The National Press Club Climate change debate between Lord Christopher Monckton and Richard Denniss.

The ABC appear to have lost the debate for their 10pm Channel 24 slot. Somehow I don’t think they would have lost the footage if Christopher Monckton had made a mistake…

Had he made a gaffe, it would have been on the 7pm news, and every hourly update after that.

Watch it here instead. Who needs the ABC?

Thank God for the internet.

Hat tip to Keith.

#2 – Most Viewed (Today) – News & Politics – Australia

My thought: We should all thank Monckton greatly for his brilliant performance (and climatesceptics for helping to make this happen). I am sure there are quite a few journalists in that room who came away from the debate with “less certainty” about the skill and knowledge of their environmental reporters. It won’t be reported [...]

Remember the Great Debate between myself and Dr Andrew Glikson? He’s back – in Climate change denial: The misrepresentation of climate science he calls names, resorts to inventing a mental illness, creates strawmen whom he beats down mercilessly, all the while misrepresenting thousands of scientists who disagree with him, and making statements that can be proven false with a few seconds of Googling.

12.30 pm 14 December 2010. Hedley Bull Lecture Theatre 1 Australian National University

We are most fortunate that Brice Bosnich managed to pop in and report on what Glikson had to say (below). I wish I could have been there to hear Brice ask those questions….

Glikson knows the main Skeptic arguments, so why did he ignore them?

In the Great Debate of May 2010, Andrew Glikson and I exchanged replies in a five part series that took six weeks and amounted to over 17,000 words, 26 graphs, and dozens of references. It’s the only long serious climate debate in writing that I’m aware of. He was unable to provide convincing empirical evidence to back up his claims of impending catastrophe. He asked if he could respond [...]

Earth and Paleoclimate scientist Australian National University, 18 May, 2010

Dr Andrew Glikson ANU

Unique among the terrestrial planets, occupying an intermediate position between Venus, with [...]

I am impressed that Glikson replied politely, rose above any ad hominem or authority based arguments, and focused on the science and the evidence. This kind of exchange is exceedingly rare, and it made it well worth continuing. Links to Part I and II are at the end. Round 4 was copied from comments up to the post.

Depending on flawed models

by Joanne Nova

May 11, 2010

For a sentence, I almost think Dr Glikson gets it. Yes, it’s a quantitative question: Will we warm by half a measly degree or 3.5 degrees? It’s not about the direct CO2 effect (all of one paltry degree by itself), it’s the feedbacks—the humidity, clouds, lapse rates and other factors that amplify (or not) the initial minor effect of carbon.

Decades ago, the catastrophe-crowd made guesses about the feedbacks—but they were wrong. Instead of amplifying carbon’s effect two-fold (or more!) the feedbacks dampen it.

Dr Glikson has no reply. He makes no comment at all about Lindzen [1], Spencer[2] or Douglass[3] and their three peer reviewed, independent, empirical papers showing that the climate models are exaggerating the warming by [...]

by Joanne Nova

April 19, 2010

Dr Andrew Glikson says the right motherhood lines [see: Case for Climate Change]: he talks about empirical evidence, and wants evidence based policies. All this is good, yet he sidesteps the main point — what exactly is the evidence for the theory of man-made global warming? It’s the only point that matters, yet when he presents evidence it’s either not empirical, not up to date, or not relevant. Why?

By hitting all the right key phrases a reader might accidentally think that Glikson is presenting key evidence and good reasoning. Take this for example: Glikson fears we’re turning away from evidence-based policies. (Me too!) But to complete the sentence he lists all the committees who predict bad weather 90 years from now. It makes for good PR, but is not scientific evidence.

Committee reports count as “evidence” in a court of law, but in science, certificates, declarations, contracts, commission [...]

The bottom line? The infamous “Pinker tape” turns out to be a reenacted piece of cherry-picking exaggeration, where lines are taken out of context to imply something important, or to frame it as if it was significant.

It’s true Monckton did get Pinker’s sex wrong (golly), and there was a point about fluxes being at the surface vs top of the atmosphere, but nothing Pinker or Lambert said makes much difference to the point that matters: climate sensitivity. (When the top of atmosphere problem emerged, Monckton recalculated the climate sensitivity on the spot; it changed from “very low” to “even lower”.) Pinker herself acknowledges that Monckton’s approach is reasonable.

Monckton has over the years pointed to many reasons why climate sensitivity is low. The Pinker paper is just another one of these corroborating pieces (and it looks a doozy). Using satellite measurements, Pinker shows that more sunlight is reaching the surface of the Earth (possibly due to fewer clouds over the ocean). Over the [...]