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Two major proxy studies, larger than ever, were released in April and June 2012. They show that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) existed, and was similar to current temperatures. These comprehensive studies suggest current temperatures are not unusual, and that itself is not all that surprising — I’ve mentioned before how there are hundreds of proxy studies showing it was as warm or warmer back then. (CO2science has been documenting them.) But these studies are worth a mention because they are so large.
Climate models cannot explain what caused the warming 1000 years ago, nor the cooling 300 years ago, so they can’t rule out the same factors aren’t changing the climate today (though they claim they can). If climate models can’t explain the past, they can’t predict the future.
The last 12 Centuries
Ljungqvist used 120 proxy records — nearly 3 times as many proxies as previous studies and conclude: “during the 9th to 11th centuries there was widespread NH warmth comparable in both geographic extent and level to that of the 20th century”. Their proxies included ice-cores, pollen, marine sediments, lake sediments, tree-rings, speleothems and historical documentary data.
 Ljungqvistet al 2012 Fig. 4. Mean time-series of centennial proxy anomalies separated by: (A) data type, (B) continents, (C) latitude, (D) seasonality of signal. The curves in (B–D) show the mean and moving block bootstrap confidence intervals (±2 standard error) (Wilks, 1997).
The numbers in parentheses indicates the number of proxies in each category. The last 2000 years
In April 2012 Christiansen and Ljungqvist published a study of 32 proxies going back as far as 1AD for the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere. They found the first millennium was warmer than the second, that the Little Ice Age (17th Century) was awfully cold and colder than the “Dark Ages” cooling (circa 300- 800AD), and about −1.0 °C below the 1880–1960AD level. It warmed a bit in the 1700’s then cooled again in the 1800’s almost back to where it was in the 1600’s. The Little Ice Age appears in records across vast areas, and the three century pattern of colder-warmer-and-almost-as-cold-again repeats all around the Northern Hemisphere. Things have warmed fast since the Little Ice Age but then, it was the coldest patch in the 2000 year record, so it’s not altogether surprising that it has rebounded quickly.
The MWP peaked from 950 to 1050AD at around 0.6°C warmer than the calibration period 1880–1960 AD: “Note that the extra-tropical NH mean temperature from HadCRUT3v in 1880–1960AD is 0.23 °C colder than in the often used standard climate period 1961–1990 AD.” That means the MWP was about 0.4 °C warmer than the 1961-1990 period.
Here’s is the long reconstruction of the last 2000 years (extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere). The “zer0” is set at the average for the 1880-1960 period. So Roman times were about as warm as the first half of the 1900’s. The MWP was hotter than that.
 … Past reconstructions are flatter…
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8.8 out of 10 based on 62 ratings
There are only hours to go before the three winning questions that Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard must answer are decided. Andrew Bolt noticed that the author of one question got US voters involved. (From BOLT: It seems the author has got US Internet forums to help. Also here: not-so-pointless-poll-on-australian-chaplains / aggregator | AtheistAus | pzmyers. “Should blog readers fight fire with fire? It does seem odd having US readers demand answers from an Australian PM that they’ll almost certainly won’t hear about a program that doesn’t affect them in the slightest.”)
Those who log in can register 8 votes. But it closes very soon: Voting ends on July 19th at 5 PM.
At the moment:
Q1
7.8 out of 10 based on 47 ratings
So much for that global “free” market.
Scott the trader writes to explain that the EU “CER” credits are the ones people can buy and exchange for Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) but they have sunk to $4. The more expensive $9 EUA units that most commentators mention, are not exchangeable in the Australian market:
“The EU CER price is equivalent to about A$3.80 per tonne… Almost $20 below Australia’s fixed price. These are the products most comparable to Australia’s $23/Tonne as it will be CERs that we can surrender instead of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) to satisfy an Australian Clean Energy Scheme liability. It is incorrect as most media commentators are doing in Australia to compare to EUAs which are at about $9 Australian. Australia cannot access EUA’s to satisfy our carbon liabilities. The only comparison is $3.80/T for a CER and $23/T for an ACCU.”
So most commentators are comparing the wrong type of carbon credits, and the Australian market is even more overpriced than people recognize. Australians will be paying 500% more than the largest carbon market in the world.
The Australian scheme is the most expensive, and most ambitious in the world. On top of that we are a distant market based heavily on fossil fuels.
[Source: eeX CER prices 2010 – Jul 2012]
LONDON, July 16 (Reuters Point Carbon) – CER prices sank to a new low on Monday within touching distance of 3 euros as traders continued to offload the offsets amid plentiful supply of cheaper ERUs, which can also be used for compliance in the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme.
The benchmark December 2012 secondary CER contract closed at 3.18 euros, the day’s high, but down 2 percent on Friday’s close as traders continued to unwind long positions.
In afternoon trade the U.N. offset slid to a record low of 3.08 euros.
“The feeling is that with increased ERU supply coming into the market, there’s not much reason to hold onto CERs, particularly because of oversupply in the carbon market as a whole,” said one trader, adding that 3 euros was a critically- important support level.
(Paywall protected)
Natural gas prices are falling, so electricity producers are switching to the cheaper and lower emission fuel, which means they don’t need to buy as many carbon permits.
As I’ve said all along, those who call for a “free market” solution are the ones who don’t know what a real free market is.
H/t Scott the trader. 🙂
UPDATE: This AAP article July 1, 2012 explains that Australian’s who buy cheap CER units have to “top up” the amount to the government approved price of $15 per unit:
“Traders are also awaiting final rules on how to implement the floor price on international units. An Australian emitter that buys a foreign carbon offset, such as UN-backed Certified Emission Reductions (CER), below the floor price will have to pay money to the government to ensure it did not get the offset cheaper than $A15.”
