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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TonyB
Reur 4871 on foreign travel control or restriction by Socialist governments:
The use of discouraging “foreign travel” was well-known in the old Soviet socialist days (discouragement = shoot ’em down as they try to cross the border to escape).
I have a friend who fled Romania (under Ceau?escu) in the gasoline tank of an Italian friend’s Fiat, holding on his belly a small container of gasoline that was fueling the car from filling station to filling station across Yugoslavia (which sent escaping Romanians who were caught back home in those days) until they finally crossed the Italian border to freedom.
So it is well known that the totalitarian socialist states strongly discouraged or restricted foreign travel (as did the totalitarian national socialist or fascist states) at the time.
But the so-called “democratic socialist states”?
As a part of an emergency act, Clement Attlee put a ban on foreign travel for all British subjects in effect in June 1947.
Will his successor, Gordon Brown, end up effectively doing the same sixty years later?
Regards,
Max
Brute,
Sorry. Yes I meant Max not you re the calculation. But it was you who made a mistake when you said I used the words “unenlightened and stupid”. If you’d just like to check on this ….
But I would agree that unenlightened is probably a good description. “Stupid” ? No. I do know that some very good and smart people can believe in creationism.
They aren’t comfortable talking about it usually. I now take the view that there is no point arguing with them about it. What does it matter? I’m sure I could live with a Noah’s Ark theme park in the city. But AGW is different. That does have repercussions on us all.
Max,
You’re priceless on claiming victory! I just heard on the radio that Man Utd scored one goal but Liverpool scored 4. Just checking, but can you let me know who won?
You wrote “Total observed 20th century warming (Hadley) was 0.65C.” You are normally careful enough to include the word linear. But you forgot it this time. Just letting you know.
I’m not sure why your matches are relevant but the weight of my 4 footballers isn’t?
You wouldn’t be trying to give the false impression that the weight of anthropogenically produced CO2 in the Astrodome was much less than it is would you?
POLEMIC VERSUS OBJECTIVE INFORMATION
The “Global Greenhouse Warming” site is apparently the one behind the bogus pictures of houses subsiding in the midst of healthy trees due to the melting permafrost, which were provided by Peter.
As can be seen from first few introductory paragraphs, the site is obviously hard-selling its own slant on the debate surrounding AGW and is, therefore, a poor source of factual information.
http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/
These paragraphs read:
“The overwhelming majority of scientists agree that our globe is undergoing major climate change. They also agree that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising significantly.
We can see from satellite images and research that the ice caps are melting faster, our sea levels are rising, and weather patterns are changing. We are experiencing more water shortages and we will see hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones increasing in ferocity and frequency. The deserts will expand and the world will ultimately have difficulty growing enough food. Without doubt, we have to change the way we live.
There are a few scientists who claim our earth is going about business as usual. In dealing with global warming, we should at least adopt an approach based on the precautionary principle. “The precautionary principle states that if the potential consequences of an action are severe or irreversible, in the absence of full scientific certainty the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.”
In order to make these introductory words less of a one-sided “sales pitch” and more objectively informative to the reader, this introduction could have been re-written as follows:
“A majority of scientists agree that our globe is undergoing climate change. They also agree that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising.
We can see from satellite images and research that the Greenland ice cap is now shrinking in size, after having grown over the period 1993-2003; we can also see from a long record from tide gauges that our sea levels are continuing to rise at about the same rate as they have been for 150 years.
There are scientists who state that these changes are natural and that our earth is going about business as usual.
There are others who believe that these changes are caused by greenhouse warming. Some of these scientists suggest that in dealing with global warming, we should adopt an approach based on the precautionary principle. “The precautionary principle states that if the potential consequences of an action are severe or irreversible, in the absence of full scientific certainty the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.”
Other scientists disagree with this suggestion and conclude that the human impact on climate will not be detrimental or will not be significant at all, and that the proposed actions to stop global warming will actually be more detrimental to our society than any climate changes caused by humans.”
That would have been a more unbiased and objective introduction, which would have given the reader more information and less hype. But, then again that was not the intent, was it?
Max
Max,
If you do a Google search (for images) on ‘melting permafrost’ you can find lots of pictures of ‘drunken forests’ and houses standing on their sides etc.
Sarah Palin would know all about this. Why not ask her if these pictures are faked.
If you were wanting to buy a house a Anchorage you’d perhaps want to engage these guys to do a permafrost survey on the property.
http://www.soilsalaska.com/
I doubt that a similar business would do very well in Australia where melting permafrost is not something that we normally have to think about when buying a home. But they are obviously doing OK in Alaska.
You might like to save prospective property purchasers some extra expense by letting them know that the pictures are faked. There is no melting permafrost problem. The ‘AGW scare’ is all due to UHI errors in temperature measurements or whatever. After all if it’s snowing in Washington in March, as Brute says, what other explanation can there be?
Hi Peter,
Forget about Manchester-Liverpool (4877). The analogy is flawed and silly.
Yes. The total 20th century linear rate of warming was 0.65C. This is the way IPCC measures long-term and shorter-term temperature trends. If I had just taken the difference between the 1901 temperature anomaly (-0.257C) and the one for year 2000 (+0.238C), I would have arrived at a 20th century warming of only 0.50C, rather than 0.65C, as derived from the linear trend. But I agree with IPCC that the linear trend approach is more valid.
Now to your “footballers”.
Brute made a point (a year ago) that today’s human CO2 impact on the atmosphere was equivalent to that of 12 matches lit in the Astrodome. This analogy was shown by calculation to be correct, and it pointed out that human CO2 emissions are rather small in the overall scheme of things (which was actually Brute’s point).
You say that the total amount of atmospheric CO2 increase that can be attributed to humans from 1750 to today is equivalent to adding the weight of three football players in the Astrodome over those 258 years.
So what? Still sounds rather small in the overall scheme of things to me. Have you ever been in the Astrodome? (I have, and it is immense.)
To your question: “You wouldn’t be trying to give the false impression that the weight of anthropogenically produced CO2 in the Astrodome was much less than it is would you?”
Of course not, Peter. The facts are the facts. Both analogies hold, but Brute’s is probably a bit easier for most people to identify with and understand.
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
Sarah Palin would probably tell you that only an idiot would build a house on top of permafrost without first ensuring that there was enough really good insulation in place to prevent the heat from the warm house from being transferred to the permafrost, thereby eventually destroying it at that spot and causing the house to subside.
This is plain common sense, Peter, and has nothing to do with AGW causing a large-scale demise of permafrost.
If it gets a fraction of a degree warmer in Alaska, then the permafrost line might move a few meters to the north, but, believe me, this has nothing to do with subsiding houses built on permafrost.
Use your head. To “blame” the susidence of houses built on permafrost on global warming is absurd.
Regards,
Max
Wow Pete; seems as if there are a bunch of unenlightened, anit-science, Christian Evangelicals down under also. Looks like the number of “religious nutters” are growing rapidly.
Climate concerns fading in Australia as economy dives
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-business/climate-concerns-fading-as-economy-dives-20090312-8ver.html
March 11, 2009
Concern about climate change is slipping away as the economic crisis continues to bite, a poll shows.
The proportion of people concerned about climate change has fallen from 90 per cent two years ago to 73 per cent, the poll found.
While worries about global warming fade, anxiety about job security and falling asset prices is very high, the poll of 1,000 people found.
It also found the federal government faces an uphill battle in selling its emissions trading scheme, its main weapon in the fight against climate change.
More than a third of those surveyed had not even heard of it, and fewer than one in 10 said they had a good understanding of the scheme.
Just under half of the respondents, 49 per cent, said they had no understanding of emissions trading.
The poll was conducted in February by strategic consultancy firm Mobium Group.
According to this link, 1947 was the year the wartime ban on foreign travel was lifted rather than imposed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/lostdecade/timeline_html.shtml#timelinetop
Except for wartime measures, there has never been any real problem for UK citizens to come and go as they please. Providing they could afford it of course. No matter what Government had been elected. They have always been allowed to visit to any country they choose and return again, without having to give a reason. That included the USSR, even at the height of the cold war.
That wasn’t the case for Americans. Even now they are still not allowed to freely visit Cuba.
Peter 4883
Just curious to know if you believe that a carbon card should be used as the means to tax people who want to travel using carbon transport and if you believe that should come about through tracking their movements.
I would also pose that question to the olthers here.
Tonyb
Hmmmm Pete. Maybe the Australian rank and file are becoming “enlightened” after viewing graphs such as this……
Tonyb,
My answers would be NO…..and NO.
Brute,
I suppose that you could argue that some buildings, in Arctic regions, have been damaged due to a leakage of heat which has melted the permafrost under their foundations.
But these buildings look relatively old. So why have they survived for years but are suddenly collapsing?
I could post up this link showing a railway line suffering from permafrost melting. Again that would have been relatively stable for many years and has suddenly subsided. Many a locomotive stopped over that spot for too long with its engine running?
http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/att_c20060902se01_e_14588.html
But it’s all futile trying you lot to see sense.
You all reject the parallel, of course, but it’s just like showing the fossil record to the creationists. They’ll always come up some nonsense to try to justify their unenlightened position. Stupid? Well that’s your word for it. Not mine.
