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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Correction.
In the second last paragraph of the above:
“The Evolutionists have their Lindzens…” should of course be “The creationists …..”
Peter
To help you in your quest with darwin
http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-species/
Complete online text.
Irreducible complexity is a component of intelligent design which is quite frankly a retarded attempt by the American christian fundamentalists to hang on to the idea of a creator in the face of overwhelming evidence.
An interesting parallel methinks, but i haven’t the slightest interest in being drawn any further OT onto a discussion on religion.
Incidently, domestication is still evolution or at least speciation, just no longer by means of natural selection.
Hi Peter,
You opined to Robin (5925):
Your suggestion is interesting. Let me give you mine (paraphrasing yours):
I suggest that the AGW controversy will follow the following course.
As the current cooling trend continues for a few more years despite all-time record human CO2 emissions, it will become more and more apparent to one and all that the connection between global temperature and human CO2 emissions is contrived, and the support for the premise that AGW is a serious threat will dwindle. But there will always be the die hards who will absolutely refuse to accept the evidence and will continue to believe in disastrous AGW, long after everyone else has moved on.
Just as logical as your premise, Peter.
And the way the temperatures are developing, I would suggest that this scenario is becoming more and more likely.
But don’t let this philosophical diversion distract you from your task of providing the physical evidence to support your credo that AGW is a serious threat.
Regards,
Max
Max,
I’m not sure that I can think of anything else to add to what I’ve already said on the subject. Even if I could, I doubt it would have any real affect on you. You’d made up your mind that you didn’t like the idea of AGW years ago.
It’s all in the IPCC reports. If you don’t like an internationalist organisation like the IPCC just look at the AAAS website. If that doesn’t cut any ice with you then I doubt if there is anything I can add.
Did you have time to look at the youtube video in 5918?
Greg Craven reckons he can get agreement between people like you and I. I think he might be an incurable optimist. How about you?
Peter: your 5925.
Re Darwin, you asked for examples and I gave you examples; of course, he provided many more. As has subsequent science. But, as you correctly say, none of this is a “clinching argument”. As I’ve pointed out to you many times, science is never “settled”, something you seem not to understand. You’ll remember that in an earlier post i noted that, as Karl Popper showed, a scientific theory, though validated by empirical testing, can never be finally confirmed as a single counterexample (commonly a failure to make accurate prediction) is logically decisive, showing the hypothesis to be false. The remarkable thing about the theory of evolution is that, despite massive criticism, it has survived – and been increasingly reinforced by further evidence, notably DNA.
Your problem, Peter, is that, far from producing reinforcing evidence, you still haven’t referred to even an initial empirical validation of the dangerous AGW hypothesis. Like Max, I’m beginning to doubt that you are able “to provide the physical scientific evidence to support your credo”.
Your reference to polar warming shows plainly how you’ve completely failed to understand what I am requesting. Even if the ice at both poles was shrinking rapidly and sea levels rising at an unprecedented rate, that would not be evidence that the cause was AGW.
Robin,
I think you right. For you that is. Not only would “ice at both poles .. shrinking rapidly and sea levels rising at an unprecedented rate ” not be enough evidence. Nothing would.
We could add in the desertification of Central Africa and South America. Failure of the Monsoons. The destruction of the world’s coral reefs. All the factors that Mark Lynas includes in his six degrees of warming.
Well done. You are a true die hard! An example to all young climate sceptics everywhere.
Peter
I have taken the time to watch the you tube video linked in your 5918. I suggest everyone else here does as well. Basically it says lets change the world anyway just in case theres AGW.
I have always taken the view that we should fix things that;
a) Need fixing
b)We can do something about.
Climate change falls into neither category so I have more sympathy with the Bjorn Lombergs of the world than the guy on You tube. It is surely immoral to spend trillions on trying to fix something that doesnt need fixing when we should be attending to things that DO need fixing?
The third world needs water, eradication of poverty and sickness and hunger, which will all be helped by industrialisation-not keeping them as the third world. It will also have the happy by product of reducing population growth as large families are primarily an insurance against bad times.
Linked to this email are several new books. I think they take a rather more realistic look at things than the you tube video entitled “The most terrifying video you’ll ever see” which is nothing of the sort.
In my honest opinion the human race is only able to keep a few balls in the air at one time and whilst we’re juggling the climate change balls far worse things are not being attended to.
“An Adelaide professor says climate change is unavoidable – but that humans are not the cause of it.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,27574,25325285-2682,00.html
University of Adelaide Professor of Mining Geology Ian Plimer this week launches his seventh book, Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science, which aims to refute every scientific argument that humans are responsible for global warming.
Professor Plimer embarked on the project after being incensed by increasing public acceptance of the idea that humans have caused global warming.
Many scientists worldwide agree that high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have caused global temperatures to rise.
Professor Plimer said his book would “knock out every single argument we hear about climate change”, to prove that global warming is a cycle of the Earth.
“It’s got nothing to do with the atmosphere, it’s about what happens in the galaxy.
“You’ve got to look at the whole solar system and, most importantly, we look back in time.
“There’s a lot of talk out there that there isn’t any science that supports my view, but I have 2111 scientific references in this book.”
Professor Plimer has been awarded two Eureka prizes, for science promotion and best science book, and a Centenary Medal for his geological contribution to Australian society.
He said the planet has endured constant climate change and rapid changes had occurred in the past.
“Not one has been driven by carbon dioxide,” he said.
The book outlines how climate is driven by the sun, the Earth’s orbit and plate tectonics.
It will be released in Britain and U.S. after its Australian launch
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/beware-the-climate-of-conformity-20090412-a3ya.html?page=-1
Beware the climate of conformity
Paul Sheehan
Sydney Morning Herald April 13, 2009
What I am about to write questions much of what I have written in this space, in numerous columns, over the past five years. Perhaps what I have written can withstand this questioning. Perhaps not. The greater question is, am I – and you – capable of questioning our own orthodoxies and intellectual habits? Let’s see.
The subject of this column is not small. It is a book entitled Heaven And Earth, which will be published tomorrow. It has been written by one of Australia’s foremost Earth scientists, Professor Ian Plimer. He is a confronting sort of individual, polite but gruff, courteous but combative. He can write extremely well, and Heaven And Earth is a brilliantly argued book by someone not intimidated by hostile majorities or intellectual fashions.
The book’s 500 pages and 230,000 words and 2311 footnotes are the product of 40 years’ research and a depth and breadth of scholarship. As Plimer writes: “An understanding of climate requires an amalgamation of astronomy, solar physics, geology, geochronology, geochemistry, sedimentology, tectonics, palaeontology, palaeoecology, glaciology, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, ecology, archaeology and history.”
The most important point to remember about Plimer is that he is Australia’s most eminent geologist. As such, he thinks about time very differently from most of us. He takes the long, long view. He looks at climate over geological, archaeological, historical and modern time. He writes: “Past climate changes, sea-level changes and catastrophes are written in stone.”
Much of what we have read about climate change, he argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modelling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as “primitive”. Errors and distortions in computer modelling will be exposed in time. (As if on cue, the United Nations’ peak scientific body on climate change was obliged to make an embarrassing admission last week that some of its computers models were wrong.)
Plimer does not dispute the dramatic flux of climate change – and this column is not about Australia’s water debate – but he fundamentally disputes most of the assumptions and projections being made about the current causes, mostly led by atmospheric scientists, who have a different perspective on time. “It is little wonder that catastrophist views of the future of the planet fall on fertile pastures. The history of time shows us that depopulation, social disruption, extinctions, disease and catastrophic droughts take place in cold times and life blossoms and economies boom in warm times. Planet Earth is dynamic. It always changes and evolves. It is currently in an ice age.”
If we look at the last 6 million years, the Earth was warmer than it is now for 3 million years. The ice caps of the Arctic, Antarctica and Greenland are geologically unusual. Polar ice has only been present for less than 20 per cent of geological time. What follows is an intense compression of the book’s 500 pages and all their provocative arguments and conclusions:
Is dangerous warming occurring? No.
Is the temperature range observed in the 20th century outside the range of normal variability? No.
The Earth’s climate is driven by the receipt and redistribution of solar energy. Despite this crucial relationship, the sun tends to be brushed aside as the most important driver of climate. Calculations on supercomputers are primitive compared with the complex dynamism of the Earth’s climate and ignore the crucial relationship between climate and solar energy.
“To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable – human-induced CO2 – is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science.”
Over time, the history of CO2 content in the atmosphere has been far higher than at present for most of time. Atmospheric CO2 follows temperature rise. It does not create a temperature rise. CO2 is not a pollutant. Global warming and a high CO2 content bring prosperity and longer life.
The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology. “But evidence no longer matters. And any contrary work published in peer-reviewed journals is just ignored. We are told that the science on human-induced global warming is settled. Yet the claim by some scientists that the threat of human-induced global warming is 90 per cent certain (or even 99 per cent) is a figure of speech. It has no mathematical or evidential basis.”
Observations in nature differ markedly from the results generated by nearly two dozen computer-generated climate models. These climate models exaggerate the effects of human CO2 emissions into the atmosphere because few of the natural variables are considered. Natural systems are far more complex than computer models.
The setting up by the UN of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988 gave an opportunity to make global warming the main theme of environmental groups. “The IPCC process is related to environmental activism, politics and opportunism. It is unrelated to science. Current zeal around human-induced climate change is comparable to the certainty professed by Creationists or religious fundamentalists.”
Ian Plimer is not some isolated gadfly. He is a prize-winning scientist and professor. The back cover of Heaven And Earth carries a glowing endorsement from the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, who now holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. Numerous rigorous scientists have joined Plimer in dissenting from the prevailing orthodoxy.
Heaven and Earth is an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence.”
tonyb
I found the first 15mins or so of this programme fascinating:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00jwxz0
Gillian Tett, Deputy Editor of the Financial Times, is talking to Andrew Marr about the origins of the credit crunch, a no-go area for discussion on this blog, but in this case it is not, if treated with care, OT.
Tett trained as a social anthropologist and her insight into the world of banking is influenced by this. She has been credited with being the first journalist to start ringing alarm bells about the banking crisis and she has now published a book on the subject.
Listen to what she has to say about the way in which highly intelligent decision makers, who did not fully understand the complex financial instruments that ‘the experts’ were developing, were nevertheless willing to go along with them because it was expedient to do so, and not necessarily out of motives of greed. Many genuinely believed that they would make the system safer by distributing risk more widely.
Then hear what she says about those who were supposed to regulate banking from outside not asking the right questions because there was no incentive for them to do so, thus allowing the bubble to continue to grow long after it was possible to detect clear signs of impending disaster.
There seem to be a lot of parallels between what she is saying about banking and what many of us can see happening at the point where climate science and politics meet.
Hi Peter,
Let me give you a tip.
You appear to be moving in the direction of trying to use the late 20th century warming period as “physical evidence” to support your credo that AGW is a serious threat, with the IPCC logic “it must have been caused largely by AGW, because the models cannot explain it any other way”.
This is a slippery slope, Peter.
It automatically raises the question why you are looking at such a short “blip” in the record to make a much longer forecast of alarming warming from AGW, rather than looking at the entire 150+-year record.
It also raises the embarrassing question as to why you ignored the late 19th century and early 20th century warming periods (with almost no, and very little CO2 increase, respectively, but similar, if not slightly higher warming than the late 20th century period), and why you ignored the mid-century cooling period with growing CO2 as well as the current cooling period, with record CO2 growth.
Ignoring the observed multi-decadal cycles in the temperature while only looking at one short upward cycle would be an egregious example of (oh, horror!) “cherry picking”.
But even worse it brings back the old problem
a- IPCC has conceded that the models cannot explain the late 19th century or early 20th century warming periods
b- IPCC has concluded that late 20th century warming must have been caused primarily by AGW
c- WHY?
d- Because the IPCC models cannot explain it any other way.
e- Ouch!
This problem is now exacerbated by the lack of warming since 1998 (11 full years) when the AGW theory tells us it should have warmed by over 0.2C, or significant cooling (at 0.1C per decade) since January 2001 (8 full years and growing).
So I would strongly advised against using the “cherry-picked” late 20th century warming as the basis for your “physical evidence”. It can be “shot down” too easily, thereby invalidating your hypothesis.
Regards,
Max
.
Peter
reur 5931
With regard to that total dross you spouted at robin, to follow in your footsteps (when talking to Max about a list of point he rattled off), lets see the empirical evidence of that, please provide links.
Some of them may even help you with your search for physical evidence of AGW.
“ice at both poles .. shrinking rapidly and sea levels rising at an unprecedented rate ”
Give me strength!!
TonyB, Reur 5932: What an excellent post, and I particularly liked the following bit:
And I too am an admirer of Ian Plimer, a GEOLOGIST. (= a realist coalface scientist)
Hi Peter,
You paint a horror picture in your 5931 to Robin:
You are conjuring up a virtual picture, not a real one.
Sea levels are not rising at an unprecedented rate.
Ice at both poles is not shrinking rapidly.
The other climate disasters you mention are also not happening in the real world.
None of this is real, let alone “enough evidence”, as you put it.
To chastise Robin for theoretically being skeptical of AGW some day in the far distant future even if the hypothetical things imagined by Mark Lynas in his dreamed-up six degrees of warming might really happen is absurd. These things are not happening, Peter.
Come with facts. Not science fiction or Lynas’ wet dreams.
Bring the evidence now to support your claim that AGW is a serious threat or admit that you cannot, and we’ll close off this part of the discussion.
Facts, Peter, not Lynas dreams…
Regards,
Max
Peter Martin, Reur 5920, although I had resolved to ignore or at best flick through your posts here, I was very surprised to notice in your 5920, addressed to me, that you might be agreeing with me. Without checking your references, it seems to support my cry that the real priorities in this world are being ignored at the alter of AGW.
If my reading is roughly correct, could you please let me know?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh, BTW, my 5923 crossed yours, and may possibly be relevant to any response that you may care to make
Peter: (your 5931). Either deliberately or through a lack of intelligence, you completely misunderstand my simple request.
Think about it carefully, take your time and then see if you can explain how “ice at both poles .. shrinking rapidly and sea levels rising at an unprecedented rate … etc. etc.”, even if they happened, would be evidence of anything other than dramatic climate change. Yes, they would prove conclusively that the world had become much warmer. But that’s all. The fact that such events had occurred would not prove that their cause was the emission of CO2 by human activity.
Are you really unable to understand that simple logic?
To repeat: I am asking you to produce published research demonstrating unambiguously that the hypothesis (that mankind’s continuing to add CO2 to the atmosphere will cause a dangerous increase in global temperature) been subjected to rigorous testing against empirical (i.e. physically observed, not theoretical) evidence and has survived such testing intact. The evidence must be publicly available and the testing capable of independent replication.
So far, you have completely failed to produce that evidence.
Surprisingly, today’s Independent has a typically shrewd article by David Whitehouse which deserves to take its place beside the one that kicked off this thread nearly eighteen months ago. It deals with the recent lack of solar activity and even suggests that a reassessment of the GHGH may be due.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-missing-sunspots-is-this-the-big-chill-1674630.html
Does this herald a change of editorial policy I wonder?
TonyN: The clip you posted at 5833 was very interesting. Thanks. I noted especially her observation about how difficult it was for a contrarian to even be heard, when everyone was being carried along by a tide of enthusiasm for the financial models – what Peter would probably describe as “an overwhelming consensus”.
TonyN
Thanks for the link to the article at the independant, well written balanced journalism. Was pleasantly suprised by the comments section, both points of view without the childish name calling of some of the guardian crowd.
TonyN
Thanks for link to very interesting Whitehouse article on solar influence on climate.
It could well be that we are approaching a basic paradigm shift in climate science, whereby the pivotal role of solar activity on climate becomes recognized by the “mainstream scientific community”, which has so far largely ignored the sun and focused its attention on AGW, based on climate model outputs.
This shift certainly appears likely, if the current low level of solar activity and global cooling continue, despite all-time high CO2 emissions.
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
Not to distract you from your task of responding to the challenge by Robin to provide scientific evidence to support your suggestion that AGW is a serious threat, but I have a dilemma.
When our planet warms (as it did over the period from around 1976 to around 2000) AGW alarmists (i.e. those that support the premise that AGW is a serious threat) are dismayed.
When our planet cools (as it has since around 2100) these same individuals are also dismayed.
Why is this, Peter?
Are you one of those individuals that is dismayed by the current cooling, are you glad that it is cooling or are you simply in denial of the physically observed fact that it is cooling?
Just a question.
Thanks for your candid reply.
Regards,
Max
Robin, Max,
You are both harping on about providing ‘unambiguous’ physical evidence, empirical tests etc and yet neither of you are able to say what you have in mind. Obviously you don’t have anything in mind at all. You are both totally vacuous on the topic. Devoid of ideas. Possessing no real intelligence at all on the subject. Totally lacking in scientific understanding. Bereft, barren and totally wanting in an appreciation of what is and what is not possible.
