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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Sort of sorry I brought it up. My point is/was that the Sun is the source of all weather, (climate) on the planet…..always has been and always will be.
Any variation in the solar output is enormous in comparison to human activities…..that’s all.
Brute,
Sort of sorry I brought it up. My point is/was that the Sun is the source of all weather, (climate) on the planet…..always has been and always will be.
Yes of course.
Any variation in the solar output is enormous in comparison to human activities…..that’s all.
Not in terms of climate forcing, on earth, it isn’t. But maybe you can show differently?
Sun is prob the essential factor, just that it’s not so QED as some make out, but the science of the sun and climate is far from settled and therefore the magnitude of the role of CO2 is far from certain and most likely overstated IMHO – don’t give up
Max,
I’ve just noticed you’ve written, “……much higher solar impact on temperature than just that portion attributable to solar irradiance.”
I know you are supposed to be away on holiday but this is just nonsense.
Solar irradiance is what keeps the earth warm! There are no “other portions” as you’ve put it. There isn’t anything else, except maybe the 4 deg K cosmic microwave background!
ALL: I have an idle afternoon, and it is ~4.00 PM local summer-time, and by now, according to the weather forecast, in my densely treed area in the north east foothills of Melbourne, that vegetation should be waving around in a strong wind. Thankfully, whilst I keep looking out, that is not the case, and I hope that remains to be true for wonderful Warburton et al townships that have ongoing “sublime” fires to their north.
TonyN:
I’ve forgotten, and run-out of patience in how to access your “admin” thread that is suitable for testing posting methods annat, so I’ll comment here instead:
You may have noticed that I repetitively posted a line something like this:
“It’s because of the wind stupid”, some half dozen times without any detailed explanation.
What I was trying to do was to test the creation of extra emphasis on text that might possibly catch the attention of Peter Martin, by using html tags, given that some such html does work on your site. Among the html I tried was; coloured font, nominated (larger) size font, and even dynamic font, being the most visually emphatic. Interestingly, in preview, all of them worked fine, and I was particularly delighted with the moving font. Even a total idiot could hardly miss seeing it! However, upon actually posting them, they all failed, including simple stuff like underlining and cross-through.
Hey look, I’m not complaining, it’s just an observation that these things would be nice, and enlivening, but only if you have time for it.
TonyN: I posted three pics of new growth forest E. Regnans as you requested. It’s very Oz; not at all English; Do you find it to be interesting?
All, further my 4330:
Have just got back from a pleasant walk with the dog.
We had a cool change come through, where the wind direction reverses, and temperatures suddenly fall
Consequently, the threat of ember attack or advanced spotting of fires ahead of the northerly fire-front towards Warburton and elsewhere has gone.
Unfortunately though, the town of Upwey (per the radio, before my walk) is now instead said to be under threat, despite the cool temperatures.
Such a cool change, (wind reversal), trapped and killed 17 fire-fighters on Ash Wednesday 1983 BTW.
Pete: please note; Wind is what causes fire-storms, not ambient temperature.
Bob_FJ,
You might have heard the adage “the pen is mightier than the sword”.
It is not always true , of course, but when it is, it’s not because of the use of CAPITAL LETTERS of excessive use of passages maked in bold or EVEN BOTH !
The overuse of these features, besides being impolite, and tanatmount to shouting, is a sign of frustration on the part of the writer. You’d be better advised to use them a little less.
I dread to think what your posts would be like if you had coloured, dynamic, larger sized, and dancing fonts at your disposal. Even then you’d probably still use upper case and highlight them as bold charaters!
PS You’ve accidentally posted your previous comment twice. I’ve corrected your howler in the other thread.
Robin, your 4312:
Yes, as an employee of NASA, James Hansen is an employee of the federal government. NASA is an independent agency of the US federal government, ultimately reporting to the president, with congressional oversight mainly from a budgetary perspective.
He provides “scientific evidence” to support the collectivist tendencies of powerful members (now a majority) of the Congress of the United States, who, in turn, provide his funding.
I’m sure that’s just a coincidence…
A collapsing carbon market makes mega-pollution cheap
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/23/glover-carbon-market-pollution
Calls Mount for Obama to Fire NASA Climate Chief
http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=2862
JZ and Brute,
I’m not sure why you’re singling out Hansen. In Australia nearly all the climate scientists would agree with him and probably the same would be true in the USA.
He’s due for retirement, so you probably aren’t going to shut him up just by sacking him! He’s survived through different aministrations, to his credit always saying the same thing. It seems to make little difference to him who has a majority in the US Senate or anywhere else.
As you’ve brought back politics into the discussion, can I just ask you how, or if, your politics would cope, should it be established that James Hansen is substantially correct?
Those of us with more moderate views would cope either way, of course.
Peter Martin, Reur 4332 whinge: you wrote in part concerning my excessive use of text emphasis in bold and upper case font:
If you feel hurt by my abundant emphasis, then you’d be better advised to cogitate why I’ve done this, but only towards YOU alone.
Here are some simple clues for you:
() It should not be necessary to repeatedly ask you to actually answer some important debate issues rather than you waffle on irrelevant crap as if trying to change the topic.
() You should pay cognisance to the significance of important key words, for example ‘maximum’ (not average), or ‘Victoria’ (a specific part of Oz, and not some other region, or the whole Globe), or ‘fire-storm’ (not an ordinary controllable fire)
If you were to conform to normal standards of intelligent debate, I would have no motive to apply such emphasis as I have towards you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You also wrote:
No, there was no accident, the addressees were different, and the wording and context was different. Incidentally, perhaps if I had used bold emphasis (thus:) for the word fire-storm, maybe you would not have made such a cock-up in your comments on the other thread. Do you ever feel embarrassed by your mistakes?
Hi Peter,
I wrote of James Hansen because Robin inquired specifically about him and his status. I didn’t bring politics into the discussion; politics and AGW are inextricably linked. As we have established clearly and unequivocally in previous posts, you cannot discuss AGW without also talking about politics. Hansen himself, in testifying before Congress, underlines the politics of the debate much like you bave criticized Bob_FJ for similar emphasis.
I take issue with your words “…nearly all climate scientists would agree with him and probably the same would be true in the USA.”
At the risk of going over ground again, can you provide hard numbers to support such a sweeping statement?
Well Pete, it doesn’t seem that we have to worry about Hansen being even close to “substantially correct”.
If someday the AGW theory is, in my view, proven correct beyond a reasonable doubt, I will whole-heartedly embrace any reasonable free-market, liberty-friendly solutions.
At timely article in a surprising place: the New York Times.
Correction to my post above: It should have read, “A timely article…”.
My apologies.
Bob, re your comment here.
You will find a link to the Admin page in the left hand side bar.
I certainly did see the pictures of the E. Regens, and very fine they are too. But also strange, for me, as the mountain ash is a common species where I live, but a totally different one. Short and sturdy to cope with strong winds but producing spectacular red berries in the late summer: the first melancholy sign that winter will eventually come. These can be used to make jam, but in my experience it’s a waste of sugar and tastes vile.
Brute,
You’ve chosen a graph from a contrarian website rtaher than from UAH themselves.
I could ask you which data set was used to plot this graph but I know you won’t know the answer. The reason I ask is that there were instrumental errors in all UAH satellite records prior to version 5.1 which were fixed in version 5.2 and later bringing the UAH stallite record more into line with RSS and surface based tempertaure measurements.
Also I’m just wondering why monthly rather than yearly figures were chosen. Is it worth asking you which months figures were chosen for the start and end points of the graph and why? Do you have any clue at all?
JZ Smith,
I think we’ve covered the consensus argument numerous times previously. It just gets boring if we cover the same ground time after time.
I’m wondering what you have in mind when you write about “reasonable free-market, liberty-friendly solutions.”
Peter:
I’m not sure, but the basic outline would be minimal government direct action, but the government would create the environment wherein private industry could, by using the profit motive, bring market-based solutions to bear upon the problem, whatever that might be.
JZ Smith,
I would say that what you are suggesting is exactly what is known as “Cap and Trade” in the USA and the “Emissions Trading Scheme” in Europe and Australia. It’s worked well in Europe and the USA for the reduction of SO2 emissions.
Its pretty much the scheme of choice for the political right. Whereas the left would favour more a straight out carbon tax. Personally I don’t much care which, providing that the end result is a reduction of CO2 emissions.
Naturally there are problems. Brute has taken great delight that the recession/depression has reduced the demand for CO2 permits, and their price has fallen. That can be easily fixed. Just reduce the supply of the permits too!.
Whatever you and Brute might think, a healthy world capitalist system would take the introduction of CO2 controls in its stride. There really would be no threat. I read the other day that in both Europe and the USA the number of jobs in the renewable energy industries, was already greater than in coal. So it might well turn out to be the exact opposite. The renewable energy sector may be what helps save capitalism.
If there is a threat to world capitalism it is more to do with its own internal contradictions than the introduction of CO2 emissions controls. You can’t blame the looming world depression on that at all.
Pete,
Regarding your above statement my thoughts are these:
The above example shows the tunneling of Gaussian wave packets through rectangular barriers of height V and width d (central strip). For visualization purposes, the probability of the transmitted wave (i.e. the wave appearing on the r.h.s. of the strip) has been rescaled.
Hope this helps.
Pete,
If green energy is such a boon to the economy, why must it be subsidized by my tax dollars?
Peter:
At 4346, you advised JZ that the Emissions Trading Scheme in Europe has “worked well” for the reduction of emissions. Er … that’s not quite right. You obviously missed my 4144 and Spiegel Online‘s report. Referring to Germany’s renewables programme, it said:
Why? Simple really: 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.
But that’s not all. At 4310, I referred to a Times report. Some extracts:
As the Times comments:
You really should pay attention, Peter. (I daresay your mother warned you about this.)
Robin,
I wrote:
“It’s worked well in Europe and the USA for the reduction of SO2 emissions.”
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain