The Highest Authority in Science is the Data

Joint Post David Evans and Jo Nova

Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC, Climate religion, Wind power

“97 percent of climate experts say man-made global warming is a major threat

The correct response: “So? The satellites, ocean buoys, and weather balloons disagree.”

The alarmists may have “experts”, but the skeptics have the data.

How do you find the truth about some disputed point in science? You find the most authoritative source of information.  The vital thing that makes science different to a religion is that there are no “Gods” of science. There is no expert who is infallible. The highest authority in science is the measurements and observations. Here is the hierarchy of authority in climate science:

  1. Data (empirical evidence)
  2. Climate scientists
  3. Other scientists
  4. Lay people.

For most of the last few centuries, science has been supreme over politics for settling the truth in matters pertaining to the physical world—empirical evidence beats anyone’s say-so.

But the modern political approach is to ignore that top level. To most warmists and the public who “believe in climate change” (as they so misleading say), the hierarchy is:

  1. Climate scientists
  2. Other scientists
  3. Lay people.

The  way the climate scam works is for the like-minded western bureaucracies to be the only employers or funders of climate scientists—which eliminates most of the competition that would otherwise keep them scrupulously honest. While peer review (like the IPCC process) is treated as equivalent to the bible, it’s more like a report of a committee meeting (one that dissenters were not invited to). The government climate scientists use the peer review process to block criticism or alternative theories from being officially heard—as they were caught doing in the Climategate scandal.  The mainstream media go to the climate scientists as their ultimate source of authority, and propagate their opinions to the public. Very neat.

It is a loophole in the modern world. The process is called “science”, but works like a religion.  The media repeat what the experts say,  but are silent about much of the data, how it is collected, and what it means. The public wrongly assumes the conclusions were audited or checked by competing scientists and that journalists asked the scientists hard penetrating questions. It all gains the veneer of rigorous analysis. The public don’t complain when they are asked to pay for it all. An excellent con.

The warmist’s view is more like the hierarchy  in the days of the Pope v. Galileo, which, on pain of death by government, was:

  1. The Pope
  2. Papal scientists and theologians
  3. Lay people.

Of course, with the printing press and the subsequent reformation and enlightenment emerged the familiar hierarchy that brought great technological strides for mankind:

  1. Data (empirical evidence)
  2. Scientists
  3. Lay people.

But now the regulating class, the bureaucrats and the mainstream media, have lopped off that vital top layer and inserted their own layer of bought-and-paid-for scientists instead.

The way the climate change debate will eventually be resolved is that the traditional primacy of data will be re-asserted, if only because by the middle of the century people will have noticed that it isn’t several degrees warmer.

“It is a loophole in the modern world. The process is called “science”, but works like a religion.”

In the meantime, the mainstream media should be reminded that there is a higher authority than the government climate scientists—the data. If the investigative “journalists” were doing some investigating, they would go over the heads of the government climate scientists to the data itself. But the mainstream media have ignored the data to date, only showing the limited selection as interpreted and presented by the climate scientists, without questioning its source or the means by which it was obtained, or noting that it conflicts with the data that comes straight from the instruments.

Here is some relevant, high-quality data from our best instruments and impeccable sources showing that the climate models have failed all their major predictions. Publicly available too. Yet the mainstream media have not shown any of this data, ever, anywhere (as far as we know).

(That could be about to change in a small way. Joanne and I have minor roles on a reality tv show about climate where we insisted on showing some data on the Australian ABC.)

Example: Air temperature, aka “the temperature”. There are three sources of air temperature data: (1) UAH (satellite), (2) RSS (satellite), and (3) the records derived from the network of official land thermometers—GISS, NCDC, and HadCrut (over 90% of their raw data inputs are the same, they just process them in slightly different ways to arrive at slightly different results from each other).

The first two agree, say the warmest year was 1998, and that the warming trend stopped around 2000. The third source is quite different—it suggests  the warmest year was 2006 or 2010 (depending on who processes it) and the warming trend is continuing. But the land thermometers are obviously corrupt—for example, most of them are in artificially warming locations such as at airports, near air conditioning outlets, at sewage farms, or in urban areas where they get increasing heat from increased fuel use in buildings and cars and from all that concrete etc. Check out some photos for see for yourself.

Any temperature record that uses corrupted data is highly suspect, no matter how much the climate scientists process the raw data on their computers after the fact. (Did you know that they are still changing the temperature record for the 1970s, 30 years later, and always in the direction of making recent warming seem worse?)

But the climate scientists usually only present to the public the land thermometer records that include the corrupt land thermometers—and not even the raw data, but the data after they have very extensively adjusted and processed it. On the other hand, the satellites circle the earth 24/7, measuring the air temperature above broad swathes of land and ocean, covering all of the globe except near the poles, and are unbiased. Satellite measurements started in 1979; early problems with calibration have long since been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.

The mainstream media, using the climate scientists as their highest authority, almost always present only the land thermometer records and ignore the satellite data. For this they are culpable, because data is the highest authority—they should be showing the satellite data and investigating problems with land thermometers. It’s not as if we public are too dumb to understand that a thermometer bathing in the hot air from an air conditioner outlet is not measuring global warming.

Most media organizations are private, so they are under no obligation to show material relevant to both sides of major national policies. However  the government media organizations like the BBC, CBC and Australian ABC have charters requiring them to tell the truth and pretty much the whole truth—but their excuse is always that they say whatever the government climate scientists say, because, according to their political view of the world, the climate scientists are the “highest” authority.

Which gets us back to the critical issue of hierarchy of authority. At the moment it is as if the world is run by postmodern arts graduates who use government money and muscle to persuade people to overthrow that hard-won victory of the enlightenment, that data trumps everything else.

So when someone tells you that you should “believe in climate change” because “97% of climate scientists say”, just send them to this article.

 

8.5 out of 10 based on 118 ratings

206 comments to The Highest Authority in Science is the Data

  • #

    Excellent piece, thanx Jo and David.

    I also like this graph from NOAA showing the difference between the raw and adjusted data in the USHCN anomalies

    graph

    It seems almost all of the US warming is due to adjustments. The chances of all the adjustments being in the direction of ever increasing warming could be much the same as my chances of winning lotto.

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      A very interesting graph. Thank you for bringing it to attention.

      Many rural sites in the USA show slight cooling in the past forty years, and if that was the case generally, then that would be disguised in the cities by UHI, giving a flat line graph. But a flat line wouldn’t help “the cause”, hence the need for “adjustments”.

      What you should do with Lotto is obvious…adjust the winning result to match your choice. Then you will be “right” and rewarded with millions of dollars. But wouldn’t that make you a Warmist?

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Hmm,

      Do I detect a reasonable correlation between the temperature variation and the amount of funds invested in the derivative stock market over the same period?

      My hypothesis is that Climate Change is ultimately driven by the movement of equity, driven by capitalist activity.

      Where do I apply for research funding to investigate this further?

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      • #
        Winston

        Rereke,
        Isn’t that the irony. The anti-capitalists and environmentalists are making it easy for uber- capitalists to trade on fresh air, taking trillions from the middle class in the Western world to concentrate wealth to the banker classes, while simultaneously depriving the world’s poorest from any opportunity to ever improve their lot. So, ultimately, while railing against the most rapacious extremes of capitalism, they are facilitating them at the expense of honest aspirational members of society attempting to bridge the gap between the elite and the remainder, which would ultimately strengthen the fabric of an opportunistic meritocracy.

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        • #
          Ted O'Brien

          Winston, there is no irony. This is the anti capitalists’ modus operandi. Give the system enough rope to hang itself, then urge it to get out there and hang itself as quickly as possible.

          This was the driving force behind the Hawke government’s quite bizarre promotion of the activities of Alan Bond, with his gross abuse of the bank deregulation. Remember that three quarters of Australia’s banking system fell for it, while the NAB, which fought against that promotion, rose to become Australia’s biggest bank.

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      • #
        Dennis

        Capitalist activity attracted to a socialist political agenda.

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        • #
          Mark

          Yes, Dennis.

          Maurice Strong, who is behind this and many other UN scams, once described himself as being “socialist in ideology, capitalist in methodology”.

          Says it all, doesn’t it?

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    • #
      crakar24

      BH can i have a linkto that please?

      Thanks

      Crakar

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    • #

      What interests me most in all of this is that the manipulated temperature increase is so tiny, in fractions of a degree of the smallest scale (Fahrenheit), and here I want you not to think as people who have been looking at things like this for years, but from the view of someone, not necessarily interested all that much.

      They get shown the above graph that Baa Humbug has included.

      The most obvious thing here is that rising line.

      The average person doesn’t look at the scale, and if truth be told, most of them would not even bother to look closely, and then correlate the Y Axis especially, and note how the X Axis is written in a way that most people read, across the page, while that Y Axis, for the temperature, the title is written vertically.

      At first sight the (average) person looking at the graph will quickly scan the X Axis, and then without even bothering to check the awkwardly labelled Y Axis, (let alone the scale, let alone fully understanding what the scale actually is) he looks at the image, that fairly steeply rising chart.

      It gives the impression of a seemingly quite large rise, even though this is barely fractions of a degree … Fahrenheit.

      This same very clever depiction of what those pursuing this meme would like to have you believe is alive and well virtually everywhere, and here I’ll draw your attention to this chart for wind performance.

      Australian Wind Plant Performance 25 March 2012

      This is barely 4 weeks ago.

      Note when you open the page, what they want you to see is in the main window (naturally) and you see unlabelled X and Y Axis, and the total output of all those 24 Wind Plants (965 Towers) on the bottom chart there.

      Now scroll down a little. (I mean who would even bother)

      That next chart shows the total physical requirement for power being actually consumed for the same area covered by all the Wind Plants.

      Now specifically note the two X Axes on the top charts when compared to the bottom chart.

      And, honestly, unless it’s explained, what average person is going to understand fully what they are looking at.

      Note that for this day, and for almost all of it, those 965 towers at those 24 Wind Plants, barely struggled to generate 100MW in total for 18 hours, and for those 18 hours, that Wind percentage was 0.5% of actual physical requirement.

      Also, look at that bottom chart there.

      Note the small dip at around 4AM.

      That low point there is 17,000 MW.

      This means that for 24 hours of just this one day, at least 18,000MW was required ABSOLUTELY just to keep those 4 main States and the ACT running.

      The average for the year is around 21,000MW as that absolute 24/7/365 requirement.

      Not 15 Hours (Concentrating Solar) Not 8 Hours (Wind) Not 5 Hours (Solar PV) but 24 hours of every day.

      So, we think like people who already understand what we are looking at.

      We need to see it through the eyes of an average person, or even an impressionable school child, who will look at that above temperature chart and say:

      “Wow! Look at that rise. That’s scary!”

      Tony.

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      • #
        John Brookes

        But Tony, Baa wants you to think that it is a steep rise – because it is the rise in adjustments made to the raw data, and Baa wants you to think that if you took the adjustments away, there would be no temperature increase.

        But you aren’t fooled, you notice that its only 0.5F, or about 0.25C. Well done.

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        • #

          Hey Brookes, Baa doesn’t want you to think anything. Baa didn’t prepare the graph, NOAA did. Baa didn’t set the scales, NOAA did.

          Baa has a question for you. If you take away the “only 0.5F/0.25C” adjustments, how much warming is left, and why should we be worried about it enough to make wholesale changes to our economy and way of life?

          BAA WANTS A FRIGGING ANSWER THIS TIME BROOKES instead of your usual slinking away quietly when your intellectual ass is handed to you. 🙂

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        • #
          Bill

          Brookes,

          The adjustment of 0.28 C is from 1950 onward. By some accounts, like BEST, I thought the entire increase over 150 years is on the order of 0.8 C? At any rate, the NOAA temp record from 1950 onwards only shows 0.5 C warming so the adjustments account for more than half, perhaps as much as 60% of the warming.

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  • #
    Grumpy Old Man

    “The alarmists may have “experts”, but the skeptics have the data.” Jim Hansen. Nobel prize winner and habitual arrestee,is working on that.

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  • #
    DougS

    However the government media organizations like the BBC, CBC and Australian ABC have charters requiring them to tell the truth and pretty much the whole truth—but their excuse is always that they say whatever the government climate scientists say, because, according to their political view of the world, the climate scientists are the “highest” authority.

    It’s a fallacious argument, but is used often by AGW alarmists. It was used to ambush James Delingpole during an interview with Sir Paul Nurse – included in a one-sided BBC climate change ‘documentary’.

    By such logic, atheists, like Christopher Hitchens (deceased) and Richard Dawkins, haven’t got a leg to stand on.

    Higher authorities, such as the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury would be considered pre-eminent in this field and the views of dissenters – worthless.

    00

    • #

      Climate scientists are not credible on issues regarding… climate. At least the post 1990 vintage, who had to exhibit agreement with the Chicken Littles in order to get into the club. NO exceptions that I know of.

      Far far from being the great lab-coated experts to be trusted, they are the opposite. Let this be known.

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  • #
    Graeme No.3

    Baa Humbug
    A graph of USA rural v city temperatures can be found in

    http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Rate_of_Temp_Change_Raw_and_Adjusted_NCDC_Data.pdf
 

    Skepticalscience disagreed with it. (surprise!)

    But more support came from
    http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/urban-heat-island—world-tour-155.php

    I think you might consider getting a Lotto ticket after all. Not this week, I plan to win it.

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  • #
    pattoh

    RP is “not the Messiah just a very naughty boy”

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  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    I would put Atmospheric Physicists on the list, between Data and Climate Scientists.

    The term “Climate Scientist” is just a propaganda name for a whole rag-tag bunch of Sciences – many of them Social.

    In the real world they are simply Computer Modellers who are certainly skilled at writing algorithms, but lacking in understanding about the algorithms actually mean.

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  • #
    KR

    The data is definitely the authority.

    Now, looking at the data relative to the “the warming has stopped” myth, I would suggest reading this very interesting post by John Nielsen-Gammon. He took a look at temperatures for years classified as En Nino, La Nina, and otherwise, with trendlines.

    It’s noteworthy that all three classifications of years show near-identical, continuing increases. We just had a lot of La Nina years recently.

    As to the adjustments, and the tin-hat conspiracy claims – why not try computing the trends from the raw data, which is readily available. Use whatever classification of ‘rural’ you like (oddly enough, you’ll see the same trends), try different holdouts for ‘station quality’, as Watts and Fall did (no difference there), etc. If you get different results, then please, let everyone know… (crickets).

    [Moderators – I attempted to add an ‘Image’ using the editor here, I’m not seeing it on the preview…]

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    • #
      BobC

      KR, check out the graph Baa posted in reply#1.

      There’s 0.5 deg F ‘warming’ NOT in the raw data.

      Of course you see nothing unusual in the adjustments going only one way?

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      • #
        KR

        BobC – From the NOAA website, which was not linked earlier:

        Applying the Time of Observation adjustment (black line) resulted in approximately a 0.3F warming from the late 1960’s to the 1990’s. The shift from Cotton Region Shelters to the Maximum/Minimum Thermometer System in the mid-1980’s is clearly evident in the difference between the TOBS and the MMTS time series (red line). This adjustment created a small warming in the US annual time series during the mid to late 1980’s. Application of the Station History Adjustment Procedure (yellow line) resulted in an average increase in US temperatures, especially from 1950 to 1980. During this time, many sites were relocated from city locations to airports and from roof tops to grassy areas. This often resulted in cooler readings than were observed at the previous sites. When adjustments were applied to correct for these artificial changes, average US temperature anomalies were cooler in the first half of the 20th century and effectively warmed throughout the later half. Filling in missing data (blue line) produced cooler temperatures prior to 1915. Adjustments to account for warming due to the effects of urbanization (purple line) cooled the time series an average of 0.1F throughout the period of record.

        So – Which of these adjustments (for time of observation, equipment changes, location changes away from inner cities) do you disagree with? Do you have evidence that any of those adjustments were made incorrectly?

        You might also take a look at caerbannog’s anomaly reconstruction from only 85 sparsely spread rural stations:

        The results pretty convincingly demonstrate the following:

        1) UHI is a non-issue (I used only rural stations).

        2) Data “homogenization” is a complete non-issue (I used only raw temperature data).

        3) The global temperature record is incredibly redundant and robust — you can really throw away ~98 percent of the temperature stations and *still* confirm the NASA/GISS global temperature estimates.

        Claiming concerted efforts to distort all of the data, from all of the sources, is just unsupported paranoid nonsense.

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        • #
          Winston

          KR,
          In post #7, you state that Watts and co shows siting of thermometers and UHi effect has no effect on average temperatures and therefore is inconsequential to the rise in temperatures over the century, then at 7.1.1, you state that adjustments were necessary because temperature trends were effected by changing station locations to areas without UHI effects. These are mutually contradictory statements! Keep tap dancing, coz you are sounding less authoritative every time you open your mouth. Sometimes it is a tangled web we weave when we are trying to deceive.

          00

          • #
            KR

            Winston

            Watts and Fall found that site quality affected diurnal range (variability), but not trend. Adjustments for changes in site location (note, that’s something else entirely) are one of the adjustments made – and I have seen no evidence supporting consistent biasing error in those adjustments. .

            These are quite separate issues.

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          • #
            Winston

            “I’ve seen no evidence supporting consistent biasing error”
            Try this link which shows a remarkable level of consistency across the board
            http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Scientific/UHI.htm

            00

          • #
            KR

            Winston

            An interesting link – one I have not seen before. But I would note that Goodrich’s comment applies only to California – very limited. For global issues, the BEST data on UHI showed:

            a slope of -0.19°C ±
            0.19 / 100yr (95% confidence), opposite in sign to that expected if the urban heat island effect was adding anomalous warming to the record. The small size, and its negative sign, supports the key conclusion of prior groups that urban warming does not unduly bias estimates of recent global temperature change.

            (Emphasis added)

            Local effects are just that – local. Not global.

            00

          • #
            Winston

            Adjustments for changes in site location (note, that’s something else entirely) are one of the adjustments made – and I have seen no evidence supporting consistent biasing error in those adjustments.

            I don’t deny (as most skeptics don’t either) at all that the globe has warmed to some extent in the last 150 years. One would have expected it to be so after the LIA, unless of course you buy into the warmist BS the Columbus discovering America caused altered land use causing the LIA (I would hope, KR, that you are not that deluded or there is really no hope for you)! So clearly cosmological and solar/ planetary forces are responsible for the natural climate variations we see in the Minoan, RWP, WP, MWP, LIA etc. So therefore this is an assertion of quantity and apportionment of effect on temperature rather than evidence of whether warming actually is occurring or has occurred, or not. Relatively over the last 11,000 years, the global temperatures are unlikely to be anything especially out of the norm. Then overlying this trend which is probably upwards by some degree, is alterations and omissions in siting which clearly negate the validity of the evidence you claim to hang your hat upon, plus alterations in land use which are not just urban so really the term UHI is a misnomer and is a method of obfuscating the non-CO2 anthropogenic effects which occur in both urban and non-urban environments.

            My admittedly unsubstantiated belief is that alteration in siting of thermometers provides an opportunity for “believers” to summarily adjust the readings in the direction which confirms their bias, whether deliberately or not. Even if a 0.1 deg F adjustment upwards is warranted, what is to stop said adjustment from being allocated as 0.3 or 0.4 deg F and inherently biasing the results by a factor of 2 or 3. Given some of the poor science I have read masquerading as cutting edge climatology (Mann’s “Hockey stick”, Kemp et al for the most egregious examples), why should anyone believe anything that is proposed by the establishment?

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          • #
            Winston

            Sorry that should say Minoan WP, Roman WP……… God I hate computers sometimes. I’ll be glad to go back to campfires and candlelight, well on second thought… maybe not.

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        • #
          Graeme No.3

          So where were these stations? From his map the 6 australian ones are Bunbury, Geelong, Derby, Lismore?, Karatha? and somewhere in the Queensland outback between Hughendon and Mt. Isa.

          Given the growth and current size of the first 2, I would hardly call them rural.

          As for using Greymouth as the sole representative for NZ; well it is rural, though hardly representative. I assume the 2 nearby NZ are supposed to be Chatham Island and Macquarrie Island, but I have my doubts about the accuracy of his plotting.

          He has found 10 long term stations in the Pacific (and 1 in the N&S Atlantic, the Azores? ) and a surprising number in Antarctica and the Arctic.

          If he calculated this graph in the Southern Hemisphere, it must have been around Christmas time, when the cherries are ripe for picking.

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          • #
            KR

            Graeme No.3

            Those are pretty reasonable questions. I would suggest you ask him! Here’s a link where you can contact caerbannog on this topic.

            Better yet – repeat his experiment, support your choices of stations, give your results, and show why your choices are better. He said it only took him about a day of work to do with publicly available tools; should be easy.

            As the opening post stated – Data is the highest authority. Present some!

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          • #
            John Brookes

            You’ll have a problem finding stations that Watts considers “rural”. He had a post where a thermometer at (if I remember correctly) Eucla airport (or was it Ceduna airport) was classified as “urban”.

            Those of you who have driven across the south of Australia can confirm that it is very difficult to imagine any urban heat island effect from either of these bustling metropoli.

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        • #
          cohenite

          The caerbannog anomaly reconstruction looks interesting. The ‘rural’ stations do not have the 1998 spike and show a marked decline since about 2003; they also show much greater and more pronounced fluctuations than the GISS record.

          But then GISS is an outlier compared to the other temperature indices; at least until Crutem4 came along:

          http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1998/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1998/trend

          As for

          unsupported paranoid nonsense

          , that is garbage KR; the pro-AGW croups have too many runs on the board in terms of exaggeration, lies and obfuscation.

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          • #
            KR

            cohenite

            You claim that the temperature records are deliberately manipulated? Biased for some agenda? Data is (as claimed above) the authority here.

            “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” – Hitchens

            Show your data. Show your evidence that the data on temperature supports your hypothesis – without, I’ll add, cherry-picks of statistically insignificant short time periods.

            Otherwise, your assertion is quite dismissible.

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        • #
          cohenite

          KR says:

          Adjustments for changes in site location (note, that’s something else entirely) are one of the adjustments made – and I have seen no evidence supporting consistent biasing error in those adjustments. .

          Well, you are blind:

          New Zealand

          Australia

          The Watts paper on siting bias did find an impact on the Diurnal temperature Range; however it has also been misrepresented by such people as Tamino; Watts concluded that by getting rid of the colder sites the average temp over the whole site range would be warmer; this is nothing to do with trend which will stay the same; but if the trend is the same but at a higher temperature then that means the temperature is warmer even thought the trend has not changed.

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          • #
            Kevin Moore

            Sattelite data is a measure of Earths radiant heat. The normal weather measuring box is about [I think] 1.3 metres off the ground. There is a big variation between ground temperature and 1.3 metres above it. How are all the variables reconciled?

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        • #
          BobC

          KR

          ”’

          Claiming concerted efforts to distort all of the data, from all of the sources, is just unsupported paranoid nonsense.

          Really KR? Why are the adjustments always in one direction? Perhaps we are dealing with an “adjustment selection” problem here? And, why do they keep “adjusting” past temperatures? Can’t they get it right?

          Why is almost all of the warming evident only in the ‘adjusted’ data, and not in the raw data? Haven’t we figured out how to measure temperature yet?

          When you look at specific stations and see stuff like the one GHCN station for the Himalayas having a 5.5 deg C / century “adjustment” added to it to convert a cooling trend (raw data) into a warming trend (adjusted data), you (apparently) just see normal, unbiased researchers doing normal science.

          Doesn’t exactly give me a warm feeling about all their adjustments based on unverified assumptions (like the “time of measurement” adjustments).

          Funny, I see the same ‘normal government-funded science’ at work — except I have some personal experience about how government-funded science works. It’s pretty clear that anyone who wrote a funded report saying the Himalayas were cooling (or that you couldn’t tell with just one station, and that one at 4000 feet altitude) wouldn’t get any follow-on funding.

          The glaciers, however, aren’t cooperating — not being sustained by government funding.

          But, according to KR: “Nothing to see here folks. Move along. Just normal (post modern) science at work.”

          We get it, KR — you’re a lemming who won’t question “authority”, even when the fraud’s obvious. But we’re not lemmings — we’re scientists and engineers who can analyze and think for ourselves — why don’t you get that?

          (Never mind — I just answered my own question.)

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          • #
            crakar24

            Thats the question that has always puzzled me Bob, firstly how can one continue to adjust the temps in such a fashion and yet still call it science afterall we are simply measuring the temp surely it cannot be that hard but secondly and more to the current point how could someone faced with all this evidence of tampering/incompetence still believe all is above board?

            Surely someone who is truly interested in the science could only arrive at the one conclusion, the science is either corrupt or incompetent but definately not accurate. Bob i do not believe KR is a lemming i believe he is a liar and has his own agenda i strongly suggest you/we all ignore his lying crap from now on.

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          • #
            KR

            BobC

            Looking at your links:

            * Why are the adjustments always in one direction? See the actual data, there are adjustments in both directions.

            * Why is almost all of the warming evident only in the ‘adjusted’ data, and not in the raw data? – Referring to Spencer’s rather odd urban heat adjustment, “supported” by some of the worst correlations I’ve ever seen? Spencer has a fair bit of work ahead of him backing up his claims.

            * …the one GHCN station for the Himalayas having a 5.5 deg C / century “adjustment” added… – Data from a single station. Just one. All of the data is available – if you can show consistent biasing of a significant portion of the data, through adjustments that you can show are unjustified, then and only then might you have a point.

            * The glaciers, however, aren’t cooperating Really? Take a look at actual data, also the report here from the World Glacier Monitoring Service. As of 2009 the vast majority of glaciers are retreating.

            That’s 0 for 4, BobC. Enough said.

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          • #
            crakar24

            KR,

            * Why is almost all of the warming evident only in the ‘adjusted’ data, and not in the raw data? – Referring to Spencer’s rather odd urban heat adjustment, “supported” by some of the worst correlations I’ve ever seen? Spencer has a fair bit of work ahead of him backing up his claims.

            Is your rebutal of Spencer’s work peer reviewed and published? If not it should and will be ignored.

            * …the one GHCN station for the Himalayas having a 5.5 deg C / century “adjustment” added… – Data from a single station. Just one. All of the data is available – if you can show consistent biasing of a significant portion of the data, through adjustments that you can show are unjustified, then and only then might you have a point.

            Yes it is data from a single station and yet you have no idea if this is the only station with such a large error and yet you come here and sit in judgment of others when they question the validity of the temp record. Dont sit here a demand unto others the very things you have not done or are not prepared to do your self.

            * The glaciers, however, aren’t cooperating – Really? Take a look at actual data, also the report here from the World Glacier Monitoring Service. As of 2009 the vast majority of glaciers are retreating.

            Really?

            http://iceagenow.info/2012/04/glaciers-asia%e2%80%99s-largest-mountain-range-bigger/

            http://iceagenow.info/2012/04/arctic-ice-extent-shatters-records/

            http://iceagenow.info/2012/02/himalayas-lost-ice-10-years-study-shows/

            http://iceagenow.info/2012/01/glaciers-growing-kilimanjaro-guide-insists/

            http://iceagenow.info/2011/10/arctic-ice-volume-growing/

            And for the US look here

            http://iceagenow.info/category/glaciers-are-growing-around-the-world/california-washington-alaska/

            Remember its always about the data

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            BobC

            So, I give KR an example of data fraud and he responds:

            KR
            April 26, 2012 at 11:33 am

            Data from a single station. Just one. All of the data is available – if you can show consistent biasing of a significant portion of the data, through adjustments that you can show are unjustified, then and only then might you have a point.

            So…fraud isn’t fraud unless it involves “a significant portion of the data”? Not even when the ‘researchers’ who fraudulantly ‘adjusted’ the Kathmandu data have also ‘adjusted’ hundreds (if not thousands) of other stations?

            KR, you are a con-artists dream — otherwise known as a “sucker”. Don’t go to a used car lot without a chaperone.

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            Mark D.

            KR, you are a con-artists dream — otherwise known as a “sucker”. Don’t go to a used car lot without a chaperone.

            Excuse me, some of us used car salesmen would like to make a living too!!!!

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            KR

            BobC

            You provided a link to an older (2010) WUWT post, where Eschenbach linked to internal GISS datasets.

            In a fascinating coincidence, I found that I could also look at the GISS data for that station, the data used in GISS analysis, which shows something quite different than Eschenbach did.

            The record after GISS homogeneity links from dataset “14” – The 2010 WUWT post is showing dataset “2”. Eschenbach also only shows the data through 1980, even though it runs up through the present (with some gaps due to station data availability). And the data actually used in GISS reports does not show the slope change Eschenbach claims affects the results.

            Hmmm; perhaps the homogeneity adjustments, the station location, time of observation adjustments, etc., actually work? Perhaps Eschenbach was looking at the wrong dataset, one with incomplete or only partial adjustments?

            Back to what I’ve said several times in this thread: If you think there is some conspiracy consistent bias in the data, show your evidence. Again – assertions without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, and you haven’t presented any evidence of a consistent bias that would distort the temperature record.

            Also note that all of the temperature records (including the satellite tropospheric records, albeit with somewhat lower slopes, as expected from the physics) are showing warming trends. NOAA, GISS, HADCRUT, JMA (Japanese Meteorological Agency), even RSS and UAH – while there are some small differences (described here), they are basically in agreement.

            Not just one, but all of them.

            If you don’t agree with the data, if you think whatever adjustments are applied are incorrect, show your work, your data. You simply haven’t done that…

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            BobC

            Geeze KR, do you ever listen to yourself?

            KR
            April 28, 2012 at 7:52 am

            Perhaps Eschenbach was looking at the wrong dataset, one with incomplete or only partial adjustments?

            I’m sure if he had been looking at the fully adjusted dataset, it would agree with the published data.

            The point was that the raw data told a different story — all of the ‘warming’ was in the adjustments.

            Hmmm; perhaps the homogeneity adjustments, the station location, time of observation adjustments, etc., actually work?

            I have no doubt that they work exactly as intended (and as revealed in the Climategate emails).

            … you haven’t presented any evidence of a consistent bias that would distort the temperature record.

            Perhaps you could be more specific — exactly how many instances of fraud does it take to consider a dataset contaminated?

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            KR

            BobC

            KR
            April 28, 2012 at 7:52 am

            Perhaps Eschenbach was looking at the wrong dataset, one with incomplete or only partial adjustments?

            I’m sure if he had been looking at the fully adjusted dataset, it would agree with the published data.

            From what I can see, Eschenbach was looking at neither the raw (which did not show those effects) nor the final (which also did not show those effects) data. He was looking at some kind of interim data.

            Which means his post was not an accurate representation of either the raw or final data.

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        Jake

        If you look at where this station is situated one would have to say that UHI is a factor, smack bang in between houses. Didn’t use to be like that of course. So would that influence the temperature readings?
        A sort of then and now. A believers dream really, of course it will show warming in a position like that. That would not be the reason it is included in the argument would it?
        This station should get a fail.

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        John Brookes

        There appears to be a disontinuity in that data. The plunge in temperatures in the late 40s and early 50s looks anomalous.

        Still, it would be nice to know why the data was adjusted.

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        KR

        The initial data showing this discontinuity is found here – the discontinuity is at a double station record change between ~1948 and 1960. The final (with adjustments, as actually used by GISS) is found here.

        There is no discontinuity in the final data – I suspect that homogenization with nearby stations and corrections of local record offsets were responsible.

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        KR

        Adjustments for the De Bilt station are described here. In 1950 there was a move of the station from mid-town to an empty field (“relocation combined with a transition of large open hut to a wooden Stevenson screen (September 1950)”), as indicated by the “Sensor location moves in De Bilt” image shown here.

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      cohenite

      why not try computing the trends from the raw data

      Good advice KR; from 1998, by all measures a land-mark year;

      http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1998/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/trend/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend

      The interesting thing is the decline in RSS and HadCrut3 and the sligh increase in UAH and the ridiculous increase in Crutem4.

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        KR

        cohenite

        And as I noted above, looking at all of the data is rather more informative.

        I notice your link fails to show the data and their variability, and also starts in one of the strongest El Nino episodes on record. Which appears to be carefully selected data, or Cherry Picking:

        …suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of which is the confirmation bias.

        Examining, again, all of the data shows multiple periods of decadal flats and steep rises. Along with a continuing trend.

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          John Brookes

          Stop being reasonable KR. Unless there is a continuous, lock-step correlation between temperature and CO2, then it is all a load of bollocks. Every single decrease, or flat period of temperature data completely disproves AGW. Don’t you know anything?

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            crakar24

            Strange……………..Al Gore showed me a lock step correlation, Mike Mann and his stick described a lock step correlation are you JB now saying these guys are wrong? Interesting…………….

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            catamon

            Every single decrease, or flat period of temperature data completely disproves AGW.

            Good to see you with the program Mr Brookes. 🙂

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            Mark D.

            JB hilariously says:

            Unless there is a continuous, lock-step correlation between temperature and CO2, then it is all a load of bollocks.

            Dumbass, do you know what “correlation” means?

            No. And all that straying off of correlation means NOT CORRELATED.

            I should be laughing more…….

            Of course you are from the camp that claims winter = warming and both drought and flood = warming.

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            BobC

            John Brookes
            April 26, 2012 at 4:40 pm · Reply
            Stop being reasonable KR. Unless there is a continuous, lock-step correlation between temperature and CO2, then it is all a load of bollocks. Every single decrease, or flat period of temperature data completely disproves AGW. Don’t you know anything?

            Good question to ask of yourself, JB. If a perfect correlation between temperature and CO2 existed, that still wouldn’t prove increasing CO2 caused the temperature to increase. For example, moving the needle on my speedometer doesn’t cause the car to go faster despite a perfect observed correllation between the two.

            It is up to those who want to remake the global economy and suppress freedom to prove that they are right — not up to me to prove they are wrong. The AGW alarmists are short on attempted validation (other than, say, KR’s meaningless drumbeat that it IS TOO warming), precisely because there isn’t any.

            Attempts to actually validate climate models have the expected result — climate is no more predictable for 100 years (or even 5 years) than weather.

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        KR

        Readers:

        As an illustration of cohenites serious case of cherry-picking, here are the data sets he plotted shown as 12-month running means (to average out winter/summer varations). Note that every one of these plots starts from an exceptional 1998 peak, as seen here.

        Shame on you, cohenite.

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        KR

        Readers:

        A closer look at cohenites post reveals even more cherry-picking – HADCRUT3 data [3, not 4] (HadCRUT4 is out, available, and includes more of the Earth’s surface – it should be better information!). HADCRUT4 data shows a slope of 0.083 C/decade, even for the short period starting in the 1998 El Nino, one of the largest on record.

        Again, a horrible, but rather illustrative, example of cherry-picking. Well worth learning from…

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          Ross

          KR
          HADCRUT 4 results –these are the ones where Jones and co. added in extra stations from the Arctic regions for the early/mid 20th century and adjusted the data for them even though the Icelandic climatologists had said there was not need for adjustment as they had already been adjusted??
          ( These added stations I presume are some of the stations that were removed from the data in the late 80’s early 90’s because they did not suit the story!!)
          But even if we ignore the adjusted “science” you present a figure of 0.08C/decade or 0.8C per century !!! Because of less than 1 C per century we are expected to agree with trillions of dollars of dubious policy decisions and not question it? You guys wonder why you are losing the debate with the general public ??

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            KR

            Ross

            The issues I have seen raised on station count have (IIRC) been WRT the GISS data.

            HADCRUT3, on the other hand, has been rather consistently criticized for deriving their trends from a more limited set of stations, covering a more limited area than GISS or GHCN, and in particular not including much high latitude data – where polar amplification expected from increased GHG’s can be expected.

            That translates into a low bias in the HADCRUT3 data – limited regions, low coverage in areas that other stations, other records, indicate are changing rapidly.

            The big change between HADCRUT3 and HADCRUT4 is the inclusion of areas not covered by HADCRUT3 – more data, more stations, including high latitude Russian and Arctic information. And including that additional information (more, not less) shows a higher trend.

            I honestly cannot understand a preference for less data, except in support of confirmation bias.

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            cohenite

            Steve McIntyre had a good post on temperature station coverage and how it has altered to fit in with the ‘requirements’ of the AGW meme:

            http://climateaudit.org/2008/02/10/historical-station-distribution/

            Note the difference between 1985 and 2005!

            KR has raised a number of issues, primarily the lack of ‘manipulation’ of temperature records to correlate the record with AGW theory. This is simply untrue and I will refer to more examples in another post.

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            KR says

            The big change between HADCRUT3 and HADCRUT4 is the inclusion of areas not covered by HADCRUT3 – more data, more stations, including high latitude Russian and Arctic information. And including that additional information (more, not less) shows a higher trend.

            Including Arctic temps shows a higher trend due to polar amplification ha? Well lets (cherry) pick a few. I’m sure KR can pick a few additional ones himself.

            Here is fairbanks Alaska

            here is University Alaska

            image

            Here is Nome Alaska

            image

            Here is Kotzebue Alaska

            image

            Here is Barter Island

            Here is barrow Alaska

            The above are all UNadjusted temp trends. WHERE’S THE AMPLIFICATION?

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            cohenite

            Well I was going to do another post on GISS manipulation of temperature data but I am spoilt for choices; I understand Frank Lasner is compiling an exhaustive history of such manipulations but in the meantime here are a couple of good ones:

            http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/giss/hansen-giss-1940-1980.gif

            http://www.rockyhigh66.org/stuff/USHCN_revisions_wisconsin.htm

            They’re always hotter.

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          “HADCRUT4 data shows a slope of 0.083 C/decade” ! OMG , if that’s true , we’re looking at another 0.8k in a hundred years like we’ve seen in the last hundred plus , a change from about 288k up to 288.8 now and maybe 289.6 by 2110 .

          One thing I like about Lindzen’s work is he emphasizes what minute near noise level variations all this brouhaha is about .

          I got disgusted with the alarmists not because of the questionable data , but the mathematically amateurish fraud that the atmospheric GH effect is on the order of 33k . What needs to be explained by our surface and atmospheric spectra is the less than 10k we are warmer than a gray ball in our orbit .

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    As far as the data… on the most important thing on the anthropogenic CO2 caused climate warming theory … CO2’s cause and effect relationship with temperature, the data is NOT supportive. Indeed, the foundation of the whole AGW conjecture was 100% based on this deceptive correlation. And now this foundation is gone. Despite a controversial ambiguous theoretical greenhouse gas model suggesting CO2 has warming effects, there is -no- empirical evidence that it does. None.
    See (and share) algor repeat the fundamental ipcc deception on CO2 in this 3 minute video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg

    Obviously if CO2 doesn’t cause discernible or significant climate scale warming, the whole CO2-caused theory is pure bunk. No evidence that CO2 causes warming, none. As significant, there no evidence that current temperatures are unusual in any way. The hockey stick has been debunked as well.
    CO2 does not cause warming of any significance, and it’s unusually warm either.
    In other words, there is nothing wrong with the climate, and CO2 has nothing to do with it. We need someone to spearhead of well-funded (or self-funding via viewer contributions) advertising campaign that bypasses the layers of biased “scientists” and the liberal MSM, and concisely speaks directly to laypeople, pointing out the 2 key points: temps are not unusual, and CO2 is not significant. End this farce, get the public on our side en masse!

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    Tom

    Good timing, Jo. Using the ABC and Fairfax (the modern Australian headquarters of political disinformation), the IPCC-aligned climate science establishment is today launching what looks like its last attempt to win over a sceptical Australian public, led by propagandist Stephan Lewandowsky, whose misstatements of the “evidence” should be an embarrassment to the University of Western Australia (which appears not to care). The academic elite of grant-chasers he represents has sided with the ultra-left of Australian politics in a desertion of its duty to work in the public interest and has shown it is utterly untrustworthy. I have no doubt their latest propaganda is a waste of effort. They will be believed by the public only when they start telling the truth. Contrary to the elitist view of the world, people are not stupid.

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    • #

      I think the inability to comment on the article Stephan Lewandowsky wrote combined with its almost zero social uptake indicates that he has lost in all senses already…

      Afraid of a bit of debate Stephan? or are we not worthy enough to be considered able to carry a debate with you? You should give it a go, you might be rather surprised..

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    Paul Deacon

    Jo – the 97% of scientists is based IIRC on a poll of over 3,000 scientists, of which 77 responded, and of these 77, 75 agreed that the world had warmed since 1950. This is what warmists call a consensus. Never mind that they are using the fallacious “argumentum ad populum” – they can’t even do that without lying.

    All the best

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    CHIP

    I think what this all boils down to at the bottom line is that the GISS temperature data constituting the basic substance of the proposed evidence for CAGW cannot be checked or tested comprehensively and independently. And I think that fact places it beyond the scope and jurisdiction of real science, in the same realm as religion and political ideology. I am continually amazed that Warmists act as though the scientists promoting CAGW are squeaky clean even when they go as far as openly admitting blackballing skeptical scientists from the peer-review process and unscrupulously omitting their contributions too, as Santer did in AR4 2007. CAGW has spiralled into a full blown religion and the faith of its adherents isn’t faltered by anything anymore. Even if Hansen came out next week and told everyone it was BS and CO2 was nothing we had to fear, it probably wouldn’t make the slightest difference to most CAGW-advocates. They would carry on screaming “Wolf”.

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    Alexander K

    Excellent article, Jo, but I suspect that the politicians are worse (more scientifically ignorant and corrupt) than us ordinary citizens have realised up to now. I have recently spent almost a decade in the UK and I found that a lack of ethics in public life there is endemic, which has made me cast a rather more jaundiced eye at our Antipodean pollies; I find them to be not significantly more ethical than their UK counterparts.
    As so many have already said, ‘follow the money’!

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    Another Ian

    Chip

    The reaction to this might provide a test of your hypothesis

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/23/breaking-james-lovelock-back-down-on-climate-alarm/

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    Neville

    See the fairfax press BS on tonights show here. What biased rubbish these silly fools come up with, unbelievable.

    http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/sceptics-must-start-warming-to-the-reality-of-climate-science-20120425-1xlhh.html

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    Bruce of Newcastle

    Quote from Marx:

    Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?

    I think they knew how men work better than green climateers do. Mendacity after all has the word “men” in it.

    PS, before you all jump on me I’m quoting the other Marx. And ok, ok they didn’t actually hyperlink the temperature record in Duck Soup.

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    Steve Case

    It’s not just the air temperature, here’s what happened to those thousands of ARGO floats that were dropped in the ocean to evaluate temperatures in the abyss:

    In March 2008, Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory did report that the Argo system show no ocean warming since it started in 2003. “There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant,” Willis has stated.

    In an article from November 5, 2008, Josh Willis states that the world ocean actually has been warming since 2003 after removing Argo measurement errors from the data and adjusting the measured temperatures with a computer model his team developed

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_(oceanography)

    That’s what Wikipedia said January 30, 2011 when I saved it.

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      BobC

      In an article from November 5, 2008, Josh Willis states that the world ocean actually has been warming since 2003 after removing Argo measurement errors from the data and adjusting the measured temperatures with a computer model his team developed

      Yep, no matter how much money is spent on temperature measurement methods, they are never right until the “politically-correct” adjustments are made.

      Note that Willis never actually checked on any ARGOS floats to see if his deductions about errors were correct. That might not have given the right answer and needed “correcting” itself. Better not to buy trouble, when you have (finally) gotten the “right” answer.

      Willis would have flunked Sophomore physics at the small school I went to, if he tried to “adjust” his lab data the way he describes doing the ARGOS data.

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    observa

    Typically you read the headline ‘Antarctic ice melting from warm water’ and note the 3 metre sea level rise prediction within. Where would we be without that, albeit alarmists like Flannery buy waterfront property?

    Then you drill down into the article to find out what taxeating Hamish has to say about his ice gazing. Well not actually ice gazing but pictures of ice gazing but remember folks-

    ‘The western chunk of Antarctica is losing seven metres of its floating ice sheet each year. Until now, scientists were not exactly sure how it was happening and whether or how man-made global warming might be a factor.’

    Fanfare of trumpets and it’s Hamish to the rescue folks-

    ‘The answer, according to a study published overnight in the journal Nature, is that climate change plays an indirect role – but one that has larger repercussions than if Antarctic ice merely were melting from warmer air.

    Hamish Pritchard, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey, said research using an ice-gazing NASA satellite showed that warmer air alone could not explain what was happening to Antarctica. A more detailed examination found a chain of events that explained the shrinking ice shelves.

    Twenty ice shelves showed signs that they were melting from warm water below. Changes in wind currents pushed that relatively warmer water closer to and beneath the floating ice shelves. The wind change probably is caused by a combination of factors, including natural weather variation, the ozone hole and man-made greenhouse gases, Mr Pritchard said by phone.’

    But what effect do the alien space rays have Hamish? That is the burning question on everyone’s lips now.
    And we actually pay these people?

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    Ross James

    This is simply the weakest and full of Ad Hom. article I ever read on this site.

    Ross J.

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    Kevin Moore

    In the troposphere is CO2 perfectly mixed or is the mixture variable?

    Are warmists virtually saying that CO2 works like a sheet of glass allowing energy to pass through but disallowing convection? If so, how close to the ground is that barrier? Then as warmists say more energy reaches the Earth than leaves it,like a greenhouse, then how hot can a greenhouse get?

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    John Nelson

    A correction if I may Joanna. The Reformation was the cradle of modern Science precisely because the hierarchy you mention was applied in the religious sphere as well.

    The data (Biblical text)
    The ministry
    The lay people (who were to test what the ministry said against the data)

    Prior to that it was:

    The pope
    The priests
    The lay people
    with the data (Bible) given lip service to provide an appearance of respectability.

    One of the great achievements of the Reformation was to put objective data above a fallible magisterium. Following this lead the same thinking was applied to the physical world. The Enlightenment went beyond this by making human reason the ultimate arbiter of all truth, not content to confine itself to the empirical sciences.


    Thanks. Interesting – Jo

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      John Nelson

      Furthermore the lay people were forbidden access to the data. The Bible was on the list of prohibited books. It was necessary to do this to ‘hide the decline’ from apostolic purity of doctrine and worship.

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    Greg Cavanagh

    Not mentioned are the models. I would have stated it as follows:

    1.Model Data (computer generated data pretending to be empirical data)
    2.Climate scientists
    3.Other scientists
    4.Lay people.

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    Terry Dactil

    The Met’s principle research scientist John Mitchell told us back in 2011…
    Quote:

    “People underestimate the power of models. Observational evidence is not very useful,” adding, “Our approach is not entirely empirical.”

    Adjusting the data to fit the model gets great results.
    It is a bit like target shooting where you draw the target after firing and put the bullseye where the bullet hits.
    See. Perfect accuracy!
    Now can I have some research grant money?

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    Faye of Fingal Head

    Message to the Climate Change mob:

    No matter how hard you try; what new PR campaign you foist; how much money is soaked up by you; what massaged “science” you announce; how scary your predictions; the weather/nature/empirical evidence will beat you every time. The longer you leave it to admit the con, the harder it will be for you to resign with any dignity.

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      Sonny

      Spot on!

      These climate scientists who manipulate data and sell rubbish science are committing acts of fraud. They’ll do whatever it takes to keep the funding coming which means hiding the failure of CAGW theory for as long as possible.

      The problem is this… You can re-write the history of temperature change but people will always look outside. If it’s freezing cold, people will not believe that global warming is happening. This is a problem for the warmists. They havn’t yet found a way of manipulating and fudging reality.

      Keep trying!

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        You can re-write the history of temperature change but people will always look outside.

        I wish. What actually happens, is that the victors in any war get to write the history of that war. While the Catastrophists were winning, they could make up the story as they went along.

        In doing so, they were relying on the fact that the general population have a, “Well they won that battle, so their version of events must be right”, view of history (encouraged by the education system).

        That is why this battle isn’t going to end any time soon. They had no war apart from the story, and when they started shooting themselves in the foot, and suffered from a bit of friendly fire, and generally failed to keep it all together, then people started questioning the story itself, and they so also started questioning what the story was about. That was the point where the Catastrophists started loosing the war.

        But it isn’t over yet. While the Catastrophists keep fighting, they still have a chance of writing part of the history. If they give up, everything they have worked for (including the not inconsiderable salaries) has been all for naught. If they do the mea culpa, they are dead and will be buried in history alongside the phrenologists. (That will happen anyway, but not within their current lifetimes).

        This is why “KR” keeps on keeping on with his cherry picking of partial references, supported by loaded questions that place the burden of proof on others. He and his mates have nowhere else to go. It may be pathetic, but it is all they have, poor dears.

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    Kinkykeith

    Hi David and Jo,

    I would have to disagree about placing “Climate Scientists” just below the data in the order of importance.

    They are obviously very adept at driving a computer but have little knowledge of “Models” and correct procedures that are essential for all models.

    They are obviously “self taught” regards models and refuse to bring in chemical engineers or metallurgists or others who understand models to help and advise because they would be exposed as frauds.

    Models must be tested and shown to function correctly. If they cant do this then, as I have said before, they are not models but simply a work in progress.

    A “work in progress” cannot be used to support guesses or supposition or wishful thinking.

    Back to the ranking scale: I would suggest that there are many better qualified to fill the second spot, Climate Scientists are basically enthusiastic Environmentalists.

    🙂

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      Sonny

      They are invariably paid by government for their services.
      Have you heard of the expression “He who pays the piper calls the tune?”
      Well, these “climate scientists” are being paid for a very specific moraly repugnant tune that is deafening to all who are not profiting from the scam. (I would say that climate scientists who fall into the alarmist camp are some of the most despicable, morally corrupt “professionals” in modern times. Just like some accountants engage in “creative accountancy”, these guys specialise in “creative climatology”. They are essentially agents of government whose services are elicited to help sell deeply unpopular environmental policies.

      When our scientists are directly employed by government (I.e the BOM, CSIRO)
      The science will always be subservient to the politics.

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    MattB

    Ok so you list 1 through 4 as follows:

    1) Data (empirical evidence)
    2) Climate scientists
    3) Other scientists
    4) Lay people.

    But it appears to me you want the interpretation of those in (4) to trump those in (2)?

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      Ha HA ha Mattb, you are hysterical. After three years of reading this site, you haven’t noticed I post Data? Furthermore, I have never said people should listen to me because “I’m a scientist”, I’ve always been careful to make the point that it doesn’t matter how many Nobel prizes skeptical scientists have, or that they outnumber believer-scientists 10:1, that doesn’t prove anything about the climate. people should look at the data.

      And when groups 1, 3, and 4 all come to the same conclusion, why keep paying group 2 to fiddle the data and pretend 28 million weather balloons are wrong?

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      MattB,

      We notice that you’ve been missing for a few days.

      I addressed a Comment to you specifically in the Post of Joanne’s three Posts back.

      Perhaps you might have a look at it and see if you may be able to provide an answer.

      Link to Comment

      Tony.

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      Llew Jones

      Climate Science is one discipline where educated lay people may just be in a better position to look objectively at the data than committed, activist, alarmist scientists.

      Given the past inability of this class of scientist to get any weather/climate predictions right lay people are likely to also question the validity of their science and how it can be distinguished from say tea cup reading.

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    Tom

    There is a marvellously simple, six-paragraph letter on Page 67 of today’s Australian Financial Review by former CSIRO physicist John Reid (“Science not always right”) that explains “the so-called ‘climate science’ as put forward forward by the IPCC is no more a science than homeopathy or astrology”.
    Unfortunately, the letter is behind the AFR paywall, but Reid, now retired and able to talk frankly on the issue, explained the lack of science in climatology and climate modelling in particular in a 2009 article in Quadrant.

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      John Brookes

      He wrote in Quadrant? That has about the same credibility as Green Left Weekly, doesn’t it?

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        Tom

        JB, I was mightily impressed with Reid’s clarity of expression, which is rare among science professionals – not where his writing was published. I see you’ve decided to go through this thread and drop deflective “chaff” wherever you can maximise confusion and second-guessing. If you were as devoted to truth and the public interest as you are to obfuscation and the defence of your mates’ public funding, you would be someone I could respect. But you are just a troll and stand for the same evil I see in white-collar criminals.

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    Neville

    Nick Minchin seems happy with the result of tonights ABC program and fairness shown by the ABC.
    If he’s right it will certainly be a first for the ABC in reference to AGW. But I’ll believe it when I see it.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/why_not_a_single_sceptical_scientist_on_the_abc/#commentsmore

    I’m dubious about the stacking of the panel on the later Q&A show (9.30 to 10.30) after the screening of the video an hour earlier.
    I hope Bolt is wrong , but I doubt it. But where is GAIA Timmy, surely he’s the best person to explain the govt’s position? Isn’t he the top man elected to explain the science to Aussies?

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    Andrew McRae

    I can’t be the only one curious as to how the ABC’s Klimate Kommissars will give recent frigid forcings a solar shave and a Mann-made manicure in tonight’s “I Can Change Your Mind About Climate” show. Sort of a… “Warmist Eye For The Science Guy”. (Or is it “My Climate Rules”?)

    I predict the insolation being low will be trotted out as to why IT CAN’T BE ANYTHING BUT US with nary a mention of helio-magnetic effects, the solar wind, the cosmic ray connection, and the Svensmark effect. Yeah that’s it, the name of this show should be: “Dancing Without The Stars.” 😀

    Why Minchin agreed to be the leftist’s punching bag I have no idea, but good on him for that.

    Since there’s unlikely to be anything in this show tonight that I haven’t heard before, I’ll admittedly be tuning in mainly in the hope of seeing Jo coat-hangering a warmist against the ropes. 🙂 In the most professionally scientific way of course (that means aim for the clavicle).

    Is it too much to hope that with the IPCC Titanic steadily sinking into the cooling ocean waters, in the end Anna Rose will let go of her “dream” and keep the riches instead? Let go, Rose, let go! 😀

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      Andrew don’t get your hopes up. We’re pretty sure they will choose the most unflattering camera angles and leave out the best answers and all in all, expect that four hours of filming to add up to 3 minutes that’s neither here nor there. We did savage poor Anna on matters of science, she was armed only with Deltoid style lines “rocket scientist” ad homs. But she knew almost nothing about what skeptics actually thought, she wasn’t aware we agreed that CO2 caused warming and couldn’t fathom how we could possibly be skeptics if we said that. The team who came agreed to show the graphs and photos of surface stations, but I doubt that those graphs will do more than flicker past.

      Credit to Anna Rose for doing the job that Flannery ought to be doing (or Steffen, or Pitman, or Karoly et al). She was the lamb thrown to the wolves (though having editors on your side can even up the odds in the final package).

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      Juliar

      Minchin is also very critical of how Rose just tried to use ad hominem attacks towards the people he chose to use for his argument.

      http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/the-abc-adds-fuel-to-climatechange-debate-20120423-1xh6m.html

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    Richard (Realist)

    My first post. Jo (and David), as usual, another excellent article. However, with respect, might I suggest one (important) qualification and amendment be made to the hierarchy: “Climate scientists” is separated into two distinct sub-sets?

    As an educational objective, there is (always) a need to provide quality of argument to enable the “lay person” to cut through the spin (lies) and over-simplification the AGW camp and complicit MSM propagate. Statistically, once >16% of the population can distinguish between, if not fully understand, the different points of view, the AGW argument is lost. Accuracy is important.

    While the four categories, i.e. Data (empirical evidence); Climate Scientists; Other Scientists; and, Lay people is logical and concise, I suggest it (inadvertantly) understates the reality and also doesn’t provide adequate recognition of the significant number of reputable climate scientists who clearly refute the AGW hypothesis with empirical data, not ad homs.

    Climate scientists reside in two generalised “camps”: one in the AGW, i.e. Hansen et al propagating computer models in a narrow paradigm, and the other in what might be termed the NCV (Natural Climate Variability) camp, i.e. Lindzen et al following what empirical data suggests, which develop new paradigms and therefore advancement of science. The NCV scientists are actually the climate science realists, not sceptics or “deniers” as the AGW camp label them.

    They seek to understand how the System actually functions, from the macro (cosmic and solar infuences) through to the micro (regional variability) level, from the distant past to the present, as the only objective and constructive means to project into the future. In contrast to simplistic models promoted by AGW climate “scientists” morphing into paid propagandists.

    The AGW camp propagate politics; the NCV camp promote science following empirical realities and new questions investigative research unearths, where truth eventually prevails and paradigms are overturned. Like many have said, if only (more) journalists were investigative, not regurgitative, the situation would be different.

    Therefore, to make a distinction and give due recognition to the Climate Scientists researching reality based on empirical evidence, might I suggest “Climate scientists” be subset into two distinct categories; Climate modellers and Climate researchers, or a better description yourselves and/or the array of mind power posting in this blog suggest.

    And let’s not forget, ultimately, the highest authority and final arbiter is not our power of knowledge and understanding based on empirical data, which constantly changes, but the natural and variable cycles of influence the Universe constantly “throws” at the Earth, which has and will always be the primary driver affecting the thin skin of atmosphere and variable cycles of climate we are dependent on for life. It’s most certainly not able to be controlled by the thin skins of those who pose as “scientists”, politicians, rent seekers, academics, et al, who have contracted the King Canute Disorder, clearly recognised by hyper-active egos, a desire for control over others, insatiable greed, un-deserved status, unwarranted entitlement and a clear denial of personal accountability and reality. Let’s take clear aim on achieving >16%.

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    I’m not usually given to extremely harsh language, but this is f****** outrageous.

    The Search engines are buzzing with commentary about tonight’s doco.

    One of them is at the following link, and 2 more biassed commentators I have never heard.

    The commentary goes for only 4.17, and it’s worth watching just to hear their attitude, but scroll forward particularly to the 3.15 mark.

    The large gentleman explains the ridiculous (his words) visit to Joanne and David’s house and how their brand of ‘kitchen science’ etc etc.

    You listen and be just as impressed as I am about this.

    Absolutely outrageous.

    He said, she said on global warming

    Tony.

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      Tom

      Tony, the inner suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney are full of ignorant zombies like these. They have no understanding of climate science; they don’t want any understanding of climate science. They are devotees of a fashionable political doctrine centred on environmentalism, which demands the overthrow of capitalism to avert the destruction of the earth (no evidence required). They believe they can get rid of all the bad gases in the atmosphere and all the bad people in the world and make it a garden of Eden again. This whole childish movement is the culmination of a generation raised on extreme misanthropy in the education system and Hollywood CGI (computer-generated images), especially end-of-the-world movies and fairytales like Avatar. People who question climate change science are the bad people who need to be eliminated in their infantile Gameboy fantasy. This totalitarian idealism has created a generation that cheers the emasculation of democracy and freedom of speech already underway in Australia. It is now obvious to everyone except the government that it will be smashed at the next election, mostly because it has signed up an unwilling population for the expensive solution to a greatly exaggerated problem that may not exist. I just hope this government collapses before too much more of its warped ideoology is enacted.

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        Kevin Moore

        They believe they can get rid of all the bad gases in the atmosphere and all the bad people in the world and make it a garden of Eden again.

        The “serpent” in the Garden of Eden is literally translated as a large snake and is symbolical. Being deceivers the only role in a renewed Garden of Eden that Gaia worshippers could take would be as snakes. [See Isaiah 9:15]

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      Kinkykeith

      Calm down Tony, That’s not “Absolutely outrageous”, what you’re looking at there is Consensus or ‘modern science”.

      I itch for a way to get rid of all the “Mates and Friends” who have work in the many channels of the ABC and who neither sweat nor exert themselves mentally on our behalf.

      Toe the line, repeat after me: “I believe in Climate Change and in human causation thru combustion (burning doesn’t have that scientific ring to it) and in the urgent need for action (hell, any action) ….. blah blah blah …

      That people like those two can sit so smug and be totally ignorant of their ignorance is a slap in the face for everyone who has worked their guts out in poorly paid jobs and seen their taxes go to fund this insult is well, insulting.

      Politics sux. It also enslaves us.

      Revolt!

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      Neville

      Couldn’t agree more with you Tony. But where do they get idiots like that fat fool from, beats me.

      Seems like evidence, history and data count for nothing.

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    pat

    Matt Bennett –
    i have responded to your comment on the previous “free speech” thread.

    TonyfromOz –
    am watching the cricket and UEFA cup semi-final, but will listen to the clip later. here’s another expected response to the program:

    26 April: Crikey: Clive Hamilton: Hamilton: ABC’s latest climate change doco another PR victory for doubters
    If there were a real debate among scientists, then the climate deniers would be publishing their counter-evidence in the professional scientific journals. But they are not, because they do not have evidence that will stand up to scrutiny…
    Several well-qualified scientists could see the program for what it was and refused the invitation to “debate” Minchin. But has Rose, who has been widely and rightly praised for co-founding the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, undone much of her good work by allowing herself to be enticed onto the television screen? Rose has written a book about the experience and she has told The Sydney Morning Herald, “I went into it with an open mind – but I answer the questions about climate change based on the science…
    Yet in this case — where the stakes are enormous, no less than the survival of the civilised world — the ABC takes the view that climate science is a fun topic for debate and has pitched against each other two people with zero expertise and no authority…
    When the program goes to air, the bevy of deniers at the Lavoisier Group, the Institute of Public Affairs, and the Skeptics Party will be shouting “Sucked in ABC”. And they will have good reason to celebrate.
    The ABC knows all of this. I and others have pointed it out many times. Scholars such as Naomi Oreskes have exposed the tactics of the climate deniers with a mass of documentary evidence.
    Yet the ABC persists with the charade of “providing balance”. Some news organisations abroad have decided they will no longer fall for the doubt-mongering ruse. Professional pride now prevents editors and journalists from being manipulated by the denial machine.
    The BBC would not air a program such as this. In the United States, National Public Radio has revised its ethics handbook. “Our goal,” it states, “is not … to produce stories that create the appearance of balance, but to seek the truth.”
    When it reports on questions such as climate science its aim is not the spurious fairness of presenting “both sides”; instead NPR commits itself to be “fair to the truth”.
    “To be fair to the truth.” Once we simply expected that of the national broadcaster. This latest program tells us that the truth no longer carries so much weight at the ABC, not when it comes to climate science.
    http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/04/26/hamilton-abcs-latest-climate-change-doco-another-pr-victory-for-doubters/

    have not watched ABC for so long, because of their relentless CAGW propaganda, so am not sure i can make an exception tonite.

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    pat

    will read the transcript tomorrow – that will be more than enough for me:

    26 April: ABC: John Cook: The how and why of climate denial
    THE CLIMATE ISSUE IS A peculiar thing. Among climate experts, there’s an extraordinary level of agreement with 97 out of 100 climate scientists agreeing (pdf) that humans are causing global warming.
    If you’ve ever met a scientist, you’ll know they’re an independent-minded bunch (at one conference, I watched them argue for an hour over where to go for beer). To achieve 97 per cent consensus requires an overwhelming amount of evidence. And that’s exactly what we have – a consensus of evidence, with many independent lines of data all converging on a single, consistent answer…
    The key to understanding the rejection of climate science is to step back and look at the various movements that deny a scientific consensus. These include the consensus that HIV causes AIDS or that the Earth is billions of years old. Each movement denying an overwhelming consensus shares distinctive characteristics, which are evident in both Nick Minchin and his witnesses.
    What do you do if all the world’s experts disagree with you? A decades old technique perfected by the tobacco industry is to manufacture the appearance of a continued debate through fake experts. Climate change is a complicated, multi-disciplinary science and yet many of the leading voices who purport to know better than the experts have never published a single piece of climate research. Of Nick’s four voices against the scientific consensus, we have a blogger, an engineer and a political lobbyist. Nick turns to only one actual climate scientist, whose research has been thoroughly refuted in the peer-reviewed literature.
    A small minority seem to believe that tens of thousands of climate scientists across the globe are all engaged in a conspiracy. Of course there is no evidence for this (which to the paranoid is further proof of a conspiracy), even when scientists’ emails are stolen and pored over with a fine-tooth comb. Fortunately very little tin-foil-hattery is in evidence throughout the documentary, apart from a throwaway line from David Evans that scientists are ‘concealing the evidence’.
    How does one deny the consensus of evidence? One straightforward approach is to simply ignore it! Jo Nova ignores satellite observations that directly measure an increased greenhouse effect when she claims the warming effect from carbon dioxide (CO2) is immeasurable. Richard Lindzen claims negative feedbacks will cancel out CO2 warming, citing the Earth’s past. But it’s precisely the Earth’s past that provides many independent lines of evidence for reinforcing feedbacks that are an integral part of our climate system.
    Marc Morano delivers a breathtaking torrent of misinformation (although I’m not sure he did take a breath) that ignores entire swathes of evidence. He overlooks the fact that Arctic sea ice has dramatically thinned with the total amount of ice hitting record low levels in 2011. He ignores that global warming is still happening, with our planet currently absorbing heat at a rate of two Hiroshima bombs per second. Genuine scepticism requires considering the full body of evidence in order to properly understand what’s happening to our climate. What we witness from Nick Minchin’s witnesses is not genuine scepticism but rejection of any inconvenient evidence.
    Why does this small minority deny the evidence and the overwhelming opinion of experts? The major driving force behind climate denial is conservative ideology and the fear of government regulation. The most concise explanation of this influence is provided by Naomi Oreskes in a scene that sadly didn’t make it into the final cut. Oreskes deconstructs Nick Minchin’s rejection of climate science with great clarity and I’ll leave her with the final word: (VIDEO LINK)
    http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2012/04/26/3489290.htm

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    pat

    26 April: The Conversation: Andrew Glikson: James Lovelock’s climate change U-turn
    As recently as March 30th, 2011, it was reported: “Professor James Lovelock, the scientist who developed Gaia theory, has said it is too late to try and save the planet. The man who achieved global fame for his theory that the whole earth is a single organism now believes that we can only hope that the earth will take care of itself in the face of completely unpredictable climate change.”…
    But now Lovelock says: (LOVELOCK MSNBC QUOTES)…
    Unfortunately, these statements by James Lovelock are inconsistent with up-to-date climate data sets. These indicate:
    (GLIKSON’S CHOICE OF DATA)…
    Given the above it remains a mystery as to the nature of the evidence or reasons underlying James Lovelock’s statements. It is particularly perplexing, since 20th century greenhouse and temperature rise rates are orders of magnitude higher than during any previous period, excepting intra-glacial Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles (see Table 1)
    Popular notion on media and TV shows juxtapose a “belief” versus “scepticism” in climate change. Science, however, is not about “belief” but about measurements and empirical evidence consistent with the basic laws of nature. It is practising scientists who are the true sceptics – examining and re-examining their methods, data, observations and explanations numerous times, subsequently subjected to rigorous review procedures, prior to peer-review publications.
    “Everyone is entitled to his opinions but not to his facts” (Senator Daniel Moynihan)
    http://theconversation.edu.au/james-lovelocks-climate-change-u-turn-6668

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      Sonny,

      you just gotta love the text about these pendants were made.

      The glass is fired in a high-temperature kiln about 3 times to complete this pendant. I’ve drilled a hole in the glass (and re-fired it) for a secure attachment to the neck cable.

      Tony.

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        Sonny

        Yeh that wouldn’t be an energy intensive CO2 producing process bt any chance?
        Who cares if we look cool hanging out with our Eco-brethren

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    incoherent rambler

    Great post Jo.

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    Dave of Inverell

    Thank you for your most excellent article. I have been an avid follower of the climate debate for years and a total skeptic. The information in your blog only confirms my own personal investigation on this matter and totally hardens me further to the
    nonsense pumped out on ABC. Can’t bear to watch or listen to any debate, news or current affairs programmes on that channel. As a very new reader of your blog, I am very pleasantly surprised at it’s excellent content – keep up the good work.

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    Juliar

    Jo, Is this post being posted now due to the expectation that there may be quite a few extra visitors on this site after tonight’s show?

    Also, from 8:30pm (AEST) on ABC the Documentary “I Can Change Your Mind about Climate” will be shown and then after that a QandA special from 9:30pm – 10:30pm (AEST).

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    MattB

    In the example cited int he article re: temp trends of UAH and RSS… just where do you get that “The first two agree, say the warmest year was 1998, and that the warming trend stopped around 2000.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Satellite_Temperatures.png

    We can even go straight to SPencer’s site… (ignoring the fact he STILL uses that absurd polynomial fit!!!! really quite staggering!)
    http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

    look it started about 0.3C below the ’81 to ’10 average, and is now about 0.2C above it.

    I mean for sure raise the data as the ultimate arbiter… but at least then lets admit the data shows a clear warming trend.

    (I do note elsewhere SPencer says “The 3rd order polynomial fit to the data (courtesy of Excel) is for entertainment purposes only, and should not be construed as having any value whatsoever.”)

    OH look – RSS too! http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/rss-april-anomaly-up-2/

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      Bruce of Newcastle

      Matt – the polynomial fit is designed to make climateers’ heads explode. Also he uses a polynomial because Excel doesn’t offer a sine fit.

      Which is the point. Sine regression fits HadCRUT, PDO, AMO and ENSO. Even sea level. IPCC do not include this obvious cyclical signal in their franchised models despite it corresponding to 1/3rd of 20thC temperature “rise” due to the arbitrary choice of endpoints (ie years 1900 & 2000). Furthermore climate scientists are starting to feel courageous enough to defy the IPCC and actually look at this area.

      After all if you apply a 10.7 years cyclical forcing to the oceans, it would be no surprise to see emergent cyclical behaviour from the great conveyer belt. 6 x 10.66 = 64 years. Same principle as the Tacoma Narrows bridge.

      Not everything Matt fits a straight line. So your point about the polynomial is what?

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        MattB

        with a 3rd order polynomial, the end point are ALWAYS pointing violently up or violently down… suggesting a trend. Spencer acknowledges there is no predictive value whatsoever in the poly fit, he does indeed just seem to use it to infuriate, and hope to con a few unsuspecting fools along the way.

        I have no problem with sine like cycles overlaying on some linear trend. none at all.

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          Bruce of Newcastle

          “I have no problem with sine like cycles overlaying on some linear trend. none at all.”

          You are ahead of the IPCC then, as the statistics of the sinusoidal that fits HadCRUT would itself reduce their derivation of climate sensitivity by a third.

          And per Rao 2011 and similar papers, of which there are quite a few, solar direct+indirect forcing would if accounted for in the GCM’s lower calculated climate sensitivity by another half, to 1/6th the AR4 value – which neatly fits the satellite values around 0.6-0.7 C per doubling.

          Matt, I suggest you hide your comment from any on the consensus side, as you would not be popular for saying what you’ve said. Congrats from me! Objective unpoliticised science is where we want to be.

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    Juliar

    Anna just criticised Jo and David for filming the ABC production crew and called David ‘a blogger’. What a Bitch!

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    pat

    first, is anyone else having a problem opening this thread? i know i am. very very slow.

    apart from Fairfax/Crikey/Conversation, ABC is frantically pumping out attacks on CAGW sceptics by the hour. sara phillips is the editor of the ABC’s environmental portal. she doesn’t seem happy that CAGW sceptics are COMMENTING on them! thinks we are entitled to our views, EXCEPT we are not:

    26 April: ABC: Sara Phillips: Climate change debate has moved on
    ACCORDING TO THE Lowy Institute’s annual poll, Australians are losing their conviction on climate change. The last poll, published in June 2011 showed that just 41 per cent of those polled agreed with the statement, “Global warming is a serious and pressing problem. We should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs” down from a whopping 68 per cent in 2006.
    Meanwhile, support for the statement, “Until we are sure that global warming is really a problem, we should not take any steps that would have economic costs” has risen over the same period from seven per cent to 19 per cent…
    Of course, as has been said repetitively, there is actually very little debate. Scientists actively working in the area of climate change are busy debating the extent and impact of climate change, not whether it is occurring.
    But the program being aired this evening attempts to examine whether climate change is happening, or not.
    Already, the people who are not convinced by the climate science they have read about – usually described as ‘sceptics’ or ‘deniers’ – have taken to their keyboards. The two pieces we have already run on ABC Environment about the show (here and here) have been flooded by their strident assertions of conspiracy, lies and cover-up.
    The Q&A special later this evening is an opportunity for more of their comments to be aired on the national broadcaster.
    Let me be clear: these people have a right to their views…
    Whatever the true cause for the loss of conviction on climate change, the airing of this program on the ABC puts the national broadcaster in an invidious position. Around one fifth of people in the Australian community genuinely believe that we don’t need to act on climate change. That’s not an insignificant number and these people have a right to a voice.
    On the other hand, by airing their non-factual views, it lends legitimacy to them. And it further alienates the majority of Australians who just want to get on and address the problem.
    With every report from scientists and economists further emphasising the increasing urgency of acting on climate, and with our political leaders in agreement on the need for action, the time for ‘debate’ is past. Even though they may be opposed, climate sceptics must accept the inevitability of the world moving on climate change.
    http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2012/04/26/3489733.htm

    Sara has been suitably anointed by Reuters:

    Greenfest: Sara Phillips: Editor The Green Lifestyle Magazine
    Sara Phillips has been an environment journalist for more than eight years. With a bachelor of arts in English and bachelor of science in zoology from the University of Melbourne, as well as a graduate diploma in science communication from the Australian National University. The Deputy Editor of COSMOS since February 2005, she wrote a cover story on Australia’s water crisis which won her a 2006 Reuters/World Conservation Union Award for Excellence in Environmental Reporting. Instrumental in the editorial development of G Magazine, she was appointed Editor in November 2006.
    Sara Phillips has been awarded a 2006 Reuters-IUCN Media Award for Excellence in Environmental Reporting.
    http://www.greenfest.com.au/node/193

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    pat

    a different Phillips … but this one has a sense of humour. this finishes with a David Cameron story that Delingpole referred to in his Lovelock UPDATE, so it’s worth a read too:

    24 April: UK Daily Mail: Melanie Phillips: Apocalypse deferred
    The great grand-daddy of the man-made global warming scam, the fifth horseman of the eco-apocalypse James Lovelock, has now recanted. Well, sort of. Don’t get too excited.
    Lovelock now admits to having been ‘alarmist’ about climate change, and says other fanatics environmental commentators such as Al Gore were too alarmist as well.
    You don’t say.
    It’s only taken a quarter of a century. During that time, Professor Lovelock was the guru of man-made global warming theory…
    Not being able to tell what the climate is actually doing, let alone what it will do in the future, is in essence what climate sceptics have been saying consistently for the past 25 years or so. And so presumably we should now count Lovelock as one of their number? Er, not exactly:
    ‘Lovelock told msnbc.com: “It depends what you mean by a skeptic. I’m not a denier.”’
    Good Lord, perish the thought! ‘Climate change deniers’ are nasty, vicious, imbecilic, rapacious neo-Nazis, aren’t they? No, Lovelock’s latest position is… ah, as sophisticated and, um, nuanced as we would expect from someone with such a solid and distinguished scientific track record:
    ‘He said he still thought that climate change was happening, but that its effects would be felt farther in the future than he previously thought. “We will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit,” Lovelock said.’
    Of course! Even though
    “we don’t know what the climate is doing”
    and
    “there’s nothing much really happening yet”
    and
    “it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising”
    — in other words, there is no evidence whatsoever to support the theory of man-made global warming, its baleful effects have only
    “been deferred a bit”.
    Isn’t the environmental movement wonderful? Even when they admit they’re totally wrong, they still insist they were right all along.
    Professor Lovelock is a Fellow of the Royal Society. Some years back that august body, the embodiment of the scientific establishment and the custodians of scientific integrity, told us that on man-made global warming ‘the science is settled’. What will the Society now be saying to Professor Lovelock FRS, or he to it?…
    http://phillipsblog.dailymail.co.uk/2012/04/apocalypse-deferred.html

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    MadJak

    I wonder if tonights ABC Documentary/mockumentary(TBD) “I can change your mind on climate change” is going to be another hatchett job – you know – like the one on the great global warming swindle which was followed by a couple of hours of catastrafarian argument by consensus?

    Actually, after the past few years – why on earth would I evn thing that maybe, just maybe, we might have a well balanced and well mediated investigation of the issue? Maybe I’m an optimist?

    I predict :
    1) The age card will be played at least once
    2) The consensus card at least once,
    3) Clive palmers comments the other month coming up at least once
    4) The “97% of climate scientists agree…” at least once
    5) The Big Oil fallacy at least once
    6) The poor poley bears at least once
    7) The Melting arctic ice caps resulting in sea level rise argument at least once

    Does anyone else want to add anything?

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      MattB

      Minchin will mention:
      i) it has been cooling since 1998
      ii) there are some eminent scientists who are skeptics
      iii) One of a variety of petitions
      iv) CO2 is plant food
      v) We are more likely heading in to an ice age
      vi) UHI
      vii) It’s the sun

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        MadJak

        Of course, if the warmist line was to be half honest, they would be mentioning at least three of those eh Mattb?

        Then Minchin wouldn’t have to mention them eh!

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        memoryvault

        .
        Interesting comparison of lists MattB.

        On Madjak’s list all points except 1) and 3) – which have nothing to do per se with climate change – have been vigorously rebutted, and on your list everything but v) has already been confirmed by observation.

        I’m at a loss to understand just what your point is.

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        MadJak

        Hey MattB,

        I’ll add another 3 if you do as well, then we can tally up at the end:

        1) The age card will be played at least once
        2) The consensus card at least once,
        3) Clive palmers comments the other month coming up at least once
        4) The “97% of climate scientists agree…” at least once
        5) The Big Oil fallacy at least once
        6) The poor poley bears at least once
        7) The Melting arctic ice caps resulting in sea level rise argument at least once
        Now adding
        8) The Denier smear at least once
        9) The Carbon is an evil substance that must be eradicated line
        10) The runaway positive feedback line at least once

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        MattB

        ok then: Minchin will mention

        i) it has been cooling since 1998
        ii) there are some eminent scientists who are skeptics
        iii) One of a variety of petitions
        iv) CO2 is plant food
        v) We are more likely heading in to an ice age
        vi) UHI
        vii) It’s the sun
        viii) Lord Monckton
        ix) That australia only produces X% of world emissions, so it will cost us billions to reduce Y% of X% that will only reduce global temps by (tiny temperature) by (some year in the future)
        x) The science isn’t settled (different to ii and iii as this is a pop culture quote wrt Gore).

        Of course you’ll have to keep score and let me know who won as I don’t tend to watch trashy non-science docos:)

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          MadJak

          Mattb,

          Let’s make it interesting. You watch and markoff my list and I will do the same with yours.

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            Andrew McRae

            To make it even more fun, every time you hear your own predicted line spoken, drink a shot of spirits.

            You are likely to experience anthropogenic guttural warming.

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          Bruce of Newcastle

          You’re off your game, Matt. You forgot ‘(xi) ocean cycles, and (xii) Tim Flannery is not a climate scientist, has a house a gnat’s whisker above the Hawkesbury River, spruikes Panasonic, an inept geothermal company and Gaia arriving next week’.

          Matt, don’t you ever think hey, that really looks and sounds like a duck, could it be an actual duck…?

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          MadJak

          Mattb,

          According to my reckoning, I got 60% which is a mere pass, but you got 40%, so back of the class for you.

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            MattB

            anecdotal evidence is that most of what was said was edited from the final version. So I blame the editors.

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    pat

    no humour zone:

    30 March: ProBonoNews: Jackie Hanafie: ACOSS Conference Wraps Up in Sydney
    Former NCOSS director Eva Cox kicked off the discussion and told delegates her vision for the future was: “that we can start talking about living in a society not living in an economy”.
    “Everybody including our Treasurer stands up and preaches about how we’re going to get economic growth and if we get more economic growth and more people in the workforce everything will be alright.
    “But we need to actually think about what makes life worthwhile. I want to get optimism back. I want to get society back on the agenda, where we work to live, not live to work,” Cox said to erupting applause from the audience.
    From the market research firm Ipsos, the Ipsos Mackacy (sic) Report’s director Rebecca Huntley spoke of her vision for less of a society of extremely wealthy people complaining about how heavily taxed they are, while Greens Federal Member for Melbourne Adam Bandt said that he hoped in 2030 there would be two things we weren’t afraid to talk about: equality and revenue.
    “I’m very concerned that equality is slipping off the national agenda,” Bandt said.
    Journalist Annabel Crabb talked about her vision to eliminate loneliness by 2030 in what she considers an “achievable” vision…
    http://www.probonoaustralia.com.au/news/2012/03/acoss-conference-wraps-sydney

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    Matt Bennett

    “It is a loophole in the modern world. The process is called “science”, but works like a religion”

    Oh sure Jo, how inordinately perceptive of you. So, given that science in the modern world is broken, I take it there’s no more medicines for you, no more flying in aircraft, no more need to develop particle accelerators to work out how the cosmos works, no more trust in evolutionary biologists to argue and develop their constantly changing theses – it’s all broken, corrupted and being put to nefarious uses! I take it you see how ridiculous this sounds and I suggest you think again that perhaps it’s the implications of the science that you don’t like…. As for the science itself, you’ve ably shown you don’t even know how to interpret it properly, if you’ve bothered reading it at all. Don’t you think, if AGW wasn’t real (and given how fierce is the battle for funding is) that more than 1-2% of working climatologists would’ve struck out on an independent line of thought? Or maybe, they ARE following the best of the evidence and what it shows is not looking good….

    This “comparing AGW science to religion” meme is reall, REALLY weak argument and so easy to disprove if, and again, I say IF you bother to read the actual literature on a year in year out basis.

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      MattB

      “I say IF you bother to read the actual literature on a year in year out basis”

      Careful Matt – you’re about to be asked to name one of those “actual literature” articles that backs your position? Of course none of them will satisfy the criteria, it’s a lose-lose. You’ve already lost in fact:)

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        Winston

        This is from you MattB, who has stated previously that you can’t be bothered to read the articles?

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      memoryvault

      .
      Is that really the best you can do Matt Bennett?

      Jo rejects the findings of a relatively tiny sub-section of a sub-section of “science” – that is – “climate science” – and therefore she rejects ALL science? So, by the same logic, if I happen to believe Thalidomide wasn’t such a crash-hot idea I will never take another pill again even to save my life?

      Is that the level of debate you climate cultists have had to descend to?

      Far more than 1 to 2% of scientists have indeed taken an independent line of thought. And despite the now exposed efforts by a small “team” of climastrology cultists to prevent it, their works have been published. Not that it matters. People like you just pretend they don’t exist, or, where that is not possible – as with the likes of Lindzen and Spencer – you just write them off as irrelevant.

      For as long as there are people like and MattB around, the meme that “AGW” (belief) is a religion requires no further demonstration or proof. You are living, breathing examples of faith-based belief in your “religion”.

      .
      So keep up the evangelising Matt. You have no idea how much it helps us.

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    lmwd

    Sorry to be O/T, but

    The good news story in the media today is….’Doomsday not as close as Gaia’s disciples feared’, in today’s Australian.

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/doomsday-not-as-close-as-gaias-disciples-feared/story-e6frg71x-1226338295762

    I’ve cut and paste the whole editorial for those who don’t subscribe.

    “BEFORE this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” Had any centre-right political or religious leader made such a prophecy in 2006 they would have been ridiculed from one end of the planet to the other — especially if they followed it up with a book entitled The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy It While You Can.
    British inventor and environmentalist James Lovelock, however, was lionised by those who swallowed his claims about catastrophic global warming and his abstruse “Gaia” theory about a single, complex organism comprising all parts of the Earth.

