Undoubtedly the best summary of the current state of affairs is the SPPI monthly CO2 report. The April report contains news that—if there was a free and high quality media—would have generated headlines like these (well, sort of—you get the idea).
Any investigative journalist who was doing their job only had to Google for the other side of the story. I’m not saying those journalists have to agree with us, just that, at the moment most environmental writers think ‘balanced’ means saying, “The world will cook: the question is, lightly toasted OR totally pan-fried’.
Here’s the counter summary of the headlines we didn’t see, accompanied by an analysis you probably won’t see anywhere else.
Planet Unmoved by IPCC Forecast
Despite the power of the authority vested in the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), The Planet appears to be unswayed by the large well funded international bureaucracy, and is similarly immune to following the collected wisdom of the software engineers who compress it’s 1100 billion cubic kilometers of complexity into a PC.
Although the warming of the last 30 years has been the ‘steepest in living memory of the baby boomers’, the trend (with the most favorable cherry-picking permitted*) is only leading to 1.5 degrees of warming, and that’s if it continues at it’s present pace until 2100.
The pink shaded region shows the range of trendlines predicted by the IPCC, but the actual trendline lies below and totally outside the IPCC range. In any other field this would be called, ‘a miss’.
Curiously, the IPCC tactic of using argument from authority, which is often so effective with large crowds, has had little impact on the troposphere. In response to the planet’s recalcitrant behaviour, the IPCC are encouraging universities to hand out more honorary doctorates to climate modelers. They hope that the atmospheric gases, or at least the data, will pay more respect to an even larger weight of PhD’s. A spokesman for the IPCC said ‘the planet’s response is surprising, given that we all have Nobel Prizes’.
When asked why the temperatures don’t match modeled projections, the leader of a large group of scientists wrote a 20 page document which essentially translates to: “The thermometers must be wrong”. This may be true. Unfortunately it leaves us with the awkward puzzle of how climate scientists can be capable of predicting the temperature accurately but are somehow unable to measure it.
*Choosing most other points to start the trendline from results in an even lower estimate. Before the 1970’s the planet was cooling, and if trends from 2001-2009 are followed, the world will warm by ‘minus one degree’.
Global Oceans Ignore Climate Models
For the last five years the oceans were supposed to be warming, instead, they’ve cooled, revealing yet another embarrassing failure of climate models, and possibly one of the most crippling.
While the atmosphere wasn’t warming, the oceans were the place that the missing heat was supposed to be hiding. If CO2 is warming up the planet, where-o-where has the extra heat gone?
As a store of heat, the oceans are hard to argue with. They cover 70% of the Earth’s surface and have an average thickness of nearly 4 km. Yet it takes only the top 3.2m layer of water to hold as much heat as the all the air in all the atmosphere. (Source: NOAA)
Presumably then, both the atmosphere and oceans appear to be not warming, we can expect climate scientists to conclude soon that the planetary radiation is not out of balance, and there is indeed no extra stored heat energy anywhere. See Watts Up for DiPuccio’s description.
Sea Ice Denies it was ever ‘Out of Form’
Despite many headlines that sea-ice is shrinking, Arctic sea ice coverage has set a nine year record high last month. Meanwhile a spokesman for the Antarctic continent pointed out that Antarctica is currently at it’s third highest level in 30 years and that the records it set in 2007 were entirely ignored. “While Antarctic ice grows, news stories this month speculate instead on the entirely theoretical possibility of the West Shelf collapsing”.
For the people who are betting that the oceanic thermometers were wrong and the oceans are not cooling, the healthy sea-ice figures back the wrong horse. It’s difficult to see how warmer water can make for more ice.
Forget the Climate, IPCC can’t Predict Carbon
Far from predicting the climate, the IPCC is having difficulty even predicting the carbon level itself. They estimate atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide will rise as high as 836ppm by 2100, instead, judging by the trend of the last seven years, it’s likely carbon will reach only 575ppm by then, some 30% lower. Since this is a cornerstone of all the IPCC calculations and estimates from models, it calls into question their ability to make larger and far more complex predictions, (or even smaller basic calculations). If carbon levels are not rising as fast as they assume, it suggests that their understanding of how global carbon circulates is like a tool box with out a hammer.
Why don’t we see these headlines and stories in the mainstream media?
…
For the graphs and commentary, and to sign on for all the monthly updates: The SPPI April Monthly Report 2009.
UPDATE: June 9, 2009. The New Monthly Report is out….
hmm … sea ice, another denier.
All I can say is, that Pravda never reported that the Ruble was worth nothing in international currency markets during the Soviet era, never reported that US and Australian workers under “bankrupt” capitalism owned their own autos and homes, never reported that citizens under Communist regime were declared “oppressed and impoverished” by the UN and others.
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All I can say is, let’s do our bit to win the “swing voters”. We’ll never get to the dyed-in-the-wool, declared believers; they’ve got too much to lose by admitting defeat. My guess is that the whole thing will be swept under the carpet similarly to what happened after the 2nd WW with eugenics (read Michael Crichton’s brilliant expose of this in the afterword to “State of Fear” – it’s what made the scales drop from my own eyes regarding Global Warming). Before the war, everyone who was anyone, including the great Winston Churchill, believed in eugenics, “everyone knew” that it was scientific and right and just etc etc. After the war, after Hitler had his way with the concept, suddenly no-one was a eugenicist and no-one had ever been one. It disappeared from famous people’s biographies.
We can win the hearts and minds of those who are just scared and bewildered: We were at dinner last Saturday and the host expressed horror at the documentary “Earth”. The usual stuff: “But it must be true, the ice is melting, the polar bears are drowning,” etc. etc. One piece of information turned him around: That the polar bear population is growing. Sometimes that’s all it takes. One way or another we’ll get there.
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Very nice, Anne Kit, thank you
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I’m sorry, call me unscientific if you will, but Monkton???? seriously…. “undoubtedly” lol.
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Yes, it’s easy to laugh at Monckton – until you know him.
MattB – When you have done something equivalent to being a science adviser to one of the G7 governments; made corrections to the IPCC reports, and debunked a nobel prize winning ‘documentary’ so thoroughly that your self funded voluntary work was vindicated in the UK High Court… let me know ok?
(The judge BTW found nine serious scientific errors in the movie and ordering the British Government to issue corrective guidance before circulating the movie to vulnerable schoolchildren.)
To win our respect, you’ll need to actually show where Monckton could be wrong, instead of just showing that you’ve read the smear-arama-non-science from DeSmog.
The SPPI report is 30 pages of graphs, drawn from many sources, and usually updated with the latest data. Unlike the 800 page report issued once every six years, there’s not much spin or filler. Sure you won’t find graphs that support the AGW case (if indeed any exist), but then in the IPCC tome, you won’t find graphs that don’t support it, except sequestered away with obscure foggifing text. lol indeed?
Do point us at a better monthly summary…
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The Matt’s, Boris’s, Barton’s, … of the world – there’s no changing their minds, they view “deniers” as a doltish lot who can easily be mocked by anyone, and the “deniers” are too dim-witted to even understand the mockery directed at them.
I have no idea why they come here.
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[deleted]
As for a better monthly summary… the IPCC reports, followed by the regular “updates” that appear in the world’s major peer-reviewed scientific journals, not good enough for you Jo?
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No it just plain old isn’t good enough for me.
I’m a peer, I didn’t review it, and if I had most of it would have wound up in the loo.
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The second person singular (familiar) pronoun is “tu” not “to” and if you decline the verb correctly I’ll chime in with the rest about how great your “France – ay” is
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do [patronising bits taken out of this comment – JN] you blog essentially anonymously so that no one knows who you are, are you too weak to say your name aloud?
if I use my middle intial that will help people who search on my name to identify the exact “Brian Valentine” who writes this, won’t it. If someone searches on ” MattB” the results might remain rather vague, won’t they.
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[delete childish remark]
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Mocking Jo Nova won’t get you on my good side, Matt.
Joanne has worked hard to promote an unpopular position, of her own time and expense, and you have offered nothing but mockery, and you get nothing but my ill temper.
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Take a chill pill dude. Jo sorry I should not have let Brian sidetrack me down this pointless conversation:) Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong that you changed your name to Jo Nova because it was catchy and suited your media/PR business persona?
Brian – if “mockery” you mean questioning Monckton’s cred then so be it. But you’ll need a thicker skin to get far.
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To all who may be reading these articles:
My words are authentic, my position and credentials to back up what I say is real.
Anyone who emails me may have, at their request, a copy [edited: a list of academic records and documents, etc] [email protected]. Ladies and Gentlemen, if this does not carry more weight for your opinion of what I have written than the prating of anonymous bloggers who kick and yell and mock, then I cannot offer more. Honest people with nothing to hide stand up and say their name aloud together with what they claim.
Anybody can hide and kick and yell, only the forthright will back it up.
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I need some evidence that Monckton was a science adviser to the UK government. I am not disputing he was a policy wonk working within Number 10. Monckton’s then boss had (has) a degree in chemistry and was one of the first leaders to publicly say that the climate was changing due to mankind’s activities. This perhaps begs the question, if Monckton was indeed a ‘science’ adviser could it be that Monckton’s boss perhaps never listened to him?
So what is the evidence that Monckton was a ‘science’ adviser and what did that involve?
Just another thing, I hear often that Monckton read classics. Can some one confirm for me that he did do classics and not just PPE. There is a difference.
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I CAN confirm that the Thatcher govt used the CO2/climate tool to whack away at the coal miners (who were, to them, an abominable grief) and to promote nuclear
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Write to the man.
He’s a square shooter, as long as you are.
[email protected]
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I have just found Monckton’s witness statement from the UK legal case over the use of An Inconvenient Truth in schools in England and Wales. In it Monckton writes that he was in the Special Policy Unit at Number 10, one of six people in the unit. In Point 5 on page 2 he wrote, “I took responsibility for the education portfolio in the Policy Unit from Oliver Letwin in 1984 and I continued in that role until 1986”. http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:GYxhR1rXf6IJ:www.newparty.co.uk/UserFiles/File/moncktonstatement.pdf+%27christopher+Monckton%27s+degree%27&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
The statement doesn’t say what his role was from 1986 but before that role Monckton was with the Forward Strategy Group of the Centre for Policy Studies, a think tank also established by Margaret Thatcher.
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[delete irrelevant quote]
Well its just interesting that everyone claims Monckton was a science adviser. Where did that idea come from?
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In the witness statement Monckton makes the point that people in the policy unit had a number of different policy areas but he only lists his as education. I’m assuming he had other areas apart from education but if so he doesn’t believe they needed to be listed in the statement as well. So he could’ve had science but it would’ve been policy and if it was its unusual not to have listed it in this statement given the legal case it was for.
