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.
Do you guys know about this?
Agenda 21
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_00.shtml
Brute 4151
I posted a pile of stuff about Agenda 21 some 18 months ago. See link 16 onwards in my article here;
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/crossing-the-rubicon-an-advert-to-change-hearts-and-minds/#comments
tonyb
I see that Mark Lynas, the man who helped trigger this entire thread, is having difficulty with the IPCC. Welcome to the Dark Side, Mr L… :-)
http://www.marklynas.org/2011/06/new-ipcc-error-renewables-report-conclusion-was-dictated-by-greenpeace/
On The Hijacking of the American Meteorological Society (AMS)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/16/on-the-hijacking-of-the-american-meteorological-society-ams/#more-41788
Hi Guys…A blast from the past…. I took part as ‘Stargazer’ on the ‘original’ two threads.
I see that allot of the ‘original’ posters are still here, Brute, Tonyb, etc.
I just had to say OMG about Mark Linas…. I just hope that he can give us enough time to see that we do indeed have a point (several infact) to make
And to wish Mark a ‘revealing journey’
Hi Ian
It’s interesting to watch Mark going through the sceptical thought processes. He appears a straightforward person to me who despite his background never seems to have examined the science properly.
He even admitted he just accepted the hockey stick at face value because he wanted to believe the message it gave out.
Lets see if Mark continues his journey
tonyb
REPORT: Climate change ‘researchers’ caught padding sea level data…
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/17/research-center-under-fire-for-adjusted-sea-level-data/
Welcome back, Stargazer.
Max
Brute
The article you cited on the latest red herring on sea level shows that the trend among the climate “faithful” now appears to be defensive rather than offensive.
Back in the heady days of “rapid” warming and awards of Nobel Peace Prizes and an Oscar, everything was rolling along beautifully.
But then all those thermometers, even the ones next to AC exhausts and asphalt parking lots, started showing that the warming had stopped!
Even worse, the newly installed comprehensive ARGO measurements showed that the ocean had cooled instead of warming since they were installed in 2003!
At the same time satellite and radiosonde measurements have shown that the “fingerprint” of greenhouse warming, the tropospheric hot spot, is simply not there!
Now even the extremely dicey satellite altimetry sea level measurements have shown a slowdown in the rate of rise. Oops!
So, for the temperature, we now have “cooling from human aerosols is masking the underlying GH warming from human CO2? (Hmm…data, please).
In the case of the ocean cooling, there was no real explanation, except at first to say that previous measurements had a “warming bias”, which might make the ARGO measurements look like cooling (OUCH!) and then to write it off as a “speed bump”.
The missing “hot spot” is salvaged by stating that the thermometers were off, so let’s use wind shear data to reconstruct temperatures that will again show a hot spot (HUH?).
For the sea level readings that are no longer playing along we now have this new “isostatic red herring”.
The mind boggles at the imagination displayed by the faithful in defending their dogma against the facts.
Is it any wonder that rational skeptics become even more skeptical?
Max
PS Too bad that Peter is no longer with us to comment on these developments.
Brute
It may interest you to know that IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri has rejected the recommendation to include a conflict of interest policy for authors of the new IPCC AR5 report.
http://climateaudit.org/2011/06/18/pachauri-no-conflict-of-interest-policy-for-ar5/#more-13886
Max
Max,
I believe that Peter Martin is now as disgusted with the warmists scientists as we have been all along.
He’s realized that he has been duped for all this time and his pride will not allow him to admit that he’s been hoodwinked.
I’ve been reading this morning about the UK removing two thirds of their money from the Eurozone. There are a myriad of reasons behind the collapse of the Euro, but as someone who lives there……I wanted your sense of the cause(s).
I’d have thought all of those green jobs would have increased revenues across the board and created a new “green prosperity” across the land. I’ve heard very little about how green technology has saved the day (sarcasm).
Your thoughts?
Max,
RE: 4160…………conflict of interest
Mrs. Brute and I watched a James Bond movie last night starring the most recent actor to play 007 (Craig?).
Anyway, the villain was this guy/organization that was buying up land in third world countries under the guise of “saving the environment”…………….Surreptitiously he was locking up vast tracts of land (calling them eco-parks) and clandestinely drilling for oil and profiting from the logging/mineral rights.
The writers must have used Al Gore/Pachauri and other real life enviro-saviors as a model to develop this character.
The most poignant scenes were when fawning do-gooder Liberals fell for this big-lie………….donating vast sums of money to fund the “enviro-park” movement.
Life imitates art…………..(or is it the other way around?)
Brute I think you will find it is the UK’s private Banks removing their money, or put more realistically they are reducing their exposure. They can’t help but do this, as it is obvious to all but our Politicians that the Euro is finished in its current form.
Yes, Peter……….this is the story that I was reading.
UK banks abandon eurozone over Greek default fears
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8584442/UK-banks-abandon-eurozone-over-Greek-default-fears.html
EU euro Debt Crisis – Lending merry-go-round – Overton Window
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAYx0jUR8yM
Brute,
So the UK bankers have removed 2/3 of their money from the Eurozone and that means that everyone else should now realise that climate scientists are worthy of nothing but their disgust?
Well, if you don’t mind, I think you need to find someone else to discuss these kind of issues with. Someone who thinks that banks such as Barclays allow their financial decisions to be made by the Hadley Climate reasearch centre, and they, in turn, ask Barclays staff to write their climate research papers.
Gee Pete, (Tempterrain), you seem somewhat “miffed”.
Things aren’t working out very well for you and your enviro-socialist buddies…….
Hey, maybe you can explain why Greece can’t meet its electrical consumption requirements.
Maybe you can regale us all with your pontificant explanation of why the “free” electricity hasn’t met the Greek people’s electrical needs.
You remember don’t you? The “free” electricity that falls from the Utopian Socialist skies.
Greece faces power outages due to austerity strike
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_GREECE_FINANCIAL_CRISIS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-06-20-06-03-47
Brute
The U.S. Congressional letter to Ban Ki Moon asking him to use his influence to implement a “rigorous conflict of interest policy” for the IPCC, as was recommended by the IAC review of the IPCC in 2010, is posted over at Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. blog.
http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/061711_Broun%20Letter%20to%20UN%20re%20IPCC%20Conflict%20of%20Interest.pdf
This comes after the IPCC leadership under its Chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, rejected the implementation of such a policy at the recent IPCC session in Abu Dhabi in May.
One should read the attachments to the letter to find out why IPCC does not want this policy implemented.
Max
Brute
I’ll have to catch up on the latest 007 flic. Thanks for tip.
Yeah. Things really do not look good for the “dangerous AGW” crowd.
More revelations of bogus info in IPCC reports surface, just as Pachauri rejects a conflict of interests policy for the IPCC.
It almost looks like an intentional self-destruction.
And the “lack of warming” continues with 2011 almost half over, despite CO2 increase to record levels.
The question now is, “will IPCC be disbanded or simply become totally irrelevant?” (And, “when will this happen?”)
Max
Brute
Re 4161
My thoughts on the Euro are two-fold.
Living in Switzerland it’s great to cross over into France or Germany for shopping with a Euro at Fr.1.20 (when it was Fr. 1.60 just a bit more than a year ago).
On the other hand, EU citizens are moving to Switzerland in waves, because of the higher salaries here. Switzerland signed the “open borders” agreement with the EU a few years ago, so we are getting construction workers from eastern European EU countries and doctors, economists, professors, etc. from Germany and France. Despite this influx, unemployment here remains below 5%.
The influx has caused a housing boom, which locals fear may become a “bubble”.
The export industry here is hurting though, as is the tourist sector.
But everyone I talk to here is very happy that Switzerland did not vote to join the EU a few years ago and has resisted political pressure (mostly from the left parties) to reconsider joining, let along being part of the Euro. Many citizens of all 4 bordering countries have expressed a desire to join Switzerland (rather than the other way around).
The EU powers that be (led by Germany and France) have just decided to hold off transferring the latest piece of a 100 billion Euro bail-out package to Greece until they see real signs of economic reforms there (reducing costs, privatizing government-owned businesses, etc.) – meanwhile the Greeks, led by the unions, are demonstrating against cost-cutting reforms, rioting and smashing windows, etc. and the socialist PM, Papandreou, is caught between a rock and a hard spot.
