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 2473
And don’t forget the Brits fought alone in Europe until virtually 1942 and lost hundreds of thousands in the Malay peninsula and Burma.
There is a great book “Refuge from the Reich- American Airmen and Switzerland during World War 11.” by Stephen Tanner.
This satisfies honours for everyone, but if Britain hadn’t stood up to Germany and then Hitler decided to renege on his non agression pact with Russia, Swizerland would likely have been steamrollered in its industrial areas in 1940/41 and then fought a long and brave rearguard battle in the Alps-which their army was well equipped to do, as I am sure your schoolchildren are taught.
I bought the book of course for the numerous climatic references :)
tonyb
TonyB
The “Battle of Britain” is taught to every schoolchild here in Switzerland.
There is no question that Britain bore an inordinately high percentage of the human cost of WWII, even well before the Normandy invasion.
Unlike the USA, that actually came out of the war stronger than it was before its late (forced) entry in December 1941, WWII almost bankrupted Britain as well.
Children are also taught about the Swiss resistance plans here. It is clear that the populated areas in the central valleys would have been quickly run over by a “Blitzkrieg”, as you write. However, it is also very likely that the guerrilla-like resistance in the mountainous regions would have resembled what actually happened in Yugoslavia. And the worst result for the Nazis would have been that the major tunnels through the Alps would have been destroyed. This was actually Switzerland’s “secret weapon” (which is not spoken of too much today). Under a treaty, which also included the supply of coal in exchange for hydroelectric power, Switzerland allowed Germany to ship no humans and no weapons, but other supplies through the tunnels to their troops in Italy, but warned Germany that the tunnels would all be destroyed if the Germans invaded Switzerland.
Of course, as you write, Hitler had a major distraction to the East, once he broke his non-aggression pact with Stalin, which certainly made an invasion of Switzerland a lower priority after 1941.
Max
PeterM
You allude to a future IPCC assessment report. Let’s hope it is not another costly 1000+ page groaner, like the last one.
If there really is another assessment report and if IPCC is shortsighted enough to ignore the recent findings based on physical observations of Spencer et al. on cloud feedbacks or of Lindzen and Choi on overall climate sensitivity in this report, then you can be sure that no one will take such a report seriously, as will also be the case if IPCC does not correct the many exaggerations, errors and outright fabrications that have been discovered in its AR4 report (which have been discussed here ad nauseam).
And if the atmosphere and upper ocean continue the currently observed “lack of warming”, and this is not specifically addressed (or is simply written off as a “speed bump”), then the report will simply be a laughing stock and more and more scientists will say (as Judith Curry wrote last week) that they can
Max
Max 2477
I agree, there is no way the Swiss would have been broken in the Alps-they had a formidable army.
It was very foolish of Hitler to have switched his attention to the Russian front but I think the depth of their alliance is not that well known-it suited the Russians to portray themselves as the innocent party.
I think the two leaders had closer ideologies than they liked to admit. As I say its a great book-with lots of very relevant references to the climate of the time :)
tonyb
TonyB
Thanks for tip about book. Will check it out.
Max
I’m not sure what WW2 has to do with all this but, if you are going to discuss it, you may as well have the correct figures. I detect some inaccuracies in some comments already.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_War_II_Casualties.svg
Mind you they are from Wiki. So you may want to dispute them as being ‘fudged’ by William Connolley!
Peter
Show some humility and respect. You might acquire some bny visiting a place like this honouring British and Commonwealth troops..
http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Overseas/kanchanaburi.html
tonyb
PeterM
The Wiki numbers on WWII casualties look similar to figures I have seen earlier.
No question that civilian and military losses were greatest in the USSR. All part of a deal between Stalin and Roosevelt/Churchill that the USSR would provide the cannon fodder while the USA would provide the USSR military equipment, Britain/USA would help destroy Germany with a protracted air war and then open a western front on the ground. According to the history books I have read on this, Stalin eventually got impatient with his western Allies (after Stalingrad in 1943) and pushed for the opening of the western front, while USA and Britain delayed as long as possible, first taking North Africa and then Italy, before finally invading at Normandy in 1944.
