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.
PeterM
Your latest does not provide anything new to the discussion.
If you wish to discuss the issues surrounding the ongoing scientific debate on AGW, I would be most happy to oblige, but I am not interested in your thoughts on what Sarah Palin’s, Gordon Brown’s or Barak Obama’s opinions on this topic might be.
Your cited Rahmstorf blurb is not very convincing. As you must know if you have delved into this topic at all, ice core data are notoriously inaccurate and dicey. You can use them to “prove” almost any point you want to make. (Maybe Rahmstorf, an ocean current specialist, is unaware of this problem, or maybe, as a climate alarmist, he uses it anyway to try to prove his point.) I would not call this empirical data to support a 2xCO2 sensitivity of 3+C. (In fact, it shows that the CO2 increase followed the temperature increase by several centuries, hardly a convincing argument for GH warming from CO2).
Rahmstorf even cites the comprehensively discredited Mann hockey stick! Citing such rubbish is a very weak argument, and makes Rahmstorf look a bit foolish. (It’s almost as silly as citing IPCC AR4 WG1 or SPM 2007 as “scientific evidence”!)
You need to show studies based on actual physical observations that demonstrate that clouds will exert a strongly net positive feedback with warming. Unfortunately, Spencer et al. and Lindzen and Choi have just published studies based on actual physical observations that show exactly the opposite, thereby directly invalidating the assumed 2xCO2 GH impact of 3+C based on model simulations.
Also the NOAA record on measured atmospheric water vapor content shows that this has decreased since 1948, despite an overall warming, thereby raising serious doubts regarding the model-based assumptions of constant relative humidity (which even the short-term study by Minschwaner + Dessler has shown was incorrect, resulting in a significant exaggeration of the estimated water vapor feedback).
Peter, you have got to come with some better stuff rather than some oceanographer’s poorly substantiated ramblings.
Max
Max,
Any scientific discussion his never going to get anywhere. You’ll just dismiss it as waffle or unproven or whatever. You just don’t ‘believe’ in it. And don’t give me all that crap about studying the science carefully. You’d made up your mind long before you picked up a text book and started doing any calculations.
So lets concentrate on what you do believe in. Like not offending the angels, or the gods, with ‘arrogant’ talk about anthropogenic global warming!
Max,
No I’m an optimist. Well most of the time anyway, although you do your best to make me think I’m wrong from time to time. I do believe that we’ll get our act together in time.
No doubt you’re an optimist about your house not burning down too. But I’m sure that your expectations on that point aren’t based on optimism alone. Or maybe they are? Maybe there are no smoke alarms?
And maybe you are so optimistic that you’ve decided that you don’t need any fire insurance? Why bother spending 2% of your income on that when you can just trust to luck?
Brute,
Second part of above is meant for you – not Max.
Pete,
I’m not trying to convince you of anything…..you’re free to think and do whatever you’d like……I do object when other people force me to think the same way that they do or force me to adopt, (and pay for), their enviro-religious beliefs.
I’ve never understood the Warmist drive to force others to adhere to their viewpoint ……it creates resentment. If you want to live a “green” lifestyle with all of the other doomsday cultists, feel free………just leave everyone else alone. If others are attracted to your movement, your goal just may be achieved. You catch more flies with honey as the saying goes………Start private groups and collect funds from likeminded kooks to fund your “green” initiatives……if it’s so popular and the sentiment is so strong, I’m certain that you’ll be able to fund algae fuel farms, perpetual motion electrical generators and provide funding for research on self levitating “green” vehicles.
Just think Pete; you could be the Lenny da Vinci of our time. School children all over the world may be taught the historic revolutionary endeavors of Peter Martin and how he saved the planet from certain destruction by virtue of his “green” ideas/inventions.
Attraction rather than promotion should be your creed………forcing people to do anything against their will bring nothing but umbrage against your cause. No one likes being lectured to or be compelled to do anything………personally, if I’m forced to do something, I’ll rebel, simply because I resent being told what to do.
Your analogy regarding fire insurance is sophistry and you know it. I don’t carry meteorite insurance, gamma ray insurance or insurance in the event my house is swallowed up by a black hole either……simply because the data doesn’t exist to support the expense……the same rational thought applies to the global warming theory……the data doesn’t support the assumption (You’ve given me an idea though………maybe I’ll begin selling global warming insurance to dupes such as yourself and retire to The Maldives……I understand a man can purchase land there cheap as the entire island is certain to be overrun with the sea due to global warming).
I read somewhere that Al Gore just purchased a sprawling oceanfront estate there as a future investment to hedge against fluctuations in the green energy futures market.
Bonn or bust – The UN’s last, desperate bid for unelected world government
There are not many empty seats in the dismal, echoing conference chamber in the ghastly concrete box that is the Hotel Maritim here in Bonn, where the UN’s latest attempt to maneuver the 194 States Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change gets underway today.
The “international community”, as it is now called, is here in full force, in the shape of expensively-suited, shiny-shod bureaucrats with an urbane manner and absolutely no knowledge of climate science whatsoever.
However, one empty chair is a pointer of things to come. The Holy See – a tiny nation in its own right, with a billion citizens around the world – has left its chair empty. And that is significant. If “global warming” still mattered, the Vatican would make sure that its representatives were present throughout this gloomy gathering of world-government wannabes.
This emergency conference, called by the UN’s bureaucrats because they were terrified that Cancun this December might fail as spectacularly as Copenhagen did last year, is a much quieter affair than Copenhagen. Not only has the air of triumphalism gone, after the scandals of Climategate, Himalayagate, Amazongate and so forth, but the belief that “global warming” is a global crisis has largely gone too.
There are a few true-believers left among the national delegates, but more of them than before are open to discussion of the previously-forbidden question – what if the climate extremists have made the whole thing up?
The Chinese Xinhua News Agency, for instance, came up to the table manned by the environmental campaigners of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which takes a hard-boiled, cynical view of the notion that a tiny increase in the atmospheric concentration of a trace gas is likely to cause a thousand international disasters.
The reporters were genuinely interested to hear that there is another side to the story. Huan Gongdi, the Agency’s senior correspondent in Germany, asked me what I thought of the Copenhagen accord (a waste of time), what was happening in Bonn (a desperate attempt to ram through a binding Treaty that can be put in front of the US Senate before the mid-term elections make Senate acceptance of any such treaty unthinkable), and whether or not there was a climate crisis anyway (there isn’t).
I explained to Mr. Huan that even if the UN had not exaggerated the warming effect of CO2 many times over there was still nothing we could do about the supposed “crisis”, because we were emitting so little of the stuff in the first place.
For the record, I did the sum in front of him. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 today is about 388 parts per million by volume.
However, we are adding just 2 ppmv a year to the air. So the warming we cause each year, even if one believes the UN’s wild exaggerations of CO2’s warming effect, is just 4.7 times the natural logarithm of the proportionate increase in CO2 concentration from 388 to 390 ppmv.
Thus, 4.7 ln(390/388) = 0.043 Fahrenheit degrees – less than a twentieth of a Fahrenheit degree of “global warming” every year. That is all. Putting it another way, it would take almost a quarter of a century with no carbon-emitting activity at all – not a single train, plane, automobile, or fossil-fueled power station – to forestall just 1 Fahrenheit degree of “global warming”.
That is why no Treaty based on controlling the amount of carbon dioxide the world emits can possibly work. And that is why there is no hurry anyway. The only reason for the UN’s sense of urgency – a panic no longer felt by the majority of the delegates here – is that the bureaucrats know the game is up. Opinion polls throughout the free world show that no one now believes a word of the climate extremists’ nonsense any more. If they can’t get a binding treaty this year, they won’t get one at all, and they know it.
I shall be reporting frequently from the conference as events unfold.
Hi everyone,
Been away, but had a chance to check the thread again. Whew! You guys are still at it toe-to-toe! I confess to not even looking at “#1”, skipped right to #2 and it still took a half hour to skim through it.
If I may offer a viewpoint from the lay-American point of view: The polls all show a clear drop in public concern as a result of “Hadley-gate”. Average Americans, like average Australians, Britons, Swiss, etc. are smart enough to know a scam when they see one. It’s been fun to watch the squirming of the Warmers as the whole house of cards has come tumbling down.
I am also happy to see that finally there appears to be some interest in a thorough statistical analysis of the data. I am confident that if all the real original data (if it still exists!) is carefully analyzed, that there will not be a statistical correlation between human produced atmospheric CO2 and temperature variation.
I’ll try to visit more often
PeterM
In his excellent book, The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb writes about “epistemic arrogance” (tunneling and thinking narrowly), and how (and why) many “experts” who think they know how to forecast really cannot.
He points out that forecasts made by “experts” are no more accurate, and usually less so, than those made by “non-experts”, due to this arrogance. What an expert knows when making a prediction is far less important than what he/she does not know. But, in his arrogance, the “expert” doesn’t even know this!
The three basic fallacies which Taleb lists are:
It is quite apparent that IPCC, with its myopic fixation on human-caused GHGs (in particular CO2) has fallen into the trap of this “epistemic arrogance”; it has also misunderstood “the random nature of the variables being forecast”
With its “our computers can only explain it with human forcing” logic, IPCC has underestimated the importance of the error rate due to natural variability, which has been “far more significant than the projection itself” (as we have seen for the period after 2000, as well as in the multi-decadal warming/cooling cycles in the record prior to the 1976-2000 “poster” period)
With the ludicrous projections to year 2100 (and even beyond!), IPCC has obviously failed to “take into account forecast degradation as the projected period lengthens”.
While the book has nothing specifically to do with climate science per se, Chapter 11 describes the flawed IPCC forecasting process fairly accurately.
I can highly recommend this book to you, Peter. It is an eye-opener.
Max
PeterM
To demonstrate how stupid and arrogant your statement is (252), let me play it back to you:
Does this fit for you, Peter?
Max
PS Bring real “science”, Peter (i.e. studies showing that your dangerous AGW premise is supported by empirical data derived from actual physical observations), not “op-eds” by someone, who even gets his data screwed up. This is not “science”, and it certainly is not “empirical evidence”.
Brute
You wrote to our friend PeterM:
You may want to reconsider “black hole insurance”.
CERN in Geneva has a project going, which will attempt to recreate “Big Bang” conditions, and (as a side benefit) identify the “Higgins boson” and “dark matter”. They had a breakthrough a couple of weeks ago, when they created several “mini-Big Bangs”.
Enviro groups were very concerned that they might create stable “black holes” that could devour CERN, the scientists and a good part of Geneva and surroundings (the anthropogenic black hole threat).
The project will supposedly cost $ 9.4 billion, which sounds like a lot, but is a drop in the bucket compared to what IPCC AR4 cost the developed world’s taxpayers.
And with the IPCC report, we didn’t even get a “bang” for our “bucks”; just a 3,000 page sales pitch for cap ‘n tax.
Max
BTW, if you want to buy “black hole” coverage, I have a friend at SwissRe that can give you a very attractive introductory rate. It’s slightly more expensive than current “global warming catastrophe” coverage (since it has a higher statistical probability of occurring, now that insurance statisticians have downgraded the “GWC” risk following Climategate, etc.)
PeterM
There has been a lively discussion on Bart Verheggen’s blog on the statistical robustness of the CO2 temperature correlation, with a blogger named VS, who is obviously well versed in econometrics and statistics in general, raising basic questions.
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/global-average-temperature-increase-giss-hadcru-and-ncdc-compared/#comment-3871
The point made is that without a statistically robust correlation between CO2 and temperature, the case for CO2 temp causation is very weak (if not invalidated).
The questions raised by VS remain unanswered on the site, despite a lot of back and forth discussion.
Citing a paper by Beenstock + Reingewertz using econometrics,
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/econometrics-vs-climate-science
the cited article states:
The results of this analysis showed that over the short-term period 1940-2000, forcing from solar irradiance resulted in 0.17C warming, while CO2 showed 0.20C warming and other GHGs showed 0.11C warming (i.e. 35% attributed to solar irradiance and 65% to GHGs).
