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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Hi Max,
Your post #61 is most excellent, but I would like to suggest that you have been sucked-in to a ploy by Benson, known as “let’s change the subject”
This diversionary technique is a good move from his point of view when he has strayed into an area wherein he has some deep problems in denying the reality.
I am a deep admirer of the great depth of your work, but I think we should not allow Benson to change the subject before any topic is finalized.
Could we take a step back?
Max:
The spam filter (Akismet) seems to be playing up and sometime in the next few days I’ll try installing Bad Behavior instead. In the mean time I’ve set the link limit to 20 links as there does not seem to be a way of turning off link counting altogether.
Re: #95, Robin
Oh Dear! Oh Dear! And I’m a pipe smoker too.
But of course it becomes less funny when you remember that Hanson, with Schneider, was one of the first advocates of AGW, and he is still responsible for much of the research that the IPCC relies on for historic temperature trends.
Tony: thanks for allowing me to post my response to Phillip Stevens’s article in the FT (see #66 above and http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=95). And thanks to Max for his kind comment. Some might be interested to contribute to the FT’s discussion page where there are a few interesting reactions: http://www.ft.com/cms/6c2bf1ce-91b7-11da-bab9-0000779e2340.html?q=Y&a=tpc&s=646099322&f=4501057231&m=9311057231
Robin Guenier (77) — Joe Romm can be testy, it is true. I suppose you could attempt to simply ask him where in the IPCC AR4 SFM (SPM?) it states whatever you think he says it states.
Be very carefull to read precisely what Joe wrote, not what you might think he wrote. He parses quite tightly, being a former Assistant Secretary (Acting) in DoE.
Bob_FJ (78, 79) — Poster manacker engages in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience
which might possibly be avoided if he had bothered to actually read (and comprehend) the Technical Summary.
I didn’t even know that there is a Hadley standard 21-year smoother. It is not in the index of the temperature products at their site AFAIK. I just used Tamino’s because it is convenient. Furthermore, those readers were are even more of a novice at statistics than I will find Tamino’s easier to read, IMO.
I don’t recall any other points that you made that are worth responding to, sorry.
manacker (81–95) — That was better. Surely IPCC took all of that into account in the assessment.
All the non-anthropogenic climate drivers (You do understand the phrase ‘solar focing’, do you not. No, you don’t. Go learn what it means. Its not the same as TSI.) lead to climate variability. The temperature steps downward in the 1910s and 1950s are in the usual range for climate variability, so I now think that I needn’t attempt to explain these at all. [You are right in that there seems to be no aerosol data from the 1950s, etc.]
Instead, consider temperature anomalies from GISP2 ice core over the entire Holocene, which I take as 10438 ybp to 100 ybp, i.e., 1850 CE. That is 103+ decades. Divide the temperature anomalies into bins to determine the number of times the decadal transistion is to the same bin, the number of times one bin up, one bin down, etc.
This produces, to a good approximation, the usual bell-shaped normal distribution. From such a study one determines that, ‘on average’, the transitions seen up through the 1980s are not statistically unusual. Not so from then on.
So one has to look for one or more causes, i.e., forcings. Since it is not the sun, the only (major) suspect is CO2, together with its water vapor feedback. [manacker, go back and review what the Technical SUmmary has to say about observing trends in upper troposphere water vapor, hmmm? You do understand why that is important, hmmm?] The data supports the physics-based conclusion.
Bob_FJ (96, 97) — My PhD is in Engineering Science and Mathematics. That’s because no PhD in Computer Science had been formally established at my school.
I am a long-time amatuer student of geology and now an amateur student of climatology.
Poster manacker often looks fairly good, but his slipups clearly indicate he is practicing a particularly good form of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience
which can easily entice and ensnare the unwary. (Before my retirement, I had ample opportunity to referee and recommend rejection of bad, i.e., pseudoscience, submitted papers. I think I’m moderately good at that, although not yet fully proficient with reagrd to climatology.
Hi David,
Before you give high school physics lectures on ’solar focing’and ‘TSI’ try reading the studies I cited. With your educational background, you should be able to understand them. They will teach you something that you (as well as IPCC) do not know (or maybe just choose to ignore).
Regards,
Max
Hi David,
Thanks for your Wiki link:
“Pseudoscience is defined as a body of knowledge, methodology, belief, or practice that is claimed to be scientific or made to appear scientific, but does not adhere to the scientific method,[2][3][4] lacks supporting evidence or plausibility,[5] or otherwise lacks scientific status.[6]”
I’d say this is an excellent description of the AR4 WG1 1,000-page (groan!) report and the slick SPM 2007 PR pitch for AGW.
Regards,
Max
Hi David,
Just a note to your self-assessment, “although not yet fully proficient with reagrd to climatology”.
Hey, I’ll agree with you on that one. 100%!
Regards,
Max
This is the second time today I have read the term “cognitive dissonance”. I guess it must be a trend.
Icecap Note: Read this excellent post by Anthony Watts entitled “If Global Warming was a Company Decision, How Would You Vote?” on Hansen and his latest ”cognitive dissonance” outburst.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/global_warmists_in_frantic_effort_to_save_their_failing_theory/
Instead of suing big oil, I think the American people ought to seriously consider going after Hansen and Gore who are as much responsible for the energy and food crises by turning a minor largely natural, cyclical change into an earth-threatening, man-made disaster by manipulating both science and data. Environmental groups and some politicians share the blame and if we can’t sue them, we can stop donating to their causes and/or kick the bums out of office. Maybe we can put Boxer’s picture on Unleaded, Gore on high test and Hansen on Deisel pumps to remind folks where the blame really lies. In this Washington Post story, Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) said the bill’s failure was proof that Hansen’s message had not caught on. “Hansen, Gore, and the media have been trumpeting man-made climate doom since the 1980s. But Americans are not buying it,” Inhofe said. “It’s back to the drawing board for Hansen and company as the alleged ‘consensus’ over man-made climate fears continues to wane and more and more scientists declare their dissent.”
See how global temperatures have declined according to NASA satellites since Hansen’s first testimony in June of 1988.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HANSEN_AND_CONGRESS.jpg
Hi David,
After broadcasting you impressive “capsule CV” to BobFJ, I can only wonder why such a learned guy (as you describe yourself) is unable to stay on the topic being discussed and respond with specifics to the argumentation being presented and the scientific studies cited, rather than simply tossing out blurbs defining “pseudoscience” and switching from causes of 20th century warming to discussions of the “entire Holocene, which I take as 10438 ybp to 100 ybp, i.e., 1850 CE”.
Sounds like another evasion tactic or classical AGW-fundie “waffle”, when the debate is going in a direction that challenges the`”AGW-faith”.
Come with pertinent specifics, David, without tooting your horn on what a smart guy you (think you) are or tossing out irrelevant blah-blah.
The many studies I cited show that solar forcings represent around half of 20th century warming, with the other half covered by increases in CO2 and CH4 over the period.
You have not been able to refute these studies.
But you should try, if you want to retain some semblance of credibility on this site.
Regards,
Max
manacker — Earlier I had stated something about solar forcing, which you clearly misinterpreted as TSI. Stick to the topic yourself.
The IPCC concensus process probably tends to produce a scientifically conservative view. However, the Technical Summary clearly indicates increases in upper atmosphere water vapor, a known global warming (so-called greenhouse) gas; hence, a positive feedback to the net forcings. I believe we are willing to agree with IPCC that all the other forcings, positive and negative, cancel (approximately), leaving just CO2 direct (about 0.3 K) plus the amplification due to water vapor (total about 0.5 K). One serious study suggests about 0.15 K for solar forcing with water vapor feedback, total then of about 0.65 K. Which is about right for the last 100 years. Close enough for me.
The Holocene record is entirely relevant. There are enough decades to establish some decent statistics for decadal variability. I claim that up to about the 1980s is within normal variability; thereafter not. See the previous paragraph.
I don’t need to refute those studies. The dates of publication are such that the AR4 Working Group 1 actual climatologists knew of them and decided to simply state that solar forcing was poorly understood.
However, incoming W/m^2 has to go somewhere. So until the satellite record for TSI becomes long enough, and similarly for clouds and water vapor, the best that can be done, IMHO, is to measure equilibrium climate sensitivity. Actual climate sensitivity, not that in GCMs.
Previously I pointed out where you could go read papers about this. It doesn’t look like you have bothered. Too bad. Guess you don’t really want to learn some climatology. First do that, then maybe there is some small thing to criticize.
Hi David,
You have stayed entirely consistent in character by shooting off another waffle, without responding to the many studies I cited, which show a significant solar contribution to 20th century warming. This is the same gambit you used earlier to try to defend the myth of a “3K climate sensitivity for 2xCO2”.
Let’s analyze what you wrote in more detail:
“The IPCC concensus process probably tends to produce a scientifically conservative view.”
Ouch! The IPCC “consensus process” does anything but that. It produces a view that supports the message that the UN’s IPCC (along with other politicians) want to ”pitch”, i.e. the message of alarming global warming caused by human GHG emissions, primarily emissions of CO2, which should therefore be taxed (or paid for by carbon footprint cap and trade schemes) involving gargantuan sums of taxpayer money to be shuffled around by the same politicians and bureaucrats, thereby enhancing their power and, in many cases their personal fortunes). Wake up to the facts of life, David, this process generates anything but “a scientifically conservative view”; it produces “agenda driven science” to support a political agenda involving hundreds of billions of dollars. Follow the money trail, David, and you will be able to see how “scientifically conservative” this “view” really is.