Stalin obviously regarded the loss of a Soviet soldier (or civilian) in a bit of a different light than either Roosevelt or Churchill regarding an American/British loss, having murdered a few million of his own well before the German invasion in forced famines, slave labor camps, etc.
The 1991 book “Hitler and Stalin” by the British historian, Alan Bullock, gives a good biography of the two dictators, pointing out many similarities as well as a few basic differences between the two.
But, as interesting as this all may be, we are getting OT here and TonyN will soon throw us off.
Max
TonyB,
I’m not showing any disrespect to anyone and, on a point of information, I have actually visited the cemetery you mention. All wars are a tragedy and every death too, no matter from which country the person came – no argument from me there.
I was reading that there is a White Poppy /Red Poppy divide in the UK. http://www.ppu.org.uk/poppy/
I’m not sure I fully agree with either side. The Red Poppy still seems to signify “our glorious dead” and as a justification for every conflict , whereas the White Poppy crowd tend too much towards pacifism – but, IMHO, certainly WW2 was justifiable.
Brute Reur 2471:
WRT the “carbon boot print” of the Abrams tank, there are some other issues. For instance, I heard on the jungle drums that although the Abrams is faster than the European tanks on a good road surface , as soon as they get onto off-road conditions, it is a different story. The ride and handling of the British Chieftain and German Leopard tanks is reportedly far superior, thus enabling higher speeds in battle conditions, and superior gunning accuracy on the move. Of course none of these tanks have faced serious competition for decades, and BATTLE losses from projectiles have been very low on all of them.
The Brits developed a ceramic-steel laminate armour that has been said to be the most effective against most projectiles, and reportedly it is used on the Abrams, although unfortunately the Abrams presents a more prone target profile. There has been talk about VERY heavy depleted uranium-steel laminates, but there are other problems with that.
Talking about the ride and handling of tanks, some time in the 80’s, during a visit to the USA, I was given, against my wishes, a huge Ford car (aka Yank-tank) as transport, groan. I think it was called a “Grande Marquee”. I was a bit of a hoon back then, and with short experience, tried to push it, and ran over a ripple in the road on a rising bend, to be shocked by a violent bump-steer that might have resulted in death(s) due to an undesired lane-change. (vacant)
Seems like the Abrams also has a primitive suspension system, described as torsion bars.
When you shouted:
Aw, c’mon Brute, you know how it is, politicians can make stupid decisions that we can’t change. In the case of military hardware it involves long-lead issues and stuff that cannot be reverted no matter how wrong it might be. I gather that you resent Obama’s wish to improve the health care of millions of poor Americans. How did you go in stopping that?
Do we [Oz] build a battle tank?
According to the CIA “World Fact Book”, Australia has a population of:
21,515,754 (July 2010 est.)
Get real Brute!
PeterM
Red Poppy / White Poppy?
Tell it to the jihadi movements that are intent on destroying us.
“No more wars” is a very noble goal, which we almost thought that we had achieved after the defeat of fascism and the demise of world communism.
Back during WWI Wilson talked about “making the world safe for democracy” and Chamberlain talked about “peace for our time” in 1938.
But now there is a new global threat.
To get this discussion back on track, I think we can all agree that this threat is far greater than the threat from human CO2 emissions.
Max
Peter #2484
I visited there as well and was struck by the supreme irony of the attendants driving japanese cars and using japanese equipment. Although I suppose it shows that time heals it also illustrates we have short memories
Anyway I’m sure you will agree this is the wrong time and wrong place to continue to discuss this subject.
tonyb
“……I think we can all agree that this threat [Islamic terrorism] is far greater than the threat from human CO2 emissions.”
Just on a point of information there, Max, well. no we can’t! :-)
TonyB,
What’s all this about UK students smashing up Tory Party HQ ? The “sons and daughters of Middle England” I heard them described on the radio. Must be all those climate change science lessons which has brainwashed them into Anarchism!
Peter 2488 and Max
Has anyone seen this letter from David Mackay (the Chief Scientist at the UK Dept of Energy and Climate Change). Both links posted by Bishop Hill:
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/david-mackays-letter
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/best-shot (the reply)
Interesting that we would get such a detailed response from David-perhaps ‘they’ realise there is still a lot of dissent?
I thought was a very good response from Matt too. If you put all the information together- which is highly inconclusive that anything much is happening- and then balance that against the huge cost and disruption to very slightly* mitigate something that might (or might not) be happening, then a dispassionate observer from another planet might think that Earths inhabitants had lost all common sense and reasoning.
Note; * ‘Very slightly’ is one twentieth of a degree. (which Max has previously referred to)
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
tonyb
Peter # 2488
There is a well established network of lunatic climate change protestors who also manifest themselves at other events.
It will be interesting to see if the ringleaders of the violence turn out be genuine students or part of this anarchist fringe. For sure the students have lost a lot of sympathy, as personally I had previously thought that the increassed tuition fees (started by the Labour Govt) are excessive.
I will reserve final judgement until we find out who the fifty or so ringleaders were. (someone interviewed on the rasio this morning was a veteran of climate change protests-an extremist and illogical group)
tonyb
PeterM
The “jihadi” war against “infidels” (or those who believe in a different form of Islam) has resulted in several thousand directly documented and recorded deaths to date.
Climate change has not. It remains an imaginary “hobgoblin” of the future, Peter.
Max
Max,
The relationship between Islam and the West is probably the worst its been since the time of the Crusades. I won’t go into the reasons why here, it would take too long, but it hasn’t all ‘just happened’.
However, it is curious to note that those who are most responsible for making them this bad, and seem to actually want to make them worse, are also the same people who deny that high CO2 emissions are a problem. Why would that be, do you think? Why should two apparently unrelated issues have such a high degree of correlation?
Brute,
This may entertain you; from the Melbourne Age:
“…MORE than $1 billion of taxpayers’ money was wasted on subsidies for household solar roof panels that favoured the rich and did little to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, a scathing review has found…
…All solar panel systems installed under the program combined reduced Australia’s emissions by just 0.015 per cent, and cost up to $301 per tonne of carbon saved – hundreds more than the cost of emissions reductions with a carbon price…”
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/11bn-wasted-on-solar-power-20101110-17nrh.html
Max,
Just to bring the graph closer up to date:
If you read Hansen’s paper, there is more to Scenario A than just “business as usual”. Scenario A assumed exponential growth in forcings, with no significant volcanic eruptions. Scenario B was roughly a linear increase in forcings, and Scenario C was similar to B, but had close to constant forcings from 2000 onwards. Scenario B and C had an ‘El Chichon’ sized volcanic eruption in 1995. Mt Pinatubo actually fired off in 1991. Essentially, a high, middle and low estimate were chosen. Hansen specifically stated that he thought the middle scenario (B) the “most plausible”.
Hansen wouldn’t have known that the deepest solar minimum for a 100 years would occur in 2008/2009 so all in all his prediction isn’t looking too far off.
Pete,
The graph is from George Soros funded Real Climate.
Come back when you have something legitimate.
I alluded to this a while back………I’m installing one for a client.
On site generation…………avoid the transmission fees, distribution fees, taxes, union pension ponzi schemes, government “assistance” programs fees and surcharges associated with commercial power.
The utilities and government agencies hate them………we bypass all of the crooks and generate our own power.
Starve the beasts…………
Capstone Micro-Turbines
http://www.capstoneturbine.com/prodsol/products/
PeterM
Yes. I read the Hansen et al. paper (for which I provided you the link). But I am beginning to doubt that you actually did, Peter.
Hansen defined his “scenario A” as follows:
Let’s see if this really happened.
