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.
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10,000 Responses to “Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs.”
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Max, Bob, et al
In my 3336 I posted this link re co2
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=585&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
Max briefly referred to it in his 3337.
I would really appreciate a thorough read of this and give me your critique of the article by Derek. (its split in 2 parts) I think its a very good piece of work and deserves a much wider audience, but to do that it needs to be better ordered than it is. I think it would also benefit from being put into a historical context with some of the background stuff I discovered plus Maxs estimates of the total amount of carbon left and the theoretical outgassing/absorption that could explain past co2 variability(apart from Beck being wrong Peter!)
TonyB
Message to bobclive
Annie Jia’s report on Hannibal’s alpine crossing as described by Patrick Hunt is very interesting.
Other studies by glaciologists confirm that the alpine glaciers were smaller both during the Medieval Warm Period and during the Roman Optimum than they are today.
In addition to remains of trees and other vegetation under the receding ice, evidence of medieval civilization as well as earlier evidence from Roman times are discovered from time to time, providing clear proof that the glaciers were smaller than today during these periods.
But this is nothing new. There are many historical records of medieval alpine gold and silver mines being shut down at the beginning of the Little Ice Age, records of medieval human migrations over passes that are closed today, etc.
The evidence is clear that the alpine glaciers were smaller than they are today both in medieval as well as Roman times, and that they reached a 10,000-year maximum around 1850, when they started to recede again.
It should be pointed out that this 10,000-year maximum is being used as the “baseline” to measure glacial retreat today.
Regards,
Max
Hi TonyB
The article by Derek on Mauna Loa CO2 “measurements” is interesting.
I cannot add anything by commenting on that, except that it has been my experience if any measured (and subsequently adjusted) indicator rises (or falls) smoothly according to a desired popular hypothesis, it is likely that
an adjustment (or manipulation) has been made to the raw data to help prove the hypothesis.
This may simply involve throwing out data points that do not fit the hypothesis as “outliers” (Callender, Keeling).
It becomes even more suspect when the raw data are not made available for scrutiny by outsiders, as it appears is the case with the Mauna Loa data.
Regards,
Max
PS When I first started looking at the whole global warming evidence a few years ago, I was totally open to both sides of the debate. However, the more I dug into the arguments and scientific justification supporting the AGW story (as promoted by IPCC) the more appalled I became at the sloppy science being used to promote the AGW story.
Is the Mauna Loa “record” part of this “sloppy science”? I cannot judge but Derek apparently believes so.
Hi TonyB
Re the CO2 analyzers. The Chinese producer has expressed difficulties with Peter’s suggestion to have them pre-programmed to show either smooth gradual (presumably anthropogenic) increase in lock-step synchrony with the latest Mauna Loa results (as preferred by the AGW crowd) or no discernable increasing trend at all (as preferred by the Exxon-funded climate deniers).
If we want an analyzer that will do both (with a toggle switch to select the desired program) this feature would cost extra, bringing the unit price well above our $100 limit.
Please advise how we should proceed.
Regards,
Max
TonyB Reur 3351, you wrote inpart:
I have not had time for a deep study of Derek’s posts, in which overall I’m very impressed, for example his second figure overlaying 47 years at ML.
However there is one area, in his next group of figures, where I feel he needs to be much more definitive, and where I wonder if he fully understands the absorption spectra, be it incoming or outgoing and whatnot. (not that I do!). For instance he gives a single absorption spectra graph for H2O! Does he mean the water vapour within the clear-sky, atmosphere, and if so, at what concentration somewhere between zero and ~4%, or at what altitude etc? Similar comments apply to the relative weighting of the other GHG’s, be it in-lab-data or somewhere in the atmosphere, but I‘ll keep it short.
Another thing is that to make sense of the spectra as graphed, there needs to be some sort of relative baseline that anyone with basic understanding can more easily comprehend. The best measure would be to superimpose a Plancky curve for incoming sunshine and for outgoing “Earthshine”, so that the relevance of the spectra might be better comprehended. (e.g. why worry about unimportant wavelengths?)
Oh! Also pls show the VISIBLE-light-band within the sunshine spectra, and even highlight that about 40% of sunlight is IR!
Perhaps the following comparative area shading for CO2 and N20 demonstrates that some kind of weighting needs to be given to the individual species spectra on Derek‘s graphs.
If no image click link:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3124/3149100063_718def79ef_o.jpg
TonyB, I notice you are active over there, and I’d like you to ask these questions if you like, whilst I try and find time to investigate Derek’s stuff more deeply.
Perhaps you could make a private commentary to Derek?
TonyB, further my 3355,
Just to elaborate about the ho hum weighting of absorption spectra for different gas species, (of which I do NOT have a full understanding), here is another dabble of mine in MS PAINT, to further illustrate the problem:
If no image, click:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3088/3150094902_ac99216459_o.jpg
Please feel free to copy-paste whatever, and ask Derek about this.
Regards, Bob_FJ
Bob and Max thanks for your comments re Derek.
Max, we can dispense with the toggle switch but add in an alarm for when co2 starts to drop.
In all seriousness there is a market there and I have asked several existing suppliers for their prices. I will be investigating Peters suggestions as well althugh South Devon is cold enough at present so I don’t fancy a trip to the Shetlands as he suggests!!
TonyB
Peter #3344
In your link you kindly suggested we all visited;
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/
in order to learn more asbout the Oz perspective on sea levels (Whats happened to your cricket team Peter-if we improve merely 67.2% we might beat you in the Ashes)
I hope they have a better grasp of modern sea levels (although they have a distressing tendancy to rely on satellite altimetry) than they do of historic ones
The Port Arthur examples they cited were thoroughy reviewed by- amongst others- John Daly. Csiro have cited their version widely but the actual historical background shows a rather different perspective
http://www.utas.edu.au/spatial/downloads/PortArthur_Story.pdf
http://soer.justice.tas.gov.au/2003/casestudy/4/index.php
http://www.john-daly.com/ges/appendix.htm
TonyB
TonyB and Peter
To add to your discussion (3344, 3358) on recent sea level trends, the apparent acceleration is a result of changing from one method of measurement (tide gauges) measuring one set of data (sea level at various shorelines) over one time period (pre-1993) to another method (satellite altimetry) measuring another set of data (the entire ocean, except those areas near coastlines and polar areas outside satellite range) over another time period (after 1993).
So, even ignoring the fact that satellite altimetry is still too unreliable today to provide any meaningful trends, it is clearly bad science to make any comparisons of “pre-satellite” tide gauge data with satellite data in order to determine whether an overall acceleration has taken place.
On the Grist site, Joe Romm has posted a recent Univ. of Colorado graph of the satellite data, showing a trend of around 3.3 mm/year, concluding from this that the rate of sea level rise is 50% higher today than before 1990.
To put this bit of “smoke and mirrors” into proper perspective, one should look at the recent tide gauge record to see if there really has been an acceleration in the rate of sea level rise. As the graph shows, this record shows a linear rate of increase of 1.6 mm/year, around half that of the satellite data and slightly less than the average over the entire 20th century (1.74 mm/year).
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3104/3150686392_05d1c88f47_b.jpg
So there has been no recent acceleration, as Joe Romm (and IPCC) would have us believe.
Max
WARMING, OR HOT AIR?
http://www.urgentagenda.com/PERMALINKS%20IV/DECEMBER%2008/22.P.WARMING.html
More evidence of Anthropomorphic bitter cold and massive snowfall due to global warming.
Half of the USA is covered in snow
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/25/half-of-the-usa-is-covered-in-snow/
Blizzard traps thousands in India
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/27/blizzard-traps-thousands-in-india/
Snowfall immobilizes rural communities in eastern, central Turkey
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/27/snowfall-immobilizes-rural-communities-in-eastern-central-turkey/
Max#3359
Is it ok if I cite your post above? It is good work but sounds remarkably like they have been splicing two differnt sets of data together. Sounds rather familiar…
Tonyb
2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html
Solar Wind Loses Power, Hits 50-year Low
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/23sep_solarwind.htm
Tonyb,
Thank you for the kind words, I am merely an amateur, unpaid, so all my “stuff” is just done on a home computer.
I will email you a copy of the excel sheet I used to construct the plots in my post you have referred to.
(I’ll PM you at GWS for an email address.)
I would like to do these plots far better than the present “back of a cigarette packet” plots they are now.
That said I think they illustrate the problems of overlying spectra quite well, more accuracy is needed though.
If anyone knows of any appropriate specta plots I can get on the internet for CO2, H20, CH4, O3, N20, and CFC11, CFC12, I would really appreciate a link or help.
I am assuming that the effect as measured is the sum of the amounts of the various gases present in the sample, times their spectral responses.
Hence MLO has a real problem, it has never measured CO2, directly.
The corrections are unstated and maybe nothing more then merely informed guesses, possibly modelled for some of the gases….
The claimed accuracy of the technique, is merely how accurate “they” think the calibration gas is (it may well be – but that has been changed three times now), not the CO2 measurement, because it has never been measured directly.
Bob and Max
Derek (#3365) is the person I referred to in my earlier post. Thanks for taking the time to go over and offer a critique. I think this is a really interesting subject as co2 is at the heart of the debate. Any other help you can offer is appreciated so Derek can refine his information accordingly.
TonyB
You CO2 anoraks may be interested in this. Apologies if you’re already familiar with it.
PS: for those unfamiliar with the term, Wikipedia helps with the slang meaning of “anorak”.
It’s interesting to compare this with this. Hmm.
Oh no – it seems we may all be doomed anyway. It seems Yellowstone may soon erupt with catastrophic results – “life on the planet as we know it would collapse”. And it’s nothing to do with AGW. Er … I assume.
Hi TonyB
Reur 3362: No problem using the data. Sources are listed.
The Holgate 2007 report (Proudman tide gauge) data only went as far as 2003, and I have been unable to find any later Proudman data. Strangely, it seems that (fairly straightforward) tide gauge data are being suppressed in favor of (less transparent and more dicey) satellite altimetry data in order to support the claim of accelerated sea level rise in the late 20th century
[Note to Peter: I do not believe that this is a result of a sinister international conspiracy of 2,500 scientists, but just the normal propensity of individuals, including scientists, to use the data points that fit their desired hypothesis or message and discard the rest as invalid “outliers”.]
Anyway, I took the trend for the years 2003 to 2007 from the up-dated Church and White tide gauge data shown on the CSIRO curve.
This data set has a different baseline starting point (1870) than Holgate (1900), so the absolute numbers do not check, but the 2003 to 2007 trend should be compatible (assuming the tide gauge data are accurate).
For the satellite data I simply took the linear trend line of Joe Romm’s University of Colorado curve as posted on Grist, assuming he honestly posted the UC satellite results.
The tide gauge data shows a 1993-2007 trend of around 1.6 mm/year. This is the same as the trend reported by Carl Wunsch et al. for 1993-2003, using both satellite and tide gauge data.
It is around one-half the trend reported by IPCC (3.1 mm/year) or by Joe Romm (3.3 mm/year, both based on satellite data alone.
So when Joe says we have a recent rate of sea level rise, which is 1.5 times more rapid than that prior to the 1990s, he is not telling us the truth; based on the same measurement methodology the rate is actually a bit lower than it was earlier in the 20th century and not at all unusual.
Just a bit more AGW “flim-flam” exposed.
Regards,
Max
TonyB and Derek, Re CO2 spectra
Something came back to me this morning, but this has to be a quickie, and I may be out of touch until January 3.
Although there are data showing absorption bands of various gas species, these bands are actually made-up of thousands of absorption lines, which can be determined from molecular dynamics calculations, or by measurement. See paper below.
As I understand it there may be windows between these lines, and some lines may be unique to species. If that is so, then it does not matter if absorption bands of different species overlap, the spectroscopy can be aimed at the unique frequency line/s.
http://www.arm.gov/publications/proceedings/conf09/extended_abs/varanasi_p.pdf
I’m not sure about this, but have a recollection of seeing a detail plot somewhere showing gaps between the lines.
Note to Robin
Your Yellowstone story filled me with even greater terror than Dr. James E. Hansens’ testimony that we are headed for irreversible “tipping points” unless US Congress agrees to enact a carbon tax.
This looks like a real threat! And we’re not talking about 0.7°C warming by year 2100 from human CO2 (of which we have already seen 0.3°C), but of major cooling, which may even be enhanced by a continually inactive solar cycle 24.
Is there some way we can “mitigate” against this potential threat?
It is a real dilemma. Should we increase our CO2 emissions “just in case”?
Do we know that this would really help?
As Peter has warned us , “We’ll probably need a last resort.” Is this it?
Regards,
Max
Your Yellowstone story filled me with even greater terror than Dr. James E. Hansens’ testimony that we are headed for irreversible “tipping points” unless US Congress agrees to enact a carbon tax.
This looks like a real threat! And we’re not talking about 0.7°C warming by year 2100 from human CO2 (of which we have already seen 0.3°C), but of major cooling, which may even be enhanced by a continually inactive solar cycle 24.
Is there some way we can “mitigate” against this potential threat?
It is a real dilemma. Should we increase our CO2 emissions “just in case”?
Do we know that this would really help?
As Peter has warned us , “We’ll probably need a last resort.” Is this it?
Regards,
Max
All,
The guys at Realclimate in a recent article about the ‘spin’ that can be imparted to world temperature figures:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/12/2008-temperature-summaries-and-spin/#more-632
have reported that “the GISTEMP, HadCRU and NCDC analyses D-N 2008 were at 0.43, 0.42 and 0.47ºC above the 1951-1980 baseline (respectively).”
Which are probably a little higher than I expected. The ENSO was in its La Lina phase for much of the year and solar cycle 24 is a bit slow getting underway. Incidentally there is no evidence, as you can see for yourself from these graphs, to suggest that this means that solar activity is going to suddenly decline:
The figures would be slightly higher but for these two factors, the phases of ENSO and the solar cycle, by about 0.2 deg C.
It looks very nuch like that the 1998 temperature record (or 2005 if you take the GISS figure) will be exceeded in the next few years.
Of course it would be good if I were wrong, but on the other hand, even you you might not agree, it’s better to know the full truth than live in a fool’s paradise.
Looks like the global warming Prophets of Doom aren’t doing too well as far as predicting the weather……I mean, climate.
I say, we should all spend exorbitant amounts of money and have our politicians raise taxes to pay for unproven, feel good “initiatives” (such as burning our food in automobiles), in order to counteract the global menace that is about to befall all of us based on what these knucklehead’s computer models, crystal balls and divining rods tell us what the weather……sorry…… climate…….will be in 90 years.
What the hell; Mrs. Brute and I have decided to burn countless gallons of cheap, ($1.46 per gallon), irreplaceable fossil fuel later this month to go snow skiing at the “non-existent” ski resort in Vermont just prior to our mid-winter Caribbean cruise aboard the 1,000 foot luxury cruise liner. (Pete, I’ll think about you while we’re enjoying the lobster tails).
After all, due to the super volcano that going to erupt (sometime) and the global warming apocalypse, I figure we may as well enjoy ourselves before the end of the world.
(If anyone can find any stories about looming “planet killer” asteroids that are headed this way, or evil space men from planet Zolton that have set their sights on killing off the earthlings, let me know…..they’re about as trustworthy as these global warming soothsayers, and I’ll certainly take that into account before I make any other future decisions concerning my lifestyle).
The Worst Climate Predictions of 2008
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/30/the-worst-climate-predictions-of-2008/#more-4725
Record amount of snow for Spokane Washington due to Anthropomorphic Global Warming.
Two cities dig out from record December snow
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28433596/