“Earlier I had stated something about solar forcing, which you clearly misinterpreted as TSI.” Sorry, David the “misinterpretation” is obviously on your part. You need to truly read the many scientific reports I cited to get a clearer picture of this, David. IPCC only considers a small part of the real solar forcing in making its ridiculous claim that the sun is only responsible for 0.12 W/m^2 of forcing, as compared to CO2 at 1.66 W/m^2. Do not waffle with “earlier I stated” MSU BS, David. Stick to the facts.
“The Holocene record is entirely relevant.” Maybe so for some discussions, David (as is the MWP for others), but the causes for the 20th century warming is a helluva lot more relevant, since that is what we were discussing, and that is precisely what you have avoided discussing. Wonder why?
“However, incoming W/m^2 has to go somewhere. So until the satellite record for TSI becomes long enough, and similarly for clouds and water vapor, the best that can be done, IMHO, is to measure equilibrium climate sensitivity.” No, David, this is just another cop-out. “We can’t “measure” what the sun is doing, so it must (in your “humble opinion” be due to CO2 (which we also “can’t measure”) plus fictitious “water vapor feedbacks” (which we also can’t measure, but others have already refuted , i.e. Lindzen, with a well postulated “infrared iris” theory plus Spencer et al. with extensive physical observations, which validate this theory), so let’s say CO2 plus assumed “water feedbacks” (related to CO2, of course) are our problem. Read the “Bible” or some other religious work, David. It has about the same scientific validity as your rationalization of “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (which we have beaten to death on the precursor of this site, without you being able to refute the physically observed facts which speak against it).
“Guess you don’t really want to learn some climatology.” This is a rather silly and condescending statement, David. I can only suggest to you that you read the many studies I cited, which all showed a significant (50% on average) contribution of solar forcing to 20th century warming, in order that you, my conceited friend, can truly learn something about what causes climate change (as opposed to the agenda-driven pseudo science of “climatology”, which you espouse).
Regards,
Max
David B. Benson wrote in part in #102:
Well, that’s a surprise, but let me help enlighten you:
The 20-year smoothing employed by Hadley, (or 21-point as they prefer to call it), is well described by them, but it is a difficult site to navigate so I can’t point to it at the moment. They even give the shape of their “bell curve”, which is actually a series of simplified chords, rather than curves. They even describe how they MSU for the last ten years of missing data through to 2017. They also confessed recently to a change in their MSU method because they did not like the recent outcome, what with the last year being colder.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You went-on with:
Well, Tamino’s little trick of doing 10-year block averaging may be convenient for you, in denying the current plateau, but I would guess it is unique to him. Even Hadley do not dream of doing it, and I guess too, GISS
However, if you were to take a ten-year block that ended in say 1996, you might be able to see it would be disproportionately different to say one ending in 1998. Thus the Hadley 20-year smoothing is superior for ironing-out spikes, whilst at the same time giving more shape to the trends. The Hadley annual bar chart (1-year block averaging) with the blue smoothing line gives much more information, and there is absolutely no difficulty in reading the blue line. It requires ZERO knowledge of statistics. (Contrary to your suggestion). The simple to read Hadley 20-year smoothed blue line clearly shows a break-over, through a plateau in the raw data, and much the same thing apparently developing right now:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2131/2458648692_1701416471_o.jpg
On the other hand, your Tamino graph DOES NOT SHOW this important information
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/10yave.jpg
Do you also deny the 1940 plateau
I have spent some time on expanding on my earlier points, and in particular would appreciate it if you would respond to three issues in my #79, rather than change the subject.
CORRECTION, add: in 1940
The simple to read Hadley 20-year smoothed blue line clearly shows a break-over, through a plateau in the raw data IN 1940, and much the same thing apparently developing right now:
Hi David,
In trying to comprehend why you and I have such apparent difficulties in communicating in the so-called “scientific debate on AGW”, I believe I have analyzed some possible contributing factors.
Your background (as you have informed BobFJ) is clearly one of academic approach (EE professor with strong knowledge of computer science). Mine has also been in engineering (ChE) with a more “hands-on” approach in industry and later in business general management.
I think computers are excellent tools for all sorts of things, and I have used them as such. I have seen in actual practice, however, that they can suffer from GIGO limitations, whether in generating future marketing forecasts for a new business development venture or in calculating the thermodynamics and heat transfer of highly exothermic chemical reactions. The validity of the assumptions, which are programmed in is paramount.
As far as “science” is concerned I believe in the more skeptical approach of Henri Poincaré, which postulates that a hypothesis must be validated by observed physical data before it can be demonstrated to be correct: “Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new; it alone can give us certainty.”
So I sense that you tend to have inherent “faith” in computer-model generated forecasts, whereas I keep asking you “where are the physical observations which support these forecasts?” (a question you evade by showing me more computer-model generated forecasts or simply writing me off as a “nincompoop” that doesn’t understand what you consider to be “science”).
This, together with some preconceived notions on both of our parts as to the “hidden political agendas” that may lie behind the ongoing “scientific debate on AGW”, make an open exchange between us challenging.
But I do believe it is worthwhile, not only for the two of us, but also for other site visitors that chime in from time to time with their views on these topics.
Regards,
Max
David: re Joe Romm and censorship (my post 80 and yours 105). As to my reading what I think he wrote and his parsing “quite tightly”, you might note my background: I’m a lawyer who for 20+ years was CEO of various technology businesses, including the UK government’s Central Computing Agency (reporting to the Cabinet Office). I am, I think, unlikely to fall into that trap – and I also parse quite tightly. My Joe Romm experience is, I think, important – typical of his attempts to suppress inconvenient truth.
So I’ll expand a little. One of Joe’s most visited posts, published last November, is here: http://climateprogress.org/2007/11/17/must-read-ipcc-synthesis-report-debate-over-delay-fatal-action-not-costly/. In the first paragraph, he says that the IPCC
I didn’t think that the IPCC had issued such a call and that, to claim that it did, was seriously misleading. So I posted a simple request:
Joe just referred me to the Report. I replied that that was not an answer, that
I got nowhere in subsequent correspondence. Eventually, in response to his claim that he found
I said,
He refused to post that comment, saying that his
In my view, it is dangerously wrong for him to pass off what he thinks the IPCC said (or what he would like it to have said) as what it actually said. So I replied,
He didn’t reply – nor did he post my comment. I regard that as censorship. Don’t you?
BTW, David, I agree with Max that it’s foolish to rely on computer projections. That’s true generally – but especially so re the validation of scientific hypotheses.
Bob_FJ (116, 117) — The decadal averages clearly show that the 1940s were a local maximum. We cannot know whether the 2000s are a local maximum until well into the 2010s, yes?
You are trying to read too much into data which is filled with varaiblity. Which is why we have statistics to enable us to decide when somethiing is actually significant.
By the way, the other guys graph you linked to seems to have some sort of errors, or something, in the last several years. Anyway, I can’t read it. Here is Tamino’s graph direct from the HadCRUTv3 global temperature product:
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/t3v.jpg
Robin Guenier (119, 120) — “today issued its strongest call for immediate action to save humanity from the deadly consequences of unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions”
A strongly worded interpretation of the probability of AGW being 90%. Which is quite a bit higher than the assessment in the TAR.
This means of communication easily suffers fromvarious forms of misinterpretation, yes?
I might point out that a vast, truely vast, number of decisions are taken based on ‘computer projections’: air and water policy, forestry practices, and a great deal of just plain engineering. There are some things that computer programs are good at; learn what those are.
Robin Guenier (119, 120) — It just occurred to me that Joe Romm might have been referring to the global temperature predictions.
Have you read “Six Degrees”? Or Joe Romm’s own “Hell and High Water”?
manacker (118) — I was never an EE professor; a professor of Computer Science.
As such, I am at least as aware as you of the tendency to assume that programs produce correct answers. But when 22 different GCMs all give about the same answers and indeed predict previously unobserved phenomena I give some credence to what they are doing. I earlier posted the example of the Japanese modeling of the entire past 125 ky. There are many, many others which suggest that GCMs have it more right than wrong.
I’ve also pointed out that ‘fear of computer programs’ ought to be tempered by the successes (where these occur). Engineering calculations often work well (except in ChemE, where nothing ever seems to work right the first and even the scond time).
However, you seem not to follow your own dictum when it comes to water vapor feedback; this is easily explained and is indeed observed; the fact that it doesn’t seem readily calculatable by hand does not make it less true; I observe more water vapor in my locality, in just the last two years or so. Learn to deal with the reality of it.
But to obtain a useful measure with does not depend upon a reductionist approach, go learn about how equilibrium climate sensitivity is actually determined from the paleorecord. I find this one of the more ingenious parts of climatology. But also one of the more important.
Hi David,
Thanks for answer. You wrote, “However, you seem not to follow your own dictum when it comes to water vapor feedback; this is easily explained and is indeed observed; the fact that it doesn’t seem readily calculatable by hand does not make it less true; I observe more water vapor in my locality, in just the last two years or so. Learn to deal with the reality of it.”
Yeah. Guess you could say the same for the negative cloud feedback first proposed by Lindzen and later validated by Spencer, which cancels out any positive feedback from water vapor. So you should “learn to deal with the reality” of that, as well.
Regards,
Max