Over the 1970s and 1980s:
324 ppmv = CO2 concentration in 1970
353 ppmv = CO2 concentration in 1990
C2 / C1 = 353 / 324 = 1.0895
CAGR = (1.0895) ^0.05 – 1 = 0.0043 = 0.43% compounded annual growth rate
From 1998 to 2008
351 ppmv = CO2 concentration in 1988
385 ppmv = CO2 concentration in 2008
C2 / C1 = 353 / 324 = 1.0969
CAGR = (1.0969) ^0.05 – 1 = 0.0044 = 0.44% compounded annual growth rate
So the exponential growth rate was actually slightly higher from 1988 (when Hansen made his model-based prediction) to 2008 than was “typical of the 1970s and 1980s”, which was the basis for his “scenario A”.
Ergo, “scenario A” is what we actually had and Hansen was off by a factor of 3.5 to 1 in his temperature prediction, as I pointed out (74) on the “mid-term election” thread.
0.84°C (Hansen’s forecast temperature increase from 1988 to 2009)
0.24°C (actual GISS temperature increase from 1988 to 2009)
0.84 / 0.24 = 3.5
Ouch! A lousy forecast, no matter how you try to rationalize it.
Peter, there is a lesson for you to learn here.
Do not rely on rehashes of the data by folks like Gavin Schmidt, but instead go back to the original data and make your own analysis (as I have done here, starting with the original data, not some silly rehash by someone who is trying to sell me a “story”).
Hope this clears the matter up, Peter.
Max
Brute
Those Capstone micro-turbines (2496) look like pretty slick products for local power generation.
What does a 30 kW or 65 kW unit running on natural gas cost? Are there any substantial installation costs above the cost of the units?
They should make Peter pretty happy, since I assume they generate around 0.8 lb (0.36 kg) of CO2 per kWh when run on natural gas compared to 2.3 lb (~1 kg) for a coal-fired power plant.
Max
PS Agree with you regarding RealClimate as a serious site for climate data (see my post to Peter), but did not know that George Soros is pulling the strings there; looks like that guy’s tentacles are everywhere!
Max,
You are selectively quoting the bits you like but ignoring what Hansen has to say about volcanoes, and particulates too, which produce a cooling effect. Some contrarian groups even airbrush out curves B and C !! Even though Hansen clearly says that scenario B is the most likely.
The fact is, of course, that agreement isn’t perfect, but nevertheless Hansen’s 1988 prediction of a general warming has been shown to be correct. At that time the general opinion was that AGW might just possibly prove to be a problem but there was no real evidence of it in the temperature record.
James Hansen did use a figure of 4 degC fo the CO2 temperature sensitivity in his models. Its likely to be more like 3 degs from work which has been done since. The IPCC puts this between 1.5 degC and 4.5 degs C.
PeterM
It is almost pathetic, but at the same time humorous, to witness your blind faith in your prophet, James E. Hansen, despite the observed facts.
You are attempting to rationalize away a prediction of warming, made by Hansen (et al.) in 1988, which turned out to be very wrong. In fact, it was exaggerated by a factor of over 3:1.
Sure it warmed, Peter. Duh! It has been warming since 1850. That is not the issue.
The issue is that Hansen’s computers exaggerated future warming by a factor of over 3:1, in other words, were totally worthless.
You write:
So, since he was off by a factor of 3.5 to 1, this tells me that the actually observed 2xCO2 climate sensitivity is more likely to be:
4 / 3.5 = 1.1°C
This is beginning to sound reasonable, based on the observed data. It also tells me that the calculated net impact of all feedbacks is zero, rather than a tripling of the 2xCO2 climate sensitivity, as assumed by Hansen’s models.
All your talk about volcanoes, etc. just shows that you are falling into the classical trap of rationalizing away a failed prediction with the logic: “except for that my projection was right”.
Read Nassim Taleb’s “The Black Swan” for a description of this logical fallacy.
Back in 1988, Hansen tried to frighten us with a forecast of alarming future warming based on his computer models.
As we now see some 20 years later, his computer predictions failed miserably, because they were based on erroneous assumptions on the importance of CO2 as a driver of our climate (GIGO).
This tells me that his current predictions (using these same erroneous assumptions) are most likely to be just as ridiculous (more GIGO).
Quite simple, actually, Peter.
Just face it, rather than being a “denier” and sticking your head in the sand.
Max