This is a continuation of a remarkable thread that has now received 10,000 comments running to well over a million words. Unfortunately its size has become a problem and this is the reason for the move.
The history of the New Statesman thread goes back to December 2007 when Dr David Whitehouse wrote a very influential article for that publication posing the question Has Global Warming Stopped? Later, Mark Lynas, the magazine’s environment correspondent, wrote a furious reply, Has Global Warming Really Stopped?
By the time the New Statesman closed the blogs associated with these articles they had received just over 3000 comments, many from people who had become regular contributors to a wide-ranging discussion of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, its implications for public policy and the economy. At that stage I provided a new home for the discussion at Harmless Sky.
Comments are now closed on the old thread. If you want to refer to comments there then it is easy to do so by left-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘Copy Link Location’ and then setting up a link in the normal way.
Here’s to the next 10,000 comments.
Useful links:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
The original Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs thread is here with 10,000 comments.
Max #2498
“Sure it warmed, Peter. Duh! It has been warming since 1850. That is not the issue.”
It has actually been warming since 1698.
Regarding Real Climate and Soros I originally posted this here a couple of decades ago (although it seems longer)
“In fact, attacking the opposition seems to be a prerequisite at RealClimate as Roger Pielke, Jr., wrote on January 14, 2005 (emphasis added):
The site’s focus has been exclusively on attacking those who invoke science as the basis for their opposition to action on climate change, folks such as George Will, Senator James Inhofe, Michael Crichton, McIntyre and McKitrick, Fox News, and Myron Ebell. Whether intended or not, the site has clearly aligned itself squarely with one political position on climate change.
I guess this puts me in good company. Yet, potentially more disturbing is the power RealClimate has within the mainstream media, as well as who appears to be funding and/or supporting this website. Press members love to cite RealClimate as the final word on global warming, and virtually always refer to it and its writers in nothing but glowing terms as this piece at Time.com demonstrates:
The Internet wasn’t invented for RealClimate specifically, but it’s hard to imagine a site more in line with the Web’s original purpose: scientific communication. An assembly of climate researchers gives readers what’s lacking virtually everywhere else — straightforward presentation of the physical evidence for global warming, discussed with patience, precision and rigor.
Yes, a straightforward presentation that gives readers only one side of this controversial issue, a fact that some believe is guided by those behind RealClimate. In a February 14, 2005, article about the debate concerning Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” theory of global temperatures — which alarmists like Gore and Schmidt base much of their hysteria on, and was thoroughly debunked by Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick – the Wall Street Journal reported:
On a Web site launched with the help of an environmental group (www.realclimate.org), [Mann] has sought to debunk the debunking, and counter what he calls a campaign by fossil-fuel interests to discredit his work.
The folks at RealClimate responded quickly to this accusation:
Readers of the Feb. 14th, 2005 Wall Street Journal may have gotten the impression that RealClimate is in some way affiliated with an environmental organisation. We wish to stress that although our domain is being hosted by Environmental Media Services, and our initial press release was organised for us by Fenton Communications, neither organization was in any way involved in the initial planning for RealClimate, and have never had any editorial or other control over content. Neither Fenton nor EMS has ever paid any contributor to RealClimate.org any money for any purpose at any time. Neither do they pay us expenses, buy our lunch or contract us to do research.
