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.
Some excitement over at the Guardian, this evening. Bob Ward attacks Andrew Montford here. The Bishop responds robustly here.
James P
You wrote:
Problem is, anyone who is uninformed enough to think that CO2 is “pollution” is also uninformed enough to think that it is lighter than air and can, therefore, make balloons rise.
The ad was not directed at rational grown people who can think about these things for themselves; it was directed at impressionable school children who simply accept what they are told, true or false.
It’s called “brainwashing”.
Max
Alex, Reur 1401; thanks for the links.
They don’t seem to like Andrew Montford over at the Guardian, and I guess they have not read the book. Here is a screen copy of my comment there. Hopefully it will survive.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BobFJ
20 Aug 2010, 12:20AM
There is an excellent low cost paperback book available from Amazon US/UK, entitled “The Hockey Stick Illusion” by Andrew Montford. I found it to be very well researched and convincing that Mann’s methodology was highly flawed. A caveat is that I must confess I’ve not had time to read the 270 numbered references from the many authoritative sources. Of many interesting issues was the attempt by his colleagues Wahl & Ammann, to produce similar results and their failure to publish the original version, with slipping paper-year-dates that should have made it an “illegal” reference by the IPCC, etc. It’s a worrying tale in itself!
I recommend that the critics here actually read the book. It is vast beyond the peripheral issues touched on by Bob Ward.
Incidentally, chapter 17: “The CRU Hack”, was a rush addition which should be considered in the context of late breaking information.
Wow, the economy in England is worse thasn I thought! Now the King is ordering his subjects to bathe only once a week.
If they catch someone bathing regularly, (more than once per week), will they cut off your head or throw you in the Tower of London dungeons?
What if you only wash your face and hands? Does that count?
How about shaving?
Maybe I’ll buy a whole bunch of deodorant and sell it in England…….I’ll make a fortune.
One must take shorter showers, says Charles: Prince urges British families to ‘snub the bathtub’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1304327/Prince-Charles-urges-British-families-snub-bathtub.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Darn!
Looks like Peter Martin left and the movie isn’t over yet…………
I wanted to at least discuss next months minimum…….
Brute
I for one hope Peter doesn’t leave permanently as he was clearly boxed into a corner on some recent subjects such as the discussion on Sea surface temperatures which he refused to engage in.
It seems that Peter unquestioningly accepts any piece of third rate pseudo science if it carries the IPCC brand.
He has a good mind and it is a pity he can not be more objective. Believing in the SST’s as a reliable component of historic global temperatures flies in the face of the evidence. The paucity of SST records is a little like obtaining three ad hoc daily measurements from the 100 year Perth record and claiming you know the temperature trend for the whole period to a tiny fraction of a degree.
So I hope Peters exile is temporary and he comes back less aggressive and more open minded.
tonyb
PeterM
You ask (23)
I believe that the first step should be to try to reestablish the lost credibility in IPCC and climate science, in general, which has suffered enormously as a result of the Climategate revelations, as the Copenhagen fiasco demonstrated.
On the NS thread I outlined my thoughts on how this could be attempted (and, for climate science, hopefully achieved).
(I listed 13 specific errors, exaggerations, questionable assumptions and outright falsifications in the AR4 WGI SPM report, which relate to climate change itself, its causes and projections for the future. These should be specifically covered in this “correction” report.)
In addition, IPCC must end its myopic fixation on AGW as the principal cause of climate change. It should concede (not only in small footnotes) that our level of scientific understanding of natural forcing factors is too low today to enable a real-world evaluation of the impact of anthropogenic factors. Along with this “large writ” concession should come a statement emphasizing the high level of uncertainty related to our present understanding of our planet’s climate in general. The “unknowns” exceed the “knowns” by several orders-of-magnitude, and this should be stated several times throughout the report.
Then there have been several errors, exaggerations, and outright falsifications in the WGII and WGIII sections of the AR4 report (Himalaya glacier melting, Amazon rainforest endangerment, loss of crops in Africa, etc.).
These should be corrected in a separate section of the “corrigendum” report.
As far as future reports are concerned, there has been a lot of internal criticism of the “politicized” method of selecting and reviewing reference literature (in order to accentuate those studies that convey the intended political message and downplay or eliminate those that do not). Some of these critiques of the IPCC editorial policy have suggested a new approach.
Then there is the problem of “in-breeding”. There is no doubt that senior “scientists turned activists” (ex. Hansen) have seen to it that “like-mined” younger scientists are positioned within the hierarchy and that those with opposing views are “filtered out” of the process. Climategate showed fairly clearly how this “in-breeding” has impacted the “peer review” process, rendering it essentially worthless as a “quality check”.
For climate science to regain its credibility, this “inbreeding” must be weeded out. There is no place for hysteria and sensationalism in science. We need unbiased, level-headed reporting of climate data, whether these point toward potentially alarming AGW or not.
We also need less arrogance and greater humility in conceding that our knowledge of Earth’s climate is still so rudimentary that we have no notion on what the next 20 (let alone) 100 years will bring.
Scientists like John Christy exhibit this humility. We need more of those (and fewer Manns, Jones, etc.)
Peter, I believe that the above outlined approach would go a long way to answering your question and reestablishing the credibility of the IPCC and climate science.
What do you think?
