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.

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10,000 Responses to “Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs.”

  1. Defections Shake Up Climate Coalition

    FEBRUARY 17, 2010

    Three big companies quit an influential lobbying group that had focused on shaping climate-change legislation, in the latest sign that support for an ambitious bill is melting away.

    Oil giants BP PLC and ConocoPhillips and heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. said Tuesday they won’t renew their membership in the three-year-old U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a broad business-environmental coalition that had been instrumental in building support in Washington for capping emissions of greenhouse gases.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704804204575069440096420212.html

  2. Thank you, Peter, for the explanation. It will be interesting to see how/if he manages to contain himself during the debate!

  3. Guess Lynas would not have found it necessary to throw a pie at Lomborg if he had had some sound arguments to throw at him instead.

    But this was 9 years ago, and maybe he has grown up since then. Let’s see.

    (But don’t look to him for any sound arguments, based on his track record.)

  4. Max, Peter M, James P, re Mark Lynas and his pie, IMO this is a classic playground tactic, used by children when they run out of arguments. Except that where a boy in the playground would use his fists, an adult may well use a soft substitute like a pie or some sort of liquid in order to express his/her aggression but avoid being charged with assault. In a way, it is an admission of powerlessness; it is saying “I have used up my store of words and have nothing left to say, so I must lash out physically.”

    Recent developments suggest, I think, that Lomborg was right and Lynas was wrong. Lynas’s argument was that the choice was between guns and butter, i.e., between the military budget and the aid budget. As reported by various sources including the BBC and Guardian at the end of January, also here and here, what appears to be the case now (for the UK anyway, and in the short term) is that the choice is between the existing aid budget and “climate change aid”.

    Between now and 2012, it seems the UK government will, in effect, be taking money that would have gone towards “anti-poverty programmes, like health, education and public water provision in the developing world” (as per the wdm.org article) and spending it on “adaptation to climate change and for programmes and projects which cut greenhouse gas emissions” (from the allbusiness.com article.)

    Which is exactly the “false choice” Lynas was accusing Lomborg of presenting. Except that it appears to be an all too real choice at least one government is making right now.

  5. Alex Cull, PeterM, JamesP, Robin Guenier

    After the “pie” incident, Lynas had this to write about Lomborg.
    http://www.public.iastate.edu/~sws/materials/materials/critiques%20of%20environmentalism/Bjorn%20Lomborg%20Debate/Lomberg%20Ecologist.pdf

    Lynas points out that the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) cleared Lomborg of deliberately misleading his readers, but that his book The Skeptical Environmentalist was found to be “clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice”.

    But there was a follow-up, to quote Wiki:

    On February 13, 2003, Lomborg filed a complaint against the DCSD’s decision, with the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MSTI), which has oversight over the DSCD.

    On December 17, 2003, the Ministry found that the DCSD had made a number of procedural errors, including:
    § The DCSD did not use a precise standard for deciding “good scientific practice” in the social sciences;
    § The DCSD’s definition of “objective scientific dishonesty” was not clear about whether “distortion of statistical data” had to be deliberate or not;
    § The DCSD had not properly documented that The Skeptical Environmentalist was a scientific publication on which they had the right to intervene in the first place;
    § The DCSD did not provide specific statements on actual errors.

    The Ministry remitted the case to the DCSD. In doing so the Ministry indicated that it regarded the DCSD’s previous findings of scientific dishonesty in regard to the book as invalid. The Ministry also instructed the DCSD to decide whether to reinvestigate.

    On March 12, 2004, the Committee formally decided not to act further on the complaints, reasoning that renewed scrutiny would, in all likelihood, result in the same conclusion.

    Response of the scientific community

    The original DCSD decision about Lomborg provoked a petition among Danish academics. 308 scientists, many of them from the social sciences, criticised the DCSD’s methods in the case.

    Another group of Danish scientists collected signatures in support of the DCSD. The 640 signatures in this second petition came almost exclusively from the medical and natural sciences, and included Jens Christian Skou (a Nobel laureate for chemistry), former university rector Kjeld Møllgård, and professior Poul Harremoës from the Technical University of Denmark

    Continued debate and criticism

    The rulings of the Danish authorities in 2003–2004 left Lomborg’s critics frustrated. Lomborg was jubilant, claiming vindication as a result of MSTI’s decision to set aside the original finding of DCSD. But critics pointed out that Lomborg’s work had not been declared scientifically valid, it merely had not been declared invalid.

    A Dutch think tank, HAN, Heidelberg Appeal the Netherlands, published a report in which they claimed 25 out of 27 accusations against Lomborg to be unsubstantiated or not to the point. A group of scientists with relation to this think tank also published an article in 2005 in the Journal of Information Ethics, in which they concluded that most criticism against Lomborg was unjustified, and that the scientific community misused their authority to suppress Lomborg.

    So the story (even as reported by Wiki, who usually supports the AGW premise) turned out to be quite a bit different than Lynas had stated in his 2003 article, and Lomborg’s book was eventually vindicated.

    The debate should be interesting.

    I have seen Lomborg in television debates. He is very hard to beat, because he has the facts and figures at his fingertips and remains completely rational and non-emotional, while his adversaries often fall into the trap of losing their rationality and becoming emotional. I suspect that Lynas may have this problem.

    Let’s see how this one plays out.

    Keep us informed, Robin

    Max

  6. Pete,

    I was wondering if you could help me with something I’ve been wrestling with.

    I grasp the concept behind “global warming” as the theory states that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will trap heat (permanently) which will cause temperatures to (permanently) rise causing [insert dire consequence here].

    Please describe “climate change” for me specifically. What does climate “change” mean?

    How exactly will the climate change?

    Will it become warmer or colder globally?

    Droughts or floods?

    Will hurricanes become more or less intense/frequent?

    Will there be more or less snow cover in winter?

    Will Arctic and Antarctic ice melt linearly and permanently?

    Theorizing that the planet will warm (may) be measurable; however, theorizing that the climate will “change” (indefinably) is no prediction at all. It can’t be proven…………..we need some fixed, defined parameters.

    What would you measure the change against?

    What is the “scientific control” climate that you’re using and during what period of time in the planet’s history?

    In the last +/- 22 years, the terminology has changed from “global warming” to “climate change”………the global warming term I understand…………the “climate change” term seems rather ambiguous.

  7. I’m worried about the triumphalist tone of comments about the Wellington debate.

    After all, we may disagree with the pieman’s views but he’s no fool and very used to debating the issue – and, although he may not be a scientist, he has a detailed grasp of the science (as he sees it). His partner in opposing the motion is David Aaeronovitch who is a regular and clever Times correspondent. Again no fool – he comes from an activist left wing background and is very used to (and good at) public debate. His views on AGW (which he writes about from time to time) are, let’s say, rather basic: see this. Note his comment that the CRU revelations seemed “quite inconsequential”.

    For the motion, we have Professor Philip Stott and David Davies MP. Stott is a professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London (so the only scientist on the panel), writes a wryly sceptical blog on AGW and has debated the issue successfully. His Wikipedia entry describes him as “a life-long Labour supporter … mildly left wing politically [and] fiercely anti-tobacco”. So not a right wing corporatist. David Davies is a senior but “maverick” Tory MP (from a humble background). He’s a tough debater (he’s ex SAS) – although IMHO (I’ve shared a platform with him and know him a little – especially from his days as respected chairman of the Public Accounts Committee) rather dull. I’ve no reason to think he knows very much about the AGW issue.

    So the balance seems good. And the motion (The prophets of global warming are guilty of scaremongering) may not be so easy to defend. We’ll see.

    PS: the debate website (here) has an online voting option. Presently it stands at 84.8% “for” and 11.4% “against – so it sounds as though the audience may be packed in favour of the motion – rarely a good thing. But (foolishly) multiple voting is possible.

  8. NASAGate has just opened at
    http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-2-0-—-the-nasa-files-u-s-climate-science-as-corrupt-as-cru-pjm-exclusive-—-part-one/
    Here’s Andrew Revkin of the NYT writing to Hansen on August 23, 2007: i never, till today, visited http://www.surfacestations.org and found it quite amazing. if our stations are that shoddy, what’s it like in Mongolia?

  9. Geoff, I’m wondering whether the stations in Mongolia might actually be better – fewer airports and less asphalt…

  10. Robin et al.

    Guess I got that wrong. I thought Lynas was going to debate Lomborg, which would have been a good show, in view of past history between the two.

    Too bad.

