Mar 172008

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.

(Click the ‘comments’ link below if the input box does not appear)

 

10,000 Responses to “Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs.”

  1. Hi Peter,

    A tip:

    You are beating a dead horse in trying to discredit Roy Spencer’s scientific credentials as a climate scientist based on his views or religion, politics or whatever.

    It is a silly line of reasoning.

    AGW proponents have been known to fall into the trap of using this type of “ad hom” attack when they run out of sound scientific arguments.

    Don’t fall into this trap, Peter. It weakens your position.

    Regards,

    Max

  2. Max 525,
    That is all a tad disconcerting!
    I may have to move towards my tropical north, and hope it does not get invaded by too many others!
    I keep staring at the solar image continuously on-line and hoping for good news without fruition!
    Check the latest depressing scene here:
    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3185/2670890882_b1868f6939_o.jpg

    Google “viola jokes” etc.,for some relief!

  3. OK, Peter, I’ll answer your question (post 518). (Incidentally, like you, I believe neither in the literal truth of the Noah’s Ark story nor in the imminent arrival of a Messiah figure.) I agree that anyone believing the first would be unlikely to make a useful scientific contribution in the field of animal evolution and that anyone believing the second is unlikely to be concerned about future environmental degradation. These examples are obvious. What is not obvious is what bearing Spencer’s reported view on intelligent design has to do (as Max says) with his scientific credentials as a climate scientist.

    Now perhaps you’ll answer my question at 487. I’m sorry you didn’t understand what I meant, so I’ll spell it out. [Extracts from your post 473 are in quotation marks]. Question 1: do you think that the findings of the climate scientists who produced Table SPM.2. (IPCC 4th Assessment Report, Working Group 1) are part of “mainstream science” and therefore within “the common current of rational thought of the vast majority” or do you think they are expounding irrational “fringe science”? Question 2: what do you think is the impact of these findings on the claimed scientific consensus about GW causation?

    Finally, it would be helpful if you would comment sensibly on my post 505 rather than indulge (see post 509) in unwise generalisation about other people’s motivation.

  4. Peter:

    #512: The Archbishop of Canterbury’s pronouncements on AGW reflect his undoubted spirituality and he approaches the subject from a moral and ethical point of view. On the rare occasions when he has spoken about the scientific basis it has been clear that this is not an area in which he has any particular expertise. It would appear that he has simply accepted the orthodox view.

    #513: I certainly was not portraying Newton ‘as a pseudoscientist because of his interest in Alchemy’, but merely pointing out that the father of modern physics could produce ground breaking research, which still underpins our understanding of the natural world, while indulging in ‘scientific’ practices that verge on the superstitious.

    #518

    PS I have checked on the blog rules and they do say “It is perfectly acceptable to suggest that there are very real dangers if quasi-religious convictions spill over into the fact based world of science”. That is exactly what I am doing, so I don’t feel that I’m breaking any rules.

    If indeed Spencer is a creationist, this is not a quasi-religeous conviction, but a belief that falls well within the scope of one of the world’s mainstream faiths, even if it is a minority view. And I merely drew attention to the fact that, while your argument might be a technical (and irrelevant) infringement of blog rules, the main problem was the fallacy on which it was based. The relevant section of the blog rules is the one dealing with ad hominem attacks, not the one dealing with religion.

  5. Slight change of subject. I’ve just come across a survey (of UK and US respondents) conducted last March by YouGov about a wide range of issues. Two questions were relevant:

    1. A list of 10 items (plus “not sure”) was presented to respondents. One was “Global Warming”. They were asked which 2 or 3 items were “the most important”.

    In the UK, 19% picked Global Warming – 8th of the 10 items. (Taxation and Iraq were lower, and the top 3 were Immigration (60%), Crime (49%) and the Economy (31%).)

    In the US, 17% picked Global Warming – 8th of the 10 items. (Crime and Personal Morality were lower, and the top 3 were the Economy (59%), Healthcare (43%) and Immigration (40%).)

    2. “Turning now to the subject of climate change, do you think…”

    The world is becoming warmer as a result of human activity – 55% UK / 49% US

    The world is becoming warmer but NOT because of human activity – 25% UK / 19% US

    The world is NOT becoming warmer – 7% UK / 18% US

    Not sure – 13% UK / 14% US

    What do I make of this?

