Too funny. Roy Spencer invented satellite temperature analysis, gets called “a blogger”

Careful Cheryl Jones, your groupthink is showing. She’s a science writer who writes today in The Australian about “climate bets”, but without seemingly using The Internet.

Here’s how she describes Roy Spencer:

Although a blogger, Spencer does publish research in the scientific journals. He was not surprised that Newman had invoked his name. “I’ve testified in the United States Congress probably half a dozen times,” he tells The Australian. “My name is out there.”

To put this in perspective, this is Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He’s not just a climate scientist either.  Roy Spencer and John Christy were the first two scientists to develop a method for getting temperatures from satellites, and the pair won NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, and the American Meteorological Society’s “Special Award.” But Roy does write an excellent blog…

No sure bets in the climate debate

Cheryl Jones, The Australian

LAST summer, Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt challenged Tony Abbott’s chief business adviser Maurice Newman to bet $10,000 that the Earth’s average surface temperature would be lower in 20 years than now.

If Cheryl Jones had gone so far as to type “climate bets” into a search engine she’d know that two Australians called David Evans and Jo Nova already have one of the largest climate wagers going and have offered to take up Brian Schmidt’s bet as well. (Would you believe, that other large bet was with a Brian Schmidt, but not the same one?).

Jones would also know that Schmidt’s bet makes him practically a skeptic. He’s betting on a complete IPCC failure. No one who believed the IPCC would offer such a weak benchmark: “no warming” for another 20 years. Schmidt’s bet is an admission all the IPCC predictions were wrong.

“Global temperatures have gone nowhere for 17 years,” wrote Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council and former chairman of the Australian Securities Exchange and the ABC.

He continued with a quotation from a blog posted by climate scientist Roy Spencer, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a sceptic and strong critic of the models.

Poor readers of The Australian might come away thinking that silly Maurice Newman was just relying on a blog post. Instead Newman is taking the safe side of one of the most awarded and notable climate scientists of our time, while poor Brian Schmidt, albeit a Nobel winner in astronomy, probably hasn’t even published a blog post on the climate, let alone a paper.

While acknowledging that the models are imperfect, climate scientists say the sophisticated computer programs have performed well in projections covering longer timescales.

That’s right, climate model projections to 2100 remain intact, untouched by reality. But 98% of their predictions from the last 20 years have met reality and reality won. Indeed they not only fail on global scales, but on regional, local, short term, tropical, polar, and upper tropospheric scales too. They fail on rainfall, drought and they fail on clouds.  A skeptic’s job is easy. Nature seems to be on our side. (Of course, that’s not a coincidence.)

They say there is strong evidence, including ever-rising sea levels, that the planet continued to warm this century. Global mean surface temperature – the air temperature measured by convention 1.5 metres above the ground – is only one of many measures of climate change. But it is a major one used in international negotiations on limiting climate change, according Britain’s Met Office Hadley Centre.

Dear Cheryl, 70% of the global mean surface is water, and 90% of the energy is held in the oceans. What we don’t have is good data on that. Are the oceans warming? If you believe that ocean buoys can measure temperatures of the 1.3 billion cubic kilometer global ocean to one hundreths of a degree, you might use the phrase “strong evidence”. Scientists though, would not. Plus, not only are ocean trends not statistically significant, but the rate of sea level rise has slowed too. IPCC climate scientists didn’t see that coming either.

I think the  real problem is that Jones is talking about imaginary people:

But greenhouse sceptics, and those who reject that label but oppose the scientific consensus on global warming…

Who is she talking about? Not Roy Spencer, not Maurice Newman, and not any of the main players or bloggers in the climate debate. The label “greenhouse skeptic”, is meaningless, as is the phrase about opposing the scientific consensus on global warming. Virtually everyone in this debate agrees the world has warmed.

These “greenhouse skeptics” as she calls them ” …have claimed that the deceleration in surface warming is evidence that the IPCC and wider climate science community have exaggerated the risks of climate change.”

Actually IPCC climate scientists like Hans von Storch have pointed out that 98% of the models are now wrong, the pause, or the hiatus shows the models have no skill.

They have attempted to use the discrepancy between simulations and observations to discredit the models’ projections.

Those imaginary people called greenhouse skeptics may have “attempted”  to use this discrepancy — but who cares? The models discredit themselves, skeptical scientists (is there any other kind?) didn’t have to do anything except point to the facts.

Another Schmidt (Gavin) provides professional excuses for the failure:

Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeller at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York, tells The Australian that a lack of good observational data available when the experiments were conducted led to input values for aerosol concentrations that were probably too low.

He says a dramatic increase in particulate pollution from India and China during the past 15 years has raised aerosol levels greatly, and the models differ widely in how they handle aerosols.

And the current solar cycle has been less active than the last one, so the models overestimated the amount of incoming solar radiation.

“There is a case to be made that the modellers were unlucky in a bunch of different things, which has meant that in the very short-term trend in the last 10 years or so they (the models) are running slightly warm,” he says.

Translated, this means, climate modelers admit their models don’t work, but they might have looked good if they got lucky.

Cheryl Jones digs up Ben Santer and others to make sure no excuse is left unsaid, and they cover the mysterious force of nature called “a pattern of natural variability”. With roaming unexplainable patterns affecting the Earth, what could any respectable climate scientist do?

Matthew England digs out the global wind excuse, but skeptical scientists just wonder about cause and effect. If internal variability can warm, it can also cool, and skeptics wonder which God switched on “internal variability” in the last 17 years, or whether possibly internal variability was doing the warming before it started doing the cooling?

We skeptics note that England has finally discovered what skeptics have been saying for years, he’s revising his predictions and moving much closer to the skeptic position. He still owes Nick Minchin an apology.

Steve Sherwood gets a chance to add confusion and fear.

The problem of the big spread in the values remains, but it might have been solved by a group led by Steven Sherwood, also a professor at the UNSW’s Climate Change Research Centre.

The team found that the spread could be attributed largely to the various ways in which the models treated the feedback from clouds, which amplify the greenhouse effect in ways that have been poorly understood.

So the models “poorly understood” what clouds did and they cover 60% of the planet, but never mind. The science is settled. (Give us your money.)

Sherwood’s team traced the mechanism to atmospheric convective mixing, and published its results in Nature in January.

Sherwood tells The Australian the research implies that a doubling of carbon dioxide levels would trigger a temperature rise of more than 3C – relatively severe warming – so the values at the lower end of the range should now be considered suspect.

And if the climate models has used Sherwood’s current estimates of climate sensitivity they would have been even more wrong than they were. Right? But this is the man who changed the color scales of his graphs in order to find the hot spot that wasn’t there.

Anytime Cheryl Jones wants to start doing some research for her articles I’ll be happy to help. First up, I’ll suggest using a search engine…

This article was pure one-sided climate porn, but watch the Murdoch haters continue to chant that The Australian is waging  a war on science.

REFERENCE

England, M.H., S McGregor, P. Spence, G.A. Meehl, A Timmermann, W. Cai, A.S. Gupta, M.J. McPhaden, A. Purich and A. Santosos, 2014. Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus. Nature Climate Change (online: 9 February 2014) DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2106

 

 

 

9.1 out of 10 based on 130 ratings

241 comments to Too funny. Roy Spencer invented satellite temperature analysis, gets called “a blogger”

  • #
    Yonniestone

    Did you know?
    – Lewis Hamilton can drive a car.
    – Vincent van Gogh painted some pictures.
    – Usain Bolt can run in a straight line.
    – J.R.R. Tolkien wrote some stories.
    There, now give me a job at The Australian because I can generalize and know SFA about the subject matter I’m writing about!

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    • #
      scaper...

      Think of it this way…got to throw a Christian into the lion’s den every now and then.

      Just love blood sports.

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      me@home

      I read this in the OZ and cried. How could any editor print a full page of regurgitated climate alarmism press releases without allowing any facts, supportive or otherwise, to intrude?

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    • #
      Glen

      If I were Cheryl Jones, after that mauling by Jo Nova, I’d be requesting a change to “Baby Knitwear Fashions”.

      20

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    scaper...

    They say there is strong evidence, including ever-rising sea levels, that the planet continued to warm this century.

    Has it been pier reviewed??

    590

  • #
    Snafu

    Maurice Newman on ABC’s Lateline – 22/04/2014 (video and transcript);
    http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2014/s3990190.htm

    Notice Emma Alberici’s constant referral to the ‘97% consensus’.

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  • #
    Leigh

    Just on that “blogger bloke”Spencer.
    I was having a browse over at his blog today.
    I had a bit of a chuckle at his highly technical agreance with a poster on “hidden” heat in the oceans.

    Bernie 16 hrs, 16 mins ago

    I was being conservative. And allowing for the fact that the water does not mix ALL the way down until a few hundred years have passed.

    This talk of “Oh, the heat has gone into the Oceans” as if it proves global warming is a problem for the environment, gets my goat. For goodness sake, heat going into the ocean is what is supposed to happen, according to elementary physics. It is a heat SINK, with a heat capacity 1,600 times that of the atmosphere. The middle and bottom waters, presently at 1-6 degree C, can suck up any heat we, or Nature, throw at it – at least until the next Millenium.

    Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. 15 hrs, 48 mins ago

    yup.

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    • #

      I’m still wondering about this 90% of the extra energy goes into the oceans. Three metres of ocean has the same heat capacity* as the whole atmosphere. 27 metres has nine times as much (90%). why are we measuring the heat content of the oceans to 700m?

      *specific heat capacity is per unit of mass.

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        *specific heat capacity is per unit of mass.

        Only if you understand physics. To the rest of the world, which certainly includes climate scientists, it’s all just clay to be molded to fit their desire for some proof of impending disaster.

        Supposedly the deeper water is hotter than the shallower water. How that perversion inversion can be stable enough to have stayed in place so long is a mystery to me.

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        • #

          I have a written an example of teaching extensive and intensive properties to high school students. Its the first draft so some feedback would be appreciated.

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          • #
            Roy Hogue

            I was once asked why I didn’t teach chemistry anymore. I said that it was because whenever I told the students that a mole was the same number as the number of carbon twelve atoms in twelve grams of carbon twelve, they laughed. The senior student who was a gun at chemistry looked at me with a strange look. His mate rolled around in his chair laughing.

            Vic,

            Having passed chemistry, even though it was a long time ago and even though I wasn’t the most dedicated student in the world at that point in my life, I don’t find anything in that statement to laugh at. As I remember it, the concept made sense and appeared useful right away.

            My only problem was that I didn’t want to be a chemist and once my curiosity was satisfied about how things worked I wasn’t interested in doing all the problems that teachers are so good at handing out — I had to do them anyway of course. What has happened between then and now I can’t say. But I surely do wonder why that statement would be funny to anyone. A mole is just a convenient unit, like the decibel that allows easy working with whatever it is, something in the chem lab or comparing signal strength to some standard.

            If I had any critique it might be that the concepts of extensive and intensive properties might be a little overwhelming to some high school students.

            —————–

            I was teaching computer science part time until 2008. One of the motivations for quitting was also student attitude. But for me it was the increasing extent of cheating. I used a health issue to make my departure less like a complaint. But the cheating was too much. I should spend endless hours on my own time grading assignments and preparing for class only to be fed back a bunch of crap instead of honest student work? No way.

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            • #

              Thank for the feedback Roy.

              I never taught in a good school so I don’t know how wide spread the problem is but teachers are reinforcing the childish superficiality of teenagers instead of helping them to develop analytical skills. They are just not use to things like this even by year 11. They should be able to cope with it although what I wrote shouldn’t just be handed to a student to just read. They do need to be eased into it. That was a concise description of a few lessons with activities.

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              • #
                the Griss

                guess I’m lucky..

                In my 10 years maths teaching I taught maths and only maths (plus a bit of computer studies.)

                Climate stuff never reared its ugly head.

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Vic G Gallus:

        27 metres = 900% ?

        We have to measure the ocean temperature to 700m or even 2000m as Argo does, so that we can see there is little or no change there. That way we can be 97% certain that the missing heat is way down where we have no measurements to confirm it.

        You will find it easier to understand “settled climate science” if you stand on your right leg, facing east. Place your left hand on your right knee, while placing your left foot behind your neck (holding it there with your right hand). Now bend down and stare backwards at the setting sun. Once you’re so contorted you will find “settled climate science” looks straight forward (or backwards actually).

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        • #
          Graeme No.3

          P.S. see Warwick Hughes Giles adjustments for 1997.

          359 minimum temperatures in 1997 for this station had to be adjusted, up to 1.5℃. That from a station manned by BoM personnel!!!!!

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        • #

          27/30=90% so 27 metres of ocean is in equilibrium with the ocean. About 100m actually churns over so its a comment on how come it is exactly 90%, until 1998.

          And I’m resigned to never digesting the settled science.

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          • #

            in equilibrium with the atmosphere.

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            • #
              Gos

              The understanding comes when you are looking up at the stars and noticing just how clear they appear.
              it’s then that the the question goes through your mind,”why am I looking at the stars”,this is when the understanding comes,you’re drunk and you have fallen flat on your back.

