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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Peter Martin, you appear to have salivated on the following:
Brute in his 5319 gave an interesting article:
Carbon Communism; by Gregory Fegel, which I found interesting. (but will not comment)
Ooh gosh! What a surprise; you have managed to use this article to divert further away from topic and the Fegal article itself, into more obtuse political opinions and their semantics, rather than address the “inconvenient” scientific issues raised of you earlier.
Is there any chance that you could return to those shaky scientific claims of yours that have been questioned? (but unanswered by you)
Brute,
Its interesting that you should couch your anti-slavery argument in terms of ‘freedom of the individual’ vs the interests of the state.
The ‘individual’ in question during pre-abolistion days would have been the slave owner himself. The slave as an individual wasn’t a consideration. It was individual rights on one side vs a morality and political question on the other. Neither side of the argument would have referenced the interests of the state.
In all societies there is a clash between conservative interests and progressive considerations. Unlike those who argued for abolition of slavery in the 19th century, you’ve lined up with the conservatives in the 21st century.
Bob_FJ,
You’ve just woken up from your afternoon nap? Don’t worry yourself too much about the science. At your age, you’ll probably not be around to see the worst of climate change.
But I’ll be back to it shortly anyway.
Peter Martin WRT your 5301, I flicked through page 1 of your link, and had no interest to go past this following early opinion, in that “New Scientist” article.
So who is the author? Here we go: 25 February 2009; by Gaia Vince
You might be interested in this comment on the said Gaia:
Crank of the Week – February 23, 2009 – Gaia Vince:
http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=content/crank-week-february-23-2009-gaia-vince
Robin Guenier WRT your 5313;
In your carefully lucid essay, you concluded with:
Nope; you are not exaggerating, the whole situation is scary!
OK, since we are drifting off topic again, here are a couple of jokes, the first of which might be clearer if you have heard the New Zealand and South African accents
1) The scene is set, the night is cold, the campfire is burning and the stars twinkle in the dark night sky…
Three hang-glider pilots, one from Australia, one from South Africa and the other from New Zealand, are sitting round a campfire near Ayers Rock, each embroiled with the bravado for which they are famous.
A night of tall tales begins….
Kiven, the kiwi says, “I must be the meanest, toughest heng glider dude there us. Why, just the other day, I linded in a field and scared a crocodile thet got loose from the swamp. Et ate sux men before I wrestled ut to the ground weth my bare hends end beat ut’s bliddy ‘ed un.
Jerry from South Africa typically can’t stand to be bettered. “Well you guys, I lended orfter a 200 mile flight on a tiny treck, ind a fifteen foot Namibian desert snike slid out from under a rock and made a move for me. I grebbed thet borsted with my bare hinds and tore it’s head orf ind sucked the poison down in one gulp. Ind I’m still here today”.
Barry the Aussie remained silent, slowly poking the fire with his penis.
2) Quoting Peter Martin (5320):
How about adding a little free market economics into the mix? If the rich want to fly their helicopters they buy carbon credits off the bushmen you mentioned. At a price freely agreed by both. I’m sure you’ll have no objection to the right of individuals to trade that way.
Well well Peter, an article in the Telegraph today quoting none other than Morner-who you try to discredit by reference to his dowsing activities.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html
It would be nice to get back on track-there is plenty of material in the last few dozen posts.
Tonyb
TonyB,
So you read the Telegraph? Its got a good sports section. They manage to get the cricket and football results correct but not much else.
You’ve still not managed to find where you read that Arctic sea ice was back to 1978 (or was it 1980?) levels? Maybe you dreamt it ? Or just made it up ? You could have read it in the Daily Telegraph I suppose.
If you look back a few posts you’ll find graphs from Max and also myself which gives you the true picture.
TonyB,
I’ve just looked up Christopher Brooker. Is he related to our dear Andrew Bolt , do you know?
I’ve just looked his bio in Wiki, which incidentally, doesn’t mention anything about scientific qualifications:
“Via his long-running column in the UK’s Sunday Telegraph, Booker has claimed that man-made global warming was ‘disproved’ in 2008, that white asbestos is ‘chemically identical to talcum powder’ [it ceratinly isn’t -PM] and poses a ‘non-existent risk’ to human health, that ‘scientific evidence to support the belief that inhaling other people’s smoke causes cancer simply does not exist’, and that there is ‘no proof that BSE causes CJD in humans’. He has also defended the theory of Intelligent Design, maintaining that Darwinians ‘rest their case on nothing more than blind faith and unexamined a priori assumptions’
As Robin would say, I rest my case.
Peter 5332
If you remember I asked for your definition of where you thought we were with ice. I am not claiming the same, merely ‘something like’. Please post your references so we can see we are comparing like for like. Also look forward to your opinion of the UN material
I suggest you read some of Bookers excellent articles and not read so much wiki-you have started to believe it all.
The Telegraph does get things wrong sometimes, for instance they’ll be reporting that Australia beat England in the Ashes this summer. That can’t be right surely :)
Tonyb
Having served my penance…
Robin, your 5313:
I agree with subsequent posters; no, you do not exaggerate. Your views mesh nicely with what I have been trying—apparently unsuccessfully—to articulate for some time now, that so many of the ‘believers’ of AGW are believers because they WANT to believe in it. Many of these believers feel guilty for their success, and are troubled by the ‘unfairness’ of their own success vis-à-vis the relative failure of so many of the world’s poor. They see the squalor of the existence of so many millions, and need some outlet. AGW provides such an outlet. They mistakenly believe that there are poor people BECAUSE there are rich people. They think that a world in ‘balance’ would have no rich and no poor. They see the capitalist structures of the west as the tools of oppression of the world’s poor, and carbon taxes and other redistributionist tax and regulatory schemes as a way of equalizing wealth.
AGW and “saving the planet” are easy to explain and understand. You can easily identify who the ‘bad guys’ are, and it is easy for politicians to go home to their voters and tell them that they are “working hard for (the voters) to save the planet!”
As Warm Words illustrated for us, the proponents of AGW have for years now wanted to stop investigating the science of GHG and AGW and move on to “solutions”. You’ll also note that many, MANY of the news articles you see “about AGW” are really dealing only with a changing climate, not AGW theory. As I have said before, whether the ice caps are advancing or retreating is irrelevant to the discussion before us, as are discussions of rising seas (non-tidal… Hilarious work TonyB!), colder winters, and UHI. Allowing proponents to deflect the conversation off of GHG is helpful only to the proponents.
We’ve also discussed how the pro-AGW crowd has quickly tried to dismiss scientists who dispute the findings of the IPCC by arguing that these scientists cannot have an objective POV because their work was funded by energy companies. To this view I have answered right here in this forum that the scientists who provide scientific support to the AGW theory, used by power-hungry and often collectivist politicians to advance their agenda, are then repaid by these same politicians with grant money for more research in a quid pro quo relationship. Why isn’t the objectivity of the pro-AGW scientists—funded by politicians—also in question?
Robin, I would alter your thinking slightly and call your ‘secular environmentalism’ more of an environmental cult. For the well-being of the cult, the cult leaders don’t want their flocks to think for themselves, and for so many people, that suits them just fine.
I, for one, when the time comes to ‘drink the Kool-Aid’, will save my drinking for the local bar.
PS to BobFJ: Thanks for the write-up on the destruction of the fires. We had similar devastating fires here in San Diego (California) in 2003 and 2007. We lost over 3,400 homes, and thousands of acres burned, and in the 2007 fires, over 500,000 people were evacuated. But now when you drive through the burned out areas you almost can’t tell where the fires were. Despite the dire warnings from the AGW crowd, the Earth is a powerful thing and can heal itself quickly and easily
Peter 5333
You get more transparent by the day. Inexplicably you forgot to mention the very large warning at the top of the wiki bio on Christopher Booker;
“This article or section has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page.
Its neutrality is disputed. Tagged since January 2009.
Its factual accuracy is disputed. Tagged since January 2008”
Do you think we don’t check these things. As Robin would say, I rest MY case.
Look forward to your comments on the UN articles.
tonyb
TonyB,
Please post your references so we can see we are comparing like for like.
I’ve already done this. See 4953, 4957.
Max also produced a graph in 4968
JZ,
“the proponents of AGW have for years now wanted to stop investigating the science of GHG and AGW “
Why would they?
Where’s this little piece of misinformation come from?
TonyB,
It was me who flagged up the neutrality question on CB.
I felt that the article was too heavily weighted in his favour!
But seriously if you look at the references at the bottom of the article you’ll find that each of the points I raised regarding his opinions are referenced independently.
Are you saying I’ve misrepresented his views? If so, which ones?
Peter, your 5337:
How many quotes from the proponents of AGW do you want me to reference? How many times have we all heard (paraphrasing), “The debate is over. AGW is real, now we need to work on solutions.”
Come on, Peter, don’t be ridiculous…
Peter 5337
“On February 28, Arctic sea ice reached its maximum extent for the year, at 15.14 million square kilometers (5.85 million square miles). The maximum extent was 720,000 square kilometers (278,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average of 15.86 million square kilometers (6.12 million square miles)”
If within 5% is not ‘something like’ I don’t know what is. The ice measurements started at a high point in 1978 due to the preceding years of cold weather. Are you seriously arguing there is less ice now than in the MWP or even the 1930’s 1910, 1817 and the various periods recorded in the annals of the Hudson Bay co?
I am certainly not going to wade through dozens of points about the veracity or not of all of Bookers articles. This is another ad hom attack because you don’t like the message.
Look forward to your comments on the UN
Tonyb
Tonyb
And your list of scientists that Max asked you about last week………
Here’s a list of scientists Pete.
See how easily I came up with it!
http://www.cato.org/special/climatechange/alternate_version.html
Mar 30, 2009
More than 100 Scientists Rebuke Obama as ‘Simply Incorrect’ on Global Warming
Note: Many of the scientists are current and former UN IPCC reviewers and some have reversed their views on man-made warming and are now skeptical. Also note Nobel Laureate for Physics Dr. Ivar Giaever signed.
Tony B,
The year you quoted was 1978. The first reliable data we have is from 1979. The sea ice extent was 16.3 million sq km in Feb of that year.
The figure you gave was 15.14 million sq km for Feb 2009. A fall of 7% in 30 years. Not 5% as you claim.
Before you start to claim that it doesn’t sound like much: You might know that there is permanent darkness in the Arctic during the winter months. You might also have noticed also that greenhouses tend to work best when the sun is shining rather than at night.
Consequently we see the biggest reductions in Arctic sea ice in summer. In the last 30 years it has fallen at a rate of over 10% per decade.
Is there “less ice now than in the MWP or even the 1930’s 1910, 1817”. Certainly less than at any time in the last few hundred years. Even Mann’s critics agree when he says its warmer now than at any time in the last few hundred years.
On Scientific “Consensus”…………
http://www.truveo.com/Saturday-Night-Live-Theodoric-of-York/id/6076610
JZ,
The ‘debate may be over’ on many other scientific questions. Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Evolution. It doesn’t mean that anyone has ever wanted to ” stop investigating the science ” as you put it. You don’t seem to have any idea at all on the way scientists work.
And, yes, solutions need to be worked on too.
Brute,
The same goes for you. You’ve no real idea on how scientists work either.
We don’t do lists. Not on AGW. Not on Evolution.
We ain’t got no lists on nothing! (If you’ll pardon my bad English)
Peter Martin, WRT your 5333, you wrote first-up:
I see your swipe at the Oz personality Andrew Bolt, but I have to say that he is a journo, in whom atypically, I’m rather impressed by his rational approach to a wide variety of things. However, he is frequently dismissed and ridiculed by “the establishment sheep”, (such as you).
Did you see the recent ABC TV programme entitled Q & A (Question and Answer)?
The panel included Andrew Bolt, and sitting next to him the minister for climate change or weather, or something like that, (name forgotten).
The chairman was that personal-agenda-driven Tony Jones, whom I dislike for his commonly displayed aggressive lack of impartiality in interviews. (I keep meaning to write to the ABC). He introduced the panellists all in clear terms except for Bolt; for whom he announced that “Controversial journalist”!
Whilst I was looking forward to a ding-dong on climate change, although Jones implied he had huge piles of questions for the panel, to my great surprise, none of them relating to climate change were permitted.
Senator Conroy, minister of communications, on the topic of banning “porno et al” websites, took a swipe at Bolt, suggesting that perhaps a Bolt site might be an issue. (no mediation from the chair or anyone)
A new Tony Jones selected question in part brought up the topic of Afghanistan. The panel pontificated on this and Bolt was allowed to speak a few sensible words, which included the comment that he had actually visited Afghanistan twice to explore the place. However the other pontificators, apparently devoid of such experience, did not seem interested.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Andrew Bolt is very interested in climate change and has written and talked much on it.
I take it Peter that you disagree on his observations.
Would you care to highlight something from him which you believe to be WRONG?
Peter
I suggest if you have a problem with the sea ice data that you take it up with the National snow and ice data center from which it was directly quoted. It is 5%.
As for the sunlight, of course it is dark in the winter. The fact that the sea ice extent is lower in the summer than is average (on a very short timne scale) is due to many factors of which the sun is one.
If as Max asserts the solar activity has been much greater than for many years it will have a notable affect on temperatures during the long Arctic summer which it does.
I suggest you renew your debate on solar activity with Max on this point.
You are flogging a dead horse again Peter. Look forward to your UN comments
Tonyb
Peter: in a world where science was properly conducted, there would be no call for lists. But, in the strange world you inhabit, it seems that science is determined by claims of “consensus” and “overwhelming majority”. So it’s understandable that you’re asked to substantiate those claims. And, revealingly, you can’t. The truth, of course, is that “consensus” and “overwhelming majority” have nothing to do with science. Accept that and your problem will go away. But then of course you’ll have to show that you know how scientists really work. That means that you’ll have to name the published research that, based on empirical data, demonstrates clearly that, if we continue to add CO2 to the atmosphere, the consequence will be a dangerous increase in global temperature.
TonyB,
I don’t think we nee the NSIDC’s powerful computers to tell us that 100(1-15.14/16.3) = 7.12%
But anyway you ask about the UN. But what are you asking? Should the UN be the same as it is? Or Worse? Better? No UN? More UN’s?
I’d say that most people would like just one UN but that there is room for improvement. I’d like to see it operating on a more democratic basis. The power of veto doesn’t seem very democratic. I guess we’d all agree that the French shouldn’t have a veto. Or the Russians or Chinese. Right?
I’d say no-one should.