Mar 172008

THIS PAGE HAS BEEN ACTIVATED AS THE NEW STATESMAN BLOG IS NOW CLOSED FOR COMMENTS

At 10am this morning, the New Statesman finally closed the Mark Lynas thread on their website after 1715 comments had been added over a period of five months. I don’t know whether this constitutes any kind of a record, but gratitude is certainly due to the editor of of the New Statesman for hosting the discussion so patiently and also for publishing articles from Dr David Whitehouse and Mark Lynas that have created so much interest.

This page is now live, and anyone who would like to continue the discussion here is welcome to do so. I have copied the most recent contributions at the New Statesman as the first comment for the sake of convenience. If you want to refer back to either of the original threads, then you can find them here:

Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with all 1289 comments.

Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.

Welcome to Harmless Sky, and happy blogging.

(Click the ‘comments’ link below if the input box does not appear)

 

10,000 Responses to “Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs.”

  1. PeterM:

    What Jones said is this (I quote): “As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different” and “the warming rates for all 4 periods [1860-1880, 1910-1940, 1975-1998 and 1975-2009] are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other”. Brill included the first of these in his article. Perhaps you didn’t notice. Perhaps you didn’t read it.

    Brill’s observation (that it’s Jones’s view that recent warming is not unusual) is consistent with the above quotations.

  2. “Brill” may well have made the interpretation you claim. My only comment would be that ‘not unusual’ weren’t Prof Jones’ choice of words.

    I would say the data from 1860 to 1880 is both too short and less reliable than later data. NASA don’t include it in their graph. So that leaves the two periods of 20th century warming.

    http://www.planetperformance.org/global-warming/nasa-temp-means-1880-2000.gif

    http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/hockey-stick.jpg

    As I said previously both 20th century periods form part of the hockey stick blade. Are they unusual? I’d say they were.

  3. TonyN,

    I hear what you are saying about health care. It shouldn’t be linked to AGW, of course, but they are insofar as right wing libertarians, and those of close political disposition, are concerned. Opposition to Government involvement doesn’t just stop at Health Care but extends to industry, transport, the financial sector, pensions, TV and broadcasting, postal services,the media, education, etc. Just about everything that you can think of with the exception of policing and defence! And it certainly includes any government involvement in addressing the CO2, and other GHG, emissions issue.

    So it seems that you guys have a bit of a problem. Either you can admit that your political philosophy is obsolete, or you can claim that the science behind AGW is all wrong.

    More on a similar theme:
    http://www.standupeconomist.com/blog/climate/round-two-with-libertarians-on-global-warming/

  4. PeterM:

    You’re right: Jones didn’t use those words. But Brill wasn’t quoting him, he was making an observation fully consistent with what Jones did say. So your comment is pointless.

    As for what Peter Martin “would say” – I suggest Jones carries rather more authority.

  5. Robin,

    You say “I suggest {Prof} Jones carries rather more authority.” I couldn’t agree more!

    So what else did Prof Jones say in the BBC interview. And this observation is “fully consistent” because these are his exact words!

    “I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.”

  6. Peter

    You quoted Phil Jones;;

    “I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.”

    Phil Jones is selling a product for which he receives a great deal of funding both from the British tax payer and from ‘Big Oil’. He is hardly going to diss his own product is he?

    Yes, temperatures have probably warmed…and cooled and warmed and….

    We have evidence of these cooling and warming periods stretching back to pre history without the apparent help of enhanced CO2 levels. The notion of a historic global surface temperature that can be parsed to fractions of a degree needs to be continually challenged. As for the completely ludicrous marine temperatures! If you had any idea as to how they are collected you would not wish to rely on them as any sort of accurate global record.

    Tonyb

  7. PeterM (9980):

    Professor Jones’s 100% confidence “that the climate has warmed” is shared by most critics of the alarmist position – Max and me included. So nothing remarkable there. Note that, on the question of natural influences, Jones notes (see his answer to Harrabin’s question D) that this is “slightly outside my area of expertise” (his exact words). And, of course, it’s IPCC Chapter 9 that deals with natural influences.

    Let’s see how all this relates to the Brill article (my post 9971). As I suspect you haven’t read it, here it is in a nutshell:

    Since the LIA, the world has been warming by (as Jones stated in a 2005 paper) an average variability of 0.11C per decade. The 1975-2009 warming was 0.161C per decade – described by Jones as “significant”. The difference, therefore, is 0.051C per decade. It’s this 0.051C that’s unexplained – and it’s the correlation of that and the post 1950 increase in human GHG emissions that Jones believes is evidence of AGW. He refers to the IPCC’s Chapter 9 and notes (replying to Harrabin’s question H) “we can’t explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing” – essentially the position taken in Chapter 9.

    There are six objections to this:

    1. It’s an argument from ignorance. Given all the vast natural forces and cycles affecting climate, why is mankind necessarily the default option?

    2. Is it really surprising that the IPCC’s models cannot explain a minute anomaly of 500ths of a degree over 10 years?

    3. How accurate is the process (instrumental and statistical) involved in producing the 0.161C per decade? It has the extremely difficult task of coping with worldwide records, over long periods, in all seasons using different and changing instruments – so is it reasonable to regard the results as reliable? Indeed, the anomaly the IPCC struggles to explain could well be swamped by recognised margins of error. (This difficulty is exacerbated by the continuing unavailability of the CRU’s raw data and metadata and by the evidence of manipulation disclosed in the CRU emails.)

    4. In any case, temperature trends “not statistically different” (see Harrabin/Jones interview) from the 1975-2009’s 0.161C happened in 1860-1880 and in 1910-1940. Therefore, as it’s commonly accepted that these latter warmings were not human-caused, 0.161C is not outside the boundaries of internal natural variability.

    5. Of course, all three warming periods could have exceeded the bounds of natural variability if they were forced by an external influence – e.g. solar flares, cosmic rays, orbital anomalies, undocumented cycles … etc. etc. No one attributes them to solar irradiance or volcanoes (the influences considered by the IPCC’s Chapter 9).

    6. The (in any case poor) correlation between GHG emissions and temperature increase became non-existent in the past 15 years (when Jones agreed the trend was “negative” although “not statistically significant”). Yet, during this period, emissions have rocketed.

    Your comments please, Peter.

  8. You seem to have gone to quite some lengths to convince yourself about Phil Jones with your “fully consistent observations”. Twisting his words would be a more straightforward description!

    If he can be so easily dismissed as “selling a product for which he receives a great deal of funding” why bother? He’s the bad boy who wrote all those emails. Remember? Why so much effort to try to show that he’s changing his line?

    Or, is it just you contrarians, as usual, misusing whatever science, or scientific statements, you can manage to misrepresent in order to justify your a priori position than the science of anthropogenic global warming is incorrect. It can’t be. Can it? It just doesn’t fit in with your well established ideological world view!

  9. PeterM:

    Professor Jones said this (and these are exactly his words): “As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different” and “the warming rates for all 4 periods [1860-1880, 1910-1940, 1975-1998 and 1975-2009] are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other”.

    Barry Brill summarised this by saying it is Jones’s view that recent warming is not unusual. Precisely why is that “twisting his words”? You really must try harder.

    Now – please comment on my précis of Brill’s article at 9982. Or is that too difficult for you?

  10. Peter

    Can you please explain what you believe my ‘well established ideological world view’ to be? I have asked you several times for clarification as I didn’t even know I had one, let alone allowed it to colour my viewpoint to the extent you seem to believe.

    We are not all as politically driven as you appear to be, so please explain yourself.

    Also please note Robins 9982. The variability-if it exists- is absurdly small. The idea we can accurately parse temperatures to this degree and then assign the extremely tiny variation to man is absurd.

    The world appears to have warmed marginally since the LIA. Who knew?

    Tonyb

  11. Robin,

    Prof Jones was correct in saying that the differences in the rates of warming in the early and late 20th centuries were not statistically different.

    What he did not say was that this showed that either or both of these were due to natural causes. Prof Jones has already said that the latter warming was human induced. The earlier warming is less certain but as I’ve pointed out previously, the blade of various hockey stick graphs starts around 1900 and would indicate that the earlier warming is largely anthropogenic too.

    TonyB,

    Yes, there are always a few cranks and eccentrics who think all sorts of odd things for no particular reason.

    However the main drivers for the campaign of disinformation on the AGW issue have been the right wing “think tanks”.

    This paper details how 141 English-language environmentally sceptical books published between 1972 and 2005 are linked to conservative think tanks.

    http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a793291693~db=all~order=page

    Faced with a choice between the credibility of established mainstream science and the obvious disinformation peddled by the right wing think tanks, and the right wing press who have also ‘helped’, most sensible people don’t have a problem in choosing.

    However those who have similar political predispositions: those who read the Daily Mail, The Spectator, The WSJ, ……….

  12. Peter, your link was genuinely interesting, but I am baffled as to why you think it is any sort of reply to my question.

    Robin conducted a survey a year ago which amply demonstrated we were not the pro smokimg, creationist, right wing lobby you believed us to be, yet still you persist in believing the propaganda that you think depicts us as such.

