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.
Sorry: my first comment above in 2150:
I meant in terms of curvilinear trends
PeterM
In 2149 you opined (from far-away Brisbane):
I’m not much closer to Detroit than you are, but I do have an ex-Swiss friend, who lives there with his family since the 1980s.
He believes that the city lost its “values”, as a result of several factors.
One was certainly the “over reliance on its auto industry”, as you wrote.
But there were other factors, as well.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) certainly played a major role in the decline of the US auto industry, along with the management of the companies themselves.
Crime has become a major problem in Detroit. Is the auto industry to blame? Not very likely.
When the mayor of a city is convicted of a felony, along with his chief of staff, this is a major problem.
A school system that has run out of money and cannot even supply its schools with toilet paper and light bulbs is in serious trouble. Only about one-quarter of students who start high school in the district graduate from it in four years,
As the WSJ has reported:
As one Detroiter has commented:
http://jackshow.blogs.com/jack/2009/07/essay-the-problem-with-detroit-72809.html
And the unscrupulous themselves (several of whom are unfortunately in local government), my friend would add.
Max
I see that sales of Australian manufactured cars is booming.
PeterM
Regarding your question in 2148, re-read my 2128 again.
It’s all very clear, but if you have questions understanding it, please let me know so I can help you out.
As Charles Dudley Warner wrote:
[In this case the “bedfellows” are climate scientists relying on politicians for tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer funded grants to produce papers to lend support for trillions of dollars of (direct or indirect) carbon taxes to be shuffled around by the same politicians.]
Refer to TonyN’s “A Very Convenient Network” thread here for more input on how this collusion of interests works (Peter Taylor has also described it very well in his book).
Max
Prominent Physicist Resigns From American Physical Society: ‘Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life’
Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Here is his letter of resignation to Curtis G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society.
Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?
How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it.
For example:
1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate
2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.
3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.
4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.<
5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.
6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.
APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?
I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.
I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.
Hal
Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety
Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)
New Zealand’s NIWA temperature train wreck
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/09/new-zealands-niwa-temperature-train-wreck/#more-26173
Raw
“Adjusted”
Max,
You don’t seem comfortable with the political side of the AGW dispute even though you think its “all about politics”.
I suspect that you really mean the support for the idea that AGW is a potential prroblem is politically inspired (yes/no?) but that opposition to it is not?
Or are you saying that the opposition is politically motivated too? Yes/No ?
I would imagine Brute’s APS professor has allowed his political belief to override his scientific judgement too. I’m open to being proved wrong but I’d say he’s never published any scientific work on the AGW question and that he has have right wing Republican leanings.
PeterM
It appears that you have a serious comprehension problem (2157).
Re-read 2128 and 2154.
As for “Brute’s APS professor”, why is it that you automatically assume if someone has a different opinion than you do (on the validity of science supporting DAGW, in this case) that he “has allowed his political belief to override his scientific judgement”?
Isn’t this a bit (pardon the expression) “arrogant” on your part?
How would you react if you were accused of the same?
Max
Brute
I get your point on the New Zealand temperature record. Glad the record has been corrected.
I believe your larger point is that if this has happened in NZ, isn’t there a good chance that it has also happened elsewhere, thereby skewing the “global” temperature record?
TonyB’s examples of long-term cooling in many locations raises this question again.
The many UHI studies also point in this direction.
Then there re the many station shutdowns and relocations, plus the major “blank spots” where “blanks are filled in” with assumed data.
On top of all this we have the poor station siting problems, which have also been shown to introduce a warming bias.
What “independent quality control” do we have on the long-term temperature records?
We know that James E. Hansen (the keeper of the GISS record) is an avowed AGW-activist (rather than an objective public servant,whose job it is to provide the US taxpayer unbiased climate information).
We also know that Phil Jones (until recently the keeper of the HadCRUT record) is also an outspoken believer in the dangerous AGW hypothesis, who has chosen to destroy his raw data rather than allowing it to be subject to an independent audit following FOI requests.
Can we trust these guys to give us the real numbers, or has the entire record been “adjusted, modified, variance corrected” (and otherwise manipulated as was the case for the NZ record?
Peter may not agree, but I’d agree with you that until both GISS and HadCRUT have been subjected to (and passed) a critical independent audit we can regard them as worthless. [And we certainly should not base long-term policy on this record until it has passed this rigorous audit.]
Max
Max,
Seriously, why the need to “adjust” the temperature record?
What justification does Hansen (and others) provide?
What is their argument for doing so?
It seems in the case of New Zealand they got caught cheating and now disavow ever having anything to do with the data that they previously published……
Brute and Max and Bob
Can I suggest you follow this link then read the top two articles ‘KML Maps slideshow’ and ‘google earth KML file’.
