This is a continuation of a remarkable thread that has now received 10,000 comments running to well over a million words. Unfortunately its size has become a problem and this is the reason for the move.
The history of the New Statesman thread goes back to December 2007 when Dr David Whitehouse wrote a very influential article for that publication posing the question Has Global Warming Stopped? Later, Mark Lynas, the magazine’s environment correspondent, wrote a furious reply, Has Global Warming Really Stopped?
By the time the New Statesman closed the blogs associated with these articles they had received just over 3000 comments, many from people who had become regular contributors to a wide-ranging discussion of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, its implications for public policy and the economy. At that stage I provided a new home for the discussion at Harmless Sky.
Comments are now closed on the old thread. If you want to refer to comments there then it is easy to do so by left-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘Copy Link Location’ and then setting up a link in the normal way.
Here’s to the next 10,000 comments.
Useful links:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
The original Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs thread is here with 10,000 comments.
Max,
Reur 3345, Booker, did not fully cover the Dr. Nurse thingy, where sceptic James Delingpole, was apparently ambushed and exhausted and wanting to leave, during a 3-hour interview for the “respected” BBC TV Horizon programme.
The saga has been unfolding in more detail at WUWT, and it seems that there was clever editing to fraudulently show Delingpole as a fruitcake.
I have fairly close experience of this media technique because back in the 80’s, the executive manager of a programme that I was working on was also interviewed for about 3 hours by Oz TV Channel 9. This exec was deeply respected by all his staff, was my confidant, and was the most honest and fair guy imaginable. (quite atypical of many other managers). However, what came out in the broadcast was edited to about one sixth of the interview taped, and was totally stitched to be out-of-context crap.
BTW, there was a lovely comment over at WUWT somewhere on the Nurse saga, which I’ll paraphrase:
The UEA and Harrabin are the two caressing cheeks of the arse, and the BBC is that spot right in the middle.
“Delingpole” is a fruitcake? Goodness me! I’m shocked at the suggestion.
He might not be able to understand the science himself, or even have the time to do it, but he’s a “interpreter of interpretations”. What more can anyone ask?
See him absolutely demolish Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, in this clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36Xu3SQcIE0
Max,
I normally skip or gloss-over anything from YOUR simpleton friend in Queensland.
However, I noticed above that he gleefully referred to a 5+ minute video of the Nurse-Delingpole interview, which according to other sources actually lasted some 3 hours. So, I suckered-up and had a look, but could not endure it more than about half-way through. However, not to abandon all hope, I ran it again for closer analysis, and noted that there were some OBVIOUS video editing breaks at about 0:22, 1:00, 1:16, 1:43, 2:11, 2:21 and 2:59. (and I may have missed some). At that point I could not see any value in enduring the full 5+ minutes that were selectively edited out of the reportedly ~3 HOUR interview.
Without me detailing the full list of editing tricks that I noticed, see for example that at ~1:43 in the background that Delingpole’s frequent arm gestures suddenly change at a switch of scene.
At least at one point I recall, the audio overlaps the video switch, which is another neat scene transition trick!
PeterM
You are asking the wrong question (3350).
The answer is “yes”, of course (if I understood the question).
More pertinent is the question which I will ask you now:
If the decade 2001-2010 had shown a linear rate of warming of 0.2C per decade (as predicted by IPCC) rather than slight cooling (as was actually observed), would you have embraced this linear warming rate as evidence that IPCC got their projection right?
A simple “yes/no” answer will do Peter.
Then we can move on – this topic has become boring and repetitive.
Max
Bob_FJ
Re ur post 3353 on Nurse/Delingpole.
I believe they call that “cherry-picking” (or “selective lying”).
BTW Peter thinks Delingpole is a “fruitcake”; I observed that Nurse behaves like a pompous ass – is he really one?
Max
PS Regarding Serreze: don’t be too hard on him for wearing all that hair. He needs every bit of it when he makes an occasional trip away from his office up to the Arctic – it’s damed cold up there.
Max,
Your question assumes that the IPCC predicted there would be a linear rate of warming over individual decades. I don’t think they have. Or if you think so, maybe you could show me where they have made that forecast?
There is just too much natural variability to be able to say that with any certainty.
However if one decade is compared with another, or ten year smoothing is applied to the graphs, then it does start to become possible to separate out the real increase in global temperature.
……………..
I thought that Sir Paul Nurse behaved with pretty good manners really. Its always the excuse of last resort that quotes have been taken out of context or there has been selective editing of the interview in question.
Ok so Delingpole admits he doesn’t know about the workings of science. We all knew that anyway. It seems from this interview that he doesn’t know about the workings of the media either.
Why would he put himself in that position? Why would he seriously think he was an intellectual match for someone like Paul Nurse? His fate was exactly the same as those local toughs who fancy their chances against a professional boxer in those fairground booths. They just get landed on their backsides without the pro having to break sweat.