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Stamping your feet, banging your fist on the table, and there is a simple solution to your query
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[Not til you get over your denial that a quote about a graph ….is a quote about a graph.
Shame, if you had some manners you might make a contribution here. – JN]
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MattB you didn’t let Brian sidetrack you in a pointless conversation. You created it. MattB #4. Then you mock me for using appeal to authority (in my reply to your ad hominem attack). Unlike you I wasn’t trying to comment on a scientific document, I was pointing out why your ad hom was wrong. I replied to you in politeness. A mistake? Now I need to delete comment pollution. There are people in this world who get things done, and people who confuse the issue and waste our time.
If Monckton was classified insane, would that make any difference to the graphs of CO2, or sea-ice, or temperatures? We talk about evidence, you drag us into the mud. Ad hom is stone age thinking. Try to catch up with the rest of us here, post aristotle.
Not only is your point irrelevant, it’s wrong too.
For the sake of correcting your wrongs about a good man on this irrelevant thread:
1. Monckton was senior policy advisor to Thatcher on science from 1982-86. I believe he was involved in setting up the Hadley Met Centre.
2. He is a Scottish member of the House of Lords – as a hereditary peer there are limits on him voting, but he is a member, and he has raised questions there – including one I asked him about funding from the UK govt for the IPCC. (The answer was “It would cost too much to figure out what we’ve spent.” The UK’s pathetically weak opposition lets them get away with this.) You can pretend to be a member MattB, but you won’t be allowed to speak.
3. Jo Nova or Joanne Nova is a real name with a real career, real TV series, real books, real blog, real bank account, and real reputation. You can write a check out to Joanne Nova. MattB is a five letter unoriginal, nonexclusive pseudonym for what? A half hour a day effort at making illogical comments? What has ‘MattB’ achieved?
As for the HIV decision. Yes MattB, quarantining AIDS sufferers would have been a tough choice. But I take it you would be happy to have killed 25 million people (so far) in order that those first sufferers of an incurable, deadly disease had the freedom to infect anyone they chose too. Life threatening diseases require hard choices.
You mock him and reveal how little you know.
I expect an apology. Monckton deserves one too.
We have higher standards, please lift yours.
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Ummmm, saying Monckton was “senior policy adviser toThatcher from 1982-1986” is not evidence. I easily located material in which Monckton states he was an education policy adviser across 1982-1986 so give us evidence that he was also an adviser on science and that this was different than policy on science or science funding or real estate where science centres were constructed.
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“He is a Scottish member of the House of Lords – as a hereditary peer there are limits on him voting, but he is a member, and he has raised questions there”
There are only about 90 hereditary seats left in the House of Lords so is Monckton one of those or is he like the rest, has been appointed, via David Cameron’s opposition leadership? So when you say he is a member is he eligible to sit in the House of Lords in Westminster, ask questions directly, make points, debate, vote, etc, etc or is he one of those Lords who like you and me have to ask his local member to raise a question in the commons or find a life peer or hereitary who will do the same in the Lords?
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I would like to suggest the the bloggers on Joanne’s site read about the life of Galileo Galilei. I have just finished a biography of him by Michael White and the parallels between the pronouncements of the Catholic Church during his life and the Inquisition could have been delivered by the ‘Climate Change’ alarmists. People such as Viscount Monckton and the rest of the realists and sceptics admirably fulfil the role of Galileo and the proto-scientists of his time.
Galileo spent the last years of his life under house arrest for his views and writings. Let us fervently hope that the human race and our civilisation can survive the latest ravings of wealthy, threatened, dogma crazed alarmists…
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MattB,
No, no I’m not saying Monckton is not a hereditary. What I am saying is that there are only 90 or so places in the House of Lords for hereditaries, the rest are now life peers appointed by the government. So the question is whether Monckton has one of the remaining hereditary seats or has he been appointed as a life peer, his status from his grandfather being one of the last people to be given a hereditary peerage.
BTW has anybody come up with any evidence that Monckton has ever been a adviser on science to the UK government and if so was that matter of science or science policy.
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Interesting that Galileo remained a strong christian all his life.
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It isn’t surprising that Galileo remained a Chritian. He recanted BECAUSE he was a Chistian.
Exactly what it was that Galileo was charged with, and what he admitted to, remains poorly understood by many people. The saga has been chronicled by Giorgio de Santillana in The Crime of Galileo. Reading it will surprise many people I think.
Many publications have appeared of course, that have assumed that AGW was true. Joanne has noted (and has essentially set up this weblog) to point out that there is not now, and never was, direct evidence to demonstrate that AGW is actually true and in fact, increasing evidence demonstrates the reverse to be far more likely.
[delete comments about blog management – for the record I edited or deleted comments from both Matt and Brian. Apologies Brian, that I did not delete MattB’s comment #4 at the start.]
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Monckton had submitted his calucation of climate sensitivity based on Stefan’s relation to Am J Physics in the form of a letter, and that particular contribution drew a lot of pointless abuse directed at the Journal and was edited out because of the negative attention it drew.
I think journals have to stand up sometimes and take some flack if they are going to be credible sources.
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Matt I enthusiatically agree and I sincerely apologise for my insulting you.
I was wrong, just dead wrong.
I think we can both agree that we both want to help humanity – you, by preventing catastrophe, and me, by preventing another catastrophe that I see as the worse.
Each of us has a different view of what the “worse” is.
I wish we could agree on more
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We probably just hit things off on the wrong track and Brian yeah same here – I apologise unreservedly.
Also -your French does also appear to be a lot better than mine;)
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you could at least add a [shortened to remove some quality discussion and make it look like matt had nothing else to say]
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I’m a techncrat too, but I consider myself a realist, and I don’t see people SURVIVING without coal, oil, gas
– let alone, living on the verge of existence without the use and devlopment of them.
Let’s make a deal, if you would like to. I’ll avoid language like “fruit loops” in all of my statements if you will too
Joanne may be tired of playing “second-form elementary school hall monitor” anyway.
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Jeremy C,
You are quibbling on Monckton’s credentials. It has no impact on the veracity of his arguments which certainly helped sway the UK High Court.
MattB and Brian,
Aw, you guys brought tears to my eyes. Glad you “kissed” and made up…metaphorically. 🙂
Brian,
The “fighting season” in Afghanistan got off to a slow start this year…due to snow…but things are picking up a bit now. Not quite as “boring” as it once was. I do prefer the cooler temps here to those in central Iraq this time of year! 🙂
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Coincidentally there was just a discussion on Brave New Climate about anonymous bloggers. As I’ve said before I’ve used a common blog name since way before I was involved on sites about such credible issues (you know sports sites, chit chat) and everyone just uses pseudonyms and it bothers no one it is just the way of the interwebs. But I’ve nothing to hide so here you go my real name. Watch as that sends zero shockwaves through the climate change blogosphere:)
To save you the google I’m a sustainable transport planner at The University of Western Australia (administraion not academia) – with a BSC (Physics) and BEng (Environmental), and half way through a Masters in Urban Design. Married, two young kids, and I like pina coladas and walks in the rain.
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Applause, Applause Matt Buckles!
Wonderful.
I have one daughter, 42, who lives in California and who doesn’t write to me unless she wants something.
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Brian you’ve spelled my name wrong already! That is why I just use the B:) So common a mistake I’d save time just changing my name:)
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Good Lord,
I sincerely apologise
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Hey Matt, I live in Perth as well. Glad you made up with Brian!
Just getting back to the gist of this thread (Headlines, missing or not …), here’s a headline that caught my attention this morning (It’s part of my job to read the papers, yeah I know, tough job but someone’s gotta do it!. This was in The Australian:
“Physicist Steven Chu whitewashes climate change
LONDON: As a weapon against global warming, it sounds too low-tech. But the idea of using millions of buckets of whitewash to avert climate catastrophe has won the backing of one of the world’s most influential scientists.
Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by President Barack Obama as US Energy Secretary, wants to paint the world white.
A global initiative to change the colour of roofs, roads and footpaths so that they reflect more of the sun’s light and heat could play a big part in containing global warming, he said yesterday. Speaking at the opening of the St James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium in London, Professor Chu said this approach could have a vast impact.
By lightening paved surfaces and roofs to the colour of cement, it would be possible to cut carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world’s cars off the roads for 11 years, he said.
Building regulations should insist that all flat roofs were painted white, and visible tilted roofs could be painted with “cool-coloured” paints that looked normal but absorbed much less heat than conventional dark surfaces.
Pale surfaces reflect up to 80per cent of the sunlight that falls on them, compared with about 20 per cent for dark ones, which is why roofs and walls in hot countries are often whitewashed. An increase in pale surfaces would help to contain climate change both by reflecting more solar radiation into space and by reducing the amount of energy needed to keep buildings cool by air-conditioning.
Professor Chu said his thinking had been influenced by Art Rosenfeld, a member of the California Energy Commission, who drove through tough building rules in the state. Since 2005, California has required all flat roofs on commercial buildings to be white.
Last year, Dr Rosenfeld and two colleagues from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, Hashem Akbari and Surabi Menon, calculated that changing surface colours in 100 of the world’s largest cities could save the equivalent of 44 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide – about as much as global carbon emissions are expected to rise over the next decade.” End of quote.
Perhaps we could paint them all black again every autumn, to keep the heat in? Hey, that would help the unemployment rate … It might just work …! Have we entered one of Barton’s sci fi novels?? Bizarre.
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[Brian bows his head slightly and says in a soft voice]
um, Dr Chu is my, um, fourth level supervisor here at the, um, US DOE
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Oh, Brian! I did know you work for the DOE but I never put the two together … what a laugh (cry?) I love it … My sincere commiserations. What can I say? Do you need a hug?
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On the other hand, President Sarkozy seemingly has more sense than Obama. He looks set to appoint to government Claude Allegre, climate convert (to skepticism). Read the story as told by the formidable Melanie Phillips:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3649281/a-true-scientist-in-government-quelle-scandale.thtml
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Thank you Anne-Kit, I’ll take that – or a pistol to take to my own head.
Twenty two years ago now I wrote a 210-page report to the Energy Science Director at the DOE, upon request, on “The Effects of Human Contributions to the Global Climate.”
I wrote,
“the ideas of Arrehius and Plass and Calendar on the influence of trace gases on the global climate appear then re-appear decannaly and are debunked again within another ten year time period. Huamns have no more ability to influence the Earth’s global climate than they have to influence the Earth’s orbit.”