Max,
Brute didn’t say twelve matches. That was your figure. In his original storyline it was just one match. I really don’t know where this fiction originated from, but I very much doubt if it was based on any sort of calculation at all. I challenged him at the time but he didn’t respond.
Maybe they just have very big matches in Texas?
The weight of MM carbon dioxide (357kg in the Astrodome) may not sound very much to you. Essentially you are just repeating one of the more naive and yes , stupid, of the denialist arguments: 100ppmv by volume increase of CO2 since pre-industrial times? OK so what?
Hi Peter,
This link says holidays abroad were banned in the UK in 1947.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-495096/Britain-1947-Poverty-queues-rationing–resilience.html
I have also seen other links that tied the banning of holidays abroad to a June 1947 austerity program that included a reduction of the daily meat rations for the British citizenry.
Interestingly, the French government reduced the daily bread ration for Frenchmen about the same time, and there were three days of riots.
Needless to say, the cut in meat rations in the UK was followed by a “stiff upper lip” grumbling (but no riots). Who would’ve thought of doing such a thing back then?
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
I’m not going back to my post of April 2008 to recalculate how many matches it takes in the Astrodome to equal the CO2 impact of humans in the atmosphere. The answer is twelve normal matches.
Yes, you are right. Brute first said it would take “one match”. Of course, he’s right if he is talking about one of these long-burning fireplace-lighting matches, but it would take 12 normal wooden matches to do the trick.
End of story.
Regards,
Max
Hey Peter,
Don’t believe all the hype you see out there. There is no large-scale subsidence of homes in the Arctic due to receding permafrost caused by AGW.
It’s BS, Peter. That’s all.
Let’s get back to a more fruitful discussion that wasting out time on this stupid stuff.
Regards,
Max
Aw, Peter, you’re just shooting yourself it the foot with all these silly links.
Read what they say: “Temperature increases of 40 to 50C predicted for the Western Arctic by 2080 are likely to affect a large portion of the total permafrost area.”
Duh!
Did you get the word “predicted”?
“Predicted” by whom?
A ”mainstream consensus of 2,500 scientists, backed up by a dozen (at least) multi-million dollar computer climate models, being fed in garbage assumptions by a bunch of computer programers”?
Did you get the year “2080”?
Who the hell knows what is going to happen to Western Arctic temperatures by 2080?
(I’ll answer that one for you). Nobody.
Get serious, Peter. The RR line subsidance pic appears to be local. Has anyone tried to figure out any local reason for this? Where was this picture taken? How close is this to the year-round permafrost line? Etc.
Don’t bring me silly pictures that prove absolutely nothing.
Regards,
Max
Lost in transcription. Line should read: “Temperature increases of 4° to 5°C predicted for the Western Arctic by 2080 are likely to affect a large portion of the total permafrost area.”
I don’t know; however, while investigating your website there was vague mention of erosion and in the lower right corner of your photograph I noticed (what looked to be) disturbed earth which could have been evidence of a rockslide.
There isn’t enough (or any) information provided to even discuss it intelligently, (another tactic of the global warming zealots).
It never ceases to amaze me when people decide to build structures on earthquake faults, oceanfront, flood plains, next to an active volcano…….. or in the case of New Orleans, below sea level……. and then are shocked when these structures are destroyed and people die. Reminds me of people that swim in the ocean and are surprised when they get eaten by sharks. “I think I’ll hang around inside of a Bengal Tiger cage”.
That Peter, is the definition of “stupidity”.
1947 would have been the last year of the UK wartime holiday ban. Not the first.
But anyway, to get back on topic, Brute mentioned the word “faith”. Its an interesting concept. A faith tells you what to disbelieve and what to believe. Its generally accepted that those who do succumb to a some sort of devotion to a faith will at some stage experience some difficulty with it. A ‘crisis of faith’ is the usual term. It is generally considered to be a marvellous thing when someone returns to the ‘faith’ after such a time. Why? What nonsense!
If I ask a creationist, he’ll say that a belief in Noah’s Ark is part of his “faith”. What sort of scientific evidence would lead him (or her) to change their minds? Of course none at all. That’s what faith means!
Following a faith is a dangerous and divisive thing. It means that one person is automatically a friend. Another, automatically an enemy. Faith means that this bit of land automatically belongs to those who follow it. Those who don’t, even if they were born and brought up there, may have to move out. That still happens in the 21st century. They are the enemy. They have to be separated and live in the 21st century equivalent of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Well I can just about live with creationists who go off and do their own thing in private. But what about your faith? What scientific evidence would it take for you to change your minds too? Just like the creationists, nothing will change them. But you are engaged in something far more dangerous. You are systematically trying to undermine the scientific case that AGW is threat which needs to be take seriously. You are endangering all our futures.