The Climate Spectator confirms that it is the CER price that the Australian and New Zealand schemes are tied to.
“While the Australian Government will not recognise all types of CERs, for the most part these credits can be used as a one for one replacement with Australian permits. Therefore the price of Australian permits has the potential to be heavily tied to the price of CERs just as occurs under the New Zealand emissions trading scheme.”
8.7 out of 10 based on 52 ratings
Topher did the brilliant “Forbidden History” video, which has hit 50,000 views and he wants to make two more to remind people of the importance of free speech.
There are only hours to help him to reach the tally. Pledges are only processed if the total hits $35k and I hear that there is a big donor as yet unlisted, and the remaining gap is small, so those last promises today might make all the difference.
The post here last month on The Forbidden History of Unpopular People garnered a very enthusiastic response.
“It’s about arrogance, it’s about powerful people here in Australia who believe that they are smarter than you, that their opinion is worth more than your opinion, and that their thinking is better than your thinking, and if you think they’re wrong, you should just shut up.”
Help stop the News Media Gestapo
I’m sorry I wasn’t onto this earlier in the piece…
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8.8 out of 10 based on 33 ratings
When independent auditors found errors, gaps and deep questions about the HQ (High Quality) dataset for the official record of Australian temperatures, the BOM responded by producing a completely new set called ACORN in March 2012. But this set is also plagued with errors. One of the independent auditors, Ed Thurstan writes to me to explain that though the BOM says it aimed for the “best possible data set” and specified that they check internal consistency of data (one such check is to make sure that the maximum on any given day is larger than the minimum) when Thurstan double checked ACORN he found nearly 1000 instances where the max temperatures were lower than the minimums recorded the same day.
This raises serious questions about the quality control of the Australian data that are so serious, Thurstan asks whether the whole set should be withdrawn.
Why are basic checks like these left to unpaid volunteers, while Australian citizens pay $10 billion a year to reduce a warming trend recorded in a data set so poor that it’s not possible to draw any conclusions about the real current trend we are supposedly so concerned about. — Jo
 The BOM goes to great lengths to assure us it’s high quality, peer reviewed, and rigorously checked, but with a days work, independent audits find major flaws Anomalies Errors in ACORN_SAT Data
Ed Thurstan
July 14, 2012
Ever since the documentation for ACORN-SAT was released, I have had doubts about the ability of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to honour their published intention to release all software that generated the ACORN-SAT data. ( I might amplify that thought later.)
In March 2012 the BOM released the report
“Techniques involved in developing the Australian Climate Observations Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT) dataset CAWCR Technical Report No. 049 Blair Trewin
This specifies in great detail both the background to the development of the database, and the checks applied to the data. As Blair Trewin writes in the Abstract of this report:
“The purpose of this data set is to provide the best possible data set to underlie analyses of variability and change of temperature in Australia, including both analyses of annual and seasonal mean temperatures, and of extremes of temperature and other information derived from daily temperatures.”
I decided to take that document as a Program Specification, and write code to perform those data checks.
The very first check specified in section 6.1 of the above report is
“1. Internal consistency of daily maximum and minimum temperature
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8.6 out of 10 based on 80 ratings
Australia’s hottest day? Not 2010, but 1828 at a blistering 53.9 °C
Back before man-made climate change was frying Australia, when CO2 was around 300ppm, the continent savoured an ideal preindustrial climate, right? (This is the kind of climate we are spending $10bn per annum to get back too?)
We are told today’s climate has more records and more extremes than times gone by, but the few records we have from the early 1800’s are eye-popping. Things were not just hotter, but so wildly hot it burst thermometers. The earliest temperature records we have show that Australia was a land of shocking heatwaves and droughts, except for when it was bitterly cold or raging in flood.
In other words, nothing has changed, except possibly things might not be quite so hot now.
Silliggy (Lance Pidgeon) has been researching records from early explorers and from newspapers. What he has uncovered is fascinating. — Jo
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 Charles Sturt (1930 postage stamp) Wikimedia Lance Pidgeon writes:
“EXTENSIVE FLOOD”, “AWFUL BUSH FIRES”, “PROLONGED DROUGHT“ AND “CHANGES OF CLIMATE“.
These Australian headlines from the 1800’s above describe extremes the early colonists faced. At the time the European explorers who were instructed and equipped to map the country and record the climate were frustrated by the only constant …change.
The heat was extreme – often hotter than 127F!
Like the other explorers Sturt was asked to record everything and in detail:
“You are likewise to note the nature of the climate, as to heat, cold, moisture, winds, rains, &c, and to keep a register of the temperature from Fahrenheit’s thermometer, as observed at two or three periods of each day.”
[From “Letter of Instructions” for his earlier expeditions from “His Excellency Lieutenant General Ralph Darling” Here]
Captain Charles Sturt as he inspects the equipment provided for the 1844-46 expedition into central Australia. Cartoon from Josh of Cartoons by Josh
The equipment provided was not always up to the task. On the equipment provided for one of his later expeditions he remarks:
“The thermometers sent from England, graduated to 127 degrees only, were too low for the temperature into which I went, and consequently useless at times, when the temperature in the shade exceeded that number of degrees” Charles Sturt. [From here].
He was able to acquire and take brewers thermometers. Which were used to measure the “in the sun” temperature and the ‘in the shade” temperatures that were too high for the precision ones. They were also used to estimate height above sea level from the boiling point of water.
