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.
Arctic sea ice could disappear by summer 2008!
(reported June 2008, citing Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado).
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-no-ice-at-the-north-pole-855406.html
But, instead, the ice has recovered from its 2007 end-summer (September) all-time low and is a long way from “disappearing”.
Oh, well. You can’t get them all right, Mark!
[But just “wait’ll next year” – or “next century”.]
Max
Peter 3324
I think you have the answer here-the use of Hadley material that believes itself to be far more acurate than it really is.
“The primary source is the Hadley Centre sea ice and sea surface temperature data set (HadlSST) [Rayner et al.,2003]. Prior to 1979, estimates of sea ice concentration are
based on early satellite observations, aircraft and ship reports.”
This gives me the opportunity once again of asking why you place such credence on such measures, with particular regards to SST’s which I would remind you go back to 1860.
The method of collecting these was haphazard, sporadic and ad hoc for the most part and covered a tiny ftraction of the oceans.
Why not demonstrate that you understand this subject by telling us HOW they were collected and WHY you believe them to be so accurate? (just saying ‘because the IPCC say so’ isn’t a good enough response.)
tonyb
Anyone who reads “The Independent” may have noticed that it’s a general newspaper, not a scientific publication. Often, reporters at newspapers do make reasonable attempts to get things right. For example, their readers would no doubt become quite irate if the football and cricket scores turned out to be all wrong.
But, equally often, they just don’t care enough to check or they don’t have time to check. The “story” is everything – that’s why reporters are employed so they just have to come up with something. If they don’t have the full facts they just make them up. If the story is political, and that can have a broad interpretation, then they are made up to suit the political position of that paper.
If you’ve ever read anything written up in a newspaper where you are more familiar with the true facts than the reporter, you may know what I mean. A couple of years ago I happened to know a perfectly normal and decent young lady who was tragically murdered. The initial storyline, in my not so favourite local paper the Courier Mail, was absolutely disgraceful, and her character was blackened, by insinuation, simply because she happened to have lived in what was considered to be a seedy sort of neighbourhood. It turned out to be irrelevant once the full facts were known, and in any case, young people on low incomes often don’t live in the best of areas for the simple reason they can’t afford it. The reporter, to be fair to her, did try to make amends later but the damage had been done.
So yes, if you see this sort of report, about Arctic sea ice, written up in the genuine scientific press then its fair enough to criticise it. However, I doubt if there was any real substance at all to this newspaper report.
Peter #3328
You give a tragic example of mis reporting (and the consequences) I think National papers are heading this way as Advertising revenue plummets and journalists are let go or asked to do jobs they might not be capable of. In this connection many jobbing journalists are asked to deal with science matters.
This is presumably the rationale behind such as the Guardian securing the services of the climate rapid response team, who have the same viewpoint as them.
However, what I take issue with is that whilst it is understandable for non specialist newspapers to get science things wrong, we make the mistake of believing that the information from ‘scientific’ sources is automatically going to be correct.
This credulous attitude comes not only from people like yourself, who admit they know nothing about climate science but because they want to believe the story don’t want to question it, but from scientists who automatically believe the material they are provided with for their research is going to be credible, because it comes from a credible -in their view-source.
We have no finer example than the arctic study you cited which uses basic data which, as I pointed out in 3327, comes from a source that shouldn’t be given house room as regards SST’s.
You believe -as do the researchers writing the article-that the information they are provided with is accurate to fractions of a degree.
Most of it is ‘invented’ and what little original material there is was collected in such an unscientific manner that scientists should realise that it has no degree of accuracy whatsoever.
I have asked you numerous times on what you base your touching belief in the unerring accuracy of such as SST’s but you refuse to answer. From that I can only assume that you realise that its as big a pile of nonsense as I do.
Tonyb
I’m not certain why the IPCC failed to predict this but this portends to be much more serious than the unregistered temperature rise “averaged” over the entire globe “averaged” over the last 150 years.
