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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JZ,
I forgot to answer your question on your association of Darwinian Evolution with leftism.
In 4846 you say “You expose your obvious leftist bias when you write …..” What I had written was purely on the subject of evolution.
And later you ask “why is it that the left doesn’t respect the views of those with whom they disagree?” . Correct me if I’m wrong, but considering the topic under discussion, Darwinian Evolution, I naturally took you to mean that these views were on just that.
Did I get that wrong? Maybe you were referring to the left’s opinion on Milton Friedman’s Chicago School of economics?
Peter, your 5001:
Peter, you need to go back and re-read my 4846. I was commenting on your 4817, wherein you opined, “Reading between the lines, its [sic] the dumber section of the population who are most anti-science!”
My comment about you “exposing your leftist bias” had nothing to do with the merits of Darwinian evolution OR Creationism. I was simply noting your predilection—all so typical of those on the left— to refer to those with whom you disagree as “dumb”. You apparently missed the whole point of my post.
Peter, you continue to exhibit such a predilection with your recent statements arguing that the posters on this forum with whom you disagree are not rational because we don’t come to the same conclusions when reviewing the evidence on AGW. Instead of debating the merits of the evidence, or the merits of the interpretation of the evidence, you have chosen to question both the intellect and the sanity of your opponents. In my experience, taking such a position is typical of left-leaning political emotion.
Hi Peter,
I see you can’t resist the temptation to drift off topic (4998).
Yes, the bonuses for executive managers (especially those who drive their companies to the brink of bankruptcy) are appalling.
Yes, the ridiculous union contracts of the automobile industry in the USA are absurd.
Yes, the US congressional proposal to force open voting on union membership, in order to “strongarm” workers to join, is a horrible invasion of individual privacy and civil rights.
Yes, the compensation differential between top-paid executives and the lowest paid employees in many companies is scandalous.
Yes, the short traders, derivative traders, hedge fund operators, and all the other non-value added money-shufflers are responsible for gambling away honest investors’ wealth and are no more than a bunch of crooks.
Yes, the dumbheads who signed up for mortgages on houses that they knew they could never pay are idiots.
Yes, the guys that sold them these mortgages to make a nice, fat commission are a bunch of jerks.
Yes, the institutions that “packaged” this garbage and resold it to other institutions who did the same are scoundrels.
Yes, the politicians who took big donations from these institutions and promoted the concept that everyone should have his own home, whether he can afford it ot not, are slime-bags.
Yes, the oversight agencies that were in place and watched this whole mess unravel are incompetent fools.
So what?
What does all this have to do with our topic here?
The fall-out “does have something to do with our topic”, as Robin, Brute, JZSmith and others have already astutely observed.
Global Warming will no longer be the “hot issue” that it once was before the financial/economic crisis. It’s a “rich man’s luxury” and we aren’t “rich” anymore. It will be relegated “to the back burner”, and, believe me, Peter, if there are one or two more cooler years, it will be relegated to the trashheap of history.
But let’s get back on topic, please.
Regards,
Max
Max, your 5003: Amen! (Sorry, Peter, for the religious reference)
JZ: you must have noticed that Peter nearly always misses the whole point of a post. But I suspect it’s his contribution that keeps this interesting thread going. So I’m happy to tolerate him. And, in truth, I enjoy the interaction and even admire his ability to keep going in the face of so much criticism.
PS: I see we’ve passed the 5,000 mark. And, as the first contributor, you deserved to bag the honour. Congratulations and thanks to TonyN, our genial host!
Not sure whether this has already been posted.
Recent study by Jones et al.
We show that all the land-based data sets for China agree exceptionally well and that their residual warming compared to the SST series since 1951 is relatively small compared to the large-scale warming. Urban-related warming over China is shown to be about 0.1°C decade?1 over the period 1951–2004, with true climatic warming accounting for 0.81°C over this period.
Does this mean that UHI over the 53 year period accounts for approx 0.53 degrees C or 40% of the total measured warming of 1.34C over the same 53 year period shown in that study.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008JD009916.shtml
The latest “Obamanation” is the ridiculous trade war with the largest importer of US products, Mexico, that has resulted from the US ban of the 99 Mexican trucks that were driving on on US highways (a decision forced by that stalwart group, the Teamsters Union, of Jimmy Hoffa fame).
What the hell is going on, Brute?
Regards,
Max
Robin, yes, I agree that Peter has withstood the criticism well, and doing so as essentially a lone voice cannot be easy. Most of us would have moved on long ago. I hope, Peter, that you continue to post.
Re 5000 posts: I didn’t realize until I posted 5002 that I got 5000! Must be karma…
Thanks, TonyN, for hosting us and putting up with all of our ‘predilections’!
PS Sorry I’m “off topic”, Brute.
JZ,
You may not be aware that Queenslanders aren’t always considered to be the sharpest knives in the drawer in Australia, and are also known for their conservatism. No dangerous nonsense about moving he clocks forward in summer here. Sydneysiders would say that it would be too difficult for us to adjust our digital watches.
So my ‘reading between the lines’ comment was an interpretation of what the writer of what I was quoting really meant.
Just to clear things up: Which beliefs do you actually mean? So you aren’t saying that the left sneer at the creationist beliefs of people like Sarah Palin?
Max,
It’s like the Keystone Cops over here on Capital Hill…..These guys are bumbling fools. They’re all up in arms today because the AIG CEO is honoring contract obligations and writing checks for bonuses to his employees.
Forget that Obama received $103,000 from AIG to finance his campaign.
Remember a while back when Congress passed that “emergency” $787 BILLION spending bill to avert “certain economic catastrophe” that was posted at 11:00 at night and voted on the following day at 10:00 AM that no one bothered to read? Well, Obama signed the bill into law without checking the details….it seems that Senator Chris Dodd (Liberal/Democrat who received hundreds of thousands of AIG campaign contributions) inserted language into the bill exempting AIG bonuses from oversight……To put it bluntly…..These idiots screwed up big time. Forget that the 173 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the largesse in the total bill, with much more going to European banks and other institutions that have nothing to do with AIG or stimulating the economy.
These knuckleheads attempted to pass a Socialist solution to a problem and even screwed that up…..these guys could get a wet dream wrong. This was a Liberal, Left Wing, Democrat sponsored and supported bill with every Democrat in the Congress voting for the bill and the entire thing has blown up in their faces. Obama’s popularity numbers are dropping like a dress on prom night and people are pissed.
AIG announced over a year ago that these bonuses would be paid and Obama’s boy genius, Tim Geitner, (Treasury Secretary) just realized that this was going to happen last week. The new CEO of AIG (name is Liddy) was hand picked by Obama and his pals.
At first I simply thought that these were smart people with a Socialist agenda…sort of smart like a fox……The truth is that they SIMPLY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING and are completely incompetent/inept at even devising and implementing their own socialist policies.
No Republican voted for this bill in the House of Representatives. I believe 3 Republicans(out of 100 in the Senate) voted for this bill. The rest were Democrats.
Now the Liberals are trying to blame AIG for a mess they created….. for following the rules of a bill (that they all voted for and passed and Obama signed into law) in an attempt to divert attention from where the rest of the money has disappeared to and to cover up this monumental foul up.
Max,
This is a typical example of government in action……Next they’re going to work on Nationalized Health Care!
Max,
You accused me of taking a cheap shot at Roy Spencer. You may disagree, but Id say a ‘cheap shot’ might be something like raising some minor misdemenour he might have committed as a young person or some sexual impropriety he might have been engaged in.
That he believes in a relatively stable climate and also that the climate itself was ‘created’ is not at all irrelevant. Believers in some form of creation nearly always assume that the creation itself was for the benefit of humanity. God gave man ‘dominion’ over the birds of the air etc etc.
I would argue that Roy Spencer is very likely to be quite convinced that this creator of his included some strong negative feedbacks into the way the clouds radiate and re-radiate heat etc. And that all he needs to do is find them.
Brute,
You seem to be getting somewhat worked up about Socialism coming to America.
I’d like to think you were right, and I have enjoyed teasing you about it I must admit.
But that’s not the case at all. No matter whether it a Republican or Democrat in the White House, or whether a Labour or Tory PM in the UK. They’ll be doing the same things. And making sure that the bankers are all well rewarded regardless of how badly they’ve done. Just take a look at this:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/03/17/business/EU-Britain-RBS-Pension.php
So is it just a coincidence that very similar scandals are outraging public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic? What do you think?
Forget socialism. George Bush sometimes gets it right, or nearly right, as he did when he said “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.”
I’d just suggest that an even better way of putting it would have been to save, not so much the system, but the people who are in control of the system.
Not worried or worked up Pete, I’m a survivor…..not dependent upon the government…..Socialism is an unmitigated failure wherever it’s been tried and will fail here also…..even faster with these boneheads trying to implement it.
I’m laughing at the incompetence of these “progressive” politicians and the people that believe that government will solve all of their problems for them, (also known as Liberal voters).
I don’t know why the Democrats are so upset about the millions of dollars in bonuses…..they created the situation and Obama said that he would “spread the wealth around”. It’s being distributed alright, (although probably not to the parasites that he intended to distribute it to).
Blame sunspots for cool winter, spring weather
http://www.democratherald.com/articles/2009/03/15/news/local/1loc03_taylor.txt
Hi Peter,
You wrote: “Spencer is very likely to be quite convinced that this creator of his included some strong negative feedbacks into the way the clouds radiate and re-radiate heat etc. And that all he needs to do is find them.”
Wake up, Peter, he did! And they are real. Get up-to-date, man. Read the new data that are out there!
Cloud feedbacks have been shown by the recently published physical observations of Spencer et al. to be strongly negative, thereby validating the “infrared iris” hypothesis of Richard Lindzen and clearly refuting the IPCC climate model assumption of a strongly positive feedback from clouds, i.e. strong enough to raise the 2xCO2 climate sensitivity by 1.3C.
The crucial importance of this new discovery is that it shows that the 2xCO2 climate sensitivity of 3.2C, as previously assumed by IPCC models is grossly overstated, and that this should probably be in the range of 0.6 to 0.8C instead.
The truly good news coming out of this work is that we no longer have to worry about a major greenhouse warming of our climate by the year 2100.
The theoretical greenhouse warming from an increase of atmospheric CO2 from today’s 385 ppmv to a projected level of 560 ppmv by 2100 is 0.4C, using the radiative forcing estimates used by IPCC (Myhre et al.) and the greenhouse theory. This level of theoretical warming has now been confirmed by the physical observations of Spencer et al.
Rejoice, Peter!
And while you’re at it, thank the team led by Dr. Roy Spencer, who performed the physical observations that led to this significant scientific breakthrough in the knowledge of cloud feedbacks, which were described by IPCC as “the largest source of uncertainty” as little as two years ago when they first published the AR4 SPM 2007 report.
Spencer and his team of scientists have brought the world some truly good news for which we should all be thankful.
Regards,
Max
Hi Brute,
As sort of an outsider, I was cautiously optimistic about President Obama when he was first elected, even though there were those in Switzerland that were concerned that he might just be a smooth talking empty suit. He ran a fantastic campaign, but could he lead?
He definitely did “hit the ground running”. At first he appeared to be Mr. Action, that couldn’t get anything wrong. But in these first 50+ days it starts to look like others are really running the agenda and he is just “going along” or acting as the affable “super salesman” to sell the party agenda to the American people (who still seem to have a love affair with him, which may, however, be starting to crumble).
Then there are the blunders on AIG, the rushed through “spendulus” bill, the pork-laden budget, the “fair employment act” (or whatever misnomer this piece of antidemocratic pro-labor union legislation is called), the impending trade war with Mexico (to appease the Teamsters by forcing a few dozen Mexican trucks off US highways), the schoolboy bumbling of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the many cabinet appointees that had to withdraw, etc. Yes, it does appear to an outsider that the “Keystone Kops” are at work here. OK, the Bush administration had some foibles, too, but that is probably normal for any administration (it’s certainly no different, on a mini-scale, in Switzerland).
I truly hope President Obama can retake the leadership to take direct ownership for this whole process again, and to really concentrate on the key issues he needs to address to help the USA and the whole world economy get back on its feet, and not be side-tracked by “nice to do” or “nice to have” other issues until this has been done. According to the polls I’ve seen he still enjoys the goodwill of the American people, and if he can get his act together and stay focused he may turn out to be a successful President after all.
If he either fails to take back the leadership or lets himself get sidetracked from the main crucial issue at hand I’m afraid it is likely that he will fail, to the detriment of his nation and the whole world.
Just my thoughts, as a bit of an outsider who is watching this with great interest and some concern.
Regards,
Max
Hi Bobclive,
Referring to the 2008 Jones et al. study for China which you cited, you asked (5006):
“Does this mean that UHI over the 53 year period accounts for approx 0.53 degrees C or 40% of the total measured warming of 1.34C over the same 53 year period shown in that study?”
That’s the way I read it. The UHI effect was 40% of the observed temperature increase.
This checks fairly well with a study made by Ren et al. (which Barelysane cited in his post #4779).
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V11/N20/C1.php
The Ren et al. study covers the period 1961-2000. Over this 40-year period the authors found an average UHI contribution of 0.44C out of 1.16C total observed warming or around 38%.
The authors conclude, “it is obvious that, in the current regional average surface temperature series in north China, or probably in the country as a whole, there still remain large effects from urban warming” and “the contribution of urban warming to total annual mean surface air temperature change as estimated with the national basic/reference dataset reaches 37.9%.”
Max
Hi Peter,
The article cited by Brute in 5015 provides some good and easy reading. It’s not a formal scientific study, but it gives some good insight on what is going on right now with climate, solar activity and ENSO events, and how these have all changed significantly from the late 20th century to today.
Regards,
Max
Brute
Reading between the lines-and you seem a little reticent to express your opinion-you dont seem to like Obama :)
From the perspective from over the pond it was obvious from early on in his campaign that he was going to be the most socialist president you have ever elected (which is not saying much) and that can not be coincidental at this time in view of the mess the govt and the banks have made.
He seems to have little experience (or appetite) for actually looking at things carefully or making decisions, but he was voted in by a landslide.
As far as his views on AGW go, it is obvious he is influenced by those we believe have got the wrond end of the stick, but the number of world leaders that have actually read the subject in depth let alone understood what they are reading is very tiny.
All we can hope for is more open and objective debate that looks at the component parts of AGW a bit more rationally rather than emotionally. We can then expose those elements of it that are actually untrue (unprecedented ice loss or unprecedented temperatures) or those hypotheses that remain in the world of extreme conjecture, such as doubling CO2 causes a rise of up to 4.8C
TonyB
Peter Martin Reur 4978 to Max, in part:
Yes I think that the NSIDC have the situation in hand. Read it up decide for your self. etc,
YAWN.
And, Reur 4983 to JZ, in part:
It seems that you’ve managed to allow a second feline its liberty.
YAWN.
And Reur 4985 to Robin, in part:
Rational Argument? That’s a bit rich coming from you!
YAWN.
And Reur 4998 to Robin and JZ, in part:
It is interesting that the ‘ruling elites’ as you describe them are driven by a sense of guilt? I’m just wondering exactly who you might mean.
YAWN.
And Reur 5001 to JZ, in part:
I forgot to answer your question on your association of Darwinian Evolution with leftism.
YAWN.
And Reur 5010 to JZ, in part:
You may not be aware that Queenslanders aren’t always considered to be the sharpest knives in the drawer in Australia, and are also known for their conservatism. No dangerous nonsense about moving [the] clocks forward in summer here. Sydneysiders [and Mebournites etc] would say that it would be too difficult for us to adjust our digital watches.
Well yes to the first part, but for the remainder;
YAWN
And Reur 5013 to Max, in part:
You accused me of taking a cheap shot at Roy Spencer. You may disagree, but Id say a ‘cheap shot’ might be something like raising some minor misdemenour he might have committed as a young person or some sexual impropriety he might have been engaged in.
YAWN.
And Reur 5014 to Brute, in part:
You seem to be getting somewhat worked up about Socialism coming to America.
YAWN.
How about you Peter, get back on topic and respond to the scientific issues that have been raised with you even if they may not align with your dogma?
Hey Brute Reur 5016, showing a graphic from Icecap.
Wow that really does seem to reinforce the hypothesis of a ~60 year cycle, which I think was first muted by a couple of Russians, which I posted a while ago.
If you would like more on this past prognostication, I can dig it up.
Max,
You really need to resign from Lindzen’s and Spencer’s fan club.
The evidence for the negative feedback effect postulated by Lindzen is thin. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_hypothesis
Even if it did exist it would be only one feedback mechanism among many. It would still be quite likely that the overall feedback was positive.
If Spencer and el had something as important as they claim, shouldn’t they be writing it up as a proper paper rather than just a letter in GRL ?
When you look up prominent climate sceptic’s opinions on other matters it is interesting what turns up. I’ve mentioned Spencers views on creationism. Lindzen is still harping on the link between smoking and lung cancer. I seem to remember TonyB’s so called sea- level expert was of a similar opinion.
I’m just wondering if its just co-incidental that guys have very maverick type opinions?
Bob FJ 5023
If you look back through my comments here I have posted many comments, such as this on my 4975, normally aimed at Peter.
” I look forward to your graphs on antarctic sea ice and why we should be so concerned about arctic ice movement in that extremely brief snapshot from 1978. It would have started from a high point due to the previous cold years that started the global cooling scare (however exaggerated or not)
Go further back and the ice melts substantially every 60/80 years or so. I have posted the records of Bob Bartlett in the 20’s and 30’s The lead up to the Titanic, The Royal society expedition in 1817, The Hudson Bay company records, vast amounts of information on the Vikings. The 2000 year old civilisations found in the Arctic that couldn’t be sustained today.
Why are we concentrating on one hemisphere and one short period in time?”
History demonstrates that we have continually been this way before, its why many warmists refuse to discuss history, or like Dr Mann try to change it. At the very start of my involvement here I posed a question along the lines of;
“Its all happened many times before-someone needs to demonstrate why its different this time”.
No one has demonstrated this at all throughout this long thread. The only conclusion we can make is that climate changes naturally and CO2 is a very weak driver at best, and is overwhelmed by natural factors.
If anyone cam dispute this assertion or the 60/80 year cycle lets see the proof.
We seem to get distracted down many by ways by Peter, but surely the above is at the heart of the arguement?
TonyB