Sturt offered his own analysis of some of the typical daily conditions from records in the colony at the time and his own observations.
The periodicity of the weather cycles did not escape his attention.
“The thermometer ranges during the summer months, that is, from September to March, from 36 degrees to 106 degrees of Fahrenheit, but the mean of the temperature during the above period is 70 degrees.”
In degrees C that range equates to a minimum of 2.2 , a max of 41.1 with a mean of 21.1.
This average seems close to the current average but the lower and upper temperatures were both more extreme than they are now!
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9.4 out of 10 based on 75 ratings
Two biology and environmental academics from Schenactady and Rensselaer Polytech New York were apparently concerned that their young prodigy might be lost from the religion of global warming (and misled by “Deniers”) so they put together together a guide to help others facing the onslaught of common sense and reason. The piece titled “Effective Strategies to Counter Campus Presentations on Climate Denial” was published in Eos.
What they didn’t do, was put forward empirical evidence. (If only they’d thought of that?)
The source of their angst? Christopher Monckton (of course) who spoke at Union College (thanks to CFACT), with help simultaneously from none other than Ivar Giaever (the Nobel Prize winning physicist we saw yesterday) who spoke at Rensselaer. (Imagine the very idea of a Nobel prize winning physicist speaking on campus about uncertainties of predicting the weather?)
Eos , Vol. 93, No. 27, 3 July 2012
Effective Strategies to Counter Campus Presentations on Climate Denial
Jeffrey D. Corbin and and Miriam E. Katz [PDF]
Assuming the world copied the Australian Carbon Tax… it will cost $2,000 trillion to cool the planet by one degree.
Monckton send this reply (below) to Eos, but while the magazine will publish name-calling illogical pieces it does not always find the polite reply as appealing.
The cost of the Australian carbon “tax”
Christopher Monckton saute’s and dices the usual fallacies, but also calculates the cost-benefits of the Australia Carbon Tax, should it be reproduced on a global scale. He assumes that not only will the Carbon Tax achieve what Ms Gillard intended (emissions wise), but also that the exaggerated unvalidated climate models of IPCC fame are completely correct. With these cavernous caveats, he estimates it will cost $2,000 trillion to cool the planet by one degree, and that’s the best case scenario.
“…carbon trading in Australia will cost $10.1 bn/year, plus $1.6 bn/year for administration (Wong, 2010, p. 5), plus $1.2 bn/year for renewables and other costs, a total of $13 bn/year, rising at 5%/year, or $130 bn by 2020 at n.p.v., to abate 5% of current emissions, which represent 1.2% of world emissions (derived from Boden et al., 2010ab). Thus the Australian measure, if it succeeded as fully as its promoters intend, would abate 0.06% of global emissions over its 10-year term. CO2 concentration would fall from a business-as-usual 410 to 409.988 ppmv by the end of the term. Forcing abated is 0.0002 W m–2; warming consequently abated is 0.00006 K; mitigation cost-effectiveness, which is the cost of abating 1 K global warming by measures of equivalent cost-effectiveness, is $2,000 tr/K. On the same basis, the cost of abating all projected warming over the ten-year life of the policy is $300 trillion, or $44,000/head, or 58% of global GDP over the period. The cost of mitigation by such measures would exceed the cost of climate-related damage consequent upon inaction by a factor of approximately 50.”
There is an excellent write up of Moncktons original talk in Schenectady on Watts Up, which I enjoyed reading.
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Christopher Monckton: Right of reply
We are grateful* to the editors of Eos for this right of reply to Corbin and Katz (Effective Strategies to Counter Campus Presentations on Climate Denial, Eos, 2012 July 3), a 1200-word melange or smørgasbord of the shop-worn logical fallacies of argument ad populum, ad verecundiam, and, above all, ad hominem.
The authors, arguing solely from consensus (ad pop.) among scientific experts (ad vcd.), say without evidence that speakers like us “intend to muddy the waters with respect to climate science” (ad hom.); they serially cite politicized websites and tendentious non-peer-reviewed presentations by non-climate-scientists against us as though they were authoritative (ad vcd.), while omitting to cite published rebuttals (e.g. Monckton of Brenchley, 2006, 2010) to these dubious sources (ad hom.); they accuse us of misrepresentation, distortion, and flawed analysis without adducing a single instance (ad hom.); and they four times brand us as “climate change deniers” (ad hom.) – a hate-speech comparison with Holocaust denial. Because these irrational allegations are so serious, we have insisted upon this right of reply.
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9.4 out of 10 based on 56 ratings
The NZ Herald reports a new study showing that since 1988 there has been a sudden increase in the absorption of CO2 over land. It’s in the order of a billion tons of CO2 a year and amounts to 10% of all human emissions. As usual, the spinmeisters frame it in terms of our guilt instead of their ignorance. “Look! Things would have been worse and even warmer if not for this new unknown factor.”
But globally plants already emit about 80Gt per year. Finding one extra Gt of absorption is both predictable and largely insignificant. What this episode really shows is just how far the alarmist PR departments will go to find any excuse to cover up for two decades of poor predictions.
Dr David Evans, formerly a carbon modeler for the Australian Greenhouse Office calls the new discovery “just noise”:
Sounds impressive, but it’s not significant. Rough numbers: there are currently 800GtC (gigatonnes, or billion tonnes) of CO2 carbon in the atmosphere, and each year: plants oceans absorb 80GtC and emit 80GtC, oceans plants absorb 120GtC and emit 120Gt, and human emissions are 8GtC. (Notice that the total turnover in CO2 carbon each year is about a quarter, which fits with the observed residence time in the atmosphere of an individual CO2 molecule of about 4 to 5 years — here are delays due to inadequate mixing). The atmospheric CO2 levels have been going up at about 2ppm (or 4GtC) per year for decades.