Whatever will we do Peter? Can’t the government intervene and apply some sort of cocoa surcharge in order to fend off impending planetary disaster due to this?
Maybe the UN will convene a investigative “committee” to study the problem………..possibly a global tax on dairy products to offset the gluttonous consumption of cocoa by those unthinking Americans.
Peak Cocoa is a reality…..Oh the humanity!
Will there be a chocolate drought? World’s supply of sustainable cocoa could run out by 2014
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1351066/Will-chocolate-drought-World-s-supply-sustainable-cocoa-run-2014.html
I see that Spain’s efforts to spur economic growth by “going green” has been a smashing success Pete.
What other insightful ideas do you and your “Progressive” friends have to try out?
Let me guess…..it would’ve worked except for [insert evil conservative blame here].
Why is it that when every Socialist program fails……one after another, it’s always because of the opposition?
Why would anyone oppose such wonderful programs if they are sucessful?
The reason is because they never are…..no matter who runs them, how much money is wasted upon them or how long they’re tried……they always FAIL.
Spain’s jobless rate surges to 20.33%
Fri Jan 28, 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110128/bs_afp/spaineconomyunemployment_20110128120624
PeterM
You got it wrong once again (3328), bloviating about how The Independent is not a reliable source of info when it quoted Mark Serreze of NSIDC saying that the Arctic sea ice would be gone by late summer 2008.
Here’s a link to an ABC news report from August 2008, entitled “North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008”
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4728737&page=1
In this report, Serreze is quoted as saying:
Oops!
So it looks like Serreze was full of hot air back in 2008 (the Arctic did NOT become ice-free, and the ice even started to recover from its September 2007 low).
[But, what the hell, it made an eye-catching headline at the time, and that’s all that was important to Serreze anyway.]
And these guys are supposed to be scientists?
Ouch!
Max
Sorry guys, just having some fun.
Could have done a bit more work on the scaling etc, but i think you’ll get the idea
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5140/5396605252_309f22dd3f_z.jpg
PeterM
Here’s one for you to think about.
As Joni Mitchell sang back in the late 1960s:
“I really don’t know clouds at all…”
What do we really know about clouds and our climate?
As you know, Roy Spencer has published several studies and written a book on clouds as a natural climate forcing, with emphasis on their ability to reflect incoming solar radiation and thereby cool our planet.
Lindzen has also written paper on this.
As you probably also know, roughly half of our planet is covered by clouds on average at any one time.
The total incoming solar radiation reaching the top of our atmosphere is estimated to be 341 W/m^2 of surface area.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/TFK_bams09.pdf
Trenberth et al. estimate that about 30% of the available solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere is reflected or scattered back to space by particulates and clouds before it reaches the ground or is reflected from the surface, with 75-80% of the total reflected by clouds and the atmosphere.
Ramanathan and Inamdar tell us that clouds alone are estimated to represent a reflection equal to around 48 W/m^2, so it is clear that they play a major role in cooling our planet. This comes primarily from lower-altitude water droplet clouds rather than high-altitude ice crystal clouds, which do not reflect incoming SW radiation effectively.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?seq_no_115=207108
Clouds also play a smaller role in absorbing and re-radiating a portion of the outgoing LW radiation reflected from the surface due to their greenhouse effect; this has been estimated to represent a net warming of 30 W/m^2. But here we will concentrate on the observed changes in the reflection of incoming solar radiation by clouds over recent time periods, based on satellite observations.
This report “shows the deviations of monthly mean values of various components of the radiative fluxes reported in the ISCCP-FD analysis.
http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/projects/browse_fc.html
Compared to the global mean total albedo over 1985-1989,the total global albedo anomaly shows a decrease of around 3% from 1991 to 2000 and an increase of around 1.2% over the subsequent period 2001-2005. This change is largely due to relatively short-term changes in albedo from cloud cover and to a much lesser degree to relatively slow changes in overall surface albedo.
These are global averages. Of course there are major differences between the albedo effect over oceans and land, or in winter or summer.
