Abbott needs to be more pro-science and cut funding to models that don’t work

Look out, Australia might trim a tiny slice from the Tithe to the Gods of Weather (protest coming)

The Australian budget is in dire straits after the Rudd-Gillard years of promised surpluses but exploding arithmetic. The Commission of Audit is here to test public reaction to all the possible ways of paying off the Labor debt. Somehow, it missed the biggest cherry waiting to be plucked. We could save billions if the the Abbott Government become more rigorously scientific. Abbott should cut funding to any scientists who are using models that don’t work, and only fund ones that do.

“Abbott should cut funding to any scientists who are using models that don’t work, and only fund ones that do.”

I expect the Greens will join me in declaring that if the Abbott government cared about the environment it would immediately launch a royal commission, a real audit, or an independent investigation into the effect of carbon dioxide. Only the best science for the planet, right? All funding to environmental programs dependent on unverified research should be frozen until the audit is finished. Easy eh? Let me be PM for a day. :- )

But apparently the sacred carbon cow must not be touched. With billions of carbon-cherries on offer, a tiny reduction in the National Carbon Tithe was suggested:

The Australian Climate Change Science Program’s four-year funding of $31.6 million, mostly to the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, duplicates work by those and other agencies and “should be returned to the budget or allocated to priority areas”, the commission said in its report.

Only $31 million? Is that it?

The total CSIRO budget is $1.2b billion and BOMs is $300m. The Emissions Reduction Fund was budgeted to cost $2.55 billion over four years. There is lots of room here to lighten the burden on struggling tax payers.

We know this $31 million that might be cut is not needed for predicting the climate, because it’s used for models that can’t do that:

But scientists, including Michael Raupach, formerly of the CSIRO and now at the Australian National University, said the program supported a “great deal of critical scientific work” that helps refine climate models which are also used for weather forecasting.

Obviously their income does not depend on keeping the fear alive. Oh wait…

Despite the increasing heatwaves, rising sea levels and ocean acidification – which scientists link to rising greenhouse gas levels – the Abbott government has downplayed the risks from climate change, said Opposition climate change spokesman Mark Butler.

Oh No! 35 not-very-good scientists might lose their jobs?

One scientist said the $4 million or so provided to the CSIRO by the ACCSP per year was the reason the institution “was still in the game”. Another said 30 to 35 climate scientists would lose their jobs directly if the program ceased and probably a similar number indirectly.

Somewhere, 35 real scientists are missing out on funding

They could be curing aggressive neuroblastomas in 3 year olds. Instead witch-doctors who break the tenets of science, call independent scientists names, and ignore the empirical evidence get funds to come up with more excuses, and even excuses-on-their-excuses to cover their failure. (See here, here, and here too.)
Note the scientific precision in this statement below:

“Climate change has not gone away,” said Dr Raupach. “The best scientific assessments indicate that Australia could be subject to warming over the 21st century that could range from less than two to more than five degrees.”

So we spend millions in order for a scientist to tell us that Australia will warm by a number between zero and infinity?
How strong is the influence of the Carbon Tabernacles? Even a government that says it believes the IPCC, and is spending billions in tithing to the scare campaign is not doing enough. This is how the meme lives on, the acolytes simply talk nonsense with a straight face:
“This is a government that has shown a disdain for scientific research,” Mr Butler said. “From the Prime Minister down, it has regularly denigrated the work of scientists here in Australia and internationally around the area of climate change.”
Regularly denigrated the work of scientists? How can a nation have a sensible conversation if the opposition spokesman puts out irrational and self-evidently untrue statements?

Is there any journo asking Butler to provide quotes for regular denigration of scientists here in Australia and internationally? Anyone?

I’m sure the ABC fact check unit will get right onto it.

Read more and weep at the opportunity missed: The Age/ Sydney Morning Herald

 

9.3 out of 10 based on 82 ratings

288 comments to Abbott needs to be more pro-science and cut funding to models that don’t work

  • #
    Karen

    Yeah, cause that’ll make the warming go away.

    633

    • #

      Actually, now that you mention it, funding junk models that exaggerate the warming does correlate with a global pause. Do junk models make the warming go away?

      473

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Cutting off the junk models would reduce global warming. It might also cut down on the hot air coming from Labor and the Greens, although I wouldn’t count on it.

        203

        • #

          But Graeme, the empirical evidence says otherwise. Junk models have been well funded and prominent in climate science since 1990, and for most of that time, global warming has virtually paused.

          Look, it’s only a correlation. What can I say? Perhaps funding junk models is the cheapest form of climate control there is?

          😉

          281

          • #
            blackadderthe4th

            ‘it’s only a correlation’, yip, correlation is not causation as AGW doubters keep saying. But when there is 500 million years of evidence, that becomes a smoking gun!

            Only 500 million years of evidence that CO2 is a GHG and therefore currently heating up the planet!

            See: Potholer54.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbUnp0QDaRo

            [BA4th there is no need to include the script from the video you wish to link to. Make the point and then just provide the desired link. So I took out the script.

            You will see here a very clear demonstration that CO2 is extremely poorly correlated with temperature since 1950, the period the IPCC claim humans caused most of the warming:http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/temp-and-co2.gif, this demonstrates the poor correlation between CO2 and temperature over 500 million years: http://wottsupwiththatblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/image277.gif. This graph shows how much better the solar activity correlates with temperature than does CO2: http://geoffair.net/climate/images/clim-20.jpg – Mod]

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            • #

              A 500 Million year long thermometer record would be the smoking gun that proves thermometers cause warming. Better keep handing over your lunch money urgently to stop the BA4GW logic here warming the sun any more!

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            • #
              James Bradley

              Bad, you are correct for once and with 500 million years of evidence that CO2 is a GHG and also that the concentrations have been many times higher than today and yet the planet survived and flora and fauns managed not just to survive, but flourished.

              You really need to take your head out of youtube and check facts directly, for instance your last little tiz about sugar in fuel tanks. Go get 500mls of petrol and see if a tea spoon of sugar disolves in it.

              You can then gauge the information you believe against the observations you make – this may serve as an example of a correlation.

              Safety hint: don’t do this when you return home from Centrelink as the impulse to go for your crack pipe may override personal safety – this would serve as an example of causation.

              190

          • #
            Andrew

            You do have a point Jo. By teaching CAGW we have ensured that no schoolchild has ever experienced warming in their K-12 careers. We should teach global warming (in History classes) to ensure we never repeat it.

            180

          • #
            Tim

            The increased funding certainly seems to be happily maintaining the ‘hiatus’. But a word of caution – it may need to level off. Should it continue to grow, it could well increase the prospect of an Ice Age. Care needs to be taken here.

            70

      • #
        Karen

        Jo. Could you please explain how a climate model is impacting the real world’s temperature. And then show us your model (spreadsheet) and how its hindcasting and forecasting ability are superior.

        328

        • #
          James Bradley

          Karen,

          Issues:

          1. Direct observation show that for the last 17 years 9 months there has been a pause in global warming.

          2. All generously tax payer funded junk climate-models predicted global warming would continue to increase during this 17 years and 9 months period.

          3. This 17 year 9 months global warming pause is ‘described’ as a hiatus by the IPCC.

          Concerns:

          That generous taxpayer funding of junk climate-models has caused this ‘hiatus’.

          Conclusion:

          Therefore all future climate-models should be funded privately to improve their accuracy.

          292

          • #
            • #
              cohenite

              I’m glad you put up that graph Karen. OHC to 700 meters is shown by this graph and SST by this graph.

              The NOAA graph for OHC to 700 meters shows a slight increase from 2003, the year of the introduction of the ARGO floats when a semblance of accurate measurement began. SST shows a marked decline from 2003.

              Also worth note is the large jump in OHC when the ARGO was introduced. This large upward spike is discussed here.

              This large spike in 2003 is responsible for about 40% of the total increase in OHC over the full measurement period. It is obviously a statistical artefact.

              Anyway back to OHC which OBVIOUSLY cannot be increasing at 2000 meters when SSTs are falling and OHC is most likely flat.

              202

              • #
                Heywood

                ..and whilst we are talking graphs, this one is always worthy of a mention.

                http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-90-models-global-Tsfc-vs-obs.jpg

                112

              • #
                Karen

                When will Bob be publishing his findings?

                James claimed more than 17 years of cooling, your SST looks like this.

                http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1996/trend/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1996

                And even your 700 meter Ocean Heat Content shows warming over this period.

                217

              • #
                Heywood

                “James claimed more than 17 years of cooling,”

                Where did he say cooling?

                …and only a pedant idiot or a newcomer to the debate would conveniently ignore the fact that the ‘pause’ is a period of non-statistically significant warming of atmospheric temperatures (you know, where CO2 actually has an effect)and not SSTs.

                141

              • #
                cohenite

                When will Bob be publishing his findings?

                He did; you read it. he has too much integrity to publish in the propaganda journals which publish pro-AGW rubbish.

                There hasn’t been 17 years of cooling but 17 years of statistically significant no warming. Your SST graph is meaningless; the crucial period is from 2003 when the ARGO floats began measuring.

                161

              • #
                Karen

                Heywood – http://joannenova.com.au/2014/05/abbott-needs-to-be-more-pro-science-and-cut-funding-to-models-that-dont-work/#comment-1448325

                cohenite – I scoff at Bob’s reason for not publishing. re 2003 – cherry picking seems to be the only way for you to get “no warming”. 2003, Argo only data, to only 700 meters! How many floats deployed in 2003? How much water was each one measuring? How deep is the ocean? I’m not certain but I think it’s a bit deeper than 700 meters.

                110

              • #
                the Griss

                Again, the ONLY way you can show warming in the reasonable accurate post satellite record is to include the 1998 ElNino in the graph.. and it is a naturally re-occurring phase that is NOT related to CO2.

                The phase we are now in is a POST ElNino phase, and even HadSST shows cooling

                101

              • #
                the Griss

                Furthermore, The half way point in the satellite record is about the middle of 1996

                There has now been a ZERO TREND for more than half the satellite record. ! Even with the large step from the ElNino.

                101

              • #
                the Griss

                Heywood, Its going to get quite hilarious as UAH temps start to trend downwards over the next few years.

                That graph at #1.1.2.1.1 will become even more funny.

                I’m reckoning that UAH will probably cross the zero line some time between 2023 and 2028.

                I think the word used is “divergent” ! 🙂

                91

              • #
                the Griss

                Karen, Bob HAS published his findings.

                They are there on WUWT for everyone and anyone to comment and review.

                This is a far more open review than anything that the climate alarmists would ever dare to publish.

                If you really have any worthwhile arguments against his work, then do your worst !!!

                102

              • #
                Heywood

                “Karen
                May 6, 2014 at 4:11 pm
                Heywood – http://joannenova.com.au/2014/05/abbott-needs-to-be-more-pro-science-and-cut-funding-to-models-that-dont-work/#comment-1448325

                Nowhere in his comment does he say it has cooled. Do you actually understand the English language or just make stuff up to suit your agenda? I would say the latter.

                It isn’t hard to comprehend that lack of statistically significant warming DOES NOT equal cooling. Maybe it is a little difficult for activists like you.

                93

              • #
                Heywood

                Thanks for the red thumb.

                Evidence that I am on target.

                82

              • #
                Karen

                Karen, Bob HAS published his findings.

                They are there on WUWT for everyone and anyone to comment and review.

                Well why didn’t you say so in the first place. Of course now I know that the ramblings of a old man on the internet, if reposted on the blog of another old man instantly make them right. How silly of me to ever doubt you!

                [I can see you are open to impartial discussion of the argument Karen. /sarc Is this the best you can do? – Jo]

                311

            • #
              James Bredley

              Karen,

              I assume you disagree with the 17 year 9 month warming pause unanimously agreed upon by both warmists and septics, with many climate scientists offering reasons for the pause.

              81

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Your claim is definitely NOT unanimously agreed upon by skeptics and warmists alike.

                See my comment at 1.1.3.

                Here is the data for 17 years and 9months

                http://tinyurl.com/nwt58yx

                From August 1996:
                RSS:
                Trend: 0.00 ±0.19 °C/decade (2σ)
                UAH:
                Trend: 0.10 ±0.20 °C/decade (2σ)

                For surface measurements:
                Giss
                Trend: 0.09 ±0.12 °C/decade (2σ)
                NOAA
                Trend: 0.07 ±0.11 °C/decade (2σ)
                Hadcrut4
                Trend: 0.07 ±0.11 °C/decade (2σ)

                17

              • #
                James Bradley

                Phil, pretty sure your guys are trying to rationalise the pause – hidden in the ocean was the last effort and I’m also sure it was finally recognised by the IPCC as well – that’s why the mad rush for latent, dumb-ass excuses for it.

                41

              • #
                Heywood

                I would be careful Brian,

                If we apply the criteria that Karen uses above to determine credibility, you are probably too old and on the wrong medium. 😉

                Your post would merely be the ramblings of an old man on the internet.

                (TIC – of course)

                41

              • #
                James Bradley

                Phil, if you folks can turn 39 papers into a 97% consensus then what we got here is 101% unanimous.

                30

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Sorry for the late reply but the IPCC position on the “pause” is the same as my own. (Summary for policy makers IPCC 5)

                Much interest has focussed on the period since 1998 and an apparent flattening (‘hiatus’) in trends, most
                marked in NH winter (Cohen et al., 2012). Various investigators have pointed out the limitations of such
                short-term trend analysis in the presence of auto-correlated series variability and that several other similar
                length phases of no warming exist in all the observational records and in climate model simulations
                (Easterling and Wehner, 2009; Peterson et al., 2009; Liebmann et al., 2010; Foster and Rahmstorf, 2011;
                Santer et al., 2011). This issue is discussed in the context of model behaviour, forcings and natural variability
                in Box 9.2 and Section 10.3.1. Regardless, all global combined land and sea surface temperature datasets
                exhibit a statistically nonsignificant warming trend over 1998–2012 (0.042°C ± 0.093°C per decade
                (HadCRUT4); 0.037°C ± 0.085°C per decade (NCDC MLOST); 0.069°C ± 0.082°C per decade (GISS)). An
                average of the trends from these three data sets yields an estimated change for the 1998–2012 period of
                0.05°C [–0.05 to +0.15] per decade.

                What do you mean by “you folks”? I have frequently written that I do not accept the 97% consensus figure.

                11

              • #
                PhilJourdan

                Regardless, all global combined land and sea surface temperature datasets
                exhibit a statistically nonsignificant warming trend over 1998–2012 (0.042°C ± 0.093°C per decade
                (HadCRUT4); 0.037°C ± 0.085°C per decade (NCDC MLOST); 0.069°C ± 0.082°C per decade (GISS)). An
                average of the trends from these three data sets yields an estimated change for the 1998–2012 period of
                0.05°C [–0.05 to +0.15]

                When the error is greater than the trend, there is NO STATISTICAL anything.

                Stat 101.

                repeating ignorance does not make it a fact, regardless of where the ignorance originated from.

                01

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                When the error is greater than the trend, there is NO STATISTICAL anything.

                Stat 101.

                repeating ignorance does not make it a fact, regardless of where the ignorance originated from.

                Mr Jourdan, this is precisely the point I have been making over and over again in respect of the pause and you have abused me for making.

                And it is the point made by the IPCC:

                Regardless, all global combined land and sea surface temperature datasets
                exhibit a statistically nonsignificant warming trend over 1998–2012 (0.042°C ± 0.093°C per decade.

                I swear, I am utterly amazed at your inability to read something and understand what it actually says.

                11

              • #
                Heywood

                Brian,

                “exhibit a statistically nonsignificant warming trend over 1998–2012 (0.042°C ± 0.093°C per decade.”

                Whenever I mention the ‘pause’, it is shorthand for the current period of non statistically significant warming. I have explained this several times including my reply to ‘Karen’ here.

                So help me to understand.

                You say that length of time since 1998 is too short a period of time to be statistically significant.

                Going backwards in time (from now) and depending on datasets, the trend doesn’t become statistically significant until you include data from before ca. 1998. Right??

                As with all statistics the larger the dataset, the lower the error margin and more statistically significant the trend becomes yes??

                So my question is, in what year will the trend from 1998 become statistically significant?

                00

              • #
              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Heywood.

                It is not possible to predict what period of time will elapse before any period, including that from 1998, will produce a statistically significant trend. It depends on what the future temperature readings are.

                For UAH data you have to go back to 1993 before you get a statistically significant warming trend.

                Trend: 0.17 ±0.14 °C/decade (2σ)

                It is generally the case that about 2 decades is required for a statistically significant result.

                But that does not mean that you will get a statistically significant result for data since 1998 in 2019. It may be sooner, or later.

                Now I must say demanding statistically significant evidence for a pause is actually very unfair. A pause is at an inescapable disadvantage compared to a warming or cooling trend. That is because a pause, by definition means that the trend is around zero.

                Whereas an uncertainty of ± 0.7 °C/decade will mean that a warming or cooling trend of 0.1 °C/decade is statistically significant, the same error margin for a trend of 0.02 °C/decade would not indicate a “statistically significant” pause, as there is a possibility of warming or cooling.

                In fact if there really was a pause, a period with an actual temperature trend of zero, any error margin, however small, would include the statistical possibility of warming or cooling.

                So we really need to decide on what is meant by a “pause” in terms of what temperature range we will accept as a pause for practical purposes, and what would be a fair error margin to declare it meningful. But that is of course going to be a highly subjective exercise, and agreement between skeptics and “warmists” very difficult to achieve.

                Probably better to simply to report what a trend and error is for any particular time period and let that data speak for itself rather than trying to declare whether there is or is not a “pause”.

                I must add however that it is a gross error to equate a non statistically significant period of warming or cooling with a pause. Even considering the above caveat,it may also mean that there is no real evidence for a pause either.

                Consider the following graph. The whole period from 1979 and that from 1999 have the same trend line (slope), but only the longer period shows statistically significant warming. The period from 1999 may statistically be a a large warming rate, a moderate cooling rate, or a “pause”:

                1979 Trend: 0.14 ±0.07 °C/decade

                1999 Trend: 0.15 ±0.21 °C/decade

                I suggest to declare the period from 1999 a pause is quite unjustified.

                http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1958/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/trend/plot/uah/from:1999/trend

                (Note that the graph suggests that the 1999 trend is slightly smaller than the 1979 trend. The difference is probably due to differences in rounding in the algorithms or one data set being more up to date than the other.)

                01

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Griss, Why has your reference picked data for January-March only?

                The NOAA all year trend from 2002 is -0.02 ±0.16 °C/decade (2σ).

                This “cooling trend” is nowhere near statistical significance at the 95% level, with the range being from cooling of -0.18 to warming of 0.14 °C/decade .

                02

              • #
                PhilJourdan

                @Shehan

                you have abused me for making

                Really? first you accuse me of ignoring what you say. Now you are accusing me of abusing you for what you may have said.

                Like the last time, I again challenge you to put up or shut up. Show me where I abused you for saying that an error greater than a trend is no trend.

                paranoid much?

                00

              • #
                Bob_FJ

                The Griss,

                Thank you for your link which led me to the latest NOAA global T’s, and it is interesting to play around in there with the menu options.
                Did you notice earlier in my exchanges with Philip Phelan that he never responded to the issue of his dedication to OLS trend (Ordinary Least Squares) linear assessment for everything, despite it having recognised limitations in applicability to some data classes/distributions?
                The said OLS fundamentalist apparently refuses to acknowledge that there is very powerful evidence of an underlying cycle of ~60-years in the surface records in T’s since 1850!
                See for instance my comment 1.1.3.7.10, particularly item d)
                Thus, the said ~60 year cycle, (I think first noted in Klyashtorin & Lyubushin 2002) suggests that the period from 1998 might be better expressed as a shallow break-over inverted bell-curve, although a short linear trend might be OK as a going-in current analysis.
                Here follows a relevant article:

                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curve_fitting

                00

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                @Jourdan.

                Pay attention.

                In response to a comment by Ms Nova that empirical evidence showed that there is a pause, (Joanne Nova May 5, 2014 at 4:20 pm) I begged to differ, (Philip Shehan
                May 7, 2014 at 4:12 pm) presenting data and statistical analysis that showed that there was no statistically significant evidence for a pause.

                Your first response to me was that I had misspelled a word in a French expression (8/5 2:56 am)

                I replied (8/5 12:25 pm) suggesting that you make a substantive comment on my post.

                You replied (9/5 6:35 am) (And note that you later complain about me making “ad hominem attacks”)

                “YOu are a god in your own mind. Your reply did not have substance.”

                (Note the complete lack of substance in anything you have so far written, compared to my mathematical critique of Ms Nova’s statement)

                You immediately follow it with this (9/5 6:35 am):

                “BTW: Your insistence on ignoring points made, moving goal posts, and redefining terms means that no one bothers to refute your straw men. Once you learn how to stay on point, debate a topic, and present evidence ON that topic, maybe you will get more substantive replies. I see no need to debate your straw men. Nor run around on the field trying to find the goal posts you repositioned.”

                I reply (9/5 3:59 pm) requesting you explain where I have done what you accuse me of doing. As far as your accusation that I was not on topic I pointed out that I was commenting on a point raised by Ms Nova, but I noted that you did not tell her to ”stay on point, debate a topic, and present evidence ON that topic” as you had me, although she started this line of discussion, so I invited you to do so.

                Anyone who has the most modest comprehension of the English langusge would understand this as a rhetorical device showing how wrong you were to accuse me of being off topic.

                This results in the first of repeated preposterous claims (13/5 1:56 am)

                “So now you are the dictator and want others to apply the lash to Joanne? …

                And tiring of your baseless attacks and misrepresentations and failure to discuss a single point of substance and ad hominem attacks I decide at this point to give you some in return, provoking sooking about me engaging in such behaviour.

                This is followed by five more posts of yours dealing mainly with the accusation that I am a Francophobe because I inadvertently once left a “u” out of your name some time back, for which I sincerely apologized and I have not repeated the error since.

                And by the way you misspelled my name (13/5 1:56 am) by putting an extra “l” in it but I have not taken that as a highly personal attack on me or my heritage. And somehow you manage to accuse me of not knowing how to spell my name. Go figure.

                You write:

                Sorry that my being French apparently offends you, but that is how I SPELL my name. Just because you do not know how to spell yours is NMP. Deal with it…

                If you do not like the French, fine! Ignore me! I will not change my heritage because of your bigotry! If you do not like facts, fine! Ignore them! They will not change because of your religion.

                And yet it is you who enquires of me: “paranoid much?

                If I was one tenth as paranoid as you are I would accuse you of insulting my aboriginal heritage, racism and bigotry by making snide references to my friends in the KKK. And report you for racial vilification.

                Also, apparently cannot get the thought of lashing Ms Nova out of your mind, which provokes near hysterical, aggressive denunciations of me. Highly Freudian.

                I could give more examples but I think I have made my point and there is another post of yours which requires attention. (Although I may not get to it tonight. But be patient. I certainly have some points to make on that one too.)

                But I will end with the best part. After all this and the claim:

                “In short, in a couple of minutes, I just blew away your hours of thought on a subject you do not appear to know anything about.”