    Well, taking the second question first, clearly nearly everyone thinks the world is getting warmer. No surprise there – and, assuming this refers to, say, the past century (the question is poorly phrased), I agree. Then about half think it’s because of human activity. Not a surprise either given the constant propaganda, and I would agree had the question asked about a human contribution (again, the phrasing is poor).

    But (see the first question) very few people think it matters much. Moreover, it’s clear from other recent polls (see this thread of Tony’s) that, had there been no predetermined list of items (which tend to prompt people to say what they think they ought to believe) and respondents had simply listed what really concerned them, Global Warming would have come even lower.

  6. Robin,

    I think everyone participating in this thread knows where I stand on this topic…….

    I don’t think the question here is whether or not the Earth is 1 degree “warmer” or “cooler” (if you can characterize 1 degree either way over 150 years as a “climate catastrophe”)……I think the issue is more about what has caused it………. and what, if anything, should be done about it.

    I believe the bigger issue here is that we’ve conditioned our society to become dependent upon the government to resolve all of our problems for us. There is an entitlement mentality that pervades every aspect of our lives and Liberal/Progressive politicians foster this notion of helplessness in order to structure societies as they see fit. They’ve created a boogeyman with this global warming nonsense, falsified data and misrepresented the science and molded it to mesh with their agenda which is more state control over the personal habits/activities of the population(s)…………a means to an end. Far too many people feel they are “owed” something simply because they exist and are increasingly demanding that “government” provide for their every need/whim. The problem is that “government” is not some bottomless pit of funding or some faceless entity. “Government” is us, we are “them”………… the citizens who work and live and die and pay the taxes that fuel the institution comprise the government.

    Sometime in the future, if this trend continues, the people/businesses that fund the government will be overcome by the parasites that feed from the government and the system will collapse.

    This is a much more realistic “doomsday scenario” than Peter Martin’s or David Benson’s apocalyptic climate catastrophe fantasy.

    Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them. – Ronald Reagan

    Were we to be directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
    – Thomas Jefferson

    A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have – Gerald Ford

    Subject: Interesting

    About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:
    “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.”

    “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.”

    “From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

    “The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.”

    “During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
    1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
    2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
    3. From courage to liberty;
    4. From liberty to abundance;
    5. From abundance to complacency;
    6. From complacency to apathy;
    7. From apathy to dependence;
    8. From dependence back into bondage”

    Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul,
    Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000
    Presidential election:

    Number of States won by: Gore : 19; Bush : 29
    Square miles of land won by: Gore : 580,000; Bush: 2,427,000
    Population of counties won by: Gore : 127 million; Bush : 143 million
    Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:*** GORE: 13.2;
    *** BUSH: 2.1

    Professor Olson adds: “In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country.
    Gore’s territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare…”

    Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the “complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation’s population already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.

    If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

    If Congress Nationalizes the energy industry in order to appease the environmental lobby due to the pseudo-science propagated by the “global warming” crowd, it will be another step forward along the path of Professor Tyler’s societal evolutionary ladder returning to bondage.

    Everyone must realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.

  7. Today, Brute, is not the best day for me to be contemplating the impact of government on the hard-working taxpayer. I’ll try to explain why. I’m a member of the governing body of a City of London Livery Company. Livery Companies, as you may know, are largely ancient bodies based on medieval trade guilds. Today they are largely ceremonial but carry out a lot of charitable and pro-bono work. Mine, however, is modern – the Information Technologists Company. I chair a particular group that has (in our own time and at our own expense) been trying to help a UK Government Department resolve big problems with a massively ambitious, absurdly late and increasingly expensive (taxpayers’ money of course) IT project. I’ve just been informed (about an hour ago) that our work, although potentially helpful (and free!), is no longer required – mainly I fear because it was likely to expose some serious difficulties that politicians would prefer not to have exposed. Ho hum.

  8. Hi Peter,

    You seem to have difficulties accepting Roy Spencer’s qualifications as a climate scientist because of his religious beliefs (518).

    Other bloggers here have given you examples of scientists in the past who also had religious beliefs that some people today would find strange.

    But here is another one. It is known that Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, is a Hindu by faith. His religious belief includes strict vegetarianism, the caste system, reincarnation of the soul including transmigration to an animal or plant body.

    He is not a climate scientist, but an industrial engineer and economist, but his religious belifs certainly have no impact whatsoever on his technical or scientific qualifications.

    You’d do best to back off on this line of reasoning. It as a slippery slope that only leads to a dead end.

    Stick with factual arguments.

    Regards,

    Max

  9. Robin,

    Understood. I’ve just spent the better part of 6 months dealing with the National Park Service to have some equipment installed that was approved FIVE YEARS AGO. I understand your frustration.

    I happen to be employed privately……If I had not completed a project that should, (on the outside, take a year) and it went on for FIVE YEARS, I’d be unemployed….these people will probably get promoted.

    Government does not work…………

  10. I’m sure, Max, that even the most anti-religious of scientists wouldn’t disqualify those scientists with religious beliefs such as Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, providing, of course, that those beliefs are not in conflict with the scientific work that is being undertaken. Maybe Tony should include a section about strawmen arguments in his blog rules?

    Stephen Jay Gould has written on the theme of “Nonoverlapping Magisteria”. Richard Dawkins isn’t particularly keen on the concept and he may have a point, but basically it just means that boundaries should be assigned to different fields of human activity, specifically to separate the ‘spiritual’ from the secular or the scientific. Its when the “magisteria” start to overlap that the problems start. I do accept, it is possible, just about, to believe that a supernatural creator of the earth, built in a high degree of climate sensitivity. Any climate scientist who does believe in a creator should make their position clear on this. If they don’t, then its fair enough to raise the point as a legitimate argument in questioning their scientific position.

    The C of E are good at keeping things separate. One of the job requirements of the Archibishop of Canterbury would be to know how not to fall into the trap of getting into conflict with scientific opinion, so I’m not surprised that he lines up with mainstream science. He’s got a bit of a problem, though, on the issue of homosexuality at the moment. Science says that it isn’t a sin. People are born that way. The Bible says it an abomination (mind you so is eating shellfish and lobster according to Leviticus 10-12) so it does surprise many that the good Archibishop can produce arguments in favour of the church lining up with science on that one too. That’s what university theology courses are for, so its nice to see that he and his advisors are making good use of their education.

  11. Hi Peter,

    You wrote that religious belifs of scientists should be immaterial “providing, of course, that those beliefs are not in conflict with the scientific work that is being undertaken”.

    I agree.

    And this is the case for Spencer’s recent study on cloud feedbacks, right?

    Regards,

    Max

  12. Well, Max, that is the point. I just don’t know.

    Dr Spencer should make his position clear on the issue of intelligent design. Does this apply to the earth as well? Does he think that a creator has made the earth for humanity? Would the creator have been careful enough to design the climate to be sufficiently robust to allow us to emit as much CO2 as we currently do?

  13. Brute,

    Governments don’t work? One year projects spin out for five?

    Those observations apply to the Iraq invasion too!

  14. Peter:

    I’d be interested to know what you think of this:

    The Sunday after the Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report was published, Sir John Horton preached the sermon on BBC Radio4’s morning service. His theme, not surprisingly, was climate change.

    At one point he gave thanks that evangelical Christians in the US were joining the crusade against global warming. His reason was that, as they provide much of George Bush’s core vote, this would bring pressure to bear on the President to sign up to Kyoto.

    Now so far as I am aware, American evangelicals are the custodians of creationism and intelligent design. Sir John is not only an eminent meteorologist and former head of the Met Office but, as I am sure you know, he also played a major role in the IPCC’s TAR and edited the much-criticised Summary for Policymakers. As a devout Christian, he seems to be as much at home in the pulpit as he is in the laboratory, and as confident proclaiming his religious faith as he is promoting the scientific basis for catastrophic climate change. And he is also quite happy to climb into bed with creationists when their beliefs – however they may have arrived at them – coincide with his.

    You may find all this hard to believe, and I certainly wouldn’t blame you, but I kept a download of the service (36MB) if you are interested. I listened to it with some astonishment.

  15. Yes I’d be interested to hear the broadcast, if you could let me know where to download the file.

    The concept of “devout” is interesting. There are those, of a fundamentalist disposition, who would question the term if applied to anyone who didn’t believe in the literal truth of the Bible. I don’t go out of my way, in Richard Dawkins fashion, to challenge people’s religious views. The work the Salvation Army, for instance, is is greatly to be applauded, and I’ve often thought that when I retire and have more time, I’d give them a hand. Or maybe even start up an equivalent Aethists Army?

    The clergy, and layfollowers, of the more enlightened wings of most Churches do, like circus performers, have to ride two horses, in the sense that they can’t accept everything that is written in the scriptures; they do have to go along with scientific knowledge otherwise they end up looking pretty silly.

    I guess if they fall of the religious horse, at least in the C of E they can become “modernists”, who don’t really believe in God, and still collect their stipend! If they fall off the scientific horse then they might have to find work in some creationist musuem in the American mid-west.

