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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Domestic commitments have left little time for blogging recently, and I have only caught up this morning.
Things are getting a little unruly on this thread and I get the impression that Nefastus’ contributions are less than welcome. Please remember that the best way of dealing with trolls is to ignore them, however provocative they may be.
Bob_FJ: Sorry, I missed your #6180 but I’ve fished it out now. This will have changed the numbering of recent comments.
Same story, different source………
Below is a plot of the average of the satellite and the Hadley Center global monthly temperatures versus the monthly seasonally adjusted CO2 from NOAA ESRL since 2002. Note the clear downtrend in temperatures even as CO2 continues to rise.
“The Met Office says it is too early to tell whether it will be a very hot summer this year……” (Quoted by Brute in 6276)
But they already have!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8026668.stm
As they did last year and the year before that, as I recall. I think they’re hoping that they must be right eventually… :-)
I meant to add this, from Piers Corbyn, who claims that he is now banned from making bets against the Met.Office by William Hill!
http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=31&c=1
Hey James P.
Cheer up.
The Met Office may not be able to forecast the temperatures for this summer in the UK (“weather”, as they call it), but they can give us very accurate forecasts for the globally and annually average land and sea surface temperature 100 years from now (“climate”, as they call it).
Hmmm…
Max
Max and James
The methods the Met office uses for its 100 year forecast are the same as for their devastatingly accurate seasonal forecasts.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/science/creating/monthsahead/seasonal/
“We occasionally use statistical forecasting methods on the seasonal timescale — in winter and summer for UK and Europe. This is done where physical relationships between weather and the state of the oceans have been found, but where models do not yet show sufficient skill to pick up these particular relationships. This gives rise to a mixed statistical and physical model forecast process.
We also use this mixture of methods for forecasting the mean global mean surface temperature for a year ahead. However, on even longer time scales, such as a century ahead, only physical models are used, as no more skilful statistical approach has been found”
As regards their empire expansion, as well as the polar ice modeller they still need because of the ‘considerable uncertainties in the science’, they also need someone skilled in brainwashing us all
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/recruitment/vacancies/dynamics_communicating_clim_change_Sci.pdf
Tonyb
James P,
Absolutely hilarious…………….Is this a real BBC story or one of those goofs? Cracker jack journalism I’d say.
”There’s a 50/50 chance of rain this summer, but only a 20% chance of that”.
Where the hell did they get these guys? They should be prosecuted by the environmental police for wasting paper and ink, (or bandwidth or internet space or whatever).
I can envision John Cleese interviewing Eric Idle:
Cleese: (With a straight face, microphone in one hand stroking his chin with the other) “What will the weather be like this summer?
Idle: (Horned rimmed, Coke bottle glasses with “expert weatherman” underneath his photo) “Well, we expect it to be dry this summer, except of course if it rains………with higher than normal temperatures, unless it gets colder …………then we’ll expect cooler temperatures”.
Once, just once, I’d love for one of these weathermen to stand in front of the camera and say………
“I’ll admit; I have no goddamn idea of what the weather will be next month or next week”.
“They just pay me to guess and stand up in front of the television camera and act like I actually know what the hell I’m talking about………and week after week stupid people listen to what I have to say and plan their lives around whatever I happen to dream up”.
“I’d do better throwing darts at a weather map”.
Some dimwit recently posted “The methods the Met office uses for its 100 year forecast are the same as for their devastatingly accurate seasonal forecasts.”
The more intelligent of you will already be aware that climate and weather , even for seasonal forecasts, require completely different forecasting techniques.
In many ways its a lot easier to predict climate that weather. I’ve just noticed that Manchester United won the English Premier league yet again. Like climate, predicting that wouldn’t have been too difficult. But they lost 4 matches throughout the season. Like predicting the weather, predictling exactly which ones they going to be would have been a lot harder.
Brute,
You’re against gambling right? Nothing wrong with that of course.
So that’s why you won’t take me on with my offer of a $100 bet, even though Max did, and also even though everything you’ve said indicates that I’ll lose. Is that also right?
You sound like you are doing OK and $100 either way wouldn’t make much difference.
So you won’t bet a trivial sum but you are quite prepared to bet the future of the entire planet on people like Max being right and almost the whole scientific community being wrong? With the odds stacked against you too. See: http://randommanplanetearth.blogspot.com/2009/02/gambling-with-climate-change-mit.html
I just wanted to check that I’d got this right.
Just noticed that the last sentence in 6308 sounds a bit garbled.
Should be ” Like predicting the weather, predicting exactly which ones they going to lose would have been a lot harder.”