    Please, an explanation as to what you think my ideological world view is and why that colours my view of AGW, as your link certainly didn’t provide it.

    tonyb

  13. Peter said;

    “What he did not say was that this showed that either or both of these were due to natural causes. Prof Jones has already said that the latter warming was human induced. The earlier warming is less certain but as I’ve pointed out previously, the blade of various hockey stick graphs starts around 1900 and would indicate that the earlier warming is largely anthropogenic too.”

    As you know I’ve made quite a study of Co2. Let us assume for the moment that the pre industrial level of 280ppm is correct. Are you seriously saying that a rise of just a few ppm from this is enough for man to have caused catastrophic-or even noticeable and measurable-warming? How lomng do you think those extra couple of molecules stay around?

    If this is right it surely means that we have to live in this precise pre indstrial concentration forever or we will cause serious damage. Any progress that man can make will always therefore be at a price that is unacceptable, as carbon is an inevitable milestone to progress.

    Are you sure you aren’t a creationist who believes in the Garden of Eden and that we have screwed up the planet just by setting foot on it?

    I remember posing a philosophical question to Max along these lines a year or so ago. Max-do you remember the debate about living in an atmospheric soup of precise concentrations?

    tonyb

  14. Robin

    The Barry Brill article gives an excellent summary of the latest thought on AGW (and how this is changing).

    The excerpts from the Harrabin/Jones interview show a new slant on the pro-AGW argument, which is, indeed, refreshing. As Brill puts it

    The real value of the Harrabin/Jones interview is the fact that straight questions received straight answers, for the first time in recent memory.

    Jones still believes that mankind has been responsible for a part of the most recent warming, while agreeing that earlier warming cycles were caused primarily by natural causes. The reason given for attributing the most recent warming to mankind is that the models cannot explain it any other way

    This is truly an “argument from ignorance”, and it goes back to the logical fallacy in:

    1. Our models cannot explain the warming periods of the late 19th and early 20th century.
    2. We know that the warming of the late 20th century was caused, at least in part, by anthropogenic forcing.
    3. How do we know this?
    4. Because our models cannot explain it any other way.

    The fact that it has cooled after 2000, despite record increase in CO2, which should have caused significant warming according to the models, presents another dilemma. To attribute this cooling to natural variability (a.k.a. undefined natural forcing) while essentially ignoring any significant natural forcing (other than volcanoes or direct solar irradiance) over the previous warming periods is not logical.

    As Brill writes:

    There are a great many known unknowns, and perhaps just as many unknown unknowns.

    It is precisely the “unknown unknowns” that make the model projections of IPCC meaningless, as the current cooling period and earlier warming cycles have shown.

    Thanks for the link to a very good article, as I am sure even PeterM will have to agree.

    Max

  15. TonyB,

    Anthropogenic change to the climate isn’t all about CO2 emissions. Changes to the the forest cover and agricultural practices have an impact too.

    The hockey stick graphs do show a sharp rise in temperatures from around the start of the 20th century and continuing to the present time.

    The hockey stick graphs also show a longer term tendency of cooling until then. So its quite possible that the warming the earth experienced in the early 20th century was beneficial and enough to prevent any reoccurrance of an ice age glacial period.

    But its gone a fair bit past that now.

    PS There is no need to be baffled. Read again the sentence starting with “Yes, there are always a few…” :-)

  16. PeterM

    You wrote:

    both 20th century periods form part of the hockey stick blade. Are they unusual? I’d say they were

    Forget the “hockey stick”, Peter. It has been buried as a fraud.

    I’ll agree with you that our climate has been “unusual” since time began, because there is no “usual” climate.

    There were longer warm periods (MWP, Roman Optimum) and longer cool periods in between (Dark Ages, LIA), as well as shorter term multi-decadal oscillations of a few tenths of a degree C since the modern record started.

    I would call that all “unusual”, even though it is also quite “natural”.

    Max

  17. Max,

    You say “Jones still believes that mankind has been responsible for a part of the most recent warming….”

    Yes he did. Then you say

    “… while agreeing that earlier warming cycles were caused primarily by natural causes”

    Where did he say that? Or were you just making it up as usual?

  18. Max,

    You may think the hockey stick has been buried as a fraud, but then you think a lot of things which aren’t true!

  19. PeterM

    To my amazement (as well as amusement) you wrote:

    You may think the hockey stick has been buried as a fraud, but then you think a lot of things which aren’t true!

    Peter, you really need to get up-to-date and avoid what one critic has called “shut-eyed denial”. For a starter I’d recommend you read Andrew Montford’s “The Hockey Stick Illusion” (review below). It goes into a lot of detail, but is informative and a good read.
    http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/03/the-case-against-the-hockey-stick/

    As you will see, the hockey stick was comprehensively invalidated statistically by McIntyre and McKitrick as later confirmed independently by the Wegman committee.

    It has been refuted scientifically by over 20 studies from all over the world using several different methods and showing a MWP that was distinctly warmer than today as well as by the global Loehle non-tree ring study also showing MWP warmer than today. [I have provided links to all these studies previously on this thread. Did you fail to read them?]

    Open your eyes, Peter. It was a fraud.

    Max

  20. TonyB

    You asked

    Max-do you remember the debate about living in an atmospheric soup of precise concentrations?

    I do. This is the “intelligent design” version of our atmosphere, which Peter apparently endorses.

    Our atmosphere was created with a “Goldilocks just right” perfect composition, in order to result in a “Goldilocks just right” perfect temperature, but all this “intelligent design” is now being destroyed by evil industrial man.

    Sound like the rantings of a member of a fundamentalist doomsday cult?

    Or the “agenda driven science” of a politically motivated committee?

    Max

  21. Max,

    It looks like you may have missed my request. I was asking where you’d seen Prof Jones say that the early 20th century warming was caused “primarily by natural causes”?

  22. All:
    In Oz, a popular personality on ABC radio is Geraldine Doogue. She is hot on religious and spiritual matters, and interestingly she said this in part, last Saturday:

    “To say that the science of climate change has been under threat of late would be an understatement.
    Just for starters, there’s a Parliamentary Inquiry under way in Britain investigating the leaked data and emails from the prestigious Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
    And in Australia, an ETS [Emissions Trading Scheme] has slipped from the Rudd government’s ‘must achieve’ list and the ‘fizzer’ that was Copenhagen didn’t help convince people anywhere that the ‘climate problem’ is urgent, one of ‘right now’ proportions.
    Another result of the recent furores has been to mobilise scientists in the campaign to restore public faith in the science of climate change – and discuss whether the powerful Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (the IPCC) is itself in need of urgent reform.”

    To hear the rather laughable audio of an interview with a mathematician, in support of climate models, go to:
    http://www.abc.net.au/rn/saturdayextra/stories/2010/2851053.htm
    OR, you could skip the audio, and see the comments, of which that by Bob Jones is actually by me; Bob_FJ (the comment Email form asked for a full name)

  23. PeterM

    Jones’ take on causation per the interview, as I interpreted Jones’ answers:

    late 20th century warming: caused at least partly by established human factors

    early 20th century warming: largely uncertain about cause (ergo, the cause is not “established human factors” but some undefined factors, which are by definition not anthropogenic).

    late 19th century warming: same as early 20th century, but more uncertainty on measurements plus length of cycle.

    early 21st century cooling: too short to tell why model projections of significant warming have not materialized. [Met Office, which is closely related to Jones, attributes this to natural variability, a.k.a. natural forcing.]

    Hope this clears it up for you, Peter, or do you have another take on this?

    If so, please state it.

    Max

  24. Max,

    There are many climate studies showing hockey stick shaped graphs. The dispute over Mann et al’s paper of 1999 is the one I think you are referring to however.

    Mann also published in Sept 2008. That paper seems to have not been subject to the same level of rabid attack as the 1999 paper. Does that mean its now been generally accepted?

    Or are you arguing, if it was indeed true that Mann’s 1999 paper wasn’t totally conclusive, as you seem to be suggesting, that the same criticism can be applied, to any paper, by any author, using any method, if the graph ends up looking like a hockey stick? Hockey sticks just aren’t allowed any more? They been outlawed by the Wegman committee?

    You are probably straying too far into religious territory with your ideas of intelligent design and the atmosphere. Some time ago I happened to switch on the TV during the day and there was an American evangelical telling us that global warming wasn’t a problem because God had designed the Earth complete with oil and coal fields etc.

    If oil and coal wasn’t safe to burn, as humanity saw fit, we were told by the good preacher, then God wouldn’t have left it there in such abundance. I’m not sure that I have an answer to that one!

  25. It’s time for this incredibly long-lived thread to move to a new home for the reasons that I gave here:

    http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=104#comment-49033

    Comments are now closed and the replacement thread can be found at:

    Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs: Number 2

    I have moved the most recent few comments to the new thread to get things going. Please note that there is a link to this thread prominently displayed there so that older comments can be linked to easily. For those who have not noticed, it is possible to link to individual comments by right clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘Copy Link Location’ and then setting up a link in the usual way.

    Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this remarkable discussion.

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