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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Interestingly this letter (to the Royal Society suggesting it reviews its position on AGW) falls into the same category as the presentation I mentioned above. The facts are sound but the tone is rude and shrill. It could, to my mind, actually set back the admirable cause it supports. Why don’t these people get some measured advice before firing off such missives?
Robin:
Such contributions are certainly unhelpful, but how can anyone prevent it happening? Still, I’d have loved to have heard what Knight and Corbyn actually said to each other after a good dinner.
Why don’t these people get some measured advice
I suspect it’s because the sort of people who write like that don’t take advice about anything much!
As you say, it doesn’t help the cause as much as it might, but I can’t help feeling that the Royal Society deserves it!
James P: it may be that the Royal Society “deserves” to get such a letter (see my 7051) but, far more important than that, is that it should listen to the message being conveyed. Unfortunately, the nature of the letter gives it every excuse to ignore it. The author, incidentally, was someone called R.C.E. Wyndham (does anyone know who that is?) and was addressed to Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society. The story is on WUWT today where I posted the following comment:
Robin #7054 Quite so. But shame about your hill-walking analogy on the Spectator thread; nil credibility after that I’m afraid.
Jasper: er … what was so wrong with that hill-walking analogy?
Robin #7056 eg A winning streak at roulette …
Why, Jasper, does a winning streak at roulette invalidate the analogy?
Robin #7058 Because you can’t infer a trend from limited data. (As they say, weather doesn’t = climate!) For a startling confirmation of this principle, I recommmend acquaintanceship with the St Petersburg Paradox.
Jasper: I think you’re ignoring the context.
When it’s pointed out that temperatures have fallen slightly over recent years, alarmists often respond by claiming that, as recent years are amongst the warmest for the last hundred years or so (obviously that’s true), temperatures are not falling now. My analogy (if you’re hill walking and the path starts to descend, it would be absurd to say that it’s not really descending because you’re higher now than you were six hours ago) illustrates the nonsense of the alarmists’ reply. I’m not making any claim to a trend or saying that warming has stopped: temperatures may rise again tomorrow (or the path may revert to an ascent) – merely that, at present, they’re going down.
And if you’re Scotland-bound what do you do at J33 on the M1 when you find you’re heading south rather than north?
You point out that you’re heading south. That would be a correct observation – just as it’s correct to point out that, at present, temperatures are cooling.
And soon (on the M1) you’re going to be heading north (rather than south). And soon temperatures are also going to be heading (regetttably) upwards. No?
Heading upwards? Maybe. Or maybe not. As Max said on the Spectator thread (where I was commenting on his post): “… IPCC and the Met Office were wrong. It stopped warming and started cooling instead. The evidence of global cooling is the temperature record … Will it continue to cool? Who knows?”
Not you Jasper, not me … not the sceptics, not the alarmists.
Chicago sees coldest July in 66 years; Average temp 68.9 degrees…
http://cbs2chicago.com/local/chicago.coldest.july.2.1103959.html
We’ve had an awful bunch of cool “climate” this summer………..(smiling face).
Jasper,
It seems that weather counts as “climate” when a high temperature record gets broken somewhere or there’s a heat wave someplace. Yes, I’m beginning to see a trend……..but I’m not about to attribute it to anything other than the natural processes that the Earth goes through.
There is something fishy going on with this global warming. I think warmists want to take over the power in the world and start to oppress us. Get ready with that, there is a warmist in White House already!
The UK’s “Barbecue Summer” was in June, apparently… :-)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8173533.stm
And it’s all the fault of the press!
From the BBC report:
Is it satisfactory that forecasters and the people who determine whether they are correct are part of the same organisation? The same, of course, applies on a larger scale to the GCMs predicting longer term climate that the Met Office run. Time for independent auditing? I’m not suggesting that the Met Office are rigging the figures, only that the public could then be confident that this cannot happen.
I liked this bit:
The Met Office complains in response that Mr Corbyn will not publish his “unique” methods of forecasting.
Pots and kettles! Even if they did respond properly to FOI requests, it still wouldn’t give them any right to Piers Corbyn’s methods, as he’s not publically funded! Nice to know they acknowledge his ability, though…
For the Brits……………….have you guys seen this?
“Deep Cool” – the Mole within Hadley CRU
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/26/deep-cool-the-mole-within-hadley-cru/
Met Office / Hadley CRU discovers the mole
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/28/hadley-cru-discovers-the-mole/
ALL,
A few days ago I mentioned what I thought was stunning news that Mark Serreze has recently been made director of NSIDC.
Over at RC John P. Reisman (OSS Foundation) was ringing the praises for an article by Serreze that I found rather amusing, as it seems to follow a tendency for Serreze to proclaim some rather naïve stuff.
Here is a follow-up post that I made at RC
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27 July 2009 at 2:46 AM
John P. Reisman, Rod B, Kevin McKinney, & Manacker,
Further my 320, Mark Serreze, newly director of NSIDC, is the apparent author of this article:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_serreze.html
Please study the following graphic comparison of its figure 1, with some other information in Wikipedia:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3496/3760617259_68b468d807_o.jpg
I’d be interested in your comments, and also from anyone with a rational consideration.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No reaction so far
They’re giving me a hard time over there at the moment following a long copy-pasting of some naughty things that me and Max have said around the place, with me getting most scolding for stuff I did here. I had a post evaporate so I Emailed Gavin making enquiries and it came back, which was nice. Seems OK now.
Brute,
Sheez, what would Confucious say about that?
Possibly he might sayeth:
Uhm…. No…………………. I’ve gone blank.
Moles can turn cancerous?
Oh bugger it, the third “Ashes” test match is starting shortly, and nothing else matters.
Re the Met Office and their “barbecue summer”, there’s a good article in today’s Telegraph. The author, Philip Eden (a meteorologist), says, “seasonal forecasting is still pretty poor. There is some measurable skill, compared with chance, but not much.” He has a good analogy:
Not a bad way of differentiating “weather” from “climate” perhaps. The problem is in those unexpected eventualities, such as losing your job. As Eden says,
Yet the Met Office like to give us the impression that they can predict the climate decades from now.
Max:
I see Dave is trying to hassle you re the earlier 20thC warming (and now the importance of earlier CO2 emissions) on the Spectator blog. When replying, might it not be amusing to throw the 1860-1879 warming into the mix?
Global Warming….We’re all gonna die!
In New York, It’s the Summer That Isn’t
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/nyregion/01hot.html?_r=3&hp