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. Hi Peter,

    You are still wrestling your own interpretation of Dr. Akafosu’s argument as a solar effect

    Maybe the “good Dr. A.” is just a bit less arrogant than the “consensus” scientists, in conceding there may be some things about climate change we just do not know as yet, rather than pinning it all on CO2, because “our models cannot explain it any other way”.

    Did you ever think about it that way?

    Try it. It’s not hard. Just takes a bit of humility.

    Regards,

    Max

  2. Please excuse my ignorance……evidently I don’t “get out enough” on vacation. (Sorry Pete, I have a business to maintain and people that depend on me to keep the business operating so that they in turn can keep food in their family’s mouths and a roof over their heads…..as well as pay their taxes). I’m also not a leach on the neck of my fellow countrymen……whining to “the government” everytime sales drop. We pay our own way, thank you.

    What is a winging Pom?

  3. Pete,
    RE:1345

    Forward planning is one of them. For the last 15 years or so, the western economies can be likened to a car speeding down the freeway. For a time everything was good, but when the engine started to splutter, someone belatedly looked at the petrol gauge and a general panic set in. How hard would it have been to think ahead?

    More along the lines of insane ideological environmental kooks covered the eyes and grabbed the steering wheel away from the driver and failed to stop and fill up at the numerous gasoline stations that they passed along their journey………….based on goofy crystal ball computer models and a non-existant apocolyptic environmental fairy tale. Not to worry, there are hundreds of gasoline stations just ahead if the driver takes control of the automobile again.

    Why is it that environmental elitists want to deprive poor people of decent living conditions and opportunity? Do they fear the masses or is it that they can continue to refocus blame on “the haves”…..and blame others for the plight that these so- called “friends of the ordinary man” have put them in. Or is it that if everyone has access to cheap abundent energy there will be no one else to blame?? Liberals are great at shifting attention…..they continue to create “victims” in order to sustain themselves. What a racket……..They claim to help the very same people that they continuously subjugate…..incredible.

    Ten well situated large scale nuclear power plants and expansion of offshore oil drilling would releive the pressure in the US…….environmentalist will have no part of it. Instead they continue to promote these imaginary “alternative energy” sources that haven’t been invented. Tilting at wind mills while the answer to virtually unlimited electrical power has been in use for over 50 years.

    Maybe they have a different agenda beside “helping the poor” and helping “the little guy”?

  4. Max and Robin,

    It’s a pity that Dr A hasn’t explained himself a bit better, we would have a better idea of what we are arguing about. It would be good for you guys too, if you could get some supplementary information. You seem quite taken with his theory, even though, and on you own admission, you don’t know what he is talking about. Just think how much more sense it might all make if you did know!

    Brute,

    A whinging Pom? Most people of UK origin make the transition to live down under without too much difficulty. However they did in the past have a reputation for ‘whinging’ , usually about trivialities like the beer being different or the batter on their fish and chips wasn’t quite what they were used to.

    Its been a bitter pill to swallow Down Under that the Poms have won more medals this Olympics. That’s unheard of! I dare say even those most opposed to any Government spending will be making an exception when it comes to financing a new crop of athletes for 2012. It must not happen again! :-)

    On the question of Americans travelling abroad, I must admit I don’t have any figures. But I’m pretty sure that Aussies and Europeans do more overseas travelling, especially when they are younger. It’s quite normal for Europeans and Aussies to have passports. But I did hear that George Bush never had a passport before being elected, which just seems extraordinary.

    It always bothers me that you Americans confuse the World for the USA. For instance, you have a ‘World Series’ for your baseball, or maybe your football, when you really mean ‘American (or USA) series’ . What about Cuba and Japan? Don’t they play baseball too? Aren’t they part of the world?

    The baseball example may seem to be a trivial issue, but it would be good all round if Americans had a slightly more internationalist view to their place in the world.

  5. For instance, you have a ‘World Series’ for your baseball, or maybe your football, when you really mean ‘American (or USA) series’ . What about Cuba and Japan? Don’t they play baseball too? Aren’t they part of the world?

    Pete,

    Yes, Cuba and Japan have baseball. The thing is, if the players are good enough, the first thing they do is join the “big leagues” and move to America where they can live in freedom and prosperity.

    Ask any Cuban, Japanese, Chinese or Russian ball player, (any sport, beside soccer) what their ultimate goal is and they will tell you to play major league sports in the US.

  6. Peter: it seems you’d prefer me to be asking you a question suggesting that solar effects caused late 20th century warming. I’m not. Dr A’s article, incidentally, refers to solar effect only once when, he says, “we did not investigate [it] in this note.” As to your “analysis” that “he is attributing the late 20th century warming to a solar effect”, the Conclusion (as Max has noted) is unambiguous: “the cause of the Little Ice Age is unknown at the present time”.

    To be clear “what we are arguing about”, let me remind you that I drew your attention to just one part of the article – and I’ll do so again. Here it is in full (you will find Figures 1 and 2 on pages 2 and 3):

    Figure 2 shows both the global average temperature and the temperature from stations widely distributed along the coast of the Arctic Ocean (Polyakov et al., 2002) during the last 100 years or so. One can see that the magnitude of temperature changes is significantly larger in the Arctic. … In particular, fluctuations, including multi-decadal oscillations, are greatly “amplified” in the Arctic. There occurred two major fluctuations, one between 1910 and 1975, and one after 1975. The arctic data indicates that the two fluctuations in the global average data should not be treated as minor fluctuations to be ignored. Indeed, it is crucial to investigate the nature of the temperature rise between 1910-1940 and also the one after 1975. As the top diagram in Figure 1 shows, CO2 in the atmosphere began to increase rapidly after 1940, when the temperature decreased from 1940 to 1975. Thus, the large fluctuation between 1910 and 1975 can be considered to be a natural change. Therefore, unless the difference between the two changes can be understood, it is not possible to say tacitly that the rise after 1975 is mostly caused by the greenhouse effect.

    My question is simple and specific: why do you consider that his last observation (“unless the difference between the two changes can be understood, it is not possible to say tacitly that the rise after 1975 is mostly caused by the greenhouse effect”) “doesn’t wash”. Please answer that question.

  7. Robin,

    You are like a dog with a bone.

    The premise of your question is incorrect. The data that we have for the late 20th century is much more comprehensive than for the early 20th century. It’s an exaggeration to say we know nothing about the first half, but for the purposes of this discussion let’s just say that is the case.

    So, does this mean that we cannot identify the cause of the late 20th century warming? No it doesn’t. There aren’t many candidates. I realise that someone will probably suggest cosmic rays, but solar changes and GHG build up are the only realistic options. If you can eiminate one then it must be the other. We do have good solar measurements going back to the mid-sixties and these show that the sun has not changed anywhere near enough to explain the heating. So it must be….

    Maybe you can now answer a question that I put to you earlier. Why is it that you, who claim to have not made up your mind on AGW, cheer Max and Brute on so enthusiastically, even though they use what you yourself have described as ‘insulting’ terminology?

    How is it that you cannot bring yourself to tell them this directly?

  8. Via Canadian Free Press…..

    The Environmentalists’ Greatest Trick

    By Daniel Greenfield Thursday, August 28, 2008

    If the devil’s greatest trick was convincing the world that he doesn’t exist, arguably the Environmentalist’ Greatest Trick is convincing the world that they really stand for conserving, rather than spending flagrantly.

    The socialist and left wing parties eagerly calling on the common man to cut back on his showers, driving and plastic bags are busy unveiling massive spending programs that would choke all the not particularly extinct whales and polar bears of the north. The message is make sure to limit your showers to 1 minute of cold water, while shelling out more of your tax money than ever to fund a whole raft of conferences, initiatives and programs meant to tell people to waste less. Cut back on toilet paper so that deeply concerned politicians and celebrities can travel on jet planes around the world and feast on buffets while discussing how to best convince the common man to use less.

    But then why be surprised, conservation for the greater good was always a staple of planned economies in the USSR or China or Cuba, just so long as you knew that the greater good was the good of the authorities and that the authorities always held an exemption. The common Russian farmer might be expected to give up his land, but the Commissar could always count on using that land for his Dacha. The rules that apply to the proletariat never apply to the leaders who wallow in their own indulgence while introducing new rationing protocols.

    Hypocrisy is no obstacle to being an environmentalist prophet as Al Gore’s sprawling mansion and bouts of jetting around the world with rock stars has shown us. Just as the mansions of the Party elite have never created any kind of contraction to demanding that the peasant cut down his ration of bread by another few ounces. The beauty of collectivism is that it divides humanity neatly into masters and slaves, and if you’re smart enough to wield the rhetorical whip or come up with another convincing argument for cutting the rations, you get to split what they are forced to give up.

    With all the tirades about the oceans rising, the polar ice melting, the atmosphere dissolving, the globe heating up, the polar bears dying out and all the catastrophe hysteria that has overrun the country, the last thing you should expect is to have the Prophets of Disaster actually listen to their own alarmist rhetoric. As everyone knows, preaching chastity excuses the parson for his own adulteries, and preaching green excuses the politician for his three swimming pools. With carbon credits as the new indulgences, cutting back is only for those too slow to jump on the bandwagon and preach it to others.

    If you can churn out a commercial featuring a multiracial panoply screaming TICK TICK TICK at the audience, in between reciting prospective environmental disasters, you can go on showering as long as you like. At most you might be expected to buy a SMART Car and drive it to the premiere of your latest movie being shot on three continents for enough money to feed all of Africa well into the 22nd century.