He’s now complaining that he’s been “intellectually raped” I hear :-)
PeterM
Just answer my question “yes or no”, Peter. Not another waffle.
FYI here’s what IPCC wrote:
As we know, GHG levels were NOT “kept constant at 2000 levels”, but instead rose from 369 to 390 ppmv from the end of 2000 to the end of 2010. According to IPCC this increase should have caused warming of 0.2°C over this period – but, in reality there was NO temperature increase over this period.
So answer my question, Peter. A simple “yes” or “no” will do. Don’t be afraid. Just answer the question (like I answered yours).
Max
Max,
You are asking me for a yes/no opinion on a position which I don’t believe the IPCC has ever held .
Just show me where they have said what you are claiming first!
PS Your quote isn’t in support of what you are claiming at all. Was this written about the year 2000?
If so, the IPCC could have looked back at the 90’s, 80’s and 70’s and seen that the decadal increase was, I’d say slightly less, than 0.2 degC per decade. The way they would do that would be to compare the 90’s with the 80’s and 70’s.
Not the linear change within the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s which would have been more variable.
Max, Reur 3355
I wonder what contribution Nurse had to this?
Royal Society launches new climate change guide By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News
The guide has been updated partly as a result of complaints by 43 of the Royal Society’s members who were concerned about the tone of its previous guide.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11438570
Oh and while we are swapping jokes, I saw this over at WUWT
Reminds me of a joke that circulates the [southern parts of Oz]
Why do Queenslanders drink XXXX?
Because they can’t spell beer! :-)
(XXXX being a popular brand of beer)
PeterM
I see from your last post that you prefer wiggling and waffling rather than replying to a question with a straight answer.
So be it.
As you may be aware IPCC uses the “linear trend” for determining temperature trends (as well as trends in sea ice extent) throughout its AR4 WG1 SPM report.
Nowhere in this report is the arithmetic average of one decade compared with that of another (as you have dreamt up to support your denial that the warming trend of the late 20th century stopped in the early 21st century).
In your denial, you are confusing decadal rates of change (warming/cooling) for a specific decade (2001-2010) with a comparison of absolute values over two decades (1991-2000 compared with 2001-2010).
These are two different things mathematically, as I hope you can grasp.
Denial is a strange thing, Peter. But it is a common behavior of people motivated by religious (or pseudo-religious) dogma, rather than reason.
Looks like you have fallen into the trap.
Too bad.
Max
PeterM
A picture is worth 1,000 words…
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5295/5405996749_32293569a5_b.jpg
Max,
Yes you’re right – a picture is worth a 1000 words and this shows you’ve got it all wrong as usual
Data from http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/annual
Its not actually cooling in the first decade of the century.
PeterM
The “first decade of this century” starts with year 2001 and goes through year 2010 (not 2000 through 2009, as you have shown on your chart).
Cheating on the years to prove a point is very silly, Peter, since it is sooooo transparent.
Sorry, chum. Grow up.
Max
Max,
If I remember rightly, the old Millenium was universally celebrated to end on the 31st Dec 1999 and the new one to start on the 1st January 2000. So the first decade of the new Millenium, and century, is 2000-2009 as claimed.
Certain pedants, at the time, claimed we should wait another year before celebrating the Millenium on the grounds that there was no year zero. That’s not true. The only way you can make the switch from BC to CE make sense mathematically is to have years:
…2BC,1BC,0,1CE, 2CE etc
which does of course include a year zero. Incidentally JC is now thought to have been born in the year 3BC so there may well have been years -1, -2, -3 also.
Interesting though this might be to certain pedantic types, its not going to make any difference to climate science, and any argument relying on the possibility that the world was 12 months early in its Millenium celebrations is thin to say the least!
PeterM
Sorry to disappoint you, but you celebrated the “new millennium” a year too early.
http://www.astronomyboy.com/millennium/
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_the_millennium_start
So it appears that you are one of the guys that chose “the wrong date to celebrate, a year too early, and don’t like to admit it”.
But the facts are the facts (even when they are unpleasant).
Max
Max,
Did you say that at the time or have you just latched on to the argument recently re the climate change issue?
The flaw in the line of reasoning you quoted is that the “new calendar” didn’t actually start on 1st Jan 1AD. The year 1AD just didn’t exist at the time. Neither did any year up to the year 524. The Julian calendar was devised in the year 525 and therefore all dates before this are backdated -and still there is an error of three years in there for the religious purists!
Furthermore, there is no mathematical reason why there couldn’t be a year zero, coincidentally, or otherwise, with the year 1BC. JC would probably have been three or four years old at the time!
So you see, there is no real case for saying the world made a mistake on Dec 31st 1999.
Hey guys,
Don’t know if you’ve heard, but at this moment a winter storm is affecting a 2,100 mile area of North America. Chicago is expecting 24” of snow. The storm is gathering strength and expected to dump (yet another) massive amount of snow on the northeast (New York/Boston).
Global Warming Alarmists have stated as recently as 2 years ago that winter snow storms would all but disappear from the northern hemisphere due to increasing temperatures caused by increasing CO2 levels.
Hansen’s doctored temperature records and Peter Martin’s quibbling regarding when a decade starts are all academic…………extreme cold temperatures and blizzards (reality) are having the last laugh in the face of the eco-chondriacs hand wringing.
The failure of the “Green Economy” in Spain is yet another example of the failure of the “green” agenda……these facts are irrefutable……………the evidence proving the fraud that is global warming theory is everywhere and the people are witnessing the failure of the global warming religious prophecies first hand.
PeterM
It is common knowledge that a millennium (or century) starts with the year “1” (as a matter of fact, counting anything starts with “1” – not “0”).
In Switzerland we learn this at around age 10.
I don’t know how it is in Queensland, but I suppose it must be about the same. It appears that you may have been sick and absent from school that day.
At any rate, you’re never too old to learn something new that you missed in school.
Max
Max,
So counting anything starts with a “one”, does it? So how old were you shortly after you were born? Not one, that’s for sure! You’d have had to wait 12 months for that. Like everyone, and everything, else you had a year zero. If you are fortunate to live long enough you’ll celebrate your centenary as the clock ticks past midnight on the day of your 100th birthday. Not your 101st birthday.
The argument about 2001 versus 2000 effectively hinges on whether there was a year zero in our callendar too. Of course there wasn’t considered to be such a year at the time. But, then neither was there considered to be year 1. Nor a year 2. Nor a year 500. That didn’t happen until the year 525 and even then it took several hundred more years for the new Julian calendar, later modified to be the Gregorian calendar, to be widely accepted.
So if its OK to backdate 524 missing years, there seems to be no reason not to backdate an extra one for the year zero. Its just as valid as all the rest.
Max,
On the matter of video editing of long interviews, a matter close to my heart, from the experience of my boss in the 80’s, here is a topical article over at WUWT, that starts:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/01/bbc4s-meet-the-skeptics/#more-32895
It is well worth a read, and Delingpole was also approached by the same video team…. Different to the Nurse ambush.
Oh,and Max,
Coming back to some Queenslanders having difficulty spelling long words like ‘beer’, it seems they also have difficulty counting. In fact I seem to recall that they cant manage to say (brand) XXXX, but instead tend to call it ‘four-X’
Peter and Max
I’ve lost track of who is arguing what, but the official definition of the WMO is that a trend is thirty years and any official measurement-such as for the IPCC- commences from the first year of the decade i.e 2001.
One of you is making up their own rules but its too late at night to scroll back through and find out who :)
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=52zXIwAUVa8C&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=wmo+1961+base+line&source=bl&ots=TloD9l7sCl&sig=tuQs-1qXszkshg6oQyNsQwCgVW8&hl=en&ei=l3FITej3J9GYhQfH3bTXBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
tonyb
AL GORE: THE SNOWSTORMS ARE CAUSED BY THE ‘WARMING’…
Snow job: Gore channels liberal columnist as proof of global warming fueled blizzards
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/01/snow-job-gore-channels-liberal-columnist-as-proof-of-global-warming-fueled-blizzards/
PeterM
Sure, you start your “first year” at birth. It ends when you are 1-year old and start your “second year”.
That’s the way it goes, Peter. Like it or not.
The first decade of the new millennium started midnight, December 31, 2000 and just ended midnight, December 31, 2010, as the second decade just started.
During this first decade there was no warming of our atmosphere (in fact there was a slight cooling, both at the surface and in the troposphere). This happened despite record increases in that deadly greenhouse has, CO2. This “unexplainable” fact was called a “travesty” by Kevin Trenberth. Met Office did not call it a “travesty”, but attributed it to “natural variability” (i.e. natural climate forcing factors), which had previously been downplayed as essentially insignificant by IPCC.
A real dilemma, and yes, a true “travesty” (or a “relief”?) for those (like yourself) who believe that AGW, caused primarily by human CO2 emissions, has been the principal cause of past warming and represents a serious potential threat.
What to do?
Acknowledge it (as Trenberth and Met Office have done) and try to play it down as insignificant (“it’s only ten years, after all” – “just wait, AGW will come back with a vengeance”) or simply stick your head in the sand and deny it (as you are doing).
Another approach would be to acknowledge it, attribute it to natural forcing factors (based on as yet undefined mechanisms) and concede that these natural factors play a much more important role in shaping our climate than was previously recognized by IPCC in its rather myopic fixation on human GHGs. This appears to be the approach that is taking hold with many scientists now.
We will have to see whether or not the current cooling trend continues and, if so, whether it will lead to a statistically significant longer-term climate trend. And scientists will have to try to figure out what caused it.
It’s all very fascinating. And there are so many more unknown uncertainties than there are certainties, particularly when it comes to natural forcing of our climate, which has unfortunately gotten much less attention (and funding) than anthropogenic forcing.
Interesting times, Peter, as I’m sure you’ll agree.
Max