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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This article today from NASA on sun spot activity is very interesting.
The graph looks suspiciously similar to the temp anomaly for the same period. Must be a coincidence.
JZ,
It looks like you might have said something sensible at last!
Yes the sun has been quieter in the last few years which has meant that the earth’s temperature is slightly less than it would otherwise be.
This is what NASA/GISS said in its 2007 summation:
The solar minimum forcing is thus about 0.15 W/m2 relative to the mean solar forcing. For comparison, the human-made GHG climate forcing is now increasing at a rate of about 0.3 W/m2 per decade (Hansen & Sato 2004). If the sun were to remain “stuck” in its present minimum for several decades, as has been suggested in analogy to the solar Maunder Minimum of the seventeenth century, that negative forcing would be balanced by a 5-year increase of GHGs.
They are saying that the current solar minimum is having the same effect as 5 years less GHG emissisons ( at the current rate). I seem to remember reading somewhere else a figure of ten years being claimed. But, whatever the exact figure, its just a temporary respite to a continued long term problem, even if the sun were to stay stuck in its present state for a while longer yet. It won’t stay stuck for ever. That’s for sure.
Good to see that you are quoting Nasa instead of the rubbish contrarian websites that we often see referenced on this thread.
TonyB,
The NSIDC do a great job, together with NASA, NOAA and more University departments. There’s lots of great science, coming out of America all the time. Its something that all Americans should be proud of. and no I don’t mean Lindzen, Spencer or the creationist nonsense that also emanates from there.
Referring to their work as a scam or a hoax is just disgraceful.
So, Tony, if you are really agreeing with NSIDC for a change then that’s good. For a moment there, I must confess, I was thinking that you might have been more interested in twisting their figures.
BTW. You keep going on about the UN. I can’t answer the question unless I know what it is.
Peter, once again, you just don’t get it, do you?
The whole point is the irony of this article, but like is so often the case, you missed it! Let me explain: First, they author describes very low solar activity for the last 12 years, in line with what has been discussed on this thread many times, that solar activity is much better correlated to the global temperature anomaly than is GHG. He doesn’t say that part, of course, but the facts of the article—the actual data—show a close correlation, to my eye, anyway, to the drop in GTA.
Read the article again, Peter. Only one line that I can see about “global warming”, and that an unsubstantiated bit: “The changes so far are not enough to reverse the course of global warming…” No references at all as to why that statement was made. Just a nod, I’m sure, to the AGW crowd’s ‘consensus’ view on GHG and AGW. The author wouldn’t want to get ostracized at the next cocktail party.
Peter, again the point you’ve missed is that this appeared at all in a NASA release. It’s clear that they cannot hide the data, so they try to spin it like it has essentially no effect at all on “climate change”.
But then there are passages like this:
This is just more evidence to me that solar activity is the likely cause of most if not all of the warming we’ve seen until the end of the last century.
Looks like NSIDC have not yet corrected the December/January/February Arctic sea ice figures for the 500,000 sq.km. missing ice. They still report the same figures as they did before the error was discovered over a month ago. Some things take time, I guess.
JZ,
I think it might be you that doesn’t get it.
For a start, it seems I need to just explain to you that the phrase ‘a 12-year low in solar irradiance’ doesn’t mean that the author is “describing very low solar activity for the last 12 years” as you’ve put it. It means that its lower now that it has been for the last 12 years.
Spot the difference?
When I was a 12 year old kid we used to have to read passages of English, just like this one, and comprehend what they actually meant. That was is just a normal public sector school BTW, before you start accusing me of elistism.
It may seem to be ‘more evidence to you that solar activity…’ etc etc, but that’s only because you’ve misunderstood what the author is saying.
My teacher would have put a big red pen through such a mistake and I would have had to rewrite it in my own time.
Max, WRT your 5380 , where you wrote:
It’s good to see you back Max, and as a sock-puppet posing for you, whist you were away, I can now retire back into lurking mode.
I find that any discussion with Peter Martin is somewhat like banging one’s head against a brick wall, or removing an eel from the hook, or nailing jelly to wall, or pouring water onto a duck’s back. (as various contributors here have variously commented)
All the best Max, with your outstanding patience/tolerance towards PM.
Regards, Proxymax
Hi Peter,
Not to belabor a point, but just to correct some basic flaws in your misleading “virtual” temperature curve (5236) before innocent lurkers start to give it any credence.
First, you have “cherry picked” a small 30-year segment of the record, coincidentally the segment with the highest rate of temperature increase (1976-2005), since the even higher rise from 1910 to 1944..
In actual fact, this small segment showed a rate of increase of 0.17C per decade, which you “rounded up” to 0.2C per decade (as IPCC also did).
Then, even more irrationally, you extrapolated the upswing of a sine curve (a basically absurd thing to do) rather than extrapolating the underlying slope of the long term trend.
This results in an erroneous extrapolated warming rate of 5 times the actually observed warming rate (0.2C per decade as opposed to the actual rate of 0.04C per decade).
This is exactly the same sort of agenda driven junk science used by IPCC in projecting alarming sea level rise, when in fact there is none.
For a graphical presentation of your errors see chart below.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3185/3408936050_3ebc0ea888_b.jpg
Peter, you’ve got to learn to stick with facts, rather than just making up “fantasy” numbers, as IPCC does in its “junk science” reports. It would be helpful if you would try to be a bit more factual rather than getting lost in flights of fancy as you did in your 5236.
Regards,
Max
Peter Martin, Reur 5366 , in which you wrote in part:
I have read your post several times, and unless I’ve been confused by ambiguities, I seem to see some internal contradictions in what you say.
Rather than me do an autopsy now, is there any chance you could review what you wrote and perhaps explain it better?
Question to Robin, Tony, Tony, Brute, Max, Barelysane, JZ, and any less regular contributors and lurkers; Is it me? or do you also wonder what PM was rambling on about?
Hi Proxymax,
Thanks for kind words. Have followed your exchange with Peter with interest.
At the risk of re-awakening Peter’s somewhat paranoid suspicion of “sockpuppetry” let me say that I hope you do not decide to “retire back into lurking mode”. Your contributions are very much to the point.
Your banging the head against the wall analogy is spot on. Peter is a firm “believer” in the premise that “AGW is a serious threat”, even though he frequently has difficulty basing his case on sound science. But he is willing to debate his case, rather than simply falling into the trap of ad hom attacks or hiding behind the “a consensus of 2,500 mainstream scientists can’t be wrong” argument as many AGW believers do, so it is interesting to debate the open scientific issues with him.
His main weakness (in my opinion) is a tendency to drift away from the topic of discussion to irrelevant discussions surrounding religious or unrelated political issues, particularly when the debate on the scientific facts does not seem to be going too well for him.
It looks like you did very well in your exchange with him. Hope to read more from you.
Regards,
Max
Max
As you can see from Peter’s somewhat grudging apology to me in 5378 he has been attempting his usual diversionary tactics of not answering questions whilst trying to parse a different point in the meantime. (I suppose we’d be disappointed if he did anything else-he is a national treasure)
If you have the stamina to look back you will see I was posing two questions
The first concerned the latest UN document which seems to tie in with Agenda 21 and the sage 21 indoctrination in our schools. It appears that through the hobgoblin of climate change the UN -via the IPCC- are seeking to create a bigger role for themselves and I asked for his opinion.
The body behind it is unelected but have a ‘noble’ cause (climate change) so does that make it better than an unelected body promoting an agenda who don’t (in Peters eyes) have a noble cause?
The other subject was the usual ‘how does doubling co2 cause catstrophic warming and can we have the A to Z.’ Usual stuff.