  16. Governments don’t work? One year projects spin out for five?

    Those observations apply to the Iraq invasion too!

    I think that even you can appreciate the difference between war/liberating a country, establishing/creating an entirely new government, creating infrasture on a national scale, creating/establishing a entire national economic system, etc……… and replacing a few park benches.

    All things considered, I surprised that things have moved along as rapidly as they have in Iraq.

    The Iraqis have moved things along faster than the Germans/Japanese did following the Second World War.

    TonyN: Brute and Peter – The Iraq war is getting rather a long way from climate, the countryside and landscapes . Let’s not get tooooooooo political!

  17. Peter:

    I’ll upload the Houghton service tomorrow and let you have a URL.

  18. Tony,

    You’re right. I thought about that just after I clicked “submit comment”.

    I apologize.

    Although, I’m certain that proponents of global warming could make a connection between the two in some convoluted way.

  19. Hi Barry,

    For a good laugh check out IPCC AR4 WG1 Chapter 3 FAQ (p.253).
    http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter3.pdf

    You’ll see a curve showing temperature trend lines. I’ve copied the curve for easier viewing below.
    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3221/2534926749_f2be35e86f_o.jpg

    You see that the closer we get to today’s date the steeper the temperature curves appear to get over shorter time periods. This looks like things are getting more alarming and are doing so at an accelerating rate.

    In its 2007 SPM report, IPCC alludes to this accelerating trend (p.5) with the sentence: The linear warming trend over the last 50 years (0.13°C [0.10°C to 0.16°C] per decade) is nearly twice that for the last 100 years” (0.074°C [0.056°C to 0.092°C] per decade).
    http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf

    This is actually a bit of “smoke and mirrors”. In a record with cyclical warming/cooling periods, such as the Hadley global average land and sea surface temperature anomaly, shorter cycles will usually show steeper trend lines than longer cycles, if properly picked.
    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3249/2672880098_1ede950b42_b.jpg

    Using the same Hadley record and the same IPCC “smoke and mirrors” approach, one can show that global warming occurred at a more rapid rate in the early 20th century than later.

    One could then modify the IPCC statement as follows: “The linear warming trend over the first 40 years (0.135°C) is nearly twice that for the last 100 years (0.074°C per decade).”

    Both analyses are absurd, of course, but this shows how one can get a message across with proper chartmanship and bit of subterfuge.

    Just something to think about, Barry.

    Regards,

    Max

  20. Who’s Barry?

  21. July 15th, 2008 at 11:47 am
    Not sure where to post this, but here is an excellent critique from APS Physics and Society where Monckton methodically demolishes the IPCCs notions of climate sensitivity. Might I suggest a new thread.

    CLIMATE SENSITIVITY RECONSIDERED

    By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

    Abstract

    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions probably caused more than half of the “global warming” of the past 50 years and would cause further rapid warming. However, global mean surface temperature has not risen since 1998 and may have fallen since late 2001. The present analysis suggests that the failure of the IPCC’s models to predict this and many other climatic phenomena arises from defects in its evaluation of the three factors whose product is climate sensitivity:

    1. Radiative forcing ?F;
    2. The no-feedbacks climate sensitivity parameter ?; and
    3. The feedback multiplier ƒ.

    Some reasons why the IPCC’s estimates may be excessive and unsafe are explained. More importantly, the conclusion is that, perhaps, there is no “climate crisis”, and that currently-fashionable efforts by governments to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions are pointless, may be ill-conceived, and could even be harmful.

    http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm

  22. SORRY
    MOUSING ERROR!

    My above should include the following lead-in

  23. SORRY
    MOUSING ERROR!

    My above should include the following lead-in

    David,
    Something for your consideration:

    This was posted over on the CA Main Board. It fits here well.

    george h. says:

  24. Is this the same Christopher Monckton that the Realclimate guys accuse of Cuckoo Science?
    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/11/cuckoo-science/

    According to his Wikipedia entry he read Classics at Uni. Its good that he’s now taken an interest in a scientific study in later life.

  25. Hi Peter,

    “Who’s Barry?”

    Sorry ’bout that.

    Have an exchange with blogger “Barry” on another site and posted this message on this site by mistake.

    But it might be of interest to you as well (just replace the name “Barry” with “Peter”).

    It a funny example of IPCC shenanigans in the “how to lie without really lying” category.

    Regards,

    Max

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