              40

  • #
    pat

    jo,

    the australian needs to publish your critique.

    the insanity of allowing the MSM – whether alberici last nite, or fran kelly, hannam, edis, or cheryl jones etc – to repeat meaningless cliches & falsehoods regarding CAGW & insult anyone who asked/asks questions, should have stopped at once, post-Climategate.

    every Labor/Green voter friend of mine who ACTUALLY read the emails understood what a scam it was immediately, even those i know who, like myself, did not have the benefit of a scientific education. meanwhile, the scam continues:

    23 April: UK Daily Mail: Victoria Bischoff: Energy giants pocket £75m of green tax cuts which would have helped millions of households save £50 on their energy bills
    Four months after the government cut green levies, millions of households have not received a penny in discount
    Customers on fixed tariffs are most likely to have missed out
    An estimated five million households have missed out on the reduction because they are on a fixed-rate deal…
    Ann Robinson, director of consumer policy at price comparison website uSwitch, says: ‘The fact is that suppliers could have made this whole process simpler by cutting prices across the board for both variable and fixed-price customers. It would have been fairer and easier for consumers to get their heads around.
    ‘Instead, it looks as though some suppliers are cherry-picking who should benefit. Those who won’t be getting a price cut, even if it’s for a valid reason, will be left feeling hard done by and that’s a real shame given that this whole thing should have been an easy way for suppliers to regain lost ground with customers.’…http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/bills/article-2610842/Energy-giants-pocketed-75m-green-tax-cuts.html

    i’m reminded of so many MSM programs, including one of the Grand Designs programs on ABC this week, praising wealthy property owners for selling solar to the grid, & benefitting from feed-in-tariffs, as if that makes them a CAGW saint, saving the planet for our children & children’s children. enough.

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    • #

      The were the “Mainstream” news media, now on issues like climate they are not. Many newspaper are so struggling to keep themselves afloat against the internet competition, that many don’t even have a science correspondent let alone someone who knows about climate.

      These days, apart from a very few papers, the only place you can find intelligent comment on climate is in the “mainstream” of internet blogs.

      150

  • #

    Here’s a comparison of the decade 2001 to 2010, compared to 2011 to date that I did a few months ago. Might be of interest to some. It’s an average of UAH and RSS data as per the bet between NTZ and SKS. http://www.kiwithinker.com/2014/01/a-decadal-global-climate-bet-three-years-down-the-track/

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  • #

    Too right!

    We bloggers have standards and can’t allow any old riffraff to call themselves a blogger.
    (wink)

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  • #
    Neville

    Jo is correct that many recent studies show a deceleration in SLR.
    But there has also been a similar deceleration in glacier retreat since 1950.
    So where’s this dangerous CAGW they keep telling us about?

    http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/new-paper-finds-worldwide-glacier.html

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  • #
    TdeF

    You build a model on the past and only when you can correctly and accurately model the past, do you dare to predict the future.

    What I find amazing about climate models is that they do not predict the past, even with the wisdom and data of hindsight. They do not even seem to try.

    However we are asked to believe they correctly predict the future?

    Worse, when they after more than 20 years fail utterly to predict the present, we are asked to believe that is because of unforeseen events, trade winds, capture of radiation by the oceans, an endless list of what can only be called excuses for utter failure.

    No one should be asked to believe a computer model which cannot accurately and exactly duplicate known past behaviour or which it is admitted cannot even predict major long term events of the future like El Nino or La Nina. They are supported in this absurd projection of the future by economists who also have computer models of world economies but failed utterly and universally to predict the GFC.

    Climate fantasists wanting funding, faux scientists away with the fairies.

    The only question is why 97% of scientists support man made global warming? Why not 100%? Was the 3% for credibility?

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    • #
      tom0mason

      A simple analogy of a climate modeling –

      Take 3,333 games machines circa 1990-1999 each of them playing a different game in one of 999 languages. The sound control has the volume set to maximum on all of them.
      Start all the machines off at the same time, time them to see which one finishes first. The loudest machine will have outputted the best data.

      This of course is simplifying the process.
      In reality only one machine runs, and this vitalizes all 3,333 game machines.
      🙂

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    • #
      TdeF

      What is also puzzling about the computer modelling is that in the 26 years since the IPCC was formed and the creation of these super models on super computers which are super complex, they have not yet fiddled their models to predict what was the future and is now the past. The data is excellent. The new explanations must precisely fit what is now precise known data. Yes or no?

      If yes, what do they predict? More of the same? Heating? Cooling? Surely we do not have to speculate using the very old ideas and incomplete data of 1988 when we have a working model and a massive data set at every latitude, every depth, every height?

      Do the new explanations predict catastrophic global warming? When will the now understood ‘pause’ stop and the heating ‘return with a vengeance?’. When? Why with all these super expensive super tools are we not getting the benefit of the models. Or are all the computers and models flat out trying to get tomorrow’s weather right and it is left to paleoentologists and economists and politicians to tell us we are going to die unless we hand over the cash?

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      • #
        TdeF

        To put it plainly, do the corrected models now show the pause? If so, how long will it last?

        I have read one article asking for another 30 years of much the same while we wait for the warming ‘pause’ to be confirmed. Does anyone really believe all the carbon fuels which were going to run out in the 1970s and are starting to exhaust today will actually be around in another 30 years, especially with accelerating demand? Our Bass Strait reserves are going. Dubai is out. Other places are out or running low. Who needs carbon taxes to slow fossil fuel consumption when it will have to slow anyway as prices soar and supply dwindles? Isn’t the ‘problem’ self fixing without any taxes?

        Of course without the coal, we will not have steel, but who needs that stuff, currently selling around $2Trillion a year?

        40

      • #
        Bulldust

        It is interesting to see the following article about the insensitivity of what is called the “Wealth Effect” in economics. For those who have never studied, or have happily forgotten their macroeconomics theory, the Wealth Effect was the concept that: as people grow more wealthy they tend to spend more, which is reflected as increases in GDP. The spending spurs production, jobs growth yadda yadda yadda … a variation of the trickle down concept if you will.

        The Wealth Effect has been the cornerstone behind the gratuitous QEI, QEII and QE Infinity policies of the US Federal Reserve, and certainly advocated by three successive chair people (Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen). Here is the heretical critique of the Wealth Effect and it’s ineffectiveness at spurring the US economy:

        http://www.investorsinsight.com/blogs/john_mauldins_outside_the_box/archive/2014/04/23/hoisington-investment-management-quarterly-review-and-outlook-first-quarter-2014.aspx

        Why do I bring this up on a predominantly climate-related blog? Think of the models of the macro-economy as GCM models. Then think of the ever-popular Wealth Effect as the climate’s CO2 sensitivity. Light bulb moment yet?

        The Fed is pinning everything on this theory that GDP growth (average global temperature growth) will rise dramatically due to the wealth effect (CO2 climate sensitivity) which they are priming with huge money printing, err quantitative easing (CO2 emissions). For some reason the economy (nature) is stubbornly refusing to respond to the QE (CO2 forcing). Unlike climate scientists, however, there is a great deal more open debate about the veracity of various economic hypotheses such as the Wealth Effect.

        Like the Greehouse Gas hypothesis, most economists agree that there will be a certain influence from the Wealth Effect – it stands to reason that the more affluent someone is, the more they will tend to spend, but the great disagreement is over the magnitude of the effect (i.e. the degree of CO2 sensitivity).

        The problem isn’t the economy/climate … just that our crude models and assumptions about said economy/climate are woefully inaccurate. One day we may have a better understanding of these systems, but at this stage we are largely groping in the dark. Wasting trillions on QE or CO2 taxation is pointless, and harmful to the economy.

        Personally I find it fascinating that the thinking in both fields is so similar. Perhaps it is so with other fields of study where the data is difficult to measure and the relaionships between variables are poorly understood? Perhaps this reflects more about the nature of the thought processes than about the nature of the subject being studied. How long are humans going to continue beating the same square peg into the round hole before they realise that just maybe the approach is the problem?

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  • #

    “I think the real problem is that Jones is talking about imaginary people:”

    Ner. The real problem is that Jones is an ideologue and an idiot. God am I sick of these morons.

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    • #
      speedy

      Jeremy

      The real problem is that Jones is an ideologue and an idiot.

      I respectfully suggest that you completely fail to understand how hard it is for journalists like Cheryl Jones. As a science communicator, her job is to demonstrate the catastrophic nature of global warming, minus the benefits of either attributable catastrophes or warming globes. Denied the support of evidence or a capacity for logic, she has no option but to use alternate communication paradyms – and gets nothing but mockery from people such as yourself. It’s people like you who, confronted with the threats of GLOBAL WARMING, who use temperature records and other data-ery stuff to show there’s been no climate change since when Johnny Howard was in the Lodge.

      What you fail to understand is that debates in Climate Science are all about arguments, NOT evidence. In fact, very often the evidence is not helpful to the argument and the gifted communicator needs to ignore, alter, massage or fabricate the evidence to enable it to align with the more fundamental issues of the argument.

      Besides that, the poor girl has to make a living somehow, and if facts don’t align with what she’s saying, what right have you to rob the bread from her table? Is it her fault? Of course not! She’s a victim of an idealogically-twisted education system; it’s not her fault if she can’t think or write and is intellectually lazy.

      I’m sorry if I’ve been a little harsh on you but now perhaps you’d like to have a little think about what you’ve said, and write a nice apology to Cheryl and that nice Mr. Murdoch, the AntiChrist.

      That’s better.

      /Sarc

      Speedy

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  • #
    Reinder van Til

    I find this missing heat in the oceans really hilarious. The idea suggests that all those extra 20 ppm CO2 molecules since 1998, produced no doubt above land suddenly got eyes. They do not backradiate above land, no they send all their rays to the oceans. 😀

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  • #
    PhilJourdan

    Calling Roy Spencer a “blogger” is like calling Jesus a “man”. Both technically and narrowly true. But you miss the rest of the elephant.

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  • #
    tom0mason

    Dear Cheryl,
    I, here and now, declare myself a greenhouse skeptic (sceptic).
    Yes I am, and have always been skeptical (sceptical) of greenhouses.
    I am having labels made now, to ensure you all know it -OK?

    Hopefully this helps you and your hapless, inept, and foolhardy campaign. I enjoy helping the underdog, especially when they lose.

    Tom.

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      It is all very well, being skeptical (sceptical) of greenhouses, because we know very well that they would not work if they were entirely green (or Green, for that matter), ergo they cannot exist.

      I on the other hand, am highly skeptical (sceptical) of glasshouses, because they are difficult to detect, especially at night.

      As for conservatories, I am convinced that they are merely a theoretical construct that can only exist in the rarefied truth of Land Agents (Estate Agent) brochures.

      30

      • #
        Gos

        If you fly a fighter jet at mach 1 close to the ground you will have no problems finding “glasshouses”,not only that but you will also uncover lots and lots of lawyers.

        00

        • #
          PhilJourdan

          That is called “flushing the prey”. You need to follow right behind with an A20 Warthog. 😉

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          • #
            Roy Hogue

            Amen!

            Despite their relative ugliness they were a formidable weapons platform against anything on the ground. My retired airline captain friend flew them in the Marine Corps. You don’t want to see one coming at you in anger.

            I’m not sure if any are still flying though.

            00

    • #
      Peter C

      At last!

      So you are not imaginary after all tomOmason. Maybe there a few more Greenhouse Skeptics out there. Count me in

      00

  • #
    the Griss

    The basic IGNORANCE of cagw apologists never ceases to amaze me.

    Why the **** don’t they actually learn something before they open their dopey mouths !

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    • #
      Jason Calley

      I can deal with the extreme level of ignorance; there are a lot of ignorant people out there. What stuns me is that the CAGW crowd have a unique blend of ignorance and arrogance. They are phenomenally ignorant, and yet have utter certainty that they understand the subject better than any mere “sceptic” can realize.

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      • #
        Yonniestone

        The CAGW crowd is suffering from “Recursive Climate Megalomania”, it’s true because a journalist did a half a*&ed job of using a search engine and came across the above psych tag mentioned on a blog.

        So being a good journalist with no accountability you would add in “Anthropogenic, Insistence, Spawning” this will spell an acronym RACISM which has no validity on the story at all but makes a dramatic headline that could sell more papers.

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      • #
        PhilJourdan

        Remember the old adage: He who knows that he knows not is a wise man. And he who knows not that he knows not is a fool.

        They do not know that they know not. That is how they can so arrogant and ignorant.

        30

  • #
    Keith L

    Please send a mail with a link to this article to Chreyl at the Oz.
    Better throw in a web browser and some instructions just in case.

    81

  • #
    Gamecock

    “Global mean surface temperature . . . is only one of many measures of climate change.”

    Gross ignorance of what “climate” means.

    50

  • #
    motvikten

    Pablo Neruda, Canto General the poem The Favorites.

    ” …..
    He’s the skulking coward hired to praise dirty hands.
    He’s an orator or journalist
    …….

    (Also true with a She, and it’s there today, everywhere, for all issues up for public debate)

    I am certain Pablo Neruda, if he had lived today, would have written a poem to praise the www.

    30

  • #
    Rathnakumar

    Excellent post, Jo! So, physicist Brian Schmidt is a moron as well. 🙁

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  • #

    Jo, typo – ‘hiatus’, rather then ‘haitus’.

    I knew I had dyslexia when I went to a Toga Party dressed as a goat. 🙂

    BTW, excellent post. I don’t know how you keep it up.

    Cheers.

    Thanks Fixed! – Jo

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  • #
    richard

    “That’s right, climate model projections to 2100 remain intact, untouched by reality. But 98% of their predictions from the last 20 years have met reality and reality won. Indeed they not only fail on global scales, but on regional, local, short term, tropical, polar, and upper tropospheric scales too”

    A consensus of climate models predicting a particular future over 20 years failed and hence the scientists who fed in the information.

    I think in most jobs you would be fired, still must be great to be paid to be wrong.

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      Jason Calley

      “I think in most jobs you would be fired, still must be great to be paid to be wrong.”

      And they would be fired, at least if their job were to make accurate predictions. However, making accurate predictions is what a scientist would be doing. They only claim to be scientists. Their real job is to drum up support for centralized control of all energy usage, everywhere. The main way they do that is by creating frightening (even if false) predictions. They do their jobs very well. That is why they have not been fired.

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    Roy Hogue

    So, more business as usual in the climate change world.

    I would die of shock if just one of these so-called experts could learn to fly right side up, straight and level and keep it that way for so much as one whole day.

    I do not understand their failure to realize they’re embarrassing themselves constantly. 🙁

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      Roy Hogue

      Maybe it really is something in the water.

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      Gos

      Roy it is almost an impossibility for an educated person to say they are wrong and that they were duped.

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        the Griss

        No it is not. !

        A properly educated person always knows they do not know everything, hence is ALWAYS sceptical.

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        Roy Hogue

        The beginning of wisdom is to admit you aren’t wise. You can only progress forward and gain wisdom from that one single starting point.

        Education — knowledge — is only valuable if you have the wisdom to use it. I know how hard it is sometimes to admit you’re wrong but I’ve had to do it, sometimes only to myself when I discover a mistake I’ve made. But if they cannot do it then they remain fooled and are fools.

        Jo even called me out on something I said once that was beyond my knowledge and inappropriate. I had to admit publicly that she was right and I was wrong. If I can do it, so can climate scientists.

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    David Ball

    Well, it was only their “projections” that were way off. That’s a relief.

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    Andrew McRae

    Too funny? Jo how can you be laughing at a time when you should be freeing the slaves:

    More acutely, when you consider the math that McKibben, the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) all lay out, you must confront the fact that the climate justice movement is demanding that an existing set of political and economic interests be forced to say goodbye to trillions of dollars of wealth. It is impossible to point to any precedent other than abolition.

    He actually admits his analogy doesn’t work at a moral level, but claims he’s only using slaves as the analogy because the foregone asset value is similar in GDP terms to 2200Gt of fossil carbon. Yeah, sure, he only wanted to argue the dollar value, but somehow those pesky slaves somehow invaded his essay completely uninvited.

    In other news, alarmists can create emotional rhetoric faster than science can diagnose the climate.

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      Roy Hogue

      In other news, alarmists can create emotional rhetoric faster than science can diagnose the climate.

      Faster than the speed of light I think. I wonder if that’s a scientific breakthrough on a par with the discovery that the speed of light is constant for all observers. Maybe we could get huge grants to investigate how they do it. 😉

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    hunter

    Hey, this is an improvement: In the US, Dr. Spencer is called “bible thumping denial^st scum paid schill” by our progressive climate obsessed media.
    At least your climate obsessed reporter-ette allows that Dr. Spencer might be somehow connected to science.

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      Roy Hogue

      Let me guess, it was MSNBC.

      My wife used to tune in to see what the opposition is saying. But she’s given up on it. The rhetoric gets lower and lower as the president and his party sink lower and lower in public opinion.

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    Bob

    “I think the real problem is that Jones is talking about imaginary people: ”

    Right. It’s all in her imagination. Don’t confuse her with facts, her mind is made up.

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    Jaymez

    Another great post Jo. Reading what Cheryl Jones has written reminds me of something else you once wrote:

    The opposite of skeptical is gullible! An unskeptical scientist is NOT A SCIENTIST!

    Being Skeptical is a good thing! I find it remarkable that the term ‘skeptic’ is often used in a derogatory sense as Cheryl Jones has used it in her article. Though who knows where she pulled the term “greenhouse skeptic” from. But when did science and the English language change?

    I’d suggest Cheryl check her Thesaurus! (Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.)

    Synonyms for unskeptical, which the dictionary defines as an adjective meaning naive, trusting:

    foolish, unsophisticated, unsuspecting, wide-eyed, being a sucker, believing, credulous, easily taken in, easy mark, falling hook line and sinker, green, innocent, kidding oneself, mark, silly, simple, sucker, susceptible, swallowing whole, taken in, taking the bait,

    Synonyms for skeptical

    astute, discerning, knowledgeable, perceptive, suspicious, unbelieving, untrusting, wise

    http://thesaurus.com/browse/unskeptical

    Being a scientist is all about being skeptical, and if you think this joke takes that point too far, then you really don’t ‘get it’:

    A carpenter, a school teacher, and scientist were traveling by train through Scotland when they saw a black sheep through the window of the train.
    “Aha,” said the carpenter with a smile, “I see that Scottish sheep are black.”
    “Hmm,” said the school teacher, “You mean that some Scottish sheep are black.”
    “No,” said the scientist glumly, “All we know is that there is at least one sheep in Scotland, and that at least one side of that one sheep is black.”
    Joke unattributed from: http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/1122sciencedefns.html

    Journalists, academics and politicians should be celebrating and encouraging scientific skepticism, not denouncing it! Once you cease to be skeptical, you cease looking and then you definitely won’t find errors or new discoveries!

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    Bruce

    With respect to sea level rise see:

    http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2007JCLI1840.1 the last sentence of which is:

    At best, the determination and attribution of global mean
    sea level change lies at the very edge of knowledge
    and technology. The most urgent job would appear
    to be the accurate determination of the smallest
    temperature and salinity changes that can be determined
    with statistical significance, given the realities of
    both the observation base and modeling approximations.
    Both systematic and random errors are of concern,
    the former particularly, because of the changes in
    technology and sampling methods over the many decades,
    the latter from the very great spatial and temporal
    variability implied by Figs. 2, 6, and 8. It remains
    possible that the database is insufficient to compute
    mean sea level trends with the accuracy necessary to
    discuss the impact of global warming—as disappointing
    as this conclusion may be. The priority has to be to
    make such calculations possible in the future.

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      Gos

      And even after all those things are taken into account we are only living on what is called the earth’s crust and underneath is a great wobbly pudding of certain materials that move at will.

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        Roy Hogue

        You mean the land may be moving instead of the water? How could that be? Solid ground is so solid and all that you know. 😉

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    pat

    Andrew McRae – thanx for posting the link to Salon which mentions:

    “The Carbon Tracker Initiative, a consortium of financial analysts and environmentalists”

    “In fact, in certain climate and investment circles, people have begun to talk about ‘stranded assets'”

    (author of the Salon piece): Chris Hayes, Editor-at-Large of The Nation, hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Monday through Friday on MSNBC. Prior to joining MSNBC as an anchor, Chris had previously served as a frequent substitute host for “The Rachel Maddow Show” and “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.” Chris became a MSNBC contributor in 2010 and has been with The Nation since 2007.)

    ABC gives TWO HOURS OF TAXPAYER-FUNDED AIRTIME (show is repeated) to the most blatant bunch of lies & half-lies from self-interested parties, attempting to extort TRILLIONS from pension/retirement/superannuation funds to finance the CAGW scam. Carbon Tracker is mentioned.

    ABC dares to present this cheap sales talk, recorded at University of Sydney, as a BIG IDEA when, in fact, it is really an infomercial:

    AUDIO: 23 April: ABC Big Ideas: Stranded assets
    Measures to offset the impact of climate change are likely to reduce demand for fossil fuels. So is it wise to continue to invest in fossil fuels or will they end up as stranded assets with a huge loss in value. Investment analysts discuss the need for governments and private companies to manage climate risk.
    Guests:
    Ben Caldecott
    Research Fellow School of Enterprise and the Environment Oxford University
    Dr John Hewson
    Chair Asset Owners Disclosure Project and former federal Liberal Party leader
    Jemma Green
    Senior Research Fellow and PhD candidate, Sustainability Policy Institute, Curtin University
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/stranded-assets/5387738

    34 mins: First Question from the floor: 3 points:
    1) one of the reasons some coal producers are trading at a loss is because of the take or pay contracts with the freight companies. where it pays them to produce at a loss rather than pay the penalties;
    2) i’ve traded commodites for 40 years. i have thousands of graphs & nowhere have i seen an inflation-adjusted commodity price chart like the one put up here; i don’t know where it comes from, but i can’t agree with it at all.
    3) corrects introduction of Hewson – small point, but as far as i know, David Clarke was the founder of Macquarie Bank, not John Hewson.

    Jemma Green jumps in: keep your questions short & direct them at the panel.

    Ben Caldecott, answering a different question, appears to address John Hewson saying, as far as he knows, the (inflation-adjusted commodity price) CHART is by OECD/McKinsey.

    more to come…

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      Roy Hogue

      And anyway you look at it, the carbon tax is screwing everyone. I would play games with almost anything to keep my business in the black, just as coal is doing. And if it increases the bottom line, so much the better. Farmers here have been content to let land go fallow and be paid by the U.S. taxpayer to grow nothing, all in the name of farm price support that came along in the 1930s.

      It’s a long time past the time to stop all this and return to a real free market in everything. It may be painful for a while but it will also settle down to what works best. When someone thinks he’s disadvantaged by that we should say no to messing with it and tell him to get into a different job, a different career or a different business, whatever applies. We’ll all end up better off in the long run.

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    pat

    Sydney Uni sidebar: “Related content: Podcast to come” but four weeks after the sales pitch hasn’t posted the podcast as yet!

    27 March: Sydney Uni: Stranded Down Under: Are fossil fuels bankrupting our nation both financially and ecologically?
    Ben Caldecott, Stranded Assets Programme Director and Research Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment
    Co-presented with the Sydney Environment Institute and 350.org.au
    The world’s top scientists estimate that global temperatures will rise by up to 6 degrees in the next century if we continue to burn fossil fuels at our current rate.
    Numerous industrialised nations are taking to reduce their emissions and shift the world’s energy system from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Yet Australia is set to invest over AUD 100 billion in new coal mining developments over the next 15 years, including nine mega-mines in the Galilee Basin and the controversial Maules Creek development in NSW’s Leard State Forest.
    Who is footing the bill for these projects in Australia? All Australians are, through compulsory superannuation schemes that invest in the expansion of the fossil fuel industry…
    Ben Caldecott, founder of Oxford University’s Stranded Assets Programme and author of the recent report Stranded Down Under? Environment related factors changing China’s demand for coal and what this means for Australian coal assets, sheds light on the ramifications of Australia’s fossil fuel addiction and how individuals can divest in funding this industry…
    Prior to Oxford, he was Head of Policy at investment bank Climate Change Capital where he ran the company’s research centre and advised clients and funds on the development of policy-driven markets. Ben has previously worked as Head of Government Advisory at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, as Research Director for Environment and Energy at the think tank Policy Exchange and as a Deputy Director in the Strategy Directorate of the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change…
    Introduction by Dr John Hewson, former leader of the Liberal Party of Australia and currently chair of The Asset Owners Disclosure Project, an independent not-for-profit global organisation whose objective is to protect members’ retirement savings from the risks posed by climate change by improving the level of disclosure and industry best practice.
    http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2014/ben_caldecott.shtml

    Carbon Tracker Team:
    Advisory Board
    Our advisory board consists of:
    – Jemma Green
    – Ben Caldecott

    Donors
    The work of Carbon Tracker has been made possible by the vision and openness to innovation shown by the following organisations:
    The Rockefeller Brothers Fund
    The Growald Family Fund
    The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust
    The Polden Puckham Charitable Foundation
    The Tellus Mater Foundation
    The Ashden Trust
    Zennstrom Philanthropies
    Wallace Global Fund
    The European Climate Foundation
    http://www.carbontracker.org/team

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      Geoff Sherrington

      Pat,
      Judith Curry’s blog Climte Etc has its most recent thread about coal consumption and the impossibilty of use of the IPCC RCP 8.5.
      I read it as meaning that Caldecott is dead wrong with his shorthand implicatons of 6 degrees from more coal use as usual.

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    pat

    this gives you the flavour of Jemma Green’s portion of the ABC Big Ideas broadcast, tho u need to hear her full spiel to appreciate the dishonesty on display at the Sydney Uni event:

    3 April:SMH: Jemma Green: Why the carbon tax should stay
    1. Carbon pricing is actually making us more efficient
    Since 2013, building new wind power infrastructure in Australia has been cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives. This investment produces a cheaper source of electricity because wind and solar don’t have the input costs of coal and gas producers…
    China is now producing more energy from renewables each year than we have in our whole power system…
    3. Climate change affects us directly
    We need to think very carefully before we take a retrograde step and potentially join what I sometimes call the SICK countries (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Canada and Kazakhstan), who are ranked the four worst performers from a climate perspective…
    (Jemma Green is a Research Fellow at CUSP, conducting industry research relating to infrastructure, energy, carbon and sustainability. Her particular interest is sustainable economics and her PhD studies have focused on low-cost and low-carbon housing.)
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/why-the-carbon-tax-should-stay-20140403-zqqb2.html

    i wish someone would have the time & energy to do a transcript from the ABC audio, because almost every line could be rebutted.

    anyone concerned about their Super Funds (or similar funds elsewhere) would be wise to listen to the entire broadcast & take action, by contacting their own Fund & warning against reckless investment in non-performing CAGW stocks.

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    llew Jones

    The refreshing trait that distinguishes Roy Spencer from the alarmist climate scientists is his willingness to say we don’t yet know so much about the Earth’s climate. He thus makes the alarmists appear to what there is little doubt they really are. Namely first class con artists.

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      BilB

      Looking at the evidence on Roy Spencer I think that he is a person who has allowed his politics to overide his science ethic. His activities appear to be more political than scientific. I had a look at his iris theory and it was clear to me that he took observations from one very small very special part of the atmosphere, drew conclusions that suited his prevonception, then extended those doubtful conclusions to the entire atmosphere. His conclusions have been refuted by many scientists who took a skeptical view, as indeed do I.

      [I’m sure Bilb has the name wrong. Shouldn’t that be James Hansen?] ED

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      • #

        You did not look at any evidence. Lindzen came up with the Iris theory. You are just parroting a CAGW propaganda opinion piece.

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        the Griss

        The delusion bilge dweller appears again, with another delusional rant.

        Nothing can ever be clear to you, because live in a permanently delusional state of mind.

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        Geoff Sherrington

        The ‘Iris effect’ is now traditionally ascribed, completely I believe, to Richard Lindzen and co-author Choi. Papers from 2009 and 2011 were heavily criticised. Experimental confirmation is near impossible, so both criticism and support have a large element of subjective guesswork.
        (It is possible that I am unaware if others did earlier work. I will happily correct this post if shown any valid references.)

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        Lord Jim

        BilB: Looking at the evidence on Roy Spencer I think that he is a person who has allowed his politics to overide his science ethic. His activities appear to be more political than scientific.

        Yes BilB, only the sceptics allow their preconceptions to influence their views. There are not an undue proportion of activist scientists and non-scientists at the IPCC – never did a political thought meddle with their prognostications [/sarc].

        What /can/ overcome preconceptions of all types is empirical testing but – guess what! – CAGW doesn’t do empirical testing. As Ms Jones says, climate scientists know their long range projections are right without even having to worry about those messy observational things called facts!

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        Roy Hogue

        ED. Poor BilB has nothing else to fall back on but the party line — no science, no arguments anyone can understand, no facts, no figures, only character assassination. So maybe you ought to take pity on him and not call attention to his having no clothes on. 😉

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          Roy Hogue

          Besides which, he’ll disappear at some point like all the others, leaving nothing but a sigh of relief behind him.

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    handjive

    Sorry, O/T:
    “Australians from all walks of life should brace for a serious tightening of federal government expenditure, Joe Hockey has warned, but it appears older Australians will be asked to do some of the heaviest lifting …”
    Hockey claims up to 10% of gdp is spent on pensions.

    To digress, immediately after the upcoming budget, politicians will vote themselves a pay-rise, as recommended by an ‘independent tribunal’. You can bet 10% of gdp on that!

    So, here is a collection of links attempting to collate the amount of money spent on stopping Global Warming.
    Maybe you prefer the 3 letter slogan “Stopping climate change”.
    Do your own back-of-the-envelope maths on how to save money:

    States:
    Tasmania: It’s just broke-Premier reveals massive blowout in Tasmanian budget
    WA: 2012/13 WA State Budget score on environment and sustainability
    SthAustralia: 2013/14 budget for the state environment portfolio is $363 million, only 2.24% of the total budget.
    Queensland: State Budget to enhance and protect Queensland’s environment
    Victoria Budget : Environment and Climate Change
    NSW: Overall, the budget allocates $1.6 billion for the state’s environment and heritage.
    Independent:
    Warwick Hughes: A Quarter $Billion in climate change grants over three years 2010-2012
    Federal:
    Economy of Australia (Wikipedia)– GDP:$1.525Trillion
    Direct Action:$3.2Billion
    Australian Budget 2013-2014, Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities
    . . . .
    To be fair, there are some good environmental programmes that benefit, but a war on carbon(sic) is not one.
    And, there is rorting of our pension system that needs to be worked out, but that is another social discussion.

    This obviously a very rough approximation, but, there is no reason anyone should economically suffer if the money was spent wisely. Not on boondoggles for lobbyist mates:
    THE introduction of smart meters in Victoria may have been a costly exercise for consumers but it has proven an impressive money spinner for a handful of Australian entrepreneurs.

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      handjive

      UPDATE:

      Direct Action: Government releases policy white paper on climate change plan

      I want to re-affirm today the Government’s clear, strong support for the science underpinning climate change, recognition of the need for both domestic and global action, and our commitment to the 5 per cent target as we go forward,” Mr Hunt said.
      . . . .
      The fraudulent waste of public funds continue by the ‘cino’s. (conservative in name only)

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        scaper...

        Keep the rage.

        Worked well for Howard in respect to the early century boat people.

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        Lord Jim

        I want to re-affirm today the Government’s clear, strong support for the science underpinning climate change

        I thought there was supposed to be a separation between church and state!

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          scaper...

          Did you know we have already attained half of the 5% target without doing basically SFA?

          Between the lines is an interesting reading.

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        the Griss

        Sirs,

        If the Liberals continue to support the fraud of global warming, they WILL LOSE the next election because Liberal voters WILL NOT vote for them.

        Then we will have another term of Labor/Green farce, and Australia will be totally ruined. Its on THEIR heads !

        They are heading down the wrong path with their refusal to listen to those that actually voted them into power… STUPID, STUPID !

        They truly need to wake up to reality. !!

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          scaper...

          Ever played contract Bridge? Finesse is an asset.

          I give up!

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            the Griss

            Yes.. and the time for finesse is well and truly over!

            Time to get agro !

            Time to tell the Jiberals exactly what you think of there wishy-washy namby-pamby attitude!

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            the Griss

            ps.. that post above is what I have just emailed to several Liberal ministers. (with the personal tense changes to direct it at them)

            Greg Hunt makes me exceedingly cranky!!

            He should be dumped and Dennis Jensen put in his place.

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    pat

    22 April: Bloomberg/Businessweek: Ambereen Choudhury: Goldman Sachs Stands Firm as Banks Exit Commodity Trading
    Goldman Sachs Group Inc., whose three top executives began their careers at the firm in the commodity-trading unit, is poised to gain market share as pressure from regulators drives competitors to scale back.
    Barclays Plc, the U.K.’s second-largest bank, said that it’s exiting commodities businesses other than trading precious metals and derivatives tied to oil, U.S. gas and commodity indexes. In January, the London-based bank cut jobs in the group that traded raw materials and in February shut power-trading desks in the U.S. and Europe.
    JPMorgan Chase & Co. last month announced the $3.5 billion sale of its raw-materials trading unit to Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. and Morgan Stanley plans to sell its physical oil business to Russia’s OAO Rosneft. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays and JPMorgan were the biggest traders of commodity derivatives among banks, according to a Greenwich Associates survey last year.
    “The more banks that exit commodities trading, the less competitive it becomes for the banks which stick with it,” Jeffery Harte, an analyst at Sandler O’Neill & Partners LP, said in a phone interview. Goldman Sachs has “the bigger franchise to be a winner. It now has a much bigger piece of a much smaller pie.”
    Regulatory Pressure
    Politicians and regulators have exerted pressure on banks to cut back their commodities business. The U.S. Federal Reserve said it’s considering new limits on trading and warehousing of physical commodities. Policy makers are seeking comment on ways to restrict ownership and trading of commodities such as oil, gas and aluminum by deposit-taking banks. New global capital requirements have also made it more expensive for banks to hold commodities…
    Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG said in December it would exit dedicated energy, agriculture, dry-bulk and industrial-metals trading, cutting about 200 jobs. Bank of America Corp. said in January it would dispose of its European power and gas inventory as opportunities shrink and increasing regulation curbs trading.
    Goldman Sachs, which earned the most money from raw materials among the top 10 investment banks in 2012, ranked second last year and Morgan Stanley was third, analytics company Coalition Ltd. said in a report last month. Commodities revenue at the 10 largest banks slumped 18 percent to $4.5 billion in 2013 because of a “depressed client environment” and low volatility, Coalition estimated February…
    http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-04-22/goldman-sachs-unbowed-as-barclays-joins-bank-commodities-exodus

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    Streetcred

    Teachers used to be the know-all blowhards that we avoided at all costs … nothing worse than a teacher with an ignorant ‘opinion’. Cheryl Jones has now led journalists to that mantle … nothing worse than a blowhard journalist with an ignorant ‘opinion’.

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    Reinder van Til

    “greenhouse sceptics”?

    Yeah, I am a greenhouse sceptic. I recently bought a new one. It is a green one made of thick green plastic on a construction of PVC and iron tubes. Its dimensions are 4 by 2 by 2 meters. I use it for tomatoes, aubergines, paprikas and peppers. I was very sceptical when I bought it but it is a nice one.

    I am not even sceptic about the greenhouse effect if that is what she actually means.

    What I reject is CAGW. That is a totally different story

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    Peter OBrien

    Good post, Jo. I also was struck by the dismissive portrayal of Roy Spencer. Another thing that seemed odd was Cheryl’s assertion that the estimate for climate sensitivity from the Palaeosens Project ‘is close to the value obtained from the models’, suggesting some form of corroboration. But as far as I am aware climate sensitivity is an input to the models not an output.

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    pat

    23 April: KRIS-TV Texas: Andrew Ellison: Bayfront Wind Turbines Will Likely Never Power a Thing
    CORPUS CHRISTI – Many of you at home are probably familiar with those four wind turbines right across from the American Bank Center.
    You’ll probably also remember a report we did back in November 2012, revealing that those turbines don’t power a single thing.
    Now, a year and a half later, the city still has no plan to actually use them, and it turns out, it may never use them.
    City Engineering says it hasn’t even looked into the cost of connecting them to the system, because the turbines wouldn’t produce enough power to make a difference anyway.
    The four of them cost taxpayers nearly half a million dollars to build, and it looks like all they’ll ever be is something to look at.
    The turbines were part of a bayfront improvement project approved by voters in the 2004 bond election…
    http://www.kristv.com/news/bayfront-wind-turbines-will-likely-never-power-a-thing/

    23 April: UK Telegraph: James Kirkup: No more onshore wind farms if Conservatives win 2015 election
    A new Conservative government would grant local residents powers to block all new onshore wind farms within six months of taking office, party pledges
    No subsidies will paid to operators of new onshore wind turbines if the Conservatives win a Commons majority next May, they will promise.
    The commitment to stop the erection of new onshore turbines – revealed in The Telegraph earlier this month – is the latest hardening of Conservative rhetoric on green energy.
    Subsidies for existing onshore wind would remain in place and wind farms currently under construction or given legal consent would still be completed, almost doubling the onshore wind sector’s capacity by 2020.
    But no more onshore turbines would be put in place beyond that, Michael Fallon, the energy minister, will say…
    (Energy Minister Michael Fallon) “We remain committed to cutting our carbon emissions. And renewable energy, including onshore wind, has a key role in our future energy supply. But we now have enough bill payer-funded onshore wind in the pipeline to meet our renewable energy commitments and there’s no requirement for any more…
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/10783823/No-more-onshore-wind-farms-if-Conservatives-win-2015-election.html

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    pat

    from UK Tele article posted earlier: “and wind farms currently under construction or given legal consent would still be completed, almost doubling the onshore wind sector’s capacity by 2020”

    here are the numbers:

    (paywalled) 23 April: UK Times: Ben Webster/Michael Savage: Plan for 3,000 turbines ‘won’t be blown off course’
    The number of onshore wind turbines will almost double over the next five years despite attempts by leading Conservatives to impose a moratorium on new projects, according to the energy secretary.
    Ed Davey, a Liberal Democrat, said the Conservatives would not succeed in blocking his department’s plan to increase the total capacity from onshore wind farms from 7 gigawatts to 13GW by 2020.
    This would mean an additional 3,000 turbines, bringing the total in the countryside to 7,000…
    http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4070152.ece

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      Ed Davey, a Liberal Democrat, said the Conservatives would not succeed in blocking his department’s plan to increase the total capacity from onshore wind farms from 7 gigawatts to 13GW by 2020.

      See again how the use of Nameplate Capacity is a ploy to make it sound so huge.

      So, while the headline says 13GW, then that is the equivalent of six and a half large scale coal fired power plants. (2000MW+)

      However, as I have always said, it’s not Nameplate, but actual power delivered to the grids. This, in the case of the UK is achieved at a current Capacity Factor of 27.5%.

      So, effectively, that means that Nameplate is now down to 3.58GW, which is less than two large scale coal fired power plants.

      Hype always looks so much better than reality.

      Tony.

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    pat

    23 April: UK Daily Mail: Tamara Cohen/Ben Spencer/Matt Chorley: Energy bills will have to rise to pay for new offshore wind farms, Lib Dem minister Ed Davey admits
    Energy Secretary unveils deal for eight new renewables schemes
    Government to guarantee price paid for power, pushing up bills
    Mr Davey insists charges would be higher without going green
    A Tory MP criticised the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary yesterday after he announced new green energy projects that will lead to higher bills.
    Ed Davey said the five new offshore wind farms and three wood-burning plants would supply 2million homes, create 8,500 jobs and attract £12billion of private investment.
    But he was accused of exploiting the crisis in Ukraine, which he said highlighted the need to develop home-grown power, as a ‘cover’ for expensive projects…
    Investors get a guaranteed price for the electricity they produce – around double the wholesale cost – some of which is added on to consumer electricity bills…
    ***In an embarrassment for the Energy Secretary, the Drax power station in North Yorkshire, where one of the new projects is based, has announced plans to sue his department.
    Only one of the two plants that it anticipated would be converted from coal to wood-chip was announced, and the firm’s shares fell by 13 per cent.
    A spokesman said it would make a legal challenge.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2611215/Energy-bills-rise-pay-new-offshore-wind-farms-Lib-Dem-minister-Ed-Davey-admits.html

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    pat

    23 April: UK WesternDailyPress: Martin Hesp: Wind farms ‘slashing house prices by half’ in Devon
    According to the chairman of the Devon branch of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE): “If they find a wind turbine or solar farm development is being planned they are backing out.”…
    “Recently there have been reports published by the LSE (London School of Economics) concluding that house values within close proximity of a wind farm are reduced by up to 11 per cent – however, here on the ground in Devon when houses are near a single wind turbine, estate agents are recommending huge discounts of between 40 and 50 per cent in some cases – if they’re saleable at all,” said Mrs Mills.
    She said she received an email last week in which a correspondent from Oxford wrote: “Hi Penny – we’ve decided, with this info, that we will not be buying this property. It’s such a shame that this beautiful location will be soured with such ugly constructions.”…
    She added that the West Country’s tourism industry was also being hit by the increasing rash of wind turbines and solar farms that were cropping up across the region.
    “Tourism is the lifeblood of the South West and we endanger it at our peril,” Mrs Mills said. “The respected conservation group in Scotland, The John Muir Trust, has undertaken a tourism survey and concluded that ‘up to 17.5m adults across Britain may think twice before visiting areas where the landscape is blighted by turbines’…
    CPRE members were also told that planning appeals were outstanding for another 22 single wind turbines and that dozens more wind farms were at the scoping or screening stage.
    The organisation is also anxious about solar farms being built across the region. Devon has 3,000 acres of agricultural land that is either already playing host to solar farms, have approval for such developments, or are awaiting planning decision…
    “Our local economy could now be affected from the consequential impact on tourism, as well as the decimating of house values.”
    “We are all now living in a giant wind farm, which nobody asked for and only a handful of people benefit from,” she concluded.
    http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/House-buyers-pull-wind-farm-nearby/story-20997210-detail/story.html

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  • #
    handjive

    Too Funny.
    The Conversation: academic rigour, journalistic flair
    ~ ~ ~
    The Conversation post:
    Censored’ IPCC summary reveals jockeying for key UN climate talks
    by David Stern, Professor at the Australian National University

    Quote: “I was an author on Chapter 5 of the report, which deals with historical trends in emissions. I was not at the governmental plenary meeting, so I can only speculate about why some things made it into the approved summary and others did not.”
    . . .
    So, I post a link that simply says link to interesting AAAS review:
    Scientists Licking Wounds After Contentious Climate Report Negotiations

    The review agrees with everything in Conversation post except it quotes the dissent amongst scientists..
    Result: comment deleted.