Yes, of course the late 20th century warming is physical evidence. The climate has been subject to various forcing factors. The other possible warming factor is a change in the solar intensity. That has been investigated and solar scientists themselves have said that it cannot be responsible for the late 20th century global warming.
So as Sherlock Holmes, or Conan Doyle, has said, when you have eliminated the impossible , whatever remains however improbable must be the truth.
Warming of the atmosphere due to increased GHG concentrations isn’t even that improbable. Max has given us the calculations to show it. With the GH effect there would be little or no life on earth. It’s not such a bad thing! But like Goldilocks we want our GH effect to be just right. Not too hot and not too cold. Not too much warming and not too much cooling either.
PS has anyone any comment on the youtube videos I posted. Do you have any answer to the arguments presented in those?
Correction: Should be
Without the GH effect there would be little or no life on earth. It’s not such a bad thing!
Hi Peter,
Robin will most likely formulate his own response to your latest tirade (5945):
But let me also post mine.
There is nothing “unambiguous” at all about physical evidence. In fact, it is the basis for science.
Both Robin and I have stated very clearly “what we have in mind”, Peter, and, so far, you have been totally unable to produce it. Based on the past, I am sure that you are not so stupid that you cannot understand this. Provide anything you can, and we will see how robust it is.
You state:
Again, Peter, you are myopically fixating on a small “blip” in the record, where solar scientists have conceded that solar factors could only have caused a maximum of 30% of the warming. But for the entire 20th century these same scientists say that over 50% of the total warming can be attributed to the unusually high level of solar activity. You must look at the “big picture”, Peter (as you frequently reminded me in the past), not just on a 25-year “blip”, anymore than we should concentrate on the most recent 8-year cooling “blip”, where it appears that unusually low solar activity is causing cooling despite record CO2 emissions. Neither “blip” tells us very much in itself, without looking at the broader long-term context.
So first provide physical evidence that AGW is the cause for the warming we have witnessed over the 25-year “blip” from 1976 to 2000.
And then provide evidence for what caused the warming of the 30+ year early 20th century “blip” plus the cooling of the 8-year “blip” in the 21st century, while you are at it.
After you have done this, provide the physical evidence that AGW is a serious threat.
Please note that I am not asking for “proof”, Peter, simply scientific evidence.
It’s actually quite simple.
Regards,
Max
Max, Robin,
What’s ambiguous about the Sherlock Holmes approach? The ‘whenever you have eliminated the …..ete etc’. I’m sure criminals have been executed on the basis of that sort of evidence and logic.
However if you are saying you can’t accept that approach, or don’t understand the thinking behind it, or requier a higher standard of what you’ve both previously called proof, and don’t have any clue of your own of what a valid test might be, I guess we’ll have to leave it that.
How about letting me know about the points made in the two video clips?
Max,
You make all sorts of unreferenced claims about what solar scientists say about global warming in the 20th century.
This is typical of what they actually do say:
“It was shown that even under the extreme assumption that the Sun was responsible for all the global warming prior to 1970, at the most 30% of the strong warming since then can be of solar origin.”
“Unusual activity of the Sun during
recent decades compared to the
previous 11,000 years S. K. Solanki1, I. G. Usoskin, B. Kromer, M. Schu¨ ssler1 & J. Beer”
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
All,
I have often wondered just how much psychology plays in the global warming argument. I would argue quite a lot. For instance it is odd how two reasonably intelligent individuals can come to a completely different interpretation of exactly the same evidence, and not just global warming either.
For a simple example of what I mean, you have only to watch the behaviour of the players and supporters at a sports match such as a football (soccer to you Americans) game. Take a look at what happens when the referee has to call, or not call, a penalty in the last few minutes, maybe during extra time, of a tight game. Often the decision will be close, it could go either way and decide the result of the match.
Each set of players and supporters will have an equally good knowledge of the rules of the game and see exactly the same incident. And yet, they will instantly divide in the most partisan of ways. The penalised side will be genuinely aggrieved. They genuinely do believe that the referee has called it wrongly and they will rage against a perceived injustice.
This doesn’t argument doesn’t apply to me of course :-), but most people do see what they want to see and reject the rest. If your politics are such that you see a political danger in adopting CO2 mitigation policies, you are very likely to be hostile to the referee’s, and of course I mean the IPCC’s, decision, in exactly the way you have all shown.