Mar 172008

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.”

  1. Peter M

    Your latest (8950) does begin to sound a bit like a broken record.

    I have not taken on the issue of whether or not “natural GHE” “violated the second law of thermodynamics”, nor have I postulated that such claims are “nonsense”.

    That is what I meant by answering “not me” to your question at the time.

    Others (such as the example below) have deconstructed the GHE based on thermodynamic considerations, and maybe you would like to point out the weaknesses or errors in this analysis.
    http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net/

    I neither accept nor discredit this rationale, but prefer instead to deliberate on the more practical points, such as:

    Is there empirical evidence based on physical observations to support the premise of alarming AGW?

    So far, you have been unable to provide any, so I must conclude that the premise is based on theoretical considerations alone (compounded by the virtual reality of computer model simulations) and not supported by empirical scientific evidence.

    The numerous solar studies I cited plus recent physical observations by Spencer et al. plus Lindzen and Choi raise serious questions regarding the premise of potentially harmful AGW.

    And finally, the lack of oceanic warming since 2003 and the surface cooling after 2000, despite all-time record CO2 levels, raises even more serious doubts, with the Met Office attributing this cooling to “natural variability” (a.k.a. natural forcing), which is not supposed to have had any significant impact on the observed warming between 1750 and 2000, representing an almost “final nail in the coffin” for the premise of harmful AGW.

    Things are not passing the “reality test” here, Peter.

    And you have been unable to provide any empirical evidence based on physical observations to support the premise of alarming AGW.

    That is the more pertinent discussion here.

    You then add the (rather opinionated)

    But if this was the case wouldn’t you have same desire to see the more neanderthal of the climate sceptics get their facts straight too? I’d say your near silence on this issue shows that your prime motivation is political and not scientific at all.

    I am not sure to whom you are referring here (please be more specific). Your stated “prime motivation” conclusion is part of the “broken record” (i.e. repetitive nonsensical blah-blah), to which I alluded at the top.

    Bring the science, Peter, if you can (and leave politics and repetitive blah-blah out of it for now).

    Max

  2. An interesting letter sent by Christopher Monckton to Kevin Rudd
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/03/climate-change-proposed-personal-briefing/

  3. PeterM

    An interesting letter sent by Christopher Monckton to your Kevin Rudd
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/03/climate-change-proposed-personal-briefing/

    Monckton points out that the difference in temperature (2010-2020) from either maintaining “business as usual” or with the reduced warming that would result from full compliance with the Copenhagen Accord is a staggering 0.02°C.

    I showed you previously that the implementation of the Hansen proposal for the USA to stop all construction of new coal-fired power plants starting in 2010 and shutting down half of the existing coal-fired plants by 2050 would result in 0.05°C temperature “offset” by 2050.

    Just recently I showed that converting 2/3 of privately owned US homes to solar power over the next 15 years in order to reduce coal-fired power generation would only reduce temperature in 2100 by less than 0.04°C.

    It really looks like all of the proposed hare-brained solutions to combat AGW give meaningless results at very high costs (as Lomborg has also pointed out), yet the “AGW faithful” keep proposing very costly but totally ineffective measures.

    How goofy do these guys think we are?

    Do you believe in any of these measures?

    Max

  4. Tony B,
    Further my 8939, I must apologise that I did not address you to:
    http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/
    But, hopefully, you found and read it anyway.
    If not, please do…. There is some interesting stuff in there, and for instance the discussion on carbon isotopes in volcanic versus anthro-emissions is somewhat counter to some alarmist claims. And, there is much more of potential interest or back-up for you in your CO2 studies there, I do suggest.

  5. Max, Reur 8952/3,
    I agree that the Monckton to Rudd letter is very interesting, and I find no fault in it in its statements of realities. However, I’m a bit uncomfortable that such statements from an English lord may well get strongly up the nose of Rudd, and thus be unproductive by virtue of its substantial aggressiveness and Rudd’s perceived insult.
    Rudd is an Oz republican; e.g. see:
    http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/always-a-republican-says-rudd-on-way-to-meet-queen/2008/04/07/1207420303586.html

  6. Bob_FJ

    Not to tread on toes, but being a Swiss peasant (with some USA connections), I may be insensitive to the finely tuned historical relationships between British Lords and Australians.

    Lord Monckton (“Chris”, as Glenn Beck recently called him on US TV) seems like a pretty level-headed, non-pompous guy, despite his blue blood.

    Rudd, on the other hand, comes across as a very opinionated individual, who puts his adversaries down as idiots, just because they happen to disagree with him.

    Am I wrong in this perception?

    Max

  7. Max,

    You are just wasting everyone’s time if you don’t understand enough basic Physics to be able to accept the reality of the natural GHE.

    Roy Spencer has done his best to explain it to you. Do you accept, and understand, what he says? Yes or No?

  8. Max,

    There is a body of opinion,which includes James Hansen, that it was desirable for the Copenhagen accord to fail. The rationale being that it is better to have no agreement than a bad agreement. I’d have to disagree with James Hansen. There will no doubt be another attempt. If Kyoto was the first step then there will be a second and third.

    According to Monckton’s logic there is no point in taking the first couple of steps of a 100 metre walk as you’ll still have 98% of the distance to travel.

  9. PeterM

    It appears that you have misinterpreted what Monckton has written and said. I’d suggest you read it again, very slowly.

    It is not about “the first couple of steps of a 100 metre walk” and “98% of the distance to travel” at all.

    It is about pouring trillion dollars down the rathole for no discernable result at all.

    I’m sure you will have to admit that spending over 1 trillion dollars to achieve an unmeasurable theoretical (maybe) temperature reduction of less than 0.1 degC would be downright asinine, right?

    The stupidity of doing this is only highlighted by the fact that temperatures have plummeted after 2000 without doing anything at all.

    Monckton is right (because he understands the science quite well).

    Your PM, Rudd, has no notion of the science, whatsoever.

    Max

  10. statements from an English lord

    At least he knows the protocol. I don’t imagine that Kevin Rudd gets addressed as ‘his excellency’ too often!

  11. Bob_FJ 8955

    I think that Rudd describing himself as a Republican is playing on the popularist theme of having a completely independent Australia. The fact is Australia has been effectively independent for years, going way back to the Second World War. In fact internal arguments within Australia were a constant cause of frustration amongst its closest Allies during the war and lead to a crisis of morale amongst it fighting men and server loss of effectiveness. Even if they had wished to, and times were desperate, Britain could not intervene. This is often glossed over in historical accounts.

    Not withstanding this a Labour Prime Minister was sacked by a Governor General, a situation I believe can not happen now, so it stands to reason that any Labour Prime Minister would have to espouse Republican ideals. However I would contend that this does not gel with his desire to grandstand aboard and his desire to abdicate control of Australia’s economy to the UN, a decidedly undemocratic institution.

    If you look back in History, very few of those leaders who set out to fundamentally change their country in a radical way have succeeded. He may have thought he had a green mandate, but the mistake he made, and it’s a dangerous one to make, is his mandate is via abstention. For whilst everyone was feeling well off and happy they were willing to let politicians get on with it. The last general election in Australia was held before the worst of the financial crisis, and well before any of the fallout had affected the electorate in Australia.

    In these situations the economy is ignored and sideshows such as the environment and wars become the area where an election is won or lost. And the people of Australia probably thought it was time for a change.

    In a world that is rapidly changing, where more and more people in the likes of USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are questioning their leaders on accountability and democracy Rudd needs to throw the gearshift into neural and do a little thinking. If you were a political opponent of his you would seek to put him on the spot, force him to justify his decisions now, make him entrench, as his fall will be all the harder. Give him space and he will regroup and come sneaking stealthily back with another attempt. Now is the time to twist the sword.

    I don’t believe Monckton’s letter is designed to be polite and accommodating. It’s not meant to make anyone comfortable, I think it is designed to draw an adverse reaction it a shallow politician. I could be wrong but just a thought.

  12. Peter M

    I think we all accept ‘the reality of the natural GHE’, but most of us are less convinced that an increase in CO2 content of, say, 0.03% will make any noticeable difference.

    In other words, the IPCC’s projections would appear to be a load of rodomontade, to quote His Lordship.

  13. Peter G

    throw the gearshift into neural

    Good phrase! :-)

  14. Mrs. Brute and I are currently on vacation in South Florida…….the temperature is 32 Degrees……..(Zero Celsius).

    I haven’t been watching the pertinent web-sites and opinion makers; however, I predict that the recent freeze in South Florida will be attributed to “careless” industrialization and the effects of “climate change” as opposed to the formerly phrased “global warming”.

    The bait and switch strategy is wearing thin. I find it extremely funny watching the old folks here is “sunny”, “warm” Florida dressed up in stocking caps, winter gloves and fur lined winter boots.

    I spoke to our driver yesterday morning that said that in his lifetime, it has never been this cold here. I suppose the excuse will be that record cold is caused by CO2……the “climate change” phenomenon as opposed to the conveniently discarded “global warming” title.

    Pete,

    If CO2 emissions will result in “warmer” temperatures, how is it that South Florida is experiencing record cold temperatures?

  15. PeterM

    You ask me:

    Roy Spencer has done his best to explain it [the GH theory] to you. Do you accept, and understand, what he says? Yes or No?

    I do understand and accept what he says, Peter.

    Now a question for you.

    Roy Spencer has done his best to explain to you that he has observed that the net feedback from clouds is strongly negative over the tropics, to wit:

    Our measured sensitivity of total (SW + LW) cloud radiative forcing to tropospheric temperature is -6.1 W m-2 K-1.

    Do you accept, and understand, what he says? Yes or No?

    Ball is in your court, Peter.

    Max

  16. Brute

    Sorry to hear about your record cold spell in Florida.

    The only good thing is that it is probably even colder in the DC area.

    It is quite apparent that the record cold temperature we are having across the northern hemisphere is a direct result of man-made global warming.

    I wonder if the variance adjusted, massaged and corrected Hadley and GISS temperature figures will be able to catch this?

    Or will they show the “mild winter” that was forecast?

  17. I did enjoy this, especially the reference to ‘Brideshead’..

    http://tinyurl.com/ydak6um

  18. Peter Geany,

    You write ” I could be wrong…” and yes indeed you are. Firstly, regardless of any dislike the British ruling classes may have felt for the political opinions and attitudes of Australians, they have no cause for complaint over the level of support given by Australia in the two major conflicts of the 20th Century. To say any more may be going too far OT. However, the attitude of ordinary Australians to the British aristocracy can be well understood by the famous remark of a wag from the crowd at a cricket match directed towards a toff captain of an English cricket team who was swatting flies from his face. “Leave our flies alone, mate They’re the only flamin’ friends you’ve got here!”

    Kevin Rudd doesn’t have to be a scientist or understand the science in any great detail. The role of the Australian CSIRO is to advise governments and the role of politicians is to formulate policy around that advice. Unlike “Monckton” who you say understands the science “quite well”, although I’d put it somewhat differently, the CSIRO have world experts who understand the science very well indeed.

  19. Max,

    There are climate hundreds of papers published annually and yet, you only seem happy to accept anything published by a small group of people who would include Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen. You’ll call their work papers when they might be articles or letters.

    Is this because you feel that they are the best scientists around or is it because they seem to be saying what you want to hear?

    I’d suggest that you should be looking at a much broader range of publications and not be too over-swayed by those few which lie on the extremes on either side of the spectrum of scientific opinion.

  20. Max,

    Climate change deniers, ( I’m not happy with the term sceptics), often move up and down the following list of arguments:

    1) Its not warming. Eg Its a UHI effect
    2) OK its warming but the causes are all natural
    3) Well maybe its warming, and maybe the causes could be anthropogenic, but its too expensive to do anything about it.
    4) Well maybe its warming, and maybe the causes could be anthropogenic, but its too late to do anything about it.

    Would you say your 8959 was level 3 or level 4?

  21. PeterM

    Thanks for tip (8969).

    I do read a lot of the “party line” papers and PR blurbs that come out (some are actually humorous). These used to represent 95% of what is out there, reflecting the enormous amount of AGW funding. But recently the percentage seems to be dwindling, as the “shine” is wearing off on AGW and reality is beginning to set in.

    I suspect that the past decade’s cooling and recent record cold weather plus Climategate and the Copenhagen fiasco have taken their toll on the perceived sense of urgency (or sense of panic) on AGW. Silly arguments by the “faithful” that the record cold is due to AGW have also not helped.

    Of course, there are also many papers that take neither a pro- or anti-AGW stand, but simply report some finding that may or may not have any connection with AGW.

    I try to keep current on all of them.

    Do you?

    Thanks for the tip, anyway.

    Max

  22. PeterM

    To our exchange on the papers out there on climate.

    One thing that is fun to do is, after reading the paper and absorbing the message, checking out how often the future tense or even the future subjunctive (or conditional) has been invoked.

    The more “pro-partyline” papers (in particular the more alarming ones) are literally full of these two tenses, while the more sober papers seem to concentrate more on the recent past (as in actual observations).

    Try it sometime. It’s fun.

    Max

  23. Peter, re your 8970, the position (applicable I think to most contributors here) is this:

    OK, it’s probably warming slightly (and has been since the LIA) and, although the causes are predominantly natural, there may have been some small (and inadequately understood) anthropogenic contribution at the end of the 20th century. In these circumstances, it is absurd and potentially damaging to attempt to distort the global economy to “solve” what is an overwhelmingly natural phenomenon.

    BTW no one here moves up and down your (or any other) list – let alone does so “often”.

  24. There’s an interesting analysis (by “tayles”) on the Delingpole blog this afternoon:

    I think we’re making a fundamental mistake here in bombarding the warmists with facts and rational arguments. The sceptics among us took a look at the evidence in favour of AGW and decided it stunk. Moreover, we realised that, even if it was accurate, it didn’t follow that the right response was global government, swingeing taxes and illiberal legislation. The warmists didn’t apply such critical skills. If they had, then the counter-arguments and cherry-picking of evidence would have caused some of them to reconsider their position. But, as far as I can tell, it hasn’t.

    Instead, the arguments against AGW have been met with hysterical refutations, personal attacks and constant changing of the goalposts – hardly the response of people who are interested in the truth. They’ve even resorted to making up ‘facts’ that support their theories, such as drowning polar bears and the unsubstantiated linking of natural disasters to global warming (the Asian tsunami, for instance).

    On this basis, there seems little chance of talking round the warmists through grown-up debate – especially as most of them want the debate closed down. We would be better served understanding the warped logic that encouraged them to believe in AGW and which will maintain their faith come hell or high water (no pun intended).

    What shines through is a sense that belief in AGW is good in itself, irrespective of whether it’s true or not. Just look at those comments from the ‘experts’ about counter-evidence being “unhelpful”. Why should this be? If I made up a charity committed to remedying a non-existent problem, would that be a good thing? Is the fact that everyone feels they are doing good what it’s all about? If so, that a pretty self-indulgent and ultimately ruinous sentiment. It has nothing to do with doing genuine good, and everything to do with feeling good and looking good. Worse still, once these people have convinced themselves that they are in the right, they indulge in circular thinking along the lines of, “If these things are true, then my belief in them makes me a decent person – and since I AM a decent person, they must be true, and anyone who suggests otherwise is an evil person trying to destroy a beautiful thing.”

    Or is it something more? Is it that the warmists find the conclusions that can be drawn from AGW extremely pleasing. For the control freaks, it offers a mandate to take over the world. For the envious, it confirms that rich people are rotten and deserve to be punished. For the inadequate, it promises the expansion of a state bureaucracy that will hinder their betters and render their ineptitude irrelevant. For the snobs, it provides an excuse to bash the greedy masses. For the scientists and intellectuals, it provides employment opportunities. For the moral poseurs, it provides something to emote over. And the best part is that while your power trips and revenge fantasies are being enacted, you can tell yourself that you are on the side of goodness and light.

    With so much to gain, it’s little wonder AGW is so popular.

  25. Robin,

    Did someone say you were supposed to be a wordsmith?
    For goodness sake. I’m sure that you are quite capable of writing this sort of crap yourself. Why resort to quoting an unnamed blogger?

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