So if my periodicity theory of debunking AGW was correct, consideration of it should have vanished in 2007, ten years after the formation of IPCC
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Welcome to the US Department of Energy,
“Home of the Chimerical Scheme”
Let’s paint all roofs and roads white.
Let’s run autos and trucks on hydrogen. We’ll get the hydrogen from natural gas (converting $8 per million Btu heat to $19 dollar per million Btu heat) or from wind electricity (converting $28 per million Btu heat to $19 per million Btu heat) or something like that.
Let’s move all coal energy R&D to CO2 sequestration. In the best case we’ll only double the price of coal electricity. In today’s case, we’ll treble the price of coal electricity.
Let’s mandate the use of corn ethanol in gasoline. Hey – the payback from corn to make ethanol is pretty good compared to using waste paper to make ethanol – only 140% more fossil energy is used to make corn ethanol than the energy derived from the ethanol – compared with 900% more fossil energy using waste paper as the starting material.
Let’s dump $10 billion into making energy saving products from high temperature superconducting materials and end up with two products that nobody buys because of the cost.
Let’s lobby against off-shore drilling from the continental US so that we buy more foreign oil by the day.
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And the sunglass manufacturers would get rich: Just imagine a totally white city on a sunny day 🙂
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Just imagine the energy bills in the winter
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Just curious, Brian: You’re in Washington, are you going to be at the 3rd Climate Conference in NY in June? I envy you guys in the US (East Coast) who are able to attend.
I HAVE had the pleasure of meeting Joanne and David here in Perth at the launch of Ray Evans’ and David Archibald’s books recently and I wish there were more opportunities to get together with like-minded people.
I sometimes think we need to get back out “on the barricades” (Baby-Boomer status revealed …)to get seen and heard. Blogging’s a bit like preaching to the converted, apart from the hopeless cases like the Bartons of the world.
I am fortunate enough to be working part time as Researcher for a local Member of (State) Parliament. I won’t mention his name as there are Western Australians on this blog, but we are in government (currently the only conservative State government in Australia), and I am heartened by the fact that there are numerous closet climate skeptics in Australian politics, not only in this State but Federally; and not only in our party (Australian Liberal Party = conservatives) but even in Labor (Federal government).
Public opinion is already turning in our favour. It is only a matter of time before the politicians follow suit – when the opinion polls allow!
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Anne-Kit said:
Even blogging helps. If Joanne’s stats are anything like mine, (my site newer and isn’t nearly as popular as her’s) the visitors who post are way outnumbered by those who do not. I tend to get private emails from people who are not comfortable about posting.
We’ll never sway the Tamino and Schmidt sycophants, but our numbers are growing and more people are “coming out” as skeptics. Our efforts do give them another voice and another view they’d otherwise not get.
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Thank you, JLKrueger. I take comfort from your words.
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I would like to thank Mrs Littler for teaching me to make well-balanced and even resposnses, instead of my tendency to provide choleric outbursts.
I have already thanked Ms Robin on another blog for teaching me to strive for complete clarity in all that I write.
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It can;t be that hard to figure out who you work for could it Anne;) Or are climate skeptic pollies dime-a-dozen nowadays.
It is hardly “STOP THE PRESS! – LIBERAL MP CLIMATE SKEPTIC”. Esp given many are rabid fundamental Christians too.
You are of course correct – the battle is not wining the hearts and minds of the people… just the jobs for boys pollies and stupid voters – it has worked for governments of all persuasion since the dawn of democracy:)
One wonders why a climate skeptic party would preference the Greens in Freo though… short term gain over long term pain?
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Wouldn’t you just like to know, Matt … And they ain’t necessarily who you think they are, either!
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… and the Climate Sceptics Party did not run in Fremantle; what makes you think that?
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/wa/2009/fremantle/
although if they had, it probably WOULD have been politically expedient to preference the Greens, to get rid of another Labor seat …
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I don’t work on behalf of any political movement, only the benefit of the Public as my knowledge and reason have led me conclude what truth is.
I am proud to work for the US Government, and am happy that my position as Government scientist removes the very appearance of special interests having influenced me whatsoever
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http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/global_warming/monckton/ gives a good summary of why I hold my opinions btw.
Even his own site: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/Letter_to_McCain.pdf shows him claiming to be an actual Nobel Peace Laureate!
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Curiously David and I have both been approached by quite a few Australian politicians and we could name many names on both sides of the fence (but we won’t). Let’s just say there is a large groundswell of sceptical politicians who are slowly getting more confident that it’s not so risky to speak up. The Skeptics Handbook has already done the rounds of at least one political party here (and no I’m not referring to the new party on the scene), and we have met with politicians from both major sides. The Handbook helps people who are already suspicious to be able to put words onto their suspicions, and feel confident about their ways to ask cutting questions and to recognize when they are being fobbed off, or treated ‘unscientifically’. When we reach the tipping point on this there will be a phase shift. There will come a point where no one will want to admit they were taken in. The catchcry: “I was never convinced”.
How incredibly bizarre it is – a scientific topic with major uncertainties, and yet there is such venom, such irrational intimidation and rude behaviour that many would not speak their minds for fear of being called names or being targetted for hate-mail and attacks on their funding, education or even on their supporters.
What’s bizarre is not that they feel afraid (which is rational given the situation), but that a scientific topic has been reduced to ad hominem attacks of ridicule and mockery instead of polite discussion.
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I have been guilty as anyone of irascible behaviour directed at the “opposition.”
I am not proud of that one bit.
What annoys me most is (as I see) an uncontollable need to control the behaviour of others
– and I have found neither politeness nor demonstration of respect to quell this inexplicable urge one bit.
Suggests about my behaviour would be welcome.
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Thanks Matt #56 for proving my point about non-science, intimidation and rude manners.
Whatever Delt said is bound to be a great example of how the treatment dished out to Monckton would make any rational person keep their views to themselves.
The polite term for those who are not suspicious of intimidation and foul manners is ‘weak minded’.
The street term is ‘sucked in’.
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Joanne I apologise for my sometimes violent outbursts.
Polite speech does not always work for me.
Please advise an appropriate course of action for me.
Ignore things that make me so disturbed?
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Jo do you mean the blog entries themselves or the reader comments? As you know it is tough to ensure the latter are quality and you see that on blogs of all political alignment. The fact is the man claims in a letter to be a Nobel Peace Laureate.
And Brian what I see are attempts to ensure that we are all free to do what we want, but when we do it we are not forcing costs on to others. And attempts to ensure that the economically cheapest choice for an individual is not the one that actually has higher costs for us all. Carbon Trading should be a libertarian’s wildest dreams come true… finally a system free of guilt and innuendo, you just pay true price. I honestly can only see upside to controlling ghg emissions.
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I have no guilt and enourage all to conduct themselves likewise.
Friends – any supposed “guilt” for fuel use is an artifact forced upon you by others who would find other ways to make you feel “guilty” anyway.
Forget them all.
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Sorry that is what I mean… not that you would feel guilty yourself, but at least there would be no cause for other do-gooder types to spend their time trying to convince you you should feel guilty. Thus removing a source of annoyance that can lead to those sometimes violent outbursts;)
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So, we are all agreed then that we haven’t uncovered any evidence that Christopher Monckton was ever directly employed as an adviser on science or science policy to the UK government but that he was employed within 10 Downing St as an adviser on education policy from 1982 to 1986 (in his own words).
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None but the “do-gooder” types can control their own actions, should they be so inclined to waste their time.
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Jeremy
email. Electronic mail. It is so simple to use, a child of six could do it.
In fact many do.
There must be SOMEONE you know who is capable of showing you how to use it.
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Brian,
No, no, you don’t get it, other people have been saying that Christopher Monckton was a science adviser so they need to provide the evidence. I’ve quoted Monckton saying he was an adviser on education policy. Lets not bother the poor guy each time someone else says something about him but won’t commit to evidence.
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I have been trying to reconstruct from memory the structure of HM Government’s offices of advisors to the Ministries and to the Prime Minister, and I cannot recall there being any official “science” advisor to the Prime Ministry of the time. There were multiple political and economic advisors or advisories, of course.
I had worked with some people from Harwell when the UK Atomic Energy Authority had made a number of functions semi-private enterprises.
No matter. I have never heard Monckton refer to himself as anything but “advisor” and scientific matters were very likely part of his function. He had a good relationship with Harwell at the time, I know that.
Why people snipe at Monckton and Professor Carter so persistently is beyond me. Both are simply trying to prevent people from over reacting, and their reward for this is utmost contempt from some circles.
I think I may have found a way to dispel the “greenhouse” issue once and for all from the standpoint of entropy.
I will be taking leave from writing within Joanne’s pages for some time; anyone is welcome to correspond with me directly
BGV
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Full agreement from me (doubtless I’m not shocking anyone with that statement).
There’s a logic to it. The best example is the recent Lisbon Treaty in the EU (dunno if you follow EU politics but a bit of searching will tell you much more than I can fit here). One of the most common “soundbite” messages from the Lisbon advocates was, “We have to keep the momentum going.”
This short remark should raise hairs on the neck of any free thinker, but a surprising number of people just nod along, “hmmm, yeah, momentum, good…” without either asking why, or even giving due consideration to what it means. This business of “keep the momentum going” is nothing more than blatant bandwagonism pretending to be legitimate policy — a bold and overt statement that policy should not be based on rational reasoning.
Lisbon certainly has lost it’s momentum, and even repeated ramrod attempts seem to be failing. If it get’s past another Irish vote (unlikely), at the level of the ordinary people it is disliked across Europe (which is why so few governments are willing to put it to referendum). I expect that when the Tories win in the UK they will also be anti Lisbon.
However the AGW bandwagon still has plenty of momentum and people like Monckton and Carter are anti-momentum players. Monckton wants every step in the process to be justified and validated. This threatens to derail the bandwagon, getting people thinking about the issues rather than herding like obedient sheep. The pro-momentum players have to clear the way for their ideas by razing the ground and fast-tracking past honest discussion. That’s the way they get what they want, by “maintaining the momentum.”
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Jeremy, Matt:
We don’t ‘need’ to provide evidence of someone’s career path. It’s irrelevant.
An ad hom tells us nothing about the climate but a lot about the mental achievements of the person who uses them.
As soon as you show me how his job with Thatcher could be influencing the Climate, I’ll get a signed Stat Dec and post it.
Scientists research the world, stone age thinkers look up CV’s.
You’re trying to figure out if the world will warm by asking about one man’s employment a quarter of a century ago.
And Matt – Deltos blog or the reader comments? There’s not much difference. There are baseless ad homs everywhere. This is not science.