                In an attempt to attack me involving a typically idiotic misreading of what was written you back up EXACTLY what I had been saying all along

                “When the error is greater than the trend, there is NO STATISTICAL anything.”

                Priceless.

                00

              • #
                PhilJourdan

                @Shehan

                Your first response to me was that I had misspelled a word in a French expression (8/5 2:56 am)

                I see your problem now. You cannot read. Better reread that comment as I did not indicate you had misspelled any words in that ignorant attempt at French. I said you could not even SPELL in French. That was proven by your mangling of my name.

                The rest is again your god complex. To you the entire article started and ended with your comments. I have shown you countless times where you were telling others to admonish the host. You ignore it. You then accuse me of nothing substantive, which I of course disproved immediately. But of course my substantive comment was not in reply to your constant snarking and ad hominems, so it does not exist in your own mind. Too bad for you.

                You then listed 5 items you claimed I accused you of, 2 of which were the same. I then provided examples for all 5 that showed – YEP! You are guilty.

                Your contempt for all things French came out in one of your petty ad hominems, which I ignored at the time, but brought up later because you will not let your god complex go.

                And I did not misspell your name. I corrected your misspelling of your name. I know this will come as a great shock to you, but my full name is PHILLIP – note the 2 els.

                So deal with it. I am tired of repeating and showing you your fallacies and ad hominems. That you religiously ignore. If you do not like my comments, IGNORE them.

                But do not try to convince me you are not a bigot when it comes to the French. You sealed your fate with your famous line “I have a French friend”. Unlike you, I do not ask the ethnicity of those I call friends. nor do I care.

                00

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Bob,

                Are you and M. Jourdan related?

                (Careful about mispelling my name. I may consider it a bigoted Celtophobic attack on my Irish heritage.)

                “Philip Phelan …never responded to the issue of his dedication to OLS trend (Ordinary Least Squares) linear assessment for everything, despite it having recognised limitations in applicability to some data classes/distributions?”

                (My bold added).

                Forgive me for being blunt here. COMPLETE BOLLOCKS

                In fact I had to go over this stuff repeatedly. I was initially very patient. I wrote “Please Bob,…try carefully as I once again explain.”

                In my numerous and lengthy responses to your posts, I discussed the limitations and uses of linear fits to data, describing it as a useful approximation for “data periods short enough that the curve is not appreciable, and long enough that the noise dose not take over. The period from 1979 to the present is in this Goldilocks zone.”

                You simply ignored or failed to understand or just would not accept that the points I was putting forward dealing with this. OK so you may not agree with me, my repeated attempts to explain may have been poor and I may be wrong, but to say I never responded is total BS.

                I pointed out that longer term temperature data was better fitted by a polynomial function discussed in more detail below.

                The said OLS fundamentalist apparently refuses to acknowledge that there is very powerful evidence of an underlying cycle of ~60-years in the surface records in T’s since 1850!

                Forgive me for being blunt here. More complete bollocks.

                I did discuss the 60 year cycle, acknowledging that there was some evidence for it but that it was not as well established as the 11 year cycle. I certainly did not reject it, but noted that if it was real, it did not account for the underlying rise in temperature over two and a half times that cycle. It must be superimposed on a warming trend, which I suggested was anthropogenic in nature.

                With regard to your comments below (Bob_FJ
                May 15, 2014 at 3:49 pm)

                I discussed the probability issue at length and several times. Again, you simply did not seem to understand (and that might have been due to my poor explanation) or refused to accept that I was answering your points on this.

                With regard to

                “d): Since for instance, you failed to comment on the gross unsuitability of your favoured long-term curvilinear fit”

                You have not before this time asserted that this fit was grossly insuitable. And you have presented no evidence to back this claim. So no, I have not commented on this allegation.

                You did object to it because Dr Robert Way’s graph it appeared on the Skeptical Science website.

                Fitting a curve to data which I pointed out was entirely consistent data sets on WFT, is hardly controverial or complicated. But it’s on SkS so it must be wrong. Childish, but I presented another such graph which was not sourced from SkS.

                You then claimed it was a poor fit. This does not qualify as “grossly unsuitable, but I begged to differ and stated that a correlation coefficient r2 of 0.82 is actually a very good fit to anyone used to dealing with this parameter, and the fit was obviously superior to the linear fit to the naked eye.

                With regard to your claim that I “did not comment on the truly relevant CMA smoothing”

                You wrote:

                4. Why do you think it is that Hadley and GISS etcetera favour CMA smoothing rather than linear trends?
                5. Do you know why Hadley use a 21-year weighted smoothing but GISS use a five-year smoothing, which apparently is unweighted?

                I wrote:

                With regard to the different smoothing trends used by the different data bases (and the temperature data for the 1958 set is Hadcrut 4) whatever the differences in method, they all give very similar data profiles:

                http://tinyurl.com/l5ojm6b

                I think there is a differe[n]ce between a smoothing trend applied to a data set to iron out the bumps so to speak [a]nd an attempt to fit the data to a mathematical function, but if you are of another [opinion] run it by me.

                No I don’t know why Giss and Hadey use different smoothing methods and would be interested if you can supply information on this.

                You did not get back to me about whether you considered a smoothing function the be the same as a mathematical trend fit, nor did you supply any information in why the different data sets used different snoothing functions.

                So yes, the discussion lapsed at that point.

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                Philip Shehan

                You write

                I did not indicate you had misspelled any words in that ignorant attempt at French. I said you could not even SPELL in French.

                keskasay?

                Now let me get this straight.

                I write

                Au contraire Graeme…

                You reply

                Why would you use French when you cannot even spell it?

                You write:

                I did not indicate you had misspelled any words in that ignorant attempt at French. I said you could not even SPELL in French.

                Pardon? (Take that as being in French or English)

                You write

                That was proven by your mangling of my name.

                I left a “u” out. Once. And you have been bithching about it interminably ever since. Is this collossal narcisism on your part or symptomatic of an utterly fragile sense of identity?

                In my apology to you for the slip, I noted that people are constantly spelling my surname wrong (and my first name too for that matter, as you did). But I do not get hysterical about it.

                And as names get spelt in many different ways, is there a specific way of spelling names “in a language”?

                Is my French friend’s (are you calling him a nigger or a member of the KKK?) surname, Martin, sounds very English to me.

                If I am to spell your name “in French” I should presumably spell it Philippe. Or is that Phillipe.

                But your reaction to that just doesn’t bear thinking about.
                You write

                The rest is again your god complex. To you the entire article started and ended with your comments.

                Yes, well, you write it so it must be true. But I thought I was an athiest.

                You write

                I have shown you countless times where you were telling others to admonish the host.

                You are such a stickler for exact meaning, so I must point out that the remark addressed to YOU, (singular) not others (plural):

                Go tell Ms Nova she is off topic on her own blog.

                You write:

                You then accuse me of nothing substantive, which I of course disproved immediately.

                Sorry, must have missed it. Care to run it by me again, or point to where it may be found?

                You write

                You then listed 5 items you claimed I accused you of, 2 of which were the same. I then provided examples for all 5 that showed – YEP! You are guilty.

                The only 5 items I mention above are:

                This is followed by five more posts of yours dealing mainly with the accusation that I am a Francophobe because I inadvertently once left a “u” out of your name some time back, for which I sincerely apologized and I have not repeated the error since.

                As for 2 of them being the same, well without checking, I rather thought all 5 were the basically same old tosh about my Francophobia.

                You write

                Your contempt for all things French…

                (There goes the paranoid persecution complex again. Well there is certainly one French thing I have recently developed utter contempt for.)

                …came out in one of your petty ad hominems, which I ignored at the time , but brought up later because you will not let your god complex go

                I have pointed out your priority in starting in with the ad homs (9/5 6:35 am), and that was the god thing too.

                “YOu are a god in your own mind. Your reply did not have substance.”

                You write

                And I did not misspell your name. I corrected your misspelling of your name. I know this will come as a great shock to you, but my full name is PHILLIP – note the 2 els.

                I mispelled my name?

                You wrote

                PhilJourdan
                May 13, 2014 at 1:56 am

                The blog is JoanneNova, not PhillipShehan.

                And here it comes again:

                But do not try to convince me you are not a bigot when it comes to the French. You sealed your fate with your famous line “I have a French friend”. Unlike you, I do not ask the ethnicity of those I call friends. nor do I care.

                I Do Not Ask the ethnicity of those I call friends.

                The agency has them fill out forms with that information, along with religion, dietary requirements, sexual preference etc.

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                Bob_FJ

                Philip Shehan @ 7:11 am,

                Sorry for misspelling your name earlier, it was accidental.

                I don’t think I can help you anymore, but very briefly for the record, there is one matter that well demonstrates your slavish following of chapter and verse despite the circumstances.

                The reason why your 3rd order polynomial curve fitting is NOT good is that it avoids the underlying ~60-year cycle, which is strongly apparent under CMA smoothing, (and which you did not dismiss). Nevertheless, because your curve has you say a good R2, you assert that it is thus OK. It is not OK, and hence you have screwed-up, by interpreting a wrong application into how you want it to be.

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                Philip Shehan

                Bob,

                Yes I realise your mispelling my name was accidental. All of us do that at one time or another. I simply pointing to the idiocy of Mr Jourdan who went on for nearly a week about how this error on my part was an attack on his French heritage, that I am a Francophobe bigot who had contempt for all things French. (Frankly I did not know that Jourdan was a French name)

                He later accused me of ‘snide’ ad hominem attacks. There was nothing ‘snide’ about my forthright description of him as a complete moron, among other things.

                Regarding the polynomial curve fit.

                Regardless of the correctness or otherwise of a 6o year cycle, or any other contributions to the temperature record, (and I affirm it may be corrrect, attempting to fit this to noisy data is highly problematic.

                I recognise that a linear fit to the data is only a usefull approximation to the data for periods of a few decades. Longer or shorter it has problems. And it has no theoretical justification, beyond its limited utility.

                Applying a particular curve fit does not assume any particualar theoretical justification, it is just a means of trying to fit the data to some function.

                The curve may originate in the mind of its condtructor because the person has some idea in his or her head that the function has a theoretical justification, which indicates the general nature of the trend and the cause of the trend, or the originator may justt be tinkering around looking for a function which gives a good general fit, from which possible mechanisms may be deduced, post facto.

                Applying the polynomial fit (which has no particular theoretical justification I can think of, although it does have a similar shape to an exponential curve, which is often found in nature and elsewhere) simply gives a curve which fits the data better than a linear fit.

                That is the only point I was making.

                It does not in itself mean more than that.

                This alone means the fit is not entirely unsuitable.

                For those of us looking at the curve in search of a possible reason for the shape, we may note the similarity between it and the rise in CO2 concentration, which begins its upward curve a few decades earlier, and postulate a cause and effect relationship.

                This does not rule out there being other factors, including a solar 60 year cycle contributing to the temperature record, as the 11 year cycle almost certainly does although it is disguised in the noise.

                A 60 year cycle would not account for this upward curve lasting 150 years. Adding a 6o years sine wave or whatever to the data might be interesting, although I thing the noise would be a broblem, but this is beyond my capabilities.

                The occaissional strong el nino peak aside, the temperature record going back to 1850 would be hard pressed to show details of mechanisms, just the broadest trend in the data. And the equation for the curve would have to be fiendsishly complicated, in fact amounting to a comprehensive model of global temperature rise.

                The apparent similarites between the temperature and CO2 curves is in no way “proof” of a causal CO2/temp relationship, or even strong evidence, but it is at least consistent with the hypothesis. For that reason it is a suitable fit, even if its theoretical explanation turns out to be wrong.

                That is as strong as I would state it.

                http://tinyurl.com/aj2us99

                http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png

                or, if you prefer:

                http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/11901124/img/Anonymous/hadsst2-with-3rd-order-polynomial-fit.jpeg

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              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Bob,

                P.S. here is a fit of four mechanisms to temperaure data since 1980, which includes the 11 year solar cycle. Maybe there is a more gradual 60 year cycle lurking under the noise.

                http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5960/1646/F8.expansion.html

                11

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                Bob_FJ

                Philip,
                Nice effort, but you should always test for reasonableness in assessing data, calculations and whatnot.
                For instance, you admit that there are many factors that affect the climate, and yet seem to think that if you find a curve which sort-of-fits the observations and also sort-of-fits the growth in CO2 then aha!
                Well sorry, no. There is so much stuff going on that a nice curve such as you select could not be a reality. Superimpose e.g. a number of oceanic oscillations of uncertain periodicity and magnitude, and what happens to your nice curve?
                That is probably why the ~60-year cycle, which has been hypothesized as an approximate underlying sinusoidal, whilst strongly evident in the time-series, is rather lumpy.
                But, it must not be dismissed. and it is not supported by your 3rd order polynomial.

                10

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                philjourdan

                Are you and M. Jourdan related?

                (Careful about mispelling my name. I may consider it a bigoted Celtophobic attack on my Irish heritage.)

                And further proof of my statements. Your problem shehan is that you are just not smart enough to avoid athlete’s tongue.

                10

              • #
                PhilJourdan

                And still more proof of my statements.

                RIF shehan, RIF. I am not going to teach you. In English or French.

                00

              • #
                PhilJourdan

                I simply pointing to the idiocy of Mr Jourdan who went on for nearly a week about how this error on my part was an attack on his French heritage, that I am a Francophobe bigot who had contempt for all things French. (Frankly I did not know that Jourdan was a French name)

                And he still cannot let it go. Even after accusing me of holding on to it. He projects poorly.

                Shehan, I corrected you on my name ONCE. Ever since you have brought it up. YOU stated you had “French friends”. I merely pointed out that was the motto of the KKK (substitute black for French). You keep harping on what YOU are writing as I took the weekend off.

                I can see I am living rent free in your head. Congratulations! I do not intend to pay. I will just keep laughing at your paranoia and delusions.

                00

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              the Griss

              You do realise just how STUPID that graph is don’t you.

              According to “the graph”, the heat content was negative before about 1980..really ??

              Whoever drew the graph was an ignorant drone trying to push a fabricated message.

              If they were able to measure it, why aren’t they using degrees celcius.. guess why not.. because they CAN’T measure it. !!

              101

              • #
                Karen

                You do realise just how STUPID that graph is don’t you.

                According to “the graph”, the heat content was negative before about 1980..really ??

                It’s a graph of OHC anomaly. Thanks for demonstrating how well equipped you are for interpreting graphs. 😉

                212

              • #
                the Griss

                And show me where it say anomaly on the graph..

                NOPE, it doesn’t.. It was drawn by an idiot. !!

                62

              • #
                crakar24

                Karen,

                I have discovered a loophole in Jo’s website which enables one to give themslves as many greens thumbs as they like if Jo passes on your email to me i will give you this secret or if you like you can continue to challenge JB for the title of most red thumbed commentator in history (based on the ratio between red and green thumbs)

                Cheers

                11

            • #
              Bob_FJ

              Karen,

              It seems that at least 19 of us here would appreciate your wisdoms concerning my comment #1.2 below of yesterday.

              61

            • #

              When you see that silly “heat content” graph, please mention that the actual data when plotted as temperature is -0.8°C to 0.8 °C.

              As Igor commented on WUWT, he was one of those who would measure a bucket of sea water to the nearest degree and its now quoted back to him to the third decimal place. (note; the Argo floats measure to the nearest 0.1°C with a thermistor).

              70

              • #
              • #
                the Griss

                Also Vic, since upwelling from deep oceans are warmer water (comparatively) it is almost certain that the Argo buoys, when in deep ocean mode, actually follow a current that flows from cooler to slightly warmer.

                51

              • #
                Karen

                You need a lesson in statistics and sample size.

                110

              • #

                Some might need to do their data analysis course again. If each measurement has an uncertainty of 0.1, then you can not get a more precise measurement by taking multiple measurements of the same thing and finding the mean and SD.

                I hope you weren’t thinking of giving that lesson, Karen.

                51

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Late to this particular party but you are incorrect Vic.

                Suppose the true value is 5.00

                10 measurements are taken each with an incertainty of +/- 0.10:

                4.93 4.97 5.0 4.91 5.08 5.10 5.04 5.06 4.91 4.98

                According to my Hewlett Packard scientific calculator, the mean and standard deviation are

                5.00 and 0.070

                01

        • #
          Ted O'Brien.

          This is why I don’t like sarcasm applied to serious issues. It creates confusion.

          00

      • #
        Philip Shehan

        Where is this alleged pause?

        http://tinyurl.com/lywq6yb

        Note that although the RSS and UAH data are very similar, the trend lines from 1999 are quite different, unlike the lines from 1979. But look at the error margins.

        From 1999:

        RSS Trend: 0.03 ±0.21 °C/decade (2σ)

        UAH Trend: 0.15 ±0.21 °C/decade (2σ)

        From 1979:

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

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

        With short data sets, small differences in input data give large differences in the slope, as reflected in the large error margins.

        In fact the UAH and RSS data from 1999 agree with each other within statistical significance, and with the data from 1979.

        THERE IS NO STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT EVIDENCE FOR A PAUSE.

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        • #
          Graeme No.3

          Phillip Shehan:
          unlike you my hobby isn’t beating my head against a brick wall, so I will just ask Why has CO2 started behaving differently in the last 34 years?

          That is the underlying assumption on which you are basing your claim of human induced temperature rise.

          61

          • #
            Philip Shehan

            Au contraire Graeme, it is the people who insist on repeating the canard that there has been no warming for x years, in spite of the evidence produced to the contrary (so tell me where my analysis is wrong)who are punishing the wall.

            CO2 has NOT behaved differently for the last 34 years.

            http://tinyurl.com/qfryubk

            The temperature rise with doubling of CO2 concentration for this period is 2 C, the same as for the period since 1958, and from 1850.

            26

            • #
              PhilJourdan

              Why would you use French when you cannot even spell it?

              42

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                A really incisive reply to the substance of my argument.

                When is one of you going to show where my analysis is wrong?

                I will say this for Griss. At least he makes an attempt.

                14

              • #
                PhilJourdan

                YOu are a god in your own mind. Your reply did not have substance.

                12

              • #
                PhilJourdan

                BTW: Your insistence on ignoring points made, moving goal posts, and redefining terms means that no one bothers to refute your straw men. Once you learn how to stay on point, debate a topic, and present evidence ON that topic, maybe you will get more substantive replies. I see no need to debate your straw men. Nor run around on the field trying to find the goal posts you repositioned.

                And that is helpful advice.

                12

              • #
                the Griss

                Poor Philip, there he is with his rote-learnt, occupational specific snippets of basic 1st and 2nd year uni maths.

                (Even then he has to use a program he downloaded from SkS.)

                Can’t blame him for him parrot/monkey type application thereof.

                Anything else is way beyond him.

                Parrot squawk “push this button and that button”.. monkey do !!

                12

            • #
              Philip Shehan

              Mr Jourdan,

              What points made are ignored?
              What are the goal posts moved?
              What points have been redifined?
              What point is off topic?

              The reply was to Ms Nova’s assertion that “since 1990, and for most of that time, global warming has virtually paused.”

              Go tell Ms Nova she is off topic on her own blog.

              You point out a spelling mistake (en francais no less), I ask you to make a substantive comment about where my analysis of Ms Nova’s statement is wrong, and you refuse to do so and say MY comment lacks substance?

              The fact is that even those cheering you on are not so stupid that they do not realise that the reason you attempt this self evident, smoke blowing obfuscation and failure to answer this entirely on topic question containing no moving of goal posts and no redefining of terms is that you are unable to do so, either because you lack the scientific knowledge or the integrity.

              Well some of them are probably not so stupid.

              You are a consumate ducker and diver.

              Best to make no comment whatsoever and pretend you did not see mine or chose to ignore it rather than indulge in your ridiculous and obvious charade.

              Again I will say this for Griss, his occassional resort to rather childish personal abuse notwithstanding, (which really does you no credit Griss but detracts from your substantive arguments) he at least is prepared to put an argument challenging my analyses and putting those of his own.

              Very, very unlike the rest of you.

              11

              • #

                I wish that you could understand this. The atmosphere could have warmed without an increase in CO2 concentration. A fit of a sine function with a 60 year period plus a constant warming over the whole 20th century fits well to the data for the last 120 years.

                What doesn’t fit well is a rate of warming that is simply a log function of the concentration change since 1950.

                There is an insignificant 0.03deg;C per decade rise in the UAH data from 1978 to 1997, the year before the El nino. This does not fit well with a gradual rise because the back radiation is getting bigger.

                The linear regression for the last ten years has a small enough SD to show that the rate of warming is cooling to barely a noticeable warming. Again, not consistent with the world warmed due to an increase in CO2 because of fossil fuel use. Hence the deep ocean swallowed it then regurgitated it theory. This doesn’t exclude the possibility that the world did also warm a little more because of the extra CO2, it just shows that the sporadic warming during the 20th century was mostly due to something else.

                If you have a cherry picked starting point around the El nino spike when the step occurred, you can make claims like you have.

                Such a step like increment to the warming is not consistent with the warming was due to an increase in CO2

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              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Vic, I dealt with the 60 year cycle and other non-anthropogenic factors in my replies below:

                Bob_FJ # 1.1.3.7

                May 8, 2014 at 5:39 pm · Reply

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              • #

                the temperature trend since 1850 is better fitted by an accelerating 3 rd order polynomial function,

                No. That a linear fit to the last 10 years shows that the rate is something like -0.05deg;C/decade plus or minus 0.06. (this was for the HadCRUT3 that I looked at mid last year). That shows that noise has not been too large to point to a pause, or more likely that the climate oscillates and the 1975-1998 warming was a part of this oscillation rather than due to CO2.

                The UAH data also shows that the warming at the end of the century was a sudden step up. You choose a start or end point in this period (or near the El Nino spike) so you can’t assume a random deviation from the slope when you calculate the SD.

                00

              • #
                the Griss

                “rather childish”

                Just trying to match your understanding and mathematics.

                Its a big step down from what I am used to.

                01

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Vic, not sure where you get your figures from. Hadcrut3 was superceded by Hadcrut4 as the former had insufficient data from high latitudes.

                The figures for Hadcrut4, RSS and UAH from 2004 to the present are

                Trend: -0.02 ±0.21 °C/decade (2σ)

                Trend: -0.03 ±0.40 °C/decade (2σ)

                Trend: 0.07 ±0.40 °C/decade (2σ)

                In other words the trend for this short period is somewhere between a very large cooling trend to very large warming trend , including the possibility of a pause.

                In other words, the data is telling you essentially nothing useful.

                See my reply at 1.1.3.7.1 concerning sudden steps up or whatever else you may wish to read into the data.

                Griss you are doing it again.

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              • #

                Its not the data. Its how you calculate SD.

                10

              • #
                the Griss

                Philip, Its obvious that you have ZERO UNDERSTANDING of climate systems, or chaotic cyclic systems in general.

                Linear trend across change points and turning points are meaningless.

                DO… YOU….. UNDERSTAND ???????

                I suggest you go back and do some real maths instead of the rote-learnt snippets you seem to have got away with in your career.

                12

              • #
                PhilJourdan

                So now you are the dictator and want others to apply the lash to Joanne? Can you do anything on your own?