Can I strongly recommend you install Google earth which will enable you to zoom in and see the data behind the vast numbers of stations that have been cooling for a statistically meaningful time scale.
The articles come from two people I have been working with, one of whom co authored the ‘cooling trends’ study I have previously referenced here and is also contained within the two articles referred to above.
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/
The reason I dislike global temperatures is
1) the figures are often meaningless as the station circumstances have changed so much over the years
2) data has been manipulated (the New Zealand figures are a good example)
3) By aggregating everything to form an average, the UHi influenced warming figures mask the true multi decadal warmng AND cooling trends.
Please Install google earth after reading the two articles. Global temperatures are a laughable concept and the idea that the whole earth is warming (as asserted by the IPCC) is equally risible.
Tonyb
Comment from Obama’s “climate czar”
Holdren – Snipping You Since 1969
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/10/09/holdren-snipping-you-since-1969/
“. . . it cannot be emphasized enough that if the population control measures are not initiated immediately and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come.’Therefore, confronted as we are with limited resources of time and money, we must consider carefully what fraction of our effort should be applied to the cure of the disease itself instead of to the temporary relief of the symptoms. We should ask, for example, how many vasectomies could be performed by a program funded with the 1.8 billion dollars required to build a single nuclear agro-industrial complex, and what the relative impact on the problem would be in both the short and long terms.”
White House Science Czar Advocated Worldwide Redistribution of Wealth, But Declines to Comment on It
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/75972
Funny……Not all Marxists are Warmists, but all Warmists are Marxists………
CAROL BROWNER
Named Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change by Barack Obama in 2009
Former Legislative Director for Senator Al Gore
Cass Sunstein (Obama’s Regulaory Czar)
Cass Sunstein (Obama’s Regulaory Czar)wants to spread America’s wealth
Echoes Van Jones on using ‘environmental justice’ to redistribute money.
Max,
You are resorting to a tactic that you’ve copied from Mr Guenier when he was stuck for an answer.
Instead of answering a simple question like
Or are you saying that the opposition [to AGW] is politically motivated too? Yes/No ?
He’s refer me to some irrelevant previous posting as you’ve just done.
Is the question really so difficult to answer?
Max,
You ask ” why is it that you automatically assume if someone has a different opinion than you do (on the validity of science supporting DAGW, in this case) that he ‘has allowed his political belief to override his scientific judgement’?”
Maybe you have a point. Perhaps I’m being too hasty. I must admit that I’d marked him down as some crusty old defence type guy who has never written anything of note on the subject of AGW.
But maybe he’s just made some stunning contribution to show why the IPCC, the NAS and his own APS have it all wrong?
OK then. Let’s see what it is! Do you know?
Brute, Reur 2156 on Kiwigate graphs before and after erh uhm “correction“.
Here follows the “official” Oz Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) equivalent for the whole of Oz. (State by state is also available). It would be interesting to know if it suffers the same sort of “adjustments” as the KiwiKrap. I remember that not long ago Willis Eschenbach did something on the Darwin (Northern Territory – Oz) record on WUWT that was far from comforting.
Just for fun, so that your serial pest friend from Queensland might learn something…. (fat chance), I’ve shown it with a 5-year smoothing, and also supplementary 11 and 15 year smoothing insets, as offered by the BOM website. (BOM and CSIRO usually use 11-years, but I don‘t know if any weightings are involved)
Click if no image: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4130/5070346397_21e0771e49_b.jpg
Max, Reur 2139, addressed to your “Homo Australoglobothermotremblinsisns” friend:
Good on you Max; you can retain a sense of humour. Me, No: I usually slowly shake my head** in disbelief that this rare species* can be so contradictory to what might otherwise, once in a while, be interpreted as a fleeting glimpse of latent intelligence. The species asserts great unthinking arrogance in its self conviction. For instance, (briefly), by claiming that its very wrong smoothing method is OK, despite that ALL climate scientists, and even the dendro’s et al, DO NOT use its method.
* Actually, I suspect that if it breeds, (rather than just as an individual malformation), it may become a sub-sub-species that I would like to describe as: Homo fruiticaekus.
** like the Roman Guards in “The Life of Brian”.
PeterM
To answer your question (2166).
The “stunning contibutions” to which you refer “to show why the IPCC, the NAS and his own APS have it all wrong” were made by several climate scientists, notably Spencer et al. (with their observations on cloud feedbacks), Lindzen and Choi (with their observations on the Earth’s energy budget as measured from satellites), Craig Loehle (with his observations of upper ocean cooling since Argo measurements were installed), etc.
These are the “post IPCC AR4 breakthroughs” that have cleared up many of the uncertainties and a few false assumptions in IPCC’s earlier AR4 report.
Max
PeterM
You may not be quick to grasp new concepts that conflict with your deep-seated beliefs, but I must admit that you have what is known as “sticktoitiveness” (i.e. like a bulldog with a bone, you will not turn a topic loose long after it has become boring and redundant).
In this fashion you again ask me the trick question (2165):
As I pointed out to you, AGW is ALL about politics, driven by tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded research grants doled out by politicians to climatologists who will provide them “scientific” support for a political program of imposing trillions of dollars of carbon taxes on the citizens of the industrially developed world, which they can then shuffle around and dole out, thereby increasing their power and (in some cases) their personal wealth. (All in a magnificent “collusion of interests” as beautifully and incisively described by TonyN.)
Is that POLITICAL enough for you?
(So the answer to your “trick question” is obviously: YES, opposition to AGW is (partially) politically motivated (BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY SO).
It is also about “science”.
Admittedly, the “science” is simply a “side show” to justify the “main event”.
But therin lies the rub, Peter. The “science” behind the premise that AGW is a serious potential threat to mankind has been shown to be full of holes.
No sound science = no potential serious problem = no need to impose trillions of dollars of carbon taxes on the industrially developed world to “mitigate” against this imaginary problem
So “science” (or the lack thereof) is also a key part of the AGW debate.
For me it is the cornerstone, upon which the political debate must rest.
I hope this has answered your question.
Max
Max,
Yes I know what Lindzen , Choi, and Lomborg are saying. I know what Svensmark is saying too. There is a fair bit of disagreement as you know. But what what about Harold Lewis?
What is he saying?
Max,
So what you really saying is that AGW is “all about politics” except for some of the opposition to it?
So you’ve obviously rejected what I would consider to be the more plausible alternative that the science is genuine but the opposition largely politically motivated as it was , say , in the 70’s and 80’s with tobacco.
Just for the sake of argument, consider , if you can a world where the science was genuine. What would it look like? Do you think all those who scream “hoax” and “fraud” would behave any differently? Do you think the whole scene would look any different, in that world, from what it does now, in this world?
Brute
You ask three incisive questions:
The “need to adjust” the observed record is quite simple: the physical observations do not agree with the hypothesis, so they must be wrong and should, therefore, be corrected.
This is a standard approach used by many climate scientists when the observed facts do not agree with the theoretical model simulation results. Since the models can’t be wrong, it must be the thermometers. [Along with other discrepancies between observed facts and the DAGW hypothesis, the missing tropospheric “hot spot” was rationalized back into existence with this kind of warped logic.]
Answering questions 2 and 3 is more difficult, because we are getting into the psychology of lying and denial of facts.
Hansen provides a lot of non-transparent double-talk, but no real justification for all the manipulations to the record. It is clear (a) that he is a dedicated AGW-activist rather than an unbiased and objective scientist and (b) that he needs a global warming trend to “sell” his doomsday story.
Whatever Hansen might say his justification is, I believe that this is his real underlying justification.
As to his argument for doing so (question 3), I believe that he has lost touch with reality in his messianic zeal to “sell” his doomsday message of “repent now or die”, so that his “argument” could well be that manipulating the temperature record is a necessary evil in order to frighten the general public into accepting and implementing his ideas on how to save the planet. (The late Stephen Schneider, also an AGW activist, expressed a similar opinion about exaggerating and lying to “sell” a necessary message.)
But then again, I am not a psychologist (or, even less, a psychiatrist).
Maybe Peter can use his insight to give you an answer to your questions.
Max
PeterM
To my 2169 you wrote in 2171:
No, Peter, that is NOT what I am saying. Do not “paraphrase” what I wrote to try to squeeze out another hidden meaning. Simply read it and you’ll see “what I am saying”.
End of this silly discussion.
Max
PeterM
Glad you are drifting back to the “science” (2170) and away from a more general “political” discussion.
Can you identify more closely the “fair amount of disagreement” which you apparently feel exists between the observations of Spencer, Lindzen & Choi, Loehle (all of whom I cited) and Svensmark (whom you added)?
Please try to be specific.
Max
Two recent articles, timely with regard to Busan this week, the run-up to Cancun and the likely fallout from next month’s US midterm elections and winter 2010/11 (if it’s a cold ‘un):
Here’s Fred Pearce on the likely outcome if the uncertainties of climate science are highlighted:
Fred’s conclusion, though (not especially convincing, IMO), is that more uncertainty means more reason to “act now”. Which leads me to my second article, from the Independent at the weekend:
If we take the following…
1) Increasing acknowledgement of the uncertainties of climate science, on the part of climate scientists
2) Increasing public scepticism, apathy and resistance to climate change messages from the government and media
3) Increasing energy bills and cost of living due directly to the switch to a “low carbon economy”
… and mix these together, I think we have a recipe for… interesting times, up ahead. ;-)