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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TonyN,
This thread, (beginning with New Statesman and continuing here), has been going on for quite sometime. I think December of 2006 until now……..
Is there some sort of “longest comment thread” in the Guiness Book of World Records or something?
Maybe Guiness will give us all a prize and we can fly at their expense to some exotic locale to accept the prize?
(All except Peter who opposes air travel as it adds noxious, dangerous, CO2 to “the atmosphere” and kills cute fuzzy polar bears).
What about it? I can learn all about Rugby….
Max,
Well no I don’t oppose air travel. I do oppose coal fired electricity power stations which need to be phased out and replaced with alternatives which would include nuclear power. Railways need to be electrified to use this low CO2 power. Research needs to be made on plug in hybrids to replace the internal combustion engine, at least for use in cities.
The earth can cope with some CO2 emissions and aircraft can wait for now.
I don’t play Rugby but I’d be happy to bowl a few cricket balls down to you in the nets if we ever get the opportunity.
Sorry I meant Brute, not Max, in the last posting.
Robin, in your 7188/p48, you wrote:
[1] I saw the run-out the next day on the 1-hour “highlights of the day’s play”, and whilst I agree that Flintoff made a great throw, I felt sorry for Ponting. Did you see the look on Ponting’s poor bruised face earlier when Watson was plumb LBW? I saw him walking off all bloodied after the ball hit him in the mouth at silly-mid-off…. I’m not surprised he set-off perhaps dazed, a tad late on his run.
[2] Brute; well it is not entirely over yet. The Oz team returns to England in about 2 weeks for a series of seven 1-day games, a rather different version of the game; not taken quite so seriously.
Bob_FJ,
“not taken quite so seriously.” Well I’m not quite sure about that. Just look at where the crowds are. Apart from the England-Australia Tests, interest in that form of the game is waning.
Amateur club cricket in England is usually around the one day form of the game. Whereas in Australia its multiday (usually two) over adjacent weekends which is usually just not long enough to allow for a result. Plus sometimes players don’t appear on the second day if they have other work or family commitments.
20-20 one dayers are what the crowds want to watch, and if cricket ever gets popular in Europe and the USA that will be the format.
Peter Martin
You are becoming repetitive with your “is it a hoax” question.
I have told you the all the hysterical hype on AGW is a hoax, whether it comes from self-serving politicians, like Al Gore or Ban Ki Moon, or from a self-serving media, or self-serving scientists, like James E. Hansen, or from self-serving UN bureaucrats, such as the authors of IPCC SPM 2007.
Would you seriously call any of this hype “science”?
If so, then the hoax includes what you would call “science”. I don’t give it that name; I just call it what it is: “hysterical hype”.
Has this finally answered your question?
I hope so, so that we can move on to the real “science”, i.e. the empirical data, which supports the premise that AGW is a serious threat, caused by human CO2 emissions, which you still have not been able to provide.
Max
Re #7226, Brute:
I’ve often wondered about this. Do you feel like emailing the Guiness Book of Records and asking them?
The dateline of the aricle that kicked off this thread was 19th December 2007 and at the top of this page there are details of the comments logged at the NS before the move here. Even if these don’t count, the 7000 odd we are at now is impressive.
I’ve seen people boasting on the net about threads of over a thousand comments, but never ten times that number. It would be interesting if the longest thread on the net turns out to be one dealing with climate scepticism, although I expect that there will be an even longer one dealing with cricket.
Max,
It isn’t true to say that there is no empirical data, but of course you know that already. There isn’t any point discussing it becuase if you can’t think of anything else to say you just say it’s part of the hoax.
If there is a hoax, it must go back a long way to Arrhenius at the turn of the last century. From empirical measurements made with CO2 in tubes, he made various estimates of the CO2 sensitivity of between 1.6 degC and 6 deg C which is pretty close to the range of values predicted now by the IPCC.
Peter Martin
You are waffling again.
Bring the empirical data that supports the premise that AGW is a serious threat, caused primarily by human CO2 emissions (don’t just say that it must exist out there somewhere, maybe…)
And don’t just bring data that show it is warming or ice is melting somewhere on the globe. This is no scientific support for the AGW premise.
Max
Peter
Lest you allow yourself to get sidetracked once again, I’ll put this in caps:
SHOW ME THE EMPIRICAL SCIENTIFIC DATA THAT SUPPORT THE PREMISE THAT AGW IS A SERIOUS THREAT, CAUSED PRIMARILY BY HUMAN CO2 EMISSIONS.
It’s a very simple request to someone who obviously feels he has seen this empirical data (since he devoutly believes in the AGW premise).
Max
Peter Martin
I have applied my mind as I would to any problem. Specifically I apply it to the facts, of which their precious few demonstrating the CO2 drives climate change. You don’t know me so you can not say I had made up my mind before becoming informed. As I have said before, 3 years ago I believe all that read or saw in the media on scientific subjects. The BBC in particular had a very good reputation. Well that is in taters now.
I was alarmed about a program called the day the earth nearly died. It’s about a mass extinction maybe some 200Ma and they put it down to a combination of volcanoes releasing CO2, then the sea warming and releasing frozen CH4. This was then linked to today and the possibility that this is what we are doing to our environment. As I have said I’m always curious so I looked for the facts.
The program in of itself is not too bad, and in isolation is unremarkable. But it was the doomster ending, relating today to the past without references, without any coherent linking of temperatures then and now, the lack of any percentages or concentration of the GH gases that would cause this disaster that bothered me.
But Peter as you well know when you look for the studies and the evidence there is none. This has been mentioned to you ad nauseam. Al Gore and his film came after I started my research, and it was immediately obvious to me as an informed person that it was a load of propagandist rubbish.
Just to finish I had an interesting conversation on the train this morning. The conductor saw I was reading Pilmers book, and said to me “I’m reading this” and “have you read Nigel Lawson’s book” and gave me the low down on his thoughts. This is yet another indicator that ordinary people are going out of their way to inform themselves as they are convinced we are be lied to.
Peter Martin
Please link me to it. At long last I will get the proof.
PS
Peter
Melting ice is not proof
Polar bears have nothing to do with CO2
Whether the temperature is going up or down is not proof or otherwise that CO2 drives climate
Hurricanes are nothing to do with CO2
Sea levels have nothing to do with CO2
Drought or flood nothing to do with CO2
Now that we have some of the read herrings out of the way, “Fact me” as they say
Max,
Robin, and yourself, have obviously decided upon a form of words which poses the question in the way you’ve convinced yourself is unanswerable.
Having set the bar so high that you feel no one can pass the test, you sit there full of smugness and think this means the problem has gone away.
But of course it hasn’t. I think I’ve tried to explain to you before that mathematics requires proof. Science, however, works on evidence. The theory which accepted by the consensus is always the one than explains the observable results the best and is considered the most likely to be correct. There is no proof that Darwins’ theory, of Einstein’s theory is correct, or even any of the so called ‘laws’. Just what makes a theory and what makes a law is an interesting question. They are accepted because they are considered to be the most likely to be correct.
The IPCC have endeavoured to look at all the available evidence on the way the climate is changing and decide on the most likely explanation.
You ask us to apply common sense. There are many times when we see warning signs. If the lights are flashing at a level crossing the most likely explanation is that there is a train coming along the tracks. Of course it may be that the lights are faulty. But no-one in their right mind would carry on as normal, with the lights flashing, just because of that possibility.
Peter (Martin)
A point you seem to miss (or are reluctant to acknowledge) in your general criticism of the sceptics here is that most, if not all, of us started out believing the AGW party line, and only arrived at our current position after some research and plenty of soul-searching. It is a big thing to challenge conventional wisdoms – it is a lot easier to go with the flow and unquestioningly accept what highly paid and qualified committees assure us is happening, but when a bit of digging reveals that those assurances are built on sand, and in some cases are deliberately misleading (e.g. Mann’s hockey stick and the suppression/omission of the MWP from official reports) then one has a choice; either give in and let them get on with it, or keep digging and discuss the matter on forums like this. Max, in particular, has provided reams of information that I certainly find very interesting, and I’m not sure why you dismiss it – could it be that *your* mind is the one that’s made up?
I believe it was JM Keynes who said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” In this case, the facts remain much the same, but their presentation has been hijacked by politicians and PR men with a whole host of agendas that have nothing to do with science, and that makes my nose twitch for the scent of a rodent.
My ‘science’ question for you is this: how much tropospheric warming is due to the dry adiatic lapse rate (a simple result of the ideal gas laws and usually quoted as 9.8 degC/km) and how much is due to man-made CO2?
This is not meant to be a trick question – just one that should be readily answerable by those who assert that CO2 is so dangerous.
Peter Martin
Plate tectonics?
Peter Martin
Empirical data, Peter, not double talk about “consensus theories” and “most likely to be correct”.
Keep trying.
Max
TonyN,
Plate Tectonics. Yes. That’s a most likely to be a correct theory.
Max,
Your alternative is a “quite unlikely to be correct” theory? How stupid is that?
Peter Martin
You have opined:
I would disagree. It is not the “consensus” theory but the simplest theory which is most likely to give the most straightforward and, in the end, correct explanation.
As a renowned climate scientist, Dr. Akasofu has written about this in much greater detail (covered on this thread in earlier posts), but the concept is quite simple.
We have global temperature measurements that go back a bit more than 150 years.
These have shown that our planet’s “temperature” has risen at an average linear rate of around 0.04°C per decade.
But the increase was not steady. There were multi-decadal periods of rapid warming and periods of cooling. Upon closer observation, these periods appear to repeat themselves in a roughly 60-year warming/cooling cycle.
The last warming half-cycle occurred from around 1976 to 2005. It appears to be cooling since 2001, but it is still too early to tell whether or not this is the beginning of a new multi-decadal cooling phase.
Prior to the recent warming phase, we had a roughly 30-year period of slight cooling (1945-1975), which followed a roughly 30-year period of strong warming (1910-1944), which, in turn, followed a period of cooling (1880-1910), which followed a period of warming to 1879.
The all-time record high year over the entire period was 1998, a very strong El Niño year.
These are the recorded facts, with all the errors and inaccuracies that the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly” contains.
Now we come to the “why” question.
The simplest answer is the best. This answer tells us that there is some sort of a mechanism, which acts in a roughly 60-year cycle to cause the warming/cooling swings on top of a longer-term slight warming trend, as our planet emerges from a well-documented previous colder period called the Little Ice Age.
A comparison made around 1990 between the sunspot cycle length and global temperature, starting around 1860, shows a strong correlation, although the mechanism is unclear (changes in the measured direct solar irradiation alone are not high enough to cause this total change). Ocean circulation cycles (El Niño, etc.) are poorly understood, but there appears to be a link to the sun.
There also appears to be another cyclical mechanism with much longer cycles, which has caused past multi-century warmer and cooler periods. The periods of extreme cold during the LIA appear to coincide with periods of extremely low solar activity.
A more complicated answer would concentrate primarily on the latest warming period, and would link this to a parallel increase in atmospheric CO2 (which has only really been measured since 1958) and to the greenhouse theory, which tells us that a doubling of CO2 should theoretically cause an increase of temperature of around 1°C, all other things being equal, with the increase in atmospheric CO2 linked to anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
The “champion” of this AGW explanation is the UN’s IPCC, which was specifically set up to evaluate anthropogenic influence on our planet’s climate and come up with recommendations to mitigate against any potential harmful consequences.
The AGW explanation does not hold for the early 20th century warming (1910-1944), when there was very little human CO2, or, even less, for the late 19th century warming (1850-1879), when there was no appreciable human CO2 at all. It also does not explain the multi-decadal cooling periods.