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Ok you can dismiss Deltoid, but Real Climate?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/moncktons-deliberate-manipulation/langswitch_lang/sw
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“Real” Climate
oy yoy yoy
mmf gghhhaghhhhhhhhggggggggggg
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Matt, look at the language. On RC it’s a ‘fabrication’, but all they are talking about is that Monckton has drawn a straight line where the IPCC are saying it’s exponential (‘now’ they say that). Yet CO2 absorption is log – (which points the other way). The IPCC infer levels of CO2 will rise exponentially – so it’s not unreasonable to suggest that combining an exponential to a log gives you a linear rise. Maybe Monckton is not exactly right, but it’s not a fabrication. It’s a reasonable comment. The IPCC won’t dish out specifics – look at the grey bands on the graph on the RC page? How wide are your error bars? Does that include ‘nearly every outocme’. Is AGW falsifiable? Hardly. Bring on an ice age…
RC hits him with “Cherry picking 2002”, but he’s done the same thing from 1980 and that doesn’t fit their predictions either. Which year would they rather he pick?
Monckton wrote to me about the first graph on this post above:
– Christopher
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Jo,
I haven’t commented on anything Monckton has said or written. People, including yourself, claim Monckton worked as a science adviser to the UK government. Fine! I just want evidence of that, thats all. I provided evidence from Monckton himself that he was a paid adviser on education policy to the UK government so surely you could come up with a secondary source.
No ad hom. Just a request for evidence. What’s the problem?!?
If you don’t have evidence why do you use the label ‘science adviser’?
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Well then I look forward to its publication in a learned journal where it can go 12 rounds in the cage match of peer reviewed science.
This is a good discussion of the graph in question: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/moncktons-artful-graph/
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For some reason, Joanne’s recent posts have inexplicably branched to the following dead-end tributaries:
“Let’s go trash Monckton!”
“Let’s go trash Bob Carter!”
“Let’s go trash Valentine!”
At least the last one I can understand, and I am here to respond, but in the other two cases the people in question aren’t even involved with the discussion?
It’s strange to me
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“No ad hom. Just a request for evidence. What’s the problem?!?”
Jeremy, Moncktons employment was pre-web. For me to get the “proof” you need I’d have to do a fair bit of unpaid work: eg – dig up tax records from a country I don’t live in or get Margaret Thatcher to write a stat dec. Since you don’t pay me, and since your question makes no difference to the climate or to Moncktons graphs, how about you admit that you are trying to drag us all up a long dead end to nowhereville?
I didn’t claim Moncktons past employment proved anything except that MattB was mocking someone who has achieved a lot more than MattB realized, and that his ad hom attack was not just illogical, and irrelevant, but badly informed too.
If you really want that irrelevant info I charge $100A an hour. I estimate I’d need 2-3 hours, but it might be less. Still interested?
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Sorry, I am a newbie to the overall climate debate but the Cap and Trade bill has really renewed my interest. I am now on the very steep portion of my learning curve on this topic. My question is (mostly due to all of the crap out there) is the “global temp” increasing or not? Some sites state that the trend has stopped since 2001. However, the NOAA “Frequently Asked Questions Site” here: http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#q3 states: “The recent warmth has been greatest over North America and Eurasia between 40 and 70°N. Lastly, seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred SINCE 2001 and the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1995.” Who do you believe? Which sites have the best raw data? I worked with NOAA during my Coast Guard days and thought they were fairly reliable but that was before I earned my advaced degrees.
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Check out the graph here http://joannenova.com.au/2009/04/03/global-warming-a-classic-case-of-alarmism/.
If we were on top of an upswing of a long climbing trend, the hottest years would all cluster together as they have. NOAA is correct but it doesn’t mean that CO2 causes warming. Their statement also support Akasofu’s theory. It’s ‘spin’.
The graphs on Junkscience are updated frequently using data from UAH, NASA GISS, Hadley… see my links page http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/links/.
Note that NOAA’s claim is steadily getting more and more particular… it’s now a specific set of latitudes, a specific range of years.
Note also that most of the raw data sets are reworked to ‘adjust’ the raw readings. This might be ok, but the adjustments always seem to make the data closer to the models. Suspiciously non random.
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[deleted impolite]
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Jeremy
Since you seem to be the only one here worked up about Monckton’s credentials, why don’t you look for them yourself. It would save you about A$300 and seems to be pretty easy from your post #80. TIC
I was thinking today about the Venus question. If Venus was an example of runaway greenhouse effect, what stopped it? According to IPCC there is a tipping point at which it just keeps getting hotter and hotter. If that was really the case then shouldn’t Venus have completely melted away as the atmosphere climbed to the temperature hot enough to melt the elements in its crust?
Also, there was a report in SMH (Sydney Morning Herald) online today saying that CSIRO is predicting a return to El Nino conditions due to a warming Pacific Ocean. All the data I’ve seen from ARGOS on the web shows the oceans aren’t warming. I know that CSIRO supports the consensus coz they are in the pay of AGW believers to the tune of millions of dollars a year.
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BTW
The second and third paragraphs are for open discussion, not just Jeremy 😉
The question that I meant to end the third para on was “Who has the right data and conclusions?”
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Actually Grumpy it is not in question that Monckton was an adviser to Thatcher, but even his own bio states “Special Adviser”. I guess Jeremy just wants to know where Jo got her info that causes her to refer to him as a “Science Adviser” (Post 3). Now Jo did not use caps so could post “well his title was not science adviser, he was a Special Adviser.” and that she did not intend to make it sound like it was his job title, just that he did advise on some areas of science. The latter would hardly be surprising given the broad role of most political advisers.
If Jo is standing by “science adviser” as a title, then she must have some evidence… and given she personally knows Monckton well and receives personal emails form him (Post 73) it would most likely cost $50 of her time to have him email some info in case she does not. But in fact Jeremy is not asking JO to be some sort of PI, rather he is asking why she used the term “science adviser”
Also Grumpy your post in #80. Please provide a reference of “according to the IPCC there is a tipping point at which it just keeps getting hotter and hotter.” and then further a reference that suggests that such a tipping point is not just in relation to say 10-50 degrees C or so, rather than a tipping point that would literally cause a planet to vaporise itself.
I also think you will find there is a clear difference between the ocean warming to which you refer via ARGOS, and the relative situation that is measured in terms of El Nino/La Nina conditions… in that a warming planet is not a pre-condition of an El Nino event.
Lastly Jo – you make it sound as if I’ve never heard of Monckton before this thread. I was fully aware of his credentials before making my post #4, in which I actually directly acknowledged it was an unscientific post.
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Both Realclimate and Desmog have links to heaps of discussions about tipping points. I think that I was mangling the link between tipping points and positive feedbacks. If these positive feedbacks, which as far as I am aware are only detectable in GCM and not in the real climate, then they must continue to positively feedback past a point of no return. If that is the case then there seems to be no mechanism to prevent positive feedbacks from continually feeding back and continually raising the temperature. A corollary question is why these positive feedbacks did not exist prior to the current time. There seems to be no argument that both CO2 and temperature were higher in the past than they are now, yet no tipping point, point of no return or ever increasing positive feedbacks were experienced.
I realise that El Nino and a warming planet are not causative or even correlative, but how can ARGOS data show cooling and CSIRO data show warming at the same time?
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Been having a running battle with AGW Nazi on a boating forum. He uses all the elitist tactics, “I’m smart, you’re not” etc. along with a whole bunch of dust smoke and mirrors and tries to get us tangled up in disproving his arguments, which I refuse to do, making him apolplectic. He raises one point however about CO2 permeation of the the ice cores that I don’t know how to argue. His claim is that the CO2 permeation level in the ice cores explains what he calls the false lag of CO2 growth behind warming and then goes into unintelligible data to support his claims. Anyone have a take on this?
You can follow the thread if you like here………
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/open-discussion/what-do-we-think-about-climate-change-21390.html
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AGW Nazi… lol – talking about underhand tactics:)
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Grumpy – sorry you’d really need to provide a link to the interpretation of ARGOS you are reading, and the report of the CSIRO predictions of El Nino you are referring to to get a really clear answer. Without that all I can do is state that to my knowledge the measurements that relate to El Nino are of differential warming between two different ocean masses, creating conditions favourable for an El Nino pattern of weather, which is quite independent of a global average sea temperature. So even if the earth were to cool 3 degrees, you could still have the required temp differential required to trigger El Nino conditions, as it is not triggered by absolute warming, but relative conditions.
Now regarding the runaway warming and history etc… well the pattern is for example the earth is in a condition, SOMETHING causes warming… orbit around sun, a meteor collision, massive volcanoes, who knows there are many cycles documented and for a layman something like Flannery’s book whose name evades me would give a good background (well before it gets in to content that may upset some non-AGW theorists).
So Something warms the earth, and in some circumstances that warming causes CO2 to be released, which warms more (there is the explanation for the lag, in that CO@ did not start the warming), the CO2 keeps warming, and warming causes more CO2 to be released… which continues ad infinitum with the constraints that CO2 does less the more there is up there (log relationship), and then this continues until further warming does not trigger any reactions that release more CO2, or some other known forcing the other way comes in to play – so a Milankivich cycle, or a massive meteorite strike, or a masseive series of volcanoes…. overwhelming the CO2 forcing and cooling the planet all the way back again.
This is just a very very basic explanation of the history of global temperature, with the only constant being that it nothing is forcing it, nothing happens to the temperature (it is not some sort of self oscillating system, although some of the forcings may well act in such a manner).
So basically I think you are misunderstanding the term “runaway greenhouse effect” as totally unstoppable by any forcing whatsoever, when it actually means that you reach certain points where there is nothing that human intervention could do to stop it, and it will continue until at least conditions on the planet are very very unfavourable for advanced human civilisations. I note that many think that humans can;t stop it anyway, and we just have to see what happens, or that humans can’t cause it and if it happens it would have happened anyway.
Also Fasteddy – will he provide any links to peer reviewed science that back up his claims? If he is correct there will be a lot of warmists with egg on faces as we have happily accepted the mainstream science on why there is a lag, rather than argue about whether there is a lag or not. I think mainstream science accepts and learned from the Vostok ice cores that show the lag.
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The first question that needs to be answered, is why did CO2 diffuse from the assumed time period to another time period in the ice, and then stop there?
Why didn’t the diffusion just continue on until the CO2 wasn’t present in the ice any more?
The whole thing has collapsed into nitwitism, trying to make any excuse fit the world.
I wish the whole thing could be dispelled once and for all – but it keeps resurfacing decannaly since 1890 and it is time for the whole thing to go away for good.
Unfortunately there is too much utopian socialism at work that prevents this from happening
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Matt. NO. Jeremy #74 asked for a secondary source of evidence. If it’s only half hour for a grad. You find the grad, you pay it. The rest of us here who graduated from the stone age, we don’t care. We’re too busy looking at the data.
I have of course got it in writing from M, but that’s not what J is asking for.
Jeremy – you are wasting my time. Lift your standards.
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Matt, Re 87.
I now see why you’re confused. Your concept of warming releasing CO2 causing more warming and running away is flawed. For this to happen, the amount of CO2 released from feedback would need to be far more than the original CO2 increase that caused the warming. Of course, this presupposes that increasing CO2 causes appreciable warming in the first place.
The IPCC metric of about 3 watts/m^2 of additional atmospheric absorption for doubling CO2 from preindustrial levels represents a change in surface
energy of 343 w/m^2 (279K) to 346 w/m^2 (279.6K). To achieve the desired 3C increase (the lowest IPCC estimate), requires a surface energy of 358.6 w/m^2 (an additional 15.6 W/m^2), or 5 times more than the original ‘forcing’ energy. If the gain of the system was large enough to support this, the climate would be metastable, like a flipflop in between states. Once it flips to the cool or warm state, it would never get out, moreover; it would have already flipped long ago and latched up. Not even Milankovitch considerations will be able to push it out of this state. Note that the IPCC estimate doesn’t even account for the fact that incremental CO2 underneath clouds has almost no incremental effect as clouds are already nearly completely opaque to longwave IR.
Regarding Venus, it’s not a case of runaway greenhouse effect. The dense Venusian atmosphere acts as our ocean, as the primary repository of stored heat energy. When a molecule of CO2 absorbs a single 15u photon, it’s effective temperature rises by 100’s of degrees C. In the Earth’s atmosphere, this energy is quickly redistributed to the other molecules in the atmosphere by collisions (see the kinetic theory of gases). In the case of Venus,
absorbed energy can only be shared with other equally energized CO2 molecules, so the result is very high temperatures for the Venusian CO2 ocean. This can never happen on Earth because CO2 is such a minor component of the atmosphere.
Regarding CO2 lags in the ice cores. The CO2 and CH4 are not necessarily physically aligned with each other or the Deuterium used to estimate temperatures from the ice cores. However, this is all accounted for by the data extraction process. The observed lags of CO2 and CH4 are clearly biological and are the response of an ecosystem to changes in temperature. The lag from CO2 solubility changes in the oceans is far too short to see in the ice core data. The biological mechanism is that at higher temperatures, more of the surface can participate in biomass production (less ice) and longer growing seasons contribute to even more biomass. More biomass alive means more decomposing which means more CO2 and CH4 (we can see the seasonal ebb and flow of this in the Mauna Loa CO2 data). Most natural CH4 originates from animal digestion and not plant decomposition, which is why CH4 lags even more, as it takes longer for animal life to adapt to climate change than it does for plant life. Newer ice core data (i.e. Dome C) shows this even more unambiguously as the samples are at a higher level of precision, both in magnitude, sample period and post processing.
George
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George we get a lot of methane from methanogenic bacterial decomposition of biomass whether or not the bacteria reside in the intestines of animals
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Re Monckton bashing.
How come nobody in the main stream is questioning Al Gore’s scientific credentials? I don’t expect a lawyer to be objective (how can an objective lawyer defend a guilty client?), but I do expect scientists to be objective. This means understanding what all of the data is telling us, not to try and make up science to curve fit an agenda to selected data. Yes, Monckton might be a little guilty of the later, but the warmists have taken this to such an extreme, I interpret Monkton’s work as a parody of the pseudo science behind the alarmists claims.
George
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If you think about it, the whole AGW thing has constructed to make things “look like” something happen or will happen from CO2 in the air.
Anything that can be taken to fit data so long as it involves CO2, well then it’s OK.
Monckton did not take any data that he didn’t consider authentic. He neither exaggerated nor “cherry-picked” to give an appearance of something being true when it was questionably true.
Anything that he has presented that appears to be of questionable validity I will take responsibility for HAVING GIVEN TO HIM and I will answer questions about it
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Brian,
Yes, anaerobic decomposition contributes some, but termites seem to produce more CH4 than anything else and I suspect that the longer delay for CH4 is the result of termites establishing an increased presence in new forests as the amount of biomass (trees) in the forest grows. It takes many centuries for a forest to establish itself, which is consistent with the measured time lag of CH4.
The Mauna Loa CO2 data is a clear indication that even the net seasonal variability in biomass arising from hemispheric asymmetry is evident in CO2 concentrations.
What’s seen in the ice cores are steady state concentrations, whose values are roughly proportional to the total size of the biosphere. Biological and other forces act in both directions on the steady state level. Biology both produces and consumes CO2, but the steady state CO2 levels required to support the larger potential biosphere resulting from higher temperatures (i.e. less ice, more land) takes a while to build up. It appears that the growth of biomass is ‘carbon limited’ and this contributes to the CO2 lag. New carbon must come from the Earth (i.e. fossil fuels and volcanoes) as biomass is continuously sequestering carbon, ultimately producing fossil fuels, creating a continuous demand.
George
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I have seen the 13C ratios from the ice cores, but what is the pattern of (delta)13C as a function of depth, do you know?
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Brian,
I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking for. The source for the ice core data I’ve used is here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore.html
This includes the depths where the samples were taken. The tested samples are all about the same width based on how much ice is required to get meaningful gas measurements. More recent samples may cover a month, while deep samples might cover many centuries. This brings up something else that’s frequently ignored, which is that ice core data represents averages of variable time periods. Claims that the temperature is rising faster than ever are based on comparing year to year change to changes in multi-century averages. Even this doesn’t pass scrutiny as the newer DomeC data shows changes in 100-year averages that are faster than even the minor absolute change that the warmists are so concerned about today.
There are a bunch of plots of this data here:
http://www.palisad.com/co2/slides/siframes.html
George
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Sorry about the Nazi quip Matt, but trying to have a discussion with this guy is next to impossible, it’s simply his way or you’re an idiot. I’m posting what he commented about the CO2 lag, I’m niether a peer or a scientist so if someone can put this in laymans language I would appreciate it. The poster is a forum member named Boston, odd, he doesn’t even have a boat.
and your theory on the lag is slightly off
the permeability of h2o ice to atmospheric gasses is such that given the accumulation incidence of the ice it takes about 800~1200 years for the exchange of atmospheric gasses to be halted by a sufficient mass of ice, so the lag between the dating and isotopic evidence of temp in the ice core and that of the the fossil atmosphere within the sample is actually easily explained. If you have trouble with this concept numerous studies were conducted in order to establish the lag time. All that needed to happen was to take a look at the latest co2 content of the atmosphere and then drill down 1000 years into the ice and check the trapped atmosphere for any influence. There was and based on the density of the ice formation you get a lag time of x.
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Fasteddy,
A lag like this is already accounted for when dating the samples. Look at the references for the ice core data on the ncdc.noaa web site I referred to earlier. The more recent DomeC data is at a finer resolution and shows a post correction CO2 lag of about 200 years and a CH4 lag of about 600 years.
The way you calculate this is to create a correlation function that compares a change in CO2 at time T+dT to a change in temperature at time T and sum
this up over all samples. The values of dT where the correlation function is maximum is the lag (or lead if dT is negative). The correlation function I used counts changes in the same direction as +1 while changes in the opposite direction count as -1. When used as an autocorrelation function comparing temperatures at times T and T+dT, the periods of all the Milankovitch forcings pop right out of the analysis.
George
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Thanks George I have already seen those data
Thank you for posting here!
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Um,thankyou co2isnotevil, I think. I guess I didn’t post my question or problem correctly. The “gentleman” in question, Boston, is maintaining that the lag is not a lag and that CO2 causes warming and the method of reading the ice core data is wrong if it assumes CO2 increase follows warming. This seems to be contrary what most folks here seem to be saying. He used the quote above as his proof to me but in truth I don’t have a clue what he is talking about so I decided to ask the experts here if they felt he was correct that the ice core data in fact supports the theory that CO2 causes warming rather than being reactive to warming. I appreciate your patience.
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Fasteddy,
There is no assumption about the direction of causality when examining the ice core data with the correlation analysis I described. The purpose of the analysis is to objectively determine which came first, the temperature or the greenhouse gases. On the other hand, if Boston assumes that CO2 causes warming and that the data must agree, his conclusion that the data is wrong is the only explanation that fits his bias. As a scientist, you must be prepared to modify your hypothesis if the data doesn’t fit, not spin the data to fit your hypothesis. This is why turning science into a political debate is so dangerous.
The ice core data is only the tip of the iceberg. There is absolutely no data that supports the AGW hypothesis. While the climate is certainly changing (it would be broken otherwise) and man is putting CO2 into the atmosphere, there is no known data or scientific argument which can establish any kind of causal link between them. In other words, the current warming trend is within the uncertainty limits of what would have happened anyway, even if man had never discovered fire.
It’s really too bad, since another ice age is inevitable. It would be nice if we could mitigate it, but unfortunately, CO2 is not the ticket. We would need some other gas to absorb energy in the other 2/3 of the energy spectrum that is not absorbed by CO2, H20, CH4 and O3. Maybe we should paint the ice black… The warmists hype the inconvenient consequences of a warming climate, but the consequences of a cooling planet are far worse. Remember, for about half of the last few million years, spanning dozens of glaciation cycles, much of N America and Europe has been buried under a kilometer or more of ice. It’s only been since the end of the last ice age that mankind has established any kind of presence in the latitudes subject to glaciation.
George
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In the interest of making everyone’s day a little brighter, I bring the following good news from Benny Peiser, thaken from The Politics of Climate Change:
“As we get closer to the Copenhagen conference, the chances of a global climate agreement are fading rapidly. In fact, the probability of a Kyoto-style treaty with legally binding emissions targets are now close to zero as the gap between the developed and the developing nations has been growing ever wider.
The global economic crisis has rendered costly climate policies more or less untenable. It has become hugely unpopular among voters who are increasingly hostile to green taxes. The intriguing fact that the global warming trend of the late 20th century appears to have come to a halt has led to growing public scepticism about claims of impending climate catastrophe.
Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes have turned into considerable liabilities for political parties and governments alike. A climate revolt among Eastern and central European countries has forced the EU to renounce its unilateral Kyoto-strategy. President Obama’s administration is struggling to push its cap-and-trade bill through the US Senate because senators of his own party, the Blue Dog Democrats, are opposed to proposals they fear as being too costly and too risky.
Developing nations are demanding financial support to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars (per year) in return for their support of a post-Kyoto climate treaty. In view of the astronomical demands made by China, India and Africa, Western governments and their voters are increasingly reluctant to agree to injurious obligations that risk weakening their economic competitiveness even further.
Perhaps the most critical factor for the growing scepticism in Europe is the vanishing strength of Europe’s centre-left and green parties, whose members were once among the most forceful climate alarmists. Labour and green parties throughout Europe have lost much of their popularity and support. Today, few have remained in positions of power.”
empahsis mine.
The principles of fairness, technological progress and economic growth used to stand at the heart of social democratic governments. Advancing the interests of poor and disadvantaged members of society was essential to the popular appeal of social democratic and Labour parties. The centre-left have substituted these social democratic ideals for an environmental programme in which the rhetoric of saving the planet has taken priority over the principle of liberating the underprivileged and disadvantaged from poverty and dereliction today.
In effect, green policies are gradually pricing the working and lower-middle classes out of their comfort zone. Labour parties may sincerely believe that their utopian low-carbon plans will save the planet. But in the process they are destroying the very foundations of their political support and movement.
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Thanks for the reply George and I appreciate the time you took to help me understand this. Brian, interesting piece. Amazing how politics and distorted science brought us to the dance and politics and the truth will take us home hopefully.
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Amazing! Methinks your words have had an effect, Brian. We may in time have a blogging community here on Jo’s blog consisting entirely of people who “fight with an open visor” (not sure this is an English idiom; I’ve translated direct from my native Danish, but you’ll get the picture …) using our own names! How delightful, how honest!
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Ann, there are many who are conducting the battle in public forums. I came here from a boating web site. Those of us who treasure recreational boating were among the first real environmentalists as we see the results of human stupidity and laziness on each outing into the water. Sadly, some boaters are the stupid ones and we work hard with government enforcement agencies to stop these folks and do what we can to educate new boaters on being a good guest here on our planet. If so many of the warmnists didn’t have a social engineering agenda as the driving force behind their AGW pursuits it would be much easier to find common ground on real issues of science and pollution. Sadly that is not the case as the zero-growth cult has seem to taken over the political wing of the AGW movement. Those folks are dangerous.
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Det er Dansk, Anne-Kit? Forunderlig …
Jeg kan snakke dansk — skønt ikke so meget gode.
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Sorry CO2 in post 90 you reply to me in #87 “I now see why you’re confused. Your concept of warming releasing CO2 causing more warming and running away is flawed. For this to happen, the amount of CO2 released from feedback would need to be far more than the original CO2 increase that caused the warming. Of course, this presupposes that increasing CO2 causes appreciable warming in the first place.”
hmm – well can I assure you I’m not confused:) And I was giving the mainstream very basic flowchart – not interested in your counter theories I was just putting it out there in response to a question raised about the mainstream science viewpoint. I even stated that non-AGW theorists would debate the CO2 role – kinda thought that was obvious… the point is that the “tipping point” does not mean temp runs away for ever… it is a relative thing, although some natural cycles would appear to be overwhelmed by the CO2 warming (there is a good blog at bravenewclimate about solar minimum cooling vs CO2 warming).
My answer also did not really refer to venus, as the question posed really was about earthly tipping points and just reference Venus as an example of a hot planet with a lot of CO2. My answer was more interested in what is happening on earth.
re: post 92… well attacking his science background would be an ad-hom attack. Al Gore is a politician… they are part of the chain. I don’t know why anyone would expect him to get it 100% right – even the mainstream view! I mean name one political decision that is made by politicians every day in which the politicians have a 1st grade background in that field??? Health – nope. Infrastructure – nope. science – nope. I like your idea of Monckton as a parody… it makes sense – that is not an attack on Monckton, it just makes sense as a tactic.
IN terms of another ice age being inevitable… do you have a timeframe for that? I mean for sure chances are at some stage in the future the planet will experience an ice age.
Lastly eddy in 106… Ahh of course… you are a recreational boatie who likes a clean ocean…. therefore you are the bastion of true environmentalism and true climate science! Of course it just flows so logically:)
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Actually Matt I live on my boat for much of the spring & summer here in Connecticut so it is not just a weekend cruise burning up gas. I don’t claim to be a scientist, don’t really recall posting that. I do know a little bit about the zero growth folks and how they would destroy our way of life here in the U.S. in pursuit of a utopian goal that will be not only impossible to achieve but foolish to pursue, it’s a non-starter. Funny, I didn’t think a warmist would be throwing stones my way simply because I mentioned boaters are sensitive to the environment.
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Before reading the below message, try to envision, what the word, “extremism” brings to mind. Think of examples.
Now then:
Letter to Global Warming-threatened Island States – take climate criminal Australia et al to ICC
“I have sent a Letter to the Media and Governments of Global Warming-threatened Island States urging them to apply an Accountability, Badge and Credo (ABC) protocol for saving the Planet and to take climate criminal First World nations such as Australia to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for complicity in a worsening Climate Genocide that, if not halted by urgent, requisite address of man-made global warming, will kill 10 billion non-Europeans this century.
Time is running out for dealing with man–made climate change (anthropogenic climate change, AGW).
Major climatic disruption has already occurred with the current average global surface temperature now about 0.8C above that in 1990 e.g. Arctic and Antarctic sea ice melting, world-wide glacier melting, increased sea levels, increased extent of forest fires, doubling of hurricane intensity, coral die off, massive ecosystem damage, increased droughts, increased floods, species extinction rates at 100-1,000 times that in the fossil record, the first populated islands disappearing under the waves in Bengal and the Pacific (for detailed accounts see . Professor John Holdren – Presdient Obama’s chief science adviser – “The Science of Climatic Disruption” “Global warming, climate emergency” U3A course notes.
Indeed many scientists are now saying in effect that it is already too late to avoid even worse climatic disruption, on top of that which has already occurred, from a temperature increase of over 2C (2 degrees Centigrade) above that in 1900.
Thus, a survey of participants in the March 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference revealed that 90% of respondents believed that the world would be unable to keep the temperature increase over the 1900 value to less than 2C (2 degrees Centigrade).
Further, Professor Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester, say that an annual decrease in GHG pollution of 6-8% is needed to stabilize atmospheric GHG at essentially the present level – i.e. a massive carbon-based economic contraction that is unachievable without radical social and economic restructuring of the world.
However we cannot give up. While there’s life there’s hope. But we have to get serious. Thus my associates in the Melbourne-based Yarra Valley Climate Action Group and the Climate Emergency Network took part in a 5,000-strong Human Sign on Melbourne’s iconic St Kilda Beach with a message to Governments from an 11 year old Australian school child saying “CLIMATE CHANGE – OUR FUTURE IS IN YOUR HANDS”.
However, while rallies and demonstrations get the message across we must go further and make the climate criminals ACCOUNTABLE for their past and ongoing pollution and devastation of the Planet.
I have devised a strategy to take the fight up to the climate criminals and which involves a 3-part protocol of Accountability (holding the climate criminals responsible by exposure, sanctions and prosecutions), Badge (bearing witness through wearing an appropriate Badge e.g. “Climate Emergency”) and clearly stating our core beliefs, or Credo e.g. “a safe and sustainable life for all people and and all species with a safe atmosphere with carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration at 300 parts per million”.
For a detailed and documented discussion of this Accountability, Badge and Credo (ABC) strategy for saving the Planet see “How to Save the Planet. Accountability, Badge & Credo (ABC) Protocol.”
Among the people most acutely threatened by man-made climate change are tropical Island Nations and I have variously written Letters to the Media and Governments of the Island States of the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean urging self-protecting action NOW against climate criminal First World countries based on this Accountability, Badge & Credo (ABC) Protocol – and in particular, urging prosecution of climate criminal nations such as World-leading greenhouse gas (GHG) polluter Australia before the International Criminal Court (ICC).”
– Dr Gideon Polya
Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria 3085, Australia.
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Matt,
I’m not talking about counter theories. I’m talking about logic based on first principles that clearly illustrates how fundamentally and irreconcilably flawed the speculative conclusions of the AGW crowd are. I wouldn’t call the AGW view mainstream either. It may be mainstream among those who don’t understand the fundamental science but certainly isn’t mainstream among those scientists who have actually taken the time to objectively dig into the details. The less one understands the science, the more likely they are to buy in to the fear mongering AGW message.
The fatalistic obsession with tipping points is unfounded. This illustrates a misunderstanding of the math of feedback control systems and what the concept of equilibrium means. The Earth’s climate has been subject to many external forces, for example, super volcanoes and impact events. If the climate was as fragile as the AGW crowd wants us to believe, it would have latched up a long time ago. The largest impact man can have on the climate would be a nuclear winter. Even this would be so short lived that it would barely be a blip in any future ice core record.
Consider that during prior interglacials, the 1000 year average temperature was as much as 3C warmer than today with significantly lower CO2 levels. How does the AGW crowd explain this?
The next ice age is expected to begin within a few thousand years. While you might think that this is too far away to be concerned about, we are actually close to the end the current interglacial period which started about 15K years ago. The longest prior interglacial period in the ice core record is only about 15K years, so from a statistical perspective, we are overdue.
The current interglacial has been a little cooler and longer than others. This is thought to be the result of the current phase relationship between the forcing influences. The primary periodic influences are the 25K year cycle of the precession of perihelion, the 40K cycle of the Earth’s tilt and 100K orbital ellipticity variations. Changes in these phase relationships are also though to be why glaciation epochs changed from a 40K year cycle to a 100K year cycle and expected to switch back to a 40K year cycle within the next 2 glacial epochs.
George
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This is from a today. I thought some of you might be interested.
There is a good discussion about how feedback works and why misunderstanding it can bias results.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/richard-lindzen-3.ppt
George
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I have argued with Lindzen a little bit about that.
That’s all very nice, but can you top Post #109?
He is claiming AGW will kill 10 BILLION NON-EUROPEANS THIS CENTURY
How is this supposed to happen? There are some 6.8 billions of people on the Earth at present. At 2.2% projected population growth IN THE ABSENCE of global catastrophe, there will be 10 billion people by 2040.
But if a lot of those people are gone, how do they have any progeny?
Anyway, the Gore team really ought to hire Dr Polya because I don’t think they have anybody on their team quite up to his level at present. They’re all pikers.
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Sure I can top that. Once the next ice age gets going, more than 10 billion people will be displaced and ultimately killed by the wars that will erupt for control of the equatorial zones. At least this will happen after 2040 …
Relative to Lindzen’s feedback math, what’s important is that,
George
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Sure I can top that. Once the next ice age gets going, more than 10 billion people will be displaced and ultimately killed by the wars that will erupt for control of the equatorial zones. At least this will happen after 2040 …
George
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Brian,
The only problem I have with Linzden’s math is that he has energy coming in and temperature going out and in the feeding term. The sum then must add temperature to energy, so there is an implicit temperature to energy conversion that isn’t shown and in fact, this conversion factor is equivalent to the gain of the system. However, he might have been forced to do this based on the IPCC definition of what climate sensitivity is, which is a simple proportionality constant relating a change in energy to a change in temperature.
The main point is that if the gain of the system is less than unity, no amount of feedback, positive or negative, will cause anything other than a damped oscillation to an equilibrium state and the gain of the system is surely less than unity.
The open loop gain of the system is easy to calculate with Stefan’s equation. Since P = o*T^4, where P is the power density and o is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, at T = 289K, P = 395.55 W/m^2. If we increase P by 1% (399.51 W/m^2), the new T is 289.72K. The open loop gain is then (289.72-289)/(399.51-395.55) = 0.18. It should be pointed out that the IPCC uses a sensitivity of about .6, which is at least 3 times larger and that this difference is the result of unspecified feedbacks. This requires a feedback term greater than 1 since F (the fraction of energy feed back) may only vary between -1 and 1.
Sorry about post 113.
George
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In a little bit different teminology , that is pretty much what I questioned Lindzen about.
Note that Lindzen orders “feedback” effects so that effects like the Iris effect have a place in the order. Then Lindzen places an upper bound on “feedback” effects of water vapour etc so that the relative effects can be compared.
Lindezen never actually places a value upon “water vapour feedback”.
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You know, I heard rumors of recreational fishermen dropping old whitegoods and heavy car parts onto the continental shelf. Using a GPS it is possible make a pile with a team over some years. They do it for two very logical reasons: to pile up and form an artificial reef (thus attracting fish) and to snag the expensive trawler nets (thus repelling commercial fishermen who would remove all the available fish).
Sure, we all understand that this practice is illegal, but scratching your bum without a license is also (strictly speaking) illegal, so let’s ask the more interesting question about whether it is good for the environment? Kind of tricky… Not an easy thing the old environmentalism, helps one guy, hurts someone else. You can try talking to the fish about the deal, and what he says is, “bubble bubble bubble”.
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Wrong, Tel.
From a recent poll, fish 2::1 prefer junk piles of old lorries etc dumped in the ocean.
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If you look at the IPCC AR4 Synthesis report, Fig 3.3 and Fig 3.5 you can see a prediction of more than 20% less rainfall over the broader Mediterranean region including all of France, some of England, the North part of Africa, Italy and pretty much the core of Europe. That’s a 90% agreement across all models that one of the most highly cultivated and productive agricultural regions will see not a small change in rainfall but bigger than 20%!
What an amazing coincidence that these are all the nations most in need of convincing so they can get behind our Green Initiative. Why, it’s almost like some invisible hand was guiding us to see this conclusion…
By the way, they also predicted lower rainfall for Perth, and so far Perth is getting wetter, early days yet I suppose.
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Hang on a moment, you are only polling the fish listed in the phone book! What about all the fish with silent numbers? Or mobile phones? Your polling results are completely skewed.
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My tipping point and runaway greenhouse effect question were the impression that I got from the various AGW websites and MSM over the past year or so. I fail to see how an increased CO2 (which is good for plants, and therefore good for us and a slight <2 degree C temp rise, which is good for us coz extreme cold kills more people than extreme heat, which is also good for us) is a bad thing that must be stopped at any cost.
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George, I agree than an ice age would be far more destructive to human civilization than three degrees of warming, and based on past evidence the ice age is coming, regardless of what we do. If you think the oil price is high now (BTW oil is not a high price right now, but the US dollar is just piss weak) imagine the price of oil with most of our reserves burnt away and the global temperature falling by TEN degrees.
Most likely it would also be more stressful on all the ecosystems of our planet; any humans surviving thus far wouldn’t have time for any Green Politics, they would just be eating everything that moved (probably each other).
By the way, seen any sunspots lately? Quiet up there. Too quiet.
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Tel,
Yes, I have been monitoring sunspot activity for about the last year. The last time the solar activity has been as low as it is now was back in 1912.
http://sidc.oma.be/sunspot-data/ (look at the smoothed monthly data).
Not coincidentally, this coincided with one of the coldest winters ever recorded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_United_States_cold_wave
Please excuse the wiki reference as wikipedia is highly biased, especially with regard to climate related pages, however; this page seems neutral.
As an avid Squaw Valley skier (50+ days per year), I’m looking forward to the consequences of this. For the last 2 ski seasons, the Sierra’s have had more dry powder and less wet snow than average. The snow pack has been smaller owing to less overall snow, but the snow quality has been very good.
On a related topic, I’ve been monitoring alpine glaciers in the Sierra Nevada mountains for many years. During the summer, there are a number of glaciers that I like to hike/climb up to and ski. During the time I’ve been doing this, there has been no discernible trend in the minimum extents of these glaciers. I know of others who have been skiing these same glaciers for more than 20 years and they report no changes either. Everyone seems to agree that the minimum extents of these glaciers at the peak of summer is determined only by how much snow fell during the prior winter.
George
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Brian G Valentine:
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Wrong, Tel.
From a recent poll, fish 2::1 prefer junk piles of old lorries etc dumped in the ocean.
That poll probably has more validity than most of those supporting AGW
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It is sad that the majority of the voting public don’t choose to think for themselves and have the mainstream media lead them like
sheep. Of course it serves governments interest to keep the Masses ignorant and in constant fear.
Personally I can’t understand how anyone can’t be suspicious of politicians and the dieing old media that claim the science is in and the debate is over. A simple google search will reveal the opposite.
Rather than open and intelligent debate on the facts they resort to name calling and character assassination. It insults my intelligence and I’m not even that bright.
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Steve G. If you want to see insulting behavior, go to the link below and read some of the posts by Boston. He is the self appointed CO2 Heresy Minister. There are also a lot of well reasoned posters there(moi included)and can be quite a learning experience in the twisted logic paths of the Zero Growth Social Engineers.
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/open-discussion/what-do-we-think-about-climate-change-21390-new-post.html
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Wow! Maybe we can get him to come over here and post!
ha – a joke – not very funny is it
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Victorian senator Fielding, former AGW alarmist, went to Heartland conference and changed his AGW melody.
See video interview here http://algorelied.com/
I don’t think the Conference actually turned him ’round – he had reached some conclusions about this earlier
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Boaties A. Spent 15 years driving charter yachts showing people the wonders of the environment myself. It never ceased to amaze me
these people from the big cities with there naive idea that it all needed saving from the evils of humanity. As a sailor I now the
forces of nature are much more powerful than anything we mire humans can throw at it. Controlling the weather with a magic co2 knob
that you can move up and down seems utterly ridiculous to me.
About as ridiculous as taxing cows farts and making everything that requires energy more expensive. Looking after working families
what a joke.
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wow who would have thought that 15 years sailing a boat could provide such an in depth knowledge of such a complicated field of science! All those fools from the cities!
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Don’t have to be a scientist to stick your head out the window and check the weather.
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I’ve just checked situation normal. Doesn’t look like the sky is going to fall in soon.
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Just because someone seized and kidnapped Chicken Little it doesn’t necessarily follow that something bad isn’t immanent
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Yer like an ETS that will make farmers even poorer and job losses in industry. Passing the costs of a tax based on junk science to
working familys.
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Yes, Steve, what amazes me about the other side is the stupidity with which they repeat the mantra “Let the Big Carbon Polluters pay!”, as if they seriously believe that coal-fired electricity plants and oil companies will just pick up the tab meekly and consumers and Kevin Rudd’s “working families” won’t be affected. There are many other aspects that amaze me abut AGW believers, but I’ll leave that for later.
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A sailor watches the weather like his life depends on it.
As compared with 15 years sitting in coffee shops, going to the hip concerts and checking the poll stats, being a certified expert in grant money collection and responsibility-free policy mongering.
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Because of course, his life does depend on it.
There’s reality, and there’s viritual reality. The alleged “climate experts” reside mostly in virtual reality. They believe the world is a computer model because that is where they spend their lives, in front of a computer.
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Has anyone ever seen a list of what is proposed to alleviate AGW if it really did have any validity? I hear them say dumb stuff like ban plastic production, ban private automobiles etc etc. But if we try to look at what would be really necessary in order to reverse something that is not occuring, sorry for the silliness there but we are dealing with AGW, we would have to move all the earths population to the equatorial area and only use the temperate zones in late spring & early summer. That’s assuming agriculture is still allowed of course.
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Ed one can only assume that no you’ve never seen a list of what is proposed.
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Look at this True Mean Global Temperature Graph and find out if there is “dangerous” global warming, and see the effect of more than a century of human CO2 emission on global temperature.
The temperature is not the “dervevative” value of change in mean temperature that you see everywhere. Sorry for forgetting not to use the term “Climate Change” for “Global Warming” and “Carbon” for CO2.
http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/MeanGlobalTemperature.htm
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Look at this True Mean Global Temperature Graph and find out if there is “dangerous” global warming, and see the effect of more than a century of human CO2 emission on global temperature.
The temperature is not the “derivative” value of change in mean temperature that you see everywhere. Sorry for forgetting not to use the term “Climate Change” for “Global Warming” and “Carbon” for CO2.
http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/MeanGlobalTemperature.htm
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JL, re 187.
You can’t just say that all models and computer simulations are bad. I’ve got 100’s of thousands of lines of modeling code under my belt and you can be sure that models are very, very useful. If not for models, the chip in your computer would never have been able to be designed.
There are formal verification techniques that can be used to validate models. This basically involves comparing models at different levels of abstraction to insure that they either match or are behaviorally convergent. Model synthesis techniques can also be used to synthesize a more detailed model from a higher level of abstraction given a set of transformation rules. Well written models also have numerous self consistency checks and validation procedures built in to them. No model should make assumptions about the behavior they are trying to predict.
The problems with most climate models is that they assume greenhouse gas concentrations drive the climate, rather than start from first principles and derive the response to greenhouse gas concentration changes. The problem is no so much with models in general, but that like everything else, garbage in, garbage out.
I agree that many ascribe more faith to their own model than can be justified, but peer review generally finds the flaws. Of course, the problem with climate research is that objective peer review isn’t part of the tool kit.
George
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Now that the reality doesn’t match the fear campaign perhaps we should have a closer look at the Greens political agenda.
Malthus population control were pandas replace people. Hitler’s youth was full of aryans wanting to save the environment.
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So if there is to be quantity control it only follows to have quality control. Perhaps this is why the AGW crowd wish all “denial” to be
declared mentally unfit. I read calls by extreme Greens to jail politicians that appose the so called science, declaring them criminals.
It really is no wonder people refer to them as Nazis.
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The AGW religious cult hope to achieve through administrative fiat the social engineering agenda that they could never hope to accomplish at the ballot box. The all encompassing regulations to control carbon related production and use could be strangling from an economic standpoint and dictatorial from an individual liberty standpoint. As they feel their influence growing some are even starting to come out of the closet and actually use the term Zero Growth to describe the goal of their agenda.
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George, I do believe you meant post 137. 🙂
Anyway, I don’t think all models or computer simulations are bad, but I do think the AGW crowd is placing far too much faith in their models. When it comes to climate models, we don’t know all that we don’t know, so the certainty with which the AGW crowd speaks is to me, ill-founded.
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JL,
Yes, I agree that they put too much faith in their models. But then again, the entire AGW premise that greenhouse gases force the climate is also a faith based belief and is always **assumed** by their models to be the dominate influence. This is a clear marker of junk science where a case built around an assumption is used to prove the assumption in the first place.
I should point out that I have my own climate model. This model is a hierarchical set of linked, synthetically derived equivalent models, based on a set of rules which starts with Ein=Eout and using the techniques of formal verification insures that all levels of the hierarchy have the same consistent behavior, that is, Ein is always equal to Eout at every level of the simulation. My model is also built on an assumption, that is, Conservation of Energy is the most important constraint on the model, although this is an assumption that has an unambiguous justification based on first principles.
The complete model has 100’s of coefficients, but each represents a physical, measurable, quantity whose values are automatically extracted from the weather satellite data accumulated over the last 25 years and many of the coefficients have the same value. The model is over constrained, meaning that there are more equations than unknowns and thus far matches each of nearly 300 monthly satellite averages quite well (under 10% worst case). Yearly averages are matched with a worst case deviation well under 5%. I’ve even been able to identify documented calibration issues in the satellite data!
I’m not prepared to call it definitive yet, as the most important and time consuming part of modeling is the verification process and that’s not completed yet. This is the aspect of modeling that the AGW crowd fails to understand.
I have done a preliminary what if analysis to quantify the effects of increased greenhouse gas concentrations and the results are consistent with the
low side of what the ‘deniers’ claim, that is, less than 0.5C for doubling the CO2.
BTW, I don’t consider myself either a denier or a skeptic. I’m just a scientist constrained by the principles of the scientific method.
George
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George, thank you for that post written in such clear layman’s language. As a non-scientist I actually understood what you were saying and what your model is built to do. I shall look forward to the result of your verification process. Do you think the AGW crowd will want to hear what you find? 🙂
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Just finished watching “Dateline” with George Negus (Current affairs program in Australia, for our overseas visitors). Link to nauseating interview with Lord Nicholas Stern here:
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/about/id/600050/n/Interview-with-Nicholas-Stern
I always thought SBS was more balanced in their coverage of most things than the ABC, but it seems times have changed. If you’re a climate realist out there I challenge you to sit through this drivel from the now discredited (no sign of THAT in this interview) author of the “Stern Review”, aided and abetted by the snivelling, grovelling George Negus, without the urge to puke.
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Anne,
I’m sure the AGW crowd will reject my findings with extreme prejudic. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof which is why I’m paying so much attention to the verification end. Frankly, I consider the AGW hypothesis the extraordinary claim because it violates known physics and requires far too many assumptions. Unfortunately, the false consensus around the AGW hypothesis morphs the truth into an extraordinary claim.
In the end I’m sure I will prevail. Climate science, unlike politics, can accommodate only a single truth and in the end the science will always win. Of course, the people will likely get reamed first …
George
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Does the Government fund scientist that dispute anthropological climate change?
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What a great question, Bill & Ben. I don’t think so, but I shall research it (maybe Joanne knows and beats me to it?)
More development re the Senator Fielding’s self-funded fact finding trip to the US:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_questions_fielding_wants_wong_to_answer/
Do click on all the links, there’s a great article by Sen Fielding from today’s Australian, and there’s also an update on the SBS interview from last night with Nicholas Stern. The Comments on the SBS website have
taken off, and they are NOT positive.
And a Hansard transcript from our very own Western Australian Senator Dennis Jensen, just about the only Federal parliamentarian here, along with Barnaby Joyce, who has the guts to speak what he really thinks about AGW, in Parliament!
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I moved some comments to the Fielding thread.
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Bill,
The US government isn’t funding science in conflict with AGW, or at least I haven’t found any. I made a few unsuccessful inquires a while ago and more or less gave up on finding any funding. Instead, I’ve been taking advantage of the economic slowdown to self fund my research. Brian G may have more visibility into this, any comments?
You would think that since we are about to perform a trillion dollar experiment in climate modification by taxing carbon based on no more than the AGW hypothesis, it would be prudent to perform some due diligence. But then again, this is politics we’re talking about and not science, so common sense doesn’t seem apply unless it supports a popular agenda. It seems that most governments have bought into the false consensus. I guess that if you say the same thing over and over (i.e. the debate is over, too big to fail, the Earth is the center of the Universe, the Earth is flat, …), it becomes a consensus truth, whether or not it really is true.
George
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UPDATE: June 9, 2009. The New Monthly Report is out….
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As far as I know there is no funding specifically to find holes in the AGW theory. Of course there are government supported scientists like Bob Carter, who have come to the conclusion that AGW is wrong. But no, I don’t think that anyone’s funding is dependent on them finding holes in AGW, as opposed the amount of funding that is dependent on those who are looking for a connection.
This possibly was Bush’s big mistake. He kept funding AGW research, but if he’d set up an independent centre dedicated to finding the major drivers of climate (whatever they may be), that centre would have had a reason to critique the IPCC – they would have been paid to audit it independently.
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The US gov’t under Bush paid the National Academy of Sciences in 2001 to determine if “the IPCC story of AGW was making sense.”
NAS provided report, didn’t answer question.
Two years later, AGW became NAS policy when int’l agreement between National Academies was formed.
Bush never believed AGW until about 2006. Somebody on his staff (I think a younger person) kind of bent his ear. I’m not sure who that was that tilted him.
VP Cheney never believed a word about it – but he kep kind of quiet. The left hated Cheney even more than Bush.
Bush was not the “britest” light in the light bulb package.
Anyhow, I am paid by the US Government. I am not paid to be a sceptic and write papers – but that is a lot of what I do – the US Government knows full well what my professional focus is, and can neither alter nor redirect my efforts.
The US Government lives with my profession, because it lives with people like Hansen. Just as they cannot direct him, the US Government cannot direct my efforts, either
Qualifier: Government prefers that claims I make become reviewed externally by peer review, which I do
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It’s obvious the AGW cult is getting scared when they start to put out drivel like this……..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ
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Jo in your intro into what is in the SPPI report is –
A spokesman for the IPCC said ‘the planet’s response is surprising, given that we all have Nobel Prizes’.
I’d love to know where this comes from as googling it only links back to here.
Bob Campbell
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Ummm, Bob … these “Missing Headlines” are a spoof. It’s satire. They’re not actually headlines, we only wish they were! Jo made them up …
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Ahem, Bob, sorry – Anne-Kit is right, that’s my satirical poke at them. No one has said that – at least not that I know of. But they behave as though that ought to happen. “The Models are Right”… lets adjust that data again.
I write Satire and Parody in the tags at the bottom of the story if I have done anything in that style. (See the grey bar at the bottom). Perhaps I should make it more obvious?
cheers
JoNova
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Well, it’s official. Il Duce Obama has declared the debate is over. Wonder if the climate will pay attention to him and start adhering to the computer climate models so we can all march lockstep to doomsday while we starve to death in the dark & cold because of carbon taxes and administrative fiats.
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Oh dear. Is my face red.
Thanks Anne-Kit Litler and Jo.
Naturally I realised that the ‘missing headlines’ were made up.
Damn pity about the little quote though. Oh what I could have done with it.
I’ll get over this disappointment in a couple of days.
Not very cheery at the moment
Bob
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Though I work as a contractor in support of NASA, I make no claims of deep science background. But armed with an economics degree and 40 years in the technical services business supporting US governemtn programs in DoD, Commerce and NASA, I confess that on global warming/climate change, my opinion is greatly influenced by the opinions and positions I read in numerous print and online forms. As such, I must say that in the past year or so of my interest in this topic, by far the most convincing arguments I’ve been exposed to are from the skeptic’s side of the aisle. What I feel should be noted by the taxpaying public is the disturing interest shown in global warming/ climate change by our nation’s politicians. Now this class of society (to me) have nearly neglibile intellectual contribution to make to our society. Almost across-the-board, the only thing our Congress?Senate class posses is law degrees. What does that really offer to America in problem solving, policy development or “vision”. I look at a man like Henry Waxman, researchc his biography and that of his cohort Congressman Markey, and I see nothing whatsoever in either of theirt backgrounds that suits them to being the achitects of America’s energy policy. Waxman holds a plitical science degree and a law degree. What does that equip him to do in or about energy?
The fact that policiticans, few with even an iota of hands-on knowledge of science, in any form, are glomming onto the global climate change bandwagon, shoud be a telltale warning to any taxpayer who will be left footing the bill for this excursion in society shaping and reengineering. Taxpayers shout certainly be able to remember way back to last Septemember and recall being told (oh so loudly) that the TARP Bill just HAD to ba acted upon immediately, with NO delay, and shoulld recall too being told how all that TARP money was going to be used to buy up all of those “toxic assets” that brought down the subprime market. The fact that after swift passage of that TARP Bill, the toxic assests were ignored shold not be lost on the taxpayers – the ones now being told that we cannot delay a minite further to undermine the very fabric of basic, 21st century American society and paint our houses white, drive unsafe mini-mobiles on our highways, and fill our homes with overpriced, mercury-filled, Chinese made compact lightbulbs that will then flood our landfills…
That politicians are so actively promoting global climate change should tell the average American all they need to know to make up their mind on this controversial topic.
When deciding to take a try at skydiving, has anyone ever been told that the right way to enter the sport is to learn how to repack one’s parachute quickly?
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Question
Open a cold can of coca cola and watch it goes flat as it approaches room temperature. Why?
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After last post on marketing without search engines, I decided to follow up with a strategy you can use to get quality free traffic. One of the easiest ways to get visitors to your web site is to spend money. Nothing is more effortless then paying for traffic. But if you can’t afford it or don’t want to pay, there’s an equally simple but free way to get traffic: ad swaps.
onlineuniversalwork
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