Maybe so, but ActivistCash.com wrote the following about EMS et al (emphasis added):
EMS is the communications arm of leftist public relations firm Fenton Communications. Based in Washington, in the same office suite as Fenton, EMS claims to be “providing journalists with the most current information on environmental issues.” A more accurate assessment might be that it spoon-feeds the news media sensationalized stories, based on questionable science, and featuring activist “experts,” all designed to promote and enrich David Fenton’s paying clients, and build credibility for the nonprofit ones. It’s a clever racket, and EMS & Fenton have been running it since 1994. […]
It’s called “black marketing,” and Environmental Media Services has become the principal reason Fenton Communications is so good at it. EMS lends an air of legitimacy to what might otherwise be dismissed (and rightly so) as fear-mongering from the lunatic fringe. In addition to pre-packaged “story ideas” for the mass media, EMS provides commentaries, briefing papers, and even a stable of experts, all carefully calculated to win points for paying clients. These “experts,” though, are also part of the ruse. Over 70% of them earn their paychecks from current or past Fenton clients, all of which have a financial stake in seeing to it that the scare tactics prevail. It’s a clever deception perpetrated on journalists who generally don’t consider do-gooder environmentalists to be capable of such blatant and duplicitous “spin.” […]
[W]hile Environmental Media Services was started, and is still run, by staffers of Fenton Communications, it was officially instituted as a “project” of the Tides Center in 1994. This gave Fenton some plausible deniability and initially shielded him from the suggestion that EMS was just a shill for his clients. It has also provided a ready-made funding mechanism for foundations, “progressive” companies, and other Fenton clients who don’t want their contributions to EMS noted for the public record [Editor’s note: despite the logistical roadblocks set up by Tides, our research still has been able to reverse-engineer several million dollars in foundation grants to EMS].
For those that have forgotten, Tides is the far-left organization Teresa Heinz-Kerry contributes millions of her former husband’s fortune to. Making things more interesting, the founder of EMS, Arlie Schardt, has “moonlighted” as a project director for Tides:
Schardt’s career connections have resulted in a collaboration that has made EMS much more influential than its small size would suggest. Schardt, moonlighting as a project director at the Tides Center, saw just a hair under $1 million directed from Tides to EMS in 1999.
Upping the ante, Schardt has ties to Al Gore and the environmental group Friends of the Earth which runs BushGreenwatch.org. This is significant, for the EMS employee that registered RealClimate’s domain name, Betsy Ensley, “manages BushGreenwatch.org, a joint EMS-MoveOn.org public awareness website.”
As for Fenton Communications, recent announcements at its website are sure to raise some eyebrows. For instance, “Fenton Communications Launches Green-Tech Division” from May 27 (emphasis added):
Fenton Communications has been deeply involved in environmental issues since its founding in 1982. The firm publicized the first reports of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, helped environmental NGOs at the Kyoto Global Warming Summit, and worked with Vice-President Al Gore to publicize the issues.
Or how about “Ad Age: Fenton, MoveOn Form Democratic Advertising Network to Help Win 2008 Elections from May 6 (emphasis added):
Fenton Communications and client MoveOn.org announced today that the still unnamed “network” would use mainstream advertising executives to help produce advertising to help change the playing field this year. […]
At the moment, the team has no clear candidate to support. So it will go after presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain. Mr. Fenton said the first ads to come out of the group will be aimed at McCain, “telling the truth about John McCain and his policies, some about McCain’s reputation and his turnabout on bunch of positions as he panders to the right.” […]
While MoveOn isn’t going to be the only group to use the team, MoveOn will get the first ads, which the team hopes to have ready within six weeks.
Add it all up, and although RealClimate’s website is hosted and supported by an organization with ties to Al Gore, George Soros’s MoveOn.org, Tides, Friends of the Earth, and Fenton Communications, I’m sure none of these entities has any involvement in its content or funding.
If you believe that, you probably also think humans can control the temperature of the planet.”
tonyb
TonyB,
You say “The site’s (realclimate] focus has been exclusively on attacking those who invoke science as the basis for their opposition to action on climate change, folks such as George Will, Senator James Inhofe, Michael Crichton, McIntyre and McKitrick, Fox News, and Myron Ebell. Whether intended or not, the site has clearly aligned itself squarely with one political position on climate change.”
James Inhofe, Fox News? You cannot be serious! Realclimate’s focus is actually on trying to explain the science of the consensus position. If I have one critricism of them, it would be that they don’t sufficiently acknowledge that opposition to climate science is motivated by political and not scientific considerations.
“One political position on climate change”?? Id say that most in the sensible regions of the political spectrum, and who wouldn’t agree that they held just one political position, wouldn’t have a problem with acceptance of the consensus position, as represented by the NAS, RS , the IPCC etc , but there are those on the fringes, mainly on the political right, who certainly do have that problem..
So, and not for the first time, science has to face up to, and face down, the political extremists.
Peter #2502
Please read the context and the dates: I did not say those things.
There is a pile of additional information on Real Climate and George Soros and the Fenton connection and many articles written on these connections which seems to have passed you by, in the same way as Connelleys connection with Real Climate and his interference at Wikipedia also seem to have eluded you.
The idea that opposition is based on political considerations is a view you have frequently tried to float here to no avail. We are more interested in the science than the politics here, but you continually try to steer us in a political direction.
If you ARE interested in the science (and there has been precious little indication of that in the last few months) how about commenting on my #2489 quoting a paper from the UK’s chief climate scientist?
tonyb
PeterM
I’d agree with almost every word of the sentence you wrote, 2502 (with one key exception):
It should read:
And, Peter, they try doing this by censoring out any opinion other than their own, i.e. the so-called “consensus position”.
The easiest way to get “consensus” is to block out any contradicting evidence or opinion.
But that is precisely what makes it a one-sided forum rather than a serious site for discussing the many open scientific questions related to our planet’s climate.
So my advice to you remains (2497), if you want to really know what the scientific data are saying:
It’s good advice, Peter – believe me.
Max
TonyB
Thanks for your 2489. It has taken me some time to go through both references, but here are my comments.
David MacKay’s letter to Matt Ridley is interesting. It shows staunch support of the so-called “mainstream view” and defense of the climate science community in spite of the Climategate revelations.
But is also shows the beginning of a doubt in the premise that the 2xCO2 climate sensitivity is high enough to result in a real danger from AGW – even a reluctant concession that it might be as low as 1°C (i.e. no net positive feedback, as concluded by the Spencer observations on clouds).
MacKay goes on to cite a few of the more common arguments in favor of the “mainstream” position.
He uses the example of Arctic sea ice, citing a data record that started in 1979, to make the point that current warming is both “unprecedented” and “fast”.
He then cites the PETM warming as “evidence that supports the proposition that the sensitivity is greater than 2 degrees”, adding another event of CO2-caused warming in the “Toarcian, which took place 183 M years ago in the Jurassic”.
He supports the IPCC claim of accelerated sea level rise and goes on to suggest that IPCC assessments on future sea-level rise might actually be conservative, “because they omitted the potential contributions from polar ice sheets”. [Note: This is not exactly correct. They do include a calculated sea level rise component from the gradual melting of polar ice sheets, but not from a suggested sudden collapse of a part of an ice sheet.]
Matt Ridley’s response is to the point and quite specific.
First, regarding the polarization (which MacKay has also mourned) he points out:
(A good argument against using the one-sided censored opinions on RealClimate as a basis for deciding what is really going on, as far as “climate science” is concerned, as I pointed out to Peter.)
He then goes on to systematically deconstruct MacKay’s arguments of “unprecedented” and “fast” warming plus high 2xCO2 climate sensitivity, point by point.
Ridley points out that the sea ice record only started in 1979 and that there are older records of sea ice retreat in the 1920s and 1930s, which were just as rapid and extensive as the current retreat.
He also points out:
As for projected 21st century warming of 3°C he writes:
To MacKay’s comment that “we should not be blasé about 2C [warming] in 200 years” he writes.
To the question of the 2xCO2 climate sensitivity, Ridley quotes a Nature Geoscience paper, which concludes:
He then counters the PETM argument for a high CO2 climate sensitivity with a reference to a recent study, which concluded “something other than carbon dioxide caused much of the heating” and then added:
As a self-proclaimed erstwhile “believer” in the premise that AGW could represent a potential danger, he writes
Ridley concludes with a very pertinent statement:
Indeed!
Ridley comes off a lot more knowledgeable than MacKay, whose arguments were fairly weak.
An interesting exchange, Tony. Thanks for the links.
Max
TonyB
Forgot to mention another important point made by Matt Ridley concerning the rate of recent warming as compared to earlier warming cycles.
Ridley cites the Phil Jones BBC interview, where Jones concedes that the most recent warming (1975-1998 or 1975-2009) is not distinguishable from earlier warming periods prior to significant human CO2 emission (1910-1940 or 1860-1880).
He also points out that the latest rate of warming was exceeded in earlier warming cycles (Younger Dryas, etc.)
Just two more nails in the “unprecedented rate of rise” claim made by MacKay.
Max
From WUWT:
Levels of most ozone-depleting substances in the atmosphere have declined significantly since the 1987 Montreal Protocol was signed, he noted.
AND:
The thinning ozone layer could be leaving the world’s whales scarred from severe sunburn, experts have warned.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/8122026/Whales-sunburned-by-thinning-ozone.html
Bob_FJ
Sorry to hear about the surburned whales caused by the thinning ozone layer.
Guess it must be due to all that human pollution with CFCs.
But wait!
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5go2RnKHmYcJjFtzH-vKYV2gs_yJA
Oops! Tell it to the whales.
(And these same clowns want to “reverse” global warming by cutting back on human CO2 emissions?)
Max
PeterM and TonyB
Re ur exchange on RealClimate (2501/2502)
RealClimate comments on James Inhofe, Michael Crichton and hurricane scientist, William Gray from back in 2005.
By Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann [the hockey “schtick” guy]:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/09/inhofe-and-crichton-together-at-last/
A quote:
Yawn!
But, wait a minute! I thought RealClimate was not a political hatchet site, but a serious forum on climate science whose “focus is actually on trying to explain the science of the consensus position.”
Hmmm…
Max
PeterM
From your pulpit you preached:
Be careful what you wish for, Peter.
“Science” [represented by a number of scientists who are skeptical of the “dangerous AGW” premise] is beginning to “face down” the “political [climate] extremists” [such as James E. Hansen. Joe Romm, Michael Mann, etc.].
Is that what you had in mind?
If not, what were you specifically talking about?
Max
I’m just wondering if I’ve landed on the same Matt Ridley?
This one is saying:
“The ozone hole and the greenhouse effect are
classic tragedies of the commons in the making:
each time you burn a gallon of gas to drive into
town, you reap the benefit of it, but the
environmental cost is shared with all five billion
other members of the human race. You are a “free
rider.” Being rational, you drive, and the
atmosphere’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide is
“overgrazed,” and the globe warms. Even if
individuals will benefit in the long run from the
prevention of global warming, in the short run such
prevention will cost them dear. As Michael
McGinnis and Elinor Ostrom, of Indiana University
at Bloomington, put it in a recent paper, global
warming is a “classic dilemma of collective action: a
large group of potential beneficiaries facing diffuse
and uncertain gains is much harder to organize for
collective action than clearly defined groups who
are being asked to suffer easily understandable
costs.”
Which all sounds very valid
http://courses.umass.edu/envsc101/e101/selfish.pdf
PeterM
Thanks for your (1993) quotation by Ridley.
If you have read his latest letter to MacKay, you will have seen that he switched from being an AGW [and apparently a “CFC-caused ozone hole”] believer to espousing a position rather similar to that of Judith Curry, when she wrote last week:
Ridley says that he changed his conclusion on the IPCC assessments after a closer examination of the Vostock ice core records showed that CO2 was not the driver of temperature (as had been claimed by Al Gore and others) and, even more, after the Mann hockey stick was scientifically discredited by M+M, the Wegman committee and the NAS panel (see Montford’s book on this).
As Ridley wrote:
All makes sense to me, Peter.
Max
PS As I wrote you a few times earlier, I had a similar experience to that of Ridley: at first I accepted the IPCC view, as expressed in the TAR, but after SPM 2007 came out, I started checking things in more detail. As the evidence began to mount, I also found that, like Ridley, “I could no longer in good faith support the IPCC and its assessments”.
Max,
Its fair enough to change an opinion of course. However in your case I don’t believe you have. There is no evidence for what you are claiming.
In Matt Ridley’s case, its pretty obvious that he’s of a very right wing disposition. He’s not a scientist, he’s an economist and businessman, and probably not a very good one at that. Is he the same Matt Ridley who was the CEO of Northern Rock just before it crashed in 2008?
