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
As far as I am concerned, the chapter on “what Phil Jones replied to Roger Harrabin’s question on the observed recent negative temperature trend (a.k.a. ‘cooling’) and its statistical significance” is CLOSED, Peter.
I have understood exactly what was said.
TonyB has understood exactly what was said.
It is still uncertain whether or not the same goes for you, although I detect a shift from outright “denial” on your part to a discussion of whether or not “a genuine attempt was made to convey Prof Jones’ original meaning”. (Huh? Whazzat?)
If you wish to keep babbling about this ad nauseam, please go ahead (TonyN appears to have a generously permissive “freedom of speech” policy regarding constantly repeated gibberish).
It just makes you look like a complete idiot (even if you may not really be one).
Max
Max,
Reur 2770, I’m not surprised that it gave you a headache reading the “Penguin Armageddon” stuff in just one day, that’s a great effort. It took me several days to get through it, with moments between of nearly tearing my hair out.
Remember the Oz ABC “Science Show” interview with Bob Ward where he described Bob Carter’s paper as the worst ever written? It went viral in the blogosphere with tags like; “is this the worst interview ever?” (and I’ve complained to the ABC). Well, I’m toying with the idea of writing an article to present to WUWT: “Penguins: Is this the worst interview ever, and this the worst paper ever?” (but it’s a gruesome job)
Sorry for inflicting that on you, but I recommend the very interesting compilation of stuff on the Antarctic and Arctic, that you said you would skip from tiredness, even if you just flash through the graphs.
http://www.climate4you.com/Polar%20temperatures.htm#AntarcticLongMetSeries
Incidentally, it makes the penguin paper look very, very silly
PeterM
A picture is worth 1,000 words:
Words:
Picture:
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5086/5247201959_f26e8b8f94_b.jpg
Max
Max,
You ask “Huh? Whazzat?” in connection to my comment on whether “a genuine attempt was made [by yourself and TonyB] to convey Prof Jones’ original meaning”.
It may surprise both of you to learn that is what is required in scientific discussion. It’s Ok to express your own reasoned case, but it’s not Ok to deliberately misrepresent the opinion of those with whom you do disagree.
I hope you’ll both mend your ways in future.
PeterM
Sorry.
Your statement (2804) is pure, unadulterated BS as the “picture” in my 2803 demonstrates.
Give up, Peter.
You are in a deep hole – stop digging.
Max
Max,
Prof Jones has said that the time period (2002-2009) is too short to be significant, so you are clearly in disagreement with him in trying to claim otherwise. You could have chosen the early 90’s or any number of equally insignificant earlier periods.
Its just quite reprehensible to miss out words when quoting from others to completely change the meaning of what they saying. Whether they are right, or whether they are wrong, is not the point in question.
You should feel thoroughly ashamed of yourself!
Max,
I was meaning to ask if you had ever heard of “Danth’s Law”
“If you have to insist that you’ve won an Internet argument, you’ve probably lost badly.”
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Danth%27s_Law
I seem to remember you doing that some time ago, but not recently. But there are other corollaries and the one that applies to you would be:
“Anyone claiming that their opponent’s argument is making the opponent look silly, or that they are just digging themselves into a deeper hole, is really concerned that they themselves are being made to look silly or have fallen into a deep hole”
I should add that one to the Wiki list. :-)
Max,
Re the Wizard of Wisdom’s 2806.
I’ve always been puzzled why so much importance is placed by some, on 30-year linear trends, when the time-series is of a strongly cyclical nature. Curiously, in the case of HADCRUT3 global, it has a half cycle length of about 30 years, which means that a 30-year linear trend is meaningless.
I once asked on-topic, those other Wizards of Wisdom over at RC, if they could advise the 30-year trend centred on 1940, and inexplicably, my comment was deleted in moderation.
I also had Jedda ask a similar question, and she too was refused.
It would be just as meaningless to talk 30-year linear trends in the PDO etc
Max,
Just to show that I’m not making it up:
You wrote: (April 7th, 2009 at 6:53 am)
“It’s a great diversionary gambit when you’ve lost a debate on the actual facts.”
A clear violation of Danth’s Law! I’m sure that wouldn’t have been your first, or last, offence either.
I sentence you to write out by hand the law and corollaries 100 times and be disqualified from any climate related forum for a period of two weeks.