    Inconveniently for Time magazine, which lauded his “unparalleled influence in environmental science . . . based on a particular way of seeing things”, and others who sought his perceived wisdom, Dr Lovelock, 92, has had a rethink. The Earth, he concedes, has “not warmed up very much since the millennium” even though he expected us to be “half way towards a frying world” because of increased CO2.

    Even more inconveniently for followers of the soft-left green manifesto, Dr Lovelock has singled out former US vice-president Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and Australian Climate Change Commissioner Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers as alarmist. They may not agree. But it remains to be seen if Professor Flannery’s expectation that Sydney, Brisbane, New York and Washington could experience “vast engines of destruction” in the form of hurricanes if fossil fuels continue to be burned at the present rate is as naive as his predictions that Australia’s capital cities would run out of water and that even our northern rainfall would be lost. If Dr Lovelock’s revised view that “we will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit” is to achieve anything it should put paid to extremist claims and encourage a more mature and rational debate over climate, energy policy and technology.

    The unrealistic costs of “direct action” on climate change, especially solar and wind-generated power, which has already forced up household and business energy costs, is one reason The Australian embraced emissions trading as the most efficient system for reducing CO2 emissions. We favour the responsible course of giving the planet the benefit of the doubt.

    But even before the Copenhagen summit in late 2009 we warned against Australia moving ahead of the rest of the world on taxing carbon. Unfortunately for Australia’s competitiveness, however, that is the predicament we face on July 1, when the world’s highest carbon tax, $23 per tonne, will be introduced — more than twice the current European price of $10 per tonne and when the US, Canada and Japan have backtracked on such action. Reopening the issue would be difficult politically for the Gillard government, but postponing the start-up date or reducing the price would be in the best interests of the economy, as would scrapping renewable energy subsidies. The subtext of Dr Lovelock’s belated realism is that much remains to be learned about climate science. Australia, which produces 1.4 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, has no reason to inflict disproportionate hardship on itself.

    OK, the Ed’s of the Oz are still trying to hold the line on emissions trading (they need to back away quietly), but surely even they can see that their logic is faulty given doubts around the science, which clearly isn’t so settled.

    It is interesting because when a mainstream paper starts referring to some scientists as alarmist and quite openly so….it suggests a ‘tipping point’. Only about a year ago Lovelock’s admission would not have rated a mention. It would have quietly been ignored.

    See also Cut and Paste in the Oz today. Lovelock acknowledges other scientists won’t admit to having stuffed up for fear of losing funding…..

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    Kevin Moore

    http://wizbangblog.com/2012/24/high-priest-of-gaia-what-global-warming/

    High Priest of Gaia: “What Global Warming?”

    April 24, 2012 | Filed under Exploitation,Global Warming | Posted by Rodney GravesJames Lovelock to be precise, author of the Gaia hypothesis so warmly embraced by the warmists.

    ‘Global warming? What global warming?’ says High Priest of Gaia Religion
    By James Delingpole | The Telegraph

    “Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth”, saith the Bible.

    So let joy be unconfined that one of the archest of the world’s arch Greenies – James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia hypothesis and therefore, more or less, founder of the world’s most powerful modern religion – has come clean and admitted that he got it wrong in his doomsday predictions about “Climate Change.”

    Well, come almost clean.

    I can’t say there has been quite as much wailing and lamentation and as breast-beating as I would have liked. Here’s what he has said in in his retraction in an interview with MSNBC.

    “The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.

    “The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.

    “The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising – carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.

    Presumably, Professor Lovelock will now be donating all his royalties from his earlier alarmist bestsellers to help fund those proper, principled, decent scientists around the world – Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen, Bob Carter, Ian Plimer, Tim Ball et al – whose careers have been blighted and whose lives have been made misery for having said precisely what Lovelock is now admitting, only much, much earlier. And then, perhaps, using his cachet among his greenie co-religionists to make amends for his sins by calling for the abolition of the IPCC.

    I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover this has been deemed un-newsworthy on this side of the pond. /Louis Renault Mode

    Just remember, burning the heretic increases atmospheric CO2 levels.

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    Sonny

    On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

    Who said this?
    Was it an alarmist or a skeptic?

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      BobC

      Sonny
      April 26, 2012 at 8:55 pm ·

      On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

      Who said this?
      Was it an alarmist or a skeptic?

      It was Stephen Schneider, totally committed alarmist, both for an impending ice age (in the 1970’s) and later for CAGW.

      Here is another interesting quote, from a scientist you have all heard of:

      As a scientist I want to rip the theory of nuclear winter apart, but as a human being I want to believe it. This is one of the rare instances of a genuine conflict between the demands of science and the demands of humanity. As a scientist, I judge the nuclear winter theory to be a sloppy piece of work, full of gaps and unjustified assumptions. As a human being, I hope fervently that it is right. Here is a real and uncomfortable dilemma. What does a scientist do when science and humanity pull in opposite directions?

      Freeman Dyson

      Dyson chose honesty, Schneider chose to lie.

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    Steven

    I have an open mind.

    If I understand your position you are not denying that the biosphere is warming, but you are saying that the oceans are not. Is that a contradiction?

    If the frozen parts of the world are thawing, isn’t it the case that the temperature of a solid does not rise as it takes on large amounts of heat to enable the molecules to gain enough energy to become a gas?

    With increasing water vapor in the atmosphere comes an increasing opportunity for the formation of cloud. What % of cloud cover would be required for it to negate the increase in temperature associated with the increase in water vapor?

    TIA.

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    Andrew McRae

    General?
    * States the preferred conclusion at the outset.
    * Says “Is Climate Change Happening” is one of the questions to be answered.
    * AYCC claims 70,000 members
    * “Not about politics or polar bears”
    * Cuts to Rose’s facial expressions to convey the preferred judgement while the consultants are talking.

    Is Climate Change Happening?
    * Buffalo fly invasion. ==> yes.
    * Sowing summer crops earlier. ==> yes.
    * Minchin agrees warming is happening ==> no further argument.
    * States Muller’s BEST has confirmed the land based temperature record.
    * Says Muller was a skeptic (hah no)

    Is CO2 Rising?
    * Mauna Loa ==> Yes.
    * Nick not frightened, Anna frightened, trend not disputed. => End of argument.

    GHGs
    * Existence of GHE not questioned.
    * CO2 doesn’t lead to much warming by itself.
    * Lindzen has an HF transmitter at home!

    Sociology/Psychology (how desperate)
    * Everybody is subject to confirmation bias
    * Fear is not sustainable, translates into ignorance, denial, or productive anger.
    *

    Economics/Lomborg
    * Cuts away from Minchin before he can object to Lomborg
    * Says smart solutions are more important than debating facts.

    Politics
    * Says presenting both sides “even handedly” gives too much air time to skeptics.
    * Let’s throw away democracy!
    * We’ll never know the risk accurately, but some actions can be agreed anyway. ==> implicit reference to the Precautionary Principle.
    * Climate Change is all about values, not science!

    Agreed: GHE, CO2, warming, and economically viable renewable energy is a common goal.

    List of Ad Homs
    By – Against – “Ad Hom” – Implication
    —————————————————
    Rose – Minchin – “Committed” ==> religious commitment.
    Minchin – Rose – “Committed” ==> religious commitment.
    Rose – Minchin – “In Denial” ==> Denier.
    Rose – All Skeptics – “it’s a moral issue!” ==> All skeptics are immoral.
    Rose – Jo & David – “Should not be trusted” ==> Untrustworthy and issue is political.
    Rose – Lindzen – “You testified in favour of Tobacco companies” ==> He’s untrustworthy.
    She raised the issue then pretended that he raised it.
    Rose – Minchin – “He’s just thinking like a politician.” – In the absence of telepathic ability this is merely an insult.
    Morano – Everybody – Too extensive to list. ==> That’s Morano’s style.
    Rose – Morano – “He makes things up”. ==> Basic slime move.
    Rose – Lomborg – Implies Lomborg is not a mainstream economist. ==> fallacious consensus argument which ignores Lomborg’s numerous awards.

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      Winston

      Matt Bennett’s version of “the truth”. See #52 below. I think you can say categorically Andrew that your forensic analysis of the salient points pretty much debunks any claim Matt has to scientific rigour or logical analytical skills.

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    Ninderthana

    Jo and David,

    Do not despair. Your stand on the science will soon be vindicated
    and people will recognize that the global warming scare was just that, a
    super-hyped chicken-little exercise that has wasted billions of dollars.

    The Q & A farce is going on as I type. A 5:2 panel of warmists:
    skeptics and an audience that looks like it was bought in from a green
    rally. The final nail in the coffin is that all the “expert” scientists in
    the audience that Tony “We are all going to die!” Jones is calling upon
    are warmists. Tony Jones is a disgrace who interrupts the two skeptics
    repeatedly to switch to his army of “experts” warmists. If he interupts
    his warmist allies it is to give them acess to a supporting case.

    Thank you for standing up to this pseudo-scientific drivel
    at time when it takes great bravery to stand against the warmist
    juggernaut.

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    Matt Bennett

    It’s hard watching the truth laid bare isn’t Ninderthana? Cognitive disonance hurts..

    “stand will soon be vindicated…” What? What planet are you on?

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      Mark D.

      It’s even harder to learn how to click on the “reply” so that your comment stays nested…….

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      Ninderthana

      Matt,

      I live on the planet that had a comparable level of natural warming in the 1910 – 1940 period
      as the so-called “unprecedented” warming between 1970 – 2000. This despite the fact that the
      anthropogenic increase in CO2 did not become significant until after WWII.

      I live on the planet were the back-casted IPCC models fail to reproduce the early 20th
      century warming (1910 – 1940) and yet they are still taken seriously by charlatans like you.

      I live on the planet where real scientist actually acknowledge that the most likely
      explanation for the warming between 1900 – 1940 and 1970 – 2000 is a change in ratio
      of El Nino’s to La Ninas and that this ratio change is most likely explained by natural
      mechanisms [have a read of my peer-reviewed paper when it comes out later this year].

      And, I live on planet that for the next 30 years [2000 – 2030] the world will actually
      experience global cooling because the El Nino, La Nina ratio will flip back to favoring
      La Nina events.

      That planet is Earth and not Pluto, which is the planet that you appear to live on.

      It is going to be soooo… so good seeing people like you spending the next 30 years
      scrapping a sh#@%^! load of egg of your collective faces.

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      Sonny

      Matt, how’s that government salary treating you?

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    Kinkykeith

    I have just watched a few minutes of the taped presentation “I Can Change Your Mind” and my immediate reaction is to want to send a big thank you to Nick Minchin for his part in the program and congratulate him on his patience.

    As for the other party, the beautiful, privileged and legally talented Anna Rose, the less said the better and what I want to say I can’t.

    I can however quote what MaryFJohnston said and while it is not pretty here it is: Quote: “I wanted to punch her in the head and enroll her in a three year science degree”.

    Obviously MaryF was not impressed by Anna’s supercilious attitude which considering her qualifications (law but no science) and hobbies (helping get Obama elected) showed that her public pronouncements on Global Warming were part of a Left Wing political involvement and not in any way based on science.

    The world truly is a strange place when the beautiful Anna can lecture on the “Science” and hold in thrall a lecture theater full of earnest young students all eager to hear what they can do to save the world; at least until they break to head for the pub before the next lecture.

    Student life is tough in 2012.

    Real science is even tougher.

    Thank you Nick Minchin.

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    klem

    I am finally starting to hear more people refer to climate alarmism as a new faith.

    When will alarmists finally admit that they are part of an unstructured religion?

    Who knows, in a hundred years we might see huge stone churches with ceiling frescos of Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri. I don’t find this funny actually.

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      Sonny

      “What is faith? An unwavering belief in a hypothesis that is by definition unfalsifiable.”
      Sonny

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    Brad

    Northern Hemisphere vs Southern Hemisphere Mean Ocean and Air Temp Variation

    Dear learned forum,

    1. Is there more anthropogenic carbon dioxide released into the Northern Hemispere vs the Southern Hemisphere?
    2. Are the atmospheres of the respective hemispheres effectively disconnected from each other?
    3. Is there valid and reliable data which shows that one hemisphere is warming at a greater rate than the other? If so, can someone refer me to this data.
    I am new to this forum and I apologise if the questions above have already been answered.

    Regards,

    Brad

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      Bruce of Newcastle

      Brad – CO2 concentrations in the south (eg Cape Grim) and the north (eg Mauna Loa) are very similar.

      Separation of warming signals in the south and north are made difficult because of the different relative proportions of land in the two hemispheres, plus that the Earth’s orbit is not quite circular. Add that humans have a very big effect through classical UHI and also land use effects (eg deforestation reduces transpiration therefore reducing cloudiness, albedo etc) and you can see why its hard to be definitive.

      The relative sea ice anomaly graphs are worth looking at since there are signs that as ice grows in the Arctic it recedes in the Antarctic, and vice versa. Global sea ice anomaly has been pretty constant, with only a bit of a dip associated with the solar max just completed.

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    Philip C

    Not sure if this is the right place but wanted to say how pleased I was to see you on the ‘I can change your mind…’ film.

    What really shocked me was the rampant naivete shown by Anna Rose – young, inexperienced and totally closed minded. Really terrifying to hear such ignorance but then she is so young.

    We all went through such phases in our youth but were able to grow out of them without causing too much damage – but the likes of her! Oh dear.

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    val majkus

    Tom thanks for that tip and here’s the letter Tom was talking about:

    John Reid

    Mark Latham seems unable to comprehend why so many successful, well-educated people should ignore the “hard evidence” of human-induced climate change (“Mass denial”, Review, April 20).

    It is quite simple. There is no hard evidence. Just because a scientist makes a statement, it does not follow that such a statement is true or even scientific. Science is a process, not a dogma. It is a process that uses the scientific method whereby hypotheses are tested by attempting to falsify them. The scientific method is circumvented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which said: “Our evaluation process is not as clear cut as a simple search for ‘falsification’ (TAR Section 8.2.2 page 474).”

    Consequently the so-called “climate science” as put forward by the IPCC is no more a science than is homeopathy or astrology.

    The general sloppiness in the outpourings of the climate change establishment are most evident in the glib, model-based predictions of global climate a century into the future. As a physicist and former numerical modeller, I know that such predictions are ludicrous.

    The flaw in Latham’s world view is his naive faith that science always “gets it right”. That is no more true of science than it is of any other human institution, and the folks out there in the ’burbs are well aware of this.

    All institutions go off the rails from time to time and the way in which environmental scientists are now peddling Green propaganda in return for grant money resembles the Christian church under the Borgia popes. Because of this, the cult of climate change has come to have a stranglehold on the environmental sciences. Maybe its time for a new Martin Luther to come along and fix things up.

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    Brad

    RE: Northern Hemisphere vs Southern Hemisphere Mean Ocean and Air Temp Variation
    Thanks Bruce – very interesting!

    RE: The Carbon Dioxide Gasometer Experiment
    Bruce and fellow forum members,
    What do you think about the following “thought experiment”…..
    We tow two identical old fashioned gasometers 500m offshore and moor them to the ocean bed.
    The gasometers are made from glass and they resemble large squat gas jars. For argument sake, we moor the gasometers 10 diameters apart.

    Gasometer One (the control) contains “existing air” ie 390ppm carbon dioxide.

    Gasometer Two contains “spiked air” ie we increase the carbon dioxide concentration incrementally over time and we compare the gasometers’ mean temperatures.For example, we boost the carbon dioxide concentration in Gasometer Two to 450ppm and plot mean “atmosphere” temperatures of both gasometers over,say, a 2 month period. We continue the experiment over the range of 500 to 800ppm in 50ppm increments in the “spiked air” gasometer.

    We would have to be conscious of controlling the biomass of encapsulated respiring organisms, the ocean temp,tank pressure and of course, the underlying ocean current.

    I believe that it would be interesting to not just analyze the temperature differential between the two chambers (if any), but to measure any long term background warming which conceivably could be due to factors other than carbon dioxide – solar flux variation etc.

    What do you think?

    Regards,

    Brad

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      Carbon500

      Brad – re. your ‘carbon dioxide gasometer’ experiment -you’re talking about a real model here. The warmists wouldn’t like it – it’s proper experimental data.
      I’ve long thought that we need evidence of the effects of CO2 using an updated apparatus based on the one described by John Tyndall in 1861. Technology’s moved on, and we can measure CO2 in ppm these days.
      To try and find out if anyone’s done it, I’ve searched the internet, asked the UK’s Met Office, the USA’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre (CDIAC) and also posed the question on the Watt’s Up With That and even Skeptical Science websites. Seemingly it hasn’t been done, because no-one’s directed me to a published paper, although I’ve had one or two vague responses – for example, I’ve been told that ‘the physics is well understood’, and that the experiment is conducted in schools everywhere. Perhaps so.
      However, unless someone’s conducted experiments in a professional laboratory using a chamber into which various gases (including water vapour) at different ppm concentrations can be pumped using modern instrumentation to assess the effect of CO2, then I think the whole CO2 story is on very weak foundations indeed. Yes, an apparatus as suggested isn’t the real world, but it would give measurable results using actual gases in a controlled experiment. If it hasn’t been done, why not?

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    […] motivations of the other side all day. Where the debate needs to focus on is the science and the data. An attempt at a psychoanalysis does not count as “deconstructing” the opposing […]

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    KR

    It looks like Skeptical Science has followed up on the John Nielsen-Gammon comments I mentioned in my post at @7, showing that if you look at temperatures classified by ENSO phase:

    …all three ENSO categories have linear trends of 0.15 to 0.16°C per decade over the past 44 years…

    See this link for details.

    The “warming has stopped” myth just does not hold up when you look at the data.

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      BobC

      KR
      May 1, 2012 at 12:53 am · Reply

      The “warming has stopped” myth just does not hold up when you look at the data.

      Well, your linked commentary agrees that the data shows that the warming has indeed stopped. What Nielsen-Gammon is arguing is that the warming stoppage as shown by the data is due to the arrangement of la Nina and el Nino years.

      Let’s assume that Nielsen-Gammon is right, and the divergence between ground and satelite measurements isn’t important and the recent changes in the Sun are unimportant. Then warming will continue at 1.6 deg C / century, a completely unremarkable rate compared to the last 5000 years of climate change (see the GISP2 icecore). This rate has been steady (well fit by a linear trend) for the last 45 years, by Nielsen-Gammon’s analysis, and shows no sign of responding to the acceleration of anthropogenic CO2 emissions over that time.

      So, one has to ask, what is the problem? You have not shown that anything about the current unremarkable, mild (and steady) warming trend is Human-caused, can be controlled by Mankind or, indeed, is likely to be detrimental in any way (since it is simply returning to past temperature levels at a rate that is duplicated or exceeded many times in the past record).

      There is a giant gap in your logic between a slight warming and the need for drastic Human action.

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        KR

        BobC

        The 0.15 to 0.16C / decade matches well with Foster and Rahmstorf 2011, showing with a very simple analysis that warming is continuing.

        WRT solar influence (and with short term volcanic influences removed), given that the insolation trend over the last 30 years has been downward, it would appear that the GHG forcing rate has been increasing over that period. Tamino has demonstrated that CO2 concentration is greater than exponential in growth, hence CO2 forcing is greater than linear – ignore that and you are going to be quite surprised by steeper warming rates over time.

        “…shows no sign of responding to the acceleration of anthropogenic CO2 emissions over that time…” – the demand for monotonic, single cause responses in the climate, when multiple forcing changes are present, is a strawman argument. You really should know better. ENSO and solar have been cooling influences recently – that won’t last.

        The analysis clearly shows continuing warming, and that the “warming has stopped” claims are wishful thinking. It looks like 2013 might be an El Nino – it will be quite interesting to see if it matches a simple prediction from the trend lines:

        2012 (neutral): +0.66 +/-0.6 C
        2013 (El Niño): +0.78 +/-0.6 C

        [correction made] ED

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          BobC

          KR
          May 1, 2012 at 5:07 am · Reply

          – the demand for monotonic, single cause responses in the climate, when multiple forcing changes are present, is a strawman argument.

          So, can we assume then that you are no longer in favor of the monotonic, single cause response (to a slight warming of the Earth) represented by the demand that carbon fuel use be drastically curtailed?

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    Farmer Ted.

    Baa Humbug @ #1.

    Methinks you have it backwards. Were not the adjustments made to compensate for the “urban heat island effect?”

    If so, the adjustments would be downwards, not upwards, and that chart could be fair dinkum.

    That does not mean that the “adjustments” are necessarily correct. The satellite data tells us that they are not. But at least they could be an honest effort.

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    Carbon500

    Warming is continuing? So how do you explain the graph presented by GISS/NASA which shows no overall rise in monthly mean global surface temperatures since 1998 compared with the base period of 1951-1980 (see http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.C.gif ) despite atmospheric CO2 levels having risen by 7% over this period?

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    Carbon500

    On temperature measurements: here’s the result of an enquiry I made at the UK’s Met Office some time ago.
    ‘The two main types of thermometer used by the Met Office for measuring air temperature are the mercury in glass ‘ordinary’ thermometer (mainly at climate sites with voluntary observers) and the electrical resistance thermometer (ERT – at automatic weather stations).
    The ordinary thermometer is graduated in half-degree increments, but when it is read, an estimate to the nearest 0.1C is made. These thermometers are calibrated on a regular basis at the Met Office against a very accurate electrical resistance thermometer, which in turn is calibrated at the National Physical Laboratory. Each ordinary thermometer therefore has an accompanying calibration certificate which gives any correction that needs to be applied to the ‘as read’ value.
    The resistance of the ERT varies with temperature and this is converted to a temperature value by the program running in the data logger at automatic weather stations. The resolution of this value is +/- 0.1C. Once again, these thermometers are calibrated regularly at the Met Office and calibration coefficients are stored in the data logger.’
    Estimating to the nearest tenth of a degree on a thermometer calibrated to half a degree! I wonder how many of these observations are in the data?

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    […] “97 percent of climate experts say man-made global warming is a major threat”The correct response: “So? The satellites, ocean buoys, and weather balloons disagree.”The alarmists may have “experts”, but the skeptics have the data.  […]

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    Chris Frey has translated this article for the EIKE-team into German. Below is my translation of my comment send to this EIKE-website.

    Dear Mr. Frey,

    You have translated this important article by David Evans and Jo Nova (the best marriage-team in this range of topics which I know) into German for the EIKE-team because you probably think to have delivered with it a next “ball” to shoot during the climate war. However, you do not need to do this by yourself. The Nature has already provided much mightier cannons. As the authors say:

    „The way the climate change debate will eventually be resolved is that the traditional primacy of data will be re-asserted, if only because by the middle of the century people will have noticed that it isn’t several degrees warmer.“

    This is intended a lot „too softy“. The Nature will already prove to us at the end of the first quarter of this century (before 2025) very impressively (for many nations further cheated up to this time, unfortunately, rather “tragically” than “impressively”) that not only David Evans and Jo Nova are right, the data are the most important. Because the data are the only “language” with which the Nature speaks to us. Who does not want or is not able to hear this language, will have to pay a high price for this ignorance, as for example our forefathers had to pay 6800 years ago.

    Dear Mr. Frey, you further cite the original text:

    „However  the government media organizations like the BBC, CBC and Australian ABC have charters requiring them to tell the truth and pretty much the whole truth—but their excuse is always that they say whatever the government climate scientists say, because, according to their political view of the world, the climate scientists are the “highest” authority.“

    I ask you, do not use the same excuse. A scientist (I personally) says you: if the data are so much important to you, please read in my blogs (the Open Science Academy and/or the Naturics) about other data (the statements of Nature) which “speak” not only about the climatic future of the Earth to us. Then you will be astonished how many vital subjects you have already missed only in the last decades. The whole present “climate war” will then appear to you probably also as to myself as no more than a “boy scout” prank.

    With friendly greetings,

    Peter Jakubowski

    [Peter, thanks for the link and the comment. Good to see the message is shared. I hope things don’t get too cold. – Jo]

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      Thank you, Peter, for your message.

      I would appreciate your comments on three figures of precise experimental data that convince me:

      _ 1. Neutron repulsion is the source of energy in cores of heavy atoms and stars
      _ 2. The Sun made our elements, birthed the solar system and sustains our lives
      _ 3. Iron-56 is the most abundant and most stable atom in the Earth and the Sun

      These are the main conclusions from fifty-three years of research on the origin of the solar system and its elements:

      https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Chapter_2.pdf

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    Jo, welcome.

    I am sorry, it’s not me, it the Nature herself. Please look at the third picture from the bottom on the page:
    http://www.naturics.eu/?page_id=1131
    entitled: Reconstruction and prognosis of the cosmic activity in Solar System during the 200 solar cycles (from -130 to 70) between the years 347 and 2510.

    We have to ask the elder generation, how it was in winters between 1904 and 1980. We and still more our children are going back to live in those conditions.

    Best wishes
    Peter

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    Hi, Oliver,

    I am going to read your report about the solar structure asap.
    But please note, I am also going to replace the old paradigm in physics through a new one, so it si possible that we will be “forced” to rethink your conclusions. All what matter are DATA, ok?

    My best wishes
    Peter

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      Oliver K. Manuel

      Thank you, Peter.

      My proposal is not in opposition to the views of B2FH, except to note that (1.) neutron-emission followed by (2.) neutron-decay is the source of hydrogen (H) that B2FH assumed at the start of stellar nucleosynthesis. Neutron-repulsion triggers

      1. Neutron-emission
      Neutron star => n + ~12 MeV

      2. Neutron-decay
      Neutron => H + 0.8 MeV

      3. Hydrogen =(B2FH)=>
      Fe, O, Ni, Si, S, Mg, Ca etc

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        I.e., Peter,

        1. Neutron repulsion is the source of energy that causes the cores of heavy atoms, some planets, ordinary stars and galaxies to violently fission and/or steadily emit neutrons that spontaneously decay into hydrogen (H) atoms.

        2. Nuclear reactions described by B2FH (1957) probably slowly converted H into heavier elements (mostly Fe, O, Ni, Si, S) and middle isotopes of trans-iron elements in our precursor star, and then violently burned He into the most abundant isotopes of C, O, Ne, Mg, etc. and made the light and heavy isotopes of trans-iron elements via the p- and r-processes in outer layer of the evolved star’s explosive birth of the solar system about five billion years (5 Ga) ago.

        3. Circular polarized light from the pulsar partially separated d- and l-amino acids in primitive meteorites before new decay products from neutron-emission and neutron decay covered the pulsar, blocked high energy radiation, and allowed the origin and evolution of life about 3.5 Ga ago.

        4. Deep-seated magnetic fields from the Sun’s pulsar core or the superconducting, iron-rich solar mantle cause “abrupt climatic changes, including geomagnetic reversals and periodic magnetic storms that eject material from the solar surface.” [Oliver K. Manuel, Barry W. Ninham, Stig E. Friberg, “Superfluidity in the solar interior: Implications for solar eruptions and climate,” Journal of Fusion Energy 21, 193-198 (2002): http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1026250731672

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    Yes, Peter, all what matter are DATA and CONCLUSIONS.

    I too was forced to change old paradigms in physics and am now in the process of adding an Addendum and Final Conclusion to Chapter 2 of my autobiography, “A Journey to the Core of the Sun”, pp. 35-36.

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Chapter_2.pdf

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    Dear Oliver,

    I am sorry, but I think, the details between us has no much meaning for the forum here. There are another important things which David and Joanne have to publish. So if you wish, please visit my blogs and we can continue our dialogue there.

    With my Regards
    Peter Jakubowski

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    Oliver K. Manuel

    Thank you for the message, Peter.

    Whether or not the Sun is a pulsar may be important for the issue David and Joanne are discussing here, . . .

    but members of the mainstream scientific community are also reluctant to consider the experimental data (Figures 1-3) that decide if the Sun (Earth’s heat source is:

    a.) An interstellar cloud of hydrogen that happened to collapse into a star, or
    b.) The pulsar remnant of the star that birthed the solar system 5 Ga ago.

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