I’m offering odds of 50 – 1 on anyone getting it right for next years league but only even money on choosing the eventual winners. So, if you think I’m wrong, you can maybe make a profit from my misunderstanding?
Hi.
I’ve been lurking over on the guardian site for a few months now and am tending towards a belief in global warming caused by man. But I haven’t been able to get a handle on the main reasons to not believe it because there is too much information sent in by too many people with lots of opinions.
Can someone maybe give me the top 5 reasons against, or other explanations, or give me a link where I can read the main reasons laid out in a sober way. I’m not really keen on blogs, even the guardian one, so am looking for information i can study and make my own mind up from. I don’t mind technical stuff so anything you can give me will be welcome.
Thanks.
Peter 6308
If you had bothered to read the post and the link properly you would have seen that the only one who had mentioned the word weather was the Met office. They use a physical model and not statistics for their century long forecasts.
Weelcome back.(No, really)
Tonyb
BePrepared (6311)
I should think Brute’s graph above (6302) showing the disconnection between CO2 and temperature would be a good place to start.
I have some sympathy with you, though, as there is a maelstrom of mis/dis-information on the subject, and it’s very hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.
I like this summary:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533290/Climate-chaos-Dont-believe-it.html
and although I haven’t read it yet, I gather that this is pretty thorough:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heaven-Earth-Warming-Missing-Science/dp/0704371669/
I’m sure you’ll get a more comprehensive reply soon..!
I’m offering odds of 50 – 1 on anyone getting it right for next years league..
Anyone? I’d say it was almost certain that somebody will!
(I do know what you mean, BTW – just illustrating the difficulty with precision in writing, which may be one reason why this thread is so long..)
But its government services director Rob Varley warned: “They are not forecasts which can be used to plan a summer holiday or inform an outdoor event.”
Or, more succinctly, ‘they are not forecasts’ :-)
BePrepared #6311
Global warming is as much a political issue as it is a political one. This paper is written by a scientist, but considers the political pressures that have influenced the scientific debate:
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/files/documents/Carter.pdf
But this is only a starting point. If you don’t mind technical arguments then try reading both Climate Audit and Real Climate to see which you find most convincing, but you would have to read quite a lot of both in order to reach any kind of conclusion.
The eerie psychic nature of the MetOffice forecast for this summer reminded me of an old psychic joke, told to me by a young lady from Ohio many years ago.
A man is in a small-town Greyhound bus station (USA), waiting for his bus and he sees a machine against the wall with a psychic lady in full regalia behind the glass and a sign: YOUR WEIGHT AND FORTUNE FOR 25 CENTS.
The man is intrigued so he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a quarter, steps on the scale and out comes a card with his weight on top, saying:
Your name’s John Brown
You’re leaving town
On the next bus to Cincinnati
Now, the man is startled, because his name IS John Brown, and he really IS leaving town on the next bus to Cincinnati.
So he decides to fool the machine, by sneaking up from the side and throwing the quarter in at the last moment as he steps on the scale.
It doesn’t work. He cannot fool the psychic inside the machine, because the card comes out again with the weight and:
Your name’s John Brown
You’re leaving town
On the next bus to Cincinnati
By this time the man is getting frustrated. How can that phony psychic in that machine know all this?
He decides to try to fool the machine one more time, but realizes that he has no more quarters. So he walks over to the newspaper stand at the other end of the bus station and gets some change. But instead of returning the same way, he comes back, skirting the wall out of sight of the lady in the machine.
At last, he sneaks up behind the machine, reaches around to stick in the quarter and puts his foot on the scale from behind.
Out comes the card:
Your name’s John Brown
You f–ked around
And missed the last bus to Cincinnati
Doesn’t have much to do with our topic, but it was unusually warm in Cincinnati that evening (and I hope TonyN doesn’t toss this one out).
Call me cynical if you like but I’m just wondering if this:
<em>”….and am tending towards a belief in global warming caused by man”
and “Can someone maybe give me the top 5 reasons against…”
Will lead to ” Yes I think the case against AGW is perhaps a lot stronger than I thought…..” and “You ‘rational sceptics’ certainly seem much nicer people than those arrogant ‘warmists’.. ”
It wouldn’t be the first time that you lot have been sad enough to make this pretence.
BePrepared
You ask for 5 proofs. As the IPCC have taken 800 pages in each of four assessments and still failed to demonstrate conclusively their own proposition, perhaps I will leave it to Max to stay within your limit.
