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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Tonyb,
I apologize…..here it is.
http://butnowyouknow.wordpress.com/
Tonyb/Max,
Yes, “Climate Change” seems to be a catch all phrase wherein the 30° “anomaly” in temperature here over 3 days can be attributed to manmade CO2 by the Warmists as opposed to the onset of winter.
Every heavy rainstorm or lack of rain, windstorm, heavy snow/absence of snow, cooler than normal/warmer than normal temperature, can be considered “proof” of mankind’s reckless disregard for the planet, upsetting Earth God Gaia…….incurring her wrath.
Where have I heard this before?
It’s a curious human nature study….. that the majority of Warmists that I come across are staunch Atheists, ridiculing popular religion, but follow “the science” of global warming as their doctrine asserting that it is somehow different.
The “counter culture” movement needs something to reject…….in this case it is organized religion……which they’ve replace with Earth worship…….but they fail to recognize the parallel (or refuse to). It’s also curious how Marxist “solutions” weave nicely into their newly found piety.
The Coldest Year Since 2000
Here, on the bottom, is NOAA’s global mean temp for each of the past 10 years. They measure this in ten thousandths of one degree from the 100 year average:
1998 0.5969
1999 0.4198
2000 0.3885
2001 0.5188
2002 0.5738
2003 0.5811
2004 0.5409
2005 0.6128
2006 0.5599
2007 0.5459
2008 0.4793
Bold is cooling.
Why do those who are profiting from the global warming industry describe 2008 as one of the ten warmest years on record, instead of as the coldest year since 2000?
You can also see this, if you zoom in, on the chart at the right.
By the way, the trendline added in black is calculated from their data as an 11 year moving average, which makes sense to use just in case the sun is actually influencing temperatures on our planet. It is therefore very slow to show a reversal in trend…see how it falls behind the change in every other case. Yet it’s now showing a cooling trend, at the far right.
With the numbers on the left, you can see it is not only growing cooler, each year since 2005, but that it cooled fastest in 2008. If we graphed this trend, 0, -529, -140, -646…the curve says we should be in an actual ice age by 2020 or so. I did that last bit in my head, but if you work it out formally, send me a copy.
In this chart, using NOAA Climatologist data with clearer formatting, you can see that we are in a four year cooling trend, right now. Also notice that this entire chart encompasses barely more than one half of one degree.
I’m cross posting the following comment that I’ve just put on the Peter Taylor Chill thread here to make sure that everyone sees it:
IT DOES NOT APPLY TO THIS THREAD!
Max and Brute.
The interesting thing about the ‘global warming but only where it isn’t cooling’ hypothesis, is how widespread it is.
As an example, in Brutes country Abilene has been cooling since 1930, Amarillo since the same date, Anchorage from 1978 and Atlanta from 1881.
These are all GISS figures and as you can see I have only dealt with the ‘A’s’. These are all subsumed into the ‘Global’ figure which is why I think it is so misleading and berate Max every time he uses it, especially when he quotes it to a fraction of a degree since 1850! (There is a smiley here Max)
tonyb
Tonyb,
Something else that I neglected to add is the impact of removing the “cold weather” stations from the record after the fall of the Soviet Union.
I’ve seen a wonderful graph of “global” temperature increase with a lay-over of the political changes in the Soviet Union in the late 80’s (which I don’t have time to find right now). The political infrastructure of the former Soviet Union fell apart and many stations were abandoned……removing them from the database.
It really is stunning.
Brute and Max
I have already got the blink chart Brute refers to. The fall out of stations since 1993 is indeed stunning.
At first I had understood this to be the removal of funding from Eastern European stations causing them to be closed. However I think there is more to it than that, so would appreciate anyone’s input.
A little while ago I asked Max to follow up on some very old German station records as the information was also in German.
I have since tracked them down myself quite coincidentally and discover that many of these stations wre removed from the Giss database in 1993. Some stil exist -but are not official-Most have have become redundant. Presumably if you are not an ‘official’ Giss or Hadley station you are more vulnerable to budget cuts.
As I work my way through hundreds of temperature daa sets 1993 is obviously a watershed as very many intersting and old records suddenly cease in that year.
So this is not restricted to East Europe, although that did occur there-it seems to be prevalent in any country that had many stations which have since been ‘rationalised’. Many of these are historic datasets that show the cyclic variation through the centuries I have already referred to.
That these were of considerable significance can be seen in that Phil Jones got EU funding in 2003 to follow up on seven of these historic databases.
tonyb
Brute (7723)
“The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind” Nigel Calder, editor, New Scientist magazine
Time he/they were reminded!
As your list makes abundantly clear, those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
Alex:
Persuaded by your 7719 and inspired by your excellent letter linked at 7716, I relented and sent an online complaint to the ASA. Here’s what I said:
I would urge all UK contributors to do likewise (in their own words).
Good on you Robin!
Does anyone know whether this advert has appeared on the Public Service Broadcasting channels? Channel4 or S4C for instance. There may be work for Ofcom to do too.
And has anyone posted the advert on YouTube yet? If so a link would be appreciated because I’m not much of a television watcher and haven’t seen it yet.
Incidentally, is there a difference between an advertisement and a paid-for government announcement? Ofcom has very clear requirements where the broadcast of factual material relating to public policy is concerned in Sections 2 and 5 of the Broadcasting Code.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/ifi/codes/bcode/
TonyN: Here’s a link. It was published on ITV1 last Friday (9th) at 20:45PM (during Coronation Street). ASA seems not to make the distinction you mention.
Thanks Robin. Can you remember a case where there have been complaints, or even an adverse finding, involving misleading information in a party political broadcast? Or do politicians have a special dispensation which allows them to mislead the public I wonder?
I’ll send in a complaint anyway.
TonyN: I’m unaware of any – although I’d be surprised if there had been no such complaint or finding. But, of course, this advertisement is not a party political broadcast.
Robin
Nope! It’s not a party political broadcast. It’s a government announcement which, instead of being put out as a press release for news coverage, and thereby being subject to the very stringent rules covering news broadcasts, is costing the tax-payer £6m in advertising slots. Presumably the same sort of campaign has been used in connection with drink-driving, smoking, AIDs and other matters involving risk, but there is no real parallel with this advert as in those cases the risks are not the subject of any kind of scientific controversy.
I was just wondering how regulators would catogorise it for the purpose of applying the various codes covering broadcast output: as factual output or as an advertisement in the generally accepted sense of the word, which is a category which does not seem to fit.
I’m here from and with reference to Peter Taylor Chill blog.
Sounds a bit like Edward Burnays’ Engineering Of Consent http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_0g1RUQMVQ
This is largely why I’m wary of the likes of Nigel Lawson ‘appealing to reason’. I, perhaps somewhat wrongly, associate him with Thatcher and a misguided faith in Neoliberalism which was riding high on the unreason of the engineering of consent. Bernays’ Public Relations was supposedly largely to placate a strengthening democracy increasingly concerned about the American ‘
Big Business’ propensity for Spencerian (‘survival of the fittest’) Robber Baron methods born of the fiery crucible of the fossil fuel intensive industrial revolution; in many ways surely a great boon to humanity, but you can have too much of a good thing.
It is no accident that Thomas Friedman, as much as he plays it down, should contrast the ‘Dirty fuels system’ with the ‘clean energy revolution’… that this should have a heavy ‘original sin’ type connotation to it.
And as for this
I have my doubts
I think we need to focus in this area http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05152009/watch2.html
to TonyN #7735
the ad is posted at Wattsupwiththat, with many comments including complaints to the Advrtising Standards Authority from Robin, TonyB, Alex Cull, Phillip Bratby and others. I suggested, before seeing Robin’s comment here, that when we get replies from the ASA, it would be interesting to continue the discussion on this thread.
From my experience working for the government’s ad agency, the Central Office of Information, many years ago, I would guess that this campaign is likely to cause big ructions in Whitehall on the subject of political neutrality, and any complaints to the ASA can only help the process along.
All: the quoted item at the end of Jack’s post above (about which he has his doubts) comes from a post of mine on another blog (specifically about that bedtime ad with the cute little blond girl).
Jack: please expand on your doubts.
geoffchambers #7741:
What kind of big ructions and why would this be seen as a matter relating to political neutrality? And would public welfare adverts of the kind I referred to in #7739 have raised the same issues in Whitehall?
I would certainly welcome discussion of this matter here or elsewhere at HS.
TonyN and Geoff:
I find it hard to see why the bedtime story ad could be seen as affecting political neutrality when all the major parties have essentially the same view on climate change. (The exception is UKIP – but might that not be the exception that proves the rule?) Nonetheless, it may be significant that, if this were a matter on which the parties held differing views, it would surely cause a tremendous row – exploiting (even, as some might argue, abusing) small children in order to make a political point would I’m sure be claimed to be a most serious and damaging issue.
But is it so very different when climate change is not conventionally political but is, nonetheless, highly controversial as is evidenced almost daily in the comments sections of online versions of the MSM and throughout the blogosphere?
Robin, I think your message was admirable as well, not least because it delivered a punch and at the same time was succinct enough to get through the rather miserly word limit on the website.
I note that the ASA announce their adjudications here every Wednesday. Tomorrow is likely to be far too early to see anything about this matter, but it will be interesting to keep an eye on the site and find out which way they go on this…
Thanks, Alex. As a courtesy, I’ve just emailed a shorter version (no references to the Code) of my ASA complaint to the Government’s “Act on CO2” website.
to TonyN at #7743
Robin at #7744 has more or less answered for me. Public opinion is part of the political process, and politicians can’t ignore it for ever. Some day, a maverick MP will raise the question of wasting £6 million on frightening children, winning himself a headline and some kudos, and embarrassing the government.
In this case the minister gets on to his civil servants, trying to lay the blame for his embarrassment, and the wave runs all the way down to the dogsbody who reads our letters of complaint. These may prove useful to someone in some government department asked to report on “the affair”. Not just x letters of complaint from Joe Public, but some intelligent quotes to be used as ammunition in the low-level civil war which is quietly breaking out at the BBC, and in the media generally.
There must be just as many non-believers irritated at the AGW hysteria in the Civil Service as there are among Guardian readers, BBC watchers, and the public at large. If our letters help them to counter the trend, it’s all to the good. One small step, and all that.
Thanks to Alex for the information about the ASA. See you all back here one of these Wednesdays.
I have also sent a copy of my ASA complaint to Peter Lilley – my MP and one of the few MPs to criticise global warming hysteria.
Alex (7745)
the ASA announce their adjudications here every Wednesday
I notice they’ve just jumped on Danone for a misleading yoghurt advertisement, where the ‘science’ must have been at least as solid as AGW. A useful precedent, perhaps?
It was about this quote
#7740
Well, yes, I suppose it’s hard not to look back at things like the Tulip mania of the 17th century and not be amazed, bemused etc. But supposedly if we apply the standards by which we view the past we should be equally wise to the present.
Fat chance of that!
Perhaps if the current AGW situation does turn out to be what it’s describe as in above quote then perhaps people will take a fairly superficial hindsight view of it.
I’m quite convinced though that the myriad problems of resource depletion will take such a severe toll on the future that it will not at all be difficult for a great many to see how climate destabilization was confused with human causes.
Any such ‘superficial’ hindsight view, as you will have probably gathered by my comments, I think, would be especially typical of the unreason to which Nigel Lawson refers but that Lawson (Neal – All Consuming) probably better, more accurately, understands.
Nigel Lawson, if I’m not wrong, goes into some detail about AGW being something like a religion, a substitue, and I think I’d agree. But it seems rich coming from someone I presume to have a misguided faith in Neoliberalism (something akin to a religion) – to have largely facilitated it.
I think John Ralston Saul explains this well in The Collapse Of Gloablism (though he doesn’t refer directly to Lawson as I remember). Perhaps Saul is a beyond the pale ‘lefty’, I don’t think so.