Anyway welcome back. I am off to Switzerland myself. Back Mid month. Good luck
Ps. For not swearing at Peter during the long and fruitless exchange above I have received the good news direct from the Pope that I have been beatified. However, as I am not dead nor a Roman Catholic I am not sure I am qualified for the honour (although I think I deserve it)
(Saint) Tonyb.
PeterM and JZ Smith
I can’t help being a bit amused by Peter’s rationalizations to downplay the solar impact on global warming.
As I pointed out earlier, several solar scientists have told us (a) that the high level of solar activity in the 20th century was unusually high (for at least the past 11,000 years) and (b) that this high level of solar activity contributed around 0.35C to the overall observed 0.65C warming over the 20th century.
This solar maximum has now been replaced by a period of unusually low solar activity, at the same time as temperatures are dropping. NASA appears to believe that this is only a brief temporary interlude while many solar scientists believe that this low solar activity will continue for a few decades, bringing with it a continuation of the current cooling trend.
The above facts are a bit disconcerting for AGW believers such as Peter (even though they should actually be good news) as they raise serious doubts about the importance of human CO2 as a driver of our climate.
The NASA solar scientists are walking a thin line here. On one hand, they cannot ignore the actual facts, yet they have to word their findings such that the AGW crowd (within NASA and elsewhere) are not offended.
This is the problem when “science” is used as the justification for a multi-billion dollar political taxation agenda and the same politicians provide the billions of dollars of taxpayer paid funding for the scientists involved in order to get this justification for their agenda.
Follow the money trail.
Regards,
Max
Max
Hi TonyB,
Congratulations on your beatification.
While I am not there at present, I hear that Switzerland is still unseasonally cold (due to AGW, I am sure).
With this in mind you should watch out for your halo shrinking (due to thermal contraction), resulting in severe migraine headache. A loose fitting fur-lined cap that covers both the halo and the ears might help you avoid this problem.
Have a good trip.
Regards,
Max
I was thinking about JZ’s use of the word ‘irony’ in his 5379. My first reaction was that it was totally incorrect, as it often is in common usage.
For instance there is a well known song by Alana Morrisette in which she repeatedly asks the question “isn’t it ironic?” And repeatedly the correct answer is “No it isn’t”. It might be be unfortunate to have rain on your wedding day, for example, but it isn’t ironic.
Irony can have several subtle shades of meaning, and one is when the results of an action are the opposite to those intended.
In the case of the NASA article, I’m quite sure that the author would have hoped to have increased the scientific knowledge of anyone reading it. However it happened to catch the eye of JZ, who for whatever reason, came with the impression that he was reading evidence that the main cause of global warming in the last fifty years was changing solar activity. So yes, but in a way he didn’t really mean, JZ was right after all in his use of the word irony.
Similarly, I must confess to a slight tone of sarcasm in my last post to TonyB. Sarcasm itself can often be mistaken for irony. But if Tony failed to pick that up and came away with the wrong impression that I was apologising to him, then that can be described as ironic too.
Peter
The British invented irony and you obviously failed to see it in my post 5386. You apologise??!!
Anyway, I am sure you will enjoy crossing swords with Max again and I think you must realise we all enjoy debating with you (until you go off at too much of a tangent for too long)
Best regards to everyone. Am going now to catch the plane. Sorry, I obviously meant to start our cycle trip to Switzerland.
Tonyb
You might all like to take a look at this graph from the Nasa link which JZ quoted with approval:
Now what I can’t quite understand is why, if global warming is thought to be more influenced by the sun than other factors, global temperatures are measurably warmer now than they were in the mid 70s, but the TSI is lower?
Any suggestions?
Max,
I’m happy to discuss 11-13 year solar cycles. You can see them in the TSI figures and by counting sunspot activity. But where’s the evidence for 30 year, or other long term, cycles? There may be longer term changes to the TSI but there is no evidence that they are periodic.
Whereas we do know that the 11-13 year cycle are periodic. Which means that we know too that any benefits which we may currently be experiencing due to the deep solar minimum will be temporary.
I’ve been wondering about that for months……
Bob_FJ,
You wrote “is there any chance you could review what you wrote and perhaps explain it better?”
I was questioning your assumption that ‘ordinary people’ could predict the crash which was coming but the ‘experts’ couldn’t.
I predicted it but I’m not ordinary :-)
Most of the ‘ordinary’ people I know, disagreed with me and were keen to persuade me to take advantages of tax breaks for superannuation, property and stock market purchases etc, even to the extent of borrowing large sums of money to do it. Most people I know seem happier to lose money than pay taxes on money they’ve earned. I’ve never really understood that mentality.
Ordinary people, in the main, have thought for a long time that property and share prices always rise, or at least they did up to a couple of years ago.
The reason for all this is that the media generally would present the arguments of the large financial institutions and real estate agents, via their hirelings, as ‘expert’ opinion. It wasn’t so much expert as what they wished everyone to believe. Did they really believe all this stuff about ‘soft landings’?
If the media had wanted real expert opinion they would have gone to the universities rather than some spokesman who’d been paid for by Citibank. I don’t just mean those on the political left, even though they do have a good track record of predicting crises of capitalism. So good that they’re sometimes accused of predicting five out of the last three !
But there’s been plenty of warnings from those on the other end of the political spectrum too. If the media had taken the trouble to interview more economists like Nouriel Roubini, Andrew Kliman, Peter Schiff and Michael Hudson, before the crash, rather than after, perhaps more ordinary people would have seen it coming.
Peter Martin wrote in part in his 5393
I find this to be rather IRONIC, but since it is well past midnight here, perhaps others could avoid yawning and indicate to PM what you might think. I can retire, smiling.
Just back after a few gloriously sunny spring days in Devon, so if anything has been aimed at me since last weekend please try a gain, if you think that it’s worth the effort.
Hi Peter,
To paraphrase your 5391 and put it into proper perspective:
Now what I can’t quite understand is why, if global warming is thought to be more influenced by human CO2 emissions than other factors, the rate of global warming is measurably lower now (in fact it’s cooling) than it was in the 1990s, but the atmospheric CO2 content is higher?
What I also can’t quite understand is why, if global warming is thought to be more influenced by human CO2 emissions than other factors, the rate of global warming was measurably cooler over the period from 1944 to 1976 (it actually cooled) than it was over the period from 1910 to 1944, but the increase in atmospheric CO2 content was significantly higher?
Another thing I can’t quite understand is why, if global warming is thought to be more influenced by human CO2 emissions than other factors, the rate of global warming was measurably higher over the period from 1910 to 1944 than it was over the following period from 1944 to 1976 when it actually cooled, but the increase in atmospheric CO2 content was significantly lower?
Peter, I believe that the “take home” from the above (plus from your 5391) is that short term “blips” in the record are less meaningful than the longer-term view.
Over the 20th century solar activity reached an all-time high level not seen for several thousands of years, contributing a bit more than half of the observed warming according to solar scientists.
This high level of activity has now stopped. So has global warming, it appears, but again that is just a short term “blip”.
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
To your query about what caused the observed longer term swings in our climate (which I plotted as a rough sine curve following the actual temperature line).
For longer term cycles that appear to influence climate there are PDO, NAO, ENSO. Exactly what causes these cycles and to what extent these are influenced by changes in solar activity are as yet unknown, as are the mechanisms (other than direct irradiance) by which the sun influences our climate.
We have observed multi-decadal swings in temperature that roughly follow a sine curve, with an underlying warming trend since the record started in 1850.
The physical observation is clear. The exact causing mechanisms and their interrelations are, as yet, not. It appears clear, however, that something other than CO2 and direct solar irradiance are at play.
Regards,
Max
TonyN,
I don’t believe that anyone misbehaved while you were gone……..exceptPeter…..hence, the duncecap……
Further to my post above (5376), I would like to expand on the theme of the potential for solar activity to be the primary driver of our climate.
I found several very interesting links that discuss in significant detail the idea that solar activity could be the real ‘driver’ behind climate changes, both up and down. I suspect that these have been previously linked here, but they are worthy of a second look if so.
First, this very interesting piece in the American Thinker describing a study from 1999 that discusses “barycentric analysis (celestial mechanics) of the solar system and its possible effects on the solar cycle.” The study has an interesting “perspective on the 4 climate minimums during the last 1000 years, and in 1999 more or less predicted the current low cycle 23 against a consensus that was opposite.” Considering the NASA article on Deep Solar Minimum referenced above, it seems to corroborate the thinking of some solar scientists that instead of warming, we may be headed instead to a long period of cooling. Interesting stuff.
Another interesting bit was this paper by David Archibald on solar cycles. In it he writes:
Finally, I found this write-up from Icecap on solar cycles, wherein David Archibald is again referenced. I strongly recommend reading carefully each of the links herein, but here is Mr. Archibald’s summary:
Global Warming: A Classic Case of Alarmism
The big temperature picture. Graph and insight from Dr Syun Akasofu
(2009 International Conference on Climate Change, New York, March 2009).
The global temperature has been rising at a steady trend rate of 0.5°C per century since the end of the little ice age in the 1700s (when the Thames River would freeze over every winter). On top of the trend are oscillations that last about thirty years in each direction:
1882 – 1910 Cooling
1910 – 1944 Warming
1944 – 1975 Cooling
1975 – 2001 Warming
In 2009 we are where the green arrow points, with temperature leveling off. The pattern suggests that the world has entered a period of slight cooling until about 2030.
There was a cooling scare in the early 1970s at the end of the last cooling phase. The current global warming alarm is based on the last warming oscillation, from 1975 to 2001. The IPCC predictions simply extrapolated the last warming as if it would last forever, a textbook case of alarmism. However the last warming period ended after the usual thirty years or so, and the global temperature is now definitely tracking below the IPCC predictions.
The IPCC blames human emissions of carbon dioxide for the last warming. But by general consensus human emissions of carbon dioxide have only been large enough to be significant since 1940—yet the warming trend was in place for well over a century before that. And there was a cooling period from 1940 to 1975, despite human emissions of carbon dioxide. And there has been no warming since 2001, despite record human emissions of carbon dioxide.
There is no actual evidence that carbon dioxide emissions are causing global warming. Note that computer models are just concatenations of calculations you could do on a hand-held calculator, so they are theoretical and cannot be part of any evidence. Although the models contain some well-established science, they also contain a myriad of implicit and explicit assumptions, guesses, and gross approximations—mistakes in any of which can invalidate the model outputs.
The pattern suggests that the world has entered a period of slight cooling until about 2030
Furthermore, the missing hotspot in the atmospheric warming pattern observed during the last warming period proves that (1) the IPCC climate theory is fundamentally broken, and (2) to the extent that their theory correctly predicts the warming signature of increased carbon dioxide, we know that carbon dioxide definitely did not cause the recent warming (see here for my full explanation of the missing signature. The alarmists keep very quiet about the missing hotspot.
No one knows for sure what caused the little ice age or for how many more centuries the slow warming trend will continue. It has been warmer than the present for much of the 10 thousand years since the last big ice age: it was a little warmer for a few centuries in the medieval warm period around 1100 (when Greenland was settled for grazing) and also during the Roman-Climate Optimum at the time of the Roman Empire (when grapes grew in Scotland), and at least 1°C warmer for much of the Holocene Climate Optimum (4 to 8 thousand years ago).
Addendum
Measuring the global temperature is only reliably done by satellites, which circle the world 24/7 measuring the temperature over large swathes of land and ocean. But satellite temperature records only go back to 1979.
Before that, the further back you go the more unreliable the temperature record gets. We have decent land thermometer records back to 1880, and some thermometer records back to the middle of the 1700s. Prior to that we rely on temperature proxies, such as ice cores, tree rings, ocean sediments, or snow lines.