[Apologies for the mix up between C and CO2. Carbon accountants work in C but often report in CO2 because that is what many “clients” expect. Having seen umpteen sets of figures each way I have lost any sense of what is “normal”, and simply check context every time to see what is meant. The carbon accounting software I wrote, FullCAM, works in C internally, and converts to CO2 or CH4 or whatever as required. It is the C atoms that accountants track, because they combine and recombine with O (as CO2) and H (as CH4) and numerous organic compounds as they move from air to plants to soil to microbes and back to air, and so on. As for the ocean-plant mix up, it was late, oops. There is a good diagram in AR4 page 515, Figure 7.3, although for the 1990’s. The rough figures here are round numbers which will let you understand and check any of these global carbon flow discussions. – David]
 Each year humans emit about 8Gt of CO2. Plants emit and absorb about 80Gt. (This is an old chart with out of date numbers that don’t quite match. Oddly NOAA or ? haven’t updated it?) This study purports to find an extra 1Gt of CO2 absorbed by plants. That’s just noise, less than the uncertainty in the other figures, and makes no significant difference to anything. Their suggestion that the earth would have warmed faster without this absorption is true, but the extra warming is miniscule and unmeasurable. The unmistakable conclusion is this paper is transparently qualitative boasting to suck in those ignorant of carbon accounting (which is just about everyone), and simply distracts attention from the failure of their predictions that the world would warm quickly from 1990 on due to rising CO2 levels (awkward reminder: 0.30C per decade was the 1990 IPCC estimate).
On a side issue, there’s a bit of a red flag: one of the study’s authors, DrSara Mikaloff-Fletcher said “We applied some really exciting statistical techniques …”. Oh I hope you’re not overindulging in numerical wishful thinking like Dr Mann, of whose hockey stick Professor Wegman famously said: “It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community.”
Patrick Moore: (Greenpeace founder) says Long live plants and humans, increase CO2!
Climate Depot asked Patrick Moore to comment on the new results.
Ecologist Dr. Moore pulled no punches in commenting on the new study: “These people are either completely naive about the relationship between CO2 and plants or they are making this up as a way of deflecting attention from the lack of warming for the past 15 years.”
Moore told Climate Depot: “Plants grow much faster when CO2 is higher, the optimum concentration is between 1500-2000 ppm so there is a long way to go before plants are happy. CO2 levels in the atmosphere have continued to rise despite plants absorbing more CO2. So what is the ‘scientists’ point? It is to obfuscate, confuse, and otherwise muddy the waters with disinformation.
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9 out of 10 based on 49 ratings
Dear Paul,
Thank you most sincerely for writing to reply to my email. Thank you for taking the time to contact Nature, and thank you for the recognition that the term “denier” causes offense.
Do we also agree that the term denier fails basic English, and cannot be defined as a scientific label because you still are unable to say what deniers deny?
“I think if you understood where skeptics were coming from it would help you design surveys that produced useful results. Basic research, like reading what leading skeptics were saying, would seem a bare minimum requirement before designing a study.”
As far as I can tell, I suspect what you feel deniers deny (though you appear reluctant to actually state it) is not any scientific observation, but the pronouncements of the highest authority of climate science (which you deem to be the IPCC).
“I do believe that the technical aspects of this debate should be between climate scientists, as with complex multi-disciplinary issues it is very easy for findings to be misconstrued by non-experts. Whether you like it or not, the majority of climate scientists agree that there is a high likelihood that anthropogenic climate change exists and is likely to be a problem”
Since the IPCC, and all climate scientists are government funded, “deniers” then are the people who doubt the propaganda, the dictat, and in other times you would call people like these “dissidents”, or “heretics”, or indeed, the true scientists — since they keep asking for evidence. You are essentially asking us to believe in authority, a fallacy known since Aristotelian times, and a concept deeply anti-scientific.
You say it’s definitely valid to debate climate science, but then say that only “climate scientists”TM can do it. Which means, you do think it’s invalid for us to debate climate science, or to ask questions of the registered approved government appointed hierarchy. We should all be obedient citizens right? — even if those experts broke the law by hiding their data, lost entire global record sets and make “skill free” predictions too?
Is Jo Nova inconsistent? She “talks about politics and funding too”.
Should I chastise myself for delving into social issues? Dearest Paul, here’s the brutal truth. I’ve been utterly consistent in my 850 articles — when I make conclusion about the climate, I use observations from the planet. When I make conclusions about socio-political matters, I talk money, politics, and people.
There are dual separate strain of topics of which evidence from one stream never crosses into the other:
Planetary Temperature (measured in C) –– > depends on Sun, moon, types of gases, orbits, dust, cosmic rays from the centre of the universe etc etc —> Uses observations from thermometers, proxies, coral slices, ice cores, stalagmites, tree rings, mud layers –> predicts (not much yet) … more cycles like the last ones.
Consensus (a “Yes-No” thing) –> depends on opinions, research, fashion, money, best estimates, personal motivations, political parties, demographics of peer group surveyed, and decade —> measured in dollars usually, and occasionally votes. (Subject to change rapidly)
I have never said: The IPCC are wrong because the government funds them (which would be an ad hom). The IPCC are wrong because 28 million weather balloons, 6,000 boreholes, 3,000 ocean buoys, and hundreds of thousands of original raw surface stations suggest the IPCC are exaggerating the future temperature increases by around 6 – 7 fold.
The reason why a science institution could be so wrong, when so much evidence points against them, is a socio-political discussion, and I go there, but I don’t mix up the reasoning. (Will it stretch the friendship if I say that you do?). You ask me to believe the world will warm by 3.3 degrees because a government appointed agency (the IPCC) says so, and to corroborate that, you mentioned that the IPCC has “even” convinced governments to act on its’ policies? Is there a more circular form of argument-from-authority that this?
I always know which point I’m making. But when you say the future temperature of the planet is measured in consensuses, I wonder what the standard deviation is, and I suspect it’s not normal.
Here’s Denial: The real socio-political evidence that many won’t “see”
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9.6 out of 10 based on 134 ratings
I’m impressed (really quite surprised) that this made it to the top story of the front page of The Australian. The syllabus for Years 10 -12 science students in Queensland contains this nonsense. What is good about it though (see below) is how it forces influential science leaders in the country to pick sides. Is science a “consensus”? Even on Climate Change? No says the Dean of Deans…
The Queensland Studies Authority:
“Science is a social and cultural activity through which explanations of natural phenomena are generated,”
“Explanations of natural phenomena may be viewed as mental constructions based on personal experiences and result from a range of activities including observation, experimentation, imagination and discussion.
“Accepted scientific concepts, theories and models may be viewed as shared understandings that the scientific community perceive as viable in light of current available evidence.”
[QSA, Physics Senior Syllabus, 2007] [QSA Chemistry, 2007] [QSA, Biology 2004 amended 2006]
The answer from QSA (The Queensland Studies Authority)?
They said the statements concerning a view of science and science education should be read in the context of the entire syllabus and it was not, and was never intended to be, a definition of science.
In other words, they have nothing. No defense. Someone was asleep at the wheel when that syllabus got approved and since it has sat there for five years with little protest we can only assume: 1/ Most science teachers in Queensland don’t know what science is, or 2/ Most science teachers in Queensland don’t read the science curriculum, or 3/ perhaps some science teachers read it, and complained to the QSA and it did nothing.
Either way, it’s not a good look. But given that people like Prof Tim Flannery, ABC Science Presenter Robyn Williams, Prof Will Steffen and Prof Andy Pitman don’t know what makes science different to religion perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that curriculum writers are struggling.
Prof John Rice understands the scientific method
“Australian Council of Deans of Science, Executive Director, John Rice from Sydney University said it was a misleading view of science and misunderstood “the unique way in which science goes about understanding things” “That’s quite wrong. It fails to understand the way in which science grounds itself in observation and testable hypotheses.”
Professor Rice said the national science curriculum made a similar error, oversimplifying the idea of scientists proving and disproving hypotheses to suggest that scientific knowledge was agreed by consensus among scientists.”
In an interview with Emily Bourke on the ABC, Prof Rice is confronted with the “climate change” monster, and sticks to his point:
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8.8 out of 10 based on 52 ratings
Dr Paul Bain has replied to my second email to him which I do most appreciate. (For reference, see the letter he is replying to here: “My reply to Dr Paul Bain — on rational deniers and gullible believers” ). He deserves kudos for replying (it’s easier to ignore inconvenient emails), and also for taking some action to improve the article he published. I will reply properly as soon as I can. For the moment, and for fairness’s sake, it’s here for all to see.
Please be constructive and polite in comments. No, I don’t think there is any scientific reason (or definition in the English language) that validates the term “denier”, but Nature is going to publish an addendum this time, and that will be noticed by other researchers in the field. That is progress. Though there is a long way to go. — Jo
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Dear Jo (if I may)
I apologise for my long and delayed response – while I would like to be more succinct, I have to resort to Pascal’s excuse that I’m writing a long response because I didn’t have time to write a short one.
First, an update. As we all know, after publication it quickly became clear that the “denier” label was causing offence, and I contacted the journal’s editors to canvass options for addressing this. As the article was already published, it was agreed that the most practical option would be to include an addendum to the paper where we publicly expressed our regret about any offence we caused. This will be appended to both the online and printed versions of the paper. As you said, you yourself did not mention a link with Holocaust denial (and I myself did not hold such a link), but this was by far the most common association made by people who took the time to write to me personally to express their offence. By doing this, I don’t expect this to resolve (or even reduce) any issues (I fear that the damage is done), but I thought this was an appropriate thing to do nonetheless.
To your point about the issue being only about climate science (specifically that this is the “only real point”), I am definitely not saying that it is invalid to debate climate science and the reality of anthropogenic climate change (or its extent or causes). However, I do believe that the technical aspects of this debate should be between climate scientists, as with complex multi-disciplinary issues it is very easy for findings to be misconstrued by non-experts. Whether you like it or not, the majority of climate scientists agree that there is a high likelihood that anthropogenic climate change exists and is likely to be a problem. You and your fellow-travellers may not be fans of the IPCC, and all institutions have their faults, but that is their overall conclusion. Further, through the IPCC and other sources, scientists have provided evidence that may not convince you, but has been of a sufficient standard that governments over the world are prepared to act, often despite its political unpopularity.
Now perhaps you might claim (and some of your fellow-travellers do claim this) that the IPCC is a corrupt political institution, and that scientists are dramatizing the problem to gain funding, etc. However, this would be admitting that there is a social and political dimension to the issue, and such assertions directly contradict your claim that the issue is only about the science. So if you were to be consistent, you should be chastising not just me, but your supporters/commenters who make claims that go beyond the science, and even revisit some of your own blogs to see where you have strayed from just assessing the science and delving into social and political issues.
