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. “visit Europe and talk to a few people from different backgrounds” in order to “find others with similar views to” Peter’s, it would be good to pick your subjects and locations wisely.

    I don’t know Pete………we were thinking of vacationing in Australia this year……

    Max,

    We’ll stay away from the coffee houses and college campuses………

    xxxxxxxxxx

  2. Brute

    Dang-nab it! Those Aussies are smarter than I thought (apologies to Bob_FJ).

    And the good thing is, they appear to be getting smarter as time goes by!

    Peter can be truly proud!

    Max

  3. Some headlines and reports about the “weather” (as opposed to “climate”) in 2010 (now that the year is about half over)

    The winter of 2009–2010 in Europe was unusually cold.

    Through December 2009 and January 2010, a dramatic cold spell swept across Eurasia, England and parts of North America

    Britain is suffering through its longest cold snap since 1981.

    Russia’s top weatherman today announced that the winter now drawing to a close in Siberia may turn out to be the coldest on record

    Very cold and/or snowy weather was reported across the Northern Hemisphere, with many severe cases being reported in the USA, Canada, the UK, Poland, Finland, Russia, India, South Korea, China and Japan.

    Beijing had its coldest morning in almost 40 years and its biggest snowfall since 1951.

    Record cold hits South America, carbon dioxide blamed

    Record cold temperatures hit several South American nations, including Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, and Uruguay, leaving more than 80 people dead

    Argentina is importing record amounts of energy as the coldest winter in 40 years drives up demand and causes natural-gas shortages.

    Hundreds of people – nearly half of them very young children – have died of cold-related diseases, such as pneumonia, in Peru’s mountainous south where temperatures can plummet at night to -20C.

    Adelaide has shivered through its fifth consecutive overnight temperature below 5C and is heading for a record-equalling sixth tonight.

    Sydney’s week of cold weather continues, with the city recording its coldest June morning since 1949 when temperatures dived to 4.3 degrees.

    Melbourne faces longest cold snap in 14 years.

    The recent run of cold night weather in Perth could soon become the longest spell on record as the city shivers through its coldest June in 15 years.

    Brisbane only reached a maximum of 16 degrees, four below the July average and the coldest day in almost two whole years. Longreach, near the heart of Queensland, topped at just 14, the second coldest July day in 17 years.

    So what do the salesmen of the “dangerous AGW” pitch have to say about all this?

    ABC News tells us:

    We spoke to Mark Serreze, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

    “The fact that we had a couple of cool months doesn’t say anything at all about long-term trends,” said Serreze. “It’s just a clear example of natural variability on the climate system. The long-term averages are decidedly toward a warming planet.

    “We have a gradual warming of Earth’s system, but that is interspersed with a strong natural variability in the system,” he said. “This is just the way the system works.”

    Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, agreed.

    “Weather is chaotic. It has an infinite amount of variability, and that’s just the nature of weather,” he said. “Weather dominates on a day-to-day basis, and there will be warmer periods and cooler periods. But it’s the overall pattern that gives you the climate.”

    “Natural variability” affecting “the climate system”?

    “Infinite amount of variability”?

    Sounds like it.

    Besides, Mark (and Kevin), we’re still coming out of the Little Ice Age, as we have been since the mid-19th century.

    Max

  4. Peter M (#1195): “Global warming hasn’t stopped. This year is likely to be the warmest ever!”

    Yes, the great Godzilla of El Nino has indeed been on the rampage this year. But now the Mothra of La Nina begins to flap her mighty wings. Let battle be joined!

  5. Brute,

    Yes, yes, you’ll side with Lindzen and others on AGW. I know that. I think I have managed to figure that out for myself. If there is any surprise there its that you even agree with him that the natural GH effect is real. But, we’ll leave that aside for now The question I was asking was:

    Are there any other scientific ‘controversies’ on which you might take a different view to what you might read on the National Academy of Sciences website? Yes/No

  6. Are there any other scientific ‘controversies’ on which you might take a different view to what you might read on the National Academy of Sciences website? Yes/No

    Like what for example Pete?

    What are you fishing for?

  7. Brute,

    I’m just asking the question, which you obviously don’t want to answer: Is there anything else, or is AGW the only Scientific issue on which you take what might be called a non-mainstream view?

    By non-mainstream I mean what you would find on any of the world’s major scientific websites. The US National Academy of Sciences is excellent and I’m happy to go along with their interpretation of the current state of scientific knowledge.