A 3% decrease in the average total albedo (as observed from 1991 to 2000) is equivalent to an increase in incoming radiation of:
0.03 * 341 = +10 W/m^2
A 1.5% increase in the average total albedo (as observed from 2000 to 2005) is equivalent to a decrease in incoming radiation of:
0.012 * 341 = -4 W/m^2
Both of these values are higher than the +3.7 W/m^2 warming expected from a doubling of atmospheric CO2, and over ten times as high as the GH warming expected from increasing CO2 from its 1991 value of 355 ppmv to its 2005 value of 379 ppmv:
C1 = 355 ppmv
C2 = 379 ppmv
C2/C1 = 1.068
ln(C2/C1) = 0.0654
2xCO2 = 2
ln2 = 0.6931
RF(2xCO2) = 3.7 W/m^2
RF (1991-2005 from CO2) = 3.7 * 0.0654 / 0.6931 = 0.35 W/m^2
So (as Spencer has postulated) it looks like cloud changes may have been responsible for a significant portion of the late 20th century warming and may also partially explain the “lack of warming” observed since 2001
What do you think, Peter?
Max
Max,
There is a difference between the North Pole becoming ice free and the Arctic, generally, becoming ice free.
The former is much more likely to happen that the latter. So its important to be sure of that distinction. We can say the latter will, on present trends, occur sometime around 2060.
If anyone needs further clarification on that point I’ll explain in more detail.
………..
You’ll have probably all seen arguments that AGW just can’t be possible because the 2nd law of thermodynamics just doesn’t allow it.
You may be interested to know that it also scuppers Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-thermodynamics.html
The internet must be a good thing overall, but when you read this sort of crap, you do realise it has its downside.
PeterM
Yes. An ice-free North Pole is not the same as an ice-free Arctic in late summer.
As a matter of record, the North Pole itself has been ice-free already much earlier than “2008”.
As Wiki tells us the USS Skate (a US Navy submarine) surfaced at the North Pole on 17 March 1959 to commit the ashes of the famed explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins to the Arctic waste.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Skate_(SSN-578)
The picture shows essentially no ice, although this was just at the end of the Arctic winter. Today, there would be much more ice at this time of year. And no submarine could surface there in late March.
Face it Peter, Serreze’s “dire warnings” are all a bunch of fear mongering hokum, not to be taken too seriously. The man has an agenda. Watch this sermon on “Planet Earth”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC_JCkGycKA
Arctic temperatures (and sea ice) have gone through past cycles of warming/cooling (shrinking/expansion). As a matter of fact, they do so every year.
Since a relatively high point in 1979 (when satellite measurements started), end-summer Arctic ice has shrunk. In September 2007 it hit a low point and has recovered slightly since then.
Earlier Russian and Greenland records show warmer temperatures than today (and less ice) in the 1940s.
And, even if all the Arctic ice were to melt regularly at end summer by 2060, as you predict, this would have no impact on sea levels (since this ice is already floating).
It might have the positive impact of reopening the Northwest Passage to navigation during summer months (a subject we have discussed here much earlier).
The “dreaded” impact on our planet’s albedo (as conjured up by Serreze on the video clip) is insignificant when compared to the larger (by several orders of magnitude) albedo from clouds (ignored by IPCC), which appears to have reversed its shrinking trend since 2001 (see earlier post).
And, besides, the Antarctic sea ice is merrily expanding from year to year (although Serreze doesn’t talk about it).
So don’t fret about the Arctic sea ice, Peter.
Max
PS Peter, I’ll agree with you that there is a lot of “junk science” on the Internet, but (as Judith Curry has realized) it is also an excellent forum for open discussion of real open scientific questions in the climate change debate (of which there are a great number, as she openly concedes). Her site is an excellent addition and well worth visiting.
I for one would welcome an ice free Arctic !
Think of all of the oil, coal and natural gas up there.
Plus, easier shipping access to markets that are hard to get to now.
All of that frozen, useless land could be farmed and developed for the population expansion that will certainly occur in the future.
The northern forests of Canada and Russia contain billions and billions of board feet of lumber that could be harvested………warmer temperatures would also make it much easier to extract the massive amounts of minerals buried under all of that worthless ice.
The place could be a literal goldmine of natural resources just ready to be picked as opposed to the wasteland that it currently is.
By the way Pete……I did my own tree ring study on a 120 year old Oak tree located on the Brute estate and concluded that the second half of the tree’s life was warmer than the second half thereby certifying that increased CO2 does not cause warmer temperatures.
I know that it was 120 years old………I counted and measured the thickness of the rings right before I broke it down into woodstove size pieces in order to throw it into the furnace to heat the Brute palace.
So rest assured Pete, the globe has not overly warmed during the second half of the 20th century……………Take it from me.
(And it didn’t cost you a dime.)
Now we’ve got to work melting all of that ice in Antarctica.
Check out what I bought Max! $150.00 bucks!
US Army surplus sale!
15 KW generator with a 2 1/2 ton trailer.
Max,
Co-incidentally, just after our recent discusion I heard a couple of new words on the radio today
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acalculia
Dyscalculia and Acalculia can’t be that common words, even my spell checker puts little red wriggly lines underneath them.
You might want to read up on them. I’d say at least one of the terms may be applicable to someone who struggles with the concept that a decadal average can be obtained by adding up the figures for the years in the decade and then dividing by ten.
Brute
Cool!
Ya gotta be ready when the lights go out because of all those greenie “wind/solar” types.
Otherwise, you’d be in the dark.
Max
PeterM
Thanks for tip on dyscalculia – send it to IPCC.
Max
PeterM
Since you appear to have difficulty grasping some basic statistical concepts, let’s see if I can help you out (even though we really have beaten this dog to death and the discussion has become boring).
First of all:
Is a totally different question from:
The fist question excludes anything that happened prior to the beginning of 2001 and concentrates simply on the trend since the beginning of 2001, i.e. has this trend shown warming or cooling.
The second question introduces the warming/cooling trend of the previous decade, as well, by comparing the two separate decades.
Everyone knows that the decade 1991-2000 showed a relatively strong warming trend (+0.26C per decade), while the ensuing decade 2001-2010 showed a weaker cooling trend (-0.09C per decade). This is recorded fact, according to the HadCRUT record (with all its known warts and blemishes).
So anyone not suffering from “dyscalculia” can easily see that by comparing the records of both decades (as you have done) one would show an overall warming trend. This is not rocket science.
But this does not change the fact that it warmed over the decade from 1991-2000, this warming trend reversed itself and it cooled slightly over the decade from 2001-2010.
And it did all this at the same time that CO2 concentrations continued to rise at record levels, raising serious doubts about the CO2/temperature correlation.
Trenberth called this “unexplained” “lack of warming” a “travesty”; Met Office acknowledged it and attributed it to “natural variability”. Peter Martin simply denied it by sticking his head in the sand and pretending it “never happened”.
Can you follow the logic here, Peter? Or is this all too complex for you?
(A simple “yes” or “no” answer will do.)
Max
Max & TonyB
I see that there is, towards the end of another nicely written article by Christopher Booker, a claim that HADCRUT3 has been recently “corrected” for the last decade
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8290469/How-BBC-warmists-abuse-the-science.html#disqus_thread
Booker seems to suggest “watch this space” concerning enquiries that have severally been made to Hirst, the boss….. Interesting!
Max,
You said earlier that GISS and Hadley do this; as often as people change their socks. Sorry, but I think that this analogy may not be totally accurate. For instance, I seldom change my socks in the way you mean. I actually keep wearing them until a toe pokes through or something, and then give them to the dogs for their tug-o-war games. Among other things, it solves the problem of the odd disappearing sock from the washing machine process, and all they need is an occasional shake in the morning.
