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.
(Click the ‘comments’ link below if the input box does not appear)
10,000 Responses to “Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs.”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Peter #8816
Peter, as you know I think the concept of a global temperature to 1850/1880 is complete nonsense, as is the notion that our temperature records are accurate to fractions of a degree.
The number of stations in the Southern Hemisphere at the start of the Global record (and even until 1940) was minute and that over the sea in effect non existent
I have referenced Hansens peper on this before. Here it is yet again.
Article: Global trends of measured surface air temperature. Author: James Hansen
This is the original article by James Hansen from 1987 where he identified the stations worldwide that he felt could be used in his own dataset that was to start from 1880.
Figure 2 sums the numbers up. Essential reading for climate researchers as it puts the GISS datasets into context.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1987/1987_Hansen_Lebedeff.pdf
We are not recording like for like either with the number of stations, their location, the equipment or the actual microclimate being recorded-many of the sites are now airports.
You obviously believe in the accuracy of the record so this is a direct challenge for you to post the article/research that convinces you of;
A) The merit of a global temperature
B) The accuracy of each component part of the record.
You have evaded this question before, so hopefully this time round you will address this fundamental building block of global warming.
Tonyb
Peter M
The UK might be an insignificant area, however cold (currently -5.1 deg.C in my garden, which rarely sees freezing temperatures during the day), but I notice it’s also been snowing in Beijing.
Our Met Office has underestimated the cold day after day over Christmas and New Year (there was a 3-day lock-in at a Yorkshire pub when the gritters failed to arrive) – it’s as if they so badly want it to be warmer that they are preventing their forecasters from using the real figures!
PS I tried to add include a link in the last comment, but WordPress didn’t like it. Try googling for ‘Beijing snow’…
add include
Can’t type either (too cold) – sorry!
TonyB,
You also thought that the GHE was contrary to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, if I remember correctly, so why is what you think on the temperature record any likely to be any less muddled?
Robin and Max,
Like all MET offices around the world I’m sure the UK office are ignored when they get their weather forecasts correct and condemned for incompetency when they get it wrong.
They are largely responsible for short term forecasts. Predicting weather is like trying to forecast the weekends football results. Very difficult. However, like overall climate trends, it was much easier to correctly predict, as I did, that the two teams, later in the season, in the UK premier league would be Chelsea and Manchester United.
The guys at Realclimate have addressed the issue of just how good various predictions have been over recent years. They are really no worse and no better than you might have expected.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/updates-to-model-data-comparisons/
Beijing — coldest in 40 years…
http://www.theage.com.au/world/siberian-winds-usher-in-record-lows-in-beijing-20100103-lna6.html
Peter M 8830
I’m sure you can do better than that Peter. How is it that WeatherNews that I use gets it right and gives me a good idea of what weather is coming, not to mention AccuWeather.com that is prepared to go out to 15 days with a reasonable degree of accuracy?
The Met Office, lets face it, is wedded to AGW and the announcement in October about the forthcoming winter had to be Political. No other organisation forecast a mild winter. How do you account for the fact that so much tax payers money is poured into this organisation only for them to be spectacularly wrong all the time. I feel sorry for their staff as some of them must be embarrassed now working in such a political atmosphere.
Just found this
Just about sums them up. Read the whole thing hear. Even in the face of all the evidence, and in the absence of any supporting evidence of their own AGW theory these morons are still trying to spin it.
Peter
I am afraid you are not remembering correctly, I seem to recall you conceded the point I made or I would have pursued it at the time.
This is getting a bit desperate if you need to go back to a conversation 18 months ago.
This current question of global temperatures has nothing to do with the laws of physics it is to do with the collection of figures and their interpretation-do not conflate the issue in order to avoid answering.
I am challenging you to produce papers to refute my 8826 without any more ludicrous diversions. That is the subject at hand because of the 2009 figures you have quoted. Stop raking through cold embers and support your assertion with facts that 2009 will be the fifth warmest ever year.
tonyb
Re the Met Office, remember this Earthwatch blog entry from Richard Black on 30th October last year?
“During the meeting, Mr Corbyn made concrete forecasts relevant to the UK; here they are.
The period from 17-19 November, he says, carries an 85% probability of a storm surge in the North Sea. This will probably lead to snow and blizzards in Scotland and northern England, perhaps a few days later. There are likely to be coastal flood warnings for East Anglia and Holland.
The UK winter, he forecasts, is likely to be cold with some very cold spells. His bete noire, the Met Office, says in an “early indication” that temperatures are likely to be near or above the recent average (3.7C for December), though there is a one in seven chance of a cold one.
So there you are. The forecasts are out; let battle commence.”
As far as I can tell, Piers Corbyn got the North Sea storm surge prediction wrong (although there were high winds, even some tornadoes in the south east, slightly earlier); however, there were severe floods in exactly that 17-19 November time frame (but in Cumbria.) Wikipedia has the details.
And I think he was spot on with the cold winter forecast. Maybe our next government could save some time and money (and maybe lives too?) by subscribing to WeatherAction – my impression is that Corbyn doesn’t get it right every time, but has an edge that the Met Office seem to lack. I don’t know of any independent studies that have compared success rates between WeatherAction and the Met Office but they would be interesting to read – perhaps one should be carried out asap, with a view to determining which service would be the best value for money.
The temperature anomaly for 2009 isn’t going to change anyone’s opinion. To get a good understanding requires an average of many data points – not just one.
Nevertheless, I’d say, looking at the red and blue traces on the first graph (Realclimate link in 8830) that GISTEMP have 2009 about equal second with 2001 and 2007. They have 2005 as their warmest year on record. Not ever. Yes it was warmer millions of years ago. And yes CO2 and sea levels were higher too.
Hadcrut3 have 1998 as their warmest year. 2009 looks to be about 5th. Its possible that this may change as more data for the end of the year is processed. Also, I’m just reading the graph by eye. What would others make it? If I’m wrong it won’t be by much.
Well, well, Peter – you still don’t get it. The point of my recent posts is this:
If the Met Office, despite its new £30m supercomputer and its £170m budget, is no more capable of forecasting this winter’s weather than could “any person in the street” (having forecast, in September, a mild winter, it now says there’s a 50/50 chance of it being cold), what authority does it have to tell us we must undermine our economies and lifestyles because it predicts that, otherwise, the climate will get dangerously warm in the future?
Your football analogy is hopelessly inappropriate. I’ve advised you before that analogy rarely helps to make a case. But, as usual, you don’t listen.
Peter
To add a little meat to the bones on the whole met office ability to predict the weather thing. I very frequently check the forecasts for where i work and where i live (being a biker i’m a little interested in the snow forecast). The outlook for this week has changed every time i’ve looked at the 5 day forecast. So far the various days this week have varied from clear skys to snow showers and back again. Even where i work, the people i speak to have zero faith in the met office regardless of their political/religious leanings and whether or not they believe AGW is a problem.
The real problem is that the Met Office (that is so much in bed with AGW hype it’s stopped using protection) no longer provides reliable forecasts to allow parts of the country to prepare for cold weather like we are experiencing at the moment e.g. parts of scotland are now complaining about grit stocks running low and this is before the expected bouts of snow hit this week, nevermind the public transport network.
They are fast approaching the point of laughing stock in this country with their constant (yes, constant) over estimating the temperature, and have such have failed in their primary role as weather forecasters.
I seem to have degenerated into rant territory, probably because i resent my taxes beinging wasted on these people.
Robin,
You’re far too fixated on the UK’s winter weather. On a global scale there is no such thing as summer or winter. The radiation received by the Earth from the Sun is very nearly the same on every day of the year. It is slightly lower than usual at present because of the very low solar minimum of the 12 year cycle.
Whatever the shortcomings of the UK MET office’s predictions of the UK’s weather, they have zero impact on global climate models. They’ll be done by different people with different computers using different programs. In principle, it may be possible to model both weather and long term climate using the same computer simulations but it would require an enormous amount of processing power and is probably several years, maybe even decades, away from being feasible.
It’s not good enough to just say that my footballing analogy is ‘hopelessly inappropriate’. If you disagree you need to explain why. It’s quite normal in statistics to illustrate sometimes difficult concepts with everyday examples. An intelligent child should be able to grasp that the same processes are at work, in both in football and climate. Short term uncertainties tend to average out in the longer term to reveal an underlying trend.
Peter 8839
You have an entirely false idea as to how these Met Office models are constructed. I have seen this done three times at the Met office and basically the core people are the same, although the data then spins off into different areas i.e. the Meteorologists for short term and the climate modellers for the long term
This is how general models are consructed.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/science/creating/monthsahead/seasonal/
This is how added value is made to the computer models.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/projections/
All that happens is that some extra data/runs are added. This is is based on the IPCCS scenarios so the answer is predetermined according to what question is being asked.
Exract:
Computer models used by the Met Office
The computer climate models used for the majority of the work at the Met Office Hadley Centre are detailed three-dimensional representations of major components of the climate system. They are mostly run on the Met Office’s supercomputers. As part of the Met Office’s Unified Model, the atmosphere component of the climate model represents the same physical processes as that used for operational weather forecasts. However, due to the longer timescales involved in climate prediction, other components of the climate system are added including:
Three-dimensional representation of the ocean and sea ice
An interactive carbon cycle model
Interactive atmospheric chemistry models
The coupled atmosphere – ocean – carbon-cycle – chemistry model is known as an earth system model.
For both weather and climate prediction, the Met Office also runs its models at higher resolution over particular regions. Currently regional climate models are typically run at 25 km resolution.”
Sorry to disillusion you, but the idea that there are entirely different teams working on entirely different computers is simply not correct. As I say, the answer anyway is predetermined
Tonyb
Peter,
Realclimate, The Met Office and GISS have been exposed as frauds. Go back through the Climategate posts.
They’ve been fudging the data all along. Their information/data is tainted…..unreliable……skewed.
Max,
I agree that no-one can ‘prove a point’ with examples of warm weather here or cold weather there. It has to be the global figures and averaged over at least five years.
However the graph you posted of Perth’s average temperature did show a long term rise. You’re good at linear regressions. What equation did you get?
The Autralian BOM , the Aussie Met office, seem to enjoy much better public confidence than the UK MET office so you might like to take a look at what they say on the issue of climate change.
They have an excellent website:
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_display_type=dataGraph&p_stn_num=009021&p_nccObsCode=36&p_month=13
Full of good stuff. The above link shows Perth’s airport average day time max temperature. It looks to me that its rising. Maybe Max, as our resident linear regression expert, might find time to work out the correct linear equation and let me know whether or not I’m right?
Sorry, can’t resist a childish analogy
peter
Or you could say that the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is very nearly the same as it was 100 yrs ago.
It’s not the amount of change in the source, it’s the amount of change in the effect that’s important, wouldn’t you agree?
TonyB,
You can’t possibly be correct. The forecasting of UK weather would have to concentrate on the state of the atmosphere in the North Atlantic. To study world climate requires a study of the world atmosphere.
It might sound harder but, with climate, there is no requirement to say whether or not there is going to be a White Christmas in the UK Home counties. Its all about long term averages.
Furthermore it isn’t reasonable to expect that global warming will be uniform. It won’t. The irony will quite likely be that the UK becomes colder as melting Arctic ice slows down the thermohaline circulation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_thermohaline_circulation
Peter
I suggest you actually read that wiki entry on the thermohaline circulation, particularly the bit at the bottom that emphasizes that the initial study results are most likely based on natural variation and a shutdown is very unlikely.
“Or you could say that the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is very nearly the same as it was 100 yrs ago….”
Well I suppose you could. But you’d be wrong!
Peter 8844
You have this distressing habit of disbelieving information when it suits you, even when it comes from what you think of as reliable sources. :)
I frequently post actual information from The Met office, Hadley, The IPCC, Proudman (sea Levels ) The Various ice monitoring institutes which you then ignore or say is incorrect.
I am only repeating what the Met office themselves say (and what their scientists have told and shown me)
This idea that they have thousands of people beavering away on some completely separate set of models is completely false. They already know the answer they will get because that is predetermined on which model they run which is itself based on an emissions scenarion. Its all there in the web site.
What it all boils down to is that they have no idea what is going to happen with world climate.
Now without any more diversions what about providing me with that conclusive information needed to rebutt my 8826?
You must have some paper/study you can refer me to that backs up your belief that global temperatures have any merit whatsoever and possess this astonishing degree of accuracy that you are fond of quoting (anomaly or actual temperature). I will add it to my my web site together with the Hansen one already quoted above
tonyb
Peter your 8842
Don’t know why you would choose an annual maximum for Perth. If you would like to use a linear regression on the Giss Perth average mean temperatures since 1977 (y=0.002×14.34) you will see they are virtually static.
It is extraordinary to use an airport dont you think? Makes my point admirably about the nonsense of global temperatures which these days is predominantly about airports.
Tonyb
No, Peter – amazingly, you still don’t get it. I am not “fixated on the UK’s winter weather”. I am, however, fixated on the Met Office’s manifest incompetence (also demonstrated in the summer).
Pete,
I’m going to retract my statement……….Climate is weather…….or at least a collection of “temperature” events.
Wouldn’t increasing CO2 levels cause increasing temperature levels making record cold readings less and less frequent as time marches on? We’re having record cold temperatures broken all over the globe.
The theory states that as CO2 rises, temperatures will rise.
What we’re seeing is a rise in CO2 worldwide, and temperatures dropping.
I think that pretty much throws a bucket of cold water (pun intended) on the global warming theory.