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. PeterM

    You ask why Rose “picked” the 2007 Arctic sea ice low point.

    But why pick on 2007? Why not 2006, or 2008 or any other year?

    Do you suffer from short-term memory loss?

    In order to help you out on this question, I posted links to two press blurbs from late 2007, both of which bemoaned the all-time record (since 1979) loss of Arctic sea ice (as measured September 2007), telling us that this was proof that the actual decline was even greater than the models projected, that the ice was in its “death spiral” and would be gone by end summer 2013 (or 2030, depending on which “scientist” was feeding us this drivel).

    Rose did not “pick” 2007 as the low point.

    Serreze and Maslowski (the two hysterical “scientists”) picked 2007 to prove their point of accelerated decline.

    And Rose simply pointed out that September 2007 was NOT part of an accelerating trend line (falsely projected by S + M) but a low “blip” in the curve that had gotten straightened out by a strong 2-year recovery.

    As we have discussed here before, it is all humbug anyway, since the “long term” record only started in 1979, a point of maximum ice extent following a 30+ year recovery from another low point in the 1930s and 1940s, as measured and reported by at least two studies.

    Serreze and Maslowski fail to tell us about earlier periods with less ice than today; they also fail to tell us today that the ice has recovered in 2 years 39% of what it had previously lost since 1979.

    Why do you think this is? Because these facts do not fit their message that AGW is causing Arctic sea ice to be in its “death spiral”.

    It looks very much like Serreze and Maslowski try to hide behind the mantle of “objective scientist”, but in reality are scaremongering eco-activists.

    Next they’ll bring out the polar bear pics. Yawn!

    Max

  2. Peter M

    Why is the North-West Passage so called, do you think?

  3. Brute and PeterM

    This may be OT, but I can recommend a book (first published in 1991) by Alan Bullock, entitled: “Hitler and Stalin – Parallel Lives” for a good glimpse into the psychology of the two dictators that wrote a large part of the devastating history of the early 20th century.

    Bullock points out many common features in both men: how both were outsiders from the margins of the countries they would come to rule and how both believed that they had a historic mission to fulfill. Both were pathologically distrustful and eliminated their real and imagined rivals ruthlessly. Both created organizations (NKVD and SS-Gestapo) specifically to carry out their illegal decisions. During their brief but wary alliance, they divided up much of eastern Europe. Together, they were responsible for the death of over 30 million people.

    As one reviewer wrote: “A terrifying story of evil, brilliantly told.”

    Yes. There were differences between the two. But there were also many similarities in both the men and the systems they ruled.

    A good read (I’ve read it twice).

    Max

  4. Max #9026

    As well as the great Arctic warming of 1920-30, don’t forget about the great Arctic warming of 12820 1860 that I wrote about here.

    “The Great Arctic warming in the 19th Century. Author: Tony Brown
    This long article -with many links- examines the little known period 1815-60 when the Arctic ice melted and the Royal Society mounted an expedition to investigate the causes.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice/#more-8688

    By great coincidence I was giving a talk at a school today on climate change and the teacher had a relative who won a 5000 guinea prize in 1851 for traversing the North West passage!

    tonyb

  5. Brute and PeterM

    We are way OT here, but I once had a political science professor explain to me that the distinction between “Left” and “Right” in politics was only applicable when you are near the “Center”.

    The “Left-Right” transition is really not a straight line, but a circle.

    “Left” and “Right” both come together as one and the same at the extreme ends.

    Made sense to me.

    Max

  6. Max,

    I notice that you’d given us, in your 9016, an equation of

    y = 7.891 – 0.078x

    y is the extent of the sea ice in millions of sq km.

    x is the number of years from 1979

    Putting y=0 gives x = 7.891/0.078 = 101 years

    So Arctic ice is due disappear completely in the summer around the year 2080

    Good that we agree on something for once.

  7. The Met Office still seems unable to break its habit of overestimating temperatures. It’s been predicting 6-8 degC here today for most of the week, to the extent that it still saying 6 deg this morning at the same time that I had a frost warning from our local weather station and 1 deg on my own outside thermometer!

    No doubt it will warm up a bit soon, but I’m sure the MO would be more accurate if they weren’t always trying to satisfy another agenda.

  8. Peter M (9013)

    everyone else who reads this blog knows that the ice minimum in 2007 was particularly low

    It wouldn’t be called a minimum if it wasn’t.. :-)

  9. Peter (9031)

    You wrote:

    So Arctic ice is due disappear completely in the summer around the year 2080

    Good that we agree on something for once.

    We agree, provided you add the clause:

    Arctic ice is due to disappear completely in the summer around the year 2080, provided that it continues to disappear at the average linear rate of the past 30 years over the next 80 years, rather than swing back to a period of growth, as we have seen in the past (which is anyone’s guess, of course).

    Do you agree to the added caveat?

    If so, we agree. Hurray!

    Max

  10. Sorry to see Brute‘s silliness #9025 comparing Woodrow Wilson to Stalin, Mao and Hitler. I’m doubly sorry, because Brute recently made one of the most perceptive comments I’ve seen about the social roots of Warmism. I’ve lost the reference on Harmless Sky, but found it, quoted by another commenter (possibly Brute’s alter ego, once the sun comes up) at
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/23/and-then-what-happens/
    (second-to-last comment).
    “… here in the U.S. it wasn’t until about 1960 that more than 50% of the American population had high school diplomas. Only 9% had college degrees. Most of those degrees were in Liberal Arts where students had to master history, philosophy, art, language, literature… they had a wide perspective on the world, and they ran the country. Our LEADING universities, from where we draw most of our leadership, are still liberal arts colleges.
    “Today, more than 25% of our population have college degrees, but most of those are essentially career preparation degrees. Many of my students, perhaps most, do not read well, can’t write, have no knowledge of philosophy, literature or history, little awareness of cultural history, and little in the way of critical thinking skills. They are simply being groomed as a better-trained proletariat, and they don’t even realize it. Not all college degrees are equal, even if my students believe they are. In a sense, it is a 21st century version of Marx’s “false consciousness”. When the young people of Europe and America find out just how badly they’ve been betrayed, the results will be horrific”.

    The French demographer Emmanuel Todd, in an analysis of the implosion of the French Socialist Party, made much the same point: that we have created in the West a kind of over-educated überproletariat, who are sufficiently numerous to be able to exist in their own cocoon, cut off from the real world, and free to invent their own cults. Global warming is the No-Logo Cargo Cult of the chattering classes.

    Much as I appreciate many of Brute’s and Manacker’s comments, I wish they’d leave their (to us Europeans) crude left-bashing at home. If Harmless Sky ever comes to the attention of the mainstream media, it will be dismissed by the likes of Monbiot as “the site for those who think Woodrow Wilson and Stalin are the same thing”. A pity.

  11. JamesP (9033) and PeterM (

    2007 was the recorded minimum since satellite measurements started in 1979.

    Arctic studies from Russia and elsewhere have shown us that the sea ice went through another period of shrinking during a well-documented unusually warm period from the 1920s to 1940s, before starting to grow again as it cooled until the late 1970s, when satellite measurements started.

    These studies indicate it may well have been at a lower overall extent at the end of this shrinking cycle than in 2007, but since there are no comprehensive satellite data to confirm the more spotty records of the time, this is not certain.

    But I think we are safe to say that 2007 was the lowest point since 1979. (Whether it will remain the low point depends on whether the 2007-2009 recovery continues or we return to the linear trend line since 1979.)

    This is what I have tried to explain to Peter in 9034. It is silly to take aa 30-year trend and extrapolate it 80 years into the future, particularly when we know that there have been longer-term multidecadal oscillations in the trend in the more distant past.

    Max

  12. geoffchambers

    For the record, I do not “think Woodrow Wilson and Stalin are the same thing”.

    Nor would I put Margaret Thatcher in the same pot as Hitler.

    I did recommend to both PeterM and Brute an excellent book about the similarities (and differences) between Hitler and Stalin, written by a British historian (BTW a Labour supporter), which is worth reading to get an insight on how two horrible butchers (who together were responsible for well over 30 million deaths) thought, acted and reacted to each other.

    But you are correct in writing that politics should be OT here.

    Mea culpa.

    Max

  13. James P

    Here is an interesting article on the Northwest Passage.

    http://geography.about.com/od/specificplacesofinterest/a/northwestpassag.htm

    The Northwest Passage consists of a series of very deep channels that wind through Canada’s Arctic Islands. The Northwest Passage is about 900 miles (1450 km) long. Using the passage instead of the Panama Canal can cut thousands of miles off of a sea journey between Europe and Asia. Unfortunately, the Northwest Passage is about 500 miles (800 km) north of the Arctic Circle and is covered by ice sheets and icebergs much of the time. Some speculate, however, that if global warming continues the Northwest Passage might be a viable transportation route for ships.

    The future of the Northwest Passage will certainly be an interesting one as the map of world sea transportation may change significantly over the next few decades with the introduction of the Northwest Passage as a prized time- and energy-saving shortcut across the Western Hemisphere.

    The article mentions the famous 1906 Roald Amundsen crossing, but does not cite the many other recorded crossings since then (nor some of the earlier attempts).

    Max

  14. JamesP

    Even prior to Climategate and the stepping down of Phil Jones, the Met Office reputation as an objective forecaster was extremely poor, as a result of the repeated forecasts for rising global temperatures, barbecue summers, record warm years, milder than normal winters, etc., which never materialized.

    It is a shame that so much UK taxpayer money is being wasted on such a totally unscientific organization.

    It appears, sad as this may seem, that GISS has the same problems of lack of objectivity and data manipulation, as it is being run by James E. Hansen, an individual, who is probably even less objective and more of an AGW activist than Phil Jones.

    Fortunately we have a satellite record, which is run by John Christy, someone who has shown more objectivity and openmindedness than the other two.

    This record shows a slower rate of warming than either of the two surface records, even though greenhouse warming is supposed to show more rapid warming in the troposphere than at the surface.

    So this tells me that either (a) the surface records are distorted to show surious warming for one reason or another, or (b) the warming is not greenhouse warming. Of course, it could be (c) a combination of the above.

    Max

  15. If Harmless Sky ever comes to the attention of the mainstream media, it will be dismissed by the likes of Monbiot as “the site for those who think Woodrow Wilson and Stalin are the same thing”. A pity.

    geoffchambers

    For the record, I have a low opinion of Monibot also and I wasn’t comparing Wilson to Stalin, I was only recommending reviewing what the man wrote and thought. His ideology and “world view” have been softened and massaged over time. The global warming agenda would be a cornerstone of his doctrine if he were alive today.

    I’ve chosen “Brute” as a pseudonym for a variety of reasons….one of many being that as a society, we’ve become meek and irresolute. We’ve knelt at the alter of political correctness for fear of “hurting someone’s feelings” to the detriment of society.

    I don’t care what Monibot thinks…….I’m not seeking his or anyone else’s approval……some things need to be said (written), no matter how controversial or “uncomfortable”.

    Mrs. Brute and I are still at the Brute family compound in Palm Beach which only allows limited computing power.

    I suggest you dig a little deeper into Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and the roots of the “progressive” movement that Peter Martin and the “Europeans” you refer to seem to be advocating….it’s anything but “progressive”.

  16. Geoff Chambers #9035

    If Harmless Sky ever comes to the attention of the mainstream media, it will be dismissed by the likes of Monbiot as “the site for those who think Woodrow Wilson and Stalin are the same thing”. A pity.

    I wonder how a Telegraph columnist, or for that matter Monbiot, would react to this?

    http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=124

    Harmless Sky is not run with an eye to what the MSM are likely to think of it, but in a way that I consider to be appropriate. That includes a certain level of tolerance of the foibles of commenters I have come to know well.

    Unfortunately when blogs like mine come to the attention of the MSM, and they use material from them, this is rarely acknowledged. James Delingpole is an honourable exception.

    (Note: this comment crossed with Brute’s #9040, but it may a well stand. Now I think its time for everyone to wander back on thread. There is a story here that could become interesting, and another one here)

  17. Although I have never subscribed to the New Scientist, I used to buy it from time to time and found it interesting and often instructive. However, in recent years, it has become an enthusiastic propagandist for the dangerous AGW hypothesis (with an alarming story or reference in nearly every edition) and I stopped buying it – although I still browsed the AGW stories on newsstands. One of my favourite “finds” was that, to debunk the “myth” that you cannot trust computer models, it pointed out that

    Major financial institutions are investing huge amounts in automated trading systems, the proportion of trading carried out by computers is growing rapidly and a few individuals have made a fortune from them. The smart money is being bet on computer models.

