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.
TonyB
To your simple question:
It is quite likely that Peter’s (unstated) answer really is:
And, unless he answers your question directly with a specific response, we must assume that this is the real answer.
Max
Max
Yes, I’m waiting eagerly for an answer.
tonyb
Climategate’s Eugene Wahl ‘has confirmed that Mann asked him to delete emails… Wahl did delete emails as the result of this request’
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/08/to-serve-mann/
TonyB,
There is no such thing as absolute accuracy when measuring an analogue variable. So, the question you ask about the accuracy of SST should more properly be: how accurate are they?
I would suggest you might like to read:
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080528/full/453569a.html
which discusses the accuracy problems you have raised. They are well known – but you can’t leap from one extreme to the other. Sorry, you are a climate denier so of course you can!
To say these measurements are ‘completely nonsensical’ doesn’t make any more sense than saying they are ‘totally accurate’.
To All
Here is a very detailed but concise summary prepared by John Christy for today’s testimony before a US Congressional committee on AGW, extreme weather events, climate sensitivity, climate models and their ability to project future climate, impact of emission control measures and much more:
http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/Hearings/Energy/030811/Christy.pdf
This outlines Christy’s conclusions regarding the “dangerous AGW” hypothesis, citing examples and references to physical observations to support these.
Judith Curry has posted this on her site, along with the statement below by Francis Zwiers, who testified in favor of the premise that AGW has caused a warming of the climate system resulting in an increase of extreme weather events:
http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/Hearings/Energy/030811/Zwiers.pdf
Both statements are well worth reading, but I’ll let you judge who gave the more convincing arguments.
Max
Peter 3805
Well at least you answered, but you merely proved yet again that you do not read things that challenge your ingrained perceptions, as in your 3805 you directly referenced the very article I had already referenced in my 3766!!!
“…A new paper by David Thompson and other NOAA atmospheric scientists in Nature reports a different explanation. Most of the wartime measurements of sea temperatures factored into the global average came from US warships, which unlike the British navy tended to log engine room water intake thermometer readings as representing the temperature of the sea.
The hardy jack tars who returned to meteorological duty as the war wound down
instead relied as always on the time honored method of throwing a bucket over the side, hauling it in, and putting it on deck for a thermometer wielding chief or officer to measure. The late Victorian change from oaken buckets to galvanized steel was compounded before World War II, when not just British, but Dutch and Japanese hydrographers were issued porous and hence cooling-prone canvas seawater scoops, a bad idea since the wind is generally brisk on a moving vessel.
Inevitably, the seawater sampled tended to cool – evidently measurably, in the time it
took to present it on deck for measurement.”
The point is that there are very few SST’s relative to ocean size and time. Add to this that samples were taken in a variety of ways, most of which permitted considerable cooling OR warming of the sample, taken from different depths, measured by untrained people using uncalibrated equipment and they become nosensical.
If they are being used as an important component in Global temperatures don’t you think it important they should be ‘totally accurate? After all, that is what is being claimed in the parsing of these SST’s to hundredths of a degree.
We have exactly the same situation with global land temperatures which were one off records taken in a metaphorically identical manner to throwing a bucket over the side, until the advent of digital recording in the 1980’s. Even then these only recorded the local micro climate, not a global one.
Is there any other science that would accept such low standards of proof for a key part of its ‘evidence?’
tonyb
TonyB,
Well if you don’t like using the evidence of the SST I guess we’ll just have to fall back on the tree rings!
Peter
A close call as to which of these high quality measurements are the most accurate to hundredths of a degree. :)
Now you come to mention it large parts of the ‘evidence’ are completely laughable aren’t they?
tonyb
Pete,
There’s a reason we don’t use trees as thermometers……it’s because we have thermometers.
We may have accurate thermometers, but unfortunately we don’t have time machines!
Brute,
At the risk of showing a red rag to a bull, or should that be a red flag to an elephant?, you might be interested in how Cuba is coping with the aftermath of their peak oil?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1721584909067928384#
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1721584909067928384#docid=4663174070862353171
Peter 3810
We have instrumental records AND highly detailed observations back to 1659. We have detailed observations back to Roman times. Why use treenometers when you have thermometers?
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
They showe temperatures have been rising since the start of the record and using other information we can date that rise to 1601.
James Hansen and Phil Jones merely tapped into an existing generally warmong trend, they do not record the start of it.
tonyb
Er, because we’d like to know what happened before 1659 too?
I presume you mean the CET? I seem to remember plotting that out and it fitted well into the hockey stick graph. No conflict there.
Peter
I think your memory is failing you. CET and others show a gentle uptick from the start of the record-with reverses and advances.There were people alive at the start of the record and in 1600 so we are able to reconcile observation with instrumental records.
There is no hockey stick shape unless you manipulate the scales-and you would never do that would you?
