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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I was amused to see that you’re all giving Max a hard time about the bet.
I’m sure that both Max and I can afford $100. The painful part, for either one of us, will be having to accept that we might have got it wrong.
Its more about testing out whether we both mean what we say rather than the propspect of financial gain. So far there is only Max who is prepared to back up what he says by risking a small sum.
It’s interesting to see that you are all in disagreement about whether or not global temperatures are falling. Notwithstanding any different theories about why this may or may not be happening, it is important for you all to try to reach some sort of consensus on at least this simple issue. You will then be in a much better position to tackle the next question.
All,
I’m happy to report that the Caribbean is still beautiful, (as are its people), and South Florida is still above sea level despite global warming and the “unprecedented” glacial ice melt.
I would however, report from our “expedition” that the temperature reached a record low of 30 degrees Fahrenheit at one point last week due to the ever climbing global temperatures, (unheard of for South Florida) resulting in crop damage (beans and citrus I think).
One of the most opulent cruises we’ve been on……I highly recommend it.
Peter,
By the way, I’ve abandoned attempting to tabulate my carbon footprint from my latest vacation.
Suffice it to say it was quite massive; however, I’ve decided to convert to Hinduism (as Rajendra Pachauri of IPCC infamy) preferring to atone for my latest “carbon sins” in my next life.
Hi Peter,
Reur 4123, I’m sure that you are aware that NSIDC uses the “% anomaly from a 1979-2000 mean” to describe and report Arctic and Antarctic sea ice developments.
As I am sure you are also aware, Actic sea ice has shown a receding trend while Antarctic sea ice has been growing.
Both go through major seasonal swings, which are much higher than the inter-annual trends.
More meaningful that just one or the other inter-annual trend is the GLOBAL sea ice extent (sum of both).
This has receded ever so slightly, except for the last two years, when it has again advanced to a level not reached since 1988 and slightly higher than the 1979-2000 baseline. In other words, Peter, global sea ice extent is back to levels not seen since 1988! (Great news, right?)
As I am sure you are aware it is the TOTAL GLOBAL sea ice extent that affects our planet’s surface albedo effect (not just the extent at one pole).
Whether this is expressed as % anomalies from a baseline (as NSIDC does) or absolute sea ice extent in square km, the answer comes ot the same, Peter, as I am sure you are aware. No need for you to make silly (and dishonest) statements about being “unscrupulous by playing games with percentages” rather than comparing absolute values.
Globally, sea ice has shrunk only very marginally over the long term on a linear trend basis, and has recovered again over the past two years to a level higher than the 1979-2000 baseline.
These are the facts, Peter, whether you like them or not.
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
In 4124 you wrote to someone (?):
“I was amused to see that you’re all giving Max a hard time about the bet.”
Who is “you all” supposed to be?
Maybe I missed some posts, but I have not seen a post from anyone “giving me a hard time about the bet”.
Can you be a bit more specific here, Peter with names and dates?
Or is this just another fabricated side-track?
You’d be better off, Peter, if you stick to the truth rather than making stuff up that may sound good to you at the time.
Just a tip.
Regards,
Max
TonyB – Good luck with Royal Soc. but I don’t think they will engage with you and you’ll need a large marketing budget to top Gore’s reputed $300 million We campaign.
Max – I agree that the trendy ‘moral energy’ and the zealous and sanctimonious preaching of the Dick Strawbridges/ Al Gores will be the hardest to tackle – as you say it’s a kind of morality play and we’re the bad guys. Perhaps someone should compile a step by step cost-benefit analysis of the whole Strawbridge lifestyle – cost per tonne carbon avoided. I doubt that the Beeb’ll be doing that.
Brute – love it – perhaps someone should set up a website for future life offsets?
OK, Max, I understand your bet (for $100). It’s simply that the global temperature anomaly (as reported by Hadley) will not exceed the ex post facto “adjusted” figure of 0.515C (you’re generous!) by 2011 – with no overtone (as intimated by Peter) that the outcome will say anything about the AGW hypothesis.
BTW I was amused to see that Peter thinks that “you are all in disagreement about whether or not global temperatures are falling”. Er, no, Peter you’re not paying attention: most contributors here agree, I think, that temperatures have fallen slightly recently but make no prediction about whether or not that will continue. Even Max’s bet isn’t that they’re going to fall.
Max/Luke: I loved the comment that “it’s a kind of morality play and we’re the bad guys”. As i noted above, quoting from Huffington Post , the MSM [plus, i would now add, most politicians and the governing bodies of most academic institutions] believes that sceptical opinion is based on “the nonsensical junk science of the right-wing think tanks and their cadre of scientists for hire.”
That, TonyB, is what you’re up against – even though the public, amazingly, is increasingly sceptical..
Luke 4131
You do know there is a marketing levy of $350,000 on everyone reading this blog in order to promote the anti AGW case?
I’m not sure that Peter has read the Blog rules closely and he might possibly object to this :)
Brute
I intend to return as a cat and defer my carbon offsets to its seventh life
TonyB
Re Arctic ice, I recommend this interesting Guardian article. Superficially, it appears to be an amazing U-turn. Its author, Vicky Pope (head of climate change advice at the Met Office Hadley Centre) after lamenting “apocalyptic prediction” says for example:
Gulp – that’s pretty amazing. But it should, I think, be treated with care. What I think she’s really doing is preparing the ground (and protecting the Hadley budget) in case summer ice recovers (as it showed signs of doing in 2008) over the next few years. Thus she goes on to say that the tipping point claim “diverts attention from the real, longer-term issues”:
On that basis, she cannot lose. If summer ice retreats, the useful headlines (and doomed polar bear scares as repeated in the otherwise excellent BBC programme, Nature’s Great Events, last night) will continue. If it doesn’t, well, as she says, these short-term scares
So there we have it: AGW is a hypothesis that can never be disproved.
Sorry – here’s the link to that Guardian article.
Robin – just came back here from the grauniad link (you posted above) after a friend disturbed my working day by e-mailing it to me.
tonyb – where do I send my cheque?
In my staged model of the truth:
1. The Met Office plea is phase one of the reversal – to realise the claims are exaggerated and even wrong in the press (What one journo calls flat earth news).
2. Phase two is to realise that the impact of the mis-reporting has affected each specialist scientist’s own beliefs for areas of science other than their own, compounding and galvanizing their own bias. (similar to Michael Crichton’s Gell-Mann amnesia effect which (he wrote):
“works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.”
3. Phase three will then be the reporting of anomalies after the journal editor gatekeepers realise they are biased – and then finally even young turks/ old renegades can publish their concerns over some of the analysis selected by the IPPC to make its case. Over which there is already much technical controversy as we all know here. At this point TonyB might get his day with the Royal Soc.
4. Phase four will be a call for a re-write of the IPPC summary reports. I’m hoping the Chinese will be involved in this and bring a sanguine and Confucian aproach to the analysis.
5. Phase 5 will be apologies from the IPPC people a la the recent banking ones.
Well, I can but dream!
Well , Max if you compare this graph with the one you previously posted:
This is much simpler to understand. But mainly it clearly shows that the 9.4% rise in extent which we saw in 2008 didn’t even bring the ice extent up to the 30+ year trend line of 9.5% decadal decline, never mind to historical levels.
See what I mean about misrepresentation?
Robin,
You’ve got quite a knack of coming up with very snappy and very quotable ‘soundbites’ for the scientific side of the debate. I do like “the nonsensical junk science of the right-wing think tanks and their cadre of scientists for hire.”
Almost as good as “undeniable scientific consensus holding its head up against a ragbag of misguided and ignorant critics”
The second one was from memory, so apologies if I didn’t get it quite right.
Anyway, please keep up the good work!
Hi Guys
Been lurking here for a while, thought i’d jump in if you don’t mind.
Peter, if you want a more meaningful chart of sea ice, these are good.
But Peter, Max and (now) Barelysane don’t you understand that all this stuff about what is actually happening to Arctic sea ice doesn’t matter any more? We have it (see 4135) on the authority of the mighty UK Met Office that these changes “could easily be due to natural fluctuations in the weather”. No – forget observation: what you must focus on are those helpful computer models and the long-term trends they predict.
And (further to 4141) those trends are pretty scary. For example, in 1988, The New York Times reported that scientists are “sure … that the sea level will rise visibly in the coming decades … [with] predicted rise in sea level of one foot within the next 30 to 40 years … [driving] much of the Atlantic and Gulf shoreline inward by a hundred feet and some of it by more than a thousand feet … [this] will destroy buildings and roads, wipe out recreational beaches, escalate flood problems many miles inland, pollute community wells with saltwater and drown coastal marshes vital to fish and birds”.
Oh no – that was over twenty years ago, so it’s going to start any day now!
I used to be worried about stuff like that (what with living in the Thames estuary in the UK) but the angel Gore visited in my sleep and commanded me to build an ark so now i know everything is going to be OK. Though i am slightly concerned the the computer program i’m using to design the ark keeps doubling all my figures.
Here (from Spiegel Online) is an extraordinary story:
How’s that possible? Well, it’s the result of the EU’s internationally praised climate change law: as renewables are used and emissions thereby reduced, German companies need less emission certificates. These unused certificates are sold, for example, to coal companies in Poland and Slovakia, permitting them to emit more GHGs than originally planned.
TonyN: I’ve tried (twice) to post an interesting story. Both times it disappeared.
http://www.ihopeyourehappy.com/?tag=icebreaker
Pretty much off topic for the most part; however, Obama the Messiah has proposed spending $88 Million Dollars on a new Ice Breaker to be used by the U.S Coast Guard.
Just a quick thought…..we already have (I believe) 4 ice breakers and while aging, could be refitted/upgraded to do the minimal job of breaking up ice that is “rapidly” disappearing, correct?
No wonder the country is going broke with these geniuses holding the purse strings.
(One more try)
Here (from Spiegel Online) is an extraordinary story:
How’s that possible? Well, it’s the result of the EU’s internationally acclaimed climate change law. As renewables are used and emissions thereby reduced, German companies use less CO2 emission certificates. They sell these unused certificates to, for example, coal companies in Poland and Slovakia, which use them to emit more GHGs than originally planned.
The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.
TonyN: three times now! I suggest you check your spam filter.
In response to my tongue in the cheek suggestion to challenge the Royal Society to an open debate Luke posted this;
“How do you kill a religion?” which leads to Durkheim and beyond. And has a religion ever been killed? I even thought of writing up 95 theses (or errors in IPPC science) to nail up outside the Royal Society for a Luther-type approach.’
Coindicentally WUWT was posting this;
Tipping point reached: UK Met Office makes blistering attack on those who make ‘Apocalyptic climate predictions’
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/12/tipping-point-reached-met-office-makes-blistering-attack-on-those-who-make-apocalyptic-climate-predictions/
The Met office look a better target and as I live 15 miles away from their office in Exeter I hereby offer to nail a proclamation to the nearest tree to the Met office(although the Met office destroyed most of them whilst building their very large HQ) setting out our 95 theses and make a challenge to an open debate. So if Luke would just like to forward the 95 point theses the rest of you can craft the words to a challenge :)
TonyB
Hi Peter,
Thanks for posting last August’s graph on ARCTIC sea ice trends (I’ve seen this graph before; you’ve shown it twice yourself). It shows some recovery, but obviously not back to the baseline level.
The graph I posted (to which you referred) is NOT ONLY the Arctic sea ice record, it is the GLOBAL (Arctic + Antarctic) sea ice record.
You know, the one that impacts our planet’s surface albedo (along with snow cover and a bunch of other things).
The charts posted by Barelysane show these trends in much greater detail.
Let’s not fall into the trap, Peter, of comparing “apples” with “oranges”.
Regards,
Max