                The blog is JoanneNova, not PhillipShehan. And for good reason. She owns it. She chooses the topics. We can then chose to comment or not.

                I do not comment on all of them. I pick and choose. I also do not follow white rabbits down rabbit holes. So when you toss up your incessant straw men, I ignore them!

                That is not ducking and diving. That is ignoring your attempt to divert the discussion. But I guess that hurts your feelings so you have to create terms out of thin air. Too bad for you.

                You are not my master. You are not the master of this blog. I CHOOSE what I respond to. I guess that means your strings are snipped.

                Here’s clue #1 for you. Stop acting like you are god.

                Here’s clue #2. I have no chorus.

                And of course clue #3 – ditch the scare crows.

                00

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                Philip Shehan

                Mr Jourdan, your attempt to misrepresent me is as absurd as it is pathetic.

                I am not applying the lash to Ms Nova.

                Contrary to you accusation that I am not on topic,I am entirely on topic discussing a Ms Nova raised (My Bolding).

                Joanne Nova
                May 5, 2014 at 4:20 pm · Reply #1.1.1.1

                “But Graeme, the empirical evidence says otherwise. Junk models have been well funded and prominent in climate science since 1990, and for most of that time, global warming has virtually paused.”

                YES this is MS Nova’s blog so any subject raised by her is clearly BANG ON TOPIC.

                In suggesting you should complain to Ms Nova about her being off topic, I am clearly pointing out how ridiculous your claim is.

                Yes I note you CHOOSE not to respond to to my request to give evidence for your accusations:

                What points made are ignored?
                What are the goal posts moved?
                What points have been redifined?
                What point is off topic?

                You CHOOSE not to because having made the claims you CANNOT BACK THEM UP.

                Your cowardice in this respect and lack of intellectual integrity is entirely commensurate with your misrepresentations and ignorance of science.

                12

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                PhilJourdan

                @Shehan

                What a putz. I guess you forgot you could not delete your comments. To wit:

                Go tell Ms Nova she is off topic on her own blog.

                I am not applying the lash to Ms Nova.

                Stop lying. You are lousy at it. And of course:

                Contrary to you accusation that I am not on topic

                (en francais no less)

                Sorry that my being French apparently offends you, but that is how I SPELL my name. Just because you do not know how to spell yours is NMP. Deal with it.

                I do chose to discuss relevant comments. But you have shown an outright obstinance to dealing with facts that do not fit your mythology! You have been shown numerous times what Trenberth and Jones have both admitted and yet you deny them by trying to move the goal posts. You have been told that the cherry tree was specified by “the team” but you ignore it and continue with your talking points (at this point that is all they are).

                If you do not like the French, fine! Ignore me! I will not change my heritage because of your bigotry! If you do not like facts, fine! Ignore them! They will not change because of your religion. If you do not like the cherries that “the team” created, fine! Don’t eat them! But stop denying they exist.

                In short, in a couple of minutes, I just blew away your hours of thought on a subject you do not appear to know anything about.

                And unlike you I do not believe I am god, so I have no compulsion to repeat what the Griss says just because you were incapable of understanding them when he wrote them. Nor will I decide to wake at 3am so you can continue your display of ignorance and omnipotence (an oxymoron, but then it is your calling card).

                01

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                PhilJourdan

                @Shehan

                One more thing (which I know will not be acknowledged or answered).

                You CHOOSE not to because having made the claims you CANNOT BACK THEM UP.

                Show me where I have not. Then withdraw your petty ad hominem, because that is all it amounts to. Just a petty ad hominem since you cannot debate the facts.

                I CHOOSE not to debate your straw men. If you are ESL, I will be happy to explain that term to you.

                01

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                Philip Shehan

                Mr Jourdan,

                My God, as I noted above, I am utterly amazed at yout inability to read something and understand what it says or are you so utterly dishonest that you deliberately twist them? I try very hard to be polite even in the face of unwarranted personal criticism but you are unbelievable.

                Are you such a liar or such an idiot that you do not understand the point made here where you accuse me of being off topic by responding directly to a point raised by Ms Nova:

                Joanne Nova
                May 5, 2014 at 4:20 pm · Reply #1.1.1.1

                “But Graeme, the empirical evidence says otherwise. Junk models have been well funded and prominent in climate science since 1990, and for most of that time, global warming has virtually paused.”

                In suggesting you should complain to Ms Nova about her being off topic, I am clearly pointing out how ridiculous your claim is.

                You CHOOSE what to comment on.

                You have chosen to spend numerous posts and paragraph after paragraph here in personal criticism of me, without ONCE, in all that writing, presented a scintilla about Ms Nova’s topic which I have challenged with empirical evidence.

                And YOU accuse ME of being of topic.

                You have blown away nothing but your own credibility.

                In spite of repeated requests you have CHOSEN not to back up your accusations that I have:

                Ignored points
                Moved goal posts.
                Redefined points.
                Presented an off topic argument.
                Set up a straw man.

                Put up or shut up.

                Finally, I have nowhere indicated that your being of French extraction bothers me in the slightest. I did not know you were. And, you fool, I have a very good French friend with whom I worked in the United States nearly 30 years ago, am still in contact with, have visited in France on several occassions and who has a standing invitation of accomodation in my home if he ever comes to Australia.

                Your utterly idiotic accustion of bigotry is based on your criticism of me for mispelling a French expression.

                Here is the advice I gave you earlier you thoroughly mendacious moron:

                Best to make no comment whatsoever and pretend you did not see mine or chose to ignore it rather than indulge in your ridiculous and obvious charade.

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                Philip Shehan

                @ M Jourdan. More and more idiotic.

                “You CHOOSE not to because having made the claims you CANNOT BACK THEM UP.”

                Show me where I have not.

                M Jourdan. You made the these accusations, that I:

                Ignored points
                Moved goal posts.
                Redefined points.
                Presented an off topic argument.
                Set up a straw man.

                You refuse to simply point to a single instance where I have done any of this, but instead expect ME to show where YOU have not.

                I am expected to demonstrate a negative, pointing to something that does not exist.

                “you cannot debate the facts.”

                You have not debated a single fact of substance in this entire thread, The closest you have come is in regard to such “on topic” points as my fFrench spelling and times of posting.

                I presented emprical data to show that Ms Nova’s claim was wrong.

                All you have done is abuse me for it offered not scintilla of opposing evidence. Then you take me to task further up but are such a complete idiot you do not even have the sense to realise you are repeating my argument exactly:

                “When the error is greater than the trend, there is NO STATISTICAL anything.

                Stat 101.

                repeating ignorance does not make it a fact, regardless of where the ignorance originated from.”

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                PhilJourdan

                @Shehan – and again you lie.

                You have chosen to spend numerous posts and paragraph after paragraph here in personal criticism of me, without ONCE, in all that writing, presented a scintilla about Ms Nova’s topic which I have challenged with empirical evidence.

                http://joannenova.com.au/2014/05/abbott-needs-to-be-more-pro-science-and-cut-funding-to-models-that-dont-work/#comment-1447842

                You also lied about the other point I made (hardly paragraphs as you seem to waste time doing that). You TOLD me to do your lashing of Joanne Nova (again for the hard of reading):

                Go tell Ms Nova she is off topic on her own blog.

                YOU TOLD ME THAT. I refused.

                As I said, the fact you have no ability to modify your previous posts show how bad a liar you are. You accuse me falsely, I prove my point, then you ignore my proof (which are your own words), and restate your lie (it is no longer “incorrect” after you have been corrected).

                Frankly, I do not care about you one way or the other. I commented and responded to comments. SOME (definitely not all) were in response to your lies.

                Stop lying and the issue is settled. I cannot make you stop lying. Only you can do that.

                01

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                PhilJourdan

                @Shehan – and of course just when I thought you could be succinct, I see that you had to toss in the obligatory ad hominem:

                Here is the advice I gave you earlier you thoroughly mendacious moron

                I guess you never heard about the 3 fingers. They are working over time in your case.

                Why is it that you cannot post a comment without a gratuitous ad hominem that adds nothing to the discussion, and only highlights your lack of ability to communicate in an adult and intelligent manner?

                01

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                PhilJourdan

                I have a very good French friend

                just curious. Do you belong to the Oz chapter of the KKK? That is their favorite line here in the states (just substitute black for French).

                You got insulted when I corrected your spelling of my name. And then decided to make snarky remarks about French. That was not even a thinly veiled slam. It was a naked slam. just like all your petty ad hominems in your previous rant.

                01

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                PhilJourdan

                @Shehan –

                Ignored points
                Moved goal posts.
                Redefined points.
                Presented an off topic argument.
                Set up a straw man.

                Just off the top of my head (because you are not worth quoting any longer as you have a problem with the written word – your own!)

                ignored points – The Griss showed you RSS for the last 17 years 9 months. You ignored it.

                Moved Goal posts – When shown of the pause, you back the dates up to your own cherry picked ones (Santer picked the dates used for the pause – we just fit the data to HIS requirements for falsification).

                redefined points – same as the previous. But I guess you lack of reading comprehension makes you think that is different.

                Presented an Off Topic Argument – I did not say argument (see, that is proof of 3 and 5). I said OFF TOPIC. In the case I have ALREADY SHOWN YOU (example of #1), you had to make a swipe at my heritage for the simple petty reason I corrected your spelling of my name!

                Set up straw men – See previous statement.

                And that is without going to the rest of your ad hominem laced, pointless posts!

                You just got owned in the same posting. Then as if you still have not had enough, you have to repeat the same lie:

                You have not debated a single fact of substance in this entire thread,

                Already debunked in a previous comment to you. Then you claim my words as your own. Wow! Even biden was not that bad a plagiarist! It took a little while to catch him!

                How about you get an education, learn to discuss without petty ad hominems (it seems you cannot post without them), learn that the world is not all English speaking or spelling, learn to address the issue being stated by the person without setting up your pathetic straw man, and then get some original thoughts of your own.

                Frankly, I do not care if you do. But I took pity on you based upon your pitiful posts.

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                Philip Shehan

                So, a week after I first asked you to justify your accusations, followed by repeated requests to do so you finally get around to it.

                And the reason for the delay is obvious. Your examples are complete rubbish.

                Claim: ignored points – The Griss showed you RSS for the last 17 years 9 months. You ignored it.

                Heywood below critcised me for “making the same point 500 times.”

                A good proportion of those was responding to the 17 years and 9 months claim, mostly from Griss.

                But when Griss raised this point for the nth time, at the risk of upsetting Heywood, I did in fact reply:

                Philip Shehan
                May 7, 2014 at 11:09 pm

                OK Griss let’s do a PROPER scientific analysis of your data.

                From 1996.5 (to two decimal places)

                Trend: 0.00 ±0.19 °C/decade (2σ)

                That is a 95% probability that the trend is between warming of 0.19 °C/decade and cooling of 0.19 °C/decade…

                I also responded to the same claim by James Bredley:

                Philip Shehan
                May 7, 2014 at 5:39 pm

                Here is the data for 17 years and 9months…

                I also responded to Griss’s graphs claiming cooling from 2001, 2002, 2012.3!! (I have complained about short data sets, but this?), 1997.4, 2001.5, 2000.9, 2000.8, 1996.65 (I have heard of cherry picking, but Griss here is getting down to the pit of the cherry) 2004.75/(ditto), and another showing data from January to March only from 1880 claiming a cooling trend based on data for the first quarter of each year from 2002 (ditto).

                In each case I pointed out that the large (sometimes huge) error margins make these time periods meaningless.

                If this is ignoring Griss’s comments…

                Now note that YOU adamantly assert YOUR right to CHOOSE what comments you reply to:

                “I do not comment on all of them. I pick and choose…You are not my master… I CHOOSE what I respond to. I guess that means your strings are snipped.”

                But if I had failed to respond to Griss’s points (or anyone else’s), I am ignoring the question.

                So YOUR proclaimed right is MY ignoring.

                And note the irony here – you take me to task for allegedly ignoring Griss on the 17 years and 9 months, ignoring the fact that I responded on numerous occasions both to Griss and others on this point.

                Your claim is busted.

                Claim: Moved Goal posts – When shown of the pause, you back the dates up to your own cherry picked ones…

                Nobody showed me a pause.

                People may have claimed it, with multiple starting dates (see above), and I disputed it with statistical evidence.

                With regard to my cherry picked dates, I have repeatedly stated that when moving starting or finishing date by a year or two (let alone a few months) makes a noticeable change in the slope of the trend, it is a certain indication that the data set is too short and that the trends will have large error margins which overlap, meaning they are statistically in agreement, but are next to useless for establishing whether there is warming cooling or anything in between. I demonstrate this with examples.

                So I specifically replied to Griss:

                And you are correct, I am cherry picking dates within months to give slopes that I like, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE DOING. I am simply following your example.

                The difference is, I know that cherry picking these short term, non statistically significant time periods with exquisetly timed start and finish dates is purest bunkum.

                YOU are the one who insists they are meaningful, wilfully refusing to acknowledge the importance in error margins as well as the slopes.

                Claim: Presented an Off Topic Argument – I did not say argument (see, that is proof of 3 and 5). I said OFF TOPIC. In the case I have ALREADY SHOWN YOU (example of C), you had to make a swipe at my heritage for the simple petty reason I corrected your spelling of my name!

                Firstly, You have not ALREADY SHOWN ME (example #1 ignoring points) as I have demonstrated I did not, but you ignored the fact that I did not ignore the posts. If you get my drift.

                With regard to your ridiculous paranoid persecution complex claiming that I taken a swipe at your heritage by mispelling your name I have dealt with that at Philip Shehan May 16, 2014 at 6:46 pm

                I did not quote you as saying I had presented an “off topic argument”

                But not only did you write “off topic” you wrote “Once you learn how to stay on point, debate a topic, and present evidence ON that topic…”

                To suggest that the phrase “off topic argument” is not an entirely acceptable rendering of your remarks is ridiculous.

                Furthrmore, to claim that this is evidence, let alone proof, that that I had (3) redefined points and (5) set up a straw man is equally absurd.

                So to cite this as an example of (1) ignored points is nonsense.

                Your claim is busted.

                Claim: Set up straw men – See previous statement.

                Firstly, If I was as ridiculous a linguistic pedant as you are, I would indignantly object to you rendering my statement “Set up a straw man” as “Set up straw men”, thereby going off topic and thus proving that you have (3) redefined points and (5) set up a straw man. Or is that straw men?

                But let’s move on.

                See previous statement.

                Your claim is busted.

                With regard to further claims you made above:

                And that is without going to the rest of your ad hominem laced, pointless posts!

                Again, refer to my post above (May 16, 2014 at 6:46 pm) for a time line of these exchanges demonstrating just who began the ad hominem attacks and when.

                Then you claim my words as your own. Wow! Even biden was not that bad a plagiarist!

                Firstly it is extremely poor form to attack Biden’s heritage by not beginning his name with an upper case “B”.

                In fact I first raised the issue of “substance”.

                Your first comment to me, in its entirety was (8/5 2:56 am)

                Why would you use French when you cannot even spell it?

                To which I replied:

                A really incisive reply to the substance of my argument. When is one of you going to show where my analysis is wrong?..

                Your reply (and note the beginning of the ad hominem attacks):

                YOu are a god in your own mind. Your reply did not have substance.

                My next comment:

                I ask you to make a substantive comment about where my analysis of Ms Nova’s statement is wrong, and you refuse to do so and say MY comment lacks substance?

                And you have indeed failed to address this substantive point of my post.

                And by the way, another point of what you consider substance was that I get up to post at 3 am.

                With regard to this pressing issue – I have never gotten up early to post. I am not a morning person. I often stay up late. If that’s OK with you.

                00

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                PhilJourdan

                @Shehan – the only gibberish is yours. I made my points. I made them a week ago. You were just too egotistical to understand them – then or now.

                And you still miss the point. And you are still constructing straw men. And ignoring what is written. I can see why you failed as a teacher. I can see why you have failed here. There are many warmists who make cogent arguments that I listen to. You are not one of them. I can debate the issue with them. With you, you merely repeat the same old straw man, the same old way, over and over.

                I suggest you take a course in reading comprehension. I can see talking to you is like talking to a brick wall. I hope your fantasies are better than your reality. Your reality does not exist.

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              Rereke Whakaaro

              I think you left out the words, “significant”, and “proven anthropogenic”. Your statement as it stand could well be true for an infinite number of reasons, or not, as the case may be.

              00

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                Rereke Whakaaro

                I should have quoted:

                there has been no warming for x years, in spite of the evidence produced to the contrary

                Sorry.

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                Philip Shehan

                Rereke, I agree with what you.

                Go see my comment at 1.1.3.8.1 below for further explanation.

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          Heywood

          Do you type this out in full every time Brian or do you just cut and paste from one of the last five hundred times you have posted it?

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            Philip Shehan

            A bit of both really, as people use different time periods for the alleged pause.

            And if I repeat the same argument 500 times, it is to counter the same canard put out 500 times.

            As Wellington said: “They came on in the same old way and we beat them off in the same old way.”

            And every time I get comments like yours and Graeme’s, which do not even attempt to point out where the analysis is wrong. Apparently this is how skeptics argue science.

            Care to give it a try?

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              Heywood

              Ok Brian,

              RSS Trend: 0.03 ±0.21 °C/decade (2σ)
              UAH Trend: 0.15 ±0.21 °C/decade (2σ)

              So the trend is -0.18 to +0.24 °C/decade (RSS) and -0.06 +0.36 °C/decade (UAH) correct?

              So, based on your calculations, since 1999 it has either cooled slightly, remained static or warmed slightly. Yes? Somewhere within the margin of error?

              So when you yell “THERE IS NO STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT EVIDENCE FOR A PAUSE”, there is also no statistically significant evidence that their isn’t one either right?

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                Philip Shehan

                Correct Heywood.

                At the risk of repeating myself, the error margins with short term data sets render any statement about whether it is warming cooling or a pause meaningless.

                But I am not the one attempting to claim a discernable trend from the data.

                It is those who claim THERE IS A PAUSE who are attempting to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

                My statement is that there is no statistically significant data to support that claim.

                There is however stistically significant evidence for a rise in temperature for the entire satellite period.

                25

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                the Griss

                There has been no statistical warming since the end of the 1998-2001 ElNino.

                It was change point.. something your monkey lacks the ability to understand.

                The monkey only thinks in straight lines.

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                Philip Shehan

                Griss I have lost count on how many times I have made this point in this section alone, let alone on orior occasions.

                “There has been no statistical warming since the end of the 1998-2001 ElNino.”

                YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.
                How many times do I have to repeat this before you get it?

                Nor is there any statistical evidence for a pause.
                Nor is there any statistical evidence for cooling.

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          • #
            Philip Shehan

            Griss, which part of statistical significance and the accompanying huge error margins for the data you present do you obstinately refuse to even attempt to understand?

            27

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              the Griss

              I understand it very well, that is why I laugh at your meaningless cherry-picked monkey-like attempts to put linear trends through non-linear stepped and cyclic data.

              Why do your refuse to even try to understand the different phases of the climate cycle, and continue to put linear trend lines through obviously non-linear sections of data. Its shows a distinct lack of intelligence on your behalf.

              It’s first year beginners stuff that you are doing, based on a total lack of any understanding of the climate system.

              I’ll explain it again.. do TRY TO UNDERSTAND this time.

              1. Slight warming, because of strong solar effects from 1979-start of ElNino in about 1997
              2. Step jump of about 0.25C bought about by the unusually strong ElNino from 1998-2001
              3. Then cooling starts because of switches in the ocean cycles and solar effect become very weak.

              Three distinct phases.

              Its not that difficult, really its not . !!!

              Oh and…

              3(cont)…. Continued cooling unless the sun wakes up. All real indicators point in that direction.

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                Philip Shehan

                Griss, they are YOUR CHERRIES and YOUR LINEAR TRENDS. I have simply added a few of my own.

                Your assertion that the el nino effect led to a permanent jump of 0.25 C is nonsense and not supported by Spencer and Christy’s data.

                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

                “cooling since the ElNino settled in 2001.”

                1999.5 according to Spencer and Christy, from which point the data continues from where it was at the end of 1996.

                Neither I nor anyone else who understands the factors affecting temperature has any problem whatsoever with solar cycles periodically adding to and subtracting from the underlying increase in temperature due to increasing CO2 concentration.

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          the Griss

          Remove the ElNino.. NOTHING, NADA.. for the WHOLE satellite record.

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            Philip Shehan

            Just what do you have against Roy Spencer and John Christy, who invented 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 event:

            Trend: 0.03°C/decade

            After the el nino event:

            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 17 years.

            27

            • #
              Philip Shehan

              Pardon me, that should be warming rising apace at 0.13 °C/decade for the last 15 years.

              27

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              • #
                Philip Shehan

                No, you are WRONG again.

                warming since el nino settled in 1999.

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

                I notice you have avoided answering my question at 1.1.3.5.1:

                Does your monkey believe that the period from 2011 to 2014.18 shows the beginning of a HUMUNGOUS warming trend of
                Trend: 0.43 ± 1.84 °C/decade (2σ)?

                http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2001/offset/plot/rss/from:2001/trend/offset/plot/rss/from:2011/trend

                If not, why not?

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                the Griss

                That’s right.. cherry pick the low point half way through the ElNino event.

                The strong Elnino event finalised in late 2000.

                And also cherry-pick the low point part way through the much weaker 2010 ElNino.

                Very, very childish of you.. Grow up, fool !

                The full sequence of the 2010 Elnino added NOTHING to the temperature, because it was part of the general cooling trend.

                You can cherry pick all you like, all it does is prove your abysmal lack of understanding

                Your monkey is now spitting cherry pips at you. !

                22

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                the Griss

                If anything we should be looking at comparing the trends after the 1998-2001 ElNino and after the 2010-2012 Elnino,

                Cooling has increased markedly.

                22

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                the Griss

                And of course we are interested in what is happening NOW and not last century some time. !!

                In a chaotic cyclic system, looking at what happened 15 – 20 odd years ago is ABSOLUTELY MEANINGLESS when trying to figure out what is happening now.

                But do keep up the good but meaningless work, your monkey needs the menial mental stimulus to keep its mind from senile atrophy.

                22

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                Philip Shehan

                “That’s right.. cherry pick the low point half way through the ElNino event.

                The strong Elnino event finalised in late 2000.”

                Griss, on what basis do you assert that the el nino event finished in late 2000 rather than in mid 1995, other than the fact that the latter date does not suit your argument?

                And you are correct, I am cherry picking dates within months to give slopes that I like, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE DOING. I am simply following your example.

                The difference is, I know that cherry picking these short term, non statistically significant time periods with exquisetly timed start and finish dates is purest bunkum.

                YOU are the one who insists they are meaningful, wilfully refusing to acknowledge the importance in error margins as well as the slopes. So it is up to you to explain why your cherries are to be preferred to mine.

                13

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                Philip Shehan

                Argh. That should be mid 1999 for the end of the el nino event.

                13

            • #
              Philip Shehan

              And Griss,

              “That’s right.. cherry pick the low point half way through the ElNino event.”

              El nino is an increase in temperature. The “half way point” is near the temperature maximum:

              http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1996/to:2002/offset:0.24/plot/rss/from:1996/to:2002/offset:0.16

              What the dickens do you mean by “a low point half way through the ElNino event?

              12

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          the Griss

          And basically dead flat for HALF of the satellite record.

          If that isn’t significant, then the tiny amount of warming in the first half wasn’t significant either.

          Be we know that, and so do you.. 🙂

          The only significant warming has come from the wholesale adjustment of the pre-1979 temperature records.

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            Philip Shehan

            Trend: 0.004 ± 0.190 °C/decade (2σ)

            37

            • #
              the Griss

              That’s right.. NO significant warming

              Thanks for confirmation.

              53

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                No Griss, the record for for UAH and RSS satellite data from 1979 to the present shows stistically significant warming:

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

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

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                Philip Shehan

                Correct Griss. See my reply to Heywood at 1.1.3.2.1. Short data sets are of next to no value in indicating what is happening.

                So stop trying to pretend that they are.

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                the Griss

                No, the RSS and UAH data show minimal warming without the very strong 1998 ElNino.

                You HAVE to include that for you to show much warming at all.

                22

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Griss, tell me just WHAT, IF ANYTHING you understand about error margins in data and statistical significance.

                RSS and UAH data for the satellite periods excluding 1997 and 1998 show that there is a 95% probability of the actual temperature trend being between

                -0.10 and 0.24 °C/decade (RSS 1979 to end of 1996)

                -0.14 and 0.22 °C/decade (UAH 1979 to end of 1996)

                -0.18 and 0.24 °C/decade (RSS 1999 forward)

                -0.06 and 0.36 °C/decade (UAH 1999 forward)

                How can ANY of these trends POSSIBLY be interpreted by anyone competent in understanding scientific data (or basic mathematics for that matter) as evidence of “minimal warming“?

                13

            • #
              James Bradley

              I note that this is the coldest cold snap in NSW since 1941.

              I guess if we are following precedent set by the adherents to the Global Warming agenda this must be the coldest May evvvvvvvaaaaaaaaaaa…

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            • #
              Philip Shehan

              OK Griss let’s do a PROPER scientific analysis of your data.

              From 1996.5 (to two decimal places)

              Trend: 0.00 ±0.19 °C/decade (2σ)

              That is a 95% probability that the trend is between warming of 0.19 °C/decade and cooling of 0.19 °C/decade.

              Now the period from 1979 to 1996.5

              http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/plot/rss/from:1996.5/to/trend/plot/rss/trend/plot/rss/to:1996.5/trend

              Trend: 0.07 ±0.18 °C/decade (2σ)

              That is a trend between warming of 0.25 °C/decade and cooling of 0.11 °C/decade

              The data sets agree on a trend between warming of 0.19 °C/decade and cooling of 0.11 °C/decade

              For the entire data set, 1979 to the present:

              Trend: 0.13 ±0.07 °C/decade (2σ)
              That is, between warming of 0.13 and 0.06 °C/decade.

              All the data sets agree within the range of warming between 0.13 and 0.06 °C/decade.

              By chopping the data into smaller pieces, you simply increase the error range for the short fragments of data.

              17

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            the Griss

            And ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT that cooling is starting to happen, and getting steeper.

            Those who are UNABLE to see that the Elnino was the PEAK, the TURNING POINT and thus the maximum in the NATURAL cycle, must have ZERO mathematical and climate understanding, and be driven purely by a nonsensical meaningless robotic, almost monkey or parrot like brain.

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              Philip Shehan

              Griss the trend for your data from 2002 t0 2014.18 is

              Trend: -0.08 ±0.29 °C/decade (2σ).

              That is a 95% probability that the actual trend is between cooling of 0.29 and warming of 0.21 °C/decade.

              That is a GREAT DEAL OF DOUBT that cooling is starting to happen.

              The difference between your monkey and my monkey is that my monkey understands how to do a proper, scientific statistical analysis of how meaningful the trend is.

              Does your monkey believe that the period from 2012 to 2014.18 shows the beginning of a HUMUNGOUS warming trend of

              Trend: 0.43 ± 1.84 °C/decade (2σ)?

              http://tinyurl.com/mj5n4pw

              If not, why not?

              27

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                Philip Shehan

                Pardon me again. The period is from 2011 to 2014.18

                07

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Sorry again. It’s late.

                Trend: -0.08 ±0.29 °C/decade (2σ).

                That is a 95% probability that the actual trend is between cooling of 0.37 and warming of 0.21 °C/decade.

                16

              • #
                Truthseeker

                Philip,

                Trend: -0.08 ±0.29 °C/decade (2σ).

                You are arguing about less than one tenth of one degree Celcius.

                Think about that for a minute …

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                Philip Shehan

                Truthseeker,

                No, I am arguing about the rate of change of temperature per time period.

                If I express the result as

                Trend: -0.8 ± 2.9 °C/century (2σ)

                Does that make you happier?

                Think about that for a minute…

                13

              • #
                Truthseeker

                Philip,

                Trend: -0.8 ± 2.9 °C/century (2σ)

                That means the trend can be anything from -3.7C to +2.1C per Century.

                Think about that for a minute …

                00

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                Philip Shehan

                Truthseeker, Your point is…?

                I have not only thought about it, I have repeatedly pointed out that the large error range of these short, statistically non significant data sets tell us next to nothing about what is going on, which was precisely the point I was making to Griss about his chosen time frame above your comment to me.

                01

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              Philip Shehan

              Griss, how is any particular el nino event a peak in a “natural cycle”other than ENSO, which is not really a “cycle” as I explain below?

              Firstly let me note again that I am wary of describing ENSO as a cycle or oscillation (in spite of ENSO meaning southern oscillation index) in the usual sense as people then attribute a regularity to the cycle which is misleading:

              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Enso-global-temp-anomalies.png

              To say that the top of an ENSO peak is a “turning point” in an ENSO cycle is simply a tautology. The top of any peak is a turning point in a trivial sense by definition.

              If there is “ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT that cooling is starting to happen” following that “peak in the cycle”, how do you acount for this?

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

              01

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          the Griss

          Life must be so very hard for you..

          You cycle up a slight hill, and it levels off.. but you still think you are cycling uphill. Tough way to get anywhere !

          Someone throws you a ball, but even after its reached its zenith, you still think its heading upwards.. until it scones you in the noggin.

          DOH !!!

          52

        • #
          Bob_FJ

          Philip Shehan,

          1. Can you see any pictorial significance in the latest UAH data presented in this link? http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/tlt_update_bar-042014.png
          2. Do you believe in selecting a linear smoothing technique on very noisy data which many have pointed out has an underlying cycle of ~60 years, (as apparent in the longer time-series)?
          3. Can you not see that the 1997/8 “super El Nino” appears to be coupled with a following “corrective La Nina” and that it is arguably wrong to separate the two, (or cherry-pick a start point for a linear trend within that region?
          4. Why do you think it is that Hadley and GISS etcetera favour CMA smoothing rather than linear trends?
          5. Do you know why Hadley use a 21-year weighted smoothing but GISS use a five-year smoothing, which apparently is unweighted?
          6. Are you satisfied that WoodForTrees uses OLS (ordinary least squares) as its singular linear regression method, regardless of the data distribution? (tip there are other methods fit for various circumstances).

          21

          • #
            Philip Shehan

            Bob_FJ

            Thanks for the considered response. I am in agreement with much of what you say.

            Your link is a bar graph representation of a graph presented earlier, without linear fits or the CO2 concentration data.

            http://tinyurl.com/nyjroxe

            I have written on more than one occasion about the uses and limitations of linear fits to data. The temperature trend since 1850 is better fitted by an accelerating 3 rd order polynomial function, but the “noise” in the data makes this non discernable for periods of only a few decades.

            http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png

            Certainly solar cycles and non periodic factors such as el nino and la nina events (they do not necessarily immediately follow one another, there being periods when neither is operating before and after these events) and volcanic eruptions etc. are very significant contributors to the noise in the temperature data.

            And as I have repeatedly stated above, (with limited success in some quarters) for periods of less than about 2 decades, the signal to noise is so poor that a linear fit (or indeed any other) tells almost nothing about what is going on within very wide error margins.

            The postulated 60 year cycle is far less well established than the 11 year cycle, but accepting for the sake of argument that it may have a significant effect, you may consider that the 35 year period is too short for the effect to average out over one cycle, so I will add another data set covering the 56 years since Muana Loa began collecting CO2 data.

            http://tinyurl.com/lhjpvkt

            In both cases , under the noise, there is a correlation between rising temperature and rising CO2 concentration. Furthermore, the temperature rise for a doubling of CO2 concentration (as expected for the theoretical logarithmic relationship) is 2 C, which is also the figure since 1850.

            http://oi46.tinypic.com/29faz45.jpg

            This figure is within the IPCC range for the sensitivity factor of 1.5 to 4.5 C.

            With regard to the different smoothing trends used by the different data bases (and the temperature data for the 1958 set is Hadcrut 4) whatever the differences in method, they all give very similar data profiles:

            http://tinyurl.com/l5ojm6b

            I think there is a differece between a smoothing trend applied to a data set to iron out the bumps so to speak nd an attempt to fit the data to a mathematical function, but if you are of another run it by me.

            No I don’t know why Giss and Hadey use differentsmoothing methods and would be interested if you can supply information on this.

            11

            • #
              Bob_FJ

              Philip,

              Thankyou for your response to which I’ll only address the topmost issues, to see how we go.

              Re my 1 & 3 of 6): The purpose of showing the bar chart is that it is easy to eyeball and to figure various trend considerations without resorting to the many alternative statistical applications, some of which are used by researchers to emphasise a point of view, (or preferred hypothesis). This is truly an issue when there is much noise as in this case, some of which is clearly from ENSO, (an oscillation or crude cycle).
              First thing to note is that there is a major oscillation starting at about 1998 (lagging globally from the 1997/8 El Nino). Thus, if any linear trends are contemplated, their start points should not be within that period but say 1998 (Jan) OR 2001.
              The next apparent condition is that there are plateau’s before and after 1998 with a step-change between them. As far as I’m aware, this step-change has not been explained but it is just as significant as any other linear trending that has been proffered.
              Now please go to your WoodForTrees presentation and add linear trends from start to 1998, from 1998 to end and from 2001 to end and please elaborate on the clashes between your selected slopes and mine. Can you see that there is a significant step-change etcetera?

              10

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Firstly let me note again that I am wary of describing ENSO as a cycle or oscillation (in spite of ENSO meaning southern oscillation index) in the usual sense as people then attribute a regularity to the cycle which is misleading:

                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Enso-global-temp-anomalies.png

                Actually I find the bar chart with monthly temperatures in red for negative and blue for positive anomalies from an arbitrarily chosen base line a distraction and prefer the more conventional representation of the same data as presented in the WTF version.

                http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1958/mean:1

                To my eyes, the el nino peak of 97/98 appears to be in a hollow between two humps – simply one of many such humps and dips and plateaus in the record (eg the hollow at 1985) due to the numerous factors contributing to temperature. I can see no reason or means to ascribe it to any particular mechanism but simply accept it as part of the “noise”.

                Again I must emphasise that the main point of my posts here is that I place no significance (in the strictly statistical and colloquial use of the term) on linear trends of short term data sets ignoring the large error margins so I consider choosing different start points around 1998 to be more or less meaningless.

                That said here are the trends as requested:

                http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1958/mean:1/plot/uah/to:1998/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/trend/plot/uah/from:2001/trend

                But permit me to add the error margins calculated by

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

                To 1998: Trend: 0.044 ±0.161 °C/decade (2σ)
                From 1998: Trend: 0.062 ±0.221 °C/decade (2σ)
                From 2001: Trend: 0.054 ±0.252 °C/decade (2σ)

                You can see what I mean about the 95% error margins and statistical significance.

                The trend from 1999 in my graph, although it looks different with a large apparent slope has the same problem when you look at the error margin.

                Trend: 0.147 ±0.210 °C/decade (2σ)

                That is, your chosen periods and that from 1999 are in statistical agreement as the error margins contain a common region from about – 0.06 to 0.21 °C/decade.

                Only the data from 1979 shows statistically significant warming:

                Trend: 0.138 ±0.070 °C/decade (2σ)

                00

              • #
                Bob_FJ

                Philip,
                Thank you for your latest comment, which crossed mine to Jo below @ 1.1.3.8.1.
                At a quick look you seem to have evaded some issues that I raised. For instance, I asked you to ADD some linear WFT trends with different start and end dates to those that you have argued, AND to elaborate why they are clearly different and to note an apparent step-change. Instead you present mine alone without relevant comparison comments.
                I’ll try and find time tomorrow for a more detailed analysis.

                00

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Bob, I thought I had answered your questions without evasion. Specifically but not confined to this one:

                “Now please go to your WoodForTrees presentation and add linear trends from start to 1998, from 1998 to end and from 2001 to end and please elaborate on the clashes between your selected slopes and mine.”

                Is that not what I have done here?:

                http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1958/mean:1/plot/uah/to:1998/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/trend/plot/uah/from:2001/trend

                I had shown my “selected slopes” from 1979 and 1999 forward earlier so did not bother to include them on the above graph but will do so here:

                http://tinyurl.com/nsgr5s3

                And I did “elaborate on the clashes between your selected slopes and mine” when I wrote that the large error margins for these time periods meant that the apparent differences were superficial as they are in agreement over a large section of the error margins.

                So in fact I dispute the assertion you now make that there are “clear differences” between the data for these short periods.

                Again I draw attention to the bolded statement as I think it is central to the points of dispute between us:

                Again I must emphasise that the main point of my posts here is that I place no significance (in the strictly statistical and colloquial use of the term) on linear trends of short term data sets ignoring the large error margins, so I consider choosing different start points around 1998 to be more or less meaningless.

                I could add further data for various start and finish points around the el nino event if that is what you requested but this somewhat tedious exercise would only show similar large error margins with considerable overlap with those already analysed. You may confirm this if you wish using this program:

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

                With regard to the “step”, I wrote:

                To my eyes, the el nino peak of 97/98 appears to be in a hollow between two humps – simply one of many such humps and dips and plateaus in the record (eg the hollow at 1985) due to the numerous factors contributing to temperature. I can see no reason or means to ascribe it to any particular mechanism but simply accept it as part of the “noise”.

                Well it is sometimes possible to do so for a few well understood processes but it is unwise to attempt to push the procedure too far lest one engage in overinterpretation of the data or the introduction of fudge factors. (And yes, some skeptics claim that the anthropogenic line in this graph is a fudge factor.)

                http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5960/1646/F8.expansion.html

                There is simply a very noisy temperature record due to the superposition of the effects of the many temperature forcings, natural and anthropogenic, which make up the resulting observed temperature record.

                01

              • #
                Bob_FJ

                Philip,

                Again, I will only briefly address the bigger issues that you raise in your several comments:
                a) I consider it an evasion by you when I ask you to ADD three additional linear trends to your EXISTING WFT chart to enable comparison with what was already there, but instead you disablingly plotted them separately. The plotting effort involved was no different in your choice and your reference to it being tedious was not relevant.
                b) Whilst you more recently claim that even the linear trends that you have aggressively used in arguments above are meaningless because of error margins, there are several considerations. For instance error margins if reliably estimated may go equally plus and minus so that if applicable the reality might be equally “better or worse” than the most likely value. Another problem is that apparently you rely on error margins estimated by SkepticalScience, a blog site of great infamy. (I don’t go there!)
                c) Error margins are generally not a precise art in estimation or suggestion, and if expressed in sigma limits there remains the issue in application within the ranges proposed. These issues become more apparent when studying data for the same metric derived from entirely different methods and sources, and I present to you a WFT comparison between UAH, HadCrut4 and GISS global mean T with six different linear trends. http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1975/plot/uah/from:1975/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1998/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1998/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1979/to:1998/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1979/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979 Would you please elaborate your statistical wisdom and explain how nine different features are so similar, or that any errors are all in the same direction in nine cases? (That’s trend x 6 and step-change x 3…… I could add RSS etcetera of course but it would get cluttered). BTW, this is even after the general anti-clockwise rotation of the surface data and an especially determined effort by GISS to progressively disappear the prominence of the 1997/8 “Super El Nino”.
                d) You have used the following linear trend thingy from WFT more than once to show a correlation with CO2 increases and stuff: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1958/mean:1/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/normalise/scale:0.5/offset:0.02/plot/uah/from:1979/trend/plot/uah/from:1999/trend You placed no caveats on it despite later asserting that such trends are meaningless and even expressing belief in 3rd order polynomial function treatment quoting SkepticalScience!

                I’ll stop there partly because the rain has finally stopped and the sun is out, but I see no value in this discussion anyway.

                01

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Bob, I have spent considerable time and effort responding to your posts and requests in detail because they were well presented substantive and polite.

                But now you are just being insulting.

                You claim I am evasive because I plotted all the lines you requested, but not to the letter (due to a misreading of your instructions) by putting them on your graph rather than mine. That this should have provided any real difficulty to anyone in comparing the data is beyond me.

                But worse than that, I actually provided the calculated slopes which give a much more precise means of comparing and discussing the data as you requested than subjectively eyeballing a graph, with the added advantage of provisions of the vital error margins which must be considered in any such comparison. If this caused you any difficulty it is not due to any evasion on my part but it does mean I possibly overestimated your competence at data interpretation.

                You write “Whilst you more recently claim that even the linear trends that you have aggressively used in arguments above are meaningless because of error margin…”,
                This is in spite of my pointing to you and others more than once in this discussion that there is nothing whatsoever “recent” about my opinions, and my “aggressive” use of linear trends has in fact been to counter the claims meekly put by apologetic, self effacing skeptics that ‘THESE ANALSYSES PROVIDE DEFINITIVE EVIDENCE TO BACK A PAUSE’ (or decline or whatever line they wish to push) no matter how large the error margins for their ridiculously small data sets.

                You are not the first to indulge in the childish, automatic rejection of linear regression algorithm simply because it appears on a website you don’t like, without apparently looking which would affirm that the data and calculated slopes are identical to those presented by WFT. I have not only done that, but entered data into my Hewlett Packard calculator and confirmed that the resulting slopes and sigma values match.

                As to point (c) I am gobsmacked. Apart from the misuse of terms and concepts, I notice you have deliberately left out the RSS slope from 1998 which is pushed my Lord Monckton and skeptics to the exclusion of others because it alone shows a negative slope. On numerous occasions this has lead me to counter with my “aggressive” presentation of the alternative data sets and ask why these are not worthy of consideration. But you leave it out because you want me to explain why slopes are all in the same direction. Actually you write that “errors are all in the same direction in nine cases.” There are only six slopes and you nowhere produce the errors, which in any case to not have direction, only range.

                And the point is the ranges of the error margins in all cases, including the RSS slope which you avoid showing , have a great deal of overlap, as I have previously explained and is the point which you seem unable to grasp.

                So pardon me if I decline your invitation to do further analysis of data not because I may get the instruction wrong and be accused of evasion, or because of the weather but because

                “I see no value in this discussion anyway.”

                11

              • #
                Bob_FJ

                Philip,

                I appreciate that you have put a lot of effort into your comments here but let me UNFORTUNATELY briefly resort to an analogy and recount my experience with a Christadelphian family in Adelaide (Australia)…. I married one of them; who came-out, and my experience then has piloted my views on people that will not consider “inconvenient facts” that are contrary to their belief system. An extreme part of that family developed a closed community with others in the Adelaide hills to escape the destruction that was to befall the evil city below what with the coming rapture year of 2000…..
                Moving on; even the more moderate family members were convinced that the Earth was only about 6,000 years old and they would not contemplate various inconvenient evidence in geology such as plastically folded brittle rock (as visible in local road cuttings), or The Grand Canyon and whatnot.

                The reason I ended my last comment to you above with:

                “I see no value in this discussion anyway.”

                …was that I had concluded that you have similar fixed views in your beliefs on the matters discussed herein, and that no logical arguments would be accepted by you.
                Furthermore, in your latest, you have distortingly paraphrased some things that I’ve written, which thus firms my impressions.
                You say you were gobsmacked by my item c) so here it is again, and I suggest that you should read it with much greater care this time:

                c) Error margins are generally not a precise art in estimation or suggestion, and if expressed in sigma limits there remains the issue in application within the ranges proposed. These issues become more apparent when studying data for the same metric derived from entirely different methods and sources, and I present to you a WFT comparison between UAH, HadCrut4 and GISS global mean T with six different linear trends. http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1975/plot/uah/from:1975/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1998/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1998/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1979/to:1998/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1979/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979 Would you please elaborate your statistical wisdom and explain how nine different features are so similar, or that any errors are all in the same direction in nine cases? (That’s trend x 6 and step-change x 3…… I could add RSS etcetera of course but it would get cluttered). BTW, this is even after the general anti-clockwise rotation of the surface data and an especially determined effort by GISS to progressively disappear the prominence of the 1997/8 “Super El Nino”.

                So, you want to see equivalent RSS data? Well try this which I’ve plotted in WFT separately to avoid clutter, and anyway you have inferred that separate graphic windows are fine for comparison purposes!

                http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/plot/uah/from:1979/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1998/trend/plot/rss/from:1998/trend

                Does not the consideration of this data make your convictions even more tenuous?

                01

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Bob,

                Firstly, your presentation of RSS data after I had pointed out its non-conclusion in your earler graph in order to pull a fast one is entirely different me presenting data on a separate graph when there was a pre-existing graph of mine so they could be compared is entirely different. And if you were so keen to see them on the same graph, why did you just not take my graph and make the additions you requested rather than leave it to me to do the hack work for you?

                Your anecdote about fundamentalists has nothing to do with my presentation of scientific data which neither you or anyone else here has been able to refute. I suggest that the inability to accept mathematically correct analysis which contradicts fixed beliefs lies with my critics rather than myself.

                Mine are not “beliefs”. They are mathematical analysis based on 3 decades of the application of statistical analysis to data.

                In my reply below, 1.2.2.1 Philip Shehan
                May 10, 2014 at 1:37 am, I hypothesise that your unfamiliarity with stistical analysis is an understandable consequence of your engineering background, as it was for me early in my career when I was dealing with simple systems.

                In that light this is what I found odd about your point (c).

                Error margins are generally not a precise art in estimation or suggestion, and if expressed in sigma limits there remains the issue in application within the ranges proposed.

                Error margins are calculated from precise mathematical equations applied to the data and give a precise mathematical result. They are not a “suggestion”. Sigma limits are the way they are mathematically presented. I do not understand what you mean by ‘issues in application within the ranges proposed.’

                These issues become more apparent when studying data for the same metric derived from entirely different methods and sources, and I present to you a WFT comparison between UAH, HadCrut4 and GISS global mean T with six different linear trends.

                If I understand this sentence correctly I have no problem with it whatsoever as it is the point I have been making over and over and over again, which you and all the other skeptics refuse to understand (because it challenges your fixed beliefs?):

                Different data sets can produce markedly different results in terms of trend and 2 sigma values for the same period because they are so short that small changes in the data produce large difference in the calculated trend and 2 sigma values. The very existence of large differences in the trend lines on a graph is a sure indication that the data sets will produce large error margins, which is confirmed by the mathematical analysis.

                These large error margins mean that the differences in the slopes are none the less in agreement within the range of statistical significance.

                This oft repeated point of mine constitutes the “elaboration” you requested in the next paragraph.

                If you graph all the data sets for a long enough time period that the signal to noise is reduced,(say from the start of the satellite period) you with find that all the slopes are in close agreement and the error margins small showing statistically significant result (in this case warming.)

                I will re-present my earlier graph of the satellite data UAH and RSS and the statistical analysis which illustrates this point. Feel free to add the other data sets if you wish.

                http://tinyurl.com/lywq6yb

                From 1999:

                RSS Trend: 0.03 ±0.21 °C/decade (2σ)

                UAH Trend: 0.15 ±0.21 °C/decade (2σ)

                From 1979:

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

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

                Would you please elaborate your statistical wisdom and explain how nine different features are so similar, or that any errors are all in the same direction in nine cases? (That’s trend x 6 and step-change x 3…… I could add RSS etcetera of course but it would get cluttered).

                As noted, I find your exclusion of the RSS value “to avoid clutter”, the only one which torpedoes the premise of your question, disengenuous.

                As noted, error margins do not have directions, only ranges.

                Does not the consideration of this data make your convictions even more tenuous?

                http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/plot/uah/from:1979/plot/rss/from:1979/to:1998/trend/plot/rss/from:1998/trend

                If you read and understand the points I have made above and in all my previous posts here and elsewhere you will understand that this data is entirely compatible with everything I have written.

                11

              • #
                Bob_FJ

                Philip,
                Here is one of the issues that you have evaded:

                I showed you three DIFFERENTLY DERIVED global T plots from WFT each of which contained three features, OLS trend for 1979 to 1998 & 1998 to end, and the step-change between those two periods. Putting aside your semantic play all three features have a sense of direction, such as slope or up versus down. These nine features are all remarkably similar (when aware of different baseline offsets) despite DIFFERENT DERIVATIONS and questionable data adjustments. What is the probability of that being so when there is random directional or magnitude possibility within your error limits, plus or minus?

                You alleged that I had not included RSS data “in order to pull a fast one” etcetera. However, upon including this, per WFT, it clearly adds to the probability argument in that the number of coincidences between four DIFFERENT DERIVATIONS is greater than in the former three. You seize on the fact that the RSS trend from 1998 is slightly cooling (downwards) but wouldn’t this be within your error margins, and does it not increase the probability that temperatures are truly flat since 1998?

                BTW, it’s funny how high the RSS 1997/8 El Nino is compared with GISS

                00

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Plese Bob, I know you have limited experience with statistical analysis of noisy data, but try carefully as I once again explain.

                I have affirmed that the all the temperature data sets are all remarkably similar.

                Here are the trend lines your data plus RSS for the entire data set.

                http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1975/plot/uah/from:1975/to/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/to/trend/plot/rss/from:1979/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1979/to:1998/trend/plot/rss-land/from:1979/to/plot/gistemp/from:1979/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979

                All these data sets are in very good agrement and show statistically significant warming.

                Your short period data sets show neither statistically significant warming, cooling nor a pause. They are consistent with all these possibilities and therefore provide evidence for none of them.

                The step change is non statistically significant artefact in the trend lines resulting from your truncating the sets before the el nino peak and then starting them again including the peak.

                Of course the trend lines including the peak will that end of the trend trend upward, like puttng a fat kid on the end of a seesaw will raise the opposite end (unless he moves closer to the fulcrum) as opposed to having two average sized kids.

                BUT YOU CANNOT examine the graphed trend lines in isolation of the error margins.

                The “step” is illusory when you examine the error margins. They are large and overlap, meaning that within the error margins there is no step.

                And while the inclussion of the RSS data destroys your premise that all the slopes of the short trends are in the same direction, again when you consider the error margins all 4 data sets are in agreement,and unable to rule out warming, cooling or a pause. And no step.

                And regarding your point d:

                d) You have used the following linear trend thingy from WFT more than once to show a correlation with CO2 increases and stuff:
                http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1958/mean:1/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/normalise/scale:0.5/offset:0.02/plot/uah/from:1979/trend/plot/uah/from:1999/trend

                You placed no caveats on it despite later asserting that such trends are meaningless and even expressing belief in 3rd order polynomial function treatment quoting SkepticalScience!

                This graph was copied from another discussion where I was yet again pointing to the importance of error margins.

                In spite of the trend lines from 1979 and 1999 being very close, this is also largely illusory as the error margins for the latter are very large. Using data sets other than UAH for the same period give markedly differrent trend lines (but similar and overlapping error margins) as does moving the time period by a year or two. These facts again show that short time periods give unreliable results.

                That is the only “caveat” I make about the graph.

                I stated that over a period of a century or so, the data is better fitted by a third order polynomial, than by a linear fit:

                http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png

                http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/offset/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:2010/trend/offset

                I also stated that linear fits are useful for data periods short enough that the curve is not appreciable, and long enough that the noise dose not take over. The period from 1979 to the present is in this Goldilocks zone.

                What is wrong with a graph that shows legitmate temperature data (compare with the Hadcrut3 data used for the linear fit) and a curve which maches the data well, even if it appears in SkS?

                Here is a non-SkS version:

                http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/11901124/img/Anonymous/hadsst2-with-3rd-order-polynomial-fit.jpeg

                01

              • #
                Bob_FJ

                Philip, briefly,

                Re my original item c), you agree thus:

                “I [Philip] have affirmed that the all the temperature data sets are all remarkably similar.”

                …but you failed to comment on the PROBABILITY issue. That is; that a highly fortuitous number of coincidences occur between at least four DIFFERENTLY DERIVED published data sets. If the published data are actually randomly in error to the extent argued in your large error limits, then the two different considerations are in serious conflict!

                Re your ramble d), just a few points:

                “I [Philip] stated that over a period of a century or so, the data is better fitted by a third order polynomial, than by a linear fit: http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png”

                Except that it is actually a poor fit, (to the sus SkS data presented ending in 2010), which does not account for underlying cycles or critical eyeballs. Take a look at this BoM GLOBAL time series, (HadCrut 3?) which conveniently has optional variable CMA smoothing which I’ve arbitrarily set to 11-years, (that period has been commonly used by CSIRO and lies between the GISS 5-year and Hadley 21-year weighted smoothing).

                http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/global/timeseries.cgi?graph=global_t&region=global&season=0112&ave_yr=11

                Can you not see that there is an obviously inconvenient underlying cycle of ~60 years? I believe this cycle was first described in the literature as an underlying approximate sinusoidal in Klyashtorin & Lyubushin 2002, and it predicted the current plateau rather well, (without claiming to know why!). Since then of course there has been much debated including the PDO as potentially a strong driver.

                Furthermore, if account is taken of obvious break-over transitions and apparent eyeballed trends, I disagree with your approach of asserting that shortish linear trends have no value, providing that they are used with care. For instance your earlier pushing of trends from 1999 to argue a warming was very naughty because the “1998 super El Nino was followed by a significant “corrective” La Nina and their coupling should not be separated, (see per the customary ENSO 3.4 index):
                http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/teleconnections/eln-f-pg.gif

                You have even graphed in WFT removal of that big El Nino, but that is misleading without also removing its associated “corrective” La Nina!

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              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Bob I am sorry but I am rapidly losing patience. GO AND LEARN ABOUT STATISTICS.

                Statistical significance and error margins ARE ALL ABOUT PROBABILITY.

                So four trends with hugely overlapping error margins meaning there is no statistical significance between tham show 3 with a positive slope and one with a negative slope.

                In terms of probability (statistical significance) there is almost nothing to choose between a warming and a cooling trend. (Imagine that one of these trends within thse huge error margins, had with an extra peak of noise tipped from being positive to negative, giving 2 all?)

                And a correlation coeefficent r2 of 0.82 is a very good fit, and certainly superior to the linear fit.

                That is it I’m afraid. I cannot be bothered anymore.

                This corrspondence is closed.

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              • #
                Bob_FJ

                Philip, very briefly,

                You would have done better to not say anything, rather than continue to evade things that do not conform to your “chapter and verse”. But, for the record, and hopefully for your potential learning:

                Item c): Please study this article on PROBABILITY: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probabilit
                …which is clearly in the context of the 12 events or features that I identified. Your morphing of it in several ways detracts yet more from your credibility.

                Item d): Since for instance, you failed to comment on the gross unsuitability of your favoured long-term curvilinear fit: http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png
                …and did not comment on the truly relevant CMA smoothing:
                http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/global/timeseries.cgi?graph=global_t&region=global&season=0112&ave_yr=11
                …it is yet more major evasion by you of inconvenient facts.

                00

              • #
                Bob_FJ

                Sorry,

                For anyone interested the first link above @ 3:49 pm is repaired here, hopefully:
                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability

                00

        • #

          What matters here is not the decadal exact trend to two decimal places, but whether the models that make grand predictions of doom are valid. They fail.

          Hans von Storch shows recent temperature trends are undeniably NOT what the models predicted.

          32

          • #
            Bob_FJ

            Jo,

            Yes, I agree, but I was piqued by the slinging of inappropriate linear trend selections by Philip in lengthy exchanges above. Although oddly he has in part apparently hedged from that stance in more recent comments. Maybe???

            10

            • #
              Philip Shehan

              Bob. I am not sure what you mean by “inappropriate linear trend selections”.

              My point is and always has been that all linear trend selections, whether yours, mine Griss’s or anyone’s which cover such short time periods that they give such large error margins that they cannot distinguish between warming or cooling (including a pause) are “inappropriate” as evidence that any of those things are happening.

              And I have not hedged at all.

              As you may have noted above people sometimes say “So you have to admit that there is no statistically significant evidence for warming for those periods either”, as if this is some kind of “Gotcha”. To which I reply:

              “That is EXACTLY what I mean.” And exactly what I have always meant.

              And they do not understand that when I say there is no statistically significant evidence for a pause (or warming ,or cooling) I am NOT saying that the pause (or warming or cooling) is not occuring.

              What I am saying is there is no statistically significant evidence to support a claim that there is a pause, or warming or cooling.

              If I have ever written that there is no pause, (and I can’t rule it out given my frequent typos and sloppy proof reading in my often hastily written posts) that would be sloppy expression on my part and wrong. I am in no position to make such an assertion on the statistical evidence, just as no-one else is entitled to make a claim that there is a pause.

              Why is it that people have such a hard time understanding the very important logical distinction?

              22

              • #
                the Griss

                Dr Drone… I will repeat it for you yet again, since you are obviously having extreme difficulty understanding even the simplest concepts.

                There have been 3 distinct phases in the satellite record.

                1. The probability of slight warming in the first part from 1979-1997, almost certainly due to the continued series of solar peaks often described as a Grand Solar Maximum.

                2. A step change at the 1998-2000 so-called super ElNino. The total effect of this ElNino was a step up of about 0.25°C. As this energy did not come from either the land or sea surface, it must be a release of energy from the slightly deeper ocean. ie it was a cooling event.. or more precisely an energy balancing event because the sun had started to go quite and the ocean needed to release energy. Pity ARGO was not in operation yet to record it.

                3. 2001 onward the climate changed to a quite stable period with probably slight cooling, which continues even with the effect of a small ElNino in 2010.
                There is some evidence the cooling trend may be starting to steepen since that 2010 ElNino, which would be in line with most of the main climate indicators, and also in line with most climate scientist NOT on the global warming trough.

                As I have shown several times, the slight cooling after the 1998 ElNino has essentially cancelled the slight warming before the ElNino. This means that apart from the 1998 ElNino , there has been ZERO warming in the whole of the RSS satellite record.

                There is a possibility of another small ElNino starting at the end of this year. This will provide the same initial jump, then rebound then a small climb to a new stable period. Like the 2010 ElNino, it will probably settle down to a temperature pretty much around where it started. The current solar indicators point to a further steepening of the cooling trend after that.

                Until you can actually accept the reality, all I can assume is that you are either a deliberate troll who knows the reality, (most likely) but just wants to stir the pot, or you really are as ignorant as you seem.

                So, remain as ignorant as you want to be, or actually try to understand and accept reality….either way, you are not worth any more of my time trying to educate you.

                As long as you keep posting linear trend BS in a non linear system without trying to understand how the system works, you prove your basic mathematical ignorance.

                (deliberate troll.. ie wasting everybody’s time with inconsequential meaningless garbage.. seeing as you have been kicked off more than a few forums because of the type of garbage posts you keep posting here, I can only assume you are just relying on JoNova’s attitude of open moderation. Seems that you have just enough intelligence not to cross that line that morons like MtR etc refused to accept.)

                32

            • #
              Rereke Whakaaro

              Nothing that is created within the natural world, is linear. And that principle applies to singular phenomena, variable trends, and cyclic variations. So anybody who tries to explain nature in terms of linear trends is, by definition, committing an unnatural act.

              If you try to describe a change in nature, by drawing a straight line between two points, you are, by definition, throwing away data. And of course, the data that is thrown away, is the data that does not fit the chosen linear trend. It becomes a circular argument.

              So Philip is being disingenuous, when he insists on using linear assessments of natural change, and then arguing over the appropriate start and end points. He reduces the discussion to one of mathematical process, and style, and thereby shifts the discussion away from the fact that the climate has changed in ways that were not previously predicted by the models.

              32

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Rereke you are illustrating perfectly what I have been saying that in spite of my repeated efforts, skeptics insist on misreading what I am saying. Again we are to a large extent in agreement.

                Why is it that people have such a hard time understanding the very important logical distinction?

                Go and reread it and my comment above at 1.1.3.7.1.

                Philip Shehan
                May 8, 2014 at 11:54 pm

                I have written on more than one occasion about the uses and limitations of linear fits to data. The temperature trend since 1850 is better fitted by an accelerating 3 rd order polynomial function, but the “noise” in the data makes this non discernable for periods of only a few decades…

                And as I have repeatedly stated in this section, I am in fact disputing the reliability of linear fits which skeptics claim give definitive explanation of what is happening (“temperatures have not risen” “the models have failed”) by producing linear fits of my own which show that such fits are untrustworthy except in limited circumstances where they do work as an approximation.

                And a least squares linear fit of data containing many data points is not a procedure which draws a straight line between two points

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              • #

                It doesn’t look flat since the El Nino just because the data is noisy. It is flat is the whole point of doing a linear regression. Hence, just the last ten years with SD calculated properly.

                Also, the sudden increase in global mean in 1998 was used to make a scary graph being extrapolated as if it weren’t noise but increasing exponentially because of a single year. Surely its OK to point out that the last 11 years has average only 0.2°C above average with an obvious (with an error of about 0.06°C/decade) flat trend.

                00

              • #
                Philip Shehan

                Vic, statistical significance was a point raised by skeptics when they gleefully leapt on Phil Jones’s agreement some years ago that there was “no statistically significant evidence for warming for the last 15 years.”

                Jones was correct as were the skeptics who then embraced statistical significance like along lost brother.

                As I have been pointing out over and over.

                No period as short as 15 years or shorter will give statistically significant evidence of a warming, cooling or a pause.

                Skeptics later utterly abandoned the concept of statistical significance when claiming a “pause”.

                The level of statistical significance they were all talking about was at the conventional 95% level. That is . That is 2 x one standard deviation, σ. Please conform to this usage.

                Similarly, your concept of “flat” does not conform to common usage. I understand it to mean a slope close to zero. The point of a linear regression is not to produce a flat line. It is obviously intended to produce a straight line, but the slope may be positive, negative or “flat”.

                I do not know where your figures come from: “only 0.2°C above average with an obvious (with an error of about 0.06°C/decade)”

                This your flat trend in UAH data since 2003

                http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2003/plot/uah/from:2003/trend

                is 0.06 ±0.34 °C/decade (2σ)

                That is indeed a flat trend of 0.06 °C/decade but you cannot ignore the error margins which mean that within the 2σ, 95% error margins deliniating statistical significance, the slope may be between cooling of 0.28 and warming of 0.40 °C/decade.

                That is a huge margin for error encompassing a huge cooling trend, a huge warming trend and anything in between, including a pause.

                That is, as I apparently have to repeat over and over again, such short time periods tell you almost nothing about what is actually happening within the bounds of statistical significance.

                I agree with your analysis of the el nino spike of 1998 to the extent it was indeed a transient spike in the data.

                I know of no gredible AGW proponent who has ever claimed that in itself it provided evidence of an exponential rise, scary or otherwise.

                It is however used ad nausem by skeptics to claim that there has been no warming since this transient noise spike, when statistical analysis provides no evidence to back this claim.

                01

          • #
            Philip Shehan

            Jo, (or Bob) I clicked on the “Not what the models predicted” link but it does not seem to take me anywhere.

            01

    • #
      Bob_FJ

      Karen,
      I notice that on the previous thread here, that you scorned a scientist of great experience for his hair colour and age, in your comment # 49.

      I extract a quote from Jo’s current article:

      “Despite the increasing heatwaves, rising sea levels and ocean acidification – which scientists link to rising greenhouse gas levels – the Abbott government has downplayed the risks from climate change, said Opposition climate change spokesman Mark Butler.”

      Do you believe that Mark Butler an ex “labour union man” and ex “minister of Housing and Homelessness” and abundantly more in POLITICS has top class scientific expertise? (just like you?)
      http://markbutler.alp.org.au/about-mark

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      • #
        the Griss

        Karen,

        In the satellite record , the ONLY warming is from the 1998 ElNino.

        This NON-CO2 related event caused a step change of approximately 0.25°C from start to it settling down at the beginning of 2001.

        If we look ath RSS and remove that heating from temps after the ElNino we get this..

        As you can clearly see, apart from the 0.25°C ElNino step, there has been NO WARMING AT ALL in the satellite record.

        Another graph you should look at , and reproduce for yourself if you are capable is this one that shows all the temperature records and the length of time each as ZERO trend to now.

        82

        • #
          Ross

          the Griss and others

          It looks like the paid foot soldiers have been instructed to push this heat content bit in relation to the 17 yr pause. Quite coincidentally I comments on an NZ news/political site yesterday that had a piece on the pause. The rebuttal was to present the Skeptical Science graph I posted ( see #30 below). When I dismissed that I got the graph Karen has used as being further evidence.
          It seems to me instructions “from on high” have been given.

          62

          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            I agree.

            There are two memes currently being played. Heat content is one, and the other is the imagined, but unsubstantiated, risks from the outcomes, without mentioning what those risks might be.

            20

      • #
        Philip Shehan

        Do you believe that Mark Butler an ex “labour union man” and ex “minister of Housing and Homelessness” and abundantly more in POLITICS has top class scientific expertise? (just like you?)

        As opposed to all the scientists commenting here you mean.

        14

        • #
          Bob_FJ

          Philip,
          I take it then that you are not offended by Karen discriminating against a distinguished geologist on the basis of his hair colour and age?
          Or, perhaps because that tends to be more an applied field of science, rather than the professional academic. Does this not meet your high standards?
          My field of applied science (retired) is engineering in which any mistakes could get people killed and maimed. So, just like other engineers (and geologists) we tend to be very careful in making risky assumptions, which arguably is not so much the case with academics.
          Was your last line a statement or a question, and do you also scorn applied scientists?
          BTW, will you be responding to my 1.1.3.7.1 above?

          10

          • #
            Philip Shehan

            Yes I find any personal comments unwarranted and only detract from the credibility of the person making them. Everyone should stick to the scientific arguments.

            I am actually a scientist myself with a PhD in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and its chemical and biomedical applications, thus my concern that people understand statistical significance and the limitations and potential uses and abuses of data.

            I have noted on a previous occasion that as I began in the physical sciences looking at relatively simple molecules with highly reproducible data, I had some sympathy with Rutherford’s view that if you have to resort to statistics you have not done the experiment properly.

            But when I moved into biomedical research where I was dealing with messy and complicated systems and realised that the results form one rat and another were much less reproducible, I came to understand the need for statistical analysis of data.

            Climate is another messy and complicated system where a proper statistical understanding of the limitations of data is essential.

            Biomedical research involve life and death consequences also, if for instance dangrous side effects to a newly developed treatment are not properly realised.

            I may be wrong but I imagine engineering deals with relatively neat and simple systems (a bridge for example where the and strengths and stresses on every component in the construction must be known very precisely) and statistics are therefore largely unnecessary. You cannot have a bridge that is safe within 95% error margins.

            I think our different professional experiences , particularly with regard to statistics, accounts for why we often seem to be talking at cross purposes.

            02

    • #
      tom0mason

      What warming?

      190

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      Is Karen related to blackadderthe4th by any chance? They make about the same degree of sense.

      130

      • #
        PhilJourdan

        nah. Although incoherent, Karen is legible.

        40

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          OK, now I see exactly what my problem is. I never learned to read the illegible language of trolls. I guess I need some lessons. But then, how does that help me with Karen whom you say is legible?

          Seems like I’m always behind the 8-ball one way or another. 🙁

          40

          • #
            PhilJourdan

            It doesn’t. She is still incoherent, but at least you can READ her words. Which is not possible with BA4.

            I just have a hobby of looking for sock puppets. Karen is her own ignorant self. Ba4 has not attained that level yet.

            50

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Karen is the new Margot.

        Another paid PR wonk who only works office hours, and is required to stick to the script.

        30

        • #
          PhilJourdan

          She does not seem as abrasive.

          20

          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            Don’t worry, Phil. She is still sussing us out, as Margot did. I am sure she won’t disappoint, once she is up to speed.

            40

    • #
      TdeF

      The only proven way of reducing the runaway catastrophic growth in global temperatures is a Carbon Tax. It is working! While it is embarassing that New Zealand led the way , our Carbon Tax is working fantastically, even world wide. Ex PM Helen Clarke may have saved the planet on her way to running the UN. It is only just. Then the coalition threat to remove the Carbon tax probably produced our very Angry Summer, so we dare not touch it. Gaia would not like it. We need to build more votive tokens to the climate, lines of windmills dominating the landscape and giant massively expensive desalination plants simply as places of worship. They will be the Easter Island statues of generations to come. We need to sacrifice more humans by freezing them to death in the North and force people to burn more wood in cute little homes in the forests. Only then can we appease Gaia. All this is scientifically proven by the miracle of correlation.

      90

    • #
      Steve

      As unpopular as it might make me pricking the bubble of the “illusion” of democracy in this country ( i.e. there is none – its a one party state, in real terms ) – but this also explains why Abbott could have had a feasting on the climate change sacred cow.

      Underneath – the two parties are of the same cloth. The external wrappers are different, but beneath it all the same agenda moves forward.

      Its called a dailectic struggle – you have two sides controled by the same people. One side creates a synthesis, the other the antithesis.

      The end result is the desired out come – funding the communist UN.

      Cecil Rhodes wanted one-world govt. Anyone who signs up to being a Rhiodes scholar in effect signs up to this agenda.

      Comrade Gillard & Comrade Abbott, underneath it all, are similar beasts.

      Socialist John Howard broght in the socialist nirvana of gun control – see the twisted barrel statue outside the UN as proof of socialist aims of gun control world wide.