Returning to the science argument, I don’t begrudge your view that there is insufficient evidence – this befits the idea of skepticism. But if you and others truly believe the science is wrong, then in my view the most productive approach would be to produce an alternative expert report (say the ISPCCE – Inter-Scientist Panel on Climate Change Errors) – I expect you could find a source of funding for it. In this document (contributed to by experts on climate science, not the general public) you would need to come to a consensus on what the issue is (is climate change occurring, is it anthropogenic or not, if anthropogenic – is it harmful or not, if harmful – how harmful), and to a consensus on the scientific basis for that view (or for a plausible range of views). On each of these matters I was emailed with widely diverging views from climate skeptics, which will probably represent quite a challenge for such a document. But if you could produce a coherent scientific document that faithfully summarizes skeptics’ views on climate change, and provided a better explanation of the science than the IPCC, then I expect you would have a much better chance of stopping the policies you oppose. Some might argue that you shouldn’t have to –it is the responsibility of the proponents to prove their point. I would counter that while this view is defensible as a debating point, it is unproductive in advancing scientific understanding – and to change the field in the “right” direction requires replacing dominant theories with better ones.
Of course the scientific issue is necessary, but it is one with political and social implications, and it would be foolish to deny these. Indeed, in blogging about bias in the IPCC and among climate scientists, and commenting on politically-motivated actions, it seems you don’t really believe it’s only about the science either. So it’s a bit bold to claim it is invalid for us to do research on broader social and policy perspectives, when it’s ok for you to comment on the same. Some might even say it’s doctrinarian, though I won’t go as far as making the Soviet comparisons you incorrectly imputed to us. It is also sending a message that those in the climate skeptic community who think about the social and policy implications beyond climate change itself should be ignored.
And finally to our study and it’s supposedly manipulative deception. Our original submission to the journal only had the first study, where all we did was ask about what the effects of taking action on climate change would be. Our finding was that some people, though unconvinced that anthropogenic climate change was occurring, were willing to support action because they thought it would have some positive social benefits. This is just a description of the pattern of responses, and describing people’s reaction to a neutral question can hardly be called manipulative. The editors, as scientists, wanted more than correlational evidence, hence the second study. We were wary of not being too leading in this study, so all we did was tell participants that there were a range of views of the effects of taking action on climate change (a true statement), and that they were going to read one of these views. It is no more manipulative than if they heard the views of a real participant from Study 1 on the street. What is interesting is that I don’t see these views expressed publicly – possibly because they are seen as unacceptable in the skeptic community, or perhaps because the most prominent public skeptics such as yourself portray such views as illegitimate. But back to the study, being exposed to a broader perspective must have been valuable to some of them at least, as they were more supportive of action when they considered these broader consequences. Now this outcome was not inevitable – they could’ve thought such arguments were garbage and have been unaffected or less supportive. But some of them didn’t, and this was probably because they were able to reflect for themselves on a perspective that they may not have heard before. It is not manipulation to give someone a different perspective on an issue that reflects a real view, and let them draw their own conclusions from it.
Now you seem to find the views of these people as illegitimate because they do not address the only real point, and those who hold those views are probably not the people represented in your blog. But our research suggests that there are a substantial number of skeptics who have this view, and I would encourage them to speak up in these debates. That’s democratic.
Regards
Paul.
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Thought from Jo: What about NIPCC?
I will do a proper reply soon, but in my email reply to him I wrote: “I’ll mention only one point now, though I have many I could make, and that’s when you suggest “ ISPCCE – Inter-Scientist Panel on Climate Change Errors” – I agree, but it’s such a good idea, that it’s already been done. See NIPCC (Nongovernmental-International-Panel-on-Climate-Change): cumulatively more than a thousand dense pages of peer reviewed references, purely scientific, non-politicized discussion of all the evidence. Unlike the IPCC it doesn’t quote activists, magazines, or ignore important papers.
PS: I have asked mods to [snip] unhelpful comments. This is your chance to help Bain understand the group he studies.
PPS: Dr Bain sent this Friday, but I held his reply to post first thing in business hours his time. It seemed a fairer thing to do that having the conversation over the weekend.
8.1 out of 10 based on 57 ratings
Dr Paul Bain sent me his second reply to my second letter late on Friday, which I am grateful for. I’ll post it in a few hours (scheduled 9am Monday morning Eastern States time, which is 7pm NY Time). It seemed fairer to let the conversation unfold in business hours, rather than releasing it over the weekend or at midnight.
It’s your chance to help researchers studying skeptics learn more about what we think. — Jo
8.3 out of 10 based on 20 ratings
Keep talking…
6.1 out of 10 based on 23 ratings
It was a dumb memo to write:
“Brumby’s recommended some “simple things for you all to do to find some extra sales”.
“We are doing an RRP (recommended retail price) review at present which is projected to be in line with CPI (consumer price index), but take an opportunity to make some moves in June and July, let the carbon tax take the blame, after all your costs will be going up due to it,” Mr Priest wrote.”
“It is understood the newsletter was sent to franchise owners last month.” [The West Australian]
But the outcry about it is over-the-top. It has drawn national interest, been published on the news around the country. The company has issued apologies. The outrage has been so overdone, that today managing director of Brumbies bakery’s (Deane Priest) resigned.