He’s obviously decided to re-join his tribal group and change to denying the science rather than using phrases like “but tax them until it hurts”. That sort of talk isn’t going to win him too many friends.
It’s a bit damp here today, with heavy rains warned to come later and overnight. Victoria again on widespread flood watch. Been browsing around and found this on http://www.climatescience.org.nz/
Straight Talking by a British member of the EU parliament:
Scientific American readers’ survey rejects Warmism (9/ November)
EXTRACT: A new survey of reader opinions comes to some remarkable conclusions. Although the journal itself cleaves to the old orthodoxy on Warmism, it’s clear that its readers take a different view, and by a very wide margin. More than 6000 have responded, with nearly 20% claiming PhD status. More than three quarters (77%) believe that current climate change is caused by natural processes. More than two thirds (68%) think we should do nothing about climate change, and are powerless to stop it. No fewer than 90% think that climate scientists should debate their findings in public (they are notoriously reluctant to do so), while 83% believe that the UN-IPCC is corrupt, prone to group-think, and has a political agenda.
http://rogerhelmermep.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/scientific-american-readers-survey-rejects-warmism/
Hmmmmm!
Brute,Re environmentally friendly performance cars: Mini Cooper.
I’m disappointed that they are, as you claim, just a “girlie” car in the U.S.
I would certainly love to have one, but I can’t justify the cost.
If you would prefer something two sizes larger, and perhaps take it to the full Nurburg Ring, maybe try one of these new beasties from Deutschland?
5 cylinder, 2.5 litre with big turbo
224 kW & 440 Nm torque, 6 sp Man
A bit thirsty at 10.4 L/100 Km though. (My much bigger diesel camper van does ~8.5 L/100 Km around town)
Not a boulevard ride I suspect either, with 19 inch wheels etc, and not cheap at about $60,000.
Oh BTW, we do build cars and bits like engines and even export them. We even used to KD build that head-shaking Ford F100 and above, and that silly Bronco, until the inexplicable demand sensibly evaporated. GM have sold our sporty “Holden Monaro” under a different name, and so-on.
Nature is a bitch Part #1
Yesterday, before the radically cooler conditions and rain of today, in Melbourne, it was rather warm at around 32C as a consequence of strong northerly winds. And, although I aint not seen nary one critter, apparently I’m surrounded nearby by plague locusts driven in by those winds:
Locust plague reaches Melbourne
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/locust-plague-reaches-melbourne-20101112-17pw1.html
Strange how, when Victoria and southern NSW might expect bountiful crops following the magnificent rains of September and October alone, there may be significant losses from locusts!
It’s nothing new though. Back in 1974/5, the locusts were amazing to rookie me in northern suburbs, flying into ones face and hair, splattering ones car, and clogging car radiators with an awful burnt stink. (and not easy to remove)
Thanks a lot
Al Gore’s Climate Exchange Utterly Fails… Media Ignores It All
http://bigjournalism.com/wthuston/2010/11/08/al-gores-climate-exchange-utterly-fails-media-ignores-it-all/
PeterM
You have offered your personal opinion on why Matt Ridley and I changed our positions from accepting IPCC’s AGW story to deciding that we “could no longer in good faith support the IPCC and its assessments”.
[This, you apparently feel, is the reason he “changed his mind” on the validity of the science supporting the IPCC story – a rather convoluted conclusion on your part, you’ll have to admit.]
In my case, you have assumed that I never really accepted any part of the IPCC story, again for some nefarious political reasons.
But, hey!
Can you explain why Judith Curry came to the same conclusion, as she wrote last week?
Do you have an off-the-cuff explanation for this?
Has Curry become a right-wing lunatic? Has she fallen on her head?
Or could it be that she simply concluded that she “could no longer in good faith support the IPCC and its assessments” (as she wrote)?
What do you think, Peter?
Max
Max 2505
That was a very good summary. I think Ridley makes a good case and Mackay seemed to me to be on the back foot.
Peter semed to go rapidly through a ‘Ridley is great’ phase when he thought he was on ‘his’ side, but curiously it seems the guy suddenly turned into a right wing demon with no talents when Peter realised the guy had once been a believer but had become a sceptic.
tonyb
TonyB
Yeah. Thanks for your 2520.
The good thing about Peter’s rather strange opinions regarding AGW is that they are 100% predictable.
If you agree with him on the scientific validity of the IPCC assessments, you are a part of “science”.
If you disagree with him you are a “right-wing nutter”.
This, in short, has become Peter’s “paradigm” or “belief system”, and he has exposed it frequently on this thread.
As a result, he cannot acknowledge it when a knowledgeable climate scientist like Judith Curry (who is certainly no “right wing nutter”) writes on an open site:
This statement is a direct challenge to Peter’s paradigm, so it cannot be acknowledged to exist. Instead we have “well, what she really meant was…” rationalizations.
That is what “denial” in its classical sense is all about.
This also explains why Peter shies away from discussing the “science” itself, preferring to repeat his personal “paradigm” ad nauseam, instead.
Max
I must admit I have quite worked out Judith Curry yet. Possibly she hasn’t done that herself either, and is using her present blogging phase to crystalise
her own thoughts.
I found this recent quote:
“Scrutiny from scientific skeptics makes the science stronger, either by identifying problems that can be addressed or by increasing confidence when problems and errors are not found. Scrutiny from [politically motivated] contrarians and deniers and the noise generated by such people do distract scientists from their real work… The scientists involved in the CRU emails are dismissing certain people as skeptics, assuming that they all have political motivations. Well, the motivation of the skeptic isn’t really the point. The point is whether or not they have a valid argument.”
Judith Curry is course absoulutely right about scrutiny from scientific sceptics. She is well aware, too, of the existence of “[politically motivated] contrarians and deniers” but yet still feels they have some positive contribution to make.
She used to be able to see the difference, so why not now? How is it possible to ‘disunderstand’, if that is the correct word for losing one’s understanding of something.
I’m sure Judith Curry would agree there is no point arguing Evolution with Creationsists because their objection to Darwin is religious rather than scientific. So why does it make sense to positively engage those whose objection to Climate science is primarily political?
Max, Reur 2508
Sunburnt Whales…. Willis Eschenbach has a new article over at WUWT
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/12/save-the-sunburnt-whales/#more-27746
It and many of the comments are very amusing in a nauseating sort of way, and it is astonishing that such tunnel-vision rubbish could come from the combined efforts of six biology “scientists“, pass peer review(?) and be published by the Royal Society.
I’m reminded of an occasion a few years ago chatting to a lady about her ongoing doctoral thesis thingy on researching loss of bone density in mothers during pregnancy. I asked her what her sample size was, and its randomness, and was rather surprised at the answer. I enquired was it adequate after dividing it into certain groups, such as changes in diet, smoking, alcohol, calcium supplements, or no changes and so-on. (including was there recovery after pregnancy). The blood seemed to drain from here face as the gears went whirring inside her head. I bumped into her again a year or two later and asked how did it go, and she assured me it went fine. I also have to wonder about her supervisor in all this. Thank goodness that these guys don’t build bridges and the like!
Fun news. We too found very much similar and Useful a week ago.
TonyB,
I wouldn’t say I’d ever thought Matt Ridley was “great”. Unlike, that is, the shareholders of the Northern Rock building society! However, the argument he was making originally at least was cohesive and non-denialist.
So, after the debacle of his reckless incompetence at the Northern Rock bank ending up costing the UK taxpayer some $70 billion, it seems that he’s now turned his expertise, sorry non-expertise, towards the field of climate science. Maybe he’s considering it a form of penance? Maybe he’s set himself a goal to influence public opinion just enough to enable the Government to cut back on research grants which may be less than 0.1% of this total? If so then it will be all worthwhile won’t it?
I’ll bet he’ll be keen to talk about climate science but he’ll not keen to talk about the Northern Rock any more. He’d be putting those conditions on any interview he might be asked to give.
He’s a crook. I guess its down to you Brits, but if I had my way I’d be giving him plenty of time to learn about about Climate Science from behind the bars of a prison cell!