In order to explain the most recent cooling (1945-1975) during the post-war economic boom with rapidly increasing anthropogenic CO2 emissions, another complicated explanation is made (without any empirical data as support): it was caused by anthropogenic aerosols (primarily sulfates) which temporarily “overwhelmed” the greenhouse warming signal.
Now we have the current end of warming (or even cooling since 2001), at the same time as anthropogenic CO2 emissions are at an all-time high, presenting a dilemma for champions of the AGW theory. Rationalizations are made of “background noise” or “natural variability” temporarily hiding the underlying CO2 warming signal, but, again, these are complicated explanations.
Solar Cycle 23 has had a hard time really ending and the sun has been unusually quiet for 18 months now. Solar scientists tell us that this could well be the start of a prolonged period of very low solar activity, following a period of unusually high solar activity (highest in several thousand years) in the 20th century, and that this might result in a multi-decadal cooling phase.
At the same time, the climate models cited by IPCC, have projected temperature increases several time as high as those observed to date, by adding in “positive feedback” assumptions that multiply the theoretical greenhouse impact of increased CO2 by a factor of 3 to 4. In addition, the computers are fed “scenarios” of CO2 increase, which is several times that actually experienced over the recent years. A double whammy effect, resulting in temperature forecasts for year 2100 of 1.8 to 6.4°C higher than today (compared to a 20th century actual increase of only 0.7°C).
Due to a large extent as a reaction to some of the shriller and more preposterous prophesies of imminent disaster, more and more people are beginning to question the science behind the premise that AGW is a serious problem, primarily caused by human CO2 emissions.
Some rational skeptics are demanding empirical data, which support this premise, rather than just model outputs, but there is no empirical data.
This general skepticism will only grow if it has really stopped warming and we are entering a prolonged cooling period, as projected by several solar scientists.
If this occurs, it will happen gradually, resulting in a major disappointment for the many who are poised to profit from the AGW craze (politicians, bureaucrats, climatologists, environmental activists, industrialists, money-shufflers, hedge fund managers, etc.) as they see their multi-billion dollar bubble burst.
But it will prove again that the simplest answer (rather than a more complicated “consensus” theory) is often the best answer.
Max
Max,
The simplest theory? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.
What really matters is how well the theory fits the observable empirical data. The sun isn’t constant and obviously that would be the first thing to look at, when investigating climate change. However, its been pretty much constant for the last 50 years so the facts don’t fit.
JamesP,
You say ” most, if not all, of us started out believing the AGW party line “only arrived at our current position after some research and plenty of soul-searching”
Would that include Brute? He didn’t actually write this line but he said it sounded like him.
““This ‘global warming/climate change’ garbage is a made-up, contrived lying bunch of ultra left wing extremist liberals trying to extort money out of people. This lying, uneducated puke Gore…”
There is lots of similar nonsense on the net. I’m just trying to conjure up a mental image of the author lying awake at night “searching his soul” , as you put it. I wonder which particular piece of scientific evidence most concerned him? Do you think he favours the variations in solar activity theory? Maybe it’s one of the papers by Dr Akasofu which clinched it for him? Or maybe he leans more towards:
Svensmark, Henrik; et al. (2007-02-08). “Experimental evidence for the role of ions in particle nucleation under atmospheric conditions”.
What do you think?
Brute,
I was originally intending to totally ignore the typically naïve nonsense issued at 7230, concerning several rather different forms of that great sport; cricket. However, I’m sensitive to the fact that you come across here as a timorous and rather impressionable soul, so wish to assure you, and not to be swayed by misinformation. Furthermore, that aficionados of the sport here would probably agree that what I wrote in 7229 was 100% correct.
That is not to say that I and others do not enjoy a 1-day game series, in which some strategy and stuff is relevant. In the same way aficionados of Rugby Union, may well enjoy Rugby League as I do at the international level.
However, in my case, I think the slam-bam 20-overs cricket game is only worth watching on TV if there is nothing else worth watching.
You could be just an old fossil, Bob !
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/sad-fact-is-that-test-cricket-is-dying/story-e6freyar-1111117989748
I personally would prefer to play any sport than watch it and , regardless of the merits of the longer version , it’s just not realistic to devote 3 or more days to a single game of cricket. Especially if half the time you’re hanging about in the pavillion waiting for it to stop raining, or while the other members of your team are out there batting!
Peter Martin
To your last post(7244), I have no opinion on which scientific reports convinced Brute that the AGW premise was based on flawed science. Ask him.
With me, it was a gradual process, as I began to see that the scientific case for the AGW premise was inherently weak, but was being propped up by vested interests.
BTW, attributing something someone else wrote to Brute (or, by indirect inference to me) is a cheap shot.
The theory (you mentioned) of Svensmark et al. is one of several, which could explain the empirically observed relation between solar activity and global temperature. It will soon be tested on a large scale and we will know more about how this mechanism works (or doesn’t work). It is a shame that IPCC has simply written this off as “controversial”, at the same time limiting its (admittedly low level of) understanding of the climate forcing impact of changes in solar activity to direct solar irradiance alone and essentially making the sun irrelevant in recent climate forcing.
The unusually high level of 20th century solar activity (highest in several thousand years) is considered to be inconsequential to our planet’s climate, while an increase of a hundred ppm of a trace GH gas (CO2) is essentially given credit for it all.
The current very low solar activity is not considered to be part of the reason of the observed 21st century cooling. It is all due to “background noise” and “natural variability” temporarily hiding the underlying CO2 signal.
Earlier warming periods (prior to significant human CO2) are glossed over (since they do not fit the AGW premise), and a cooling period, occurring just as human CO2 emissions were beginning to ramp up exponentially, are rationalized by introducing another anthropogenic hypothesis (human aerosols), with no empirical data to support this suggestion.
You’ll have to admit that this is sort of like the Easter Bunny story, Peter.
Ask Brute. Maybe that is why he no longer believes in the Easter Bunny.
Max
“Would that include Brute?” (7244)
You’d better ask him, but I suspect his agreement with the quotation you gave was somewhat TIC, as (I surmise) it often is.
I also agree with the sentiment, if not the language, as it is a natural enough response to be angry when you realise you’ve been deceived.
One of the ironies of this debate is that most sceptics, who have a right to be annoyed if what they believe is true, are quite measured and polite in discussion (e.g. here and on Anthony Watts’s site) while a lot more rudeness is to be found on AGW sympathetic sites like RC, where I get the impression that they protest too much. All IMO, of course, but I’m not the only person to have observed this, and the termination of threads when a sceptic has made a telling point seems significant.
Perhaps you would care to defend Hansen has for his ‘death trains’ remark?
‘Hansen has’ = ‘Hansen’ – sorry.
Peter Martin
You wrote (7244):
Let’s check this out more closely.
If we use the Wolf number (solar cycle amplitude) as a measure of the sun’s activity, we see that this rose from around 60 to an unusually high level of 190 from solar cycle 14 (early 20th century) to solar cycle 19 (mid-century). It then dropped, but still remained at a level of 108 until 1975. After 1975 (solar cycles 21 and 22) it rose again to a relatively high level of 160, before dropping slightly in solar cycle 23, which is just now ending up.
The first rise of activity correlates very well with the early 20th century warming period. The late 20th century rise of activity correlates with warming as well, although the change in Wolf number from 108 to 160 is not as dramatic as the earlier change from around 60 to 190. Is the recent slowdown in solar activity at the end of solar cycle 24 linked to the most recent cooling?
There is an observed correlation here, Peter, which actually appears to be more robust than the correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperature taken over this same time period.
Even for the late 20th century warming (post 1975) we have an increase in solar activity (Wolf number) of 48% versus an increase in atmospheric CO2 from 330 to 370 ppmv or 12%.
Do you care to comment?
Max