I know that the Guardian will have told you that Monckton is an absurd figure, although my suggestion to Mr Monbiot that they have a public debate at the Royal Society seems to have fallen on deaf ears. So I will ask you to ‘hold your nose’ and go to his web site. Go to ‘popular articles’ and browse through the content.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/proved_no_climate_crisis.html
For immediate and easier reading why not look at some of the comments from exasperated reviewers of the IPCC material?
“Expert Peer Review Comments of
the first draft of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report
provided by Richard S Courtney
” General Comment on the draft Report.
My submitted review comments are of Chapters 1 and 2 and they are offered for use, but their best purpose is that they demonstrate the nature of the contents of the draft Report. I had intended to peer review the entire document but I have not bothered to complete that because the draft is of such poor quality that my major review comment is:
The draft report should be withdrawn and a report of at least acceptable scientific quality should be presented in its place.
My review comments include suggested corrections to
• a blatant lie,
• selective use of published data,
• use of discredited data,
• failure to state (important) limitations of stated information,
• presentation of not-evidenced assertions as information,
• ignoring of all pertinent data that disproves the assertions,
• use of illogical arguments,
• failure to mention the most important aerosol (it provides positive forcing greater than methane),
• failure to understand the difference between reality and virtual reality,
• arrogant assertion that climate modellers are “the scientific community”,
• claims of “strong correlation” where none exists,
• suggestion that correlation shows causality,
• claim that peer review proves the scientific worth of information,
• claim that replication is not essential to scientific worth of information,
• misleading statements,
• ignorance of the ‘greenhouse effect’ and its components,
• and other errors. ”
There is very much more in a similar vein from this and a variety of other reviewers.
Perhaps it may be more helpful if you gave us the five reasons why you think man is responsible? Incidentally, whilst dong so you can tell us how many scientists you believe are carrying out the actual science contained within the few relevant chapters of WG1 of the Assessments ‘Cause’ As you will be aware those working on WG2 ‘mitigation’ and WG3 ‘effect’ include everyone from junior researchers, engineers, insurance assessors, bankers and Greenpeace and Oxfam activists.
Peter
Coming from the sock puppet king your 6318 is a bit rich
tonyb
BePrepared (6311)
Three tips (together with those, which other posters have already suggested):
1) Remain open-minded to new studies based on the real world of actual physical observations which challenge the conclusions reached in the virtual reality of climate model assumptions
2) Be rationally skeptical of alarming predictions by individuals or organizations such as IPCC that may be making a sales pitch for a hidden political agenda
3) Where possible, always go back to the raw data, rather than accepting someone else’s explanation of what the raw data really mean, particularly those explanations made in press releases or PR blurbs
You have said that you have an aversion to blog sites, but these often provide an open and informal source of information. Check both the sites that support the premise that AGW is a real and serious threat (RealClimate, Grist) and those that challenge this premise (ClimateAudit, Watts Up With That). Look to see which sites arbitrarily censor out opinions that do not agree with the site moderator and which sites do not. It is my experience that sites that censor out dissenting opinion are usually not good sources of unbiased information.
Lots of luck!
Max
I understand the cynicism because i have seen it myself but this IS genuine. As I wrote, I am more pro-manmade warming than against but i just wanted to find out what the main arguments against are. If I find them reasonable, I will probably become confused and neutral because i can’t interpret the basic science myself. In the end, the climate itself over the next few years will determine what needs to be done but i wouldn’t want to prejudge things by claiming this will happen or that will happen.
Thank you for the links. I will be some time reading everything but will be back.
BePrepared (6311)
Not to overload you with my personal thoughts on the ongoing scientific, political and economic debate surrounding AGW, but here is one more point.
When making predictions for the future it is always much more important what the forecasting expert DOES NOT know than it is what he/she DOES know, for it is precisely what he/she DOES NOT know that can and will cause major errors in the prediction.
The longer the forecasting period, the greater is the likelihood that these unforeseen outliers (of unknown data or events) will make the prediction worthless.
A good read on the fallacy of long-range expert predictions (not directly discussing the AGW debate) can be found in the book: The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb.
As a part of this, also be wary of arrogance. If a report is so written as to give the impression that essentially all that is important to know about a subject is already known, that “we now have very high confidence in our ability to project”, etc., this is a sign of arrogance.
Remember that Einstein once wrote, “The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance”.
Max
Beprepared
I have copied a post I made a few days ago about fraud in science. I do not think the IPCC set out to be fraudulent, but the points made in the article as to how everyone goes along with the flow are well worth reading in order to understand how we have got to this state.
“This article below says it all. Frauds (or misunderstanding) peer jealousy, the need to gather more money and prestige for your dept are all major drivers in science these days.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/5345963/The-scientific-fraudster-who-dazzled-the-world-of-physics.html
“Schön’s fraud was the largest ever exposed in physics; he ended up without a job, and was forced to leave America in disgrace. But the ease with which his fraudulent findings and grotesque errors were accepted by his peers raises troubling questions about the way in which scientists assess each other’s work, and whether there might be other such cases out there.”
We are being dazzled by reputations, unproven theories and computer models (which even the IPCC admit are flawed) whilst we set aside history and observational evidence. Yet still some believe everything they are told. I’m going to have a Mencken moment here…
Tonyb
Hey Peter,
Hi Peter,
Your cynicism truly does amaze me. You, the believer, are now the cynical skeptic!
I, personally take people at face value until I have reason to do otherwise. If someone, like BePrepared, asks an open question (such as “Can someone maybe give me the top 5 reasons against…”), I take this as an honest question in search of an honest answer.
There are many valid reasons that speak against the premise that AGW is a serious threat.
My “list of 5” for BePrepared would be:
1. The greenhouse theory itself tells us that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 should result in a temperature increase of a bit less than 1°C, yet climate model assumptions lead to a modeled prediction of several times this value, due to assumed positive feedbacks, which have been programmed into the models but have not been validated by actual physical observations.
2. Recent studies based on actual physical observations (rather than just climate model studies) show that the assumed model feedbacks exaggerate the estimated 2xCO2 warming by around 2.4° to 2.6°C:
(a) cloud feedbacks are strongly negative (cooling) rather than strongly positive as previously assumed by all the climate models [correcting this error results in a reduction of the 2xCO2 impact of around 2.0° to 2.4°C]
(b) water vapor feedback is much less than assumed in the models; these assume that relative humidity remains constant with increased temperature while actual physical observations show that relative humidity decreases significantly with temperature (i.e. there is actually a smaller increase in water vapor than assumed by the models) [correcting this results in a reduction of 0.3° to 0.5°C]
(c) surface albedo feedback is based on a reduction in the amount of snow and ice cover, thereby reducing the amount of solar energy reflected back by our planet, but actual observations show no reduction in N. Hemisphere snow cover since the 1980s and the losses in Arctic sea ice are offset by gains in Antarctic sea ice, so there has been no net change in surface albedo [reduction of 0.1° to 0.2°C]
3. Solar experts tell us that slightly more than half of the long-term warming physically observed over the entire 20th century can be attributed to the unusually high level of solar activity (the highest in several thousands of years); if one attributes all the rest to human CO2, one arrives at a 2xCO2 impact of 0.8°C, confirming the greenhouse theory without any feedbacks
4. IPPC predictions of extreme weather events: heat waves, heavy precipitation events, increased droughts, higher frequency or intensity of tropical cyclone activity, extreme high sea levels, are based on “expert judgment” rather than “attribution studies” and are often estimated to be only “more likely than not” (>50% probability); in other words, they are based on a 50-50 guess by an “expert” rather than on hard data, and can therefore be ignored
5. Climate models tell us that they cannot explain the early 20th century warming period from 1910-1944 (a bit more warming than in the late 20th century warming period from 1976-2000) (i.e. a portion of the warming was caused by inexplicable or unknown factors), then they tell us that they cannot explain the late 20th century warming without including anthropogenic forcings; why could these same unknown factors that helped cause early 20th century warming not also have been responsible for a portion of the late 20th century warming? The IPCC logic is flawed.
That would be my “big 5”.
Of course, there are also the dubious sea level records and projections, the questionable claims on mass loss in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, the disappearance and denial of the historically and physically documented Medieval Warm Period, the erroneous claim that the troposphere is warming more rapidly than the surface, thereby providing evidence of greenhouse warming, the doubtful claim that the UHI distortion to the surface record is negligible, etc.
But these have all been documented by others.
The fact remains that the 1,000-page IPCC AR4 report contains some exaggerations, some sloppy science, some GIGO model projections, some notable omissions, some outright inaccuracies and misrepresentations and a bit of hyperbole, ALL going in the direction of making AGW sound like a more serious problem than it actually is in real fact.
And this is probably the real message to BePrepared: be rationally skeptical of anyone (including myself, but also including IPCC) that is trying to sell you a story; do not accept something as “truth” because you are told that it is based upon a “mainstream consensus”, be extremely wary of computer model outputs as these are only as good as the assumptions fed in, dig until you can uncover the raw supporting data for any claim and insist on actual physical observations rather than on theoretical calculations and assumptions.
Max
Re. fraud, this is social science rather than the proper sort, but it still shows how easily wool can be pulled over eyes that aren’t looking:
http://www.salon.com/media/media960517.html