Bob_FJ
Thanks for link to Booker article. Shows how corrupt Dr. Nurse, the BBC and UEA are (when it comes to the “climate change” debate).
But this is nothing new, as TonyN and Andrew Montford have also pointed out.
Max
Bob_FJ
Not to digress too far from our main topic here, but your statement about “changing socks” reminded me of an old joke.
Toward the end of WWII in an Italian POW camp. The weary prisoners are a scroungy and dirty looking lot…
The commandant of the prisoners makes an announcement:
After the cheers subside, the commandant continues:
Max
Max,
You don’t think it’s at all significant that the temperature is the 00’s was 0.17deg warmer than it was in the 90’s, but what would you have said if it had been cooler, by the same amount, instead? Would you have said the same thing? I don’t think so! But, how can a 0.17deg warming be any more or less significant than a 0.17deg cooling?
I’m surprised that you haven’t looked at the monthly figures for 2010 and made the same argument. ie some groups think it is the warmest year, but it was cooler towards the end than at the start. So it doesn’t count!
I would agree that even two decades of data isn’t totally conclusive and these decades do have to be compared with previous ones, and we’ll have to wait another nine years to see how the 10’s will turn out compared to the 00’s. You can devise a simple test for yourself. If you are prepared to say right now that you’ll take just as much notice of a further warming as a cooling, then you can possibly start to think of yourself as a rational human being.
However, if you know now, you’ll be shouting as loudly as you can about any cooling, but doing your best to downplay any further warming, you just have to admit that you’re not a rational person at all, and that the term ‘denier’ is well justified in your case.
PeterM
We have discussed the observed 21st century “lack of warming” (Trenberth’s “travesty”) ad nauseam, Peter.
All the talk in the world won’t make it go away.
What happens over the next decade is anyone’s guess.
If it follows the most recent decade, chances are it will not have much to do with changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
But we’ll just have to wait and see.
Maybe it will start warming again. Who knows?
Certainly not IPCC or James E. Hansen. Their models got it wrong the last time.
With Hansen there is the added complication that the same guy is making dire predictions and secretly manipulating the temperature record (GISS) on a routine basis. A bad combination (like the fox guarding the hen house), but that’s what we have today, like it or not.
Your BS on a “rational person” versus a “denier” is just that, Peter, and does not deserve a response (as I am sure you are aware).
Max
Max,
What about answering the question?
If temperatures had been cooler in the 00’s, than in the 90’s, by the same amount as they were actually warmer, would you have said been equally dismissive of its significance?
You might ask me a similar question at some stage. If it turns out that temperatures do fall in the 10’s as compared to the 00’s then I would agree that it would be a curious against-the-trend result. I would certainly agree that there may need to some re-evaluation of the understanding of the issue of AGW.
I certainly wouldn’t claim that although temperatures had fallen over the whole decade, they were warmer in the second half than in the first and therefore the result lacked any significance!
Max,
I’ve noticed that you have not been impressed by the various failures of Mark Serreze, DIRECTOR of the NSIDC, concerning his profound arguments of unprecedented ice loss in the Northern Hemisphere.
But hey, look….. don’t be so harsh….. he’s a lovely cuddly guy, and needs a good hug from someone; perhaps a nice young lady adorned with elegant tattoos and a gold nose-ring or two.
I’m a tad surprised that he has not appreciably shed hair from his cranial Northern Hemisphere, given the overheating activity that must go on in his grey matter beneath, but then, shatteringly, only to be disappointed later.
It reminds me of a far more rational genius, (sadly I mourn), the late Spike Milligan, whom wrote somewhere words to the effect that in his youth, he would pad-out his underpants around his wedding tackle for motivational exaggeration, but that subsequently, various pre-marital easily impressionable ladies would express disappointment at the outcomes.
But hey, blow this photo of Serreze a nice kiss!
http://sciencewatch.com/sciencewatch/dr/fbp/images-fbp/2008/08junfbpSerreze.jpeg
Brute,Actually, I agree with you about some benefits in reduced ice cover in the NH