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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TonyN, please email me. I have a suggestion that might make your life easier.
Thanks!
JZ
Shell dumps wind, solar and hydro power in favour of biofuels
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/17/royaldutchshell-energy
JZ
Any helpful suggestions will be very welcome on the Admin thread, which is what it was originally set up for.
SPPI’s Monthly CO2 Report shows that throughout the eight years of George Bush’s presidency there has been a downtrend in global temperature at a rate equivalent to 2 F (1.1 C) per century. See how it is far below even the lowest IPCC projection.
Since Al Gore’s climate movie An Inconvenient Truth was launched in January 2005, global cooling has occurred at the equivalent of 11 F (6 C) per century. If this very rapid cooling were to continue, the Earth would be in an Ice Age by 2100.
The Formula That
Killed Wall Street
Bankers securitizing mortgages knew that their models were highly sensitive to house-price appreciation. If it ever turned negative on a national scale, a lot of bonds that had been rated triple-A, or risk-free, by copula-powered computer models would blow up. But no one was willing to stop the creation of CDOs, and the big investment banks happily kept on building more, drawing their correlation data from a period when real estate only went up.
Temperature goes up then down, house prices go up then down, dam those computer models.
TonyN,
Are you wanting to wind up this thread?
The Topic in question is : “Has Global Warming (Really) Stopped?” So I do admit that my last post on nuclear power, which you deleted, was off topic.
I think I’ve said all that I can possibly say as an answer to the above question. And if anything else is going to be classified as OT, then I guess that’s just about it.
Thanks for hosting the discussion.
Bye
PM
Hi JZ Smith,
Back in July (#403) I posted some tables showing carbon efficiencies of various countries, i.e. the efficiency of a nation’s economy to generate wealth per unit of fossil fuel carbon footprint (GDP divided by metric tons CO2 emitted).
I suggested that this could be a good indicator of how energy efficient (or carbon efficient) a nation’s economy really is. My argument was that currently published numbers (total or per capita CO2 per country) do not give a true indicator of how carbon efficient a nation’s economy really is, because they leave out the wealth or “standard of living” generated by that economy.
You came back (#405) with a very good suggestion to add a column showing population density, making the point that nations with lower population densities will have higher transportation distances and fuel consumption (and therefore generate more CO2) that nations with higher population densities.
A look at the statistics as well as the facts on the ground shows that this is a very valid point that should be part of the equation. It took me a while to look at all this, but I didn’t forget you, and your point definitely makes sense.
Switzerland, as a small example, has a fairly high population density (176 people per square kilometer) and, as a result, is able to build and operate efficiently a very good system of mass public transportation for people as well as goods (with the additional advantage that it can drive this system with cheap hydroelectric power). In Japan (population density of 339) this is even more the case. For the EU overall the population density is 108, and most countries have well-developed public transportation systems.
The USA, on the other hand, can only do this regionally, where local population densities are high, but nationally (with a population density of 31) the USA is unable to efficiently operate such a system and must rely on higher energy consuming motor vehicles. This explains why in the USA the percentage of total energy going for transportation including private motor vehicle use (33% of total) is much higher than in the EU (20%) or Japan (13%). Also, the long-haul trains are usually diesel driven, rather than electric, as in Europe and Japan.
Canada and Australia are even more extreme cases (both with a population density of only 3). One source I saw (data for 1998) indicated that 25% of Australia’s energy usage was for road transport and another 12% for private motor vehicle use, putting the total at 37%. A source I found says that the transportation sector in Canada represents 36% of the fossil fuel consumption. Data for other countries is sketchy or non-existent, so I did not add this to the table, but the trend and the impact on overall carbon efficiency of population density is clear to see.
The attached table shows the energy (carbon) efficiency and oil consumption of various countries, along with their population densities.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3426/3371750534_21b6db105a_b.jpg
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
There is still a great deal to be discussed on global warming, such as:
– why does it seem to have stopped for the past 8 or 10 years?
– how has it correlated with changes in atmospheic CO2?
– how has it correlated with changes in solar activity?
– how has it correlated with changes in ENSO patterns (El Nino La Nina trends), as well as longer term PDO and NAO cycles?
All of the above points can be discussed for the total long-term record, for the early 20th century warming period, for the mid-century cooling period, for the late 20th century warming period and for the current cooling period.
Only by doing this is some detail can we begin to have a better understanding of the various natural and anthropogenic factors that have driven our climate since the continuous global temperature records began in 1850, which will enable us to see what is likely to happen to our climate in the future under various scenarios of natural and anthropogenic forcing changes.
Some of this has already been done, you can say, with the extensive work cited in the latest IPCC report.
This is true, and the work cited by IPCC should be taken seriously.
The unfortunate part is that IPCC has limited its investigation to the anthropogenic forcing factors by assuming that the natural factors are insignificant by comparison.
This is a glaring omission leading to a glaring error in the IPCC forecasts for the future.
It is in this sense that I hope we can keep this very interesting thread going.
I fully agree with the way TonyN runs this thread. We have drifted too far off topic for too long, and his efforts to get us focused and back on track are positive.
There is still so much to discuss that is directly on topic, so we should all try to avoid too many side tracks as we have had in the recent past.
Religion has nothing to do with our topic and should not have been a topic of discussion, as it unfortunately became.
Politics are interesting, but they are only pertinent here if they are related in some fashion to the ongoing debate surrounding AGW (and there are plenty of politics that are on topic in that regard).
Just my thoughts.
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
In your #5052 you opined, “Yes, scientists are sceptical about lots of things. But not AGW unfortunately.”
Looks like you are a bit out of date with that opinion, Peter.
In April 2006, 65 scientists signed a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister pointing out that climate always changes and that it is impossible to distinguish between natural and human causes for climate change.
At the time of the IPCC Bali boondoggle in December 2007, over 100 scientists sent a letter to the UN Secretary General expressing their skepticism that AGW is a serious problem.
US Senator Inhofe has listed 650 scientists and meteorologists that are skeptical that AGW is a serious threat.
On an individual issue basis, Edward Wegman testified that the Mann hockey stick curve was based on flawed science and statistical methodology and therefore provided no evidence that the last decade of the 20th century was the warmest in 1,000 years or that 1998 was the warmest year (as still being claimed by IPCC); in the same report Wegman showed serious problems with the peer-review process used for the Mann study, which applies generally for climate science.
Another scientist who is skeptical that AGW is a serious threat is Hendrik Tennekes, who has challenged the validity of the GCM projections for the future.
Another is obviously Roy Spencer, of whom we have already spoken. His work on satellite temperature measurement and on cloud feedbacks with increased temperature have provided major breakthroughs in climate knowledge. He has gone on record several times that he does not believe AGW is a serious threat.
Yet another scientist skeptical that AGW is a serious threat is Sami Solanki, a solar scientist who has shown that climate has changed with solar activity over history, and that the latest warming has also followed this pattern.
Then there is Syun-Ichi Akasofu who has pointed out that until we know the impact of natural climate forcing over a longer period of time we can make no assumptions that climate changes of the past were caused by AGW or that AGW will cause future major changes.
Nir Shaviv is also one of the many scientists who do not believe AGW is a serious threat. Dhaviv believes (like Solanki) that we can explain a major portion of past climate change to solar factors and that AGW while real, plays only a minor role.
Richard Lindzen is another well-known and acclaimed climate scientist who has gone on record several times that he does not believe that AGW is a serious threat.
John Christy is another.
Then there is Chris Landsea, a specialist on tropical cyclones, who resigned when his findings were distorted in order to claim a link between AGW and hurricane activity; he has stated that there are no scientific studies demonstrating a link between AGW and hurricane frequency or intensity.
Patrick Michaels is another climate scientist who is extremely skeptical that AGW is a serious threat; he has testified before the U.S. Congress that climate models are unable to provide any meaningful forecasts for our future climate.
J. Fred Singer is also skeptical that AGW is a serious problem; he has shown from historical records and paleoclimate studies that our climate goes through warming and cooling cycles driven by the natural variations in the solar activity and that the effect of human greenhouse gases is small; he challenges the assumption that changes in atmospheric water (vapor, liquid droplets and ice crystals) will result in a positive feedback.
Claude Allegre is another distinguished scientist and environmentalist; he does not believe that AGW is a serious threat, but rather that the whole AGW story is exaggerated, the models are unable to establish a anthropogenic cause for climate changes and that natural climate forcings are ignored.
A surprising skeptic is Yuri Izrael, former deputy chairman of the IPCC, who has gone on record saying that there is no proven link between human activity and global warming; he does not believe that AGW is a great threat.
The late Reid Bryson is recognized by many as the father of scientific climatology; he was a firm believer that humans can indeed influence climate in ways that can result in both warming and cooling, but he believed that the current AGW movement exaggerated the impact with distorted science. He did not believe that AGW presented a serious threat and was ver critical of the so-called “scientific consensus” on AGW.
Tom Segalstad has shown that the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is only around 5 years, while the hypothetical results from climate models start off with the false assumption of a 50 to 200 year “lifetime” of CO2 in the atmosphere, leading to exaggerated warming forecasts for the future; he points out that there is not enough carbon in all the remaining fossil fuels on our planet to reach alarming levels of atmospheric CO2.
I could go on and on, but below is a list of some of the other scientists who are indeed skeptical of AGW.
Khabibullo Abdusamatov; Jarl Ahlbeck; Sallie Baliunas; Tim Ball; Robert Balling; Jack Barrett; Dave Barss; David Bellamy; Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen; Frits Böttcher; Paal Brekke; Adriaan Broere; Ian Byatt; Ian Castles; Ian Clarke; Paul Copper; Richard Courtney; Petr Chylek; (late) John Daly; Peter Dietze; David Douglass; Hugh Ellsaesser; John Emsley; Hans Erren; Robert Essenhigh; Chris Essex; Bob Foster; Chris de Freitas; Eigil Friis-Christensen; Bas van Geel; Lee Gerhard; Vincent Gray; William Gray; Kenneth Green; Timo Hämeranta; Tom Harris; Howard Hayden; David Henderson; Louis Hissink; Christopher Horner; Douglas Hoyt; Heinz Hug; Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso; Andrei Illarionov; Yuri Izrael; Albert Jacobs; Kees de Jager; Zbigniew Jaworowski; Hans Jelbring; Madhav Khandekar; Kirill Kondratyev; Douglas Leahey; Allan MacRae; Mikhel Mathieson; Stephen McIntyre; Ross McKitrick; Fred Michel; Asmunn Moene; Julian Morris; Thomas Moore; Tad Murty; William Kininmonth; Kirill Kondratyev; Salomon Kroonenberg; Hans Labohm; Knud Lassen; Nigel Lawson; David Legates; Marcel Leroux; Gerrit van der Lingen; Bjørn Lomborg; Nils-Axel Mörner; David Nowell; James O’Brien; Tim Patterson; Bob Pawley; Alan Peacock; Benny Peiser; Roger Pielke; Ian Plimer; Harry Priem; Paul Reiter; Colin Robinson; Art Robinson; Arthur Rörsch; Simon Rozendaal; Rob Scagel; Gary Sharp; Paavo Siitam; Frederick Seitz; John Shotsky; Robert Skidelsky; Carlo Stagnaro; Phillip Stott; Willie Soon; Henrik Svensmark; George Taylor; Lawrence Solomon; Dick Thoenes; Richard Tol; Jan Veizer; John Weissberger and David Wojick.
You may be able to “cherry-pick” one or the other name off of the above list and say “Aha! He’s not a ‘qualified’ scientist!” Or you may fall into the trap of claiming that one or the other has strange religious beliefs or is in the pay of big oil, but this is irrelevant and does not change the fact that there are many qualified scientists who do not support the hypothesis that AGW is a serious threat.
So your statement is incorrect that “scientists are sceptical about lots of things. But not AGW unfortunately.”
Regards,
Max
Max,
Tony N obviously thought that I’d drifted off topic with my suggestion that we should be more like the French. A big reason would be that their CO2 emissions per person are about 1/4 of those of the USA and, not much different for Australia either.
How tightly does Tony N want to define the “topic”? Strictly speaking it doesn’t include CO2 emissions either. TonyN could rationalsie the threads by amalgamating the AGW Debate with the NS continuation thread. There’s no need for two.
Does everyone make up their minds on the AGW issue purely on the merits of the science? I would argue not.
Are religion and politics relevant to the AGW debate? I would argue that they most certainly are. Most of those on your side have no real interest in the science. Didn’t TonyN say that he didn’t even bother to read the scientific discussions? What worries them are the political consequencies of accepting the scientific argument on AGW.
Yes you can argue that the exchange of anti- French jokes was OT. However, I must say I was quite shocked about that. It was an illuminating insight into the thinking of the USA far right.
I’m amused that at 11:39 pm on 20 March Peter says, “I think I’ve said all that I can possibly say … I guess that’s just about it. Thanks for hosting the discussion. Bye.” Good-bye, Peter. Then, 9 hours later (8:28 this morning), he’s back. Hello, Peter.
And he’s back with an constructive observation: “Does everyone make up their minds on the AGW issue purely on the merits of the science? I would argue not.” And I would agree – as I think would most contributors here.
Bob has made some suggestions here:
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=104#comment-13210
And I have replied here:
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=104#comment-13224
If anyone has anything they want to add, then please do so on the Admin thread and not on this one.
Pete,
I’m “shocked” at your selective moral outrage and hypocrisy. You seem to relish in denigrating and insulting the majority of the world’s populations as a group…….. describing them as “unenlightened” and obtuse, but are outraged about a few jokes?
How conveniently sanctimonious.
I suppose running down people who are spiritual is “Ok” nowadays but making jokes about a lack of military prowess is off limits? Do I have it straight now? I just want to be careful as I walk gingerly through the politically correct minefield.
Brief highlights of the report featuring over 400 international scientists:
Israel: Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has authored almost 70 peer-reviewed studies and won several awards. “First, temperature changes, as well as rates of temperature changes (both increase and decrease) of magnitudes similar to that reported by IPCC to have occurred since the Industrial revolution (about 0.8C in 150 years or even 0.4C in the last 35 years) have occurred in Earth’s climatic history. There’s nothing special about the recent rise!”
Russia: Russian scientist Dr. Oleg Sorochtin of the Institute of Oceanology at the Russian Academy of Sciences has authored more than 300 studies, nine books, and a 2006 paper titled “The Evolution and the Prediction of Global Climate Changes on Earth.” “Even if the concentration of ‘greenhouse gases’ double man would not perceive the temperature impact,” Sorochtin wrote. (Note: Name also sometimes translated to spell Sorokhtin)
Spain: Anton Uriarte, a professor of Physical Geography at the University of the Basque Country in Spain and author of a book on the paleoclimate, rejected man-made climate fears in 2007. “There’s no need to be worried. It’s very interesting to study [climate change], but there’s no need to be worried,” Uriate wrote.
Netherlands: Atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a scientific pioneer in the development of numerical weather prediction and former director of research at The Netherlands’ Royal National Meteorological Institute, and an internationally recognized expert in atmospheric boundary layer processes, “I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting – a six-meter sea level rise, fifteen times the IPCC number – entirely without merit,” Tennekes wrote. “I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached.”
Brazil: Chief Meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart of the MetSul Meteorologia Weather Center in Sao Leopoldo – Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil declared himself a skeptic. “The media is promoting an unprecedented hyping related to global warming. The media and many scientists are ignoring very important facts that point to a natural variation in the climate system as the cause of the recent global warming,” Hackbart wrote on May 30, 2007.
France: Climatologist Dr. Marcel Leroux, former professor at Université Jean Moulin and director of the Laboratory of Climatology, Risks, and Environment in Lyon, is a climate skeptic. Leroux wrote a 2005 book titled Global Warming – Myth or Reality? – The Erring Ways of Climatology. “Day after day, the same mantra – that ‘the Earth is warming up’ – is churned out in all its forms. As ‘the ice melts’ and ‘sea level rises,’ the Apocalypse looms ever nearer! Without realizing it, or perhaps without wishing to, the average citizen in bamboozled, lobotomized, lulled into mindless ac¬ceptance. … Non-believers in the greenhouse scenario are in the position of those long ago who doubted the existence of God … fortunately for them, the Inquisition is no longer with us!”
Norway: Geologist/Geochemist Dr. Tom V. Segalstad, a professor and head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo and formerly an expert reviewer with the UN IPCC: “It is a search for a mythical CO2 sink to explain an immeasurable CO2 lifetime to fit a hypothetical CO2 computer model that purports to show that an impossible amount of fossil fuel burning is heating the atmosphere. It is all a fiction.”
Finland: Dr. Boris Winterhalter, retired Senior Marine Researcher of the Geological Survey of Finland and former professor of marine geology at University of Helsinki, criticized the media for what he considered its alarming climate coverage. “The effect of solar winds on cosmic radiation has just recently been established and, furthermore, there seems to be a good correlation between cloudiness and variations in the intensity of cosmic radiation. Here we have a mechanism which is a far better explanation to variations in global climate than the attempts by IPCC to blame it all on anthropogenic input of greenhouse gases.”
Germany: Paleoclimate expert Augusto Mangini of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, criticized the UN IPCC summary. “I consider the part of the IPCC report, which I can really judge as an expert, i.e. the reconstruction of the paleoclimate, wrong,” Mangini noted in an April 5, 2007 article. He added: “The earth will not die.”
Canada: IPCC 2007 Expert Reviewer Madhav Khandekar, a Ph.D meteorologist, a scientist with the Natural Resources Stewardship Project who has over 45 years experience in climatology, meteorology and oceanography, and who has published nearly 100 papers, reports, book reviews and a book on Ocean Wave Analysis and Modeling: “To my dismay, IPCC authors ignored all my comments and suggestions for major changes in the FOD (First Order Draft) and sent me the SOD (Second Order Draft) with essentially the same text as the FOD. None of the authors of the chapter bothered to directly communicate with me (or with other expert reviewers with whom I communicate on a regular basis) on many issues that were raised in my review. This is not an acceptable scientific review process.”
Czech Republic: Czech-born U.S. climatologist Dr. George Kukla, a research scientist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, expressed climate skepticism in 2007. “The only thing to worry about is the damage that can be done by worrying. Why are some scientists worried? Perhaps because they feel that to stop worrying may mean to stop being paid,” Kukla told Gelf Magazine on April 24, 2007.
India: One of India’s leading geologists, B.P. Radhakrishna, President of the Geological Society of India, expressed climate skepticism in 2007. “We appear to be overplaying this global warming issue as global warming is nothing new. It has happened in the past, not once but several times, giving rise to glacial-interglacial cycles.”
USA: Climatologist Robert Durrenberger, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, and one of the climatologists who gathered at Woods Hole to review the National Climate Program Plan in July, 1979: “Al Gore brought me back to the battle and prompted me to do renewed research in the field of climatology. And because of all the misinformation that Gore and his army have been spreading about climate change I have decided that ‘real’ climatologists should try to help the public understand the nature of the problem.”
Italy: Internationally renowned scientist Dr. Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists and a retired Professor of Advanced Physics at the University of Bologna in Italy, who has published over 800 scientific papers: “Significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming.”
New Zealand: IPCC reviewer and climate researcher and scientist Dr. Vincent Gray, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports going back to 1990 and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of “Climate Change 2001: “The [IPCC] ‘Summary for Policymakers’ might get a few readers, but the main purpose of the report is to provide a spurious scientific backup for the absurd claims of the worldwide environmentalist lobby that it has been established scientifically that increases in carbon dioxide are harmful to the climate. It just does not matter that this ain’t so.”
South Africa: Dr. Kelvin Kemm, formerly a scientist at South Africa’s Atomic Energy Corporation who holds degrees in nuclear physics and mathematics: “The global-warming mania continues with more and more hype and less and less thinking. With religious zeal, people look for issues or events to blame on global warming.”
Poland: Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, Chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw: “We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire theory of man-made global warming—with its repercussions in science, and its important consequences for politics and the global economy—is based on ice core studies that provided a false picture of the atmospheric CO2 levels.”
Australia: Prize-wining Geologist Dr. Ian Plimer, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide in Australia: “There is new work emerging even in the last few weeks that shows we can have a very close correlation between the temperatures of the Earth and supernova and solar radiation.”
Britain: Dr. Richard Courtney, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a UK-based climate and atmospheric science consultant: “To date, no convincing evidence for AGW (anthropogenic global warming) has been discovered. And recent global climate behavior is not consistent with AGW model predictions.”
China: Chinese Scientists Say C02 Impact on Warming May Be ‘Excessively Exaggerated’ – Scientists Lin Zhen-Shan’s and Sun Xian’s 2007 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics: “Although the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated.” Their study asserted that “it is high time to reconsider the trend of global climate change.”
Denmark: Space physicist Dr. Eigil Friis-Christensen is the director of the Danish National Space Centre, a member of the space research advisory committee of the Swedish National Space Board, a member of a NASA working group, and a member of the European Space Agency who has authored or co-authored around 100 peer-reviewed papers and chairs the Institute of Space Physics: “The sun is the source of the energy that causes the motion of the atmosphere and thereby controls weather and climate. Any change in the energy from the sun received at the Earth’s surface will therefore affect climate.”
Belgium: Climate scientist Luc Debontridder of the Belgium Weather Institute’s Royal Meteorological Institute (RMI) co-authored a study in August 2007 which dismissed a decisive role of CO2 in global warming: “CO2 is not the big bogeyman of climate change and global warming. “Not CO2, but water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. It is responsible for at least 75 % of the greenhouse effect. This is a simple scientific fact, but Al Gore’s movie has hyped CO2 so much that nobody seems to take note of it.”
Sweden: Geologist Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, professor emeritus of the Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology at Stockholm University, critiqued the Associated Press for hyping promoting climate fears in 2007. “Another of these hysterical views of our climate. Newspapers should think about the damage they are doing to many persons, particularly young kids, by spreading the exaggerated views of a human impact on climate.”
USA: Dr. David Wojick is a UN IPCC expert reviewer, who earned his PhD in Philosophy of Science and co-founded the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie-Mellon University: “In point of fact, the hypothesis that solar variability and not human activity is warming the oceans goes a long way to explain the puzzling idea that the Earth’s surface may be warming while the atmosphere is not. The GHG (greenhouse gas) hypothesis does not do this.” Wojick added: “The public is not well served by this constant drumbeat of false alarms fed by computer models manipulated by advocates.”
TonyN,
By the way, I was out of line…..I apologize. You have set down guidelines and I overstepped them.
I’d forgotten that there are people that may not be participating in this discussion but may be simply viewing the comments……people that wouldn’t understand the sarcasm and the personalities that make up the clique.
We’ve become such a small, tight, group that I sometimes forget that this isn’t our own private, personal “bar room” discussion.
Brute: I was amused by your comment that “We’ve become such a small, tight, group that I sometimes forget that this isn’t our own private, personal “bar room” discussion“. Do you remember that, back in January 2008, you said, “Guy’s (and Gals) it’s been fun. I almost feel like I know some of you personally. I can’t help but imagine if we all were sitting in a bar, (or pub if you will), having this discussion over a cold beer, (or room temperature beer as you do there?) …“?
And we’re still in there -14 months later. Maybe we need to get out more. Mrs Guenier who’s in the garden expected me to help her would wholeheartedly agree!
PS: I also see that the day before your comment, I said “This is my last contribution to this thread“. So Peter’s not the only one to leave us and return immediately. I think addiction may be the right term for this behaviour.
The Ocean Really is Cooling
THERE are 3,000 free-drifting buoys in the world’s ocean; first deployed in the year 2000 they allow continuous monitoring of the temperature, salinity, and velocity of the upper ocean.
There has though been some difficulty in interpreting the data from these buoys. Initial signs of cooling were dismissed as due to technical errors subsequently corrected based on a small sample of the 3,000 buoys known as profiling floats.
Craig Loehle has analysed the data from only the profiling floats for ocean heat content from 2003 to 2008. In a paper recently published in the journal Energy and Environment he has concluded that there has been ocean cooling over this period.
This graphic is from figure 1 of the technical paper and shows the decline in ocean heat content (x1022J) smoothed with a 1-2-1 filter.
Dr Loehle’s findings are consistent with satellite and surface instrumental records that do not showing a warming trend over recent years.
Re: 5089, Brute
Peace! And actually you’re right about people who read but don’t comment. There are quite a lot of hits on this thread from search engines.
Robin,
Is it simply me or would you just move? I wouldn’t live anywhere that was only 6 feet above sea level……just seems like a bad idea, especially on a tiny atoll surrounded by miles and miles of nothing but ocean. Next thing you know, a hurricane will wipe the place out and they’ll want international aid.
I mean seriously, someone is going to have to clue these people in that they are living in a dangerous place. It goes back to a comment I made previously about being responsible for one’s own decisions and applying a modicum of common sense to the situation………
Reminds me of a missionary trip to Haiti through my church………Flew a planeload of chickens down to a village on our dime…..set up a chicken breeding/egg farm for the locals.
Returned the following year…..no chickens….”What happened to the chickens?” I asked.
Answer: We ate them all.
Different village…..delivered a cargo ship full of building materials. What was left over (after much of it was stolen), we used to build houses. Following year, the houses are gone and the people are living outside again.
What happened?
Answer: We burned the houses as firewood, (as opposed to walking 200 yards to the forest).
Would you like to hear the story about the engineering solution that we came up with regarding the village that needed water piped in to keep the women from walking 4 miles up, (and back), a mountain to get fresh water?
Despite popular opinion and calls to action, the Maldives are not being overrun by sea level rise
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/despite-popular-opinion-and-calls-to-action-the-maldives-is-not-being-overrun-by-sea-level-rise/#more-6338
Hi Peter,
There you go again (5085) making silly, unfounded statements, “Most of those on your side have no real interest in the science.”
I’d say that all of those that have been “on my side” in this debate here on TonyN’s site have shown a very “real interest in the science”.
It is precisely that interest that got me to look at the global warming issue several years back: are the dangers real, is the science well-founded and robust, are there omissions, exaggerations or outright errors in the hypotheses made and conclusions reached?
So I started checking.
To my surprise I found a lot of hype and exaggeration, but very little sound scientific evidence that global warming is indeed happening at anything near an alarming rate as a result of human CO2 emissions. The scientific validation of the hypothesis simply wasn’t there and many observations actually spoke against it.
The more I checked into the details, the more rationally skeptical I became of the science supporting the “potentially disastrous AGW hypothesis”.
Then, just as the warming trend seemed to have ended, the cries of alarmists, such as James E. Hansen and Al Gore, became shriller and more hysterical, to the point that they became ludicrous. Scientific principles were being bent completely out of shape to “prove” that a potential disaster was lurking, hidden from detection, but waiting to fry us with a vengeance. Fear mongering (such as 6-meter sea level inundations) began running rampant to get public and political acceptance for the proposed tax measures. The “dangerous” level of CO2 was revised downward from the laughable 450 ppm to an absurd 350 ppm (which we have already exceeded, without any evidence of disaster). “Science” was, indeed, being “bastardized” to sell a political agenda.
It angers me when I see “science” being grossly misused to frighten people into supporting a political move. When a politician, like Al Gore, does this, I can shrug my shoulders and say, “well, that’s what politicians do” (Mencken). But when a supposedly serious climate scientist on taxpayer payroll, like Hansen, stoops to this level it is unacceptable.
Yes, I have a “real interest in the science”, and I have observed that the other contributors on this site also have.
Most of us do not agree on many things and we come from different backgrounds and professions, from (mostly) English-speaking nations of this world, and some of us are more interested in the political/policy aspects and others in the more technical/scientific questions, but I believe you will have to agree that we ALL have demonstrated a very “real interest in the science” behind the current AGW scare.
So I have shown here that your statement is basically false.
BTW, I believe that you, too, have a “real interest in the science”, but that you are prone to accepting “consensus” opinions as absolute (because they come from “2,500 scientists”), particularly if they reinforce your own personal beliefs, without subjecting them to a rationally skeptical burden of proof beforehand, as I am prone to do.
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
In your 5085 you asked the thought-provoking question, “Are religion and politics relevant to the AGW debate?” And then you added your opinion, “What worries them [those who question the “consensus” AGW view?] are the political consequencies of accepting the scientific argument on AGW.”
I would say that politics are directly intertwoven with the whole AGW story. It was actually borne by politics: the setup of IPCC by the UN to “investigate potentially negative human influence on climate”. It is being kept alive by massive injections of tax-payer money by politicians. Its whole aim is to provide scientific “justification” for a political move of levying some sort of massive carbon tax on the inhabitants of this world, in order to give politicians obscene amounts of taxpayer monetto shuffle around.
So yes, it has always been directly connected “up to its eyeballs” with politics.
The connection with religion is less obvious.
Yes, there may be those who see the whole issue in a quasi-religious morality play between good (pristine Mother Earth or an Earth-goddess figure) and evil (greedy and, more lately, capitalistic industrial man). So this could be interpreted as a link with religion. But, there again, anti-capitalist socialistic potitical ideology also plays a role.
Another link (to which you allude) is to various religious fundamentalsits of creationist movements, etc. who may feel that an almightly God is in control of our planet through naturally occuring changes, and not human CO2 emissions.
But I would submit that the religious tie to the debate is coincidental and secondary, while the political link is direct and primary.
In that sense I would support TonyN’s approach of allowing a political discussion (as these relate to the main topic of AGW), but to screen out discussions of the religious beliefs of individuals, particularly where these have no direct bearing on the main topic.
As to your second statement I could add that those who do not accept the premise of AGW being a great threat are no more worried (or concerned) about “the political consequences of accepting the scientific argument on AGW” than AGW proponents are worried (or concerned) about the political consequences of refuting the scientific argument on AGW”, or of replacing it with another, more scientifically valid, hypothesis which essentially throws AGW out of the window as a serious concern.
“Horses for courses”, to quote and East-end Londoner friend.
Regards,
Max
Hi Brute,
The article you cited gives a good update on what is going on in the Maldives (i.e. no significant rise in sea level,
An older Australian study on the islands of the South Pacific can be seen here:
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/carvingout/issues/sealevel.htm
Eleven monitoring stations measured sea levels across the Pacific Basin, in Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. The study covered the period 1994-2000.
Of these, only one location (Tonga) showed a major rise in sea level over a six-year measurement period. Five locations (Tuvalu, Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa, Solomon Islands) showed a major sinking of sea level while the remaining four showed only minor change or none at all (Vanuatu, Cook Islands, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea).
So much for the “endangered islands of the South Pacific”! They are no more in danger that the Maldives, just south of India, covered in the article you cited.
As Professor Nils-Axel Mörner has pointed out, these islands are not doomed to being inundated due to rising sea levels caused by AGW. It’s “NONSENSE” (as he put it).
Regards,
Max
Max,
I was just looking at your list of names in your 5084. I noticed Nigel Lawson, who was Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor in the 80’s. Is he a scientist? I thought Mrs T was one of the few UK politicians to have a science degree?
Anyway it would be interesting to see what scientific publications any of them have ever written. I remember you quoting Willie Soon on his solar work. Any others?
Robin.
You seem surprised that I would argue that not everyone makes up their minds , on the AGW case, on the merit of the science. But how can they? Unless they have had a scientific education they just can’t.
Everyone does this to some, or a large extent, on all scientific issues. For instance: Do I believe that CFC’s damage the ozone layer? Yes. I do. Even though I have never looked at the chemistry behind it and, without looking it up on the net, couldn’t begin to explain why it was a problem.
And, yes, that applies to those who accept the scientific consensus on AGW just as much as to those who would argue that it is a hoax.
So, if we agree it can’t be intrinsic acceptance and/or doubts on the science itself, can we also agree on just what does divide the two groups?
Hi Peter,
From your 5098 it is apparent that you fell directly into the trap! I purposely left Lawson’s name on the list I downloaded to see if you would “cherry-pick” this name with the “aha!” remark I predicted you would make.
So, out of a long list you picked exactly this name to try to invalidate the whole list and my prediction of your behavior was validated.
Thanks. It was a psycholoical test that worked.
As for publications by these many scientists, I believe we have already discussed some studies by some of these scientists on this site.
I recall that we discussed the published work of Solanki (solar), Segalstad (CO2 residence time, etc.), Ahlbeck (CO2 cycle and ocean absorption), Spencer (cloud feedbacks), Shaviv (solar), Lindzen (CO2 impact on temperature, clouds/water vapor), and many more on that list, so I take it that your question was more of a blague than a serious query based on a memory lapse on your part.
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
Now that we have established that there are many serious scientists that are skeptical of the premise that AGW is a serious threat (as I have demonstrated to you), are you ready to retract your obviously incorrect remark from #5052: “scientists are sceptical about lots of things. But not AGW unfortunately.”
I think it’s about time for you to agree that your statement was wrong and retract it. Some scientists are, indeed skeptical about AGW, as the facts have shown.
Regards,
Max