Max
[The About thread on this blog is not the right place to post your extensive views on the future of the IPCC. TonyN]
PeterM
PS My post on the NS thread was 1215.
Max
TonyN
Agree with moving this latest exchange to the NS thread, where it belongs.
I’m sure Peter will have no objection, either.
Max
Brute, re your #1404, the Prince is simply reviving a royal tradition going back at least to Queen Elizabeth I, who was said to have bathed once a month (or year, depending), whether she needed it or not. She was clearly the first Eco-Warrior Queen, obsessing about the planet and her carbon footprint before the industrial revolution and global warming were even invented.
However: “As for the Prince of Wales himself, Clarence House last night remained tight-lipped on whether he takes short showers.” So we’re not sure whether the rule applies to him as well, or just to the rest of us – the great unwashed, as it were.
Alex & JamesP
I’ve just picked up your posts on the absurd mendacious “Walk to School” poster. I think a letter to the ASA would work. Apart from the schoolboy howler about CO2 being heavier than air, and this from the website:
We then converted that mass into a volume by dividing it by the molar weight of CO2
There’s a clear identification of CO2 and pollution, followed by references to “other nasty exhaust chemicals” and “all the other nasty pollutants”.
Then:
and:
The message is that CO2 is a nasty chemical that kills. This is a lie, frightening, and bad science. A protest to the ASA would at least put the frighteners on the charity, if only because their advertising manager might be found to have wasted a lot of the money donated by a generous public.
Congratulations Alex on all the research you put into on the background to your posts.
Alex,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xd_zkMEgkI&feature=search
“We then converted that mass into a volume by dividing it by the molar weight of CO2”
Aside from the observation that ‘molar weight’ doesn’t exist outside dentistry, mass/weight = 1/g which is not exactly volume! What are these people on..?
I’m a bit rusty on my physical chemistry, but doesn’t anyone check this stuff? Must arts graduates do all the work?
James P You say #1399:
But at their site
http://www.walktoschool.org.uk/content/balloons.php
they say:
So that’ s another two things to worry about. A world helium shortage and the environmental impact of not picking up pieces of burst balloon.
In reply to your #1414, to be fair, I truncated their quote on calculating the gas volume. They say:
Deprived of balloons and any short car journeys which are not absolutely necessary, our children are being told to amuse themselves by learning how to calculate gas volumes. Are these people sadists, or just sad?
Thanks, Geoff. It’s still not right though, is it? A mass divided by a weight (I think they mean molar mass, but that’s not what they put) is not dimensionless – it’s the result/g.
Furthermore, their gas volume estimate of 6.3 litres per balloon doesn’t include any compression by the balloon, so you probably wouldn’t need so many…
Geoff, James P – many thanks and am actually considering writing to ASA; am curious about how they will respond.
Brute, re your link at #1413, you do realise that England will probably be very like this, 20 years from now?
More amusing?
(Sorry TonyN…..I threw that in to break things up…….)
Had a meeting with some representatives of a German hedge fund today……looking to invest.
Very interesting to hear their views on “green” energy technology/”green” energy subsidies….I doubt Peter would like it.
Here, an interesting commentary on “consensus science“ in other “churches“:
I’ve just re-read after perhaps a decade; “Carl Sagan & Immanuel Velikovsky” by Charles Ginenthal, 1995, and thought you might all be interested in this extract where a variety of authors discuss uniformitarianism versus catastrophism in astronomy and geology.
Page 274: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26175880@N05/4911300459/
Page 276: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26175880@N05/4911289727/
The following extracts are a first go scan and not top quality. If you are interested, but they are too hard to read on your systems, even with zoom, let me know and I’ll try it another way
I found it hard to avoid the conclusion that there were indeed huge catastrophes on Earth culminating some 3.5 millennia ago. Furthermore, that the conclusions reached for Venus after the Mariner orbiter, and some early conclusions from Venus Express may be worthy of sceptical review.
[See suggestion here. TonyN]
Max;
Paraphrasing, an interesting hypothesis from Velikovsky was that some mountain ranges “grew” only a few millennia ago from violent tectonic activity. This includes the Euro Alps, evidenced by remains of human habitation, etc, that were “impossible” back in the 1950’s. Have you come across this before, and what do you think?
If that hypothesis seems ridiculous, a good comparator was lake Titicaca in South America, with not only a recent higher shore-line, but a sloping one. Also the mysteriously abandoned nearby city, Tiahuanaco with agricultural terraces above it quoted as at an impossible 18,400 ft. And, there was a lot more besides.
Danish Wind Power Bust
http://www.gresshasissues.com/2010/03/danish-wind-power-bust/#axzz0xCUTle5m
Gamesa Corp. (GCTAF.PK) is based in Spain, with 18% of the world’s share of the wind turbine market.
Energias de Portugal (EDPFY.PK) is a Portugal based company, which is one of Europe’s largest electricity providers and the fourth largest wind power producer in the world. One of its newest divisions is Horizon Wind Energy.
Broadwind Energy, Inc. (BWEN) is a Naperville, Illinois company, which manufactures wind energy products including steel fabricated towers, internal tower components, and other large fabricated components.
Nordex (NRDXF.PK) is a German based wind turbine company.
Vestas Wind Systems (VWSYF.PK) is a Denmark based company, which is the world’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines.