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.
Max, Re Venus & Mars
As you know I’ve had a renewed interest in Venus in recent months, so I couldn’t resist commenting as follows:
Average distance from Sun (million Km)
Venus 108, Earth 150, Mars 228
Energy ratio per inverse square at TOA
Venus 1.93, Earth 1, Mars 0.43
Percentage of energy absorbed by surface
Venus ~10%, Earth 51%, Mars 71%
Energy ratio absorbed at surface:
Venus 0.19, Earth 0.51, Mars 0.31
Additionally Earth has much greater evaporative surface latent heat loss (evaporative cooling) and significant convective cooling. (According to Trenberth)
Venus seems to lose most of it’s surface heat via conduction/convection, meaning low GHE near the surface.
Mars would seem to have little convective or latent heat loss
Earth has major energy redistribution from the tropics via oceans and dynamic atmosphere
Most of Earth’s GHE is from water vapour
Mars does not have to thermalize masses of nitrogen etc via GHG absorption
I’ve yet to see a satisfactory explanation as to how Venus has an alleged average T variation of zero from equator to poles and from midday to mid night with a rotation time of 242 Earth days.
CLIMATE CHANGE LIES ARE EXPOSED
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/196642
A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found there was “little evidence” for its claims about global warming.
It also said the panel had emphasised the negative impacts of climate change and made “substantive findings” based on little proof.
The review by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) was launched after the IPCC’s hugely embarrassing 2007 benchmark climate change report, which contained exaggerated and false claims that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.
The panel was forced to admit its key claim in support of global warming was lifted from a 1999 magazine article. The report was based on an interview with a little-known Indian scientist who has since said his views were “speculation” and not backed by research.
Independent climate scientist Peter Taylor said last night: “The IPCC’s credibility has been deeply dented and something has to be done. It can’t just be a matter of adjusting the practices. They have got to look at what are the consequences of having got it wrong in terms of what the public think is going on. Admitting that it needs to reform means something has gone wrong and they really do need to look at the science.”
Climate change sceptic David Holland, who challenged leading climate change scientists at the University of East Anglia to disclose their research, said: “The panel is definitely not fit for purpose. What the IAC has said is substantial changes need to be made.”
The IAC, which comprises the world’s top science academies including the UK’s Royal Society, made recommendations to the IPCC to “enhance its credibility and independence” after the Himalayan glaciers report, which severely damaged the reputation of climate science.
It condemned the panel – set up by the UN to ensure world leaders had the best scientific advice on climate change – for its “slow and inadequate response” after the damaging errors emerged.
Brute,
The problem with “newspapers” like the Daily Express is they lie and distort. For instance:
“little evidence for its [IPCC’s] claims about global warming.” Where do the IAC say that? I don’t believe they do. The Express have just made it up and furthermore they haven’t allowed any comments under this misleading article.
Instead of quoting what the Express say the IAC say why not go to the source itself?
http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/ReportNewsRelease.html
http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/OpeningStatement.html
What they do actually say is:
“Overall, IPCC’s assessment process has been a success and served society well. The assessments have put IPCC on the world stage, raised public awareness of climate change, and driven policymakers to consider options for responding to climate change. Indeed, these were among the reasons IPCC was awarded a share of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.”
Yes there are criticisms and recommendations such as:
“We recommend some significant reforms to the management structure that we believe will strengthen the day-to-day management and decision-making capability while at the same time maintaining oversight, transparency, and a variety of perspective”
Its really the sort of general stuff that would apply to any or organisation. Yes the IPCC made one mistake about the melting of Himalayan glaciers. Actually they got the rate of Arctic melting wrong a few years back too. Its actually melting faster than they said it would!
Brute I like your poster at #1548. I even went to the source
http://thepeoplescube.com
which is quite funny in an Ayn Randy sort of way. The poster reminds me of the work of the thirties German communist artist John Heartfield. Like many European communist intellectuals of his generation, he admired the USA as much as he hoped for a Marxist revolution. We lefties are a funny lot.
The IAC report is generating a lot of interesting comment at Bishop Hill and elsewhere. I’m wondering whether we should comment here or on some earlier thread.
Max, further my 1551, comparing the planet’s energy ratios etc:
Where I wrote:
Energy ratio absorbed at surface:
Venus 0.19, Earth 0.51, Mars 0.31
I erred:
The value of 0.19 for Venus is the popular value of ROUGHLY how much sunlight reaches the surface of Venus. However, the albedo of its surface is unknown. If it is anything like Mars at 0.29 (71% absorbed), and if we make Earth = 1, then the relative values of energy ABSORBED by the surface becomes:
Relative solar energy ratio ABSORBED at surface:
Venus 0.25, Earth 1, Mars O.61
Venus appears bright white in the sky because its albedo from space is about 0.8, due to its clouds. Mars has a more earthly red colour because of its thin cloudless atmosphere
Bob_FJ
Thanks for interesting info on Mars/Venus/Earth.
The differences between the three are great
Max
PeterM
You opined to Brute:
Yep. And another one about the Amazon rain forest
And don’t forget African crop losses
Or the percentage of the Netherlands under sea level and at flood risk
Etc. (in WGII)
Not to mention a whole bunch of even more basic boo-boos and falsifications in WGI:
Phony comparison of short and long term periods in a cyclical record to show acceleration in warming where none exists
Claim that troposphere is warming faster than surface when records show that opposite is true
False claim that UHI distortion has negligible effect on temperature record
Exaggerated CO2 climate sensitivity based on false assumptions on cloud feedbacks
Supposed mass loss in Antarctic Ice Sheet which did not occur over period cited
Ditto for Greenland ice sheet
Misleading claim that Antarctic sea ice is not changing when it is actually growing
Alleged acceleration in sea level rise (based on rigged “science”)
Sticking with false conclusions of “hockey stick” long after it had been comprehensively discredited
Unfounded claims on “extreme weather events”
Etc., etc. ad nauseam
Max
That’s pretty funny Pete……the Express distorted the findings of a commission that critiqued the distortions of the IPCC.
geoff,
Yes, hysterically “funny”……….Interestingly, Adolf Hitler admired the USA immensely……almost as much as he (for good reason) feared us. Being a Socialist (Progressive) he realized that a free, open society would ultimately expose the façade of his oppressive, brutal totalitarianism…..bringing an end to his maniacal socialist dream.
Brute,
OK before you have a giggle just show me where the IAC say there is “little evidence for its [IPCC’s] claims about global warming.”
Regardless of what you think about the IPCC doesn’t it bother you that the IAC haven’t said that?
If the case against AGW is so strong, don’t you wonder why the Express have to resort to making it up? Any answers anyone?
Brute,
You’re an imbecile.
European socialists fought Hitler long before the outbreak of WW2. Starting with their opposition to the Nazis and Italian fascists who sided with Franco in the Spanish civil war. Franco’s military regime which very like Pinochet’s military regime in Chile. He and his army did succeed in to deposing an elected Government while the western democracies did nothing to intervene. The only intervention was by individual men and women of socialist persuasion.
Franco wasn’t socialist. Pinochet wasn’t socialist. And Hitler wasn’t socialist either. His use of the word was just a fraud to attract working class support.
PeterM
“The case against AGW” per se may not be so strong, but the case against the postulation that AGW has been the primary cause of 20th century warming and represents a serious potential threat is extremely strong, as we have discussed here repeatedly.
This is simply because it cannot be validated by empirical data based on actual physical observations (refer to several earlier posts on this subject), and, in fact, appears to have been falsified (a) by the recently observed cooling of both atmosphere and upper ocean despite record CO2 levels as well as (b) by actual physical observations demonstrating a strongly negative feedback from clouds (the “natural thermostat”, which prevents overheating).
So the Express doesn’t “have to resort to making it up”.
Max
Pete,
I see, the creator and leader of the National SOCIALIST Party was not a socialist…..it was all a misunderstanding.
Thanks for straightening me out.
Brute
Peter’s right about Hitler not being a socialist, and both Hitler and his communist opponents were right to find much to admire about the USA. Can we leave it there? (I do like the thirties style artwork at thepeoplescube though).
Peter’s chart of planet surface temperatures at #1559 is most telling. Velikovsky’s explanation was that Venus was a new entry to the solar system in about the 16th century BC (on a Friday, if I remember rightly – I kid you not). His description of Venus as a “comet” was a main cause of his being ridiculed by the scientific establishment.
Post Velikovskians mostly reject such a recent date for Venus’s arrival. Modern studies of the behaviour of electrically charged bodies in a plasma make it possible that planets could change their orbits and come into near collision without destroying themselves. Venus’s high temperature, aberrant rotation, and peculiar atmosphere can be explained by such near collisions, possibly in the relatively recent past.
All the planets and major satellites have aberrant atmospheres, chemistries, and behaviour, which cosmologists are forced to explain by ad hoc theories which get more far-fetched, the more discoveries are made.
Post #1562
I was getting worried that the new polite Peter was actually TonyN playing the grit in the oyster, and the afore mentioned was indeed ‘banned’ and skulking miserably round other, lesser, climate blogs.
However, now that he has called Brute an ‘imbecile’ I know the genuine article is here and normal service has been resumed.
Tonyb
PeterM
My, my! You are calling people names. For shame!
You wrote:
Depends on how you define “socialist”, Peter.
I’d agree with you, but would also add Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim, Pol Pot and a whole bunch of other repressive and murderous dictators that also called themselves “socialists”.
Then I would exclude all the European “social democratic” governments, the past UK “Labour” government, Obama’s current US administration, etc. – because they tolerate private enterprise and ownership of wealth (the anathema of “socialism”).
So, in fact, it leaves you with no real examples of pure “socialist” governments.
(And yes, I’ve read “Das Kapital”).
I personally believe that “socialism” cannot exist in its pure form beside “individual freedom and liberty”, because of its underlying Marxist principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”.
Some may find this a “noble” concept, but is an “unnatural” (i.e. non-Darwinian) one, and it must, therefore, be enforced by a government, which has the power to decide what is good for its people. It is also not compatible with private enterprise or ownership of wealth. In a democratic society, it is the people who eventually decide what is best for themselves. In an autocratic society, the government decides what is best for the “collective good”.
Whether this is done by a Stalin or a Hitler is pretty much immaterial.
But this is all pretty far off topic, except as it relates to enforcing carbon taxes against the will of the individual taxpayers for the perceived common good of mitigating against the imaginary hobgoblin of disastrous AGW.
Max
If you’re a delusional fruitcake, you can deny that these were government economic/social policies in Germany during the period of 1933-1945.
Funny how the German government policies at the time resemble the tenets of Socialism (and “green” economic policy)…….though Peter and Geoff fail to see this…….(and that an organization titled “The National Socialist Party” has nothing to do with Socialism).
Amazing……
PeterM
Your graph of surface temperatures of selected planets and distance from the sun is interesting, but it leaves out one factor, which I believe is also quite important: the atmospheric pressure at the surface of the planet.
It is pretty easy to construct a graph that shows a fairly linear relationship between average surface temperature of the four planets (Mercury-Venus-Earth-Mars) and a factor related to the atmospheric surface pressure divided by the square of the relative distance to the sun (with the pressure and distance for Earth being 1.0).
Mercury is closer to the sun, but has an extremely low atmospheric surface pressure, while Venus is a bit further away, but has an extremely high atmospheric surface pressure.
In his rather unscientific rationalization that the GH effect from atmospheric CO2 was the primary cause for the difference between the temperature of Venus and Mercury, Al Gore ignored atmospheric pressure at the surface (plus a whole lot of other things).
Of course, as Bob_FJ has already pointed out, there are many other factors involved, which could also be factored in.
But the “take home” is that the “worst case” damage from AGW on Earth is not “one of runaway warming and the Venus effect” (as you have stated); this is pure hare-brained fiction (courtesy of the same guy that gave us the hare-brained schemes to shut down coal-fired power plants).
Max
Max, Reur friend Peter Martin’s chart:
I’ve no idea what the purpose of it was, but the temperature shown for Jupiter cannot be a surface T as with the other planets.
According to this;
http://www.universetoday.com/15097/temperature-of-jupiter/
EXTRACT:
Jupiter has a vast range of temperatures. The outermost layers are exposed to the near absolute zero temperatures of space, while the core of the planet has high temperatures because of the intense pressure of the entire planet bearing down at it.
At the cloud tops, the temperature of Jupiter is thought to be -145 degrees C. As you descend into the planet, temperatures increase. When the pressure of the atmosphere is about 10 times what we have on Earth, the temperatures are roughly room temperature – about 20 degrees C.
As you continue to descend into Jupiter, the temperature and pressure increase dramatically. Once you get deep enough, liquid hydrogen is heated to the point that it becomes a liquid. At this point, scientists think the temperature is 10,000 Kelvin. And then when you get to the very center of the planet, temperatures are thought to get as high as 36,000 K.
Of course, the solar energy intensity out there at the inverse square of distance is miniscule.
Max,
You avoiding the point about the Express. They have not claimed themselves that the evidence for AGW is weak, they have claimed that the IAC say there is little evidence.
The Express can say what they like on their own behalf, but why would they want to falsify what the IAC say? Why the need to do that if the evidence is on their side?
Brute,
“Thanks for straightening me out.” No problem.
Except it wasn’t a misunderstanding. The Nazis knew that the German working classes had had a gutful of failed capitalism in the early 30s. they knew they had to offer a “socialist” alternative. The real socialists were put in concentration camps. They weren’t just for Jews, you know.
The Nazis started up a wartime economy almost immediately and, yes, there was State control. But, so there was in the USA during the war. Weren’t Ford told in no uncertain terms that they should shut down their car production lines and make tanks instead? Were the USA socialist too?
Max, further my 1570;
It’s hard to know where to stop, but clearly the absence of a substantial atmosphere on Mercury and Mars is the clear reason why they both have such large diurnal variation in T. Quoting an average T for them both is almost silly!
Geoff, Reur 1565
I’ve sometimes mused how it might have been if Velikovsky had heeded Einstein’s advice to be more cautious about his claims!
Had V firstly published “Earth in Upheaval” and then “Ages in Chaos”, and maybe “Akhenaton…” and THEN for his more controversial book interpreting myth etc, used a different title avoiding the over-dramatic word ‘Collision’, maybe he may have had more consideration. It is absolutely clear in his text that he never claimed actual collision.
I’m rather impressed by the observances of planetary geologists, that make claims about “recent” partial re-surfacing of Mars etc, (and other stuff on Venus), oh, and the funny moons of Mars, and may comment later if TonyN does not pull the plug
PeterM
No. I am NOT “avoiding the point about the Express”. It frankly doesn’t interest me all that much.
I believe the latest IAC “investigation” of IPCC was essentially a “whitewash” (as was expected by almost everyone).
They made a few token critiques of procedures and understated uncertainties, etc., but did not go into any depth on the flawed or exaggerated “science” or outright falsifications. Too bad.
For one comment on the inquiry see:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/8/31/fred-on-the-iac.html
Pretty mild stuff.
“Little evidence” is a good cop-out expression. For example:
OR
I’d agree with both.
How about you?
Max
Bob_FJ
Thanks for comments.
Yes an “average temperature” is meaningless on Mercury, our Moon or Mars due to the wide swings caused by the lack of a substantial atmosphere.
It is even pretty meaningless for Earth, even if it were accurately measured (which, of course, it is not).
Agree also that Jupiter is a totally separate case, which has neither a real “surface temperature” or “surface pressure”.
I think Peter was trying to show with his chart that Mercury’s lower “average temperature” than Venus’ proves that distance to the sun was not the cause for Venus’ much higher temperature (with the underlying innuendo that it was because of a “runaway” GH effect, which could happen here on Earth just as well, due to AGW). This was a silly argument used by Al Goracle in one of his sermons.
Peter was astute enough not to bring this up directly, although he did opine initially (before getting shot down) that a runaway GH effect leading to Venus-type warming on Earth represents the “worst case” AGW scenario (which led to this whole exchange about Venus).
Max