Over the longer-term period 1880-2000 the analysis showed that forcing from solar irradiance resulted in 0.40C warming with CO2 and other GHGs at 0.09C and 0.06C, respectively (i.e 74% attributed to solar irradiance and 26% to GHGs).
The results are shown in Table 4 of the report.
The forcing from GHGs was found to be of shorter duration than that from solar irradiance.
Interesting stuff, Peter.
Max
Brute,
No man is an island -John Donne
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
That’s great Pete……very nice sentiment.
By the way, I’m having difficulty coming up with the money to pay my income taxes……since you are “part” of me, please send me a couple thousand dollars……after all, what’s yours is mine and mine is yours……..which means my debt is essentially your debt also.
Apparently, Mr. Donne had quite a problem with debt (he was a freeloader) and frequently put the bite on his friends……so I’d expect that he’d support the collectivist theme.
CO2 Lifetime: Which do you believe- Models or Data?
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/03/co2-lifetime-which-do-you-believe.html
Max,
I seem to remember you saying that the chances of the IPCC being right were less than 10%
The number of houses burning down or even suffering serious fire damage must be very much less than that but even so take out the necessary insurance.
So doesn’t it make sense to take out that policy?
Should be in above ” but even so the owners take out the necessary insurance.”
PeterM
Just because IPCC might be 10% right on average, does not mean that the IPCC projections for 2100 are 10% correct. These are 100% BS, based on flawed science and the virtual world of GIGO computer simulations, as has been pointed out to you.
The second problem is that the insurance is much too expensive, even if there were a 10% chance the IPCC projections were right. Much cheaper to send a few Dutch engineers to populated low-lying coastal regions and build a few dikes, in the improbable case they were right (as the Dutch have been doing for centuries).
Go ahead and take out the insurance for yourself, Peter, if you have let the fear mongering of the insurance salesmen frighten you. Just don’t expect me to do the same.
Max
PeterM
Re 264/266.
Please refer to Brute’s 254 concerning meteorite insurance, gamma ray insurance or black hole insurance. These risks are in the same category as “catastrophic AGW”.
But let’s get serious.
Exactly what are you proposing in the way of “AGW insurance”? (Please list specific actionable proposals with an estimate of cost and of benefit.)
Is this an optional expense for the few worrying types in this world (like you), or is it a mandatory expense for all?
Specifics, please.
Max
Pete,
You’ll be elated to know that I have single handedly resolved the global warming issue once and for all.
Over the weekend I cut down a very large old tree on the front forty of the Brute estate……I exhaustively and painstakingly examined the tree rings this morning before breakfast and have concluded that the tree was exactly 106, 3 months and 4 days old (give or take a couple of hours).
Further examination of the rings after I finished my second cup of coffee indicated that the most robust growing activity occurred when the tree was between 10 and 16 years old which I concluded to be the longest growing season of the tree’s lifespan……subsequent years indicated that the growing season has become shorter which proves that planet has gotten colder since 1905 (Remember, CO2 has been increasing all this time).
Whew! We can close the thread now and discuss the World Cup………(Why do they call it “The World Cup” when the entire world doesn’t participate?)
PeterM
Let’s forget the “science” for a moment and talk about logic.
You wrote:
This is a very good point.
Dutchmen live along a low lying coast. It makes good sense for them (as “owners” of the low lying coastline) to invest in the “insurance” of a good dike system, with pumps, canals and all the other good stuff. The same is true for the sea walls and levees protecting New Orleans.
It does not make sense for Swiss or Nepalese to invest in this “insurance”.
In California and Japan structures are built to withstand occasional major earthquakes. The extra investment made is an “insurance”.
It does not make sense for someone living in the UK or Norway to invest in this “insurance”.
So yes. Those that “own” a potential risk can minimize this by investing in “insurance”.
Who will be hurt by a putative 1 to 2C increase in global temperature? Nobody. Period. (We’ve seen this during the MWP, Roman Optimum, etc,, with no detrimental effects.)
How about the extremely unlikely scenario that this is 3+C?
Will the Sahara become green again as it was in warmer times of the past? How about the Sahel? Will Canadian and Russian wheat farmers be hurt or will they benefit from a longer growing season? Will crop growing all around the world benefit from slightly higher CO2 levels?
There are just too many things we do not know, even if we did know that the temperature impact suggested by IPCC was real (which we definitely do not) or that we could do anything about it (which we also do not know).
The pessimistic AGW-believer’s logic is that there will more likely than not be more negative effects than positive ones (Stern said so, right?), and since we are all one joined community of nations sharing this planet, we should all “pull together” to solve this potential problem before it becomes a disaster, with the richer, more developed nations carrying the cost to support their less fortunate partners in the world community of nations, starting off with a multi-billion dollar “guilt tax” to be paid by the rich nations to the (corrupt?) governments of the impoverished nations (to find its way into the private Swiss bank accounts of the corrupt leaders).
This is not at all the same as “the owners takes out the necessary insurance”, so your logic is false.
Max
OK, I’ll bite. About 200 nations take part – remind me how many are involved in your ‘World Series’? :-)
Brute (268)
I thought trees lived forever! I mean, they’d have to for carbon offsetting to work, wouldn’t they?
There’s an observation I’ve made to PeterM many times. It’s this: even if (unlikely though it may be) the dangerous AGW hypothesis is valid and we face catastrophic global warming and even if humans could theoretically do something about it by drastically reducing CO2 emissions, there is no prospect whatever that they will. That’s true partly because we in the developed West show little sign of being ready to take really drastic action but in particular because the developing economies (especially the so-called BRIC countries – Brazil, India and China) have made it wholly clear that, notwithstanding rhetoric to the contrary, nothing will be allowed to stop their economic growth. Hence China’s and India’s (and now South Africa’s) continuing investment in huge coal-fired power stations (with no prospect of carbon sequestration). That’s why Copenhagen failed and why last week’s UN climate conference in Bonn made no progress and prospects for Mexico are dismal – see this and this.
So CO2 emissions are inevitably set to go on increasing and the West’s feeble attempts to make reductions are a waste of time. Therefore – I’ve said to PeterM (and I repeat to all contributors here) – all the debate about whether man-made climate change is happening and will continue is of little more than academic interest and important only in the context of whether or not disaster is inevitable and, if it is, how (if we can) we should prepare for it. Last time I pressed Peter for an answer (never easy!) I think he said he was “optimistic” and expected China etc. would agree to dramatic cuts after all. Well, recent history shows there is no chance of that happening. So what’s your view now, Peter? Do you still think mankind can avoid catastrophe? And, if so, why? And, if not, what should be done about it?
There’s no better example of the true colours of the BRIC nations than last week’s quite remarkable story of the World Bank’s decision to loan South Africa $3.75 bn for the construction of what will be one of the world’s largest coal-fired power stations. Guess who backed it? No surprise there: it was Brazil, India and China. Guess who helped by not voting “No”? Amazingly it was the UK – yes, you read that correctly. See my post here.
Robin,
So what’s your argument?
Humanity in general is so hooked on the drug of dirty coal burning that there is hope of ever getting clean. So lets just pretend that it’s nowhere near so dangerous as those so- called experts tell us!
Does that sound about right?
Sorry, should “no hope of ever getting…”
Whew!
Hundreds of thousands of pest in that tree……Ants mostly…….little devils……..a couple of birds nests and what looked like a Woodpecker’s hive/hole/lair………
You’ll be happy to know Pete, that I gave the ants plenty of notice to vacate the premises so it isn’t my fault if they’re now homeless.
By the way Pete, I used a 27 Ton Troy Built Gasoline Powered Hydraulic Splitter to break up the logs and a Two Stroke Poulan 24 inch chain saw to cut the tree into manageable pieces……the solar powered models I tried couldn’t cut a fart.