I would remind you that the usefulness is that the instrumental record covers much of the LIA-a bit of a misnomer I always feel
tonyb
Peter
Looked at the videos of Cuba. You are right, they are an object lesson in demonstrating how developed countries would mire themselves in poverty if they reverted to a pre industrial life style. I am greatful to you for pointing out so forcibly the unique benefits of fossil fuels.
tonyb
That’s a funny joke Pete. Bravo.
Don’t talk to me about Cuba…..I know what has and is still happening there.
Cuba is the poster child of a failed collectivist/progressive society and you use that as a fine example of “enlightenment”?
Forced labor camps Peter? Really?
This is what you hope mankind aspires too?
TonyB,
Failing memory? No. Am I the only non retired geriatric on this blog?
This is from last year:
Looks a bit like another hockey stick to me!
Brute and TonyB,
The Cubans don’t have nuclear power and unfortunately aren’t in a position to get it any time soon.
So they are doing the the best they can with what they’ve got which doesn’t look too bad to me.
There is a an interview with a farm manager in one of the videos who was adamant that he was the boss. He was the guy who called the shots, and yes he was paid more for the responsibility. However unlike western CEOs his salary wasn’t 100 times more than the workers, it was about 60% more and if the workers didn’t think he was doing a good job they could vote him out at the end of his term.
Its fair enough to criticise any society for a lack of democracy, but it just struck me that, in western countries, we just don’t get a vote on that sort of thing. At least I never have when I’ve had a job. Have you?
Its a pity that Brute isn’t allowed to go there. He could take a look for himself.
Probably should be “non retired non geriatric” ! :-)
Peter 3817
I think we had a long discussion about the merits of your chart at the time-like Cuba it doesn’t prove what you think it does.
So it took 30 years- from 1959- for the accelerated co2 emissions to take effect? The warming then lasted barely a dozen years-not even a trend. I suggest you google Hadley CET 1772 and see what has happened over the last 7 years-the head of the stick has been well and truly broken
So what precisely caused the grandadaddy of all hockey sticks-the period from 1699 to 1740? Or the 1819 to 1839 stick, or the 1895 to 1952 version. Retrospective c02?
The truth is of course is that there are no hockey sticks at all. What has caused the gently warming trend evident from 1601 to the present day is natural variability-very evident in this years winter.
tonyb
Peter said
“So they are doing the the best they can with what they’ve got which doesn’t look too bad to me.”
I admire the Cubans for making the best of a bad job, but don’t hold them up as an economy we want to emulate.
tonyb
PeterM, Brute, TonyB
Cuba as an energy poster child?
Peter showed some youtubes, but what is the “carbon efficiency” of the Cuban economy ($GDP per ton CO2)?
Cuba emitted around 29 million tons CO2 in 2007 and had a Real GDP of $57.5 billion.
This equates to a “carbon efficiency” of $1,980 $GDP/ton CO2.
Puts the country slightly worse than the USA at $2,200 and slightly better than Australia at $1,900.
That’s the “good news”.
But the “bad news” is that the annual per capita GDP (i.e. the average affluence of its inhabitants) was $5,000, one-eighth that of the USA at $42,400 or one-seventh that of Australia at $35,400.
Not a very good example to use, Peter, despite the PR youtubes you cited.
And the Castro regime has blocked ethanol from sugar cane (like in Brazil), so they have missed the boat on this opportunity to improve their “carbon footprint”.
Brute wrote, “Cuba is the poster child of a failed collectivist/progressive society”.
The many Cuban refugees, who ended up in the USA and are thriving there now, tell the story even clearer (none of them “yearn” to return to life under Castro, as far as I am aware).
Max
Exactly right. My brother’s wife and family are Cuban exiles……..Cuba today is misery and extreme poverty.
Peter is an idiot……..he dreams of his non-existent “Progressive worker’s paradise”……….it doesn’t exist and never has.
Sorry Pete, don’t mean to be so harsh……but if you spoke about the pleasures of Cuba’s “workers’ paradise” to these people……..they’d spit in your face.
Brute,
If Cuba is all misery and etxreme poverty how is it that their life expectancy, infant mortality, and literacy level is the same as that of the USA?
No-one is saying that Cuba is now, or was when it had a close relationship, with the USSR, a workers paradise. But if you had to choose to live in Cuba, or live in Haiti which is just to the East, which would you go for?
Haiti has been governed by dictators with appalling records, on human rights and yet it has never been subjected to an economic blockade by the US as has Cuba. It the same story in much of Latin America, the Americans only make an issue of lack of democratic rights in countries which they disapprove of. Never Chile. Never El Salvador. Never Guatamala.
Its good that Cuba is moving away from Soviet style state collectivism. Its good too that there is a realisation that things do need to change.
It looks like President Obama wants to recognise and encourage that but he can’t move too quickly. There are powerful forces in America who won’t be happy until Cuba is back in the hands of the US organised crime.
According to the world development index Cuba at 0.863 is exactly the same as Spain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index
Now OK, admittedly, I’d probably prefer to live in Spain than Cuba, but the figure show that Cuba isn’t quite the basket case that Americans are led to believe.