Max,
There may be a few readers who are somewhat puzzled that you have not challenged my 357 kg figure for the amount of human produced CO2 in the air contained in the Astrodome satdium. Actually if you did measure it there you’d get a much higher figure, but that’s another story.
Yet you are still claiming that the CO2 concentrations can be represented in terms of emissions from matches! How many matches, even the big firelighting type, would it take to produce 357 kg? It would be a whole trees worth I’d say.
Maybe you would like to clarify just exactly what you do mean?
Hi Peter,
I truly doubt if there are “a few readers who are somewhat puzzled that you have not challenged my 357 kg figure for the amount of human produced CO2 in the air contained in the Astrodome stadium”, as you postulate.
I’d say there are probably many more that are getting bored by this long-winded irrelevant discussion, which you keep trying to re-activate.
The discussion is over, Peter. You and I both made valid points. Yours was made over the time perod from 1750 to 2008, a period of 259 years or 8.2 billion seconds, while mine (and Brute’s original statement) were based on the length of time a match normally burns = 15 seconds.
That’s the difference, Pter.
Now let’s move off of this truly silly topic.
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
Your very astute statement was, “Following a faith is a dangerous and divisive thing. It means that one person is automatically a friend. Another, automatically an enemy.”
Yes, Peter. This is a problem of those who follow the AGW faith. A rational skeptic of this faith who speaks out against it with physically observed facts (such as Roy Spencer) is “automatically an enemy”. He must be neutralized and ridiculed in order to defend the AGW faith (of potentially disastrous AGW).
Good observation, Peter!
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
Believe it or not, folks, you actually wrote: “You are systematically trying to undermine the scientific case that AGW is a threat which needs to be taken seriously. You are endangering all our futures.”
How totally absurd, Peter.
The “scientific case that AGW is threat” is coming unraveled all by itself as the facts are being exposed.
As a rational skeptic, I am just trying to move this process of exposure along.
The 2xCO2 “climate sensitivity of 3.2C” has been “shot down” by (a) the physically observed 20th century warming, (b) the measured solar warming over this period and (c) the physical observations on cloud feedbacks.
These all demonstrate that there is no “scientific case that AGW is threat which needs to be taken seriously”.
This premise is dying a slow, natural death as everyone realizes that global warming has stopped and the facts are slowly coming to light.
“Endangering all our futures?”
Get serious, Peter.
Regards,
Max
Max,
It is strange you should mention Roy Spencer in connection with a discussion on the parallels between climate change denial and evolution denial.
This is what he has to say:
http://theevolutioncrisis.org.uk/testimony2.php
“Science has startled us with its many discoveries and advances, but it has hit a brick wall in its attempt to rid itself of the need for a creator and designer. In fact, every year that passes reveals all the more starkly that a naturalistic explanation for the origin of the universe, life, complexity, consciousness and reason is not merely ‘difficult’ but hopelessly impossible.”
He’s not helping you in your case at all.
No doubt he would even argue , that science itself was a faith. Just something else to be added to list of the world religions. Just another point of view , equally valid with all other points of view. Something to follow Rastafarianism, Scientology and Shinto, with Taoism next on the list.
It’s quite nice fantasy. We just get rid of the AGW problem by choosing to not believe in it!
I don’t think of anyone who believes in Creation as an enemy. At least not in the way that Israeli Jews often think of Palestinian Arabs ,either Christian or Muslim as enemies. Or Catholics and Protestants have always considered each other to be enemies in Northern Ireland. However I am concerned at their attempts to spread their ideas through the education system.
An they would say the same thing. They would object to their children being taught Science in schools too. So its difficult to avoid a clash on that topic. Just as it is difficult to avoid a clash with politically motivated groups who don’t want AGW included in the syllabus.
I’m not going to post for a while on this forum. I have learned a lot. I started off with a belief that it should be possible to discuss the question rationally. That was a mistake.
There is no give and take like there should be with rational people. There wouldn’t be any with creationists either. Their mind is made up just like yours and probably nothing will ever change it. They literally do believe that the Devil has planted fossils just to mislead us all on the age of the earth. How can you argue with that?
For you guys the devils are the UN, the IPCC, Al Gore and probably Barack Obama will join them if he does decide to carry though on his election pledges. You’ll make the most of the current flattening off in temperatures, but when they rise again, when the next jump occurs, will you change your mind? No way. Your last line of defence will be more arguments, that the data is all faked. We’ve just seen that in the discussion on melting permafrost. We’ll hear more on how it is all a big conspircay and a hoax. And you can’t argue with that level of paranoia either.
Correction:
That should be “Something to follow Rastafarianism, with Scientology, Shinto, and Taoism next on the list.”