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. Brute 2122

    Very interesting. Did you see the items we posted a few days ago regarding the reality of scientists saying there was global cooling? This fits nicely into that thread.

    However in Dr Hansens defence I believe he allowed his colleague to use his Venus software program but took no part in the actual study. So unless there is a direct reference to himn being involved in the work this is merely guilt by association

    tonyb

  2. Max,

    You now seem to be saying in 2107, by shrugging off Ed West’s comments, that AGW is not about politics, but in 2095 you said it was “all about politics”.

    I know you guys are referred to as contrarians, but its surprising to see that attitude extend to self contradiction too!

  3. PeterM

    Sure, AGW is all about politics! Duh!

    We’ve got tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded pro-AGW research grants doled out by (guess who?): politicians!

    And we’ve got trillions of dollars of potential carbon taxes at stake, to be doled out by (guess again?): politicians!

    But it has little to do with “right wing” or “left wing” political leanings, as Ed West has pointed out and I simply confirmed.

    So there is no contradiction there at all, Peter. You just have to pay a bit better attention to what is written rather than imagining contradictions, that’s all.

    Max

    PS But let’s get back on the real topic (2119), rather than irrelevant side tracks. Or are you afraid (as it appears here) to try to defend the weak “science” behind the “dangerous AGW” postulation with “empirical evidence”?

  4. Max,

    The hurricane numbers are what they are…….what can I say? The predictions aren’t matching up with the observations……they’ll get it right next year.

    I’m certain the global warming prophets of doom will come up with some sort of retort…..possibly that James Hansen or Peter Martin waved their magic wand and interceded on behalf of mankind to avert certain calamity.

    The mystical prophecies of Hansen/Gore were just more hot air. You’d think by now that these guys would be run out of town on a rail after all of the failed divine predictions.

    Tonyb,

    No……I’ll look at them tonight. Suffice it to say that they were wrong then and they’re wrong now.

  5. Tony B, Re time-series smoothing
    Maybe you can see now why I find it an utter waste of time and page space to engage with Anagram Pete. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve explained to him that he wrongly uses PMA (aka SMA = Simple) averaging, which does have applications in say commerce, such as with average weekly prior performance, but NOT in the smoothing of noisy time-series data. His defence still seems to be that EXCEL only offered (offers?) PMA and not CMA, without explanation, so it must be right.

    This is one of the bits of info previously offered showing the Hadley approach which explains the method, and the problems they encountered after arbitrarily adopting a 21-year weighted interval, and “cheating” for the last ten years of “missing” data. (that data not to be available for another ten years beyond the final target year)
    The OZ BOM/CSIRO usually favour an 11-year smoothing and GISS uses 5-years. In the latter case, (which I prefer), It may well be that there is no weighting, because there is less reason to do so when the smoothing interval is short, versus it being essential if it is long.
    PMA is not used for smoothing but for averaging prior intervals, (like prior yearly production), so MUST NOT have any weighting.

    I have also joked that purely by eyeball, one can see that his various graphs show an out-of-phase condition, and does he also have a spatial perception problem when trying to park a car? In much the same way, he does not seem able to see in the HADCRUT graphs you presented, (2111) that they show a distinct plateau and a downward trend in recent years. (even though the last ten years are a cheat)

    It’s a joke that I no longer find entertaining, and it brings to mind the word: Troll.

  6. Max,

    I think I see what you are saying. AGW is “all about politics”. So, everyone who agrees with what all the world’s climate research organisations, all the world’s universities, all the World’s top scientific bodies tell us about the dangers of allowing CO2 and other GHG’s to rise out of all control, are acting politically. They are politically motivated!

    However, those valiant right wing deniers, like James Delingpole who openly declare that Conservatism requires a rejection of the scientific line: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100050792/why-conservatives-shouldnt-believe-in-man-made-climate-change/

    are not in the least bit political.

    Have I got that right now?

    Bob_FJ,

    I normally advise climate change deniers to study some science. In your case, I’d say you need to start off with grade 4 maths. However, if you can’t see that the first data point of a running five year average can’t be obtained until after five years’ data has actually been acquired, then you may find even that too advanced for you.

  7. Tony B
    Perhaps you would like to ask Anagram Pete why he does not appear to read or understand simple stuff given to him. (but it would be a waste of time, maybe because he is a troll?)

    Above is GISSTEMP time-series correctly plotted with a 5-year CMA (Central Moving Average) smoothing. It is obviously different to his wrongly applied PMA (Prior Moving Average), in several respects.

    My dogs seem to have a switch in their heads where they become oblivious to my advice when they smell a rabbit. Maybe it’s something similar?

  8. Bob_FJ,

    If I plot the running average in the way you suggest:

    the curve comes out as the blue line. If I do it in the way that Excel does it automatically, and the way I’ve been doing it, then we get the red line.

    I would argue that you should wait 5 years before putting in the first data point but does it make much, if any, difference? No not really.

    Do the curves look different? No they don’t!

    Are the conclusions reached any different? No they aren’t. There’s no evidence that the warming trend has come to end whichever curve you look at.

  9. Tony B, Re CFC’s
    I’ll go along with what Max says, but suggest that the main reason that there is no correlation between CO2 and global average temperature, is probably because of an unrelated natural cycle of about 60 years. (as even recognised by some alarmists; e.g. David B Benson).
    The PDO, and smoothed ENSO both show a remarkable match to this ~60 year cycle, which seems too much of a coincidence to me.

    But anyway, even if the CFC thingy is important, I would think that it will be largely ignored whilst everyone unstoppably continues hyperventilating about CO2. I think it is indisputable that CO2 is a GHG, which does have a small warming effect, but that it is probably largely neutralized by that amazing behaviour of water. (with for example its three atmospheric phase changes). CO2 is also overpowered by that strange ~60 year cycle, and there is also that approx log relationship, and the CERN “CLOUD“ experiment, and sunspot count, and…

    I think it is far more important to quantify the feedbacks that are a response to any increase in water vapour, towards the view that 2xCO2 sensitivity may well be very small, and NOT scary as per the IPCC.
    The strange thing is that there are a substantial bunch of scientists that are all working hard mostly on clouds, water vapour, and their radiative effects, but almost nil on evapotranspiration (E-T, aka latent heat flux or evaporative cooling). I’ve pointed out to Roy Spencer that according to the several “Earth’s Energy Budget” diagrams, (aka cartoons), that the surface heat loss from E-T is around 4x greater than the absorptive radiative heat loss from the surface. Also, an argument that there is probably a latent heat negative feedback that is much greater than the net absorbed radiation feedback. He has agreed that E-T is indeed important but he has yet to explain the devotion in climatology to those arguably smaller radiative negative feedbacks. (He is atypically slow to respond to my fourth Email, in which I‘ve also asked: wouldn‘t it be easier to demonstrate a strong negative feedback with E-T?)

    I don’t think that they will ever crack clouds, and that maybe it has become an exclusive and very difficult club competition for them “for ever“. For instance see On the diagnosis of radiative feedback in the presence of unknown radiative forcing. (Spencer & Braswell 2010); It’s enough to give one a headache.

    BTW, he does discuss convection therein as also being of importance. (By convection he means per an Email: E-T plus thermals aka latent plus sensible heat flux)

  10. Brute,
    You mentioned on page 14, I think, that if the U.S.A. goes into a double dip thingy, then we should all stock-up with food and ammunition beforehand. But I thought nah, there are so many experts suggesting this, that, it probably won’t happen.

    For instance, last Tuesday in Oz, it was claimed that 18 out of 25 notable expert economists predicted that the Oz Reserve Bank would up the official interest rate by 25 basic points. Well no; they were wrong.

    But then, a couple of nights ago, I watched a TV documentary entitled “Detroit Requiem”, and I became most saddened. For back in the 80’s I grew to love the “safe” parts of Detroit. (Downtown, Greek-Town, the Wharf District, and nearby). I would reside most of the time across the river in Windsor-Canada, even when I had assignments in Detroit environs. (Great views across the river, even at night). Detroit had the most marvellous musicians, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Renaissance Centre, and more. But, even then, there was the start of decay in the city. There was “101 Bagley” where a Canadian friend and I would go, but in about 1984/5, I was shocked to see it all boarded up. It was mostly black there, and there was usually a carbon copy of Billy Holiday at a grand piano, with a Bassist, oddly, some 10 metres away. Sadly gone, as with the famous Rhinoceros Bar* and “The Soup Kitchen” et al. The Blacks were such fun, and so smartly dressed, and boy, they know how to dance! I visited Detroit (and England) quite regularly for about ten years, even when I was working in California or Italy, because back then it was cheaper (for my company) to fly me around the world, in first class too.

    Well anyhow, that Detroit requiem doco reminded me that things can get very bad, when handled by grossly overpaid experts like the great leaders of the Detroit Auto companies; totally ignoring what was happening in the real world out there.

    So, I’ve decided to stock-up with food and stuff, including for the longer term; red lentils and rolled oats**, because they can be prepared with minimal or even no cooking and provide together, perfectly full protein. Also, candles and matches. (candles can be emergency food). Also some vitamins to balance a poor diet, but not those effervescent drink kinds, because they generate lots of CO2.

    BTW, why do you guys still have such silly dinosaur easily forgeable handicapped unfriendly banknotes. Our polymer notes are friendly and unforgeable.

    * I remember one night when the owners pleaded that we all go because they only had a 2:00 am licence. Well fair enough, we obliged around 4:00 am after a giant brandy glass was passed around overhead attracting tips of $10 or so.

    ** Caution: They have to be protected from cereal pests though.

  11. Bob #2135

    Thanks for your take on CFC. I look forward to Peters contribution.

    I don’t know if you saw my joint article a few weeks ago, because after examining hundreds of old temperature records the 60 year cycle (and a longer one) became evident. Unfortunately in a linear absorbed modelling community these cycles can’t be replicated.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/04/in-search-of-cooling-trends/

    As you know I specialise in historic records and it is quite evident that the general warming of the earth can be traced back to 1698. Dr Hansen merely plugged his Giss figures into the end of this trend and wasn’t recording the start of it.

    Within that general warming are a large number of places that have been cooling for a statistically meaningful period (30 years plus)up to today.

    They appear to be working on a counter cyclical basis, but this isn’t noticed as the warming signal (natural and uhi) overwhelms the cooling signal, hence the general over all warming recorded in the extremely imperfect ‘global’ temperature records.

    How Co2 both cools and warms at the same time is obviously worthy of expensive research. :)

    tonyb

  12. TonyB

    Your post citing various versions of the Israeli sea level study is interesting. While Science Daily may not have been guilty of deliberate distortion by omitting portions of the data, they still achieved the same result.

    It almost appears that one has to “bend” the data to make the answer come out such that we are in a period of accelerating sea level rise in order to get a paper published.

    The Jerjeva et al.study, which Peter cited, which only goes back to 1700 (not over 2,000 years, as the Israeli study does) is another good example.

    Peter read this study superficially and concluded that the authors had stated that the observed sea level record showed “6 cm sea level rise in the 19th century, about 19 cm during the 20th century”. From this the authors concluded that it “will contribute 34 cm sea level rise during the 21st century”.

    But a closer look at the data cited by the authors shows that they are not talking about the “observed (i.e. reconstructed) record”, but rather the estimated data for the 19th and 20th century as well as the projection for the 21st century based on a “calculated acceleration of 0.01 mm/yr^2”.

    The calculated acceleration of 0.01 mm/yr^2 using the 300 year long GSL accounts for 6 cm sea level rise in the 19th century, about 19 cm during the 20th century and will contribute 34 cm sea level rise during the 21st century.

    What is apparent from the raw data is that sea level sank by around 35 mm over the 18th century (as we were still in the LIA), then shifted to a rising trend in the early 19th century (as the LIA ended and the modern warming period started) and the rate has remained essentially constant since then: around 150mm over the 19th century and 170mm over the 20th century. So there has been no apparent steady “acceleration” in the actual record, but rather an early-19th century shift from lowering to rising SL.

    While this is not mentioned in the study, the rate of rise was 1.6 mm/year over the period 1993-2003, as confirmed by a study by Carl Wunsch et al. (cited previously, 1943), again confirming that there has been no acceleration over the 20th century.

    This same conclusion is also reached by Simon Holgate of Proudman (cited previously, 1943): first half of 20th century showed an average rate of rise of 2.0 mm/year while second half showed a slightly lower rate of 1.4 mm/year, for a 20th century average of 1.7 mm/year. Again, there has been no observed acceleration.

    The “steady acceleration” has simply been created statistically by combining the lowering SL trend of the 18th century with the rising SL trend of the 19th and 20th centuries into a single polynomial trend line. Had the authors started their series in 1800 (rather than 1700) there would have been no shift from long-term lowering to long-term rising SL trend and, therefore, no “polynomial fit” to a curve showing steady acceleration. Instead they would have seen a steady rise of 150 to 170 mm per century.

    I’ve shown this graphically using the sea level data graph from the study cited by Peter.
    http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4104/5062193867_4d6e9a22fd_b.jpg

    Max
    http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4104/5062193867_4d6e9a22fd_b.jpg

  13. PeterM

    Looked briefly at your temperature curve (2134) and had to chuckle.

    You have already plotted the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly” for the year 2010!

    Have you got a crystal ball working or is this (as IPCC puts it) “based on expert judgment rather than formal attribution studies”?

    Max

  14. PeterM

    You asked in your 2131:

    Have I got that right now?

    Answer: No, Peter, you haven’t (as explained previously).

    Max

  15. Max #2138

    Yes, two things are going on here.

    The first is the need to slant material so it apears that sea levels are rising rapidly. The second is not to look at the historic context.

    It is quite clear that sea levels in the Roman optimum were up to 30 cms higher than today and during the MWP slightly more. How many people know that? They then declined during the LIA and the IPCC merely plug into it somewhere around the next rise.

    The long and short of it is that sea levels are still lower than the two periods just cited, and that the historic tide gauge information contained in IPCC AR4 chapter 5 is laughable and completely fails to put it into context. (My article will hopefully do that)

    Science Daily are not the only ones guilty of not citing the full report, but they knew what they were doing when they omitted parts of it to tie in with what I now find to be their agenda-that of using the ‘science’ tag to promote the concept of CAGW.

    As I mentioned to Bob in my #2137 exactly the same thing has happened with the so called global temperature record. Giss merely plugged into the latter part of the rise that had alreadty been occurring in the 180 years prior to the start of their record. They were NOT recording the start of it.

    tonyb

  16. Tony B, Reur 2137 Re CFC’s

    “I look forward to Peter’s contribution”.

    Wot?

    Contribution?
    You can’t be serious!

  17. Looking at the IPCC Reports I’ve found this graph. Interesting……….

    gggg

  18. Bob,

    Re: Detroit

    It really is too bad that Detroit has become what it is. The city has been run by Democrats (Socialists) for years that have promised the population handouts looted from the treasury.

    Obviously, the productive citizens have grown sick and tired of paying the freight for the indolent and have moved on to areas where they are free to keep (at least a portion) of what they have earned.

    Coupled with Mafioso Union types that strong arm industry and the result of these Socialist policies are well represented in areas such as Detroit.

    ‘The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money’

    – Margaret Thatcher.

  19. Brute

    Graphs are great, as your example from the IPCC report has shown (this one has been attributed to Hubert Lamb, climate science historian and founder of CRU at UEA). It was shown on p.202 of IPCC’s First Assessment Report (FAR).

    Unfortunately, the IPCC did not like their own graph, because they could not make the statement that recent warming was unusual (since the historical record showed it had been warmer during the MWP without any impact from human GHGs), so they did not show the graph again in the SAR.

    Then Mann et al. came up with the ideal solution: the “hockey stick”!

    OK. It was based on cherry-picked bad science (as it later turned out), but IPCC pounced on it like a dog on a bone, without even bothering to do any “due diligence” to validate the methodology or conclusions. Now IPCC could claim in its TAR report:

    New analyses of proxy data for the Northern Hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years.

    http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/vol4/english/

    IPCC even carried this charade a step further, with a full-page graph entitled “Variations of the Earth’s Temperature: years 1000 to 2100” in a beautiful example of superb “chartmanship”. This chart not only started off with the “Mann hockey stick”, itself containing a splice to “hide the decline” (which the tree-ring data erroneously showed for the latter 20th century, demonstrating how inaccurate the tree-ring series really was), but then continued by adding another graft: this time the fantasy curve of various model assumptions for the future. We now had a chart that not only showed that the 20th century warming was unprecedented for over 1,000 years, but also showed temperatures shooting off the top of the page over the next 100 years in an alarming warning of imminent disaster (all due to AGW, of course)! Wowee! (Al Gore loved it.)
    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3556/3820576014_91c891760f_b.jpg

    Then, as Andrew Montford describes in excruciating detail in his book, the hockey stick was comprehensively discredited as a fraud based on cherry-picked bad science, first by McIntyre and McKitrick, then by statistics expert Carl Wegman and finally (before a congressional committee) by a panel from the NAS.

    Yet, despite this, the discredited “hockey stick” amazingly lives on in the latest AR4 report, even if it no longer gets “center fold” exposure. It has even been “validated” by a series of “spaghetti copy hockey sticks” (AR4 WG1 Ch.6, p.467)
    http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter6.pdf

    And, of course, the claim of unusual warmth based on the hockey stick is repeated:

    Paleoclimate information [code word for the discredited hockey stick] supports the interpretation that the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1,300 years.

    Ouch!

    Max

  20. BobFJ,

    Here’s another perfect example of what happened to Detroit. This tax will raise the price of an airline ticket.

    This expense will be paid by the passengers which means that they will have fewer Dollars/Euros to spend on other things causing other businesses to suffer.

    In turn, downstream businesses will either layoff employees or otherwise cut expenses causing further misery……a vicious cycle.

    Look for travel abroad to decline and business to relocate away from areas that impose tyrannical taxation such as the EU has done in this case.

    Aviation deal clears way for emissions scheme: EU

    http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6981CU20101009

  21. Yes Max, smoke and mirrors.

    Sadly, the temperature record is so screwed up that any claim of increase or decrease is suspect.

    Guys such as Mann, Hansen and Jones have almost single handedly discredited all data relating to the topic such that we will never know the true story.

  22. Max,

    You said I had summed up your views incorrectly. When you say “Its all about politics”, do you mean the reported dangers of increased atmospheric GHG concentrations or the reluctance of people like yourself to accept there is a problem?

    You didn’t say which bit I’d got wrong!

  23. Brute,

    The main problem with Detroit is in its over reliance on its auto industry which has recently failed. Why? Big American style cars have never sold well in the world market. To see one on the roads in Europe, Asia or even in Australia is quite a rarity. Just about every car plant in the world has organised labour but you can’t blame the unions if the company produces the wrong product.

  24. Tony B, Reur 2137

    Unfortunately in a linear absorbed modelling community these cycles can’t be replicated.

    Quite. Not long ago, I was having some fun over at RC, and I abbreviate an attempted comment:

    *There seems to be a remarkable similarity between the current global temperatures and those depicted around 1940*

    It was deleted in moderation, which was disappointing because I’d been having a good run there. It was after the faithful insisting that it was necessary to have thirty years of data in order to establish a trend…. and the great values of linear trending. (as used so wonderfully by the IPCC)
    So, I had my dog Jedda make a related comment from a different computer and Email address; something like this:

    *What do you make of a thirty-year linear trend centred on 1940? Seems to be a rather strange result to me! *

    It too was deleted in moderation.
    Gavin may have still been feeling sore after a short lived article discussing the current cooling trend that had a rough passage.

    As you may gather, I’m not a fan of linear trending, when it is regardless of the nature of the data.

    I had not read your article, and may not have time today to do so.

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