    Max

  11. APNewsBreak: Top UN climate official resigns

    http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100218/D9DUKH501.html

  12. BTW the result of that online poll re Sunday’s Wellington School debate (here) has dramatically reversed: it now stands at 35.7% for the motion and 62.8% against. Of course, online polls of this sort (especially where multiple voting is possible) are meaningless. Nonetheless, this result makes the debate potentially more interesting.

  13. The online poll is meaningless as it readily accepts multiple votes. Currently each vote will move the score by 0.2% Its now 40% for

  14. I’m surprised they didn’t learn from the Science Museum debâcle:

    http://wermenh.com/proveit.html

  15. Well, I’m now banned from at the Huffington Post…….It must have been those sarcastic comments that I wrote in the “green” section………

    I’m also banned from Joe Romm’s site.

    Wow, those guys are sensitive!

    At least I know I have some friends here.

  16. Brute #9641
    banned from Huffington, banned from Romm’s, I feel for you. I’ve been banned for life from the Guardian, my newspaper for nigh on half a century (and you can’t say that of Huffington’s). The joke is, I recently discovered that I’m the great great nephew of CP Scott, the mythical Guardian editor whose slogan “comment is free, but facts are sacred” adorns the Guardian’s blog pages.

  17. peter geany (9639), JamesP (9640), Robin (9638)

    If I had idle time on my hands I’d toss in a few thousand votes “for” and even the score again.

    I think the real vote will come after the debate and the current poll is worthless.

    Max

  18. the real vote will come after the debate

    I notice that in past debates, they have taken votes before and after. The sceptic numbers increased dramatically last time (when Philip Stott was also speaking):

    Link

  19. TonyB

    Regarding the paper by Evans et al. cited by PeterM, it has one basic weakness, which I pointed out to Peter: to arrive at the downward surface radiative flux for CO2, the authors had to separate out a very large flux from water vapor to arrive at a much smaller flux for CO2, with some overlap in the wave lengths.

    I cannot vouch for the methodology used or whether or not the approach and conclusions have been validated by other physical observations.

    This study is not even cited in IPCC AR4 WG1. It appears to me that if it really provides the empirical “smoking gun” to support the radiative forcing and warming effects of trace GH gases (including CO2), it would have gotten much more ballyhoo and publicity than it apparently has, but that is just an opinion.

    Maybe you know more on this.

    Max

  20. Huh – I see that the Telegraph has just picked up on the Harpers article I referred to at #9595 – here. Entitled Here comes the next bubble – carbon trading, it includes this:

    “Carbon developers”, many of them employed by large multinationals, travel the world in search of carbon reduction projects to sell, while firms of carbon accountants have been established to verify on the United Nations’ behalf that those reductions are real. The whole thing, though well intentioned, looks wide open to abuse and scams.

    Clever of the Telegraph to realise that.

  21. Brute

    Yeah. Being banished from “believer” sites is a painful experience.

    Who was it (in the Old Testament) that got sent out into the desert for some transgression?

    I have had this, off and on, on RC (at present the site moderator is a bit more moderate and tolerant to “other opinion”, possibly as a result of latest developments).

    But the “site faithful” are always present with relevant or irrelevant responses, howls of outrage plus vitriol to spice things up. It’s sort of like poking a stick into a wasps’ nest when you lob in a provocative grenade.

    Fun and games.

    Max

  22. I love the gentle way Lindzen demolishes Emanuel in this letter. His choice of words is delightful: e.g. “hardly change this”, “disingenuous”, “peculiar”, “at this point” … Perfect.

  23. Yeah. Being banished from “believer” sites is a painful experience.

    Who was it (in the Old Testament) that got sent out into the desert for some transgression?

    Max,

    Hagar and Ishmael………although in my case it correlates more to Akhenaten……they’ve erased any and all references or depictions of “evil Pharaoh Brute” from the website…………I’ve changed my address to Elba………I’m so ashamed……..

  24. Brute (9641) & Max (9647):
    You may recall that I had a “near death experience” over at RC a while back, but surprisingly I’m now having a good run there on the “Daily Mangle” thread, mostly on page 7. (No change of ID) Would never have got away with it before! Have not even had any acid from Gavin or his pals!

    I’m about to post one exchange with the “colourful” Doug Bostrom; (#4) on TonyN’s thread:
    Is the Information Commissioner a toothless watchdog?
    http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=165
    Because of Tony’s reference to the secret panel of experts that allegedly formulated BBC policy on AGW

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