    Yeah – that really debunks it.

    But now we hear (see Bishop Hill’s story here) that the New Scientist is having serious misgivings about it’s 1999 report that “glaciers across much of the Himalayas may be gone by 2035” – a report on which the IPCC subsequently based the same claim (without, it seems, a simple fact check, let alone peer review). Here’s the NS’s editorial comment:

    … how could such speculation have become an IPCC “finding” which has, moreover, recently been defended by the panel’s chairman? We are entitled to an explanation, before rumour and doubt compound the damage to the image of climate science already inflicted by the leaked “climategate” emails.

    Interesting – note the disparaging reference to Pachauri. Could it be having a change of heart and moving to the objective attitude to climate science demanded by many of its readers? If so, I suspect it may be a reaction to readers’ online response to its disgraceful attempt on 14th December to minimise Climategate (Deniergate: Turning the tables on climate sceptics), an attempt that included these comments:

    … nothing in the hacked emails has been shown to undermine any of the scientific conclusions.

    If we are going to judge the truth of claims on the behaviour of those making them, it seems only fair to look at the behaviour of a few of those questioning the scientific consensus.

    The article attracted 536 comments of which a huge number were deleted for breach of its “terms of use”. But even the majority of those left were critical, many seriously so. Here are two examples:

    I can’t believe that NS has written such a biased article. I am neither a sceptic nor a supporter of AGW, I remain open to both possibilities. I am closely watching the science on both sides. Unlike the NS which has written an article containing NO science at all, just politically charged rhetoric. I will be cancelling my subscription. I do not buy NS to read this kind of non scientific political garbage.

    NS acted as an advocate and a cheer-leader rather than impartial reviewer of the science. The only way it can regain some credibility is to have the current editors dismissed and to hire impartial individuals who look at empirical evidence rather than narrative speculations.

    Hmm – I wonder what the deleted comments said.

  18. RealClimate bills itself as “Climate Science from Climate Scientists”

    In a recent RealClimate article by John Fasullo, Kevin Trenberth and Chris O’Dell entitled “Lindzen and Choi unraveled” the authors purport to rebut a recent paper, which showed that the observed total outgoing LW + SW radiation increases with surface temperature and that the climate sensitivity of doubling carbon dioxide is thus much lower than the value stated by IPCC based on model simulations.
    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/lindzen-and-choi-unraveled/

    But just how impartial is RealClimate as a site for obtaining objective “Climate Science from Climate Scientists”?

    In an e-mail by Michael Mann to Tim Osborn and Keith Briffa, copying Gavin Schmidt (one of those leaked in “Climategate”), Michael Mann writes
    http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=622&filename=1139521913.txt

    Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that you’re free to use RC in any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through, and we’ll be very careful to answer any questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. We can hold
    comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you’d like us to include.

    Oops!

    So much for the credibility of this site.

    Max

  19. Robin,

    Are you the same Robin Guenier who wrote on the NS bog (15/1/2008 on NS bog) “I am neither a denier nor a believer”

    You seem to have found a soul mate in “Kif” who also writes:

    “I am neither a sceptic nor a supporter of AGW, I remain open to both possibilities.”

    Who does this remind you of?

    “…empirical evidence rather than narrative speculations”.

    I must confess I did suspect you of quoting yourself with approval for a minute there. But this was by some guy called “Vangel”.

    Robin Guenier, Kif and Vangel. Maybe you were identical triplets separated at birth!

  20. PeterM

    There you go again, playing the childish “sockpuppet game” with Robin.

    How silly!

    Forget this rubbish and address the real topics here.

    Show us the empirical evidence, based on actual physical observations, that AGW, caused principally by human CO2 emissions, is a serious threat.

    You have been asked repeatedly by Robin, myself and others here to do so, but so far you have been unable to.

    Max

  21. Robin, re your #9042 I actually did subscribe to New Scientist for a few years, back in the 90s, and found plenty of their articles interesting, especially the speculative stuff about the origins of the universe and the “Tomorrow’s World” sort of pieces. But in recent years, when occasionally dipping into an issue, I’ve found the refusal to question That Which Must Not Be Questioned somewhat irritating.

    The 2035/2350 error for the Himalayan glacier melt deadline (if true) is hilarious – a sort of variant of the Big Lie idea, but with a humble typo becoming gospel, instead of a deliberate fib. It’s the sort of thing that might happen in the world of the Arts, where you can imagine all sorts of errors evading the proof-readers and becoming canon. But in the Sciences, in the realm of “Nullius in verba”?

    Everyone, you’ve probably now seen this rather interesting BBC article by Roger Harrabin defending (kind of) the Met Office. It’s also a little confusing, mentioning a warming bias but then citing the Met Office’s Professor Chris Folland: “a re-analysis of weather science might even show that the actual temperature measurements have under-recorded recent warming – making the Met Office forecast even more accurate than it appears.” Which I take to mean that even if there is a slight warming bias, the actual temperature measurements could be wrong, i.e. colder than they actually have been, which would tend to cancel out the bias and prove that the forecasts have been actually been more accurate than they had seemed at the time. At least I think that is what he meant. Does “under-recorded” mean the physical equipment, i.e., the thermometers, might have a cooling bias? I’d be interested to know how others would interpret this, as I find it a little opaque.

    Roger Harrabin re Piers Corbyn: “I have been asking him for several months to offer independent corroboration of his forecasting successes but none has been supplied.” Would Piers Corbyn need to be the one supplying this corroboration? Could not one of WeatherAction’s customers be prevailed upon to supply copies of past forecasts, which could be checked against the actual weather records? I’m sure the process might be more complicated than I’m assuming, but even so, it just doesn’t seem that difficult for an independent and skilled person or organisation to collect Met Office forecasts, say for 2000 to 2009, and compare them with WeatherAction forecasts from that same period; I can’t think of a reason why no-one appears to have done this already.

  22. Robin, Reur 9042
    Re Bishop Hill/New Scientist; on Glaciers.
    Your embedded link did not work for me, but it would appear to be this:
    http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/1/15/new-scientist-on-glaciers.html#entry6335958
    Interesting… Molto interesante, molto molto.

    My word it would be even more molto if we could see all 536 comments. (and hopefully New Scientist has taken contemplative note)

  23. Don’t worry Max (9045). PeterM always descends to that level when he finds the debate is going badly for him – i.e. most of the time.

  24. Sockpuppets? Who mentioned them? It sounds like you guys might know more about that sort of thing than I do. I’ll leave them to you.

    I must say I was touched by that old posting I dug up from Robin where he poses as a concerned citizen of the middle ground saying:

    “I suggest that the believers deal with the arguments of the sceptics with rather more respect. Otherwise, only those who are already believers will listen and little will get done.”

    Thanks for the advice Robin!

    The phrase a “wolf in sheeps clothing comes to mind”. But wolves are intelligent animals and learn very rapidly. Robin seems to have had good intentions, saying:

    – in fact, I knew no more about the subject than might be expected of a reasonably well-informed person. So I was willing to learn.

    However, Robin seems to have been incapable of that. It looks like Robin has turned out to be a donkey in sheeps clothing!

  25. There’s much more about the Himalayan glacier story in Jonathan Leake and Chris Hastings’s report the Sunday Times (here). They show how the real scandal is not that the New Statesman has become a propaganda sheet (bad as that is) but the appalling lack of professionalism at the IPCC.

    That organisation, whose report is being used by our leaders as the authority for policies that will further undermine the West’s already shattered economies, made a major and widely publicised claim based on what turns out to be a “speculation” that “had not been peer reviewed or formally published in a scientific journal and had no formal status”. Yet it used the claim to advise the world that the likelihood of the glaciers melting was “very high” (i.e. having a probability of more than 90%). And amazingly Professor Murari Lal, who oversaw the IPCC’s chapter on glaciers, now admits “I am not an expert on glaciers“.

    What an absurd and incompetent mess. Yet only recently the embattled IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, scorned criticism of the Himalayan claim as “voodoo science” – see story here. Perhaps he should have directed the comment at his own organisation.

    Here’s the article’s closing paragraph:

    The revelation is the latest crack to appear in the scientific consensus over climate change. It follows the so-called climate-gate scandal, where British scientists apparently tried to prevent other researchers from accessing key data. Last week another row broke out when the Met Office criticised suggestions that sea levels were likely to rise 1.9m by 2100, suggesting much lower increases were likely.

    Perhaps the AGW scare really is beginning to fall apart. I seriously hope so.

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