    Academic rigour, journalistic flair?

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  • #
    pat

    can u believe this?

    14 April: RenewEconomy: Giles Parkinson: Schneider study finds boosting renewables will cut energy costs
    Analysts at French based energy components company Schneider Electric have concluded that extending or expanding Australia’s renewable energy target would lead to lower electricity prices, lower carbon emissions and increased competition…
    ***The conclusions in the white paper have apparently surprised even the four-man team from Schneider that conducted the analysis, and the unnamed large energy users who commissioned it.
    ***Large energy users have normally been against the renewable energy target, and this study – along with others that have reached similar conclusions – is causing a rethink…
    http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/schneider-study-finds-boosting-renewables-will-cut-energy-costs-89361

    Schneider Electric White Paper: Renewable Energy Target: Three Consumer Benefits
    http://www.secontact.com/dl/australia_lret_whitepaper.pdf

    Schneider Electric
    We have been involved in onshore and offshore wind farms since the mid 1990’s, with customers in UK, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Spain and USA.
    In the UK we’ve worked on 600MW of projects.
    http://www.schneider-electric.co.uk/sites/uk/en/solutions/business_segments/electrical-energy/renewable-power-generation/windfarms.page

    given their history, how can Giles say Schneider were “surprised” to find wind turbines were a win-win-win proposition? surely Giles should be shocked if they found otherwise.

    as for Giles’ claim that large energy users have “normally been against the renewable energy target” – which users would that be, Giles? & what are the positions of the specific UNNAMED LARGE USERS WHO COMMISSIONED THIS REPORT, Giles?

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    pat

    11 April: Goulburn Post: Louise Thrower: We are ACT’s wind turbine
    THE ACT government will brief Goulburn Mulwaree Council about its renewable energy policy later this month…
    The (ACT’s renewables’) target is already inflaming tensions in council areas surrounding the ACT, concerned they’ll be built on their patch.
    Mayor Geoff Kettle joined Hume MP Angus Taylor and state coalition politicians Pru Goward, Katrina Hodgkinson and John Barilaro in Canberra on April 1, opposing any move to construct more wind farms…
    “By investing in wind farms, all located across the border in NSW, it’s not only treating NSW like a junkyard, it’s a case of corporate welfare on steroids for the wind industry,” Mr Taylor said at the time.
    “If we’ve learnt anything over recent years, it’s that we need to find low cost ways of reducing carbon emissions. When you boil this down, it’s one giant corporate welfare scheme. The households and businesses of Canberra will be the ones to pay,” Mr Taylor said…
    Duty MLC for Monaro Steve Whan branded this NIMBYISM as bizarre, saying that the NSW Planning website dubbed the ACT region as a renewable energy precinct. This initiative was aimed at attracting investment in wind farms.
    “In a bizarre bit of politically partisan theatre these coalition MPs decided to attack the customer instead of the actual approval authority – the NSW Government – or the proponents,” Mr Whan said…
    On the upside, a report to Council speculated that with ACT electricity consumers funding the initiatives, there was potential for some Canberra businesses to relocate into the surrounding region, particularly those that were “price sensitive.”
    http://www.goulburnpost.com.au/story/2211107/we-are-acts-wind-turbine/

    the Coalition Govts – State & Federal – need to get off the fence, one way or another. where’s the integrity?

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  • #
    Greg

    How a lefty blog looks at Spencer. It is actually pretty well disguised as being authoritative, if you were a low information type.

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      The comparison of Hansen and Monckton is interesting. I would bet a whole lot of money that in a fair debate Chris Monckton could take James Hansen apart, piece by piece and reassemble him again at the end. Hansen would be torn to shreds by Monckton. It would be more fun to watch than anything I can think of. It’s probably also impossible to arrange. Keeping it fair might also be a problem depending on the moderator because I think Hansen would need help from the moderator to get through it.

      I’d still love to see it.

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        the Griss

        I can imagine Hansen melting into a mouth-frothing rage…

        No, wait there…. that was McKibben, wasn’t it. !

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    Eddie

    ” If Cheryl Jones had gone so far as to type “climate bets” into a search engine ”

    Ooh, getting dangerously sounding close to ‘ climate debts ‘ .

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    Rogueelement451

    One would have thought that the revelations from the CRU emails would have been sufficient to expose to the World
    the mendacity, corruption and self interest of all of those involved in the CAGW,,,,hoax ,does not fit the bill i,m afraid,Crusade appears more fitting but a Crusade you would hope would have more worthwhile aims.
    For those who would like a decent summary of CRU ,lies, duplicity,abject toadyism and fear of the boss, then here is a good site.

    http://www.michaelkelly.artofeurope.com/cru.htm

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  • #
    Lord Jim

    . While acknowledging that the models are imperfect, climate scientists say the sophisticated computer programs have performed well in projections covering longer timescales.

    Is she really saying that long range projections – which have never been empirically confirmed – perform better than short term projections which are verified against the empirical record?

    Really?

    We sure are lucky to have climate scientists who know the predictive power of their models without even having to empirically verify them!

    How dare these brutish facts ruin their lovely models!

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    • #
      the Griss

      “While acknowledging that the models are imperfect, climate scientists say the sophisticated computer programs have performed well in projections covering longer timescales.”

      Seriously?? How the **** can they know the models have performed well over longer timescales.. WAFLOR !!!!!!!!!!

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        Rogueelement451

        Quite simple really they have a model which predicts that in the event that the last 30 years of modelling have been inaccurate,then taken over a period of 2000 years there is a high probability that they are at least 98% correct based upon the simple fact that 97% of peer reviewed scientists think it is extremely likely that, that should be the case.
        Simples!

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      I’ll believe it when the temperature at my house is 6 C (10.8 F) above normal. And have no fear, I’ll be well able to tell it’s that far above normal.

      In the meantime, ho hum!

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    • #
      Lord Jim

      Hope Jo doesn’t mind, but here’s something I posted there that has apparently failed to appear:

      Firstly Kaye Lee, it IS a well know fact that the empirical temperature rise has not accorded with the model projections (As per Spenser, according to 95% of the models the empirical record is /wrong/). There is absolutely no reason for me to bend over backwards to prove something that is a matter of common knowledge (or should be common knowledge to the reasonably well informed).

      The argument is /not/ about whether the temperature is rising – the temperature of the world has probably been rising since the end of the little ice age (although there are measurement problems with both the terrestrial and satellite records that raise questions of reliability). It is about whether the ‘projections’ (really, one should day ‘predictions’ but CAGW proponents are shy of saying that word because it implies a standard of judgment) of CAGW match up to the observations record. They do not. Therefore pretty much everything you have said is irrelevant to my argument. You continue the meme of the warming ‘going into the oceans (one of the ‘saving’ supplementary hypotheses that I mentioned: a claim that is not sustained by the empirical data on ocean heat).

      As for what Hansen ‘actually says’ he ‘actually says’ what I quoted:

      “The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade” – which is the fact you asked me to provide a source for.

      As for your comment: “Note that the 10 warmest years in the record all occurred since 1998.” That does NOT mean that it has ‘significantly’ warmed since 1998. A plateau can be at the same level or thereabouts – alternatively you can deny Hansen’s observation that the temperature record has been flat for a decade (obviously what you are trying to imply by this comment is that the world has continued to warm, which flies in the face of what Hansen actually said).

      As for: Cowtan & Way (2013) [plucked no doubt from ‘skeptical’ science] this is an attempted reconstruction of the temperature record – not an actual measurement of temperature. Using algorithms to create data where there is none is something that can never be empirically confirmed (the original data /does not exist/). Given the theoretical biases of /all/ scientists (theory dependence of observation) something that cannot be empirically confirmed should /always/ be treated as conjectural, not (as you do) as ‘proof’.

      Moreover, even Cowtan & Way admit that there results are only preliminary:

      “preliminary global temperature reconstructions presented here, by highlighting the potential scale of the bias in the short-term temperature trends, will provide an impetus for other groups to look at the problem using more sophisticated tools, including climate and reanalysis models.”

      In other words, even they admit the limits of their own analysis.

      In sum Cowtan & Way is not a sound basis for an argument that the empirically observed pause should be disregarded because: (1) the results are preliminary; (2) there is no consensus in the field (note e.g. Hansen’s disagreement); (3) the results are conjectural.

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  • #
    Philip Shehan

    While we are praising Spencer for his satellite based temperature measurements, let us see just how his data tallies with Maurice Newman’s statement that “Global temperatures have gone nowhere for 17 years”

    http://tinyurl.com/khykv63

    From the beginning of satellite measurements in 1979:
    Trend: 0.14 ±0.07 °C/decade (2σ)

    For the last 17 years:
    Trend: 0.10 ±0.20 °C/decade (2σ)

    For the last 18 years:
    Trend 0.12 ±0.19 °C/decade (2σ)

    For the last 15 years
    Trend: 0.15 ±0.21 °C/decade (2σ)

    So temperatures have certainly gone somewhere, even for the last 17 years, the lower rate being entirely expected if you cherry pick a start at the extreme el nino year.

    But wait there’s more. Once again skeptics stress statistical significance when it suits their argument:

    “not only are ocean trends not statistically significant…”

    Well folks, as far as the UAH temperature trends are concerned, the numbers for 18, 17 and 15 years are in statistical agreement with the trend since 1979.

    There is no statistically significant evidence for a pause or hiatus or even a reduction in the rate of temperature rise for those periods compared with the trend since 1979.

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    • #
      the Griss

      cherry, cherry cherry baby !

      cherry.. won’t you come out tonight..

      (courtesy Franki Valli and the four seasons.)

      Apart from the 1998 ElNino, RSS shows 2 periods which together give ABSOLUTELY NO WARMING in the whole satellite record.

      http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/to:1995/trend/plot/rss/plot/rss/from:2001/trend

      Any one can play your childish little linear trend games.

      You are fooling only yourself, so why WASTE YOUR TIME.

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      the Griss

      ps.. you can see from the WFT graph exactly where the ElNino started to disrupt the insignificant slope in the first half of the satellite record,

      then you can see the decrease in atmospheric temperatures after the ocean cooling event of 1998 had settled down at the beginning of 2001.

      Pity you have zero understanding of what has actually happened and rely purely on monkey driven linear trends.

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    • #
      the Griss

      And really Phil, you must try to teach your monkey a new trick.

      This one was quite funny the first couple of times,

      ..but now has become boringly tedious.

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    • #
      PhilJourdan

      Dishonest now aren’t we? Monckton used RSS, and explained why he used RSS. You use UAH a lot, but not RSS. So your straw man does not hold water.

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      Philip Shehan

      Fellas, The discussion here is singing the praises of Spencer and his UAH data. This data does not support Newman’s assertion, also discussed.

      Monckton is not mentioned in the discussion, (so who is being dishonest?) but of course Monckton and skeptics like to cherry pick RSS data (for short periods) because it is the only data set which gives a negative slope for the last 17 years.

      http://tinyurl.com/kanq2op

      But again all these data sets agree within statistical significance (or are you now abandoning the concept when inconvenient) because the error margins for short data sets, 18, 17 and 15 years, are so large, because the signal to noise ratio is small and thus small variations between the data sets produce noticably different slopes.

      Once again none of you can point to where my analysis is wrong.

      And I keep producing such analyses and will continue to do so as long as you people keep repeating the boringly tedious claim that “it hasn’t warmed for x years.”

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      • #
        Philip Shehan

        And

        Trend: 0.14 ±0.07 °C/decade (2σ)

        Insignificant?

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        • #
          Jaymez

          No it isn’t insignificant Philip, but that is from 1979. I do agree with your point made further on that it is not scientific to argue without any basis that the El Nino ‘step up’ was some sort of constant effect.

          No one is arguing that warming from 1979 is statistically insignificant. But when you look at the trend from 1997/8 or 9 where the error bars are larger than the trend, that is when it becomes statistically insignificant and irrelevant to the anthropogenic global warming theory. Because you really don’t know for sure which way the trend is going, that is the whole point.

          No one I know is arguing that the world hasn’t warmed since the Little Ice Age either.