    Among the elite, conspicuous consumption has given way to conscious concern about consumption. The thing isn’t to cut back, but to spend money and buy something that signals your concern about consumption, such as expensive organic products, electric cars or a DVD of Al Gore using his beak to point out melting icebergs on a slideshow of the Arctic. As Conspicuous Concern becomes the new hip, shallow people show how deep they are by spending more money on the status symbols that show just how opposed to wasteful consumption they are.

    And environmentalism at the government level is truly no different. Obama’s campaign isn’t being run on a platform of spending less, but spending more. More programs. More projects. More logos and slogans and money all somehow geared toward using less energy. But can you spend more to spend less and waste more to waste less? The laws of thermodynamics would seem to say otherwise.

    And while the mindless celebrities who circle any trend like starved vultures continue to preach to us that we need to stop using toilet paper and drink rat’s milk, the political culture of consumption that gave birth to their idiocy continues rolling along just fine. That culture is perfectly happy with oil prices because it doesn’t affect their own padded pocketbooks but does drive public disaffection that they hope to exploit.

    It isn’t that they really want the public spending less, but their business allies want the public spending more on the things they want to sell, things with a Recycled logo or Biofuels or Ice Cream guaranteed not to harm the habitats of Polar Bears. The trick is to get the public to buy less and spend more, on the products they buy and on the government they’re forced to accept.

    The economic politics of Green creates forced scarcity in formerly prosperous nations at the bottom rung and squeezes the middle class by adding surcharges to everyday products to fight imaginary problems, surcharges that benefit the corporations and the parasitic Green industries that exist to certify and wastefully and unnecessarily process and recycle products that don’t need it at added expense.

    The real economic logic of Green has nothing to do with melting icecaps but with selling a product for 150 or 200 or even 2000 percent of its original cost by attaching some sanctimonious tripe to the label about saving the earth. The real economic logic is about forcing businesses to comply with regulations drafted by politicians at the urging of their friends who just happen to run companies that will profit from those regulations. And that is why the real color of green is the highway man’s color, the camouflage of highway robbery.

    Real conservation has never been on their agenda or they might actually listen to the Sierra Club when it opposes immigrant. Real cutbacks in waste are not on their agenda or they might stop jetting around the country and the world for conferences and concerts. Real reductions in energy use is not on their agenda or they might actually cut back on their own energy use instead of buying carbon credits. But it’s much easier to victimize Asthma patients and working class people who find themselves having to pay more for everything they buy thanks to the mesh of regulations they implement, than to actually show more responsibility in their own lives.

    The Politics of Green is all about appearance over reality, about a sprawling mansion with a green sticker on it and a SMART car parked right in front of the driveway with that embarrassing SUV inside.

    The Environmentalists’ Greatest Trick
    By Daniel Greenfield Thursday, August 28, 2008

    If the devil’s greatest trick was convincing the world that he doesn’t exist, arguably the Environmentalist’ Greatest Trick is convincing the world that they really stand for conserving, rather than spending flagrantly.

    The socialist and left wing parties eagerly calling on the common man to cut back on his showers, driving and plastic bags are busy unveiling massive spending programs that would choke all the not particularly extinct whales and polar bears of the north. The message is make sure to limit your showers to 1 minute of cold water, while shelling out more of your tax money than ever to fund a whole raft of conferences, initiatives and programs meant to tell people to waste less. Cut back on toilet paper so that deeply concerned politicians and celebrities can travel on jet planes around the world and feast on buffets while discussing how to best convince the common man to use less.

    But then why be surprised, conservation for the greater good was always a staple of planned economies in the USSR or China or Cuba, just so long as you knew that the greater good was the good of the authorities and that the authorities always held an exemption. The common Russian farmer might be expected to give up his land, but the Commissar could always count on using that land for his Dacha. The rules that apply to the proletariat never apply to the leaders who wallow in their own indulgence while introducing new rationing protocols.

    Hypocrisy is no obstacle to being an environmentalist prophet as Al Gore’s sprawling mansion and bouts of jetting around the world with rock stars has shown us. Just as the mansions of the Party elite have never created any kind of contraction to demanding that the peasant cut down his ration of bread by another few ounces. The beauty of collectivism is that it divides humanity neatly into masters and slaves, and if you’re smart enough to wield the rhetorical whip or come up with another convincing argument for cutting the rations, you get to split what they are forced to give up.

    With all the tirades about the oceans rising, the polar ice melting, the atmosphere dissolving, the globe heating up, the polar bears dying out and all the catastrophe hysteria that has overrun the country, the last thing you should expect is to have the Prophets of Disaster actually listen to their own alarmist rhetoric. As everyone knows, preaching chastity excuses the parson for his own adulteries, and preaching green excuses the politician for his three swimming pools. With carbon credits as the new indulgences, cutting back is only for those too slow to jump on the bandwagon and preach it to others.

    If you can churn out a commercial featuring a multiracial panoply screaming TICK TICK TICK at the audience, in between reciting prospective environmental disasters, you can go on showering as long as you like. At most you might be expected to buy a SMART Car and drive it to the premiere of your latest movie being shot on three continents for enough money to feed all of Africa well into the 22nd century.

    Among the elite, conspicuous consumption has given way to conscious concern about consumption. The thing isn’t to cut back, but to spend money and buy something that signals your concern about consumption, such as expensive organic products, electric cars or a DVD of Al Gore using his beak to point out melting icebergs on a slideshow of the Arctic. As Conspicuous Concern becomes the new hip, shallow people show how deep they are by spending more money on the status symbols that show just how opposed to wasteful consumption they are.

    And environmentalism at the government level is truly no different. Obama’s campaign isn’t being run on a platform of spending less, but spending more. More programs. More projects. More logos and slogans and money all somehow geared toward using less energy. But can you spend more to spend less and waste more to waste less? The laws of thermodynamics would seem to say otherwise.

    And while the mindless celebrities who circle any trend like starved vultures continue to preach to us that we need to stop using toilet paper and drink rat’s milk, the political culture of consumption that gave birth to their idiocy continues rolling along just fine. That culture is perfectly happy with oil prices because it doesn’t affect their own padded pocketbooks but does drive public disaffection that they hope to exploit.

    It isn’t that they really want the public spending less, but their business allies want the public spending more on the things they want to sell, things with a Recycled logo or Biofuels or Ice Cream guaranteed not to harm the habitats of Polar Bears. The trick is to get the public to buy less and spend more, on the products they buy and on the government they’re forced to accept.

    The economic politics of Green creates forced scarcity in formerly prosperous nations at the bottom rung and squeezes the middle class by adding surcharges to everyday products to fight imaginary problems, surcharges that benefit the corporations and the parasitic Green industries that exist to certify and wastefully and unnecessarily process and recycle products that don’t need it at added expense.

    The real economic logic of Green has nothing to do with melting icecaps but with selling a product for 150 or 200 or even 2000 percent of its original cost by attaching some sanctimonious tripe to the label about saving the earth. The real economic logic is about forcing businesses to comply with regulations drafted by politicians at the urging of their friends who just happen to run companies that will profit from those regulations. And that is why the real color of green is the highway man’s color, the camouflage of highway robbery.

    Real conservation has never been on their agenda or they might actually listen to the Sierra Club when it opposes immigrant. Real cutbacks in waste are not on their agenda or they might stop jetting around the country and the world for conferences and concerts. Real reductions in energy use is not on their agenda or they might actually cut back on their own energy use instead of buying carbon credits. But it’s much easier to victimize Asthma patients and working class people who find themselves having to pay more for everything they buy thanks to the mesh of regulations they implement, than to actually show more responsibility in their own lives.

    The Politics of Green is all about appearance over reality, about a sprawling mansion with a green sticker on it and a SMART car parked right in front of the driveway with that embarrassing SUV inside.

    The Environmentalists’ Greatest Trick

    By Daniel Greenfield Thursday, August 28, 2008

    If the devil’s greatest trick was convincing the world that he doesn’t exist, arguably the Environmentalist’ Greatest Trick is convincing the world that they really stand for conserving, rather than spending flagrantly.

    The socialist and left wing parties eagerly calling on the common man to cut back on his showers, driving and plastic bags are busy unveiling massive spending programs that would choke all the not particularly extinct whales and polar bears of the north. The message is make sure to limit your showers to 1 minute of cold water, while shelling out more of your tax money than ever to fund a whole raft of conferences, initiatives and programs meant to tell people to waste less. Cut back on toilet paper so that deeply concerned politicians and celebrities can travel on jet planes around the world and feast on buffets while discussing how to best convince the common man to use less.

    But then why be surprised, conservation for the greater good was always a staple of planned economies in the USSR or China or Cuba, just so long as you knew that the greater good was the good of the authorities and that the authorities always held an exemption. The common Russian farmer might be expected to give up his land, but the Commissar could always count on using that land for his Dacha. The rules that apply to the proletariat never apply to the leaders who wallow in their own indulgence while introducing new rationing protocols.

    Hypocrisy is no obstacle to being an environmentalist prophet as Al Gore’s sprawling mansion and bouts of jetting around the world with rock stars has shown us. Just as the mansions of the Party elite have never created any kind of contraction to demanding that the peasant cut down his ration of bread by another few ounces. The beauty of collectivism is that it divides humanity neatly into masters and slaves, and if you’re smart enough to wield the rhetorical whip or come up with another convincing argument for cutting the rations, you get to split what they are forced to give up.

    With all the tirades about the oceans rising, the polar ice melting, the atmosphere dissolving, the globe heating up, the polar bears dying out and all the catastrophe hysteria that has overrun the country, the last thing you should expect is to have the Prophets of Disaster actually listen to their own alarmist rhetoric. As everyone knows, preaching chastity excuses the parson for his own adulteries, and preaching green excuses the politician for his three swimming pools. With carbon credits as the new indulgences, cutting back is only for those too slow to jump on the bandwagon and preach it to others.

    If you can churn out a commercial featuring a multiracial panoply screaming TICK TICK TICK at the audience, in between reciting prospective environmental disasters, you can go on showering as long as you like. At most you might be expected to buy a SMART Car and drive it to the premiere of your latest movie being shot on three continents for enough money to feed all of Africa well into the 22nd century.

    Among the elite, conspicuous consumption has given way to conscious concern about consumption. The thing isn’t to cut back, but to spend money and buy something that signals your concern about consumption, such as expensive organic products, electric cars or a DVD of Al Gore using his beak to point out melting icebergs on a slideshow of the Arctic. As Conspicuous Concern becomes the new hip, shallow people show how deep they are by spending more money on the status symbols that show just how opposed to wasteful consumption they are.

    And environmentalism at the government level is truly no different. Obama’s campaign isn’t being run on a platform of spending less, but spending more. More programs. More projects. More logos and slogans and money all somehow geared toward using less energy. But can you spend more to spend less and waste more to waste less? The laws of thermodynamics would seem to say otherwise.

    And while the mindless celebrities who circle any trend like starved vultures continue to preach to us that we need to stop using toilet paper and drink rat’s milk, the political culture of consumption that gave birth to their idiocy continues rolling along just fine. That culture is perfectly happy with oil prices because it doesn’t affect their own padded pocketbooks but does drive public disaffection that they hope to exploit.

    It isn’t that they really want the public spending less, but their business allies want the public spending more on the things they want to sell, things with a Recycled logo or Biofuels or Ice Cream guaranteed not to harm the habitats of Polar Bears. The trick is to get the public to buy less and spend more, on the products they buy and on the government they’re forced to accept.

    The economic politics of Green creates forced scarcity in formerly prosperous nations at the bottom rung and squeezes the middle class by adding surcharges to everyday products to fight imaginary problems, surcharges that benefit the corporations and the parasitic Green industries that exist to certify and wastefully and unnecessarily process and recycle products that don’t need it at added expense.

    The real economic logic of Green has nothing to do with melting icecaps but with selling a product for 150 or 200 or even 2000 percent of its original cost by attaching some sanctimonious tripe to the label about saving the earth. The real economic logic is about forcing businesses to comply with regulations drafted by politicians at the urging of their friends who just happen to run companies that will profit from those regulations. And that is why the real color of green is the highway man’s color, the camouflage of highway robbery.

    Real conservation has never been on their agenda or they might actually listen to the Sierra Club when it opposes immigrant. Real cutbacks in waste are not on their agenda or they might stop jetting around the country and the world for conferences and concerts. Real reductions in energy use is not on their agenda or they might actually cut back on their own energy use instead of buying carbon credits. But it’s much easier to victimize Asthma patients and working class people who find themselves having to pay more for everything they buy thanks to the mesh of regulations they implement, than to actually show more responsibility in their own lives.

    The Politics of Green is all about appearance over reality, about a sprawling mansion with a green sticker on it and a SMART car parked right in front of the driveway with that embarrassing SUV inside.

  9. I apologize Tony……Not certain what happened there. Please cut my last post in half. The Canadian Free Press Link always gives me trouble which is why I posted the text as opposed to just the link.

  10. Peter (post 1358): I’ll deal with your closing question first. I said your suggestion that I believed AGW theory was a hoax was insulting because that’s not my view; nor have I said it was. As neither Max nor Brute has made any such claim about what I think, I have no reason to complain to them.

    Next your dog analogy. I have two dogs, an English Springer Spaniel and a Labrador Retriever – both gun dogs (yes, I’m a nasty gun toting game shooter). They’re great friends – but give ’em a bone, and friendship evaporates. Let’s hope the same thing doesn’t happen here.

    Now the important issue. You’re adopting your usual tactic by attributing to Dr Akasofu views that he doesn’t have and then commenting on those “views”. He simply says, “the large fluctuation between 1910 and 1975 can be considered to be a natural change”. He doesn’t say we know nothing about it. Nor does he question the fact that we have data about late 20th century warming. His point is simply that, until we understand the nature of the 1910/1975 natural changes much better, we’re logically unable to determine whether they contributed to the later warming. Until that determination is made, it cannot be assumed that “most” of the warming is caused by GHG emissions.

    I can expand on this as Dr Akasofu recently published a revised version of his paper – it’s here. He goes goes into more detail than he did in his earlier paper – I suggest you read it. I’ll confine myself now to three quotations that are relevant to this discussion:

    One possible cause of the linear increase may be Earth’s continuing recovery from the Little Ice Age (1400-1800). This trend (0.5°C/100 years) should be subtracted from the temperature data during the last 100 years when estimating the manmade contribution to the present global warming trend. As a result, there is a possibility that only a small fraction of the present warming trend is attributable to the greenhouse effect resulting from human activities.

    There is an urgent need to correctly identify natural changes and remove them from the present global warming/cooling trend, in order to accurately identify the contribution of the manmade greenhouse effect.

    It is well known that CO2 can cause the greenhouse effect, so it is natural to hypothesize that CO2 is one of the causes of the present warming trend. However, it is not appropriate to conclude that the 0.6°C rise is mostly due to human causes without carefully subtracting the contributions of natural changes. This point is missing in the IPCC study on global warming.

    Do you think these conclusions don’t “wash”?

  11. Hi Robin,

    Thanks for link to the very recent study by Dr. Akasofu.

    This study covers the point you have made repeatedly, which Peter has so far failed to grasp, i.e. if one cannot explain earlier warming oscillations with the climate models, one cannot assume that more recent warming was caused predominantly by AGW simply because the models cannot explain it any other way.

    Maybe after going through this in more detail, Peter will see this flaw in the IPCC reasoning regarding AGW as the primary driver of climate change.

    Akasofu provides significant evidence for earlier warming periods, essentially ignored by IPCC AR4.

    He provides a good rationale (based on the physical record) for an underlying warming trend, since we are emerging from the LIA, which must have had a largely natural cause, since it occurred prior to significant AGW.

    He provides compelling evidence that the 1976-1998 upswing could well have been another one of the multi-decadal oscillations overlying the warming trend, as observed previously.

    I would say that he has provided more information on past and current climate change in 47 pages than IPCC AR4 has done in 1000 pages (by essentially limiting its detailed analysis to the period following 1976, focusing primarily on AGW, writing off natural causes as insignificant and skipping over previous periods lightly).

    Of all of the studies I’ve seen, which question the notion that AGW is the principal driver of climate, this one appears to me to be the best thought out and presented.

    I can imagine that there will be some sort of an “ad hom” attack on Akasofu plus an attempted “put-down” of his study by RealClimate, Tamino or another pro-AGW site within a few weeks at the latest.

    Should be fun to hear the “howls of outrage”.

    Regards,

    Max

  12. Hi Peter,

    You apparently referred to me (and Brute) in your statement to Robin (1358), “Why is it that you, who claim to have not made up your mind on AGW, cheer Max and Brute on so enthusiastically, even though they use what you yourself have described as ‘insulting’ terminology?”

    Can you define the terminology I used, which Robin has described as “insulting”?

    Please be specific, Peter.

    Regards,

    Max

  13. Hi Brute,

    You wrote to Peter (1353), “Ten well situated large scale nuclear power plants and expansion of offshore oil drilling would relieve the pressure in the US…….environmentalist will have no part of it. Instead they continue to promote these imaginary “alternative energy” sources that haven’t been invented. Tilting at wind mills while the answer to virtually unlimited electrical power has been in use for over 50 years.”

    This makes excellent sense (and, from earlier posts I believe Peter even agrees with the nuclear part).

    This would certainly solve the electrical power problem for an essentially unlimited time and offshore drilling would start to ease the oil import problem.

    In addition I think the US congress should not continue to block further oil exploration and development in ANWR and the U.S. Arctic offshore (a medium-term fix for part of the motor fuel problem), allow the Alaskans to put in a major natural gas line to the south (also a medium-term solution to recover and utilize the co-produced natural gas from Prudhoe Bay, which is now being either re-injected or flared) and also not block Shell (and others) from developing the vast oil shale reserves in Colorado, etc. (a long-term solution, which could profitably provide oil at $60/bbl and secure US energy independence for 100+ years).

    There are a lot of real solutions out there without pumping billions of dollars of taxpayer money into subsidies to prop up otherwise non-competitive solar and wind generation (as opposed to government R+D grants to develop new, more efficient alternates, which I believe make sense).

    But, hey, you live in the USA, so I guess it’s your money we’re talking about here.

    What do you think?

    Regards

    Max

  14. Hi Peter,

    Still awaiting a specific answer from you on my 1346,(response to your “nonsense” post).

    Regards,

    Max

  15. Max: it wasn’t the terminology that I said was insulting – it was Peter who was insulting by suggesting that I held views that I did not hold. See the first paragraph of 1361, replying to the penultimate paragraph of 1358.

  16. Max,

    Of course, all of these projects should be pursued at full throttle. Unfortunately, the reign of King Brute I of America never really took off, (even with Mrs. Brute), and we’re left with the ineffectiveness of the government as it is with all of its stumbling blocks and impediments. (I’d make one of those little smiley faces here but I don’t know how).

    But seriously, the answer is just so simple. We can pursue all of these options until some Einstein or Edison comes up with something better IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR. Every option is opposed by the environmental lobby and by extension, the Democrat Party, which they are beholden to. These people oppose ANY and EVERY source of cheap abundant energy………they are anti-mankind.

    As I’ve written previously, they see the Earth as THEIR private “Garden of Eden” or they falsely profess their concern in order to continue to subjugate the very people they purport to help.

    (Vote for us and WE will solve all of your problems!……rescue you from the evil clutches of “Corporate” America!). Power to the Proletariat!……… and all of that nonsense. In other words, voluntarily submit yourself to slavery.

    Class envy at its finest…………..Listen to and dissect anything that B. Hussein Obama has ever uttered and you’ll get the picture…….or just read any book written by Saul Alinsky, Obama’s mentor.

    The Alaska gas pipeline is in the process of being built, with the magnificent insight of REPUBLICAN Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

    On 3 July 2007, the Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin announced that the State of Alaska is ready to receive applications to build the pipeline in the framework of the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act.[3] On 4 January 2008, a proposal by TransCanada was selected out of five. Other proposals were submitted by Sinopec, AEnergia, the Alaska Gasline Port Authority, which proposed a liquefied natural gas project and the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority. Outside of the AGIA process, authorities were evaluating a separate proposal issued by ConocoPhillips.[2][4] On 9 April 2008, BP and ConocoPhillips announced that they will develop a joint pipeline project.[5]
    On January 5, 2008, Palin announced that the Canadian company, TransCanada Corp., was the sole AGIA-compliant applicant.[6][7] And in August 2008, Palin signed a bill into law giving the state of Alaska authority to award TransCanada Pipelines $500 million dollars in seed money and a license to build and operate the $26-billion pipeline to transport natural gas from the North Slope to the Lower 48, through Canada.[8]

  17. Via Ice Cap…………

    Aug 31, 2008

    Oil Works, Wind Turbines Don’t

    Posted on August 30, 2008

    Mother nature dumps 63 times more oil into the ocean than does drilling and extraction, through natural seepage. The Santa Barbara channel seepage is not exceptional, apparently. Seepage of oil into the ocean and U.S. coastal waters is widespread, even typical.

    See larger image here
    Oil in ocean is largely a natural phenomonon. See “Mother Nature, the biggest oil polluter on Earth”/ Some documentation here: CRS REport for Congress, Oil Spills in U.S. Coastal Waters.
    The time to switch to solar energy, or to wind power, not only is not today; it may be never. The alternatives to oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy so often cited as if they are silver bullets in the battle to prevent imaginary global warming simply are not economically viable, on any scale.
    In this abortive Massachussetts attempt (below) to prevent imaginary global warming, 19 turbines produced only 27% of planned energy. Other turbines produced only 17% and 15% of planned output, according to the Massachussetts Technology Collaborative. On the other hand, if T. Boon Pickens wants to build us a half-trillion dollar transmission system, he should get started. But he doesn’t, because he knows it cannot pay.
    The practical and proven solution is build more nuclear plants, drill more oil and more natural gas. Convert coal to gas; then make hydrogen fuel. But we better do it quickly. We have no guarantee that Earth is not about to cool off by more than 5 degrees Farenheit; in fact, the climate gives every indication of doing exactly that. Read more here.

    Oil Works, Wind Turbines Don’t

    http://hypsithermal.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/oil-works-wind-turbines-dont/

  18. Max,

    Re:1346 see 1347 and 1348.

    Robin,

    So I was being insulting, rather than mistaken, by perhaps incorrectly attributing terms to you which weren’t insulting themselves?

    You are quite happy to back up Max and Brute with comments of “well said” etc even after they’ve used terms like “scam”, “hoax” and “charlatan”. But as an English gentlemen you couldn’t possibly use that sort of language yourself?

  19. “Do you think these conclusions don’t “wash”? Yes I do and they dont.

    Of course we need to quantify all factors involved. There are positive and negative components, anthropogenic and natural. We have tha data to do that for the late 20th century onwards, but alas, we are not able to go back in time to repeat the same measurements for earlier periods.

  20. Max,

    I guess that you are still asking me to point examples of nonsense from your 2007 posting. I don’t really have to go back that far, even your recent posts are still full of it. Although as I may have mentioned recently there is perhaps a small ray of hope for you.

    Tell me, had you worked out your figure of 0.7deg C for CO2 sensitivity last year? If you have, or had, some philosophical or religious objection to the idea of man being able to change the climate, why concede even a milli-degree of anthropogenic temperature rise?

    Of course, you have moved towards being on the right track. So an element of congratulation is in order. We’ve just got to get you to see sense, instead of nonsense, apply the feedbacks, and you’ll then be in the scientific mainstream.

  21. Hi Peter,

    Thanks for congratulations, but I have still not seen any specific rebuttals to the list of my earlier statements, which you dredged up out of the past and labeled “nonsense”.

    But then again, as your performance on this blog site has shown, “specifics” are not really your strength.

    So instead of posting anything specific, you come with, “Tell me, had you worked out your figure of 0.7deg C for CO2 sensitivity last year? If you have, or had, some philosophical or religious objection to the idea of man being able to change the climate, why concede even a milli-degree of anthropogenic temperature rise?”

    Again, Peter, you get yourself into a whole lot of trouble by starting off sentences with “IF” and then continuing with some sort of gibberish.

    I have always said that I have no proof that the greenhouse hypothesis is invalid, so I can accept it at face value. It tells me that 2xCO2 should theoretically result in around 0.7°C temperature rise, all other things being equal.

    But, as we see from the temperature record, “all other things” are not equal. Dr. Akasofu has stated this much more scientifically and eloquently that I just did.

    Just like the good Dr. A., I believe the jury is still out on whether or not AGW is a real, measurable phenomenon, and, if so, how great (or insignificant) an impact it has had (and could have in the future) on our planet’s climate.

    There just is no real evidence for a potentially alarming effect from AGW, despite 1,000-page IPCC reports filled with pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, exaggerated “model projections” and thinly-veiled fear mongering.

    I know there are those, such as you, Peter, that may have “philosophical or religious” reasons for believing in humankind’s culpability in contributing to what will in all likelihood become a “climate disaster” within a fairly short period of time, unless we start “mitigation” actions today (where this is really a hidden way of saying levy draconian carbon taxes or cap and trade schemes on every man, woman and child on this planet so a few wealthy individuals can become richer and politicians and bureaucrats can have access to obscene amounts of public money to shuffle around).

    While I do try to keep an open mind in this discussion, I try to remain rationally skeptical and just do not share your “philosophical or religious” belief that this is true.

    Regards,

    Max

  22. Max,

    Maybe you’d like me to grade each sentence in order of nonsensicalness?

    How about ” We also do not have the ability to change the current climate trends”. Even you yourself have conceded that we do with your 0.7deg C figure for CO2 sensitivity.

    and

    “Forget all the junk science by so-called experts that are all in on the multi-billion dollar ‘climate research scam’.”

    Just a comment on:

    “…or even to accurately forecast what is going to happen over the next 10 let alone 100 years” Of course it depends on what level of accuracy you specify. But, in a way, its harder to forecast 10 years ahead than 100 years. The level of AGW is just about on a par with natural variability over a 10 year period but will be much clearer over a 100 year period.

    Your comment “I believe the jury is still out on whether or not AGW is a real, measurable phenomenon”. That sounds much more reasonable than your rantings of last year. Maybe there is hope for you yet!

  23. Robin, I hope you don’t mind me cutting-in on your exchange with Peter, but he wrote something rather NEW and UH? in a similar/related way twice now, that rather caught my attention, and I can’t contain myself from asking for confirmation of what he actually means and in what context.

    Peter, you wrote in part to Robin, by your post Nos.

    1358: “…The data that we have for the late 20th century is much more comprehensive than for the early 20th century. It’s an exaggeration to say we know nothing about the first half, but for the purposes of this discussion let’s just say that is the case…”

    1370: “…Of course we need to quantify all factors involved. There are positive and negative components, anthropogenic and natural. We have tha data to do that for the late 20th century onwards, but alas, we are not able to go back in time to repeat the same measurements for earlier periods.

    WRT the context of Dr. Akafosu’s data presentations and considerations, AND also recent discussions here:
    Would you please clarify what data are inadequate or missing in the early versus late part of the 20th century, and what is the break-point of such inadequacy by each parameter.
    Obvious parameter leaders (but not all) in that context defined above are:
    1) Global average T
    2) Important regional T (eg Arctic coast & Greenland)
    3) Global average CO2
    4) Sunspot activity
    5) Insolation
    6) Indicative mapping and definition of sea-ice coverage and its thickness
    7) Other that may concern you.

    If you would give a straight answer to these questions it would not only aid a rational debate here, but would be a positive move towards credibility for you.
    For instance, behind parameters 1) and 2) a secondary question might be: WRT Dr. Akafosu’s Fig 2; comparing Atlantic coast T’s with Global T’s, are you claiming that the data presented is false?

  24. A couple of interesting links:

    http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=fabled-northwest-passage-open-for-b-2008-08-27

    http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

    someone should tell Antony Watts to bring his website up to date.

    http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/northwest-passage-still-impassable/

    Also see Brute’s 320 posting

    You might have wondered why I didn’t have time to post any comments in June, but as part of the international global warming conspiracy, I can now reveal I was drafted on to flame thrower duty in the Arctic.

    I’m pleased to say that our efforts weren’t in vain and we managed to melt nearly as much ice as we did last year. We opened up the Amundsen passage about a month ago and we’ve just about finished both the NE passage and the NW passage through the Parry channel. The guys still up there are engaged in a final push and we may still crack last year’s record.

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