Under pressure from the EU last year (at the time of the first “Greek crisis”), the Swiss National Bank spent almost 100 billion Francs buying Euros at Fr. 1.50 to “help out” (that’s almost two times the total annual federal budget of Switzerland). This decision is now being questioned, as it has obviously not worked and people are asking why Switzerland should be bailing out the EU in the first place.
So you see that, while not directly impacted here by the latest Euro crisis, there will undoubtedly be an indirect impact if it gets much worse.
Max
.
Brute
Re 4161 –part 2
You asked if I knew the causes for the Greek crisis.
I am no expert on this, but here is one analysis of this, based on what I have been able to read here.
Over the years Greece (the poorest EU member) benefited from EU membership and the Euro, with rapidly increasing wages and salaries, generous retirement packages, bloated government bureaucracies and government-owned businesses. As was the case in Spain and Portugal, there seemed to be a race to “catch up” with the richer member nations, such as Germany and France.
But Greece has always had deficits in its balance of payments, with imports more than twice the value of exports and, most recently a trade imbalance of around 15 billion Euros per year.
With the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the USA in September 2008, most nations (including Greece) gave large government guarantees – or bailouts – to their own backs to prevent a ripple effect. (Switzerland did the same for UBS, for example.) In doing this, the already bloated Greek government became a major owner of all the risky deals hidden in the banks’ balance sheets. The government also handed out stimulus packages to try to jump-start the economy (as was also done unsuccessfully in the USA). Of course, the economy did not recover and the already overextended government became unable to pull itself out of the crisis without external help.
So, in summary, Greece chronically spent more than it earned, its government and government-owned enterprises grew rapidly, as did wages and salaries, and when the international financial crisis and resulting economic slump caused by the Lehman collapse hit, the Greek government did all the wrong things to make matters even worse.
That’s just my assessment based on what I can read here.
Max
Max,
The Socialist’s appetite for other people’s property/wealth is as deep as the Mariana Trench.
The Liberals in the US Congress are using similar language regarding the US debt limit today as Hansen/Gore use in their global warming histrionic fits. They claim irreparable damage and looming catastrophe if the amount of money they are permitted to borrow is not increased.
The thing is, the “deadline” passed without incident a couple of months ago. The new “deadline” is August 1st (it seems the primary doomsayer, Treasury Secretary Timmy “Turbo Tax” Geithner, seems to have recently “found” some “extra” money to keep us going until then).
Funny thing that………….I’ve always wondered how there can be a “debt limit” when every time they reach the “limit”, the congress increases it.
No matter the amount, the Liberals will always spend more……..it’ll never be enough to satisfy their voracious appetite to waste in addition to bribing their cronies to vote themselves gifts from the treasury.
The problem with you right wing types is, generally speaking, you are too fixated on money whereas in reality it is nothing more than a piece of paper , or even a binary digit in a computer database. You’ve got to ask yourself just what money actually is and what it is for.
Essentially its no different than the points that are used in baby sitting circles. The idea behind these circles is that children are looked after, enabling their parents to go out, rather than for any one individual or couple to accumulate a huge amount of points. Obviously, if that were to happen and none of the other parents had any points left in their account it would make sense for the club to create and hand out new ones to all circle members. Otherwise, even though babies still needed to be looked after and sitters were willing to do the sitting, there would be no available points to enable the system to work.
A unit of currency is just another variable in the workings of a country’s or world’s economy.
That’s why I exchange my “pieces of paper” for commodities.
Speaking of worthless paper……………how is the carbon credit scam going Pete?
How much air do you own at this point?
PeterM
You commented (4173) to a discussion Brute and I were having about the causes and current status of the Greek financial crisis:
The Greek financial crisis is primarily about “money”. Of course, it is also about a Greek government (under both parties) that has chronically overspent and built up a vast bureaucracy, a society that has allowed chronic corruption at all levels, a handful of superrich Greeks that do not pay their share of taxes, etc. (and a whole bunch of other social and political factors), but the primary issue is about “money” (or lack thereof). [At least the Greeks can’t blame “climate change”!]
But in a sense you are right. “Money” alone will not solve the Greek problem. Unless the Greeks carry out the (probably painful) reforms, the next financial injections will not do much good.
Max