          Where the issue becomes super important is when the UN IPCC hangs it scientific hat on saying that the greatest influence on our climate is human CO2 emissions and they build climate models which assume our climate is very sensitive to atmospheric CO2.

          Then they make statements in their Climate Reports claiming that they are 90%, (now increased to 95%) certain that most of the warming since 1950 has been caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Yet during a period of 16 years when CO2 emissions have escalated exponentially, and the IPCC rhetoric predicted ever increasing rates of warming, today’s actual temperature is lower than the error bars of 101 of 104 (from memory) climate model predictions.

          Surely then, with your evident understanding of statistics, you have to acknowledge that their models are broken? Which means their theory is broken.

          The IPCC effectively admitted as much when they agreed that the lower than expected temperatures were likely to have been caused by some as yet not understood natural climate variable which had overwhelmed anthropogenic global warming. In other-words they didn’t predict it and don’t know what caused it. That being the case, they also can’t attribute a value to it.

          So they really have no idea how much of the warming is caused by natural variation versus anthropogenic. If you think you can, then first you must do what they haven’t been able to do so far.

          I will continue to keep an open mind and accept that our climate fluctuates naturally. The world enjoys brief periods of particularly warm weather which have been good to humans in the past, which is why they were called Climate Optimums. Periods such as the Medieval Warm Period, The Roman Warm Period and The Minoan Warm period. The temperatures were similar or higher than they are today and the world thrived. Weather was more stable, crop yields higher and growing seasons extended. What’s not to like?

          What we should fear are colder periods such as the Little Ice age of the Next Ice Age which we are due for. I note that in David Archibald’s book ‘Twilight of Abundance’ – Why Life in the 21st Century will be nasty, brutish and short., he raises an issue which has always concerned me. Because the IPCC was set up to research man’s link to global warming, they have been blind to the more obvious natural factors. In fact they have explicitly claimed certainty that solar activity is not responsible for global warming.

          Being a statistics person, you would have to ask how climate scientists could so readily and easily dismiss the most obvious link to warming and the many papers written which make a connection between warming and solar activity. Archibald for example quotes ‘The long sunspot cycle 23 predicts a significant temperature decrease in cycle 24’
          Jan-Erik Solheima, Kjell Stordahlb, Ole Humlumc, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics
          Volume 80, May 2012, Pages 267–284

          This research indicates that a direct negative trend can be found between the length of a solar cycle and and global average temperatures during the next cycle. They found that up to 72% of the warming in North Atlantic and Norwegian Stations over the last 150 years could be attributed to the sun. They also predict a 1 °C or more temperature drop is predicted 2009–2020 for certain locations.

          This theory compared to the IPCC work is refreshingly falsifiable because they have made very specific, testable predictions. Right now I would say they are more on track than the global warming alarmists.

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        PhilJourdan

        That is incorrect. It is Monckton pushing the 17 year pause (Spencer’s data shows a shorter one, but not by much – HadCRUT falls in the middle of the 2). As soon as you mentioned the 17 years, you narrowed the discussion.

        Your dishonesty is noted.

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        • #
          Philip Shehan

          Mr Jordan. I repeat the discussion here makes no mention of Monckton. I was responding to the discussion as presented. If you are saying that Monckton holds some kind of copyright on the 17 years claim, that is total BS. I do not accuse you of dishonesty as I do not know if you are deliberately trying to mislead with this entirely fatuous argument.

          But if you want to discuss RSS data, I will use that data:

          From the beginning of satellite measurements in 1979:
          Trend: 0.13 ±0.07 °C/decade (2σ)

          For the last 17 years:
          Trend: -0.01 ±0.20 °C/decade (2σ)

          For the last 18 years:
          Trend Trend: 0.02 ±0.18 °C/decade (2σ)

          For the last 15 years
          Trend: 0.03 ±0.2 °C/decade (2σ)

          The results agree with the data for UAH within experimental error.

          There is no statistically significant evidence for a pause or hiatus or even a reduction in the rate of temperature rise for those periods compared with the trend since 1979.

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          • #
            the Griss

            Again that missing inconvenient 16 year value.

            Cherry pickin’ mamma !!

            You have to include all or part of the ElNino release from the ocean and consequent jump in atmospheric temperature to show ANY WARMING TREND AT ALL.

            You know that it provides THE ONLY major warming in the satellite record. Without it.. you have basically nothing.

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            PhilJourdan

            First, learn to spell. Or should I just call you Mr. Shahan?

            Second, there are many 17 year intervals of data. And some go back centuries. however, in the modern age, only one shows a 17 year pause (the others show 13 and 15 year pauses). And you just showed which one.

            I do not care WHO talks about the 17 year pause. If they are like you and trying to play the shell game, I point out the pea is in their hand.

            The 17 year pause is based upon RSS data. In 2 years, HadCrut may have a 17 year pause (or it may not). In 4, UAH may (or it may not).

            But YOU set up the strawman and then attempted to knock it down with your shell game. I merely called you on it.

            Honesty does not appear to be one of your strong points.

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            • #
              Philip Shehan

              Apologies Mr Jourdan. I am used to people mispelling my name as Sheehan (and if we are going to be fussy, It’s Dr Shehan.)

              It was Maurice Newman who nominated the 17 year time frame (and Ms Nova who nominated Spencer and his UAH data as the topic for discussion). It’s not my cherry. It’s Newman’s and all the others who use the el nino summer of 1997/98 as a starting point rather than the year before or after that event.

              And Griss, to claim that el nino added any permanent change to the temperature by warming the atmosphere is nonsense just as La nina events do not permanently affect the temperature. ENSO giveth and ENSO taketh away.

              NO data gives a statisiically significant pause or reduction in temperature. Not even the cherry picked RSS data set which alone gives a negative slope.

              Again I do not accuse you of dishonesty. I assume you just do not understand data. And show an unwillingnesss to learn if it contradicts your beliefs. Psychologists call that “denial”.

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                the Griss

                The RSS data give NO WARMING since the start of the data once you discount the ElNino step.

                NONE WHAT-SO-EVER. !!

                NADA, NIL, ZIP.

                There is ZERO correlation between no warming and rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

                CO2 has ZERO warming effect and is PURELY BENEFICIAL to all life on Earth.

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              • #
                the Griss

                ” I assume you just do not understand data’

                And I assume you do not understand anything. !

                People call that “IGNORANT”

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                the Griss

                “RSS data set which alone gives a negative slope”

                Of course the surface temperatures of Giss and HadCrut have a slight positive trend compared to RSS,

                Look up “Urban Heat” and learn something for once. Please try !

                Also look up “Giss and HadCrut ADJUSTMENTS” and realise that they are trying their hardest to find a warming trend from somewhere… anywhere !!!!!

                For some reason UAH didn’t register the same trend before the ElNino step, but they start and end at the same value over the whole set and the ElNino step is still around 0.25C
                ,..
                so AGAIN, once you discount the ElNino step.

                THERE IS ZERO WARMING in the UAH data over the whole satellite period.

                NONE WHAT-SO-EVER.

                There absolutely no correlation between the continued CO2 rise (the Earth thanks China) and a ZERO temperature rise over either satellite record.

                I know your keyboard monkeys like the warmth.. (monkeys hate the cold, did you know?)

                So please start knitting jumpers for them. They will learn to luv you…. eventually.

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              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Peter C

                PhD in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)spectroscopy. This is used mainly for producing spectra of molecules from which their structures can be deduced. MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) uses the same principle, and sometimes the same equipment, to produce anatomical images. The data from atoms (usually Hydrogen)is collected and processed differently in the two techniques.

                03

              • #
                PhilJourdan

                next time I will misspell it Sheehan. And if you want to be addressed as “Dr”, put it in your name.

                I do understand data. And I also understand the old adage of “those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach.” I have spent my life doing. I will not ask you what you spent your time doing.

                RSS is not cherry picked. I gave you all the majors and the time intervals. I did not claim because there was no statistical warming within those time frames, that it meant warming had stopped. I OBSERVED what is happening. I made no prognostications about the future. Ergo I do not need to calculate degrees or levels of confidence.

                You should learn the difference.

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                the Griss

                Gees, all that study, and the only thing you learnt was how to fudge and mis-lead using linear trends from non-linear data.

                Even that, barely at an amateurish level.

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                Rereke Whakaaro

                Philip,

                What is the title of your thesis? I have a personal, and historic, interest in NMR from an engineering perspective.

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      OK, sound argument. But now, assuming accurate measurements and that they really apply to the whole Earth so we can talk about their having some meaning, what is the actual rate of temperature increase? 0.14 C +- 0.07 (+-50%).

      Phil, I can’t exactly get excited about that. That’s a mighty big error.

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        If I measure between a wall and a closet door to see if there’s room for a desk I propose to put there and I get the measurement accurate to withing +- 50%… …well, everyone can see what a problem I’m going to have.

        Standard deviation is a tool that can be both used and abused, just like any other tool.

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        • #
          Philip Shehan

          Roy, yes its a pretty large error margin. I have no problem with you drawing a conclusion that an error margin of 50% is still pretty large, but it does indicate in this case statistically significant warming.

          The problem with stistical analysis is not so much that it can be misused as that it is not well understood, even among some scientist let alone the general public, who thus consider it suspedt, although it is rigorously mathematical and essential to meaningfully discuss much scintific data.

          With discusions of whether it has or has not warmed for x years, the problem is with people just looking at the slope on the graph, and not considering the statistical analysis of how real the apparent slope is within statistical constraints. I particularly object to those who want to use the argument that such and such a figure is or is not statistically significant when it suits their views, and ignore it when it does not.

          If you understand statistical analysis you will not be fooled by attempts to mislead, intended or not.

          I began in the physical sciences, looking at simple molecules where data is nice and clean and had considerable sympathy for Rutherford’s view that if you have to resort to statistics you have not done the experiment properly. Then I moved into biomedical research, where you are dealing with messy and complicated living systems, where an experiment on one rat will not be ‘exactly’ reproducible in another, and you have to use a statistically acceptable sample number of rats and do the stats to draw a scientifically valid conclusion. Climate is another very messy and complicated system, so statistics must be used to discuss any results meaningfully.

          If I use Hadcrut4 data from 1914 (satellite data only goes back to 1979) the error is less significant (again the longer the period, the better the signal to noise, the lower the error)

          Trend: 0.07 ±0.01 °C/decade (2σ)

          To answer the comment above as to why I often use UAH data, it is because some people condemn the use of Hadcrut or Giss or whatever dat gives them answers they don’t like, although there is next to no difference in the data sets, so I use Spencers’s when applicable which I assume skeptics consider beyond reproach.

          http://tinyurl.com/l5ojm6b

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            the Griss

            “If I use Hadcrut4 data from 1914 ‘

            If you do that , you are using a data set which has been SPECIFICALLY ADJUSTED to follow the CAGW meme.

            Its a FAKE.. and you know it is.

            So STOP PRETENDING !!

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        Roy,

        I calculated the linear regression for 2003 til mid 2013 of HadCrut3 data. The result was -0.05±0.06 °C/decade.

        Here is the spreadsheet file (open office). Line 362 in red for the SD.

        I have mentioned it to Phil numerous times. Standard deviations were calculated assuming a Normal distribution of deviations from the mean (Bell curve for climate scientistsshrills).

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          the Griss

          Hey, Philip downloaded a linear regression app from SkS, and by crikey, he’s going to use it….

          …regardless of whether what he is doing has any meaning.

          He’s obviously had lots of practice presenting amateurish meaningless linear trends. 😉

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          • #

            From SkS

            As with any statistical tool, the validity of the result depends on both the expertise and the integrity of the user. You can generate nonsense statistics with this tool.

            00

    • #
      the Griss

      Oh look 15,.. ,17, 18. Philip’s monkey can’t count !

      Where’s 16 years, monkey?

      You are a truly dishonest cherry-picker.

      You choose 17, 18 years because that are before the ElNino ocean cooling event,

      then you choose 15 because it hits to low rebound point after the initial release.

      Statistical LIES, as usual !!

      But I guess that comes from your previous profession.

      21

      • #
        Philip Shehan

        Because 16 years also covers the el nino event (which is not dependent on CO2 concentration). Using one year either side of the 1997/98 event demonstrates how the slope changes just one year either side of that event.

        If you wish to see how adults discuss these matters, go to Roy Hogue’s comments and my reply.

        14

        • #
          the Griss

          It seems that monkeys really do like cherries.

          So many monkeys but only one cherry tree.

          How long have you been practising this amateurish statistical farce?

          Most of your working career I suspect.

          21

        • #
          the Griss

          As you say, “which is not dependent on CO2 concentration”.

          Thank you.. so we can remove it from the calculation.

          ———————————————————————-

          The ElNino added approx. 0.25C to the atmosphere. If you take the ElNino out, you get NOTHING.. absolutely NOTHING

          http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1997/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1997/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/offset:-.25/plot/rss/from:2001/trend/offset:-.25

          Apart from the 1998 ElNino, its lead up and rebound, …

          THERE HAS BEEN ZERO WARMING IN THE WHOLE OF THE RSS SATELLITE RECORD.

          21

          • #
            Philip Shehan

            No Griss. Your own graph shows that there has been a (statistically significant) increase in temperature according to RSS records (as noted above):

            (RSS) 0.13 ±0.07 °C/decade (2σ)

            (UAH) 0.14 ±0.07 °C/decade (2σ)

            http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1979/mean:1/plot/uah/from:1979/trend/plot/rss/from:1979/to/offset:-0.1/plot/rss/from:1979/trend/offset:-0.1

            Your plot of RSS data from 2001 is statistically meaningless:

            Trend: -0.06 ±0.25 °C/decade (2σ)

            33

          • #
            Philip Shehan

            Griss you can take any statistically significant temperture set over any period of time, break it up into sufficiently short periods, and none of the short periods will be statistically significant because you have reduced the signal to noise ratio to render the data meaningless. You are setting up the data to fail the statistical significance test.