The memo was dumb because it wasn’t suggesting a totally honest approach, and because it projected the wrong attitude to staff of Brumby’s, and it was especially dumb, because there is a witchhunt on for any business which blames a fraction of a cent more than they should on the carbon tax. With 300 stores across the country there was a 100% chance of at least one staff member being a fan of the carbon tax, or the Labor Party, and leaking it to the press, whereupon it would fuel the fire at the stake being readied for some random unlucky sod.
Don’t mistake me, trying to pull one over on customers is a bad-and-mad business strategy, but at the end of the day, the customer was still getting the same load of bread, for a price agreed in advance. If they didn’t like the price (or the tax quotient), they can always shop at Bakers Delight, right?
In normal times, sloppy memos like that one never make it to the national news. The company is not making itself richer by promising that the bread contained Hand-Seeded Organic Aztec Flax while it was really made with GM wheat from Weifang, China. If the memo was cheating anyone here, mostly it wasn’t the customer, it was the government. If Brumby’s was trying to sell more bread by pretending that a larger cut of the price was “helping the environment” then that would be deceptive, and customers could rightly feel aggrieved that more of their money was not subsidizing bird-chopping fans, as they had been led to believe — but they weren’t. Brumby’s, or rather, Deane Priest, was trying to cheat the government of it’s story that the price rise due to the carbon tax would only be 2 cents.
So look how effective that threat of fining businesses $1.1million dollars is already? It didn’t need to be invoked, or tested in the courts (which could potentially backfire badly) it just needed to be announced, as long as the furore against it was moderate and bearable, and it was.
Thus the Labor Party have silenced their critics – and I’m not talking about Deane Priest, I’m talking about all the honest business people watching the news for the last two days who now know absolutely that it’s better not to mention the carbon tax, unless they do it in cautious careful terms, with their lawyer at their side.
The regulation never needs to be tested in court, it merely needs to hang like a cloud of dengue-filled mosquitoes. The drone with encephalitic undertones will clear the area.
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9 out of 10 based on 48 ratings
We know there is something wrong when we pay public servants to serve us, and they provide us with temperature records that are not the same as the original data, but they won’t explain why they adjusted them. We know the system is rotten when the inexplicable adjustments are used as an excuse to take even more money. We’ve tried FOI to get the information, but they ignore it. We’ve asked the National Audit Office to audit the records, but the people who adjusted the records are essentially the same ones who control them, so they just changed the records again, and said the audit request applied to a set they did not use now.
Today we announce a new approach — Anthony Cox and others are pursuing the legal option. It’s a creative strategy — he‘s approaching this through consumer protection laws.
Is there a chance consumers could be misled by reports that don’t include the uncertainties? We think so. – -Jo
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Guest Post: Anthony Cox — Legal Action Against AGW
 Image: Wikimedia
In New Zealand there is an ongoing legal action against the government producer of the New Zealand temperature record, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research Limited [NIWA].
Researchers found the temperature record produced by NIWA had a warming bias which basically created a warming trend of 1C per century when the raw data showed no increase at all. After being stonewalled by NIWA the researchers issued a Statement of Claim seeking a Judicial Review of the temperature record.
The Defence issued by NIWA was novel in that it claimed there was no official New Zealand temperature record [clauses 6 & 7].
An Amended Statement of Claim was issued and the case is now at the Affidavit stage. Could a similar case be brought in Australia challenging the validity of the Australian temperature record which is prepared by the Bureau of Meteorology [BOM]? There are similarities between BOM and NIWA: both have adjusted their temperature record and both have created a warming trend through the adjustments. The BOM’s has adjusted their temperature trend by approximately 40%. This appears not to be consistent with criteria for adjusting temperature laid down by Torok and Nicholls and Della-Marta et al.
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8.7 out of 10 based on 71 ratings
It was for a moment the clash of the Nobel Prize winners on climate change… just barely, but nothing like this has happened before in the debate-that-isn’t. Normally this is not a show the heavyweights turn up too. But there were three Nobel winners in the room at the same time.
Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland won the 1995 Nobel for work on Ozone. Both of the first two are fans of the man-made global warming theory and they both spoke just prior to notable skeptic Ivar Giaever (who won a Nobel for tunneling in superconductors in 1972).
[UPDATE: Watch Giaever speak – the whole speech – it’s excellent. h/t Roberto Soria]
As usual, the core arguments of believers comes down to argument from authority. Can they attack the credentials of the dissenters? The skeptics, the real scientists, talk about evidence.
From Scientific American by Mariette DiChristina
Crutzen:
“The scientific evidence is really overwhelming. Most experts agree; maybe two or three in 100 disagree.” He added, “I know who they are and why they are wrong.”
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8.7 out of 10 based on 146 ratings
Australians are spending $77 million a week to try to replicate the stable climate we had with CO2 at 280ppm. So just how ideal was that climate? Newspaper reports of the times were filled with stories of droughts, then floods, bitter cold, and fires that wasted the land. Hmm. Something to aim for then?
And what did the scientists of the day say then? Back before anyone had a hand-calculator or a satellite, the choices were: Orbits, natural cycles, magnetic effects and man’s influence. How times have… not really changed all that much.
Published in 1860 The Sydney Morning Herald.
THE following paper was read at the fortieth monthly meeting of the Australian Horticultural and Agri- cultural Society, on Tuesday evening, by Mr. Robert Meston.
 If the 60 year PDO cycle is sketched backwards we would expect temps to be cooler in the 1790’s and 1850’s and hotter in the 1820’s and 1890’s. During the “perfect” climate of the preindustrial era — apparently there were still floods and storms. (?!)
“To begin with British observations. 1697-98-99 were three bad years—years of floods and storms. 1700 proved hot and dry during sum- mer, and 1703 was the last of what are technically termed the seven dear years. 1740 was memorable for its great flood, and was distinguished as the rainy harvest (wetty harvest). 1701-02-03 came in as dear years again. Next 1768, and its great floods, in which year Britain imported 1,300,000 quarters of wheat. 1769 was noted for its mild winter ; 1782 as the snowy harvest in Scotland, and 1784 as the year of abundance. 1799 brings another great flood, and 1800 a dry year, with wheat 110s. a quarter. 1802 is remarkable for the great shake of September 10th, and severe frost of the 13th following. February 14th of 1811 is recorded as the coldest in a century, the thermometer falling two degrees below 0. 1822 is famous for a general snow storm, and 1828 as a most abundant year for Scotland, but very dry in England. Then we note 1829 as the recurring great flood, and next mention the three bad years of 1837-38-39, fore- told by Captain McKenzie six years before their advent.
“For hurricanes of wind, the great gale of October 10th, 1838, and of January 8th, 1839, have only been matched by the wind storms on the British coast in 1859. At midday, previous to the gale of 1839, the barometer fell to 26½.
“In course of our flood predictions, reports of floods in 1856 were anticipated years ago over Europe and Britain. Nor were our forebodings unfulfilled. To beg or borrow a term, some of these form the greater phenomena, and other observers may be able to fill up gaps which, very probably, have been overlooked or omitted in the compiler’s memoranda.
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8.7 out of 10 based on 46 ratings
Just which Big Scare Campaign is the worst?
Thanks to Thanks to Steve Hunter h/t Andy’s Rant.
The Australian Labor Party has been crying “Tony Abbott’s Scare Campaign” in every second interview on the carbon tax. I guess we could call this whipping up a scare about the scare campaign. Except that Abbott was responding to the primary scare, so cries of “Scary Abbott” are the counter scare to the scare that counters the real scare campaign.
We’re not just talking of job losses and electricity bills. The ALP forecasts Hell. The prophesies are for centuries of killer heatwaves and mega-fires — seas may rise 7 m threatening 700,000 houses and melting Greenland; the houses that aren’t inundated might be razed by fire; acid will leach through the oceans wiping out the Great Barrier Reef (and 60,000 jobs). The entire agriculture industry of the Murray Darling irrigation basin will disappear….and deadly mosquito plagues will spread and put more than a million people at risk.
The Labor Party are The Primary Scareholders
Here’s a member of Parliament doing his best to scare the pants off Australians (guess who?)
Excerpted:
“The massive stores of heat in the world’s oceans means climate change cannot be reversed for many centuries.
… if we fail to control global greenhouse gas emissions global average atmospheric temperature could rise by up to 5 or 6°C above 1990 levels by the end of this century. These are dramatic temperature increases. To provide a point of comparison, the difference in average global temperatures between the last ice age and today is about 5°C. These temperature changes would be accompanied by significant and ongoing rises in sea level, heat waves, bushfires and droughts, disruptions to ecosystems including the extinction of many species, disease threats, and social and geopolitical destabilisation.
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8.7 out of 10 based on 66 ratings
Australians will pay $77 million per week in carbon taxes, while Europe with the 30 most green countries pays just one third of that, according to the Mineral Council of Australia.
“Australia’s carbon tax starts generating $77.3 million per week from today. New figures from the Centre for International Economics show that Europe’s emissions trading scheme — which covers 30 nations — has generated $23m per week so far in 2012.”
Wholesale electricity prices have stepped up by $21-25MWh (roughly doubling) overnight across the three largest states – apparently $2 more than was expected.
The ACCI points out the contradiction in sending a price signal but intimidating anyone who dares to say how big that signal is.
THE Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has taken a swipe at the consumer watchdog, accusing it of intimidating commercial operations and trying to mask the cost impact of the carbon tax on business.
ACCI’s director of economics and industry policy, Greg Evans, said yesterday the purpose of the carbon tax was to introduce a price signal into the market, but the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission was trying to prevent businesses from attributing increases to the impost.
“It’s basically saying to business: don’t attribute price rises to the carbon tax, otherwise we’ll come after you,” he said. “Wasn’t one of the whole points of this that you are actually trying to send a price signal? [The Australian]
Companies can incur fines of $1.1 million per breach and private entities could pay $220,000 per breach if found guilty of deceptive and misleading conduct under the Australian Consumer Law.
Flashback to all those signs I wrote up when we first heard we could be forced to pay a $1.1million fine for overestimating the effect of The Carbon Tax on our prices.
Shop owners — do feel free to plagiarize ad lib. No copyright on those images.
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8.9 out of 10 based on 89 ratings
Posted in comments by “Carbon Free”
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I sit here in my living room with just a few minutes left before midnight & ‘Carbon Sunday’, now in my dark cold residence, using only a battery powered smart phone to blog, as I start my new low greenhouse gas existence. Already the new evening meal of beans and vegetables is starting to become uncomfortable. I dare not pass wind for fear of adding to the earth’s methane levels, and I have tried not to exhale my CO2 directly into the atmosphere, but rather store it in environmentally friendly plastic bags where it will be released into my new hermetically sealed backyard greenhouse, where plants will convert my CO2 back to pure O2 and stored carbon.
My only sadness today was having all my pets put down. My dogs caused far too much emissions for the planet. Perhaps the vegan diet proved too much for their digestion systems but the thought of any living creature eating meat is far worse. Anyway, they will make good fertiliser food for the greenhouse.
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9.1 out of 10 based on 103 ratings
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