Bob_FJ,
“Wizard of Wisdom”. Is that me? I’m flattered. I’ll go along with that!
PeterM
A summary of the past week’s posts:
2738 (me)
2745 (me):
2772 (me):
2776 (me):
2778 (TonyB):
2779 (me)
2783 (me):
2791 (me)
2795 (TonyB)
2796 (TonyB)
2798 (TonyB)
2803 (me)
2806 (Tempterrain)
HUH?
Claim otherwise?
Ouch!
(Grow up, Peter.)
Max
PeterM
(Wiki)
Tell it to General MacArthur, when he greeted the Japanese leaders on the USS Missouri.
Sayonara baby!
Max
Max and Bob
As Peter seems to have temporarily (I hope) lost his ability to read, perhaps you might like to comment on my ~2795 when I posted some truly ‘significant’ trends gathered over 350 years. As Peter seems unwilling to address them perhps both of you might like to comment?
The relevant part is repeated below.
“If you want some proper trends let us look at the overall trend that shows the earth generally warming (in fits and starts) since the beginning of instrumental records.
Here it is from 1660
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a7c87805970b-pi
Here it is from numerous other old records.
http://i47.tinypic.com/2zgt4ly.jpg
http://i45.tinypic.com/125rs3m.jpg
Here is where I collect such information
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
Global Trends and averages showing the equivalent of the upward ‘gold price’ over many hundreds of years disguise what is happening in individual stations. Here is a study showing numerous places that have cooled for at least thirty years in direct contradiction to IPCCS assertions
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/in-search-of-cooling-trends/
Strip aside the nonsenses of global averaging with a database largely made up of stations affected by uhi-which is very poorly accounted for despite the protestations of Real Climate- and you start to see some interesting things.
In Phil Jones home country and mine we are able to see much more clearly the negative direction of travel of which Prof Jones speaks.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/
Now it is not long enough to be a trend (as I previously said) but it is significant in its size. Whether it will continue I have no idea because it may just be a blip in a general 350 year observed upward trend. A trend that did not start with Giss.”
tonyb
PeterM
Regarding the currently observed cooling, you opined (2806):
No, Peter.
There were NO cooling “blips” of the same duration and magnitude as the current one since the mid-1970s. The one you cite only lasted 6 years, and was much less significant. The latest “blip” (which no one is claiming is “statistically significant” YET) has lasted over 9 years.
If it continues for another decade or so, the question will arise as to whether it has become “statistically significant”. But we’ll have to wait a while for that, Peter.
Despite what some solar scientists are predicting, I’d say (based on the past record since 1850) that it is likely to start warming again, but who knows? (After all, we have been emerging from a colder cycle, called the LIA.)
Then again, there is always the nagging suspicion that there is a warming bias in the surface record, due to the many factors that have been identified.
At any rate, the currently observed cooling is (to put it into IPCC verbiage) “unprecedented” since 1976.
Max
TonyB and Max,
You aren’t the only ones to play word games with the Phil Jones interview:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html
The headline says “Climategate U-turn as scientist [Phil Jones] at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995”.
Do you agree that this was what Phil Jones actually said?
PeterM and TonyB
TonyB’s 2812 and my 2813 were posted almost simultaneously, but they fit together quite well.
We are in a short-term cooling “blip” within a longer term cyclical record with an overall warming trend over several centuries, a portion of which may have been caused by the effects of urbanization and other identified but unquantified spurious warming signals plus natural factors.
Some (like you, Peter) may attribute the latest warming cycle to GH warming from human GHG emissions while others (myself, and I believe TonyB) may attribute this warming cycle, along with previous warming and cooling cycles, principally to natural forcing factors.
Who knows who’s right?
We can debate this issue until we are blue in the face, but we will not be able to resolve it, because empirical evidence is lacking.
Since there have been many warming and cooling cycles prior to significant human GHG emissions, “Occam’s Razor” tells us that “natural variability” is the less complicated explanation, at least until “anthropogenic forcing” can be supported by empirical evidence based on actual physical observation or reproducible experimentation (which has not yet occurred).
So we do not yet have an answer.
Max
Max
Peters #2797
It seems extraordinary that in Peter complaining about our misrepresenting Phil Jones view-when we cited his words time and again- that he should then do what he accused us of.
He has form on this of course when he quoted Arrhenius’ first paper but conveniently forgot his second, which substantially revised his own calculations.
In his post Peter claimed Schneider said this;
“Steven Schneider was criticised for his comment about ” Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
Peter only quoted the last phrase, whereas to see what Schneider was really inferring you have to go to his whole quote;
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination.
That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
In that context the word ‘hope’ takes on a much more signifcant role.
Tonyb
PeterM
Citing a Daily Mail article you state:
And then you ask (2814):
No, Peter. (Read the interview):
Jones said there had been warming ( a “positive trend”), but that it was not “statistically significant”.
Just like he said there had been cooling (a “negative trend”) from 2002 to 2010, but that this was also not “statistically significant”.
Pretty easy to understand. No “word games” required.
Max
TonyB
An observation made over a few years now:
Science and logic are not Peter’s strong suits.
Twisting words and polemic are.
Max
Max,
Good to hear that you agree the Daily Mail had misreported the meaning of Phil Jones comments. Pity you didn’t speak up at the time though.
They’ve been at it again recently. Under the Headline “Alarmist Doomsday warning of rising seas was wrong, says Met Office study” they then go on to say:
“Alarming predictions that global warming could cause sea levels to rise 6ft in the next century are wrong, it has emerged. The forecast made by the influential 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which would have seen cities around the world submerged by water, now looks unlikely”.
Except that all of us who are familiar with the IPCC 2007 report know that the actual projected figure was more like 1.5 feet than 6 feet. But how many of their readers would know that?
The journalists who write these sort of stories are deliberately lying to the very people who pay their wages. Why do you think they do that?
Peter your 2819
I’m never sure with you whether you just don’t know the facts or deliberately try to mislead. In your post I assume you are referring to this story from a few days ago?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1335964/Alarmist-Doomsday-warning-rising-seas-wrong-says-Met-Office-study.html#ixzz17i5HPpmH
I’m not going to attempt to defend all the popular science spouted by the Daily Mail, but a ‘scary scenario’ of a dramatic sea level rise-as suggested by Stephen Schneider- was also suggested by others, including Hansen-I believe you may have cited him here, but I’m not going to definitively claim that.
Here are the sea level rise scenario;
http://www.fasid.or.jp/daigakuin/sien/kaisetsu/gaiyo20/lecture07/07-1.pdf
So its certainly part of the popular culture-which is the Mails audience- that there is going to be a 6 foot plus rise.
The Mail said;
“Alarming predictions that global warming could cause sea levels to rise 6ft in the next century are wrong, it has emerged.
The forecast made by the influential 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which would have seen cities around the world submerged by water, now looks ‘unlikely’.”
That quote actually came from the Met office itself;
Jason Lowe, a leading Met Office climate researcher, said: “These predictions of a rise in sea level potentially exceeding 6ft have got a huge amount of attention, but we think such a big rise by 2100 is actually incredibly unlikely. The mathematical approach used to calculate the rise is simplistic and unsatisfactory.”
Where did these ‘predictions’ some from? From the papers presented at the conference in Copenhagen last year-organised by the IPCC -when highly credible sources contributing to the science of that organisation came up with that figure of 6 Foot.
http://climateresearchnews.com/2010/01/climate-scientists-clash-over-apocalyptic-sea-level-rise-prediction/
This understanding that the IPCC were promoting the idea of a larger rise than they previously may have publicly mentioned was confirmed by Richard Black, in an email to sometime commentator here, Barrie Woods.
“Thanks for your email.
Yes, the IPCC said a maximum sea level rise of 59cm. But it also said it was unable to include a contribution from accelerated ice sheet melting as modelling was not yet advanced enough – so the 59cm was an underestimate.
Best wishes,
Richard Black”
So the IPCC believe it will be more once they know the ice sheet contribution. How much more?
This factor is mentioned at Real Climate here;
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/the-ipcc-sea-level-numbers/
Now, there are complications with different time scales and uncertainties with Ice sheet melt and thermal warming of the oceans (both not properly modelled) but as it says in the RC article;
“The biggest change is that ice sheet dynamics look more uncertain now than at the time of the TAR, which is why this uncertainty is not included any more in the cited range but discussed separately in the text.”
“…My point is that in terms of a risk assessment, the uncertainty range that one needs to consider is in my view substantially larger than 18-59 cm.”
So the popular view of a 6 foot rise is supported by the very scientists contributing to the science and promoted at the IPCC conference.