            That really is a monkey trick.

            13

            • #
              the Griss

              I notice your monkey uses a program to do all this..

              press a key here.. press a key there..

              No wonder he has no idea about what’s going on. !

              22

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Griss, I abandoned my abacus and slide rule for calculations some time ago. Your posts show you have no understanding of statistical significance.

                13

              • #
                the Griss

                That, coming from someone with your limited maths background, is quite funny.

                The monkeys have made me laugh. 🙂

                Go press some more random buttons, bozo,

                11

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Griss, Mathematics subjects taken at third year undergraduate university level, and further studies and application in post graduate level and 3 decades of scintific research.

                And you?

                Pass the bananas.

                02

              • #
                the Griss

                Honours-1 degree in pure and applied mathematics.

                Your monkeys prefer cherries.

                One day you may even learn how to spell “scientific”.

                Pity you will never learn what it means.

                10

              • #
                the Griss

                Your maths was but a small part of your degree, mine was ALL of it.

                Limited, you are. !

                10

              • #
                the Griss

                And we know that most of your scientific research probably involved misleading people with random meaningless linear trends.

                BECAUSE ITS ALL YOU HAVE !!!

                Except cherry-picking monkeys.

                10

              • #
                the Griss

                You probably shouldn’t have abandoned your abacus.. because your maths understand STINK without it. !

                10

              • #
                the Griss

                ignore the typos.. been working all day on some major climate related research funded by the government.

                Have friends at UNSW ACCARNSI 😉

                such fun 🙂

                10

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Then you should know better.

                Yes my typing is rather appalling and my proof reading before hitting the submit button worse. Apologies.

                02

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Griss, are you telling me that whatever university you went to allowed you to take nothing but mathematics subjects during your entire degree?

                I know of no credible university that does not insist on taking minor and major subjects. You appear to have minored in sandpit debating techniques.

                Is yours a dotcom alma mater?

                02

              • #
                the Griss

                Physics, chemistry, statistics and computer programming are just Applied Maths.

                You should try applying some maths some time.

                Or at least try to get some understanding of the system you are working with before trying to apply your 1st year level maths to it.

                This way you will avoid the random nonsense you keep coming up with.

                00

              • #
                the Griss

                ie. Maths was the major core and by far the bulk even if part of other subjects.

                You on the other hand, seem to have treated maths as a purely incidental subject.

                00

            • #
        • #
          the Griss

          And if you want to discuss as adults.. stop using a monkey to do you calculations.

          22

        • #
          Graeme No.3

          If you wind The Griss up he takes a while to stop.

          I must say the accuracy you achieve is remarkable, down to one hundredth of a degree. Given that the early measurements were to the nearest 0.5 of a degree, and the latest to 0.1℃ , an extension to another significant figure is questionable, though I give you credit for restraint as some believers in AGW go another figure.

          I don’t claim to be a statistics expert, but I am doubtful that the whole “measuring the Earth’s temperature” is fraught with problems.
          Firstly, Spencer’s method may lay claims to being more accurate, even though it covers only 80% of the surface, but there have been problems with instruments on the satellites and, in any case, his early figures and his methods had to be based (and calibrated) on the other projects.

          Secondly, I have some difficulty with reconciling the HADCRUT/NASA/NOAA approach. As I understand if you take a 100 (nominal) measurements of some constant e.g. a physical length like the space for a proposed desk, your likely figures will graph to a bell curve, so then averaging the results and calculating a SD is quite legitimate, and your answer be expressed ± your lowest unit of accuracy. What I don’t understand is how taking a single measurement of a thousand (nominal) results (say the average of minimum and maximum temperature), averaging some averages into 1200 sq. km. grids with other grids based on a single average, averaging the averages (of the averages) can result in any meaningful figure, let alone one that can be expressed to accuracies of thousandths of the original accuracy of the measurement. Or is them being called Anomalies some sort of in-joke?

          Thirdly, how accurate are those original measurements? As Warwick Hughes pointed out recently, The Australian BoM thought it necessary to “adjust” 359 minimum temperatures from the Giles station for the year 1997. Apparently the figures were out by up to -1.5℃ to +1.0℃.
          And this station, where they couldn’t read a temperature correctly 98% of the time, was staffed by BoM personnel. And these are the same people who claim they can say what the temperature will be in 86 years.

          You can keep posting graphs if you like, but I doubt you will convince anyone here. In any case, if the sun remains quiet then the whole debate will be dead and buried within 5 years.

          22

          • #
            the Griss

            ” If you wind The Griss up he takes a while to stop. ”

            🙂

            22

          • #
            Philip Shehan

            Graeme No 3.

            The program I use actually delivers a result to 3 decimal places, but I have rounded down to 2.

            http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php

            The data sets used quote individual temperatures to the second decimal place. They do not report what the uncertainties are in these individual measurements. Some scientific instruments commonly assume an uncertainty in the last decimal place of +/- 5 in that digit – eg in this case a temperature anomoly (relative to an arbitrary baseline) of 0.07 +/- 0.05.

            There are two kinds of errors – random and systematic. Random errors are as likely to be too high as too low. This is related to the precision of the instrument or measurement. But these errors tend to cancel out when a large number of measurements are used so the second decimal place will be more precise than the uncertainty in the individual data points. And as I keep pointing out, the more data you have, the more confidence you can have in the results.

            Systematic errors will always be too high or too low by the same amount (eg from an incorrectly calibrated instrument), and so bias the result by the same amount however many repeat measurements of a single data point you make, or how many different data points (ie from different locations and times) you use.

            As my overlay graph above shows there is not much difference at all in the different data sets and over the long term they give very close trend results eg see the plots for RSS and UAH above.

            Whatever the problems with the data sets, and your points are entirely valid, this is the data we (skeptics and ‘warmists’ alike) are restricted to whenever we discuss trends in global temperatures.

            13

            • #
              Graeme No.3

              Philip Shehan:
              Thank you for your reply, but your comment; “Whatever the problems with the data sets this is the data we are restricted to whenever we discuss trends in global temperatures” shows what I find wrong. All the data sets are related. The satellite readings must have been calibrated originally on the land based ‘results’, and they in turn have been shown to be so riddled with errors, adjustments and bluntly fraudulent figures that I cannot regard them as any basis to make a decision. The behaviour of some of the climate “scientists” to any suggestion of an independent review can only reinforce any scepticism.

              It is more than likely that the World has warmed up since 1979, or at least the Northern Hemisphere has, but I find it hard to believe that there has been much warming since 1935. The Icelanders seem to think that their country hasn’t, and if anybody knows about the benefits of warming it is them. The use of proxies is rife with problems, and it is too easy for someone committed to a belief (“save the world”, “save my job”, “boost my career”) to see a trend that just has to be “MADE” a little clearer. See Mendel for an example of someone who cannot claim to be defamed.

              The whole underlying basis of (man made) global warming is the belief that “this time it’s different”. That somehow the CO2 molecules are behaving differently, or that the temperature is higher that ever before, or possibly the Witch of the East Wind is being particularly evil. Instead of the last 34 years go back and look at the last 1,000 or 10,000 or 500,000 years or even 500 million years. The changes in temperature have dwarfed any recent event.
              That viewpoint does require you to query the “official” explanation that CO2 is “higher than it has ever been for [ insert favourite time period] and the even more fatuous “the temperature is higher that it has been for X years (I think 5 million is the current record holder)”. Neither can possibly be true if you believe that CO2 controls the Earth’s temperature. Look at the ice core records where various interglacials were warmer than present despite lower CO2 figures. The response to this always the rate of change is greater, coupled with a reference to a tipping point/runaway warming. Yet the end of the Younger Dryas is held up as the time of a tipping point when CO2 went up 60-90 ppm and the temperature 5-8℃ in a very short time. Some scientists seem to be competing to have the most rapid change (10,15, 30 years) but undoubtedly any change was far bigger and faster than current conditions.

              So the predicted tipping point is based on conditions changing much faster than today, and that somehow the temperature is rising rapidly. Yet, if you go back to individual station records you will find many places not showing recent warming.** (It has been said that George Bush changed his mind when shown data from over 600 rural sites in the USA with no cause for alarm. I have been unable to track this to the original data and would be grateful to anyone who can point me there).

              This is a rather lengthy response, and I apologize, but I think that you are sincere but not yet acquainted with much evidence, and too ready to judge self proclaimed “scientists” by your own standards. Certainly you will find nothing on the Skeptical Science blog site that shows any scepticism.

              ** http://www.john-daly.com very near the bottom of the main page has a Station Data button. These aren’t recent as he died in 2004, but you may find them interesting.

              21

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Graeme. Thank you for your considered reply. Excuse me if I don’t respond in detail.

                Overall just let me say I am not as pesimistic as you as far as the accuracy of temperature measurements go.

                As I keep explaining to Griss, all the data sets, including from satellite data since 1979, are in very good agreement, which gives a certain degree of confidence.

                http://tinyurl.com/l5ojm6b

                One specific point. You mention calibration problems with satellite data. Even if present, this represents a “systematic” error that I mentioned earlier.

                We are really interested in changes in temperature, rather than the temperature measurements themselves. These changes will not be affected by a miscalibration as the error will be the same for every measurement so will not affect the difference between measurements.

                As I noted previously, temperatures are usually expressed as the temperature “anomoly”, the difference in temperature from some rather arbitrarily chosen baseline anyway. That is why in the graph above different offset parameters are used to account for the differences in baseline used by the various data sets.

                02

              • #
                Graeme No.3

                Philip Shehan:

                If the temperature record is changed by someone wanting to make his belief in Global Warming obvious, then you have an anomaly that doesn’t exist. That the records are being changed is beyond doubt, It might be because there are good reasons other than that, but wholesale changes e.g. that listed above of 359 out of 365 in one year? With the original record coming from trained personnel in an official station?

                Please read http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/11/10/giss-data-tampering-worse-than-you-thought/
                It is only one of many such in the sceptical literature, but likely to be more believable than some AND IT HAS SOME GRAPHS.

                You reminded me of the story of the Riverboat Gambler in the days of Mark Twain, who won a modest fortune on one voyage and then on shore lost the lot at a notoriously crooked game, when he must have known it was crooked and probably the method(s) used to cheat him. When asked Why? he said “it was the only game in town”.

                10

            • #
              the Griss

              “The program I use ”

              Is something you have no understanding of.

              monkey press button !!! Again..

              And again.

              10

            • #
              the Griss

              Why don’t you write your own program so you KNOW what its doing.

              Far horizons beckon you !!

              10

            • #
              the Griss

              “There are two kinds of errors – random and systematic”

              OMG.. they did manage to teach you something in high school !!!

              10

          • #
            Philip Shehan

            I should add that the “noise” problem I talk about here in relation to short or long term temperature data sets is not what we term “random noise”. In NMR spectra which I am familiar with the noise is random squiggles in the baseline analogous to the hiss in a radio signal, due to random electronic interference. This noise is reduced by doing many scans of the sample,which increases the signal to noise ratio. This is a square root relationship. Doubling the scans inmproves the signal to noise ratio by the square root of two. Four times the scans, twice the S/N, 9 times the scans, 3 times the S/N etc.

            The temperature data is noisy because there are many ‘real’ factors influencing temperatures – anthropogenic, solar cycles, volcanoes, el nino/la nina etc. These give year by year fluctuations in the temperature. Many of these are relatively short term in nature (11 year solar cycles) and so tend to cancel out over a number of decades. Much longer term factors, such as those that result in ice ages are too long to affect temperature trends over multidecadal time frames.

            13

          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            If you wind The Griss up he takes a while to stop.

            Powered by EverReady – Just keeps on keeping on.

            Good theatre though … 🙂

            00

        • #
          PhilJourdan

          The period was not chosen by a skeptic. It was chosen by an Alarmist (or actually several).

          The “effects” of the El Nino should long ago have passed, yet you even admit that it affects the meme of “warming”.

          10

          • #
            Philip Shehan

            PhilJourdan. Who chose the 17 year period?

            And I entirely agree that the effect of the el nino summer of 1997/98 has passed. I note this specifically above,(49.4.2.1.1) in response to Griss’s claim below (49.9.3) that the el nino spike gave an increase in temperature of 0.25 C which persists. He then claims that if you remove this you can chop the entire satellite record into two (non statistically significant) periods excluding this “step” and claim there has been no increase in the satellite temperature record.

            Complete tosh.

            I will modify my statement on el nino and la nina effects above to emphasize my position on ENSO on global temperature:

            ENSO (temporarily) giveth and ENSO (temporarily) taketh away.

            01

            • #
              the Griss

              Poor little mis-guided fool.

              No matter which way you look at it .

              Once you remove the warming jump from the 1998 ElNino..

              THERE HAS BEEN NO WARMING IN THE RSS SATELLITE RECORD.

              Fact is as fact is.

              GET OVER IT !!!!!!

              10

            • #
              the Griss

              “ENSO (temporarily) giveth and ENSO (temporarily) taketh away”

              Sweet .. so all the warmist HYPE about a possible Elnino some time later this year is IRRELEVANT..

              But we KNEW that, didn’t we. 😉

              10

            • #
              PhilJourdan

              Santer. And I am surprised you were unaware of that which you were attempting to debunk. Now that you know it is a “Grand and Glorious leader of the Alarmist Revolution”, maybe you will apologize to him for doubting his infallibility.

              00

            • #
              the Griss

              Hey Philip, whatever you do, don’t ever try to catch a high ball.

              You would still be trying to persuade yourself it was trending upwards even after its sconed you on the noggin.

              And sliding down a slippery dip is really going to dis-orient you and seriously stress your tenuous grip on reality.

              10

              • #
                PhilJourdan

                sconed you on the noggin

                One of the reasons I really Enjoy Joanne’s site. I get to read all the colloquialisms from other countries! I have to remember that one.

                00

              • #
                the Griss

                You can just image him waiting for the ball to come down, shouting…

                “hey but.. its still trending upwards !!”

                00

    • #
      the Griss

      I really don’t think it has any meaning to include any part of the 1998 ocean cooling event in any calculation except on a count-back statistical basis (which is what LCM does.)

      You use the data to head backwards to see how far you go back with zero trend, which in RSS is currently about 17.5 years.

      I much prefer to take the ocean cooling event out of the picture, which entails actually understanding (sorry monkey) the different phases. This is at about the start of 2001.

      Since 2001, there has been zero warming.

      Here’s WFT index (essentially the average of the 4 main sets) shows this.

      http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:2001/trend/plot/wti/from:2001

      21

      • #
        the Griss

        And of course, RSS shows a large hint of cooling since 2001.

        http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2001/trend/plot/rss/from:2001

        UAH shows a slight rise, but only because it didn’t record as much of a jump at the ElNino. It has now caught up to RSS.

        http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2001/plot/rss/from:2001/plot/uah/from:2001/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/trend

        Giss and HadCrut show very little trend either way.

        There has been NO WARMING since the end of the 1998 ElNino event. (and RSS shows very little warming before the event either)

        21

        • #
          the Griss

          DESPITE continued increases in CO2

          21

          • #
            Philip Shehan

            Well,actually,no.

            http://tinyurl.com/mol6ken

            02

            • #
              the Griss

              Actually YES

              NO CORRELATION between ZERO CO2 based temperature rise in the whole of RSS or UAH and a continued rise in Co2

              None, nothing.

              Because CO2 has ZERO warming effect on the atmosphere. None. Nothing.

              We know that because that has been NO RISE in the temperature EXCEPT for the ElNino step in the WHOLE satellite record.

              11

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Tell me Griss, in this entirely pure and applied mathematics degree from Dotcom U, did they offer courses in statistics, and if so, why did you avoid them?

                12

            • #
              the Griss

              Again, the ONLY way you can create a trend is to include the NON-CO2 based ElNino step.

              That’s because there IS NONE. !!!

              11

            • #
              the Griss

              Oh let me guess,

              You have no way of taking the Elnino step out using your little program from SkS, because you only have the .exe, and have no idea how it actually works.

              I’ve shown you how using WFT, so just do it.. and you will see that the start temperature is the same as the end temperature.

              ie NO WARMING

              Have you bought the wool yet for the sweaters for your monkeys?

              11

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                A pity you took no science subjects in your entirely pure and applied maths degree (no statistics)from Dotcom U. Again, from your preferred WFT: (By the way you seem to take the WFT exe program on faith but not the temperature trend calculator which produces the same results but includes an error calculation. Or did your entirely mathematics degree from Dotcom U include computer science lectures as well? If so please explain to us dunderheads where the WFT program is right and the Trend calculator wrong.)

                http://tinyurl.com/mol6ken

                02

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                To assist with your explanation, here is your WFT graph,

                http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1997/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1997/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/offset:-.25/plot/rss/from:2001/trend/offset:-.25

                and here the results of the temperature trend calculator for the same data set and timeframes:

                http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php

                Trend: 0.07 ±0.17 °C/decade (2σ)

                Trend: -0.06 ±0.25 °C/decade (2σ)

                I will settle for a demonstration of how the slopes differ if you do not feel inclined to explain where the error calculation is incorrect.

                Once again these results are not statistically significant for as far as telling whether there is a warming or cooling trend occuring in either data set, whereas the trend for the entire period, including the years you insist in cherry unpicking, shows a clear statistically significant warming trend:

                Trend: 0.13 ±0.07 °C/decade (2σ)

                http://tinyurl.com/mol6ken

                02

              • #
                the Griss

                That’s because you are totally unable to recognise that there are three distinct phases and thing that just drawing a line through the whole lot actually means anything… IT DOESN’T !

                Slight warming, then the Elnino step, then slight cooling. Three phases.. Ka Pish ??? (get your monkey to explain)

                Without the NON-CO2 based ElNino step, the two slopes cancel each other as you have just clearly shown.

                The ONLY warming in the whole RSS satellite record was from the ElNino step.

                Without the Elnino.. NOTHING, Nada …. zip !!!!!

                10

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                No Griss, what I have clearly shown is that your cherry picked subsets of the entire data set show no statistically significant cooling or warming trend whatsoever.

                Trend: 0.07 ±0.17 °C/decade (2σ)

                That is a trend with a 95% probability of being between warming of 0.24 and cooling of 0.10 °C/decade.

                Trend: -0.06 ±0.25 °C/decade (2σ)

                That is a trend with a 95% probability of being between warming of 0.19 and cooling of 0.31 °C/decade.

                Send another $25 (plus postage and handling) to Dotcom U.com for a degree in statistics to go with your honours degree in pure and applied mathematics. But you still will not have a clue about the statistics or science.

                The idea that el nino or la nina effects on temperature persists permanently after they have passed is complete nonsense, as your fellow skeptic PhilJourdan has noted:

                “The “effects” of the El Nino should long ago have passed”

                Tell me, do the effects of volcanic ash cooling and the warming/cooling effects of the 11 year solar cycle persist permanently too?

                02

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                But OK Griss, for the sake of argument, let’s accept your view that the effect of the el nino summer of 1997/1998 has some permanent step effect on the temperature record.

                So we will excise the el nino spike and give you your three phase model of temperature record.

                But why must we accept the RSS data rather than that of Roy Spencer, the inventor of satellite measurement?

                http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1997/plot/uah/from:1999.5/trend/plot/uah/to:1997/trend/plot/uah/from:1999.5

                The trend prior to the el nino step is

                Trend: 0.03°C/decade

                After the el nino step

                Trend: 0.13 °C/decade

                Looks like the “pause” actually occured in the period from 1979 to 1997 and temperatures have been rising apace for the last 16 years.

                02

            • #
              the Griss

              It really is a pity that your limited maths never taught you to try to “understand” before applying random linear trend.

              But do keep going.

              Its a good laugh. 🙂

              11

            • #
              the Griss

              I mean.. its really NOT THAT DIFFICULT..

              You have a slight warming form 1979 to1997 due to the continued high solar activity.

              Then you have a break point at the 1998 Elnino.

              Then gradual atmospheric cooling as the lower solar activity starts to take effect.

              See.. very simple.

              Please, do try to understand, rather than applying meaningless linear trends over the whole period.

              It makes you look very stupid.

              11

    • #
      Andrew McRae

      Actually the whole notion of statistically significant trends in climate has no basis in statistics because nobody can agree on what prior probability distribution model is valid for world average temperatures. That was the outcome of the argument between the UK Met Office and one of the commentators on Bishop Hill when he pressed them on the issue in the UK Parliament. The experts can’t give a statistical justification for choosing the Met Office’s stat model over other better-fitting alternatives. They don’t have an objective definition of “statistically significant” to use for climate, so the claim “man made global warming is statistically significant” is not an objective statement over any time period.
      It is such a mess that I have been ignoring all “17 years” claims, either for or against.

      Using statistical significance to reject shorter trends is okay when you are ignorant of the underlying physical process, as you are Philip, because statistical models are the only thing you have. But when you understand the temperature of the last 140 years has been the result mainly of solar activity and a recurring 63 year ocean cycle in temperature (PDO), a Halt in warming around 2004 is predictable and the prediction of such a model has low RMS error against the data over the whole century and over intervals shorter than 17 years. A physical model which matches the history everywhere else and also predicts a halt in warming between 2000 and 2008 provides much more confidence that the last 13 years are a halt, a level of confidence which cannot be reached with a purely statistical model.

      If you are walking along a street in Beirut, looking in shop windows and pausing for photos, for 300m with no problems and suddenly a sniper shoots you, you would not say “claims that I have stopped walking cannot be statistically supported because I have been walking at 1m/s ±1m/s just fine for the last 300m and my reduction in walking speed to zero over the last 2m is too short an interval to be statistically significant“. You would note blood pouring out of your leg and figure you had been shot in the leg. A physical model is superior to a statistical model for diagnosing the existence of purported events.

      So you see why I agree that there is no Hiatus. It’s a Halt.
      It’s only a Hiatus if warming resumes, which is not going to happen for another 25 years, with cooling until then.

      40

  • #
    spangled drongo

    I sent the ABC an email after watching Lateline:

    “WRT Emma Alberici’s interview of Maurice Newman last night on lateline could you please bring to her attention this new scientific paper from the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences by Timothy W Cronin.

    http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JAS-D-13-0392.1?af=R&

    She was critical of Newman’s quoting of Roy Spencer’s critique of the IPCC models being 95% wrong and claimed that others claimed that it was Spencer who was wrong.

    As noted by Dr. Roy Spencer, a change in planetary albedo of only 1-2% alone can account for global warming or global cooling, but this paper finds climate model planetary albedo may be biased as much as 6% due to errors of the solar zenith angle alone!

    This totally supports Maurice Newman’s claim as to how and why the IPCC models are 95% wrong.

    It would be appreciated by all if the ABC generally could be a little more sceptical about the “settled” warming science when even the IPCC are unable to produce any quantification of the degree to which humans are responsible.

    Regards,”

    31

    • #
      Rogueelement451

      With the best will in the world , we in Britain are looking forward to upgrading from an average 14 C.Up to 20 would be lovely !
      Obviously Australia is taking a big hit temperature wise , but Oz is not the World.America has had a huge number of cold records.
      The Artic is not the World and neither is the Antarctic and all points in between are subject to variation.That’s weather ,extreme weather is climate change and we do not have a handle on it.
      The more I read , the more I become a denier ,first class.
      This entire CAGW thing is becoming unraveled and nonsensical ,or maybe that’s just me?

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    Richard

    “They have attempted to use the discrepancy between simulations and observations to discredit the models’ projections.”

    How can a rational person, let alone a serious journalist belive this statement supports her articles argument?
    Its the very definition of how you measure a models success, if it predictes future observations it can be considered a good model and of some use, if it doesnt well start again.

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    The “Mainstream” news media has so few climate or even science experts that they are nincapable of doing other than parroting the 97% meme. The internet competition is killing the newspapers and they know it and hate it but are incapable of breaking out of their self-destructive vicious cycle.

    Mistaking Roy W. Spencer Ph.D. in meteorology, University of Wisconsin-Madison 1981, Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville 2001, Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, global temperature monitoring with satellites, U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite. for a blogger is typical of their level of intelligence.

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    Ilma

    Would that be the Roy Spencer who believes that a colder object can make a warmer object even warmer? What a hoot! So placing a block of ice in front of my oven can make the oven even hotter? What a great invention. Perhaps blogger is an apt description (for that piece of gibberish anyway).

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    Roy Spencer “invented” satellite temperature analysis, gets called “a blogger”
    What complete Bull Shit. NASA and Spencer were given obsolete instruments, from the USA military and CIA. Spencer, has demonstrated that he has absolutely no understanding of the instruments, or what they were trying to measure. Spencer only made wonderful power point presentations of the discards, of those that tried to measure something!.

    [I guess that is Dr Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites. Also why Dr. Spencer’s work with NASA continues as the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite. – Mod ]

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      “[I guess that is Dr Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites. Also why Dr. Spencer’s work with NASA continues as the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite. – Mod ]”

      Yes that is him! An academic with a PhD, that is an honorary “team leader”, that misinterprets the data from the Aqua satellite,then gets a medal for his colorful but (meant to misinform) Power point presentations. Typical NASA workings! Have you visited his blog? It reads just like the SkS site, with nothing but misinformation about anything physical! He strongly supports that nonsense that all things radiate electromagnetic energy proportional only to its self temperature raised to the fourth power independent of its surroundings. He does not even define “to radiate” In all of his sprouting on his blog, he writes radiation (energy transfer), but clearly is referring to “radiance” (a spectral vector) indicating only electromagnetic field strength normalized for distance.
      He does this misinformation deliberately so he can continue to do hand waving nonsense like all other Climate Clowns, about that non existent”radiation”! His blog currently has 10 “Skeptical Arguments that Don’t Hold Water” but those 10 are all valid arguments that defeat his offensive spouting!

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        llew Jones

        That may all be so but the important difference between Roy Spencer and the run of the mill alarmist climate “scientists” is that they are primarily activists for economy destroying responses to human fossil fuel emissions. Spencer is opposed to their destructive activism on the ground that a bit more CO2 will not only be harmless but good for the biosphere in terms of things like plant food.

        One does find it a bit hard to take any of the climate science too seriously regardless of its proponent’s attitude pro or con alarmism. In other words it’s all good fun as long as one doesn’t take any of them too seriously.

        You will note Spencer takes a similar approach to this very immature science which is still grappling with vital things like the nature of the net CO2/water vapour feedback.

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          llew Jones April 28, 2014 at 9:16 am
          “That may all be so but the important difference between Roy Spencer and the run of the mill -alarmist climate “scientists”
          llew, I agree, His political statements are fine by me.

          It is his promotion of the “idiot” NASA pseudo-science, that I take offense! Read again my 55.1.
          The concept of radiation equal to “radiance” has never been detected, observed, nor measured!
          That pseudo-scientific concept (fantasy) rises not even to the level of a “conjecture”, as a conjecture must at some past time have been detected, or observed. All of the physical can well be explained, with no “back radiation” in the direction of a lower temperature surface. Such radiation (flux) does not exist!

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