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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A PARADIGM IS, ESSENTIALLY, a world-view or what is called a weltanshauung, a belief system that helps one understand the world around him or her, usually specifically related to a given phenomenon. Paradigms are by their definition (at least in the classical sense) mutually exclusiveAdj. 1. mutually exclusive – unable to be both true at the same time
contradictory
incompatible – not compatible; “incompatible personalities”; “incompatible colors”
….. Click the link for more information. or incommensurable in·com·men·su·ra·ble
adj.
1.
a. Impossible to measure or compare.
b. Lacking a common quality on which to make a comparison.
2. Mathematics
a. , but not infallible.
Perhaps the most quoted work in the philosophy of science is Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, written as a doctoral dissertation in 1962. In the book, Kuhn introduces the notion of “paradigm shiftA dramatic change in methodology or practice. It often refers to a major change in thinking and planning, which ultimately changes the way projects are implemented. For example, accessing applications and data from the Web instead of from local servers is a paradigm shift. See paradigm.
….. Click the link for more information..” Kuhn’s thesis is that the process of paradigm shift is essentially a revolutionary one. One paradigm is debunked so thoroughly as to render it obsolete and replaced by another, better, more comprehensive paradigm: therefore, in the process of this revolution, science loses its commonly assumed property: cumulative knowledge. What was understood to be true and a foundation for building deeper knowledge is thrown out like yesterday’s newspaper. The most widely cited paradigm shift is that from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics with Einstein’s theory of relativity theory of relativity
Einstein’s contribution to the space-time relationship. [Science: NCE, 843–844]
See : Turning Point . Now widely accepted, Einstein’s theory faced opposition because it represented a paradigm shift, Rare in the world of physics, Einstein’s theory was proven a few years after publication during an eclipse in 1919, and the world of physics was changed forever.
Hi Peter,
Yeah, I’ve seen Naomi Oreskes’ article on the “consensus” (your 4020). It has been debunked by at least two independent studies. I’m sure that you are aware of both, as they have been out there for some time, so I won’t bother providing links.
I would encourage you to drop the ”consensus” argument, as it has three basic problems:
1. it is unsubstantiated
2. it changes from year to year, as new evidence is discovered and published
3. it is meaningless as an indicator of the validity of the science
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
Any comment to my 4002 and the posted temperature curves?
These show that, on a short-term basis, that around 1/3 of the total warming experienced both on land and at sea over the 30-year period 1970-2000 (0.8C and 0.32C, respectively) was reversed in the ensuing 8-year period 2001-2008 (-0.26C and –0.10C, respectively). Both the warming and the subsequent cooling of the sea occurred more slowly than over land, with the warming/cooling over land at 2.5 times the rate of the sea warming/cooling.
The two short-term curves do show very clearly that there is no multi-annual continued delayed warming trying to find an “equilibrium” as you suggested with your “in the pipeline” postulation based on “ocean heat uptake”. It also shows clearly that there was no “ocean heat uptake” from 2001 to 2008.
Both the land and sea temperatures rose for a while, and both then sank for a while.
The long-term record is, of course, more meaningful for determining a trend than these short-term “blips” in the record. It shows larger inter-annual swings on land than at sea (as could be expected from the observed larger diurnal swings). It also shows that the temperature on land rose at a rate around 45% faster than that at sea.
Hope this information has helped clear up some points.
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
You, Robin and Brute have been discussing the “prevailing paradigm” on AGW (or “consensus”, as you call it) and how both Darwin and Einstein were “contrarians” who challenged the scientific “consensus” during their time, eventually causing a “paradigm shift”, where the old paradigm (or consensus view) was overthrown and replaced by a new paradigm.
Brute referred you to the treatise of Thomas Kuhn on the subject of paradigms.
Don’t know whether you’ve read this treatise, but it is worth reading to get an understanding how paradigms can lead to “group think” (or “consensus” view, as you call it) and the inability to “think outside the box”, and how “paradigm shifts” involve a revolutionary, rather than evolutionary, process).
As I believe you all have agreed, both Darwin and Einstein were contrarians that challenged the established paradigm. Another good example is Alfred Wegener, the discoverer of plate tectonics.
In his work, Wegener presented a large amount of circumstantial evidence in support of continental drift. His observation of the similarity between continental coasts and fossils convinced him there had been a separation of the continents, but he was unable to come up with a convincing mechanism. The new theory challenged the deeply ingrained scientific paradigm of the time and was widely criticised and universally dismissed by the mainstream scientific community.
The mainstream scientific community of the time (your “consensus” group of today) organized symposia specifically to discredit the new theory.
The theory was largely buried in the 1930s and remained outside the accepted scientific paradigm for almost 30 years.
In the 1950s advances in geology led to the resurrection of the continental drift hypothesis and its direct descendant, the theory of plate tectonics.
Alfred Wegener is now recognized as a founding father of one of the major scientific revolutions of the 20th century. His theory has become the new “paradigm”.
A modern-day contrarian is Roy Spencer. His recent findings on strongly negative cloud feedback with warming of sea surface temperature threaten one of the pillars of the alarming AGW postulation, namely that of overwhelmingly positive feedbacks leading to a 2xCO2 climate sensitivity 3 to 5 times as high as the greenhouse theory itself suggests. Spencer’s observed negative feedback results in short-term cooling until the cycle starts again, acting as a natural “thermostat” to prevent runaway warming.
The first reaction by the “consensus” group has been to downplay the importance of Spencer’s findings, to attempt to refute them with theoretical arguments or paleoclimate studies or simply to pretend that they do not exist. A recent Grist blog by a “consensus” scientist says “Negative feedbacks are as real as the Easter Bunny”.
Thomas Kuhn explained all of these reactions in his treatise. They are predictable.
Will the physical observations of Spencer et al. result in a “paradigm shift”? It is likely that they will, unless they can be refuted with real physical observations demonstrating strongly positive net cloud feedbacks, which has not yet occurred.
Another good example of a contrarian is Henrik Svensmark, who together with Eigil Friis-Christensen suggested in 1997 a link between galactic cosmic rays and global warming, whereby the effect of a more quiescent sun permits the penetration of cosmic rays, which facilitate (cooling) low cloud formation. Like Wegener with his continental shift theory, they observed similarity between trends in global temperatures and solar activity, but were unable to come up with a convincing mechanism.
Most mainstream “climatologists” immediately rejected the idea, defending the prevalent paradigm that human carbon dioxide emissions are the primary factor behind twentieth century warming.
Leaving aside some more emotional attacks on Svensmark that were ideologically motivated, Svensmark was told over and over again that this was only a theory, based on doubtful correlations, and that there was no experimental evidence to back it up.
Most of today’s leading climate scientists remain unconvinced and continue to defend the prevalent paradigm of AGW as the principal driver of climate change.
But there are a few scientists who say that the complicated nature of cloud cover is exactly why Svensmark et al. may be right.
The calculations and model studies used to defend the AGW theory and the IPCC predictions all assume that there will be a strongly positive feedback from changes in cloud cover with warming. This is a critical assumption and Spencer’s findings have shown that, at least on a short-term basis, this assumption is incorrect, confirming a significant negative feedback from clouds as temperatures warm.
But is there also a longer-term negative “cloud feedback” caused by a lower level of solar activity as postulated by Svensmark?
A study is now underway at CERN to verify the results obtained in Svensmark’s simple laboratory experiment.
If the results from the current CLOUD study at CERN confirm the theory proposed by Svensmark et al, they will shed new light on the impact of the sun on Earth’s climate and present a radical new challenge to the current AGW paradigm.
The “mainstream” scientific supporters of the AGW theory have not welcomed the CLOUD study as a possible source of new knowledge, but instead have reacted strongly to defend their paradigm against this possible challenging new theory.
In Wegener’s day this was done by organizing symposia specifically to discredit the new theory. Today we have blog sites to do this work and they are actively defending the AGW paradigm against this possible intruder. RealClimate has called Svensmark’s theory “one of the skeptics’ last trenches”.
Who knows if Svensmark and Friis-Christensen will become the new “Wegeners” in the global climate debate? Will their “cosmic ray / cloud” theory be validated?
And who knows if this new knowledge will cause a “scientific revolution” or “fundamental paradigm shift” away from the currently prevalent AGW paradigm to a totally new paradigm?
It’s a shame that Thomas Kuhn is no longer alive today. He would love this circus!
Regards,
Max
Max, Brute, and TonyN,
I suppose I should have emphasised that we are disussing a scientific consensus, not a general one. The idea that Darwin or Einstein were sceptics in the sense that they rejected the scientific consensus is just not correct.
In Darwin’s case there was nothing much to reject. Darwin wasn’t the first to discuss the possibility that species might transmute from one to another but there was no coherent theory of how that might happen. The general consensus of the time would have been that life was a result of a supernatural creation, and yes I agree, Darwin would have been a sceptic on that one.
Before Einstein came up with his E=mc^2 equation, the means by which the sun emitted so much energy was a complete unknown. It wasn’t so much that Einstein was sceptical of the existing scientific consensus, it was more that he and everyone else knew that the existing theories of time, gravitation, had their limitations, and he was working to extend them. Incidentally, its still the same. The current theories are known to have limitations and maybe there will be a new Einstein this century who makes a similar huge leap in the space of a few years. He won’t be a scientific sceptic any more than Einstein was.
Peter,
I apologize. Climate Change is real. All it took was for me to get on an airplane and travel 1800 miles south to the Caribbean and the climate definitely changed.
Mrs. Brute just toasted a Piña Colada to you and the global warming eco-nuts that paid for the “green” engineering advice that I provided to them last year that paid for this holiday.
Cheers.
Postscript: I’ll make a concerted effort to track my “carbon footprint” during this junket.
Hi Peter,
You opined that neither Einstein nor Darwin were challenging the then-prevailing scientific consensus (by saying that there was no such scientific consensus on the origin of species prior to Darwin and that Einstein’s theory was unknown prior to Einstein).
I personally find your argumentation here convoluted and circular, but I’ll let Robin and Brute take you on in this discussion.
How about Wegener (4029) with his theory of “continental drift” that later became the new paradigm of plate tectonics?
Was he also not challenging the prevailing “consensus”?
Peter, there are many historically documented cases where a scientific paradigm (or “consensus” opinion) was challenged by a “contrarian”, which finally ended in a “paradigm shift” (or a reversal and replacement of the old “consensus” opinion with a new one). Often this came from a total “outsider” to the prevailing “consensus” discipline.
To deny that this has happened many times in the past is sticking your head in the sand.
To deny that it could just as well happen now with the prevailing “potentially disastrous AGW paradigm” is foolhardy.
It may already be happening, with the recent physical observations on cloud feedbacks by Spencer and the ongoing CLOUD study at CERN investigating the Svensmark hypothesis of a solar – cosmic ray – cloud connection.
Regards,
Max
Peter:
You say:
If you want to draw a parallel between the nineteenth century debate over evolution and our twentieth century climate change controversy, then I am sure that the best place to start is with Owen. He was, without doubt, a brilliant and innovative scientist with a considerable reputation, and yet his public utterances on evolution seem to have been constrained by the prevailing orthodoxy. Given his reputation for being completely unprincipled in his dealings with colleagues, it would seems unlikely that he was guided by anything other than self-preservation, which is understandable given what was at stake. He had reached the peak of his profession, from very humble beginnings, by sheer hard work and talent.
How many climate scientists do you think there are who have doubts about the AGW hypothesis, but are unwilling to express them or perhaps even fully admit them to themselves? I am not suggesting that such people suffer from the same character defects as Owen, merely that they probably have wives, mortgages, expensive children, and a career path to consider. The fate of Lindzen, Spencer, Carter, Christy, Singer, McKitric and others is hardly likely to encourage open scepticism or dissent.
We may have moved on a couple of hundred years since Darwin’s time, but neither human nature nor the pressures of academia have changed much except in one respect. So many of the nineteenth century, and earlier, scientists who broke new ground were men of independent means, and that gave them far greater freedom to challenge orthodoxy than is possible in our own time.
Robin/TonyN,
Are you guys alright over there? Should we send snowshoes to help you maneuver through all of the global warming? (Think of it as a form of environmental Lend/Lease.)
Feb 03, 2009
Big Snow and Cold Consistent with Global Warming Say UK Scientists
By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent, UK Telegraph
Britain may be in the grip of the coldest winter for 30 years and grappling with up to a foot of snow in some places but the extreme weather is entirely consistent with global warming, claim scientists. (Icecap comment: “so keep the grant money coming please”)
Temperatures for December and January were consistently 1.8 F ( 1 C) lower than the average of 41 F (5 C)and 37 F (3C) respectively and more snow fell in London this week than since the 1960s.
But despite this extreme weather, scientists say that the current cold snap does not mean that climate change is going into reverse. In fact, the surprise with which we have greeted the extreme conditions only reinforces how our climate has changed over the years.
A study by the Met Office which went back 350 years shows that such extreme weather now only occurs every 20 years. Back in the pre-industrial days of Charles Dickens, it was a much more regular occurrence – hitting the country on average every five years or so.
During that time global temperatures has risen by 1.7 F (0.8 C), studies have shown.
“Even though this is quite a cold winter by recent standards it is still perfectly consistent with predictions for global warming,” said Dr Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at Department of Physics, University of Oxford. “If it wasn’t for global warming this cold snap would happen much more regularly. What is interesting is that we are now surprised by this kind of weather. I doubt we would have been in the 1950s because it was much more common.
“As for snowfall that could actually increase in the short term because of global warming. We have all heard the expression ‘too cold to snow’ and we have always expected precipitation to increase. “All the indicators still suggest that we are warming up in line with predictions.”
This winter seems so bad precisely because it is now so unusual. In contrast the deep freezes of 1946-47 and 1962-63 were much colder – 5.3 F (2.97C) and 7.9 F (4.37C) cooler than the long-term norm. And with global warming we can expect another 1962-63 winter only once every 1,100 years, compared with every 183 years before 1850.
Dave Britton, a meteorologist and climate scientist at the Met Office, said: “Even with global warming you cannot rule out we will have a cold winter every so often. It sometimes rains in the Sahara but it is still a desert.”
Scientists point out that the people must distinguish between climate and weather. Weather is what happens in the short term whereas climate is the long term trend. “Just as the wet summer of 2007 or recent heat waves cannot be attributed to global warming nor can this cold snap,” said Bob Ward, spokesman for the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change at London School of Economics. “What is important to do is look at the long term global trends and they are still up. What we experience in the short term in this country is not important. After all, Melbourne had a heat wave last week.”
Read more here. See how Britons were angered by the government’s inability to deal with the storm which may have a cost topping $4.3 billion here.
Sorry guys, the jig is up. Yes weather is different from climate but a climate regime change has taken place which will mean this kind of weather will happen more frequently. Your excuses and claims will seem more and more ludicrous with each passing storm or cold day/season. Better either open you minds or start looking for another line of work.
Max,
I’ve just taken a look at the graphs in your 4002. Call me over suspicious , if you like, but I was very curious why you had taken the trouble to split up the the timescales into the 20th and 21st centuries as you did.
Why go to the trouble of drawing two graphs when you really only need one? What were you trying to conceal?
So I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve just drawn my own using data from 1975 to 2008. All one graph!
I would suggest that so-called cooling of the 21st century looks a lot less convincing when it is shown in the context of what happened previously. The only year which deviated from the long term trend line was 2008. And that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
Lets just take a look at the linear equation.
y=0.0253x -0.164
The 0.0253 means that this is is the annual temperature increase. Over 33 years of the graph that works out at 0.83 degC
Over the 125 years from 1975 to the year 2100 this would mean that the climate would warm, on land, by 3.16 deg C. The year 2100 is the time when CO2 levels are projected to double. 3 degC is the best IPCC estimate for the climate sensitivity of 2xCO2.
What was that you were saying about the only evidence for a 3 deg C climate sensitivity being GIGO computer models?
Peter Martin,
I’m hoping that you watched the TV doco’ on SBS last night entitled: “Blood and Guts“: A history of surgery. There were a collection of examples where innovators had a really tough time in fighting the paradigms (consensus) of the day which, because the establishment was wrong, resulted in immense suffering and loss of life for hundreds of years. I can’t remember/spell some difficult names but: For example, even after a French surgeon showed that excessive bleeding (death) could be stopped by tying-off arteries, the preferred method long remained cauterising with hot irons or boiling oil.
Perhaps the saddest example was with an Austrian head-doctor in a Vienna maternity hospital, where mothers were dying in their hundreds from infection in one ward run by Doctor’s, but another ward operated by midwives was OK. He was puzzled, but one day, one of his doctors died from the same infection after he cut his finger, so he deduced that it might be “something” on the hands of the doctors, so he forced everyone to wash-bleach their hands, and pedantically patrolled the place to make sure it happened. The results were a drastic reduction in the childbirth death-rates. However, he became very unpopular, thought to be crazy, and was forced to leave, whereupon the high death-rate returned. He took a position at a similar hospital in Budapest and the same awful consequence was repeated, but this time a conspiracy was hatched, (involving his badly pressured wife), and he was locked away in a mental home, where he died shortly afterwards.
Despite all the evidence that he was right, and the consensus establishment was wrong, it was not until Pasteur came along a few years later and discovered microbes, that after a further delay, the penny dropped in the consensus community. In the above, doctors were performing autopsies on the dead mothers and had germ-laden hands, whereas the midwives did not.
Does it sound familiar to you Peter that the establishment ignored the evidence, maybe because they did not understand it, or that it contradicted their dogma and lifelong practice? What do you think?
Hi Peter,
I see from your 4035 that you are falling into the trap of using the (cherry-picked) short-term “blips” in the temperature record to try to prove a point.
Sorry. This approach is “bad science”. For shame!
The LONG-TERM record (1850-2008) does not support your hypothesis of a 3C sensitivity for 2xCO2.
Think LONG TERM, Peter. It’s the only way to go! Climate is a LONG TERM development, not a short-term “blip”. Try to be a bit more SCIENTIFIC, if you can.
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
Here is some more “short-term” stuff for you to think about.
Have you ever thought much about the changes in ENSO (plus PDO, NAO) and their impacts on late 20th century temperatures?
I really didn’t think so.
The 1970-2000 increase in temperature can be explained by about 30 to 40% on the ENSO factors alone.
The 21st century reversal of this ENSO pattern may explain a major portion of the cooling over the past 8 years, as well.
(BTW, even Hadley likes to use this second “explanation” as to why temperatures are not warming today, e.g. “masking the underlying anthropogenic warming trend” – ho. ho!)
So if a reversal of ENSO warming is now causing ENSO cooling (according to Hadley), does this not mean that this ENSO warming was responsible for (at least a significant portion of) the earlier warming in the first place? Makes sense to me.
But this apparently does not fit your myopic fixation on CO2 as the primary driver of climate, does it?
Open your eyes to the real world out there, Peter.
By doing so you will learn new things that will open your horizon and enable you to break free from the narrow IPCC fixation on CO2 as the primary driver of our planet’s climate.
It will also help you to be less pessimistic and fatalistic about our future, and maybe to be a happier person!
Just some life tips from someone who has been around a bit longer than you.
Regards,
Max
ALL: I see Brute’s 4304 has a mention of the recent Melbourne heatwave, and since he, me, and Max, have a special affection for Joe Romm, here is his latest related exposé, over at Gristmill. (going in at my response, that I hope you find interesting.)
Dry days down under
Australia faces collapse as climate change kicks in
Bob_FJ,
I might say that I’m not by nature a pro-establishment person. However, there are different types of ‘establishment’. There is the conservative, free market capitalist political establishment: Thatcherism, Toryism, New Labour in the UK. Various shades of conservatism in the USA. The Liberals and sections of the ALP in Australia. They are currently in a state of near panic, and the situation must be much worse than most people think and that is bad enough.
Who’d have thought that they’d get into such a mess that they’d be talking about trillion dollar deficits and nationalising their banks and the rest of their bankrupt financial system.
You’d have to have a diseased brain to support that establishment!
Its not the same with science or the scientific establishment. Their track record is nothing short of brilliant over the last century or more. You’ve got to look pretty hard for examples of where they’ve got it wrong. OK. Maybe Plate tectonics is one area that you can point to, but they got it right in the end.
Medicine hasn’t always followed the scientific path. You are quite right in the sort of examples you give. Homeopathy, just one possible example, still doesn’t. I can imagine that in the sort of conditions you describe that homeopathy, or doing nothing, was much preferable to the conventional medicine of the day.
However, in the 20th century as the medical ‘establishment’ merged with the scientific establishment, fully accepting the scientific method there’s really been no looking back.
Max,
The climate since 1850 has been affected more by anthropogenic factors than is generally realised. You may be right in wanting to go back further than 30 years. However, as you admitted yourself, this period is when CO2 concentrations have increased the fastest and also the temperature has increased the quickest too.
As I’ve shown, the measured record is all in line with the mainstream scientific case.
Are you still going to be saying its just ‘a blip’ if current trends carry on for another 20 years? The evidence for your theory of an imminent downturn in temperatures is flimsy to say the least. I hope you are right though. But what if you aren’t? What if you lose our bet? How long are you going to give it before changing your mind?
Hi Peter,
You asked me (4040) “Are you still going to be saying its just ‘a blip’ if current trends carry on for another 20 years?”
“Current trends” (according to the Hadley record from 2001 to 2008) are a cooling of 0.11C per decade. (Other records place the rate of cooling a bit higher.)
If this current trend carries on for another 20 years (as you say), this will mean an additional cooling of 0.22C beyond what we have already experienced since 2001, bringing the total 21st century cooling to around 0.30C by 2028.
If we extrapolate this observed cooling to year 2100, we have a net cooling of around 1.1C over the entire 21st century!
Note that this is 1.7 times the 0.65C warming we have seen over the 158 years from 1850 (at the end of the Little Ice Age) to today! Brrrrr…
You lucky guys in Brisbane don’t have to worry, Peter, but other less fortunate individuals better break out their fur-lined jock straps and parkas!
Regards,
Max
I have just put up an interesting, if fairly technical, guest post by David Holland. This deals with a way in which some of the closely guarded secrets that the climate science community would far rather that bloggers should not see may become accessible.
Climate change secrets and the Aarhus Convention
P e t e r M a r t i n,
Reur 4040, to me, concerning paradigms/consensus/”the establishment”.
I’ll ignore some of your irrelevant waffle, at which you are a master of the side-step, however:
1) It is generally accepted that medicine and other human endeavours such as in geology, chemistry, physics and many more, are all defined as sciences, although for convenience, the word science is often omitted.
2) Medicinal science, can be further divided into fields like anatomy and surgery et al. The latter as a case in point is dependent on the former. Leonardo da Vinci, centuries ago defined anatomy with great scientific precision, but this was not published until 160 years after his death, and well, briefly, there were centennial problems in poor anatomical knowledge.
3) It is clear that all sciences developed slowly, and sometimes with great hostilities. For instance in the mid 19th century, Lord Kelvin calculated the age of the earth, based on sound engineering principles, had some support from fellow scientists and hostility from others and the church. Read it up: it’s an interesting story. (BTW he was hopelessly wrong in his result)
4) The example I gave of the Doctor who deduced a fix for high childbirth deaths in Vienna, was also operating on the scientific principle of observing the data, and acting on it. He did not ignore it because it was inconvenient, or not fully understood. However “the establishment” ended up destroying him and discarding his good work.
5) As you say, science progressively advances rapidly, which is only to be expected because knowledge builds on knowledge, together with increased funding.
6) So when did medicinal science, and physics and geology etc start?
7) When did paradigms or consensus or the real money-trail start?
8) When did scientists stop disagreeing with each other?
9) When did scientists stop getting upset if their life’s work was found to be wrong.
10) When did scientists stop blowing the whistle if they disagreed with their boss, or the community?
These 10) points are all I have patience for.
On the same night as the “Blood and Guts” doco, there was also another on SBS; “Can dogs Smell Cancer”, (of specific types like prostrate in urine samples) which you might have found enlightening. It turns-out that the idea has not attracted much interest for a very long time, despite great promise, and it even gets ridicule from “the establishment”. I “felt like” leaping up to the TV, and punching one guy in the face!
Yes there are pseudo-sciences such as some of the nonsense put-out by the IPCC, and various qualified scientists; Joseph Romm being an immediate case in point.
Peter
Still hoping that you will answer my query (third time of asking)regarding your scientific analysis of the credibility of global temperatures in the first place, and those back to 1850 in particular.
You continue to base your beliefs on extremely flawed temperature data and it would be interesting to understand on what scientific basis this belief is founded on?
thank you
TonyB
Max Bob FJ and Peter (assuming Brute isnt following this from the Carribean)
I have been having various conversations with people about ice cores. Direct comments from others have speech marks, my own don’t.
“First of all see: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/current.html
If I count only the Antarctic ice cores, there were 26 drilled, the first one I see is in 1977, the last one (Dome C) started in 1999 and has reached 800,000 years old ice. As the south pole today reflects the global CO2 levels quite accurate (within 5 ppmv), and the overlap of the south pole / Law Dome ice cores was within 1 sigma (1.2 ppmv) and consecutive ice cores are within 5 ppmv for overlapping periods, one can say that the ice cores of Antarctica are representative for ancient global CO2 levels within +/- 7 ppmv.
Ice cores from Greenland and many other places (glaciers) are not suitable for historical CO2 levels, as (volcanic) dust has produced CO2 in situ.”
(By definition no ice cores can be taken at the Arctic, so the Antarctic therefore contains the only ‘reliable’ records).
” I suppose for each site one need a crew of 10-30 people: several drilling experts and helpers, technical and logistic support and a few scientists to give the instructions for how to store the rods and so on. Then transport under freezing conditions to different laboratories of (parts) of the rods. And ultimately the measurements by skilled people, with knowledge of the ice crushing and following techniques (gaschromatography). And ultimately a few who can comment on outliers, as the data themselves are the result of (nowadays) simple techniques. All together, I suppose that some 100-150 persons worldwide are involved, of which maybe 10-20 scientists in this field.
Known contributions to this field are Jouzel, Petit and lots of others. Many work on universities of different countries, with France leading the field for Europe. The above reference contains several references to the authors of the data record of the ice cores.
Last but not least: depending of the place, there are huge differences in accumulation speed at Antarctica: Near the coast up to 1.5 m ice equivalent per year for Law Dome, while inland near the pole, it is a few mm per year. The result is that Law Dome covers maximal 1,000 years, while Vostok covers 420,000 years of history. Near the coast, more salts are deposited in the ice, the ice is less cold (-20°C), compared to more inland (-40°C). Despite these differences, ice cores covering increasing time periods show similar CO2 levels within about 5 ppmv for overlapping periods of the same gas age.
The most convincing paper was the drilling of three ice cores at Law Dome by Etheridge e.a. 1995. He describes in very detail what the possible problems were (the same list as you can find by Jaworowski, where he refutes all ice core data), and how these were avoided, didn’t exist or were solved. I have the impression that Etheridge anticipated on what Jaworowski had written a few years before (1993) and still writes, and did want to prove that the objections were unfounded. Anyway it is an impressive work:”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1996/95JD03410.shtml
My own observations are that the number of ice cores involved is startlingly small (Greenland and glaciers being considered unreliable and the Arctic irrelevant) The number of actual scientists involved even smaller, and the complexity of the sampling and their subsequent interpretation would be considered highly experimental in a more rigorous discipline. One of the most eminent ice core scientists is called Jouzel.
Here is a good reference to his work on ice cores. He was examining three ice cores, talks about ‘corrected’ measurements and cross references to his own work
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/ … k_deld.txt
The following seems to be a good and unbiased summary of the current state of the science and potential problems
http://web.mit.edu/angles2008/angles_Em … uiroz.html
Personally, I do have some problems with the idea of ice cores being used as an accurate proxy for an event that happened between 1958 and 400,000 years ago, and that these proxies are considered more accurate than actual direct co2 measurements made at the time by eminent scientists using tried and tested equipment.
It is difficult to believe that co2 remains trapped and accurately records the exact level at the time the snow fell, whether it was 3pm yesterday or a night in high summer 375,000 years ago. Why doesn’t it deteriorate? How does the co2 remain ‘pure’ and how is it ‘interpreted?’
This all seems even more unlikely than tree rings
It must be pointed out that the scientists during the 1800’s were extremely careful and meticulous with their scientific work, and took a pride in getting things absolutely right.
From around 1820, measuring co2 was a common occurrence and in many books of the period, such as one I have been reading from 1872, it is mentioned they found it easier to measure co2 than oxygen content. As far as I can determine, some 1 million Co2 measurements were taken for matters as diverse as hospitals, mines, and factories, apart those for strictly scientific reasons.
I believe Ernst Beck has accessed around 300,000 of these and has based his data on 90000 of them that are considered the better examples -many must be suspect or unverifiable and a considerable proportion came from one location.
The remaining measurements were made around the world in locations as varied as next to water, on mountains, and everything in between. The need to be accurate (to say 3-5mm- not the fractions ML uses) encouraged the development of ever more accurate methodology and equipment.
So on the one hand we had hundreds of thousands of measurements, made by many thousands of scientists -many very famous- and thousands of other practitioners -such as factory inspectorate- who made up in skill and experience what they lacked in celebrity. The accuracy was ever improving as people learnt more every day, so by the time Mr Keeling came along there was some 130 years of considerable knowledge and skill behind the established science.
On the other hand, to validate the accuracy of the new methods -as exemplified by ML- we have a brand new science in ice core measurements. This operates on a highly theoretical basis through the work of a very small number of scientists, who make a lot of assumptions about what their complex data is telling them, using a tiny number of ice cores that- by definition- come from only a few areas of the world, and were formed under extraordinary conditions that are by no means representative of the majority of the globe.
If we go by Peters’ criteria of numbers, the overwhelming scientific consensus must be with the thousands of scientists recording hundreds of thousands of direct co2 measurements at the time, rather than 12 scientists using highly original interpretation techniques on a few dozen ice cores in an experimental science hundreds of thousands of years after the event.
(or does scientific consensus only work in one direction?)
TonyB
Hi Peter,
In your 4035 you used the (cherry-picked) land temperature record (~30% of the geographical total) based on the (cherry-picked) “blip” in the record from 1975 to 2008 (~20% of the total time period) to determine a warming “trend”, which you then extrapolated for the next 92 years to determine the warming (over land) by year 2100. Using the extrapolated warming (over land alone) you arrive at a 2xCO2 “climate sensitivity” of 3C.
Then you asked: “What was that you were saying about the only evidence for a 3 deg C climate sensitivity being GIGO computer models?”
Maybe I should have said, “the only evidence for a 3 deg C climate sensitivity is GIGO computer models and some extrapolations based on relatively small cherry-picked geographical and temporal pieces of the record.
Does that make you happier?
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
You got me interested in checking the Hadley “land” and “sea” temperature records when you first brought up this topic a few posts ago.
These do not tell us too much about long-term overall trends, but they do tell us the following:
– the land record has larger inter-annual swings than the sea record
– the land record has a higher warming or cooling rate than the sea record, both over the entire record and also over shorter-term warming and cooling periods within the record
– the ocean has been cooling slightly over the past 8 years (along with the temperature over land), so there is no evidence of longer term continued ocean warming “searching for an equilibrium” when air warming stops, as you postulated with your suggestion of “warming still in the pipeline from ocean heat uptake”
Interestingly the recently observed cooling trend of the ocean (Hadley) has been confirmed (on a spot basis) by the latest Argo float measurement results, although NASA is having a real hard time accepting their own observed data (as it conflicts with their theory of what “should” be happening).
But this has been covered in previous posts.
Regards,
Max
As we’re celebrating the 200th anniversary of the great man’s birth, I hope I may refer to Darwin again, adding one more thought on the matter of consensus (or, if you prefer it, orthodoxy or paradigm). TonyN and Brute have already touched on my point. Incidentally, I particularly enjoyed Max’s fascinating overview at #4029 of Thomas Kuhl’s treatise, and liked his suggestion that Spencer or Svensmark might prove to be the new Wegener: thanks.
Peter has suggested that, for a consensus to “count” in the context of our discussion, it must be a scientific consensus. Therefore, the religious consensus of nineteenth century Western society, that assumed that God created the world and its multitude of life forms but with man in a unique position, is not, in his view, relevant. I certainly agree where his critics are clerics but the critics I referred to (e.g. Owen and even Lyell) were scientists. Well, Peter might argue, their science was tainted by their religious faith (and, in Owen’s case as TonyN has indicated, possibly by a fear of career-damaging criticism) and so cannot count. But there’s the rub. Scientists are human and, for most, it’s impossible to escape the mores of their time – and, in Darwin’s day, belief in creation and the uniqueness of humankind was a given for most people, including most educated people; indeed, even Darwin’s first book barely mentioned human evolution. Therefore, I maintain that a commonly held scientific orthodoxy, even one that was influenced by religious conviction as well as by observation, is nonetheless a consensus for the purposes of this discussion.
It’s my view that something similar applies today. But the orthodoxy of today’s Western establishment is not religion (far from it) but political correctness – in particular a view that man is essentially a selfish and greedy creature and that it is necessary to control that characteristic for the greater good. I suggest that the many influential people, in politics, the media, etc., who have this view have seized on the AGW hypothesis as vindication of it, turning it into the new scientific orthodoxy. It should not be a surprise that many scientists subscribe to it – just as they did to the orthodoxy of Darwin’s day – especially when their funding and career prospects may depend upon it. As I said at #3998, a politically desired position has become the object rather than the consequence of research. Nor is it a surprise that leading scientific bodies subscribe to what is patently in their members’ best interest, although commonly leaving enough wriggle room in their public statements in case the orthodoxy changes. Nor should we be surprised that, with some brave exceptions, scientists with doubts about the AGW hypothesis are wary of speaking out.
And that, Peter, is the basis of your “consensus”.
Robin, your post above (4048) goes straight to the heart of the problem for me: Science has become a tool of the political left. Those who hold the view that—as you put it— “man is essentially a selfish and greedy creature”, whose selfish and greedy notions must be controlled are those whom I fear.
Those who most vigorously defend AGW, in my view, usually hold collectivist positions on government and economic policy. Their psychology usually drives them to seek power and control over others. Since they typically have no aspirations for real contributions to society—aka “producers”— they seek control over the producers. Hence you see them so proliferate in government around the world. Governments produce nothing; other than providing national defense and other infrastructural needs, government’s role is almost exclusively regulation of behavior, aka control.
The scientists and AGW theory gave the controllers of our society an invaluable tool, and in a quid pro quo the controllers reward those in the climate research arena with billions of dollars in research grants.
Clearly, a major conflict of interest exists in the funding of climate research, since most of it, I suspect, comes from governments that are run, for the most part, by those who view humans and human activity as evil and in great need of control. Fear of losing grant money, compounded by the fear of being ostracized from the rest of the scientific community, keeps many, I suspect, from speaking out.
It is this control of words, research, and grant money that I fear from the AGW movement.
(unscientific) UHI effect research. [Brute, upon your return to civilization, you, too, can repeat my test methodology and confirm my results. I guess then all we have to do is write up a paper and get it published (peer-reviewed!)]
I drive a convertible car. I live in southern California, so I drive it almost exclusively with the top down. Day and night. Cold and warm. Yes, I’m a freak about it and just bundle up when it’s cold. Of course, around here cold is a 40ºF day!
As I drive through suburban San Diego county, I drive on major thoroughfares, freeways, side streets, and in sleepy neighborhoods. There are some trees here, but almost all are non-native. The native landscape is desert scrub; sage brush, Mexican sage, fennel, grasses, tumbleweeds, etc. The land runs from sandy beaches along the coast, through low rolling hills cut with canyons, draws, and washes, eventually rising to the coastal mountains that reach over 8,000 feet.
You can drive for 30 minutes in densely populated areas, where houses, and concrete “tilt-up” industrial parks sit nearly side by side. The smell of civilization, when driving top-down, is strong. The smell of a fast food restaurant, a roofing truck’s stench, and the delicious aroma of a bakery all go through your nostrils in rapid fire. But then a sharp canyon with natural desert flora will cut through the development, and as you drive through it the air temperature suddenly drops—dramatically and noticeably. I have long thought to myself that I wouldn’t want to live in a canyon like that because it is so much colder, but then I also realized that the is no human development in the canyons either, and it may not just be colder because it’s a canyon; the lack of structures and pavement and other human activity may play a large role, just like the stations that measure temperature around the globe.
I suspect that the speed of passing through these cold areas helps to make the differences more dramatic, and unless you do so I doubt you would even know it was colder. And these canyons are not always large, sometimes only 100 meters wide, but still you notice a temperature change.