have moved to stop works being published and who have also encouraged the belief that 'peer reviewed' means absolute truth.
I don't understand what you mean by 'Hockey Stick concept'. Principal Component Analysis?
I could well be wrong but I understand 'Hockey Sticks' (in general) to be the produce of methods that confuse noise for signal to give an overconfident fit to instrumental data and reduce historical variations.
Divergence is almost guaranteed because the methods never found a true signal just noise that looked like a signal. If you have doubts then look at the chosen few proxies and decide for yourself.
You go on to say:
“
Also publishing meant that other people might find a solution, a real solution. The situation is similar with the statistics. Novel stats are more of a reason to publish, not less.
“
This is why I believe that it should not have been published. Without full data and methodology replication is near impossible and 'Novel stats' compounds this. (hard to check out in a text book)
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#468, bowmanthebard wrote:
“
#464 LarryKealey wrote:
"'temperature' is a very poor measure of energy content. Heat content of air is highly dependent upon humidity and pressure - temperature is not."
I must be missing something obvious, but Boyle's Law, Charles' Law, etc. relate volume, pressure and temperature, right? Air cools as it expands, right?
“
The average surface temperature that a planet like Earth would have without an atmosphere is frequently quoted as -18C.
Keeping the albedo and emissivity constant the actual average surface temperature could be anywhere between -18C and -129C.
This huge difference can be achieved by altering specific heat and thermal conductivity.
A 111K spread is theoretically possible without any alteration of radiative parameters.
Real world constraints on specific heat and conductivity push the figure towards -18C but nevertheless heat transport mechanisms can have a significant effect on average temperature without any change in the radiation budget.
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#468, bowmanthebard wrote:
“
#464 LarryKealey wrote:
"'temperature' is a very poor measure of energy content. Heat content of air is highly dependent upon humidity and pressure - temperature is not."
I must be missing something obvious, but Boyle's Law, Charles' Law, etc. relate volume, pressure and temperature, right? Air cools as it expands, right?
-------------end of quotes---------------------------------
Ah, yes, in a confined volume, Boyle's Law (aka Ideal gas law) - states: PV = nRT - Pressure * volume = number of moles * universal Gas constant* Temperature
However, air is not an 'Ideal Gas', nor is volume a constant with regards to the atmosphere. Boyle's Law does not apply. Why would you think that it would apply? Are you that daft when it comes to science?
Please, is it so difficult to understand? It is actually very simple: It is too complex for us to model. We can't even really define, nor measure the 'temperature of earth' - we certainly can't say with any real authority that it has risen by .75C in the last one hundred fifty years. Nor can we predict what it will be one hundred and fifty years from now - regardless of 'emissions scenarios'.
How about spending our money and efforts on problems which are better understood and where we can have an impact? Certainly we need to continue atmospheric studies, but not to the detriment of all else.
@Richard, I thought this was the year of biodiversity???
Cheers.
Kealey
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@Rob #486
Quite right.
Cheers.
Kealey
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@Bonn1e
Regarding tree rings as proxies for temperatures. Tree rings (and growth) is dependent upon a number of factors - like precipitation, humidity, temperature, parasites, etc...point being, temperature is just one factor of many which affect tree growth. The idea behind the hockey stick was that trees near the tree line (up in the mountains) are better proxies; however, more recent studies have concluded that overall, tree rings make very poor temperature proxies - regardless of where the tree grows or what kind of tree it is. There are just too many factors which affect tree growth, and hence ring size.
Hope this helps.
Cheers.
Kealey
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484. At 01:56am on 17 Feb 2010, JaneBasingstoke wrote:re:
481. At 11:41pm on 16 Feb 2010, manysummits wrote:
Richard Lindzen or James Hansen?
Lord Monckton or James Lovelock
Like you, Jane , I have a wealth of respect for the two James and equally would not denigrate Lindzen. So.........how about:
Hansen as against Fred Singer
Lovelock as agains Ian Plimer, and
Monckton as against Al Gore
Incidentally, Blunderbunny, Lord Moncktom actually revels in the title "High Priest of Sceptics" much as many of the anti-AGW lobby are only too happy to call themselves "sceptics" I don't know if anyone has described Al Gore in a similar manner. And BTW, most of your recent contributions have kept to the topic, one way or another but your reference to Manysummits shows the worse side of you taking hold again. Pity.Have you yourself read any of Lovelock or Hansen?
Jane, re your comment about Lovelock and "sensitivity" I had a different slant on this. I am aware I am wandering into something I just don't understand so I translated what he was saying into something I do.
Many hazardous chemicals have a rather nasty habit of misbehaving badly if heated too much. Organo Peroxides for example have a property, Self Accelerating Decomposition Temperature (SADT) Fortunately this temperature is easily identified in experiments within the safe confines of a laboratory. If a large quantity exceeds that temperature, then the only safe activity is big steps in an away direction. I suppose another word is "tipping point".
But then again I could easily be misinterpreting the whole thing so feel free to put me right.
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@Shadorne
Too late, manysummits has already procreated. He has a child named 'cloudrunner'.
I do admire your attitude, the earth is not going to end. It is funny, so many who have benefited from the industrial revolution - who would probably already be dead if not for the changes in our lifestyles would deny the same to so much of the world.
Take a look at Africa - the poverty, the corruption, the environmental rape has being going on there for my entire life. Yet, today, those in Africa are denied loan guarantees and funding to build coal plants - on the basis of 'global warming' - while at the same time, those same Europeans happily burn African coal in their plants.
(Africa) don't enjoy fertilizers, nor tractors, nor electricity for pumping water for irrigation. So many are reduced to tilling by hand, carrying water by hand, living poor, shortened lives.
Cheap energy has been the driver for the west to become the west and enjoy the lifestyles and lifetimes that we enjoy. How can we continue to deny this to Africa? The hypocrisy astounds me.
One day, hopefully soon, we will end this silliness and develop Africa. Not only will Africa benefit, but so will the rest of the world. Both from an environmental perspective as well as a humanistic one.
Cheers.
Kealey
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Mango, Hi again.
Mid afternoon here in NZ, uncomfortably hot out there so escape to the "relative" cool of the computer room. So.......
Bear with me through this, the end might interest you.
Me???...........a conspiracy theorist???..What, me?
My understanding from it being rammed down my (royal "our") throat(s), I understood that the "scientific method" relies on hypothesis being tested against reproducible observation. Am I correct?
In which case, in the context of my comments which drew your observation, where do you want me to start re- my personal observations of manipulation of the decision making process?
One clue (or else I get carried away).
Our previous Government, Labour, actually introduced legislation to make political donations more transparent! But then I guess you could say they were being paranoid.
Now, If I had suggested that in the last financial melt down that some incredibly rich people were going to get incredibly richer........
But I digress yet again.
You may have observed that I keep out of discussions on the science (got dangerously close to demonstrating my ignorance just now) even though you have tried to engage me, and even though I have read many of the "sceptic" links but I usually give up after a couple of paragraphs.The same is true for pro-AGW links to reputable papers. It just isn't language I understand.
But having to "tolerate" (it took me a while to decide how to word that) the Decision Making Process since 1975, that has been my focus on this site.
A bit more about how it works (or to be more precise, is MEANT to work.
If we accept, as you appear to do, the lack of faith we have in our Governments etc. most of our concern is directed to those elected personnel we call "our representatives". We all know that when we toddle off to the polls like good little sheep every five (or three, here) years, we believe that we are electing someone to represent us in Parliament. To that end, we are not looking to elect someone with a particular expertise.Hopefully, the "Leader" will have leadership qualities and nominate various other elected members to administer a raft of Ministries (Note, these persons ALWAYS come from the "winning" team even if a better person may now be in the "opposition").
So, in Environmental Issues, we here have a Minister of the Environment and gang of guys in the Ministry. Our current Minister is a Dr. Nick Smith who has qualifications in.........."Civil Engineering" (Our previous Finance Minister also had the Title Dr. to his name. He was an Historian.)
So at that level, we don't expect (or we shouldn't expect) our elected "representatives" to be experts in any particular fields.
So where are the "experts"? In the Ministries........hopefully.These are the paid Civil Servants (frequently not too "civil" and who have no intent to "serve") you advise the various Ministers as to Policy. Some of them have fancy titles such as Policy Analysts. It's a bit like dustman insisting on being called a "garbologist".