So the Mail is nearer right than wrong, as can be seen by reading the Real climate article and that of the Mail.
As regards the reality of the situation, sea levels today are lower than in the Roman and MWP period, a fact curiously omitted from Chapter 5 of AR4, and sea level rise increase has fallen, not risen, in recent years (as was pointed out in an extensive series of posts I made here that you ignored).
I know that you desperately want to believe in these scary scenario but you would do well to be a little less credulous.
Tonyb
Peter
I’m sure you will be pleased to hear that with regards to sea level rise at least the Daily Mail aren’t lying scum and their reference to the IPCC seems indirectly correct.
This from the synthesis report meeting held prior to the Copenhagen summit during which a variety of papers were presented. It was attended by all the great and the good.
http://climatecongress.ku.dk/pdf/synthesisreport/
“The new observations of the increasing loss of mass from glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets lead to predictions of global mean sea level rises of 1 m (±0.5 m) during the next century.
The updated estimates of the future global mean sea level rise are about double the IPCC
projections.”
So the new papers were preparing the way for the IPCC to officially revise their forecast in AR5. I doubt if they will do so however due to the controversy surrounding the report when it was actually presented at the Copenhagen jamboree in December.
Stil its good if you can remove the Daily Mail from your no doubt long list of organisations you consider unreliable.
Tonyb
Geoff
Thought you might be interested in the source of one of the testimonials for the new climate rapid response team
http://www.climaterapidresponse.org/testimonials.php
tonyb
tonyb, #10:
I’m not sure how that’s on thread, but since you mention Climate Rapid Response:
Their FAQ B13 has the Radiative Forcing Components table from AR4 SPM, but with an interesting modification:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/scitech/2A953C90-CC12-42B2-BD0A-B51FECC2AEC3/FAQ_e.pdf
I can understand why they might have edited out columns 3 and 4 as this is for the general reader rather than the specialist, but taking out column 5, which deals provides levels of scientific understanding, would seem to be understandable for a quite different reason. There’s nothing like hiding the …. when it might raise awkward questions.
[TonyN: This comment and those following moved here from Alex’s Cape Farewell thread]
TonyN
Yes I’m drifting off thread -you might like to remove this wholseale to the New Statesman thread? It is collated below;
“Geoff
Thought you might be interested in the source of one of the testimonials for the new climate rapid response team
http://www.climaterapidresponse.org/testimonials.php
tonyb”
TonyN said
“Their FAQ B13 has the Radiative Forcing Components table from AR4 SPM, but with an interesting modification:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/scitech/2A953C90-CC12-42B2-BD0A-B51FECC2AEC3/FAQ_e.pdf
I can understand why they might have edited out columns 3 and 4 as this is for the general reader rather than the specialist, but taking out column 5, which deals provides levels of scientific understanding, would seem to be understandable for a quite different reason. There’s nothing like hiding the …. when it might raise awkward questions.”
My reply;
Interesting. The chart you are talking about is this one. This is precisely the sort of thing Peter was accusing the Daily Mail of doing. It is positively misrepresenting the situation.
http://www.greenfacts.org/en/climate-change-ar4/figtableboxes/figure-2.htm
(the article also misleadingly refers to the diagram as based on figure SPM2 which is a completely different one).
You are right they have missed off several columns (excluding the technical stuff-which is understandable)
There’s more-at a brief glance- I found this in their resources page;
http://wiki.nsdl.org/index.php/PALE:ClassicArticles/GlobalWarming
4) Mentions the 1906 Arrhenius paper but just like Peter seems to forget the 1906 version which substantially recuced the estimates.
6) Mentions the Callendar paper of 1938 but not the much more convincing rebuttal by Giles Slocum in 1956 which also mentions the generally accepted levels of co2 as being 400ppm. Also no mention of the 1936 paper on which Callendar based his temperature calculations, on a very small sampling, which even he wasn’t impressed with.
Also the IPCC 2007 FAQ link not working.
This is rather poor stuff from what is supposed to be a crack team.
tonyb
TonyN
The crack team has recruited an 18 year old as one of their star turns.
http://climatesight.org/2010/04/11/mind-the-gap/
It is so riddled with mistakes, assumptions and material that is provided without supporting evidence that it is difficult to know where to begin to deconstruct it. (nicely written though)
Tonyb