      People need to look beyond politics/words and look at what they do.

      The globalists run the show – the actors ( the pollies ) change as needed to keep the sheep distracted.

      73

    • #
      cohenite

      There is NO correlation between temperature and CO2 as Frank Lansner elegantly shows.

      In the modern era this can be shown from 1960, the alleged take-off of AGW and in the 21stC.

      91

  • #
    KinkyKeith

    This article is basically about misuse/misappropriation of taxpayer funds and provokes a “what if”.

    In Australia the proper places for doing the necessary research to bring power costs of “renewables” based electricity down are being

    denied funds because of the politically based diversions that sink money into high profile looney schemes like roof top solar electricity.

    Had the money squandered on roof top power and the pink batts fiasco been given directly to the Universities and the CSIRO for “pure” research we would have been a lot better off.

    Using 50% of your “research” dollar for what is basically feel good green political advertising is just plain dumb as Spain Germany and the USA have found.

    The green Global Warming anti coal thing is a sad joke on taxpayers and the future, delaying sensible research and adding to pollution woes in places like China who manufacture the “solar cells” needed for roof top power and do not have basic scrubbers and precipitators on their coal fired units in many cases.

    Pure Science (Research) must be separated from Politics and propaganda.

    KK

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      KK:
      as they get more prosperous the Chinese will add scrubbers etc. to their newer more efficient plants.

      But, as Tony has pointed out, the best way to reduce CO2 emissions (and retain our lifestyle) would be to modernise our coal fired stations to the new German or Chinese standards. Less coal burnt for the same amount of electricity means less CO2. It will buy time for the development of safe, non emitting sources of electricity.

      The Greens wil never accept this reasoning, but as the AGW scam dies Labor will wish that it hadn’t served under the same banner. Spain, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Greece and the Czech Republic have all reduced or eliminated “renewable energy” subsidies. Only the UK and Sweden are still in favour of them.
      Outside of Europe only the USA and the province of Ontario are still keen on them, and the recent winter didn’t increase the number of believers in AGW at all.

      No, divert research funds to some area where there is hope of some good. The superfluous CSIRO “scientists” should be sent to the USA or retrained for a useful job. (How many horses and elephants are left in the Circus these days?)

      170

      • #
        tom0mason

        “It will buy time for the development of safe, non emitting sources of electricity.”

        At the current rate of development in non-nuclear power, not in anybodies lifetime then?

        100

      • #
        KinkyKeith

        G3

        Specially liked your list of countries that have given up or seen the light.

        Encouraging.

        KK

        20

  • #

    Continued funding to Climate Change.

    What?

    Hang on a minute. I thought that this debate was supposed to be over.

    Cue Curly!

    Tony.

    160

  • #
    John F. Hultquist

    “Despite the increasing heatwaves, rising sea levels and ocean acidification – which scientists link to rising greenhouse gas levels –” [Mark Butler]

    This probably isn’t a record for saying so many wrong thinks in the fewest number of words but it surely ranks near the top.

    332

  • #
    scaper...

    the program supported a “great deal of critical scientific work” that helps refine climate models which are also used for weather forecasting.

    Well, that is the reason why weather forecasting has been getting more woeful of late.

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    • #
      Greg Cavanagh

      Funnily enough, just this morning; the young girl behind the counter making my coffee was complaining that the weather tomorrow was forecast for rain (she had to drive to Brisbane). I commented that the weather predictions are usually wrong so don’t worry. Upon which she said “Yea, they seem to be getting worse”.

      So if a young girl can recognise that forecasts are getting worse, it must be really bad. (Caveat: more a comment on her being unskilled and young, not being female).

      20

  • #
    ROM

    $31.6 million divided by 35 climate scientists equals about $900,000 each.
    The university takes about half.
    So each climate catastrophe scientist in that list probably rakes in about $450,000 a year.

    Not bad for playing in an airconditioned office with an over hyped and hotted up version of a Play Station generating a derisory version of a science that has no reality in real life and is then spun and dramatically dressed up to make the shaman like predictions from the climate Play Station’s button pushers and stick wigglers look like a chimera of real science

    And this with the latte sipping facilities all nice and close and handy.

    On a pension which I never ever wanted to be until circumstances deemed otherwise and which my wife and I managed to put off until we were seventy years old, I can only but dream and dream.

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    • #

      ROM, I wondered that too, but if you read the article closely, I think the 35 jobs is connected just to the $4m in funding for one particular program within the $32m. At $4m for 35 jobs they get about $114k total each (which is pretty tight, because it includes on-costs, super, admin, research, if that is the case).

      141

      • #
        tom0mason

        So, not overpaid too much, just plain ordinary overpay then?

        90

      • #
        ROM

        Perhaps you are right Jo.
        However as an old farmer over some five decades I have spent a lot of my hard earned on some crops which often for seasonal reasons be it drought, disease or even the total collapse of markets for that product means that the crop may look in fair order but when you walk through it before harvest and when you put your harvester into that crop, little or nothing comes into the grain box,

        It is time then to make the hard decision and cut your losses and start thinking ahead to the next chance to try and make some money.
        So the big cultivator or the 8 tonne disc or the 30 metre boom spray goes in to destroy and get rid of that crop or to plough it under [ or even animals as the shooting of no longer supportable live stock in such as a severe drought situation is done and has to be done to be humane to the suffering animals. Few know the psychological cost to the farmer to have to do these quite horrific, from his viewpoint, actions to his animals ] before it uses any more of your very expensive fertilizer and the retained moisture in the soil.
        Or you put the firestick into that crop to get rid of it entirely particularly when a severe disease outbreak occurs such as we have seen [ and done ] when a new version of the crop disease Leaf and Stem Rust wipes out the crop ..

        Failing to take such very hard to take action just means that your next crop in a years time could suffer significantly as will your income due to lack of moisture from being used up by the non yielding crop or disease or the effects of one type of crop residue on the next crop of a different type.

        Big business does this all the time to survive when a division of the business is no longer performing so they sell it or just close it up and get on with what they are doing best.

        It is well past time that the government [s ] and even the universities just got on with the business of closing down all of the totally unproductive, disruptive, excessively expensive, non productive research and research divisions which have never ever provided useful, useable results that actually contribute to our society’s knowledge bank and it’s functioning as a society and as a very welcome well researched contribution to the maintenance of the health and well being of the individuals who make up this community and society.
        The entire climate research departments in most Australian universities appear to have contributed nothing to our society’s knowledge bank.
        Instead they have promoted fear and despair, are arrogant in the extreme in the manner in which most of the climate researchers and their departments in academia and in the Ivory towers of the universities have openly undermined by scientific subterfuge and open advocacy and the high pitched emotive promotion of predicted disasters to come, all based on their opinions, not science, so that the long established public respect for science and the universities and science establishments as centers of carefully considered, weighed and researched outcomes which advance society’s and civilization’s cause is no longer a fully accepted and recognised characteristic of climate science and increasingly of university academic research overall.

        In doing so climate science and it’s practitioners, without ANY hard provable in field evidence to back any of their fatuous claims which are based almost exclusively on the output of invalidated, unverified and unsubstantiated climate models,along with a thick overlay of unsubstantiated personal opinion using their credentials as scientists to promote their own personal beliefs, they are eroding and destroying the trust for science inherent in the past in the public psyche which has been a feature of the public of our western societies for nearly a century past.

        The climate researchers and their departments have taken up the role of advocates, demanding that the governments follow their dictates on matters not just climate related but now extending far beyond climate related matters into other fields of public policy with a high accompanying level of arrogance and hubris buttressing their assumed impunity from any blow backs from their policy advocation.

        Accompanied by a consequent belief that there is no need for them to take any responsibility for the outcomes of their advocacy and it’s societal impact which is almost always extremely negative in outcome accompanied often by considerable related suffering involving many susceptible individuals in our society.
        That is always somebody else’s responsibility

        Governments first but particularly universities which wish to take a long term view, for their own good and for the retaining of the public’s respect and therefore access to the public’s funds through the tax system plus their own survival which is not at all assured for many universities in the longer term despite their arrogant belief that they are immune to censoring both in their academic credence but also dramatically in their longer term physical existence, have to start to recognise the real damage climate science and it’s arrogant opinionated advocates of their personal unsubstantiated predicted climate catastrophes to come are doing immeasurable damage to the public’s perceptions of university academia and thereby to the universities .

        The universities with the support and prompting of governments which suposedly represent the desires and wishes and the views of it’s electors as a whole , should take the knife. cut deep, very deep and hard, bear the pain and cure themselves of this climate science induced disease of contempt for finding the real truth of science and to retain the respect and support from the public and thereby from governments into the future.

        Climate science is dying from it’s own excesses , it’s hubris and it’s contempt for the public and for the constant and contemptible ad hominen attacks upon any who dare question it’s science, it’s motives and it’s claims and for it’s venturing into contentious public policy fields while endeavoring open vehement advocacy to promote it’s own dictates as public policy.

        That is the exclusive preserve of elected governments.

        And that eventually creates annoyance and derision leading into anger and contempt by the elected politicals for those promoting and openly and vehemently advocating publicly unacceptable policies not aligned to those of the government of the day.

        And with that begins the rot in public and political perceptions of academia and the university system and what that all eventually spells for science and the ivory towers of academia in the universities and for their survival as respected places of learning and science into the future.

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  • #
    PeterPetrum

    Greg Hunt really disappoints me! Before the election, following his reply to a few emails I sent him, I thought he was at least aware of the volumes of scientific data that clearly showed that there is absolutely no consensus among genuine and reliable scientists as to what part and how much CO2 plays in our climate, whether man made or not. Now I am hoping that all this budgetary push for direct action is just a smoke screen and they are secretly plotting with the fat clown to pass the Carbon Tax repeal but block direct action! Any takers on this one?

    163

    • #
      Bob_FJ

      Peter,
      You say that you received a few email replies from Greg Hunt.

      Are you aware of an open letter from Jennifer Marohasy to minister Hunt that I was advised by Jennifer a few days ago has NOT been responded to? It asked seven important questions (back in early March) concerning serious discrepancies in BoM data presentation (compromising the metric for assessing Oz warming).

      http://jennifermarohasy.com/questions-for-the-australian-bureau-of-meteorology/

      Do you have any contributions as to how to get comment from Greg Hunt or his staff?

      140

      • #
        PeterPetrum

        No, Bob. His replies were limited to an acknowledgement of what I wrote, and as his acknowledgements were not all the same, and had come from his iPhone, I presumed (fool that i am!) that he had read them!

        And, yes, I have read Jennifer’s letter. A good one that he should at least have acknowledged. AS for getting a reply, all I did was send him an email to the address listed on his web site. Below is the letter I sent to him, twice. The first time he said “thanks”, the second “thanks again!

        Dear Greg,
        Congratulations on your appearance on The 7:30 Report last night. You are obviously well over your portfolio and put your points across well.
        That said, I do wish that you and your party would start educating the electorate on the real position with our climate.
        I realise that, at this stage in the electoral campaign, it would not be too smart to start telling people:
        • That the last 16 years have shown that there is no straight-line correlation between CO2 levels in the atmosphere and temperature rises (there have been no rises on a global scale);
        • That Antarctic ice is now more extensive than it has ever been since satellite photography has been used;
        • That Arctic ice is, in the main, sea ice that floats and displaces its own volume of water and, even if it did melt in toto; it would not make 1mm of difference to sea level;
        • That polar bear populations are at an all-time high, now that hunting has been stopped and they have survived warmer times than this;
        • That, if one looks at temperature and CO2 rises over millennia on long timescales it can be seen that CO2 levels rise long after the sea temperatures rise, not the other way around.
        • And so on….. I am sure you are fully aware of all these things!

        However, I believe that you should be doing the following.
        • Stop talking about Carbon Pollution! That is as senseless as saying we all drink hydrogen, when actually we are drinking Di-hydrogen oxide (H2O-water). It is Carbon dioxide and it is NOT a pollutant! As you know and I know (I am an agricultural scientist) CO2 is essential for plant growth, and a bigger risk to agriculture, forests and all life in general would be a catastrophic drop in CO2 levels. Why do you not tell people this – it is the truth and it will not hurt to say so, I believe.
        • Surely it would be beneficial to tell people that world temperatures have not increased over the last sixteen years? Most involved in climate issues agree with that now, although not all agree as to what this means. Would this not help create a strong argument to hasten slowly on curbing industrial emissions of CO2 in order not to cripple our industries and our economy? This would support a well regulated move to direct action, would it not?
        Thank you for reading this and good luck to you all in the LNP on 7 September. You know where my vote will go!

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          Lord Jim

          I realise that, at this stage in the electoral campaign, it would not be too smart to start telling people:

          Sadly the intellectual climate has deteriorated in Australia to such a degree that anyone uttering the least dissension from the climate ‘science’ party line is immediately met with howls of derision.

          I can imagine the AGE/Herald headlines: ‘Environment Minister: denies climate change!’ followed by the usual cacophony of concerned citizens bleating about the imminent destruction of the world by co2.

          But hopefully – one day – someone armed with a few facts will draw a line in the sand…

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            Manfred

            Smart move by the shakers and do’ers wasn’t it? Shifting from GW to CC?
            As we know, CC has now become a socio-political code phrase. It bears no resemblance to its original meaning that the climate changes constantly and with substantial ranges of chaotic natural variation (aka. ‘extremes’).

            CC is used by those that wish to obfuscate by creating a phrase that epitomises an intellectual rock and a hard place. They betray themselves.

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          Bob_FJ

          Peter,
          Thanks for the information. You enquired on issues important to his ministry that would seem to merit a proper reply! An acknowledgement on his iphone although encouraging, does not necessarily mean that he (or his staff)read though, unfortunately.

          I’ll link Jennifer to this OK?

          I see that Greg Hunt’s website has other contact details such as Telephone: (03) 5979 3188 (Electoral office) and (02) 6277 7920 (parliamentary).

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      • #
        scaper...

        Why does not Jen get Cory to pass it onto Greg Hunt? Failing that, some enquiries could be made.

        I doubt that Greg has even seen the open letter. If he did I suspect it would have been passed onto the head of BOM to form a reply.

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  • #

    So then, do you like your chicken with gravy?

    It seems that the gravy is being piled on before the chickens have even roosted. or should that be roasted.

    If funding for climate modelling dries up, then attach the phrases Climate Change or Global Warming to other absurdities funding grant applications.

    Read this from the U.S. another source of grant money going to anything associated with Climate Change.

    The University of Delaware was given millions in grant money to search Africa for farm animals that could better withstand the hazards of global warming.

    They have found a bizarre looking naked necked chicken and are researching to see if their ability to withstand heat can be bred into American chicken flocks.

    Hey, surely there’s a Colonel somewhere who’s rubbing his hands together with glee at the prospect.

    Tony.

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    scaper...

    Secretly plotting with the fat clown? No. The fat clown’s bluster is all about the possible closing of his nickel refinery because of environmental issues.

    Also, there are only a few elements of DA that would require legislation, the real environmental stuff can be inserted in the Budget.

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  • #
    PeterS

    Abbott is imply being a typical political opportunist – can’t blame him for that. He is already very much pro-science. What is required is for the scientific community itself finally to admit the IPCC and its supporters got it so wrong by deliberately misguiding the public with fabricated stories about runaway global warming. The ball rests with them, not Abbott. As long as significant parts of the scientific community either remains silent or keep supporting the AGW hoax, Abbott can’t do a thing. After all, he is not a scientist but instead takes advice from them, such as the CSIRO and other so called reputable organizations both here and overseas. So stop blaming Abbott for the hoax, and expecting him to wise up to what’s happening. Blame the scientific community – it’s their responsibility and duty to feed the right advice to the rest of us, not the other way around.

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    • #
      Richard Hill

      PeterS. Agreed. You cannot blame politicians for following advice from recognised bodies like AAAS CSIRO etc. The politicians would be rightly criticised if they dont follow such advice. As you say, the scientific community has to police itself. How can the populace encourage this? Is there a place for some sort of legal action? Can a scientific “mandarin” face legal action for giving advice to politicians based on unjustified extrapolation of evidence.

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      • #
        PeterS

        Glad to see I’m not alone in thinking it’s not the politicians to blame but the general scientific community. After all the latter are the ones who are supposed to be in a far better position to disseminate the right kind of information and the truth. If they don’t who else can? Motor mechanics, dentists and taxi drivers? Of course not; it’s not their area of expertise (although some would say they would have a better idea than politicians).

        40

        • #
          handjive

          IMO, this previous Jonova post is just as relevant:

          Spending billions? Why not do a due diligence study? Nah, who needs it?

          40

          • #
            PeterS

            Using the financial industry as an analogy actually highlights even the experts get it wrong too often. The GFC is a classic example. Most financial experts prior to the GFC were saying everything was fine. Same with the dot com boom/bust and dozens of other similar disasters over the past 100+ years. It appears we never learn from history and instead we are doomed to repeat it over and over. One problem is the lack of proper education of the general public. I still hear too many people calling today’s environmental problem as the “carbon pollution”. Firstly, here we know the entity in question is carbon dioxide not carbon, and secondly it’s not pollution but an essential gas for the propagation of life, and there’s a good argument we need lots more of it not less (up to a point of course but that point is far higher than current levels).

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      the IPCC and its supporters got it so wrong

      NO, THEY DID NOT GET IT WRONG. Let’s be clear on this.

      They got the grants and funding they wanted and a never-ending cycle of first-class travel to conferences on the subject held at the best destinations in the world.

      They got it exactly right.

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    On how the CSIRO has undergone a sea-change into something rich and strange,former Chief Research Scientist of the CSIRO,Art Raiche, comments.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/csiro_heavy_says_dont_trust_csiros_scares

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      TdeF

      It has not changed. It was always a disaster. The failed cloud seeding program ran for 50 years, more than his 27. Generations of people worked on it. The Automatic sheep shearing program too.

      I went to the CSIRO once, thirty years ago, as they had a division in a specialist area. No one was available as the whole place was having morning tea. Together. The place was a retirement village even then, an employer of last resort, a sheltered workshop for determined second rate scientists or science refugees from other countries. The frustration for any good scientists must be massive. I suppose they are still putting things out in the sun to check on ageing. No one tires of that.

      The Universities seem to have gone the same way, if Dr Chris Turney and his multi million dollar ‘ship of fools’ farce is any example. What a disgrace! Then how could English at LaTrobe graduate Flannery achieve a real Science PhD? Surely you should have some qualifications in Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and even computer modeling? How could he be a ‘Climate Scientist’? The great thing about large very dead marsupials unique to Australia is that no one can prove you are wrong. Much the same with climate change. If it wasn’t for those pesky satellites actually measuring a temperature, it would still be going wonderfully.

      No, the CSIRO needs to be privatised like the very successful CSL. Unfortunately, it might be commercially worthless, but at least we would finally know that. Then perhaps the government could sponsor private research simply by giving more tax breaks, which after all, cost nothing. Now that’s a budget move. Unfortunately the Greens believe they can spend the tax breaks more wisely elsewhere, which means they are as bad at accounting as they are at science.

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      • #
        Ron Cook

        Thank God then that I never got the job at CSIRO that I applied for 46 years ago.

        Cheers
        Ron Cook
        (no relation to Tim or John thank God for that too)

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  • #
    bananabender

    Tony Abbott is a professional politician. He has no private sector experience. He is a traditional Democratic Labor Party man – socially conservative and fiscally profligate. He will not cut the bureaucracy in any meaningful way.

    There is a very good chance that Abbott will get dumped by the Liberal Party within the next 12 months if he doesn’t radically improve his performance.

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    • #
      TdeF

      He has no private sector experience?

      From my reading, Tony worked as a bartender while at university. Yes, he did get three degrees including two at Oxford and a Rhodes scholarship to pay for them. Then he worked at a concrete plant, rising to manager. Then as a journalist at the Australian. He seems to have brought up his three daughters with his own hard work. A real triathelete who has always donated real chunks of time freely to many causes including aboriginal communities, surf lifesaving, a volunteer firefighter and more, I cannot see him merely as a professional politician with no knowledge of the real world. He does not have a very rich wife or a hairdresser boyfriend. Perhaps our first PM with a BEc as well as an LLB and a masters in Politics, I cannot see him as anything but the best qualified prime minister we have ever had. When his bodyguards cannot keep up with him on a hill climb, we know we finally have a PM who is much more than a lazy politician or opportunist. Yes, he has strong moral principles too. Now that would be a change in a politician from NSW.

      His particular style is to canvas ideas first. In fact none of the things for which he is being criticized are real, but people cannot see how he is cleverly researching public opinion and reaction. The fact that the Greens protested their own idea of taxing high income people shows how absurd they are.
      However as a BEc, like Peter Costello he also knows we can trade out of this mess, as long as we can pay off the credit cards quickly or it is like filling a leaky bucket. Coal prices has plummeted x2 and metallurgical x3, so the mining boom is over, the massive incomes just wasted on stupid drinks coaster ideas.

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        Glen Michel

        I would suggest that Abbott does not waste what political capital he has left – and cut to the chase;I’m starting to lose patience;political realities notwitstanding

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    manalive

    From the Prime Minister down, it has regularly denigrated the work of scientists here in Australia and internationally around the area of climate change …

    How dare he?
    Scientific work of the Gergis-Karoly-Neukom (2012) and Lewandowsky caliber perhaps.

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    Eddie

    OT. the European Parliament had an Open Day yesterday.

    Inviting you to come and test your intelligence

    http://t.co/myPxzKTM8j

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  • #

    If funding of climate research in Australia is so important, maybe someone could list the successes of that research. Core to “climate science” is climate sensitivity – the estimate of the increase in average surface temperatures from a doubling of CO2. Nic Lewis has shown the 1.5-4.5 degree estimated range has not changed in 35 years. (table here, interview here). With all the hundreds of billions of dollars that has been spent on research globally a core estimate has not been improved upon.
    If the Abbott Government genuinely wants to promote science in Australia, it should look at novel research that produces results. Funding “climate science” is rewarding failure.

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    • #
      ROM

      Kevin Marshal @ # 15

      You beat me to it Kevin.
      So we deal with science which has researched and created an immense number of  highly advantageous items and advances of very significant impact and benefit to individuals and to society and to our civilisation over the last century.

      So can anybody list any and / or all those items, if any, that Climate Science of any stripe and colour has created and is proving to be of a significant benefit to our society, our community and to us as individuals over the last three decades?

      I said “Climate Science”, not Meteorology or any of it’s offshoots in which there has been undoubted progress and benefits for the community.

      Maybe I’m particularly dumb but I just can’t think of even just one positive benefit we as a society and community have ever received from Climate Science since it first became Climate Science a couple of decades ago.

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        ROM,
        You make a slightly different point to me. There are many scientific advances that are harmful or have no useful purpose. In the first category are chemical weapons. In the second is a lot of theoretical physics, or capital theory in economics. In both cases I can appreciate a case for government funding, though maybe not agree with it.
        Climatology, since it gained prominence in funding 20-25 years has said little or nothing that is (1)novel, (2)falsifiable and(3)stood the test of time. There are no significant advances that can be called scientific, just defense of dogmatic truths against better-formulated hypotheses and real-world evidence.

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        ROM

        From my post @ 15.1

        So can anybody list any and / or all those items, if any, that Climate Science of any stripe and colour has created and is proving to be of a significant benefit to our society, our community and to us as individuals over the last three decades?

        It is now almost 12 hours since I asked this question and not a single solitary item has been listed where Climate Science has provided something of benefit to our society, our community and to ourselves as individuals over the last three decades.

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      TdeF

      I cannot accept that anyone has proven first that the CO2 rise is due to fossil fuel and without this, all this man made global warming is nonsense. I believe we can prove simply that it is not using C14 dating. I have written to a few notables and the response is that it is ‘obvious’ or that the IPCC say so, so it must be true.

      My point is that CO2 climate sensitivity doesn’t matter if we cannot control CO2 concentrations anyway, if the CO2 levels are set by simple equilibrium across the air/water interface with 98% of available CO2 in the water. In fact it would be a complete surprise to any physicist or chemist to think that CO2 was not in constant equilibrium, like the vapour pressure of every other dissolved gas. It is controlled primarily by Henry’s law.

      Sure temperature and CO2 appear to have gone up at roughly the same time, but who proved that CO2 produced the increase in temperature and not the other way around? When was coincidence causality? It is far more likely that a steady temperature increase increased CO2 from the oceans because CO2 is vastly more soluble under pressure and pressures in the 4km of ocean are massive, up to 400 atmospheres.

      Of course all this is simple science, but complex interacting simultaneous systems and elaborate computer modelling on super computers is the new science faith. Computer simulations must be right is the new faith, the new science. Einstein would be appalled. You have to get the rules and the models right first. Of course the models are all failing. As Dr Murry Selby points out, they were never right in the first place assuming not only that CO2 was the driver of temperature, but incredibly, the sole driver of temperature.

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        tom0mason

        “I cannot accept that anyone has proven first that the CO2 rise is due to fossil fuel and without this, all this man made global warming is nonsense.

        One of the implications of the contents of this paper is that anthropogenic activities are not the dominant force behind the post-1800 global warming trend. Atmospheric CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas that is believed to have contributed to global warming since the beginning of the industrial revolution [1]. The use of fossil fuels (e.g. oil, coal, natural gas, etc.) is the dominant source of anthropogenic CO2. In line with the implications of this paper, Ryabchikov [23] shows that the main source of supply of CO2 to the atmosphere is not anthropogenic activities, but tropical regions of the ocean. These regions supply 2×10↑10 tons of air-borne CO2 annually to the temperate and circumpolar latitudes of the northern hemisphere.

        From the Conclusion of the 2007 paper ‘Formulations of human-induced variations in global temperature’ by Ernest C. Njau,and available at-
        http://www.aseanenvironment.info/Abstract/41015298.pdf

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    Sunray

    Thank you for the truth Jo. There are other critical topics where the Main Stream Media, including News Corp, “moderate” the truth to zilch.

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    Radical Rodent

    Let me state something that I mentioned over at Bishop Hill: CLIMATE CHANGE IS A MYTH!

    Radical, yes… but that is my name!

    We do not have climatometers or climatoscopes; rising sea levels (such as they are rising – is millimetres per decade really measureable?) are NOT an indication of changing climate, nor are forest fires, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes or tsunamis. So, the only measurement that we have connected with climate that shows any noticeable variation is for temperatures. Are average temperatures rising or falling outside acceptable parameters? Answer: NO. Are weather events occurring that have never occurred “since records began”? Answer: No. The only thing that “climate change” offers is a totally amorphous concept that can be moulded to fit any particular whim that politicians may want to frighten us with; indeed, it is the fact that “climate change” has NO acceptable definition that it has been so enthusiastically embraced by those who wish to control us.

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      Graeme No.3

      Radical Rodent:

      Ric Werme http://wermenh.com/climate/6000.html#sthash.8B4yT3rM.dpuf

      has a list of papers etc. about past warming/sea levels etc. The seventh paper talks of a series of glacial retreats in the Alps, showing that there have been many cases of natural climate change with warming. One of the authors is Thomas F Stocker. There is also a Thomas F Stocker known for his belief in “Climate Change” due to rising CO2, and well and truly involved with the IPCC. Obviously they must be 2 separate people but what a coincidence?

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    PhilJourdan

    With all due respect, government should not be funding ANY science. What is the end purpose of funding science? To further YOUR goals. Phizer does not fund research in gasoline additives. It is not in their business to do so and would be a waste of money.

    So why is government funding any science? The science or war? Yes, they do that very well when needed. But outside that, they are not in the business of science. Period. So the end result of their funding is to validate their business. And what is the business of government? Power and control. Seeking new ways to extort money from producers to use to buy power and votes. So what happens to the funded science?

    It is corrupted. The conclusions are given along with the grants. The scientist then compete on ways to prove the conclusion. Not on seeking the direction the data will take them.

    Economics is sometimes called the b*stard science for good reason. When you start applying economic principals to how money is spent, it often tears away the veneer of lies surrounding the spending and reveals the truth.

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    handjive

    Peak Stupid?
    Selling invisible, natural, harmless CO2 as visible smog “pollution” is deeply stupid at best.
    ~ ~ ~
    April most polluted month in history says Climate Central
    Since records began in 1958

    “The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were this high consistently was anywhere from 800,000 to 15 million years ago, various studies have estimated, and the world was a very different places then, with much warmer temperatures and extremely higher seas.”
    . . .
    handjive question:
    If the last time carbon(sic) was 400ppm “it was much warmer, and extremely high seas“, why isn’t it like that now?

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    • #
      Eddie

      “If the last time carbon(sic) was 400ppm “it was much warmer, and extremely high seas“, why isn’t it like that now?”

      Was it on the way down ?

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      handjive

      “The relentless soundings of apocalypse have done more to undermine public interest than efforts of skeptics.”

      Future historians are likely to regard as a great myopic mistake the collective decision to treat climate change as more or less a large version of traditional air pollution, to be attacked with the typical emissions control policies—sort of a global version of the Clean Air Act.

      This article was originally published in Issues in Science and Technology, and is reprinted with permission:
      The Conservative Case for Climate Policy
      And Why Adaptive Resiliency Is One Way Forward

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    realist

    If the forthcoming budget doesn’t take a serious, I mean a really serious bite into reducing (should be eliminating) funding to the coterie of climate carpet baggers, then it could well indicate that while we vote for selected (by and large by parties) candidates every election, they don’t actually run the country, as we are lead to believe. The real players are the marionettes behind the public screen but in reality, in full view; hidden in bureaucracies, “research” agencies, lobby and interest groups, Big Money and Big Players. In two words: vested interests.

    Always follow the money. Self interest, graft and corruption always follow the scent of freebies. And to complicate matters, just where does any government put science front and centre with highly credentialled ministers (and with pre-selection run by lawyers and pseudo economists, the chances of it happening aren’t high)? Greg Hunt is a yes man, a lightweight by any measure (and a closet Green at heart?), so this suggests the Coalition aren’t really serious about Rocking the Climate Boats as much as they are about Stopping the Boats.

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  • #

    Gavin Schmidt’s (NASA GISS) recent TED talk was a sales pitch for more funding for his GCMs. The money is scarce now and will get even more so. GCMs will be de-prioritized to the level that suits them best; down to one level below the study of polar bear overpopulation.

    John

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    Jaymez

    I came across this when I was considering the CSIRO’s contribution to science. They claim a list of wonderful inventions on their web site and at Wikipedia, but I figured if they were that good they wouldn’t need to receive net funding from the tax payer every year. In the 2013-14 their expenditure budget is $1.3bn with expected revenues of about $404m, So net funding of $900m. None of that accounts for any capital expenditure on buildings and equipment!

    A private company with so much resources thrown at them year on year would be worth billions and would be raking in billions of dollars in royalties. They claim to have ‘invented wi-fi’. But when you dig deeper they actually made an accidental discovery of some technology helpful in utilizing already existing wireless local area networks WLAN (now known as wi-fi), which they have made some good money on. But the whole organisation can’t claim credit and justify their existence on the back of an accidental discovery by a small group from their organisation, while the rest of them continue to run a huge bureaucracy churning out ‘research’ which pleases their politically correct masters.

    The quality of science at the CSIRO can be measured by their response to ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ here: http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Climate/Understanding/Why-The-Great-Global-Warming-Swindle-is-wrong.aspx

    It certainly hasn’t stood the test of time even though it was written in 2007 and updated in 2011! For example:

    CSIRO: “Since 1970, the role of greenhouse gases has been dominant as their concentrations have risen sharply.”

    – Clearly the CSIRO scientists have not checked the data which shows no increase in global atmospheric temperature since 1998, even though CO2 emissions have increased exponentially! http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/co2-temp-rss.png

    CSIRO: “…temperatures now are warmer than the highest during this [The Medieval Warm] period by between 0.5 and 1 degree.”

    – Only if the CSIRO want to be very selective in their reading! http://www.globalresearch.ca/articlePictures/globalcool3.jpg and http://www.longrangeweather.com/images/gtemps.jpg

    CSIRO: “Published studies have revealed calibration problems in upper-air temperature data from both balloons and satellites. When these were fixed, the data and the models agreed.”

    – Only if those who want to re-calibrate the satellite data and radiosonde data (balloons), also want to re-calibrate their correlation with global surface temperature measurements! The models have long since been out of whack with actual data a fact which even the IPCC admitted in their latest Climate Assessment report 5, released late last year. http://www.climatedialogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Christy-fig-1.jpg

    CSIRO: “Solar fluctuations in both gross energy output and cosmic radiation are nowhere near strong enough to cause the rapid warming since 1970, as confirmed by several recent studies including one published just last week.”

    – The CSIRO must have studiously avoided comparing sunspot cycle length with temperature anomaly vs atmospheric CO2. Clearly CO2 is not as well correlated with temperature as sunspot cycle. http://www.paulmacrae.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/sunspots-climate-friends-of-science.gif In fact there are multiple studies showing TSI or TSI proxies correlate far better with global temperature than CO2. http://landshape.org/enm/files/2011/08/phaseofsolar-300×275.png

    CSIRO: “Climate models are based on known laws of physics, and incorporate the effects of greenhouse gases together with many other processes. They do a good job of reproducing and explaining past climates, so their predictions of climate trends over coming decades are worthy of respect.”

    – Science is about making falsifiable predictions. A climate model is making a falsifiable prediction. If those predictions do not prove to be accurate, or even close to accurate, then the theory upon which the model is built, no matter how good it seems, needs to be chucked out! Empirical evidence beats predictions every time. Here is how well the models have fared! http://www.climatedialogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Christy-fig-1.jpg

    We can’t afford to rely on the CSIRO to be authorities on climate matters with an independent scientific outlook, CSIRO have shown they cannot do that job.

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      KinkyKeith

      Well put Jaymez.

      The CSIRO must be urgently de-politicised but in the real world I find that hard to visualise.

      Politicians will grab and use any news-bite to help make them appear “concerned and active’ in the interests of Joe taxpayer.

      Then they get voted in and we get to pay the bill.

      KK

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    Bruiser-101

    It’s hard to justify the $300M going to the BOM when they systematically revise their observations to match their CO2 mantra. The record solar radiation levels recorded across the nation in 2013 have been revised to remove the inconvenient truth. In general Jan, Feb and March have been revised up slightly whilst the rest of the year has been revised down by up to 25%. The net result is around 2Mj/M^2/day reduction in average daily solar radiation. If we spread that over 12 hours of sunshine that equates to over 48W/M^2. This is an enormous amount of additional energy if you compare it to the rediculous Hiroshima Bomb Application that is bases on half a watt of “missing” energy or the 0.4 watt of energy required to melt the 290Km^3 of arctic ice loss of recent years. Yes 2013 was hot but there were other climate factors in play. Fraudulent science is not science at all and the Australian tax payer deserves better for their $300M.

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  • #
    Rod McLaughlin

    “Less than two to more than five degrees”

    “So we spend millions in order for a scientist to tell us that Australia will warm by a number between zero and infinity?”

    Surely that should be “between minus infinity and infinity”?

    Or maybe “between (difference between absolute zero and Australian temperature) and infinity”.

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  • #
    pat

    5 May: Reuters: Thomas Atkins: Briton arrested in Las Vegas carbon trading probe
    FRANKFURT: U.S. officials have arrested a 56-year-old Briton in Las Vegas in connection with suspected tax fraud worth 136 million euros ($189 million), deepening a European carbon trading probe that has also drawn in Deutsche Bank.
    A German prosecutor on Monday said the man was under investigation for participating in a scheme to evade taxes through trading European Union carbon emission certificates using a business based in Dubai.
    German authorities issued an international warrant for his arrest on May 2 and the man was arrested on May 4. The suspect’s identity was not revealed. He is now being held in custody in Las Vegas awaiting extradition, the Frankfurt prosecutor said in a statement.
    “The accused had flown from Dubai to a boxing event in Las Vegas where he was sponsoring one of the boxers in a fight,” the prosecutor said. “He was arrested on the sidelines of the event.”
    The arrest broadens a carbon trading probe that has also affected Deutsche Bank, where prosecutors are investigating 25 staff, including co-Chief Executive Juergen Fitschen and finance chief Stefan Krause, on suspicion of tax evasion, money laundering and obstruction of justice…
    ***European police agency Europol has estimated that such crime has cost taxpayers more than 5 billion euros in lost revenue since 2008.
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/05/us-carbontrading-germany-idUSBREA440BR20140505

    check the results of a search on ABC for “carbon fraud” – NIL.
    http://search.abc.net.au/s/search.html?query=%22carbon+fraud%22&collection=abcall_meta&form=simple

    meanwhile, taxpayer-funded ABC has rebranded some digital station, hired some friends on the backs of taxpayers, for this!

    29 April: Tone Deaf: Triple J’s New Station Is Playing The Same Song On Repeat
    On Monday at midday, Triple J’s digital radio station Dig Music took a break from its regular programming for 48 hours for the lead-up for its relaunch as Double J tomorrow at midday.
    To fill the stopgap until new presenter Myf Warhust rolls out the Double J rebrand at midday Wednesday 30th April, the station is currently playing one tune, ‘Express Yourself’, on repeat.
    Multiple versions of N.W.A.’s ‘Express Yourself’ from the historic rap group’s 1988 debut Straight Outta Compton to be precise, including different cover versions of the track and its original, sampled inspiration: the Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band’s 1971 single of the same name…
    The original Triple J 1989 strike saw presenters playing N.W.A.’s ‘Express Yourself’ for 24 hours non-stop (around 360 plays) after the rap group’s ‘Fuck Tha Police’ was removed from the station’s playlist under orders by ABC management, in turn pressured by a government ban on the song. In reference to that day, a scratch sample from ‘Fuck Tha Police’ has been used as part of the Triple J news theme ever since.
    Double J’s current ‘Express Yourself’ ad infinitum homage will end tomorrow at midday when former Spicks & Specks and Triple J host Myf Warhust has the honours of rolling out the new station’s roster of presenters and programming (before taking up regular hosting duties from 11am – 3pm weekdays)…
    http://www.tonedeaf.com.au/news/local-news/401050/double-j-is-playing-the-same-song-on-repeat.htm

    having the ABC made sense when there were few broadcasting options, but how did it grow into the monster it is today?

    cut back the ABC.

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    pat

    5 May: Daily Mail: Ellie Zolfagharifard: Global warming is ‘not uniform’: Regions of the planet have actually COOLED over the past 100 years, study claims
    From 1910 to 1980, study found areas south of the equator cooled down
    Other areas near the equator didn’t see significant changes in warming
    It found largest warming to date has been at the northern mid latitudes
    The research comes as United Nations secretary-general urges the world’s policymakers to do more to address the threat of climate change
    “Global warming was not as understood as we thought,’ said Zhaohua Wu, an assistant professor of meteorology at Florida State University…
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2620624/Global-warming-not-uniform-Regions-planet-actually-COOLED-past-100-years-study-claims.html

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    Gasbo

    The word scientist is a generalisation , in the wider sense it just means someone acquiring knowledge,which is what we all do,but alas too many wear it as a badge,as their identity and somehow see themselves as being IMPORTANT,well guess what,it’s your job,you go to work you get paid at the end of the week/fortnight/month,if you think that your presence as a scientists will be missed,conduct this experiment get 1 bucket of warm water roll up your sleeve of your left arm then place it in the bucket down to the bottom and then pull your arm out,the resulting hole left is the measurement of your importance in the world.

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    Rod McLaughlin

    May I make another suggestion? When introducing abbreviations like ‘CSIRO’, explain what they are.

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    • #

      That is a good habit but all Australians are familiar with the CSIRO and every search engine and Wikipedia gives you Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation when you search for it (I’d say that 97% of Australians don’t know the full name).

      10

    • #
      Philip Shehan

      Australian scintists usually do not pronounce the letters C-S-I-R-O but refer to it as “siro”.

      00

  • #
    pat

    for those with cable TV:

    APAC Channel tonite – 7.30-9.00pm – Dr. Patrick Michaels IPA – “The Climate Delusion”.

    Greg Hunt gets lectured by the US:

    5 May: Australian: AAP: Nick Perry: US urges closer ties on climate change
    UNITED States ambassador John Berry has urged Australia to work closely with its ally in Washington on climate change, pointing to the major economic opportunities available in tackling the global challenge.
    The US is one of the world’s largest polluters, but has made significant progress reducing its emissions since climate change was made a top-priority issue by the Obama administration.
    Data in April showed the US had slashed greenhouse gas emissions 10 per cent below 2005 levels, meaning it’s more than halfway to achieving its target of a 17 per cent reduction by 2020…
    The US would lead by example and be challenging world leaders to do their part by adopting “aggressive” pollution goals of their own.
    “The issue is serious, it deserves everyone’s attention,” Ambassador Berry told a climate summit attended by Environment Minister Greg Hunt on Monday.
    “We know you will continue to work with us – both bilaterally and in multilateral organisations – on the tremendous challenges climate change presents in the region.”…
    The US has forged agreements with other major polluters like India and China in the lead up to the 2015 summit, and wants to see climate change on the G20 agenda in Brisbane in November.
    Ambassador Berry said the US should work closer with Australia to chase the huge economic benefits posed by the growth of renewable energy…
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/us-urges-closer-ties-on-climate-change/story-fn3dxiwe-1226906292654

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    Ross

    Sorry to be off topic but on another site I got this graph from Skp Science thrown up to try to explain away the 17+ yrs of no increase in temperatures. They are arguing it is more than surface temps that has to be looked at and “Trenberth’s lost heat”. has to be taken into account. My immediate reaction was to dismiss it completely but then I asked myself “how could they even think they could measure the increase in ocean heat content and graph it?”

    https://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Total_Heat_Content_2011_med.jpg

    To me the graph is complete nonsense — am I wrong ?

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    • #
      Bob_FJ

      Ross,
      To me, as a retired engineer, I think that measuring the heat content of the ocean and all the dynamics and delta-T’s involved is a bizarre proposition. Furthermore, to allege that the “missing heat” started going there as a new process some 16 years ago (to explain the plateau in global average T)is, is, sorry,…..I’m lost for words and do not want to upset the watching moderator!

      Oh, and if the “missing heat” is absorbed by the oceans, how come the sea level thermal expansion correlations are not evident?

      I must admit that I cannot bring myself to look at the skepticalscience link though!

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    • #
      tom0mason

      From a quick first eyeball I would suspect some modeling was molesting what ever data they have.

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    pat

    it’s all about trading carbon dioxide emissions & gobbling up the trillions in Super/Pension/Retirement funds. period.

    5 May: World Bank: A Call for Countries & Companies to Support a Price on Carbon
    STORY HIGHLIGHTS

    Through a statement of support to be launched at the UN Climate Summit, countries and companies could work to strengthen carbon pricing policies and implementation to better manage investment risks and opportunities and also share their expertise.

    The proposed statement reflects a sense of urgency and inevitably for carbon pricing.

    Growing momentum by countries and businesses in support of carbon pricing was evident at a global meeting of government officials, corporate leaders and investors ahead of the Summit…

    The debate over carbon pricing has shifted, with the focus moving from whether to have carbon pricing to how to put an effective price on carbon. The change comes in the face of scientific warnings, clear evidence of countries acting to spur low-carbon development, companies moving to develop business strategies for a carbon-constrained world, and a groundswell of interest in how to use economic policy and business planning to transition to low-carbon and resilient development…
    “We are encouraging countries, sub-national jurisdictions, and companies to join a growing coalition of first movers to support putting a price on carbon,” said Rachel Kyte, World Bank Group vice president and special envoy for climate change. “A carbon price provides a necessary signal for investment in low-carbon and resilient growth and, regardless of the mechanism used, should be part of any package of policies to scale up mitigation.”
    Kyte was speaking at a session on carbon pricing during the Abu Dhabi Ascent, a preparatory meeting for the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit, to be held in New York on Sept. 23. Together with senior representatives from China, Morocco, the European Commission, European Investment Bank, IKEA, the Carbon Disclosure Project and the International Emissions Trading Association, she drew attention to a proposed public statement that reflects a sense of urgency and inevitably for carbon pricing…
    In the statement, they agree to work together toward the long-term goal of a carbon price applied throughout the global economy by:

    • Strengthening carbon pricing policies to redirect investment commensurate with the scale of the climate challenge;

    • Bringing forward and strengthening the implementation of existing carbon pricing policies to better manage investment risks and opportunities; …

    According to the investor group Ceres, 96 of the combined 173 companies in the Fortune 100 and Global 100 have gone further to set voluntary greenhouse gas reduction targets, leading them to accelerate their investment in energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable forestry.
    Last month, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim urged governments to take on the issue of carbon pricing as they develop solutions equal to the challenges created by climate change.