But the important point to note here is that first they have a lot of influence as the Minister himself knows diddly squat (favourite description of mine)and is in no position to disagree., and secondly, they are so secure in their position (job security) that they are the same guys and gals that advise the Minister whoever he may be and no matter which government may be in "power".
I haven't even started on the calibre of people employed in these ministries. That really gets me "grumpy" (No I have absolutely no desire to work for a Government Department and never have had. I hate big cities for a start)
Is it surprising, that in issues of environmental concerns, governments keep on churning out the same old same old when they keep on getting the same old same old advice from their ministries.
So........back to our topic, AGW or no-AGW. Where do you think these "policy Analysts" get their "advice"?
If you've already guessed it, and you came up with the IPCC you are dead right. Why?......because just like the Minister, they too don't know diddly squat
So it all comes back to the IPCC.
One thing has always bothered me
How did the IPCC arrive at the 90% probability? Why not 75%, or for that matter, any figure less than 100.
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491. At 04:02am on 17 Feb 2010, LarryKealey wrote:
"Take a look at Africa - the poverty, the corruption, the environmental rape has being going on there for my entire life. Yet, today, those in Africa are denied loan guarantees and funding to build coal plants - on the basis of 'global warming' - while at the same time, those same Europeans happily burn African coal in their plants."
We are having an interesting discussion here in NZ re:-"name suppression" in criminal cases, the basis being that suppressing one name leaves many others open to suspicion.
This topic of yours gets thrown into the discussion from time to time. Don't you think it's about time you identified which part of Africa you are talking about (it certainly isn't South Africa who mine a significant amount of coal and use most of it internally) Who is denying the "loan guarantees" and who is denying "funding" for coal fired power stations while happily importing and burning same to generate power. And since you point to "Europeans" wouldn't it be only fair to identify which "Europeans" you are referring to so at least they have the opportunity of answering your claims? Not to mention the "other" Europeans being freed from suspicion>
Is that too much to ask?
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bowmanthebard #468: "I must be missing something obvious, but Boyle's Law, Charles' Law, etc. relate volume, pressure and temperature, right? Air cools as it expands, right?"
LarryKealey #487: "Ah, yes, in a confined volume, Boyle's Law (aka Ideal gas law) - states: PV = nRT - Pressure * volume = number of moles * universal Gas constant* Temperature
"However, air is not an 'Ideal Gas', nor is volume a constant with regards to the atmosphere. Boyle's Law does not apply. Why would you think that it would apply?"
Because air is a gas. And Boyle's Law does apply, better than approximately, to all gases. But anyway, I was referring to the relationship between pressure, volume and temperature this is enshrined in at least three laws that every high school student learns and some adults understand because they know what gases consist of at the molecular scale.
"Are you that daft when it comes to science?"
You you understand why clouds tend to form when air passes over mountains?
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#492 xtragrumpymike2 wrote:
"How did the IPCC arrive at the 90% probability? Why not 75%, or for that matter, any figure less than 100."
I've often asked the same question, but I had no idea the 90% figure came from the IPCC!
Someone who defends AGW really has to volunteer an answer to this question, because I think I see "ninetypercentgate" looming...
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#487 LarryKealey:
"Are you that daft when it comes to science?"
What do you think I have said is "daft"?
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wasn't it a compromise?
other countries wanted higher than 90% (or was it 95%?) and the chinese wanted much less, so they compromised on 90%
/mango
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should have added
I know the chinese had the word "very" stricken from "very high confidence"
well at least according to wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report
/mango
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@Bowman, #494
"I was referring to the relationship between pressure, volume and temperature this is enshrined in at least three laws that every high school student learns..."
A physical relationship enshrined in laws? That doesn't sound like you at all. The laws that you are referring to are mathematical approximations to describe an ideal situation. They are not exact and the system they describe does not exist (we can come close to it under extremely controlled laboratory conditions, but still it doesn't really exist) - I agree with Larry @#487 that these laws do not apply to non-equilibrium systems. However, our opinions on the value of climate modelling differ, I refer you to my post #146.
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#449 manysummits
thanks for the info on acidification. i wish i had more time to study this stuff. however, last night i came across on interesting character, john r mashey. i particularly like the way he tracks the contrarian pr campaign. if you're not familiar with him try searching: mashey monckton schulte oreskes
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