  8. Geoff Reur 1175

    “…By rejecting Hubble’s identification of red shift with velocity, he [Arp] reinstates a simple, steady state universe, with no need for big bangs, black holes, dark matter, and the rest. He was eased out of his post at the University of California and now works at the Max Planck Institute… …Arp is a respected astronomer, but lost his telescope time at California when his research became too embarrassing to the mainstream. Both are attacked with the same fervency as climate sceptics, though, with no political or economic consequences flowing from cosmology, the debate remains within the closed circle of sceptics and defenders of orthodoxy.

    Same story; different church, but no MSM/political interest!
    I have not followed astrophysics much since almost choking in laughter on string theory and parallel universes, and becoming more concerned by the CAGW church, oh, and also doing a big study on the biblical Book of Daniel which also has a catastrophic wish/motivation for some fundamentalist Christians and Christadelphians.

    Remember wotsisname and wotsisname and their radio-horn-come-telescope that detected a strange spherical signal from space? They initially wondered if it might be caused by pigeon pooh, but after removing said substance, still got the same signal, so it was obviously concluded as remnant radiation from the big-bang, about 13 billion years ago. Yeah, but look, I’d like to check-out that there were not mosquitoes are other buzzing insects active in that big echo-chamber horn.

    Nice to know that others share my doubts about red shift conclusions….. and where is the centre of the universe anyway? Here?

    Dark matter? Oh yes, whatever it is, it must be true, right, or everything else is wrong?

    I’d better stop there!

    Alex, Reur 1180: You mentioned the WUWT thread “hyperventilating on Venus”, but perhaps more interesting is Steve Goddard’s later thread: “Venus Envy”

  9. Bob_FJ, the Venus Envy thread is interesting indeed; to think that I once considered Venus a rather dull sort of place!

    The icing on the cake would now be a guest post on WUWT by James Hansen, in defence of his runaway Venusian warming hypothesis. I’d love to read that (and the comments!!)

    Probably won’t ever happen though, unfortunately.

  10. Bob_FJ

    Steve Godard’s “Venus envy” article provides a very clear and compelling refutation of Hansen’s “Venusian warming on Earth due to AGW” postulation.

    Although Goddard mentions Mars in passing, it would have been good had he gone through the same exercise comparing Mars with Earth, to further validate his Venus-Earth comparison and put another nail into Hansen’s silly postulation.

    Mars, also with an atmosphere of 95% CO2 has an atmospheric pressure at the surface of only 1% of that of Earth, while Venus has an atmospheric pressure at the surface of 90 times that on Earth.

    Add to this the fact that the distance from the sun to Venus is 0.738 times the distance from the sun to Earth, while the distance from the sun to Mars is 1.52 times that to Earth, and the sun’s radiation is proportional to the square of the distance, and you’ve got Venus with over twice the warming from the sun as Earth and Mars at only around half.

    It is clear that Venus’ atmospheric composition, per se, has little to do with its temperature and that other factors are much more important

    It is amazing to me that Hansen, a person who is supposed to be a scientist, can come up with such silly drivel.

    Max

  11. PeterM

    Can you define what you refer to as a “mainstream view” on “science”?

    Googling “mainstream” I get:

    Noun

    the prevailing current of thought, influence, or activity: “You need not accept the nominee’s ideology, only be able to locate it in the American mainstream” (Charles Krauthammer)

    a major or prevailing trend, as of thought, action, literature, or music

    Mainstream is, generally, the common current of thought of the majority. However, the mainstream is far from cohesive; rather the concept is often considered a cultural construct. It is a term most often applied in the arts (i.e., music, literature, and performance).

    Adjective

    Representing the prevalent attitudes, values, and practices of a society or group: mainstream morality.

    “Mainstream medicince” is defined:

    Allopathic medicine, allopathy, conventional medicine, modern medicine, orthodox medicine, traditional medicine, Western medicine Clinical medicine. The approach to health care practiced in developed nations, based on scientific data for diagnosing and treating disease

    “Mainstream” seems to be a “cultural construct”, used in the “arts”, “medical practice” and in “politics”, but I could find no definition of “mainstream” as it refers to “science”.

    Wiki does not give a definition of “mainstream science”, but in discussing the difference between “mainstream science” and “pseudo-science”, Wiki tells us

    the philosopher Karl Popper wrote that science often errs and that pseudoscience can stumble upon the truth, but what distinguishes them is the inductive method of the former, which proceeds from observation or experiment, and that its theories are falsifiable (bold print by me).

    Looks like “mainstream science” is a bit of a nebulous concept or misnomer and we are back to our discussion on the lack of empirical evidence based on observation or experiment to validate the AGW hypothesis. Am I missing something here?

    Max

  12. PeterM

    We have all these reports from all over the inhabited world (1203) that the NH winter (Jan-Mar 2010) and the current SH winter (Jun-Jul) have been unusually cold and severe, causing hundreds of cold-related deaths.

    Yet NOAA tells us that the first half of 2010 has been hotter than normal.

    For a good analysis of why there is this discrepancy and what it tells us about the real temperatures so far in 2010, see “NOAA Jan-Jun 2010 Warmest Ever: False Impressions”:
    http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/NOAA_JanJun2010.htm

    Turns out it’s “warmest” (compared to the 1971-2000 base period) to a great extent in largely uninhabited areas where there are either no measurements today or were none back during the “base period” (or both). Duh!

    Can you explain this, Peter? (Sounds like “sloppy science” to me.)

    Max

  13. Is there anything else, or is AGW the only Scientific issue on which you take what might be called a non-mainstream view?

    Nothing comes to mind Pete.

    Wait, I question this study…….

    Monkeys Get High for Science (Winston-Salem, NC) – $144,541
    Researchers at Wake Forest University think that, in at least one case, it is good to monkey around with your stimulus dollars. The Department of Health and Human Services has sent $144,541 to the Winston-Salem college to see how monkeys react under the influence of cocaine. The project, titled “Effect of Cocaine Self-Administration on Metabotropic Glutamate Systems,” would have the monkeys self-administer the drugs while researchers monitor and study their glutamate levels. When asked how studying drug-crazed primates would improve the national economy, a Wake Forest University Medical School Spokesman said, “It’s actually the continuation of a job that might not still be there if it hadn’t been for the stimulus funding. And it’s a good job.” He added, “It’s also very worthwhile research.”

    You can’t make this stuff up.

    UPDATE: Just checked Recovery.gov and they claim that this project reported “0.43? jobs created as a result of this award. This may explain the inflated numbers of jobs “saved or created” by the Obama Stimulus plan.

  14. PeterM

    I believe we can both agree that IPCC has lost credibility over the past years, since those happier days of “Nobel Peace Prizes”. This loss of credibility has brought with it a loss of relevance, as the Copenhagen fiasco last December clearly showed.

    Here are my thoughts actions the IPCC could undertake to regain this lost credibility:

    1. remove Pachauri as charman, replacing him with a climate scientist, who has no preconceived agenda on AGW, such as John Christy

    2. after getting the complete agreement of the new chairman, issue a ”correction” to their 2007 SPM report, in which IPCC:
    · concedes that the surface temperature record has a significant upward distortion, due to the UHI effect, station shutdowns and relocations, land use changes, poor siting of stations, etc.
    · concedes that the warming rate in the troposphere as established by the satellite record is slower than that at the surface, either pointing to the conclusion that the observed warming was not caused primarily by the greenhouse effect or that the surface record distortions (above) were high enough to cause this discrepancy
    · concedes that that “paleoclimate information” supporting the stated “interpretation that the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1,300 years” is suspect, and that this conclusion is withdrawn
    · concedes that the comparison of observed warming rates over the entire 20th century with those over the last 50 years, which infer an acceleration in warming, are misleading, due to the cyclical nature of the temperature record, and should be removed
    · concedes that the claim that “most of the observed increase in global average temperature since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations” is speculative, due to the high level of uncertainties involved and that “most” should be changed to “a significant portion” and “very likely” should be changed to “more likely than not”
    · concedes that the level of scientific understanding of natural variability and climate forcing factors (ocean currents, solar influence, etc.) is too low to permit any significant estimates of the net forcing from anthropogenic factors
    · concedes that the net total effect of feedbacks is unknown, since the observed net negative feedback from clouds (Spencer et al.) is likely to offset any net positive feedbacks from measured increase in water vapor content (Minschwaner + Dessler) minus lapse rate plus hypothesized positive feedback from changes in surface albedo
    · concedes that the projections of future warming to year 2100 are based on assumed strongly positive net feedbacks, which are anything but certain; include another set of projections with no net positive effect from feedbacks
    · eliminates the “scenarios” of increased future CO2 which exceed the observed compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 0.4%, as has been observed over the most recent 5 years as well as over the entire period since Mauna Loa measurements started in 1958 (these are all “scenarios” except B1)
    · concedes that the reported apparent acceleration in the rate of sea level rise in the late 20th century is an artifact introduced by changing the methodology of measurement (from tide gauges to satellite altimetry) as well as its scope (from selected coastlines to the entire ocean, except coastlines and polar regions, which cannot be measured by satellite altimetry), and that the estimates of future sea level rise resulting from global warming are purely conjectural
    · corrects the statement “Antarctic sea ice extent continues to show interannual variability and localized changes but no statistically significant average trends…” by replacing it with “Antarctic sea ice extent has shown a continued gradual increase since modern records started…”
    · backs down on the erroneous claims that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets lost mass during the continuous measurement period 1993-2003, conceding that the record shows that both gained mass slightly over this period
    · concedes that the projections of increased ”severe weather events” (heat waves, heavy precipitation events, droughts, tropical cyclones, high sea levels) resulting from assumed future global warming are unsubstantiated and have been withdrawn

    These are the changes to the “Working Group I” summary report, which covers climate change itself and its causes. In addition there are the many recently revealed errors and exaggerations to the reports on the impacts of climate change (Himalaya glacier melting, Amazon rainforest endangerment, loss of crops in Africa, etc.). Formal corrections to these errors and exaggerations should also be made.

    I believe these actions could start a process by which the IPCC could again regain some of the credibility and relevance, which it has lost over the past years.

    What do you think, Peter? Would this help?

    Max

  15. Brute

    To the “monkey-cocaine” research project you wrote:

    Just checked Recovery.gov and they claim that this project reported “0.43? jobs

    Yeah, Brute. But that does not include:
    -the monkeys themselves
    -those dealers involved in the cocaine “supply chain” including the transport
    -the cocaine manufacturers

    Then you’ve got the government accountants that dole out the research funding and audit the process plus the OSHA and EPA regulators that have to supervise the operations and their impact on the workers (including monkeys) and our environment, plus the legal staff required to support these individuals.

    I’d say you could multiply your number by at least a factor of 10, which would be normal for government (or government-supported) projects.

    Max

  16. PeterM

    Following the philosophy that it is less painful to “lose an arm at the shoulder in one fell swoop than have it chopped off ‘salami style’ in several steps”, I believe it would make sense for IPCC to “come clean” on all the listed errors and exaggerations in its 2007 SPM (1215) in one “correction” to the report rather than doing this piecemeal over a period of time.

    The worst approach, in my opinion, would be to “stonewall” and go into denial that these errors and exaggerations even exist.

    What do you think?

    Max

  17. PeterM

    A link to a definitive listing of IPCC AR4 WG1 and SPM 2007 errors, distortions and exaggerations (1215) is here:
    http://sites.google.com/site/globalwarmingquestions/ipcc

    This provides more detail for each IPCC error, most of which I have listed, as well.

    Max

  18. Max, that looks like an excellent resource, worth bookmarking for those times when someone comes out with the “only one mistake in 10,000 pages” kind of argument.

  19. Max and Brute,

    I don’t know enough to comment on the partcular study you refer to, but on the general question of drugs and science it is, in fact, another area where politics and science can clash.

    Drugs, scientifically, would also include the legal drugs such as prescribed pharmaceuticals, caffeine, alcohol and nicotine. Banned drugs would include heroine, cocaine, ecstasy etc

    The scientific evidence that legal drugs are relatively safe and the illegal ones are relatively dangerous just isn’t there. But politicians generally don’t want to hear that sort of talk from scientists as David Nutt recently found to his cost in the UK.

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6898456.ece

    So yes this is evidence that politicians try to influence scientists but equally it is evidence that scientists are not just the mouthpiece of governments either.

  20. Max, Reur 1202; {Dang-nab it! Those Aussies are smarter than I thought (apologies to Bob_FJ)…etc}
    Just a point of clarification Max, I’m not an Aussie but a British resident of 41 years but do feel to be Aussie. What’s more, despite at least one “serial pest” here, and an awful refugee policy etc, I plead that Oz makes some smart net contributions to The World. Furthermore, if I were wealthy, I would personally help smarten it up overseas. For a start, I would fund sending a crew of Oz brickies (brick-layers), to Rome to tidy-up all those awful tumble-down ruins. Perhaps too, a demolition team to create carparks by removing some of those ostentatious monuments. (e.g. that Emmanuelle’s ugh thingy)

    Brute, Reur 1190, and Max, Reur 1194, concerning the “crash proof” motor bike video.
    I noticed that the bike-rider was so confident with his “all-seeing head-up display” that he did not think it necessary to glance over his right shoulder upon merging onto the road, and that the system failed rather badly at that point. Those German engineers/computer programmers may need some help from Oz if they can‘t figure out what went wrong. It is plain to me that some rearward orientated feedbacks are missing from the current model. I guess that mathematically this could be because of an error in sign.

  21. Brute#1214 tempterrain #1220
    With a worldwide “war on drugs” costing countless billions of dollars and thousands of lives, I’d hesitate to criticise any scientific study of drug effects. PeterM is right to point out the arbitrary (but pro-Western) bias of the division between legal and illegal drugs, effectively outlawing all recreational drugs in the third world, while imposing those whose production produces profits for Western companies. This absurd policy was a product of the United Nations in the days when it boasted about thirty odd members, almost all of them Western colonial powers. We’ve moved on from those far off days to imposing our unanimous decisions on the world’s weather.
    Many of us on the left had hopes of better things from a democratically structured international organisation.

  22. PeterM

    AGW is a multi-billion dollar big business, with lots of powerful individuals, corporations, bureaucrats, politicians, scientific institutions, lobbying groups, etc. elbowing their way to the taxpayer-funded money (and power) trough.

    Drug enforcement (DEA) is a multi-billion dollar big business, with lots of powerful individuals, corporations, bureaucrats, politicians, scientific institutions, lobbying groups, etc. elbowing their way to the taxpayer-funded money (and power) trough.

    In democratic republics, the taxpayer eventually has the ultimate decision by majority vote where his money will be spent, even though the powerful individuals plus political elite listed above tend to forget this over and over again (and have to be reminded at the ballot box).

    So far, polls show that there is a fairly large majority that has concluded that alcohol should be legal for adults, while “hard drugs”, such as cocaine, heroin, etc., should not (with the question on marijuana apparently closer to 50/50 in some locations). IOW, the majority of the taxpaying public is OK with bearing the high cost of drug enforcement (although many might balk at “boondoggle” studies, such as the one cited by Brute).

    This majority does not exist in support of AGW mitigation steps. A growing majority of the taxpayers across the world have concluded that AGW is not a potentially serious problem and, thus, do not support costly “mitigation” steps, including draconian (direct or indirect) carbon taxes.

    Politically and socially, that appears to be the big difference.

    In both cases, scientists are “split” on the “science” supporting these political issues (and, in any case, their votes should count no more that the votes of the taxpaying public who will be asked to pay for the proposed solutions).

    That’s what democracy is all about.

    Max

  23. Bob_FJ

    Thanks for clearing up your heritage.

    I agree with your notion that a good crew of bricklayers (for patching up the worthwhile monuments in Europe) and demolition teams (for converting the others to parking lots) could be a valuable Australian export.

    The “New World” does not have all the monuments to the powerful of the time covering millennia as do Europe and Asia, so a 150-year old farm house is considered a “cultural heritage” in many places.

    Switzerland has hardly any leftovers from Roman or earlier times and a few castles and ruins plus several churches and cathedrals from the medieval period, but (since there were no monarchs and nobles after the Middle Ages) we do not have all the leftover symbols of imperial pomp one finds in France, England, Austria, etc.

    Some of this is (as you mention) pure junk (as bad as the architectural atrocities of Ceaucescu or Lenin/Stalin), but locals seem to get used to (and even identify with) these symbols of the past, as ugly as they might be.

    As to the “crash-proof” motorcycle, we have here a good practical example of what happens when one falls into the IPCC trap of relying too heavily on computer models loaded with theoretically derived assumptions (calculating with great accuracy the relative trajectory of the car coming from the left), at the same time ignoring actual physical observations, which lie outside the specific scope of the computer model (the speeding truck from the right).

    It’s sort of like calculating a model-simulated projection of climate change caused by the application of theoretical greenhouse hypotheses and complicated feedback assumptions (coming from the “left”) while ignoring overriding “natural variability”, i.e. natural climate forcing factors (coming from the “right”).

    Blam!

    Max

  24. Unlike global warming, the devastating result of illicit drug use has been proven over and over again.

    It ruins peoples lives, health and is (with certainty) deadly.

    The impact on society and family is catastrophic.

    The ironic thing is that I posted the study on primates to illustrate the point of the collusion between government spending and fraudulent “science”.

    There is no need to “study” the effects of cocaine on monkies……..I see the result of drug use on human beings every single day……I know what I’m talking about regarding this topic………..first hand.

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