    “Taking action now will not only solve the problems of protecting the planet, but it will be a tremendous boost for economies,” President Kim told the press before a closed-door meeting with finance ministers. Despite the fact that it is controversial, we have to tackle the issue of carbon pricing. Some countries are working very hard on this; others know that it is a direction that we have to go.”
    http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2014/05/05/supporting-a-price-on-carbon

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    pat

    5 May: Oil & Gas Journal: Nick Snow: Rockefeller bill would expand carbon dioxide EOR tax credits
    US Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) introduced legislation that would increase tax credits for using carbon dioxide in enhanced oil recovery, and establish a certification process to help future projects obtain financing…
    The bill also would establish periodic reviews of the CO2 sequestration credit under Section 45Q of the federal tax code and provide the US Treasury Secretary authority to ensure that new tax credits would be revenue positive to the federal government over time when taking into account the revenue produced from increased oil recovery resulting from the credit compared with tax revenue lost from credits being claimed, Rockefeller said.
    According to the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), increasing the supply of CO2 captured from manmade sources has the potential to increase American oil production by tens of billions of barrels, while safely storing billions of tons of CO2 underground, the senator added…
    He introduced his Expanding Carbon Capture through Enhanced Oil Recovery Act alongside another bill, the Carbon Capture and Sequestration Deployment Act, which would authorize $1 billion over 15 years for a cooperative industry-government research and development program in the US Department of Energy’s Fossil Energy Office…
    It also would modify Section 45Q by allowing projects to apply for a guaranteed allocation of credits for future use, and authorize $20 billion in loan guarantees to be used for the construction of new commercial-scale electric generation units or industrial facilities utilizing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology; the retrofit of existing commercial-scale electric generation units or industrial facilities utilizing CCS technology; and the construction of CO2 transmission pipelines.
    “The reality for West Virginia and the rest of the country is that we need coal; we can’t meet our energy needs without it,” Rockefeller said. “It is simply unrealistic to think that we can stop burning coal and shift to cleaner sources of energy instantly. And it is equally unrealistic to think that coal is as clean as it could be, or that it will be around forever. Either way, we have to prepare for the future.”
    The National Enhanced Oil Recovery Initiative, a coalition organized by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (formerly the Pew Center on Global Climate Change), and the Great Plains Institute, said the tax credit program in Rockefeller’s CO2-EOR bill would pay for itself within 10 years through the federal revenue generated from new domestic oil production…
    “This tax incentive will boost domestic oil production, generate net federal revenue, encourage the development of much-needed carbon capture technology, and safely store carbon dioxide underground,” said Brad Crabtree, vice-president for fossil energy at the Great Plains Institute…
    http://www.ogj.com/articles/2014/05/rockefeller-bill-would-expand-carbon-dioxide-eor-tax-credits.html

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    pat

    being picked up by the MSM. Alister puts all the scary stuff first….and finally mentions it would take thousands of years to happen!

    5 May: Reuters: Alister Doyle: East Antarctica more at risk than thought to long-term thaw: study
    Part of East Antarctica is more vulnerable than expected to a thaw that could trigger an unstoppable slide of ice into the ocean and raise world sea levels for thousands of years, a study showed on Sunday.
    The Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica, stretching more than 1,000 km (600 miles) inland, has enough ice to raise sea levels by 3 to 4 meters (10-13 feet) if it were to melt as an effect of global warming, the report said…
    East Antarctica’s Wilkes Basin is like a bottle on a slant. Once uncorked, it empties out,” Matthias Mengel of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, lead author of the study in the journal Nature Climate Change, said in a statement.
    Co-author Anders Levermann, also at Potsdam in Germany, told Reuters the main finding was that the ice flow would be irreversible, if set in motion. He said there was still time to limit warming to levels to keep the ice plug in place…
    Worries about rising seas that could swamp low-lying areas from Shanghai to Florida focus most on ice in Greenland and West Antarctica, as well as far smaller amounts of ice in mountain ranges from the Himalayas to the Andes.
    Sunday’s study is among the first to gauge risks in East Antarctica, the biggest wedge of the continent and usually considered stable. “I would not be surprised if this (basin) is more vulnerable than West Antarctica,” Levermann said…
    The study indicated that it could take 200 years or more to melt the ice plug if ocean temperatures rise. Once removed, it could take between 5,000 and 10,000 years for ice in the Wilkes Basin to empty as gravity pulled the ice seawards.
    “It sounds plausible,” Tony Payne, a professor of glaciology at Bristol University who was not involved in the study, said of the findings. The region is not an immediate threat, he said, but “could contribute meters to sea level rise over thousands of years.”…
    Click here to see the study…
    http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/05/05/us-climatechange-antarctica-idINKBN0DK0HM20140505

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    pat

    it becomes more unlikely daily that the Govt really intends to unwind CAGW policies:

    5 May: Australian: Staff Reporter: Henry in switch to university climate role
    Highly regarded environmentalist, Don Henry has been appointed as a Public Policy Fellow at the University of Melbourne.
    In his role, Mr Henry will undertake research into climate change policy and the role of public activism.
    Mr Henry’s research will look at the last decade of environment policy making and public engagement in Australia and the Asia Pacific region. Research will also focus on Indigenous and environmental collaborations for sustainability in Northern Australia.
    Don Henry comes to the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute from his role as CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation where his 15 years of leadership received recognition as the Prime Minister’s Environmentalist of the Year in 2013, and as Australian Not for Profit Organisation CEO of the year…
    “Climate Change is the great challenge of our generation and we are now in a major period of change for energy production and consumption around the world,” Mr Henry explained.
    “The good news is that in the last decade renewable energy production and energy efficiency have grown rapidly in Australia and the Asia Pacific region. The recent tremendous growth in Australian rooftop solar panels represents the equivalent of shutting down a large coal power station and taking away all the pollution that this created.
    “I’m looking to research how public action and collaborations across society can shape and influence political leaders and innovative policy making…”…
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/latest/henry-in-switch-to-university-climate-role/story-e6frg90f-1226905511227

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  • #

    I posted this late because it will cause me a bit of grief. If anyone has some money left to invest in a project in a potential new area of renewable energy, (BD4?), here is a basic outline what I propose.

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    • #

      Vic,

      I sort of hoped you wrote this with your tongue planted firmly in the side of your cheek, so in that vein, may I add that this may actually show some promise.

      It could be used in conjunction with already existing renewable power plants, namely Wind Power.

      You could use the voltage build up at the electrodes, of your quoted 8 MilliVolts. Arrange the thin electrodes in series, in much the same manner as for a battery.

      You’d need a few of these electrodes, say 16 million or so of them, hence a potential potential of 128KV. That bank of electrodes would be around 4.2 miles long.

      Now, the wind power generated at slack times when it cannot be sold into the market could then be directed to cause the reaction in the electrodes.

      The charge period would depend on the output from the unused wind plants.

      Now, in much the same manner as a battery, a charge could be built up, and once reaching that 128KV, a capacitive reactance would then discharge that 128KV in the form of a single spike of electricity, say something similar to a lightning bolt.

      This humungous discharge could then be used in a large volume of CO2, say, the waste exhaust from a coal fired power plant.

      That CO2, then ‘zapped’ with this immense charge would generate an enormous amount of heat which could be used to boil a volume of water to steam, and the resultant steam could then drive a three stage turbine, which could then drive a generator.

      I might suggest that the generator able to be driven by this would be capable of an output of, say, 8 millivolts, so now we just hook up 250 Million of these generators in series to generate the requisite 2000MW, and voila, we have replaced ONE large scale coal fired power plant.

      My five cents is in the mail Vic.

      Hope this helps.

      Tony.

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        No, Tony and Andrew. Actually serious.

        Look up the thermoelectric effect. The flow of electrons from one metal to another is different if the junctions are at a different temperature. The voltage difference is then used for measuring temperature. There are patents for devices using this effect to generate electricity.

        Its not a perpetual motion machine. Its another way of dissipating energy, or in other words, not going to produce a large current either but might useful for keeping batteries topped up.

        10

        • #

          Mobile phone and laptop batteries, Tony.

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        • #
          FarmerDoug2

          It all gets down to storage efficiency. Thermocouples have been around a while and I can’t see them being better than lead acid batteries, stored pumped water or molten salt. Carbon, as in coal, gas or petroleum is good cheep and eminently manageable. Modern generators are extracting the energy at a reasonable price.

          Doug

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        • #
          Graeme No.3

          Vic G Gallus:

          Basically you have a battery with both electrodes acting on the same base chemical. Have you given though to the effect of oxygen in the air driving the reaction towards ferric ions?
          I think you would have troubles with side reactions between the polymers and the ions, which would reduce the efficiency a lot. The anionic polymer in particular could become ‘clogged’ with iron ions.
          You are limited in the voltage you can generate if you rely on water as the solvent, but don’t ask me what can match it for conductivity, dissolving power and cheapness.

          The best approach I can suggest is that you re-write your proposal to include phrases like “renewable”, “emission free” and “new age crystal ionic re-arrangement pollution free source” (whatever that means). Recent history indicates that large amounts of money will be yours-or would have but for the recent election.

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          • #

            I don’t want to sell my soul. Just the idea.

            Its not a battery but I can’t say that the energy cost to make it will not be the same as the energy obtained from it in its lifetime. I also kept a few important things out. It would not use ferric/ferrous complexes. These are what are used in the undergraduate experiment that prompted the idea. The voltage difference comes from have a different ratio of a redox pair in one beaker and the reverse in the other. With a salt bridge between the two, you get a voltage difference simply because they can mix into a 50:50 mixture by donating or accepting electrons to oxidise or reduce into the other. That is a battery but not powered by chemical potential energy.

            What is needed for my idea is a redox pair X- ⇌ Y+ + 2e-

            The idea is that if there is twice the concentration of X- at one electrode and twice the concentration of Y+ than X- at the other, there will be net oxidation of X- to Y+ at the first and reduction of Y+ at the second.

            The ionic polymer is there so that half of the anions at one electrode and half the cations at the other are immobile. If a small percentage of the mobile ions are the redox pair, then you have a 2:1 and 1:2 ratio of them at the two electrodes and diffusion of the ions corrects the changes due to redox reactions at the electrodes.

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            Wayne Job

            Vic you get a bigger bang for what you are talking by using a ground battery, whack an iron rod in a wet spot and copper one in another and the Earth will give you better voltage for nothing.

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      Andrew McRae

      My perpetual motion detector hummed with a faint signal when I got to this sentence:

      Diffusion of these ions would reinstate the imbalance.

      In context that would seem to imply a self-recharging battery.
      Did I get it or did I miss it?

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    Douglas J Cotton

    Radiation is not the primary determinant of planetary temperatures. There is no solar radiation, for example, at the base of the nominal Uranus troposphere where it is hotter than Earth. The required thermal energy gets there by “heat creep” which is a term I coined for “convection (both diffusion and advection) which transports thermal (kinetic) energy from cooler to warmer regions as it restores thermodynamic equilibrium with maximum entropy in accord with the process described in statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.” Likewise for most of the required energy for Venus, and much of that for Earth. The 165W/m^2 of solar radiation reaching Earth’s surface would, at the most, raise its temperature to 235K (not 255K) but it can’t even do that because water is fairly transparent.

    All the Trenberth and Pierrehumbert garbage about radiation is a complete travesty of physics, because layers of the atmosphere and the thin surface layer of the oceans do not act remotely like black or grey bodies.

    Take a look at the solar radiation absorbed by the atmosphere (mostly by water vapour) and the distribution of that which is absorbed is nothing remotely like a Planck function. Besides that, these layers all absorb thermal energy by diffusion from nitrogen and oxygen molecules that were warmed by non-radiative processes. So Kirchhoff’s Law cannot be applied to layers of the atmosphere, as Pierrehumbert claims it can be.

    Consider the fact that over 99% of solar radiation is transmitted through the ocean surface, so how could it be warmed like a black or grey body?

    Consider the evidence that regions with higher precipitation are cooler not warmer, and there is obviously something very wrong with the whole radiative forcing conjecture.

    I have published in my book “Why It’s Not Carbon Dioxide After All” valid, authentic mainstream physics which explains all known temperature data in the atmospheres, surfaces, crusts, mantles and cores of planets and satellite moons. It’s your choice whether or not you spend an hour or two studying what I have written, because I don’t have the time to write it out again here.

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    Douglas J Cotton

    Meteorologists know that heat transfer by convection can stop altogether in calm conditions in the early pre-dawn hours. When there is no further energy transfer across any internal boundary in an isolated system physicists know that this happens when there are no unbalanced energy potentials. The state is called thermodynamic equilibrium. You can read about it in modern statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. For some strange reason climatologists call this state “convective equilibrium” as in Pierrehumbert’s writings for example. Why they think they need to invent a new term when one already exists I don’t know. But then nothing would surprise me any longer in their pseudo fissics.

    Because energy transfers stop, the rate of surface cooling has also stopped (near enough) and we have a nice normal temperature gradient in the troposphere just above. The air is keeping the surface warm just like a blanket – all those good oxygen and nitrogen molecules being kept warm by energy that has been trapped … . wait for it …. by gravity – just like in the 5,000K Uranus core nearly 30 times further from the Sun than is Earth. Thank heavens for good old gravity – it certainly does held us keep our feet on the ground.

    Tell Tony Abbott about it will you? I have.
    .

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    Karen

    [I can see you are open to impartial discussion of the argument Karen. /sarc Is this the best you can do? – Jo]

    No Jo, sarc isn’t all I got. Unlike you I read the science.

    Unlike you, I accept what the science says.

    Unlike you, I understand how the Ocean Heat Content is still rising, even though all known natural causes should be making the climate cool.

    Unlike you, I reply on peer-reviewed science performed by experts instead of Bob’s blog on the interweb.

    http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n3/full/nclimate2138.html
    http://www.wou.edu/~vanstem/490.S14/tropicaloceans&slowerwarming976.full.pdf
    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013EF000165/full

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    • #

      Unlike you I read the science.

      Unlike you I don’t spout one-liners that are so easily refuted. The Evidence that I read science. “The Science” Btw is an oxymoron.

      One oceans see here and here.

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      • #

        I have to disagree with something in Ocean temperatures – Is that warming statistically significant?

        I have only read that the thermistors on the Argo Floats measure the temperature to 0.1°C. This means that even if the temperature was taken in the same place at the same time 3000 times, you still couldn’t claim an uncertainty of 0.002, even if it were recorded to 0.01 as the best thermistors do. With the better thermistors and a variation in measurements over 0.1°C you can find the mean and standard deviation and cite them to 0.005 (half the increment) but anything smaller is just feeding the chickens.

        If you are going to use the mean of many measurements, they have to be precise even if not accurate (due to random error). You can’t find the middle of a dart board with many random throws around the bull’s eye if all you know is that each dart hit the board somewhere.

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        Karen

        But you didn’t Jo. None of your links reference the science I posted.

        Referencing your own blog is not the same as citing peer-reviewed science.

        Please use science when debating the topic, not blogs.

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        • #

          Please use your brain when writing comments. All the links cite scientific papers.

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          • #
            Karen

            None of your links reference the science I posted.

            Read carefully Jo! None of your links to peer-reviewed science debunks the links I posted.

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            • #
              Rereke Whakaaro

              None of your links to peer-reviewed science debunks the links I posted.

              Well, of course not. Contrary to popular belief, science is not conducted like a court of law, where the prosecution is required to present evidence, which the defense then tries to debunk.

              The fact that you take that line of reasoning demonstrates that you are not a practicing scientist.

              So we therefore assume you are politically motivated, and I , for one will engage with on that basis, looking for the motivations behind your comments. I am glad we have addressed that point.

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                Karen

                Not only does Jo’s link fail to rebut my earlier links, but the science Jo references doesn’t even support her claim.

                Jo, you say the science supports you, but the links you have posted contradict you.

                [Karen, No. The papers I cite support my claim 100%. This is a much more basic conversation than you think. I want you to be honest and rational before we even start talking science – it’s hardly worth my time otherwise. I quoted one sentence of yours, and showed you were wrong. You claimed I don’t cite papers , and I showed I do. You can show you are here for a real conversation and apologize for wasting our time with self-evidently false claims. BTW it’s obvious you ignore my first link “The Evidence” which has dozens of papers, and we both know why. – Jo]

                [SNIP. I’ve emailed this part to you as a courtesy so you can repost it and we can discuss ocean heat. But first you need to lift your standards and resolve this point. I hope you don’t find this difficult. I look forward to discussing ocean heat after you apologize and agree to do better in future. – Jo].

                UPDATE: Your email has bounced (again) so it is a fake and the SNIPPED part has disappeared. You’ll need to provide a real email too, as per blog requirements. – Jo

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                Karen

                Karen, I’m looking forward to discussing ocean heat (as I have already done in scores of comments. Afraid? You’re kidding right?). I made a very simple request. Are you here for an honest conversation? BTW I’ve been aware your email was fake for months but let you keep posting, but if you will not comply with basic requests for honest and rational replies, and I can’t email you either to help you get posted, how can we discuss anything? Do I or do I not cite peer reviewed papers? This is a snap for anyone who can read. Are you in denial? – Jo

                [SNIP until you show you can reason. I’m glad you keep screenshots. 🙂 ]

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                Rereke Whakaaro

                Karen says:

                Not only does Jo’s link fail to rebut my earlier links, but the science Jo references doesn’t even support her claim.

                Which shows that she is arguing from a fixed position, base on what she believes, or wants, Jo’s position to be, rather than taking the time to actually understand her position.

                I couldn’t ask for a more explicit example, in support of my contention that she is politically, or even evangelically motivated.

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                Karen

                You cite papers Jo, [SNIP… still a fail.]

                Thank you. So, your statement ” “Unlike you, I reply (sic) on peer-reviewed science”…” is obvious nonsense. Do you agree to write more accurately in future so we don’t have to spend 4 days getting you to write a correct phrase? – Jo

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                Karen

                Still harping on about a typo in order to avoid the question?

                [A typo? Read your comment #38.1.2 where you try to defend your “typo” as if you meant it. What is really irrational about your behaviour is you could have resolved this so easily. Still in denial? – Jo]

                You should self-examine more closely.

                One oceans see here and here.


                [(Psst: Here’s what a rational response looks like) – Yes, you’re right. I did make a typo. I’ll try to do better next time. Your turn. – Jo]

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              Heywood

              You just posted a list of scientific papers without any explanation as to why. Did you expect everyone to be mind readers and work out the point you are trying to make by magic?

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              PhilJourdan

              You have not posted any science. Just ill-informed opinions.

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              PhilJourdan

              Science 101. Alternate hypothesis must first disprove the null hypothesis. It is not up to her to disprove your conjecture. Itis up to you to disprove the null.

              You do not even know what it is!

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              Karen

              You still don’t get it Jo. Let me put it in simple terms.
              [No. You still don’t get it Karen. IF you find it so hard to admit you were wrong on a simple Yes-No topic, there is nothing I can say on a more complex issue that would reach you. – Jo

              Which of your science links (to peer-reviewed papers) debunks the OHC?

              [1. Your failure to write in accurate English makes this pointless, like debating jello – consider “debunks the OHC” – what does that mean? Is it about whether the OHC is warming or cooling, or about the amount of warming, or about the uncertainty of the amount of warming? You don’t quote me, it doesn’t seem you know my position, despite me giving you the links you were too lazy to find yourself, and this is all off the topic in the thread as well.
              2. If you think all peer review citations written in a blog post effectively do not exist because “it’s a blog” (that’s what you wrote) why would I waste time writing lists of citations for a person that was delusional or dishonest? You now apparently reluctantly recognise that what you wrote was wrong, but instead of manners and grace you pretend that it was a typo, try to change the point, and still refuse to agree to do better. It’s like debating a five year old. I don’t have the time.
              3. Even if the ocean is still warming AND contains some of the missing heat, it isn’t enough, the models are wrong on every other measure (you are in denial of my link to The Evidence.)
              4. Over and above all that, in the unlikely event that the oceans did contain “the missing heat” (that the instruments don’t show) that wouldn’t demonstrate causality of CO2, all forms of natural warming cause… oceans to warm too.

              I know you “cite science”, that’s not the problem. The problem is you come up with your own predetermined conclusion, then add links to science which don’t support your claim.

              Regarding the oceans and OHC, the science you have cited also says the oceans are warming.

              Exactly. What I cite supports me because I agree the ocean is probably warming (inasmuch as our best instruments show). It just isn’t warming fast enough, and the uncertainties are larger than claimed. You don’t have the reading comprehension to make a debate worthwhile. Shame.

              Sorry Karen, or whomever you are. No more from you. This is a waste of time because you are not honest enough or you fail to reason. I suspect we’ve been through this before havent we?. No more chances for anonymous irrational people with no real email or name. Your comments will go straight to spam as of now. All you had to do was respond “Fair point Jo. You do cite papers. We disagree on the interpretation. Sorry for being careless with words. I’ll do better” If you said that you’d still be posting. I will not see your reply to this. I don’t check the spam bin. Don’t bother. Its too late now. – Jo

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          From the first sentence of the Nature article that Karen linked to

          Surface global warming has stalled since around 2000 despite increasing atmospheric CO2.

          Someone better tell Philip.

          Here is Judith Curries assessment of the second paper from Kosaka on this. She is a respected and very experienced climatologist who is a luke-warm sceptic. You can parrot her in order to sound intelligent.

          What is mind blowing is Figure 1b, which gives the POGA C simulations (natural internal variability only). The main ‘fingerprint’ of AGW has been the detection of a separation between climate model runs with natural plus anthropogenic forcing, versus natural variability only. The detection of AGW has emerged sometime in the late 1970′s , early 1980′s.

          Compare the temperature increase between 1975-1998 (main warming period in the latter part of the 20th century) for both POGA H and POGA C:

          POGA H: 0.68C (natural plus anthropogenic)
          POGA C: 0.4C (natural internal variability only)

          Their models say that less than 0.2°C of warming could be attributed to man.

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            I’m tired. Judith Curry’s.

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            Rereke Whakaaro

            Don’t worry Vic.

            By the time the spin merchants have had a go at it, we will be hearing that the average temperature will be 2oC hotter, by the end of the decade, 20oC by the end of the century, and 200oC by the end of the Millenium.

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              the Griss

              Hansen is out of the picture, but his trainee, Gavin, is still there giving older temps the downward nudge and trying to push new temps upward.

              Jones at CRU and his students at BOM are also doing what they can to create a positive trend, despite the raw data.

              Gotta create a trend somehow, even when NONE EXISTS !!! !

              We have seen, even on this forum, what their brain-washed parrot cross monkey apostles will do to try and reinforce the fakery. !

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      Wayne Job

      Karen, people here are not sheep, many are highly qualified individuals that look at both sides. The AGW science has proved to be not science as when it was falsified the name changed to climate change. This is not falsifiable, as every one who has an education knows about ice ages thus our climate is always in a state of flux.

      Your faux scientists with their warming arguments have proven over time to be not only wrong, but so far wrong that they are now into Looney Tunes territory. a belief system like a religion, that is not falsifiable. They are now so political and religious in their pronouncements and have sucked in many true believers ,you being one, that their gravy train continues to roll, sucking the wealth of once prosperous nations, who are slowly awakening to the scam.

      Stand in front of a mirror and look yourself straight in the eye, then ask yourself am I looking at all the facts or just propaganda, if you really understand science you might shock yourself.

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      James Bradley

      I repeat, coldest May since 1941, following AGW precedent means that this is the coldest May evvvvvvvaaaaaaaaa.

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      PhilJourdan

      Unlike you I do not lie about data. The science is not settled. That is why there are many views, none more valid than others.

      OHC has not been measured long enough to draw any conclusions. RSS shows (now) a 17 year 9 month interval with no statistical change. Ben Santer (not a skeptic) declared that if the interval reached 17 years, that would break the models.

      All you have is broken models. You have no science, no data, and no class.

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    (Jo): “Note the scientific precision in this statement below:…”
    “Climate change has not gone away,” said Dr Raupach. “The best scientific assessments indicate that Australia could be subject to warming over the 21st century that could range from less than two to more than five degrees.”
    (Jo): “So we spend millions in order for a scientist to tell us that Australia will warm by a number between zero and infinity?
    Thanks for the laugh, but it’s better (i.e., worse) than that; warming “less than two” includes cooling, so it’s between zero Kelvin and infinity.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      … it’s between zero Kelvin and infinity.

      Zero Kelvin, you say? I had better buy an extra pair of socks, as well as a sun hat, then.

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