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. Peter 975

    It was you that suggested that we ought to stick to 19th Century temperatures, to which I posted an article citing in detail the evolution of the climate during that time.

    Seems to me that you are now saying that you DO prefer the modern climate to the one in the recent past

    If you want a nicely warm period- but not quite as warm as today- then clearly the early part of the 18th Century would fit the bill. This is shown even in your own graph.

    Have you any explanations for the dramatic up turn in 1698 from the bitterly cold preceding decades-the coldest in the record and before Man ‘tampered’ with CO2?

    Tonyb

  2. TonyB,

    You’re talking about just England or Global? If just England, and probably Europe too, then it could be ocean currents in the North Atlantic. Or maybe it was an early 18th century type of UHI effect? Someone situated the weather station too close to a warm chimney :-)

    If you’re talking global then it would have to be just a proxy measurement and you’d need to give me the reference before I could comment.

    Its not a question of what climate I, or anyone else, ‘prefers’. Naturally many people would prefer a warmer climate than you might get in, say, Yorkshire. The last time I was there I remember playing cricket in the snow, and my hands were so cold I could barely grip the ball. Its not something that happens too often in Queensland. But, as I said, if you want ‘warm’ don’t live in Yorkshire and expect dangerous climate change (as Robin puts it) to make it become more like the Mediterranean.

  3. PeterM

    So you do not have any idea (974) what the “Goldilocks just right” ideal globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature or corresponding atmospheric CO2 content or resulting optimum sea level should be? Good!

    Neither do I. Neither does Hansen (despite his “dangerous CO2 level” postulation).

    I’d say that Goklany’s study tells us that there are fewer climate related deaths globally today than there were 30 or 50 years ago, so it is logical to conclude that we are probably headed in the right direction, despite Hansen’s hysterical hyperbole.
    http://www.csccc.info/reports/report_23.pdf
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Improving_State_of_the_World

    Max

  4. Max,

    Temperatures have risen about 0.8deg C since the start of the 20th century. With probably more to come even if CO2 stays constant due
    1)to the Earth being in a state of thermal disequilibrium
    2)to the effect of particulates in the atmosphere which offset the effects of GHGs These are shorter lived than CO2 and will therefore not offset CO2 build up indefinitely.

    I guess the purists would say that therefore the ideal temperature should be 0.8 degC less than it is now. I’m more flexible and would accept a higher figure maybe 0.5 degC. This will mean getting CO2 levels down to about what they were in the mid 60’s about 350ppmv.

    see http://www.350.org/

    So that’s, if you like to use the term, the Goldilocks level.

  5. PeterM and TonyB

    Looking at Peter’s CET chart it is quite obvious that the largest single increase in temperature (1.6C) came over the pre-industrial period from around 1700 to 1735, with a smaller increase (1.2C) occurring during the “IPCC’s AGW poster period” from around 1975 to 2005.

    How was this possible without human CO2 emissions to speak of, Peter?

    How would Hansen rationalize it?

    Did glaciers recede during this early period of rampant warming?

    Did sea level rise during this period?

    What happened to Arctic sea ice and the polar bears? How about Antarctic sea ice?

    So many questions – so few answers…

    Max

  6. PeterM

    You cannot be serious in saying that the “Goldilocks just right” ideal “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature” should be between 0.5C and 0.8C colder than today! (Little Ice Age, here we come!)

    How many fewer mouths could our planet feed at this colder temperature?

    Despite some IPCC reports about lower future crop yields with significant warming beyond today (some of which have since been shown to be unfounded), it is generally accepted that a world that is 0.5C to 0.8C colder than today would produce significantly fewer crops than are produced today.

    In addition we have the generally beneficial effect of higher CO2 levels on plant growth. C3 plants, such as wheat, rice, potatoes and soybeans, show greater beneficial photosynthetic response to elevated levels of CO2 than C4 plants, such as maize (corn), sorghum, millet and sugar cane, which only show a minor beneficial response.

    Max

  7. PeterM

    Let’s forget your “thermal disequilibrium” myth (the recently falsified “hidden in the pipeline” postulation) for now and concentrate on your statement:

    Temperatures have risen about 0.8deg C since the start of the 20th century

    Not quite correct, Peter.

    The sentence would be more accurate if it were modified as follow:

    Temperatures have risen about 0.65deg C since the start of the modern HadCRUT record in 1850, 160 years ago

    Just a technicality, but we should strive to be as accurate as possible here, Peter.

    Max

  8. PeterM

    BTW, coming back to the “Goldilocks” discussion (979/981), the C3 crops, i.e. those that benefit the most from higher atmospheric CO2 levels, are:
    Rice
    Wheat
    Potatoes
    Soybeans
    Barley
    Oats
    Rye
    These represent 70% of the total, with the top 4 alone representing 66% of the total.

    The C4 crops, which show only a slight benefit from higher CO2 levels, are:
    Maize
    Millet
    Sorghum
    These represent 30% of the total, with maize alone representing 27% of the total.

    So it looks like higher CO2 levels could have a major beneficial effect on our planet’s ability to feed its population.

    The 0.65C temperature increase, which we have observed since 1850, has very likely also had an additive net beneficial effect in longer growing seasons and improved crop yields, particularly in the temperate zones.

    Just a bit of good news to cheer you up, Peter.

    Max

  9. Keeping CO2 levels – and therefore the climate (following the AGW logic) – in a sort of 1960s time-warp is an intriguing idea. We could call it the Austin Powers Climatic Optimum…

    Mind you, not everything was rosy, weather-wise, in the 1960s. Millions (!) died in China in 1959/1960, due to flooding and drought. Hurricane Betsy flooded areas of New Orleans in 1965, drowning 40 people and caused more than $9 billion in damage; on the Hurricane Severity Index, Carla (1961), Betsy (1965) and Camille (1969) all score higher than Katrina (2005). The Columbus Day Storm of 1962 caused great devastation in the Pacific Northwest. People also drowned in Italy when the river Arno flooded in 1966. In the UK, of course, we had one of the worst winters of the 20th century in 1962, and we also had hundreds die in the North Sea floods of February 1962, in northern Europe (Hamburg, in particular, was hit hard.) There was also the New Years’ Eve Storm of 1963 in the US which set historic snowfall records as far south as Alabama. The late 20th century Sahel drought in Africa, in which hundreds of thousands died or were left dependent on food aid, actually started in the late 1960s. And one of the worst Australian bushfire disasters ever occurred in Tasmania in 1967, with over 60 people dead, hundreds injured and thousands homeless, after very high temperatures and low humidity in early February.

    I can see, Peter, that we’re all going to have a big argument about where to set Earth’s thermostat, as the 1960s sound far too climatically dangerous.

  10. Peter

    You are still exhibiting this touching faith that we know precisely what temperatures appertained globally hundreds of years in the past. We can look at individual stations and work out how often they have moved and how they are affected by UHi as I have done with this resource;

    http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/

    However, the idea that we know historic Global temperatures and can parse them to a fraction of a degree is nonsensical as I demonstrate in my article here that looks at how the measurement of temperatures developed over the centuries

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/14/little-ice-age-thermometers-%e2%80%93-history-and-reliability/

    UHI us a very understated element of any modern temperature record as can be seen by IPCC and independent reports here.
    http://climatereason.com/UHI/

    There is lots of good reading in the links above Peter. My vote still goes either to modern temperatures or those current in the early part of the 18th Century (or much of the MWP or Roman Optimum) . Those sorts of temperatures, together with ‘enhanced’ CO2, will help to feed the soon to be 9 billion population much better than the often cold (but equally natural)periods in the past.

    tonyb

  11. Brute

    Your article (962) on the decline of the UN under Ban Ki Moon indicates that this may be partly due to a feud between Moon and a disgruntled (female) ex-employee, but there is also more to it.

    As the past has shown, corruption is a big problem in the UN and the end of the investigating task force under the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) will not help. An outside independent auditor would be even better (but hardly likely to be accepted by the UN).

    Ban Ki Moon also played the AGW fear mongering card a bit too much, with op-ed articles about 7 meter waves hitting coastlines within 100, or maybe even 10, years (when his IPCC tells us sea level is estimated to rise by 18 to 59 cm over the next 100 years and other experts put this at 10 to 20 cm maximum).

    So there is a connection between the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon and the AGW hysteria, even if there is no direct tie (as Peter says) to the topic “Has Global Warming Stopped”.

    Max

  12. PeterM

    You wrote about 2010 probably becoming a “hot year”.

    Have you seen this?

    Cold Wave in Latin America: 220 people dead, thousands homeless and dead crops/cattle.

    http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/34265/south_america_cold_wave_brings.asp
    http://poleshift.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cold-wave-in-latin-america-220

    The cold wave that extends through the Southern Cone and the tropical wave that
    spans several countries in Central America, the Caribbean and northern South
    America, has left at least 225 people dead and thousands of people affected in
    Latin America.

    Earlier this year there were the North American and European cold waves that reached across Asia, as far east as Korea. These were explained by a rare combination of known factors in earth’s natural climate variability (AO, ENSO, NAO, etc.).
    http://sites.google.com/site/whythe2009winterissocold/

    At least 90 were confirmed dead after record low temperatures and heavy snowfall across Europe caused travel disruption to much of the continent including the British Isles, France, the Low Countries, Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland, the Baltic States, the Balkans, Ukraine and Russia. Coldest winter for 30 years in the UK with the longest sustained cold spell since 1981. Temperatures in the Italian Alpine peaks have reached low to an extreme of -47 °C. (Wiki)

    The winter temperatures were well below long-term averages in central North America, across northern Asia and in Europe, with winter weather lasting longer than normal, while those in the Arctic were above average, and parts of Africa and southern Asia were slightly above average.

    All in all, it doesn’t sound too “hot” to me so far. But who knows what will happen in the second half?

    Max

  13. Alex Cull

    To add to your “1960s climate anomalies” (984)

    Lake Zürich was frozen the last time in 1963.

    Earlier recorded freezes were: 1929, 1880, 1830, 1795, 1695, 1684, 1573, 1571 and seven earlier years since 1326.

    Max

  14. TonyB

    Checked out your Climatereason link with the many long-term temperature trends (985).

    I was rather astonished to see that almost none of the stations listed show any significant temperature increase from the 18th/19th century to today.

    How did we get a HadCRUT record that shows 0.65C warming from 1850 to today (or a GISS record that shows similar warming starting in 1880)?

    Is this real, or only an artifact resulting from the urban heat island effect, poor station siting, land use changes and shutdowns or relocations of a majority of the stations, as some studies have shown?

    How did we arrive at projections of several degrees warming by year 2100?

    What do you think, based on your studies of the subject?

    Max

  15. Max,

    Since you want accuracy I should just put up this graph

    Which shows that 0.8degC is a perfectly accurate figure for the warming the world has experienced in the last century.

    It may not sound a lot, and its much less than the normal variability which everyone sees in the day to day weather. However, the emissions of CO2, if left unchecked, are projected to be much higher in the 21st century than the 20th century so the degree of warming for the coming century is likely to be much greater and much more dangerous.

  16. Max,

    There was no ice age in the mid 60’s. Mini or otherwise. 350ppmv is 70ppmv over the pre-industrial level and will probably be enough to stave off any further return to glacial conditions.

  17. Max #989

    Some of the answers are given in the second link I gave to Peter in #985

    A proportion of the apparent change comes down to when the record starts from. For example, a start point in 1870 will give a quite different slope to one starting in 1880 (when Hansen commences his record)

    All those factors you mention have an impact but two factors stand head and shoulders above the others.

    Firstly, when stations move (often to an airport)they are then recording a quite different micro climate-in effect it is not the same station although the name may continue.

    Second, those stations that remain static are often engulfed by the city and are affected by UHI. (do you remember that last year we looked at Zurich Fluntern) Both CRU and GISS are heavily biased to urban records these days, but the several thousand stations used are not adjusted sufficiently for this, instead the tiny allowance made is averaged out over the whole globe (see link 3 from above)

    UHI is particularly high in winter, especially at night. A station that was rural 100 years ago will show completely different temperature values to that same station now surrounded by buildings.

    Global temperature is a complete nonsense as the stations continually change in locations and number, and those that do remain the same are often highly compromised.

    Some of the European long records are examined in my article here.

    http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/travels-in-europe-part-1/

    If you have the time to read this and link 2 and 3 from #985 and my article mentioned in #973 you will get a good idea of what is going on.

    I leave in the morning to go on holiday for two weeks so in the meantime I hope you will be able to cure Peter of his belief that a global temperature has any merit whatsoever.

    tonyb

  18. Pete,

    Remember how you wrote that you could personally control the planet’s temperature?

    Turn the dial up a little……..you’re killing penguins.

    Hundreds of dead penguins wash up on Brazil’s beaches; home waters too cold…

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100722/ap_on_sc/lt_brazil_dead_penguins;_ylt=Ap9vlgVNlh1N6i.2MBJEYL1zfNdF

  19. Senate Democrats abandon comprehensive energy legislation

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100722/ap_on_bi_ge/us_senate_energy

  20. Climate bill tabled, blame game begins

    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40132.html

  21. PeterM

    If you take the difference between the peak lowest year in the 20th century to the highest, you may arrive at 0.8C change (990).

    If, however, you use the IPCC statistical approach of determining linear trends, you get 0.6C for the 20th century (1901-2000) – as published in the TAR – and 0.7C for the “adjusted” 20th century (1906-2005, eliminating an early cooling trend) – as published in the AR4.

    Statistics are a wonderful thing, Peter. You can prove almost anything you want to, simply by bending the rules a bit.

    Max

  22. PeterM

    Your prognosis for the future (if “CO2 emissions are left unchecked”) is interesting, but hardly conclusive, as it is not based on empirical data but simply on model simulations with assumptions based on theoretical deliberations.

    I would not worry too much about it, Peter. It looks like the world, in general, is beginning to be less worried about this hypothetical problem than about some real problems facing us.

    Max

  23. TonyB

    Thanks for your 992 with links. Will check them out.

    Have a great holiday.

    Max

    PS Will work on Peter, but have little hope that he will change his dangerous AGW belief.

  24. PeterM

    You are right when you write (991) that there was no mini-ice age in the 1960s.

    Using your “spot temperature analysis” approach, it was simply 0.2C colder (on average) than 20 years before, despite the UHI impacts which TonyB cites in his 992.

    And this despite a rapid increase in atmospheric CO2, which (according to IPCC’s “climate sensitivity estimate”) should have caused warming of 0.2C. Oops!.

    How strange!

    Max

  25. Max,

    Can’t you get anything right? You pose the question about the diffence between the “peak lowest and the highest year in the 20th century”

    Highest (1998) = +0.546 (above arbitrary reference)
    Lowest (1911) = – 0.581

    Therefore Difference = 1.13

    However, that’s the value I would claim if, like you, I was trying to deceive. And I’m not claiming 1.13 degC.

    I should probably take the difference between ten year averages and then I get 0.9 degC . So my figure of 0.8 deg C was actually a slight understatement.

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