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.

4,522 Responses to “Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs: Number 2”

  1. “We don’t have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.”

    Interesting quote Pete. Not surprisingly, it was never uttered by James Watt.

    As with most things you write here, this quote is a fallacy.

  2. PeterM

    You ask in 3050 (about the fear some people have of an Armageddon doomsday):

    So why should anyone who holds this sort of irrational belief worry in the slightest about AGW?

    Can’t you see, Peter? It’s the same thing!

    Whether the “doomsday” comes as a result of divine action (as prophesized by “hellfire and damnation” evangelists) or Mother Gaia’s retribution for mankind’s sinful use of fossil fuels (as prophesized by “coal death train” hysteric, James E. Hansen) makes very little difference. Both are equally irrational beliefs.

    And, as history has taught us about doomsday predictions, both are 100% certain to fail.

    Max

  3. Bob_FJ

    Thanks for info on Queensland (Fitzroy River) floods (3049). Looks like they are not unprecedented, even though the extent of damage may be for the reasons you outlined.

    It also looks like neither the severity nor the incidence of the floods has increased over the latter part of the 20th century, as claimed on a global basis by IPCC.

    And finally, it looks like there is a perfectly natural cause for the most recent flood (without having to blame it on an unquantified “human impact” by “expert judgment”).

    But I’m sure your press sees that differently!

    Max

  4. PeterM

    I’ve asked you this before, but am still curious where you got the idea that Brute had used the specific phrase “your Darwinist religious beliefs…”.

    Can you point me to the post, so I can read whether or not he actually used this phrase and, if so, in which context it was used?

    Failing this, I will have to assume that you simply made this up.

    Max

  5. Max,

    You should know better than to suggest I make up or don’t get my quotes right. See #3018 for your “Darwinist religious beliefs”.

    Bob_FJ,

    Yes its been wet in Queensland. I haven’t seen anyone suggesting a definite link to anthropogenic influences on the climate. I think its been explained often enough that it’s just not possible to say a single weather event is caused by climate change. It may be that statistically, over time, there will be a higher frequency of more extreme events. Drier droughts, stronger storms, heavier floods etc.

    If that was the only impact of Climate change/Global warming then there wouldn’t be too much of a problem. No-one likes Hurricanes etc but they are survivable.

  6. Another Al Gore/James Hansen disciple………another unabashed member of Peter Martin’s “Green” cult.

    IPCC Green Doctor Prescribes End to Democracy to Solve Global Warming

    http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/ipcc-green-doctor-prescribes-end-to-democracy-to-solve-global-warming/

  7. Brute,

    I meant to include this link as evidence of the James Watt quote. There quite a few other good ones in there too!

    http://adultthought.ucsd.edu/Culture_War/The_American_Taliban.html

    Maybe you could let us know which others you disagree with or think have been mis-attributed.

  8. Brute,

    There is an interesting quote on the above link from George W Bush saying “God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did…”

    Is it being unreasonable to suggest that he would have also asked his imaginary friend what to do about Climate Change?

    Who needs the IPCC, or even the CIA, when Presidents of the USA can get all the advice and “instruction” they need for free?

  9. PeterM

    Thanks for providing the source for Brute’s tongue-in-cheek mingling of the “theory of evolution with global warming theory”.

    The take-home premise I see here is that Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” applies to humankind versus other “less fit” (or less adaptable) species and that impeding the “survival of the fittest” by forcibly curtailing the very thing that arguably made this survival highly successful (readily available, low-cost, carbon-based energy) in order to help other “less fit” species survive runs counter to Darwin’s theory.

    In other words, the carbon mitigation schemes proposed by believers in the dangerous AGW religious belief represent an attempt to thwart Darwin’s natural selection process and would, therefore “seem heretical to the Darwinist religious belief”.

    This conclusion has been suggested by several studies, which have shown that the benefits to humankind from curtailing carbon are far less than the costs (one estimate I have seen for the proposed EU actions talks about 3 cents to the Euro).

    On top of this there is the negative impact on the poorest humans of forcibly depriving them of a low-cost source of energy to improve their lives.

    An uncertain point here is whether or not less adaptable species (penguins, polar bears?) would really be negatively impacted by any incremental anthropogenic global warming that might occur if no carbon curtailment is enforced; at any rate I think we can reject the hysterical prophesy of James E. Hansen of irreversible “tipping points” leading to “extinction of species” if the “coal death trains” are not stopped as unfounded speculation.

    Max

  10. Brute

    Your quote (3056) demonstrates why these nuts are referred to as “eco-Nazis”.

    We can hope that they remain on the lunatic fringe in democratic societies and don’t become non-elected “Czars” to advise the elected leaders.

    Max

  11. Pete,

    You’re a knucklehead. You fall for any line of bullshit that you’re spoon fed by your misguided (lying) Leftists propagandists.

    February 1981

    • February: Reagan’s newly posted Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, a former industry lobbyist, testifies before Congress:

    “That is the delicate balance the Secretary of the Interior must have: to be steward for the natural resources for this generation as well as future generations. I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns; whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations.”

    Author Austin Miles (mis)interprets Watt’s statement to read:

    “We don’t have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.”

    http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_G._Watt

    Watt clearly states that the environment must be protected for future generations. Miles’ blatantly misquoted Watt’s statement.

    Did you somehow forget that Austin Miles misquoted Watt?

    Watt is a born again Christian which you are certainly free to ridicule and bash……..but attribute your quotes correctly.

  12. xxxxxxx

    New Year Brings Devestating News To AGW Alarmists: New Research Shows Little CO2 & Warming Correlation

    Read here.
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/25/warming-trend-pdo-and-solar-correlate-better-than-co2/

    A new peer-reviewed study finds little, if any, causal relationship between increased fossil fuel CO2 emissions and global warming. This lack of empirical evidence is of no real surprise to skeptics, and probably is the best explanation as to why climate agencies across the world have been forced to fabricate fake global warming.

    This study also indicates why the IPCC’s global climate models consistently fail: the models assume human CO2 causes global warming, which this study finds to be false.
    “The main conclusion one arrives at the analysis is that CO2 has not a causal relation with global warming and it is not powerful enough to cause the historical changes in temperature that were observed. The main argument is the absence of immediate correlation between CO2 changes preceding temperature either for global or local changes…..The anthropogenic wasting of fossil fuel CO2 to the atmosphere shows no relation with the temperature changes even in an annual basis. The absence of immediate relation between CO2 and temperature is evidence that rising its mix ratio in the atmosphere will not imply more absorption and time residence of energy over the Earth surface…..The main implication is that temperature increase predictions based on CO2 driving models are not reliable.” [Paulo Cesar Soares 2010: International Journal of Geosciences

  13. Coldest in 25 years……Hansen/Gore said that winters would get warmer……..what with all of the global warming…..

    January Could be Coldest for USA in 25 years…

    http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/43933/bastardi-january-could-be-cold.asp

  14. Max,

    Thanks for the apology re the Darwin quote.

    ‘Survival of the fittest’ doesn’t mean one species, or race of a particular species, displacing another. Extinctions do happen but on an Evolutionary timescale they are quite infrequent, except when something quite cataclysmic such as the impact of a asteroid brings them about.

    Survival of the fittest, in Darwinian terms, refers to what happens within a species. The preferred term is natural selection. Another way of putting it would be the non-survival of the least fit. So any genetic variations only progress to individuals in subsequent generations if they are beneficial. Natural selection is about individuals not the species as a whole.

    It doesn’t make any sense to try to invoke Darwin to justify exterminating other species. Yes, we can do it, but why would we want to?

  15. Brute,

    You don’t want to start believing in Wikipedia, now, do you?

    For example they say that James G Watts said “If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used.”

    What is it that you and Max were saying about eco -nuts and democracy? Does the same apply to that good Christian, James G Watts, too?

  16. PeterM

    Brute made a tongue-in-cheek comparison of AGW and Darwinism, invoking the Darwinistic “survival of the fittest” principle to suggest that we humans should not curtail the basis of our successful survival in order to (possibly) help other (less fit) species survive.

    I got the joke, but you apparently did not.

    Let’s leave it at that.

    Max

  17. PeterM

    On a more serious note, for a good description of how the “survival of the fittest” principle has worked over our planet’s history and what it might mean for the future, I can recommend The Time before History (also published as The Day before Yesterday) by Colin Tudge.

    A good read.

    Max

  18. PeterM

    Very briefly back to the “survival of the fittest” principle (before TonyN throws us off).

    It does, indeed, apply both within a species and between different species, as you will learn if you read Colin Tudge’s book.

    A cited example is the gradual dominance in parts of England of the imported gray squirrel over the native red squirrel.

    Max

  19. A cited example is the gradual dominance in parts of England of the imported gray squirrel over the native red squirrel.

    Or you could exchange squirrel for “man” and gray for “Caucasoid”. Pete never did answer my question regarding which race of mankind he considers to be the “most evolved”. According to Darwin, the negroid race was the “missing link” between ape and human.

    Is this true Pete? Which race do you “favour”?

    On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. – Charles Darwin

  20. Where is the heat? Probably hiding like a crouching tiger in the deepest oceanic abyss……waiting to pounce…..BEWARE, THE END IS NEAR…..REPENT!

    New paper on ARGO data: Trenberth’s ocean heat still missing

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/06/new-paper-on-argo-data-trenberths-ocean-heat-still-missing/

  21. Brute,

    You say I never did answer your question regarding which race of mankind should be considered to be the “most evolved”. Read again 3021. “No race is more evolved than another, but because local conditions are different so too is the outcome of local evolution.”

    Darwin may have been subject to some of the widespread racial prejudices of his time, in itself proof that racism pre-dates Darwinism, but he never went in for sinister racist theories, passionately loathed slavery and explicitly rejected talk of “higher and lower” races (in animals and, by extension, in humans). One of the major implications of his theory is that humans are all one race, separated only by superficial differences that stem from adaptation to different environments.

    There is no evidence that any one race is closer to our common ancestors than another.

  22. Darwin spoke of the “gorilla” and the “Negro” [sic] as occupying evolutionary positions between the “Baboon” and the “civilized races of man” (“Caucasian”); viz: At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes … will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro [sic] or Australian and the gorilla.[49, 3]

    Pete,

    I stand corrected…..Yes; you did provide an answer, albeit lame.

    Your response demonstrates that you have no idea of what you speak regarding Darwin…..or, that you conveniently gloss over certain unpleasant aspects of his theory/writings in order to fit your modern, politically correct viewpoint.

    You disagree with Darwin.

    So, I’ll rephrase my point………..

    Wouldn’t the progression of mankind at the expense of “lower” life forms be consistent with the Darwinist theory?

    That is, industrialization that benefits mankind resulting in higher CO2 levels (creating your mythical global warming) simply be the natural progression of evolution/natural selection?

    After all, in the Darwinist view, mankind is simply an animal………without moral compunction to consider lower species.

    Why would you want to tamper with the “natural order” of things?

  23. Brute

    The Knox and Douglass study you cited (3070), which shows a net loss of energy in the ocean since ARGO measurements started in 2003 is the same unaccounted “lack of warming”, which Kevin Trenberth referred to as a “travesty”.

    The longer-term warming trend 1993-2008 reported by Lyman et al. includes the years 1993-2002, which showed apparent warming. However, during this period there were only the inaccurate expendable XBT measurements, which have been shown to introduce a spurious warming signal, as confirmed by team leader, Josh Willis.

    As a result, Knox and Douglass have concentrated on the more recent time period, for which more accurate data are available.

    Suffice it to say that the ocean has been cooling at the same time as the atmosphere (both at the surface and in the troposphere) has also been cooling.

    In other words, our planet has been cooling despite record CO2 increase – providing a direct falsification of the premise that increased atmospheric CO2 has caused a large positive radiative imbalance and is thus the primary driver of global warming, thereby presenting “dangerous AGW-believer” Trenberth a major dilemma, which he has referred to as a “travesty”.

    Trenberth has stated that he believes the “missing energy” may be going out “into space”, with “clouds” acting as a “natural thermostat” (interestingly agreeing with Spencer and Lindzen on this).

    Peter has not yet advanced as far as Trenberth in recognizing this “travesty”; he still prefers to stick his head in the sand and simply deny that it exists.

    But that strategy obviously does not work.

    Max

  24. Yes Max, The Warmist strategy is to continue telling people that the world is getting warmer while their shivering knee deep in snow in summer.

    The phrase “two plus two equals five” (“2 + 2 = 5”) is a slogan used in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four[1] as an example of an obviously false dogma one must believe, similar to other obviously false slogans by the Party in the novel. It is contrasted with the phrase “two plus two makes four”, the obvious – but politically inexpedient – truth. Orwell’s protagonist, Winston Smith, uses the phrase to wonder if the State might declare “two plus two equals five” as a fact; he ponders whether, if everybody believes in it, does that make it true? Smith writes, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” Later in the novel, Smith attempts to use doublethink to teach himself that the statement “2 + 2 = 5” is true, or at least as true as any other answer one could come up with.
    Eventually, while undergoing electroshock torture, Winston declared that he saw five fingers when in fact he only saw four (“Four, five, six – in all honesty I don’t know”). The Inner Party interrogator of thought-criminals, O’Brien, says of the mathematically false statement that control over physical reality is unimportant; so long as one controls their own perceptions to what the Party wills, then any corporeal act is possible, in accordance with the principles of doublethink (“Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once”).[2]

  25. Why Climate Change Reminds Me of a T.S. Eliot Poem

    http://blog.american.com/?p=24462

Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)


five × 8 =

© 2011 Harmless Sky Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha