Mar 172008

THIS PAGE HAS BEEN ACTIVATED AS THE NEW STATESMAN BLOG IS NOW CLOSED FOR COMMENTS

At 10am this morning, the New Statesman finally closed the Mark Lynas thread on their website after 1715 comments had been added over a period of five months. I don’t know whether this constitutes any kind of a record, but gratitude is certainly due to the editor of of the New Statesman for hosting the discussion so patiently and also for publishing articles from Dr David Whitehouse and Mark Lynas that have created so much interest.

This page is now live, and anyone who would like to continue the discussion here is welcome to do so. I have copied the most recent contributions at the New Statesman as the first comment for the sake of convenience. If you want to refer back to either of the original threads, then you can find them here:

Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with all 1289 comments.

Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.

Welcome to Harmless Sky, and happy blogging.

(Click the ‘comments’ link below if the input box does not appear)

 

10,000 Responses to “Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs.”

  1. Hi Peter,

    You are beginning to waffle again with your question, “Are you saying that the effect of particulates, methane, and volcanic activity has been zero?”

    No, Peter. I am just saying that IPCC has stated that all these factors cancel each other out, so that the net effect has indeed been zero.

    Radiative forcing from CO2 = 1.66 W/m^2.

    Net radiative forcing from all anthropogenic factors, including other GHGs, land use changes, black carbon, aerosols = 1.6 W/m^2.

    Check IPCC 2007 SPM (p.4).

    Do you have a problem understanding this, Peter, or are you just being obstinate?

    Regards,

    Max

  2. Hi TonyB,

    Your 3074 concerning fantasy Chistmas presents really does tell the whole story very well.

    Today there are the “believers” who “know” that “sinful” human CO2 emissions from our industrial society are causing a serious climate problem for our planet. No matter what data are presented to show that this is not the case, these fundamentalists will not change their minds.

    IPCC, the political organization specifically set up to promote these anthropogenic “disaster” predictions, pours more fuel on the fire with 1,000+ page reports supporting this myth with GIGO computer model projections.

    Doomsday prophets, such as James E. Hansen and Al Gore, reinforce the belief of these fundamentalists with pseudoscientific declarations and predictions of imminent disaster.

    Politicians and bureaucrats see a wonderful opportunity to increase their power with dracorian carbon taxes or cap and trade schemes.

    And temperatures have been dropping for the last decade despite all these disaster predictions, leading the doomsayers to even more bizzare rationalizations of (yet to occur) “climate-carbon cycle feedbacks”, delayed “equilibrium” hypotheses, etc.

    How stupid do these guys think we all are?

    Regards,

    Max

  3. Hey Max,
    What a difference a year makes over at GISS!
    Hadley may have made some gradual changes to show slight warming over the past decade, but GISS seems to do it really big-time
    Pete produced a GISS annual graph ending with 1996, and I thought I’d compare their latest @
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
    Anyhow, here they are, side by side. GISS don’t pussyfoot around eh?
    GISS 1996 1997A
    If no image, try: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3211/3091224050_3512274802_o.gif

  4. Max,

    I think its the non CO2 factors that approximately cancel out, and these include the effect of solar changes.

    How about we agree on this graph?

    If not maybe you could suggest your own?

  5. Bob_FJ,

    Only the left hand graph is from NASA/GISS. The right hand graph is from the UEA/Hadcrut data http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/gtc2007.csv

    which I plotted out in Excel using the same averaging method NASA use.

    Its good that you noticed that the two graphs had the same features but naturally there are small differences too.

  6. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/14/the-evolution-of-the-giss-temperature-product/

    Bob,

    In the same vein, Anthony Watts posted this last month. It demonstrates how the data is being manipulated incrementally to support Hansen’s prophecies. I’m not certain if the “blinker” graph will work with WordPress but it is an interesting study of how Hansen et. al. are attempting to falsify information to bamboozle the public. No one will notice and the originally temperature record will be lost in the black hole of government bureaucracy and time.

    The “evolution” of the temperature record would be amusing if the implications weren’t so insidious.

  7. Tony B,

    I wanted to suggest An Inconvenient Truth as good science fiction tale and was looking for a tongue in cheek write up; however, I ran out of time.

    What I did find are numerous articles posted by environmentalists supporting the film and pointing out the fact that the film is “riddled with inaccuracies” which are “immaterial” as the message the film conveys is the salient point.

    The logic goes something like this…..I deposit a check at a bank in the amount of $150.00 and the bank credits my account with only $100.00. When I ask the bank why they didn’t deposit the full amount they explain that the amount is “immaterial”….the point being that a deposit was made.

    This is the sort of logic that the eco-chondriacs use. The facts don’t really matter as long as they vilify (insert evil corporate entity here). I’m certain if I practiced this type of logic effecting their budgets or government funded research grants they’d cry foul; but it doesn’t seem to matter when it’s not their ox that’s being gored.

    For instance, when Hansen asks for another few hundred million to research global warming we could simply say that we provided the funds “in theory”……the fact that no money actually ended up in his budget is “immaterial”….. the message is that we support his research…….that’s the important thing…….get it?

  8. Pete, Reur 3080, now let’s clarify this:
    When you wrote in part in your 2900/20
    http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=63&cp=20#comment-6240

    I did update the data on my graph to include the year 2007 which is the last full year for which data is available. Just change the 2006 to 2007 [in the link] to get the updated version…
    …NASA use the 5 year averaging technique too. Their graphs show exactly the same features.

    And then when you inserted a graph below that of different appearance, including different looking 5-year smoothing, and with different data points, ending in 2006, you apparently forgot to mention that it was actually based on Hadley data of some other vintage and duration, to the earlier 2007 Hadley graph you posted. (not GISS, as seemed to be the context)

    Furthermore, in your 3080 above, when you said:

    The right hand graph is from the UEA/Hadcrut data http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/gtc2007.csv
    which I plotted out in Excel using the same averaging method NASA use.

    This is new information which claims you used the 2007 full-year data to plot a graph ending in 2006. (really?) I’d also be interested to know the difference between your claimed NASA 5-year method, and your clearly different earlier 5-year method. (outcome)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    EVERYONE: Sorry for the confusion!
    Does anyone have copies of any GISS graphs of annual mean global T for the document dates between 1998 and very recently?

  9. Brute Reur 3081,
    Nice post, and the blinker graph worked great for me! I hope “The Earth Moved” for Pete too!

    You wrote in part:

    It demonstrates how the data is being manipulated incrementally to support Hansen’s prophecies… …No one will notice and the originally temperature record will be lost in the black hole of government bureaucracy and time.
    The “evolution” of the temperature record would be amusing if the implications weren’t so insidious.

    I was out bush-walking a while ago when a friend pointed excitedly at a flat fungus or something rather unattractive on the ground and marvelled: That is one of those creepers! Check it out tomorrow, and you will find it has moved. Look at it as long as you like right now but you won’t see it move…… but come back tomorrow or next week, and you may be surprised.

    Up above somewhere, Pete advised that all the Hadley global average T’s are available at:
    http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/gtc2007.csv (updated during 2008), but if you want a different year-end just alter the year in the address. I tried this for 2005 and 2006, and sure enough, up pops a data set, in Excel, ending in the specified year. The only thing is that the data is identical in each case, apart from the terminating point. Ho-hum; the old records are progressively obliterated.

    It’s a creeping thing, just like that incredible inedible fungus, slime or lichen, whatever it was!

  10. Bob_FJ,

    I think I might have given this link originally as 2006 instead of:
    http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/gtc2007.csv

    The graph actually does end at the end of 2007.

    The value of 2003, which is almost the same as for 2002, is obscured by the black circle. So, you might have missed this.

    The graph was drawn to show that the current cooling period is in no way ‘unprecedented’. For the purposes of making this point, it really doesn’t matter whether the graph finished in 2006, 2007 or part way through 2008.

    I’m not sure why you have a problem with Excel’s running averages. Have a try for yourself. Just take any series and right click on it. Choose ‘add trend line’. Then choose a factor of 5, or whatever you like, for the running averages option. If you disagree with what Excel does , please let us all know!

  11. Max, Reur 3072, you wrote in part:

    … As you recall, I was unable to get a satisfactory explanation on CA from blogger “Phil”, who tried to defend and rationalize the ex post facto adjustments [by Hadley – Jan-April] as first (a) “late data” coming in and then (b) “variance” adjustments, and finally saying (c) the changes really were not that great. So I gave up pursuing it further since the original data had been wiped out of the Hadley record.

    Well, actually I remember the big UPWARD Hadley changes you identified after that notoriously cold NH winter, to be astonishingly contradictory to the widely reported evidence. (E.g. was it 172,000 power-grid pylons ice-demolished in China in January?)

    Although the older Hadley records may have been wiped “clean“, (and thus maybe safe from FOI enquiry), surely there must be stuff independently archived out there in this wide-world that could be accumulated, to show that there has been “creeping manipulation disease”?

    Could we perhaps get some funding of a few million dollars to check this stuff out?
    I jest! Re the political reality!

  12. Pete, Reur 3085:
    NO; NOT THAT GRAPH, THE OTHER ONE!

  13. Bob_FJ,

    This one? I’ve lost track of all this. What is it that you are quibbling about?

  14. Hi Peter,

    You tried this trial balloon (3079): “Max, I think its the non CO2 factors that approximately cancel out, and these include the effect of solar changes.”

    Sorry, Peter, that one does not fly. IPCC (SPM 2007, p.4) states that:

    CO2 (anthropogenic) represents 1.66 W/m^2
    Total net ANTHROPOGENIC factors represent a net total of 1.6 W/m^2
    So it is all the other ANTHROPOGENIC factors that essentially cancel one another out.
    These do not include solar factors, which are non-anthropogenic.

    IPCC show an extremely low guess for solar forcing, conceding a “low level of scientific understanding” on solar impact.

    Since they concede that this is not their area of expertise, it makes sense to check the solar climate experts who have a higher “level of scientific understanding” on this than IPCC.

    Many solar experts (which I have cited) agree that the 20th century saw the highest level of solar activity for the past several thousand years, resulting in an average estimated impact of 0.35C from solar warming.

    So your “curve” is model-based IPCC “smoke and mirrors” stuff and should be ignored. It is always best, Peter, to go to the source of information, rather than to re-hashes by groups that are trying to “sell” a message.

    The “curve” on total actual 1850-2008 warming is provided by the Hadley record. This shows a total linear warming of 0.65C. Please refer to my post #3048.

    “All other anthropogenic factors” cancel one another out per IPCC (the self-proclaimed “experts” on anthropogenic warming).

    Volcanic activity has no net long-term effect over the entire 150+ year period. [If you can provide links to specific studies that show otherwise, please provide these.]

    ENSO oscillations, etc. seem to correlate with temperature, but there are studies, which indicate that these are linked to solar activity; I have seen no studies linking them to anthropogenic CO2. So we can ignore them for now.

    The CO2 warming is therefore = 0.65 – 0.35 = 0.3C based on the observed Hadley record.

    This checks with the theoretical warming one would expect from the estimated increase in atmospheric CO2 over the time period, using the RF estimate of IPCC (Myhre et al.) and the greenhouse theory.

    Very simple, Peter.

    Can we now agree that CO2 caused a 3C rise in temperature over the period 1850 to 2008?

    Or do you believe that a portion of this 0.3C warming should be attributed to ENSO, etc.?

    Let’s see if we can agree on something here, Peter, rather than just spinning our wheels.

    Regards,

    Max

  15. Hi Bob,

    Your 3078 with GISS graphs is hilarious!

    These guys really know how to re-write history to make it fit their “story line”.

    Since the early 2008 Hadley “adjustment”, I suspect they are doing exactly the same thing.

    Guess we’ll have to look out for more of this, now that global warming has, in fact, stopped. Otherwise how are these guys going to “sell” their global warming hysteria (and, in the case of Hadley, the “climate change adaptation services” they are now going to market aggressively)?

    The more gullible folks out there will fall for this for a while, as long as the media play along with the ruse. But eventually people are going to notice that it is not really getting any warmer, that sea levels are not rising at an accelerating rate, that there are no more droughts, floods, storms or heat waves than there were before, and the bubble will simply go “POP”.

    But it’s fun to watch GISS and Hadley squirm a bit in the meantime trying to keep the hoax alive.

    Regards,

    Max

  16. Max,

    You are referring to this graph from the page you quote in IPCC (SPM 2007, p.4)?

    This is saying that the net forcing from CO2 is equal to the total net forcings, which is what I have been saying too.

    There have been other attempts to look at, and calculate from, the historical record to predict from that what the likely warming will be in the 21st century. Such as this one:

    This predicts another 2.2 degC of warming, assuming a ‘business as usual” scenario, which is very close to my previous ‘back of envelope’ calculation.

  17. “Your [Bob_FJ’s] 3078 with GISS graphs is hilarious!”

    Only if you hadn’t already realised that the graph on the left, of Bob_FJ’s 3078, is from GISS, but the one on the right uses Hadley data. A quick way to tell is to look at the 1998 spike. GISS generally put this a little lower, making the year 2005 as the all time high.

  18. Hi Bob,

    Went back to the GISS record I downloaded in May 2007 and compared it with the same record downloaded today.

    Every single year had a slightly different number for the two records!

    Starting in the 1900s the average annual difference over the ten-year decade was <+.001C.

    In the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s the difference was slightly over –0.001C.

    In the 1940s the downward adjustment was -0.002C.

    In the 1950s the downward adjustment was -0.001C.

    In the 1960s the upward adjustment was slightly below +0.001C.

    The adjustment started becoming greater with the 1970s.

    In the 1970s the downward adjustment was -0.005C.

    Starting with the 1980s the upward adjustment became greater:

    In the 1980s the upward adjustment was +0.005C.

    In the 1990s the upward adjustment was +0.006C.

    Over the 32-year warming period 1970 through 2000 the “adjustment” is equivalent to a decadal rate of increase of around 0.006C per decade (or 0.02C over the period).

    Prior to the adjustment the period showed a linear decadal rate of warming of 0.150C/decade; after the adjustment this increased to 0.156C/decade (an increase in the warming rate of 4%).

    Not a big “fudge”, but this is only the adjustment made from May 2007 to November 2008 and “every little bit helps”.

    Regards,

    Max

  19. Hi Peter,

    You just posted the IPCC radiative forcing table and then wrote: “This is saying that the net forcing from CO2 is equal to the total net forcings, which is what I have been saying too.”

    No, Peter, that is not what it says. Please read closely.

    It says that CO2 has a RF of 1.66 W/m^2 and that TOTAL NET ANTHROPOGENIC forcing is 1.6 W/m^2.

    This means that the other ANTHROPOGENIC forcings cancel one another out (and can therefore be ignored).

    Presumably since some of these anthropogenic forcings are shown to be “local to continental”, “continental”, “continental to global”, while others are shown to be “global”, the “total net anthropogenic” forcing (shown as “global”) is not a simple addition of all the individual forcings listed. But that is actually beside the point.

    Other ANTHROPOGENIC forcings beside CO2 cancel each other out, according to IPCC (the “self-appointed expert” on anthropogenic forcings). Got it?

    Please confirm that you now understand what IPCC has written, so we can move on.

    Regards,

    Max

  20. Robin,

    Is there an international or national tribunal that deals with scientific fraud?

  21. Pete,
    In your 3088, you present a TOTALLY NEW graph, on this thread, complete with the same 5-year smoothing error as before, and asked:

    This one? I’ve lost track of all this. What is it that you are quibbling about?

    Well, obviously NO….because it has not been seen before.
    I mean the one you presented in your 1900/20, and having the following words above it:
    NASA use the 5 year averaging technique too. Their graphs show exactly the same features.

  22. Hi Brute,

    Reur 3095, Robin is certainly much more qualified to answer your question on the legal ramifications of scientific fraud, but here are a few thoughts.

    Wikipedia tells us:
    “In many scientific fields, results are often difficult to reproduce accurately, being obscured by noise, artifacts and other extraneous data. That means that even if a scientist does falsify data, they can expect to get away with it – or at least claim innocence if their results conflict with others in the same field. There is no “scientific police” which is trained to fight scientific crimes, all investigations are made by experts in science but amateurs in dealing with criminals. It is relatively easy to cheat.”

    Wikipedia goes on to write:
    “The U.S. National Science Foundation defines three types of research misconduct: fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. Fabrication is making up results and recording or reporting them. Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record. Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.”

    For a writeup on the legal implications of scientific misconduct in the USA read:
    http://www.ebmonline.org/cgi/content/full/224/4/211

    From this writeup it appears that the regulatory apparatus does not work very well and that it essentially concerns itself with “plagiarism and fraudulent appropriation of ideas”, rather than with falsification, exaggeration, or omission of scientific data in order to advance a specific commercial, financial or political agenda.

    In some instances scientists have been known to cry “foul” and object to being “muzzled” when congressional committees investigate the accuracy or ethics of their scientific claims, and there is no question that science must be allowed to work freely without undue legal constrictions.

    But there is also the other side of the story to consider. One writeup states “the most common examples of fraud in the United States appear to be environmental, including acid rain, ozone holes, carbon dioxide, ultraviolet radiation, global cooling, global warming, endangered species and pesticides.” This article cites the U.S. ban on DDT as an example of “scientific fraud”, which occurred at great cost to humanity in order to advance a specific political agenda, and has only recently been quietly undone by the WHO for some locations after the deaths of millions, mostly young children, from malaria.

    I truly hope Robin has some answers for us on this complex legal, scientific and social issue.

    Regards,

    Max

  23. Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.

    Max,

    Looks to me as if this description fits the bill……… I’m serious about this. These guys are falsifying data and it is having a negative impact on many businesses.

  24. Peter Martin wrote in part in his 3092

    the graph on the left, of Bob_FJ’s 3078, is from GISS, but the one on the right uses Hadley data. A quick way to tell is to look at the 1998 spike. GISS generally put this a little lower, making the year 2005 as the all time high.

    It was Pete that led to the impression in his 3080 that both graphs used GISS data, the left for year 2007, and the right for year 2006. See also, my 3083. it is a bit rich that he seems to think WE could work-out that the 2006 graph used Hadley data, given that the first was from 2008 data, and the second from 2007 data. I guess it does not occur to Pete to apologise for the confusion he has caused

    His argument about spotting a generally lower 1998 spike in GISS, causing a higher 2005 is also a bit feeble. Isn’t it all about “creeping upwards disease”, and more a matter of a large difference between GISS over Hadley in 2005?

  25. Blizzard of mad proposals descends on UK
    By Christopher Booker

    The timing was immaculate. Last week, as blizzards closed roads and schools across northern England and Scotland and large parts of the country were carpeted with snow for the third time this winter, the Government’s Committee on Climate Change, chaired by Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, issued its first report on how Britain is to meet the terrifying threat of runaway global warming.

    In his day job Adair Turner is chairman of the Financial Services Authority, responsible for helping to sort out the chaos in our banking system which the FSA failed to foresee or prevent. A measure of his fitness for his other new role as “Britain’s first climate tsar” was the suggestion he made when he was appointed last March that, as a first step towards saving the planet, men should stop wearing ties and suits to the office, and women give up wearing skirts, because this would lessen the need for air-conditioning and encourage them to walk or cycle to work.

    Now, after eight months hard at work with his committee made up of various “professors of climate change” and other unworldly academics, he has come up with suggestions as to how Britain can lead the world in cutting emissions of CO2 back to just 20 per cent of where they were in 1990. Only one of the committee, all naturally hard-line believers in man-made global warming, appears to have had any experience of the world of industry. Unsurprisingly they have produced a wearisomely familiar list of proposals, none of which have the slightest hope of being achieved.

    They want us, for instance, to switch from eating beef and lamb to “less carbon-intensive types of meat”. Within 11 years they want to see 40 per cent of all the cars on Britain’s roads powered by electricity, in the very week when it was reported that sales of all-electric cars have this year halved, from 374 to 156, making a grand total of 1,100. (One of the two companies that make them has just gone bankrupt.) Nor, of course, do they explain where all the electricity to power these vehicles might come from.

    They seem blissfully oblivious, for instance, to the fact that, within a few years, we shall face a shortfall of 40 per cent in the supply of electricity we need to meet current peak demand, thanks to the forced closure of so many of our existing power stations. They insist that no more coal-fired power plants should be built unless they can be fitted with “carbon capture” (burying the CO2 in holes in the ground), seemingly unaware that, even if this were technically possible, it would double the cost of electricity and make us even more dependent on Russian and other imported coal which already supplies 70 per cent of our needs.

    So what will provide the juice to fuel those millions of imaginary electric cars, let alone keep our lights on and our computers running? Inevitably they want to see thousands more wind turbines, but nothing better illustrates the cloud-cuckoo land in which these academics live than their graph showing how, by 2020, we shall have enough of them to meet our EU target of deriving a third of the electricity we need from “renewables”.

    These, they claim, will provide 28 gigawatts (GW) of “capacity”, representing more than a third of the 80-odd GW of capacity we have today. Yet, as the rest of us know, thanks to the intermittency of the wind those thousands of turbines would only generate on average around 27 per cent of their capacity, some 7.5GW. This represents a mere 13 per cent of current peak demand, leaving us woefully short of our agreed EU target and doing nothing to plug that fast-looming 40 per cent gap in our supplies.

    In other words, a more vacuously dotty ragbag of proposals would be hard to imagine. Although the latest six-point “Moonbat Plan” to save the planet, from The Guardian’s George Monbiot, is a contender. It includes reducing air travel by 95 per cent, barring “key roads” to private cars, and a ban on grouse-shooting because burning the heather on grouse-moors creates “a staggering proportion of UK emissions”.

    Alas, however. the blethering of Lord Turner’s committee cannot just be dismissed as a joke. The awful fact is that it was set up by our Government in all seriousness, to advise on how we are to achieve those EU targets to which we are now legally bound by the Climate Change Act, passed virtually unanimously by Parliament.

    Meanwhile in Poznan 10,000 delegates from 192 countries shiver in near-freezing temperatures as they squabble over the UN’s next treaty on global warming. They face impasse over demands by China and India that richer countries should hand over 0.7 per cent of their annual GDP to help “developing” countries to meet their “carbon” targets (for Britain that would represent nearly £10 billion a year). And in Brussels, where 11,000 metal workers demonstrated last Tuesday to protest that the EU’s climate change policies would spell doom to Europe’s steel industry, the entire package has been thrown into chaos by threatened vetos from Italy and Poland – which still derives 95 per cent of its electricity from “dirty” coal. It is nice to think that all those UN delegates in Poznan are only being kept warm by a fuel which they and the EU would like to ban.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

© 2011 Harmless Sky Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha