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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Brute,
I’m not totally unsympathetic to some of your criticisms of government in general. But are you arguing that there should be no government, Anarchism, or just better government?
We’d all like better government and that, I would suggest, is best achieved by greater democracy and accountability.
Or maybe you’d like less government? I suspect that the motivation for those pushing that argument is that they really would like less democracy.
TonyN is only able to pursue his claim against the BBC because they are government owned and subject to FOI acts etc. If those advocating ‘less government’ had their way it would be sold off to big business and that would be the end of any sort of public accountability at the BBC. Any criticism would be met with a response that if Tony don’t like the programs, he should watch another channel.
I don’t particularly agree with Tony’s complaint but nevertheless I do support his right to pursue his grievance through all legitimate channels. This is part of the democratic process at least as much, if not more than, the action of marking a cross against a candidate’s name every four or five years.
Max,
If you Google the term “American Empire” I think you’ll find 16,900,000 hits. There is even a Wiki page on the subject. You may disagree with the term but I would suggest that you’ll find that those who do agree with it are as sane as the world average.
If the Empire does exist then of course Australia, the UK, Israel etc must be part of it. One of the the most sensitive US bases anywhere outside the USA is located at Pine Gap. The NSA and CIA have the ability to eavesdrop on just about any communication they like in the world. Hello guys!
The USA wouldn’t want that sort of facility outside the control of their Empire.
There was an item on the news the other day about the Joint Strike Fighter jets, for which Australia is likely to pay $16 billion, but “were comprehensively beaten in highly classified simulated dogfights against Russian Sukhoi fighters”, and which cost less than half as much.
That’s good to know of course, but of all the discussion which I heard, mainly from aircraft nerds and the top brass in the Aussie airforce, no-one suggested what I would have thought would have been the obvious solution of buying the Sukhoi fighters instead. I did mention this to one of my customers who is ex RAAF, and who is still interested in these things, and he just laughed.
Of course, he wouldn’t want to admit it openly but he knows as well as I do that there is no way that Australia would be allowed to buy a Russian jet fighter.
I apologize. Sometimes that word just “fits”. I understand that using terminology such as that exhibits a lack of vocabulary; however in this particular case it was the most descriptive way to express my disgust. Another slap in the face is that this “emergency economic rescue” Bill contains provisions to address “climate change”. The items that I mentioned above and the items mentioned below have nothing to do with “rescuing wall street” but are attached to this Bill as an all or nothing choice. I shouldn’t have used that word, but it fits succinctly.
House passes $700B “bailout bill” – CO2 Tax issues included –
WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF GOVERNMENT SANCTIONED CARBON TAX
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/03/house-passes-700b-bailout-bill/
Sneaky: Current credit bailout bill contains carbon tax provisions!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/02/sneaky-current-credit-bailout-bill-contains-carbon-tax-provisions/
I’d prefer less government and the waste, fraud and corruption that big government brings. Presently, our government officials are working against the will of the people. The problem here is that government officials were on the take; they were cooking the books and stealing from the people. Franklin Reines, Jim Johnson, (Obama’s present campaign economic advisors), Congressman Barney Frank and numerous other politicians were warned and asked about their lack of oversight…..they hid evidence and publicly proclaimed that the institutions were solvent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs
The United States also have a government subsidized television outlet which has failed miserably since it’s inception. The only reason that it’s still on the air is due to taxpayers being forced to subsidize it. Let the market decide. If the BBC relied solely on private contributions, I’m certain that it would be out of businesses inside of a year.
Left leaning businessmen launched a radio network titled “Air America” a few years ago which was designed to counter the “Right Wing” radio broadcasts such as Rush Limbaugh. Air America was another miserable failure; no one listened. After millions upon millions of dollars being pumped into the operation it finally has gone under. No one wanted to hear Left Wing radio pesonalities badmouth their country for hours on end. No advertisers would sign on because they had no listeners. I’d venture to say that the BBC broadcasts to a captive audience andwould die on the vine if it was privatly funded.
Tony,
Is it true that each person in the UK must pay a license, (tax) to own a television set or radio?
Brute,
in Australia we have the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) which is modelled on the BBC and attracts a substantial audience share, although they don’t go in for a full scale ratings battle with the commercial networks. Unlike the BBC which is funded from a TV (not radio) licence fee, it is funded from general taxation. Like the BBC it is commercial free. They have two TV channels and various regional and national radio stations.
Of course no-one has to watch! Although they do have to pay their taxes. Most people think it is a fair system, even so, and there is no real support for selling it off.
I can’t watch commercial TV. In a half hour program there would be three commercial breaks. It drives me up the wall, and instead I have to record it and fast forward through the ads.
Most that’s not the main reason for supporting the ABC. For all its faults it is everyone’s to criticise if they don’t like it. Questions can be asked in Parliament. The constitution of the ABC can be changed according to the democratic process. The bosses of the ABC are accountable.
People like Tony can campaign to get things changed if they don’t like what happens at the ABC.
The other channels are accountable only to the likes of the Packers or the Stokes of this world, and those who pay for the advertising. No-one elects them.
Brute,
I’ve just watched your Youtube video. I’ve not been following the goings on over the two FM’s over the years but it seems to me that all the main political parties are to blame. The clip you showed is interesting but to try to put all the blame on the US Democrats, although they are far from totally innocent, is way too simplistic. You guys have had a Rep President, and the Congress too, up to 2006. If the Reps had wanted change they could have made it.
There was a period after the second world war when the “conventional wisdom” was that capitalism was good, up to point, but it had to be controlled and managed in the peoples’ interest. It was probably because many politicians of all political parties had memories of the Depression, and how things rapidly changed during the war time when governments got a grip on the economy and made damn sure that things that had to happen to win the war did actually happen. There wasn’t any nonsense then about the war effort being left to the free market.
There wasn’t a government tender put up for the liberation of France and the occupation of Germany! The thought after the war, at least in Europe, but in the USA also to a lesser extent, was that a similar process could be harnessed to ‘win the peace’ too. That worked pretty well for thirty years but things started to change under Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the USA. The so called Anglo American model was started, based on removing regulations from as many sectors as the economy as possible. Money was something that could be printed and borrowed at will. It was all just pieces of paper to the new style neo-liberals.
The Australian and Labour Parties are just as guilty as the Australian Liberals and UK Consevatives. They have gone along with it all until now. The same with the US Democrats who have always had ties to big business anyway. It is curious that there is now an unholy alliance of old style socialists ( or social democrats) and old school conservatives who now saying we told you so.
I’m no economist but when I last moved house a few years ago and found out I could have borrowed at least twice as much as anyone on my income could reasonably expect to repay, I just knew that there was something wrong and it was all going to end in tears. The idea that the stock market was a one way bet struck me as equally suspect. It was pretty obvious that it was just like the 1920’s all over again and that no-one had learned the lessons of history.
Pete,
The current US economic mess began with Democrat politicians passing laws that required banks to loan money to customers that could not afford to pay them back in a misguided effort to provide “affordable housing for all”. No doc loans….No down payment, no credit check…. people didn’t even have to provide employment verification. The law, proposed and mandated by Democrats in Congress, stated that banks asking these questions were practicing racism.
These high risk loans were then package and sold to investment houses. When the default rate skyrocketed, people that had invested in these investment houses, (pension funds) plummeted. This caused a cascade effect which poisoned the system.
Democrats, when asked, stated that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were sound. Republican members of Congress attempted to pass laws that required strict controls on mortgage lending; but were over turned by Democrats. These votes fell along party lines. The Bush Administration warned repeatedly about this problem; but after September 11th 2001 the country was in no mood to hear about an impending crisis in the housing sector and Democrats managed to defeat both bills. The price of housing ceased to rise and people found themselves owing more money than the houses were worth. Americans, (as well as foreign speculators) that bought these houses hoping to turn a quick buck, walked away leaving the financial institutions and the shareholders holding the bag. This bad debt then rippled through the conventional banking/ mortgage system and here we are.
So, the bottom line is that Socialist policies advanced by Leftist politicians, forced banks to provide mortgages to a bunch of deadbeats to purchase homes they couldn’t afford and walk away. The banks were forced to comply for being feared of being accused of racism. The taxpayers are left paying the freight for another failed Leftist policy.
Democrat politicians Chuck Schumer, The Clintons, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Barrack Obama and many others have all been provided sizable campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, (as well as personal loans at VIP rates)……they’ve been using these two organizations as their personal bank accounts, skimming money and using them to buy political favors and peddle influence.
NY Times Article
By STEVEN A. HOLMES
Published: September 30, 1999
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates — anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
”Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990’s by reducing down payment requirements,” said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae’s chairman and chief executive officer. ”Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.”
Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.
”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”
Under Fannie Mae’s pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 — a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.
Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.
Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.
Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990’s. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.
In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.
Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.
In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.
The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.
Pete,
What role does the RAAF play? Strickly defensive? How are the fighters going to be deployed? Why would the Australian government purchase aircraft from a traditional enemy?
Iran possesed F-14 fighters at the end of the Shah’s regime. These aircraft were rendered virtually useless after the fall of the Shah due to the inability to purchase spare parts and technical advice. I would think that in any future conflict, the Russian fighters would be useless to Austalia.
Pete,
RE: Pine Gap
You have no idea what happens or does not happen at Pine Gap. Maybe they’re doing experiments with extraterrestrial aircraft there?
Hi Peter,
You wrote, “If you Google the term “American Empire” I think you’ll find 16,900,000 hits.”
I Googled “U. S. A. Empire” (to eliminated central American Empire of the Mayas, south American Empire of the Incas, and other non-USA related references). I got 644,000 hits (not 16,900,000).
When I started checking, I found that very few of these refer to the “U. S. A. Empire” (actually 6 out of the first 100 that came up, and two of these argued that the U. S. A. does not have an empire, such as the Roman, Ottoman or British empires of the past). The rest were either promotional sites for a whole bunch of products carrying the “Empire” name, plus several companies, clubs and organizations with the “Empire” name. There were several articles about past “Empires”, several relating to New York (the “Empire” State) and the “Empire State” building there. There was one article by Iranian President Ahmadinejad denouncing the U. S. A. Empire and one by the linguistics professor and self-proclaimed anarchist, Noam Chomsky. And there were several repetitions along the way, so I’d guess there are probably a maximum of 25,000 hits, where the article or reference actually refers to a “U. S. A. Empire”.
But this is a meaningless indicator in any case. For example, I get 225,000 “hits” when I Google “Myth of man-made global warming”.
Can’t comment on the Australian air force buying jet fighters outside the USA and this does not mean much either. If the Aussies (or anyone) is dumb enough to buy an inferior military product/service package from the USA when a superior product/service is available at a better price elsewhere, with the same degree of reliability of supply, then they are simply foolish.
Let’s get back to AGW, including the scientific and political debate surrounding this issue and get off of polemic discussions of an “American Empire”, which have nothing to do with our topic here.
Regards,
Max
Peter: although your response to #1844 didn’t answer my questions, I assume it meant that (a) you don’t agree that “current change should not be assumed to be human-caused unless natural causation is first eliminated” and (b) your reason is that “we’ll never be able to obtain the same quality of climatic and solar data for the first half of the 20th century, and earlier, as we have for the second half of the 20th century”. That’s illogical – I’ll explain why.
First, a reminder. In April/May, in an exchange on the same topic, you said:
I replied by tying your analogy more closely to the topic:
Not a perfect analogy (after all, I didn’t choose it) – but it may help. If (a) a potentially serious phenomenon the causes of which are poorly understood (e.g. global warming) that has happened many times in the past happens again and (b) a possible cause that cannot apply to the earlier examples (e.g. man-made GHG emissions) is identified this time, it is illogical to assume that that must be the primary cause now, discounting the causes of the earlier phenomena simply because they are poorly understood. (The fact that, because of inadequacies of current scientific understanding, that poor understanding may continue cannot alter that illogicality.) The only logical position is to regard the matter as unproven and to redouble efforts to identify the causes of the earlier phenomena to determine whether they can be eliminated as an explanation of the current phenomenon.
That logic is true in any event. In the present case (recent global warming) it is emphasised by the IPCC’s identification by computer modelling of man-made GHG emissions as the probable primary cause of warming – not by direct observation. Yet the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences study published in May showed that the IPCC’s models did not include records of such natural events as the strength of the Gulf Stream and the El Nino cyclical warming in the Pacific.
You asked if this means “we can never hope to gain a good understanding of what is happening to the atmosphere and climate right now”. Well, vast sums are being spent on climate research so I’m sure our understanding will improve substantially over time – the Leibniz study is an early example of improvement. But, until our understanding of those earlier warmings is much improved, our understanding of the causation of the recent warming must continue to be uncertain.
A final comment. Your implication that Bob Carter’s work is unsubstantiated pseudoscience is absurd. I don’t suppose you read his paper but, had you done so, you would have found that he supports his arguments with three pages of detailed references (the majority from peer-reviewed papers in recognised journals) and four pages of graphs (all fully sourced).
Here are some interesting data. It’s a set of historical temperature graphs from a large selection of mostly non-urban weather stations in both hemispheres. I thought it most interesting. Any comments or observations?
Hi Robin,
Thanks for the very informative information (#1862). You asked for comments to your temperature data sets for various regions worldwide.
After looking at these data in some detail, it appears that there has been no real warming across our globe in the past decades, from Siberia to Antarctica, based on the actually observed record from the land stations.
How can it be then that both GISS and Hadley show warming in the “globally averaged land and sea surface temperature” (at least until around 1998)?
Can the difference be attributed to “corrections” made to the raw land surface data plus “adjustments” to the sea surface data?
Is this whole “observed warming” a hoax, perpetrated on the public by a few fervent believers in the AGW hypothesis at both GISS and Hadley?
Or are the records cited in your reference incorrect?
I wonder what Peter would answer (if you could exceptionally pin him down to be specific)?
Based on his track record on this site, I suspect he would prefer to digress to Arctic sea ice trends or some other non-related political topic rather than discussing temperature trends.
But maybe he wil surprise us all and get specific on late 20th century and early 21st century temperature trends. Let’s see.
Regards,
Max
PS Today I had the opportunity to talk about “man-made global warming” with a Swiss friend (and scientist) involved in (non-climate) research here. He had always believed that AGW was causing a climate change (including the melting of glaciers here and elsewhere in the world). I was very surprised to hear that he now has serious doubts that these changes are man-made.
I did briefly look at the temperature records and am of the same option as Max in that I don’t see any temperature increase in these rural observations.
I would suspect that Peter would hypothesize that the operators of these recording stations are taking kick-backs from big oil or big coal or are part of a cabal involving a Bush/Palin conspiracy to secretly take over the world and operate it from Pine Gap forcing everyone to become evangelical Christians.
Max/Brute: perhaps Hadley could say that this is too small and inadequate a sample to be a reasonable basis for coming to global conclusions. I’m sorry but I don’t think the “official” data are likely to be a hoax. Mistaken perhaps but not a hoax. But I have to admit it’s a puzzle: the evidence here certainly suggests that there has been no temperature increase in non-urban locations across the globe. Three interesting records are Central England (1659 – 2002), West Point and Central Park, New York and Napa and Willows, California (the Napa site is near San Francisco). Here you do see recent warming – but all in urban locations. Incidentally, re the first of these (Central England), I was surprised by the extraordinarily warm period around 1730 – and interested to see John Daly’s comment that “The industry prefers the 1770 start date as it then omits” that warm period. I wonder why?
e # 1851Peter
Your views on my FOI application would have more resonance if you answered the question that I posed here
Re: # 1854, Brute
The BBC is funded from the licence fee that all users of TVs in the UK must pay, plus what they can make by selling programmes and other services.
The fee is set every time that their charter is renewed and the BBC negotiates this with the government. All governments in the UK have some control over the scope of the BBC’s operations, but not directly over editorial policy.
Therefore the BBC is indirectly funded by the government, to the extent that the corporation is allowed to levy what is really a tax for using a television set, regardless of the extent to which people use their channels. This is a situation that few people find satisfactory, but no one seems to be able to think of a better idea.
As our national broadcasting service, with a privileged status that other broadcasters do not enjoy, the BBC is required to run a public service news feed. Clearly, it is essential that this is impartial in order to justify the way in which they are funded.
For the purposes of the FOI Act, the BBC is treated as a government agency and comes under the scope of that act. On the other had they also enjoy a derogation with respect to information that they hold for the purpose of journalistim, which is understandable. No one is going to give the BBC an off-the-record briefing if they know that the reporter’s notes will be publicly available under FOI Act.
There is considerable concern, even among other journalists, that the BBC is stretching the definition of ‘jounalism’ in order to withhold information that should clearly be within the public domain. That is the problem that I am trying to address at the moment with my FOI application. They are, in fact, using the legislation as an excuse to withhold information in a way that they would find very difficult to justify if the FOI Act did not exist. This is not exactly in the spirit of the legislation.
—– 0 —–
On another subject, I have been listening to the Today programme as I type this. There are now major problems in the German banking system and the FTSE fell by about 5% on opening. Between 8 am and 9am the BBC also ran three stories on climate change: contributions from Harrabin on a probable breakdown in the EU mitigation negotiations, Stern on the importance of China and other developing countries cutting emissions and a story abut a new form of alternative energy.
With the banking system in tatters, I doubt whether I was the only listener who wondered whether the BBC has completely lost the plot. If you can no longer be certain that your savings are safe, then you are most unlikely to lie awake at night wondering whether the GCMs are predicting 100 years hence correctly, or even care.
Brute,
Your statement “So, the bottom line is that Socialist policies advanced by Leftist politicians, forced banks to provide mortgages to a bunch of deadbeats to purchase homes they couldn’t afford and walk away.” betrays a lack of understanding of the subject.
Surely you can’t have any objection to race being an illegal criterion in the provision of mortgages? That seems to have been the underlying motivation of those in the nineties who were originally promoting the idea of sub-prime mortgages. I would expect that nearly all the original recipients would have either managed to keep up with their payments or they would have had the opportunity to sell their properties within the first few years. This is the time when many borrowers, not just sub-prime ones, realise that they are over- committed and decide to get out.
Of course, banks have always known this. Regardless of how well they vet their clients, they know they can’t get it right every time. This is why they used to demand at least a 10% deposit. That way there is a strong incentive for a borrower to sell the property themselves rather than just walking away in times of stress. Why on earth did the banks think everything had changed? Why did they expect that they could offer 125% mortgages without risk? It should have been a rule for everyone , black, white, latino etc alike, that 90% was the maximum limit for a home loan.
What they seemed to be unable to see (although blind Freddie could have told them) was that the more money they lent, and not just to the riskier borrowers (reportedly incuding cats, dogs and people who were deceased), the more they were inflating a housing price bubble. Borrowers who would have been previously classified as being A+ were forced into the sub-prime category as they needed to borrow way more than they could reasonably afford to meet the ‘bubble’ prices. Yes, you could argue that they were foolish. But it wasn’t just the sub-prime borrowers who paid over the odds for homes three or four years ago.
Of course, now that the bubble has burst, the option of selling their property no longer exists for many new borrowers. Similarly the bank makes a big loss on each repossession. This is the real cause of the ‘toxic debt’ problem. The term ‘sub-prime crisis’ is a convenient term but it isn’t the real explanation. A better term would be ‘negative equity’ crisis.
I don’t want to be too partisan. I’m sure that the same thing may well have happened if the Democrats had been in charge too. But the bubble in the USA occurred under the Republican’s watch so they should accept responsibility for the ‘negative equity mess’. Just as the British Labour party should accept the responsibility for what has happened in the UK. It may be even worse there. The same thing has happened here in Australia under the Liberal Party. It is maybe not quite as bad, yet, as in the the UK and the USA but that may well change in the next few months.
Robin #1865
The 1730’s warming period is very well documented and is almost identical in temperatures to the current period. I have put all the Hadley CET records dating back to 1659 into graphical form and it is astonishing
a) to see how much they rise and fall
b) How many temperature records still relate to pre 1850 records-these are usually ignored as they do not fuilfil the climate scientists observation criteria. I suspect the real reason is they dont like the results.
c) how similar the period 1725-1740 is to today
d)How quickly temperatures can change
I did a two month research project on previous temperatures. There is no doubt at all that temperatures have been as warm as, or warmer than, the present episode on very many occasions.
I have posted a link to the results. This is not written up in a narrative form-myself and others were adding evidence as we found it. The evidence ranges from scientific abstracts to contemporary reports, books and even a learned article on climate references during the byzantine empire http://www.climateaudit.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=520
Arguing that the present warming is unprecedented is completely pointless as the evidence shows otherwise and even AL Gore in his 1992 book ‘Earth in the balance’ cited previous warming episodes. The only arguement is ‘why is it different this time?’
Personally I dont think it is, and natural variability caused by sun activity, water vapour, cosmic rays etc explain virtually everything. I think the next big scientific discussion is about cosmic rays which appear to present a different explanation to fluorcarbons causing the hole in the ozone layer
Tony Brown
Hi Robin,
Yes, I’m sure you are right that the “official” data are probably not “a hoax”, although there may be some rounding up plus some ex post facto “adjustments” and “corrections”. The Hadley record is probably less suspect than the GISS record, based on the errors that have been exposed by Steve McIntyre (and subsequently corrected by GISS) for the USA.
But, as Brute also observed, I believe the records you cited show clearly that warming is not apparent in non-urban locations across the globe, in other words that the main cause of the apparent warming is the urban heat island effect.
To your point that perhaps Hadley could say that this is too small and inadequate a sample to be a reasonable basis for coming to global conclusions, the logical solution would be for Hadley to extend the size of the sample until it is large enough.
There have been scores of studies from all over the world, which all confirm a significant UHI bias (of 0.3°C to 0.6°C). In addition, studies have shown that poor siting of measurement stations and shutting down rural stations can cause major distortions in the temperature record. And finally it has been shown that the shutdown of several Siberian stations at the collapse of the Soviet Union coincide wih an apparent jump in temperatures.
Despite this evidence, IPCC states that the UHI effect has had an influence of “less than 0.006°C per decade”. The “hoax” is, in fact, the IPCC denial that urbanization has caused a significant part of the apparent warming.
IPCC has not backed its claim with any studies providing direct comparisons of urban and nearby non-urban records, as one might expect. Instead it has relied on a study by David Parker comparing “calm night/windy night” temperatures; this study has since been debunked by Roger A. Pielke.
So you are right, Robin. The measurements themselves are not a “hoax”. It is the interpretation of these measurements and, more specifically, the IPCC denial that there is a significant UHI distortion, which is the “hoax”.
Regards,
Max
TonyN: you’re right about the relative newsworthiness of climate change as opposed to the banking crisis. But there is an interesting parallel between European leaders’ inability to coordinate their response to the banking crisis (with Ireland, Greece, Germany etc going their own way) and their inability (as reported by Harrabin) to agree about CO2 mitigation (with Poland, Germany etc demanding special treatment). I think it demonstrates two things: (1) whatever international bodies (e.g. the EU and the UN IPCC) may request/demand, nations will give overriding priority to their perceived national interest; and (2) financial concern trumps climate concern every time. (BTW the FTSE is now nearly 6% down.)
TonyB: thanks for the interesting post (1868) and link.
I’ve been clicking idly around the data I referenced at #1862. It’s hard to find any temperature record anywhere throughout the world (apart from a few urban sites) that exhibits the warming trend we keep hearing about: so much for global warming it would seem. But that’s extraordinary – if this is as significant as it seems, why hasn’t it been getting the widest publicity? Clearly it’s not a conspiracy of silence: after all, there are plenty of sceptics out there who would be expected to shout about it. Have I missed an obvious explanation? Cherry-picked data perhaps?
Pete,
No, but I do have a problem with the government forcing banks to loan people money that have unworthy credit and then leave me holding the bag.
Second:
I’ve done a little research and your comparison of the F-35 vs. the Sukhoi was based on computer simulations.
Do you live in the real world or a world of virtual reality? I mean, the recorded temperatures that Robin posted yesterday are verified, actual, recorded temperatures; no computer simulations.
Do you understand the difference between reality and virtual reality?
I’ve become drawn into your topic change/misdirection game again. Sorry Tony.
Brute / Peter
Have been following your exchange on the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. Here is a link to a comedy act, which explains in exquisite British humor exactly what happened. These comedians saw it many months in advance, but the financial reporters and financial “gurus” (Wall Street, London, etc.) did not!
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/187.html
Enjoy!
Max
PS Are there similarities between the “sub-prime” scam/bubble/meltdown and AGW? Will this multibillion dollar bubble also burst? (Just some food for thought to keep us on topic.)
Max: well I suggested one parallel at 1870.
Thanks for your reminder of the wonderful Bird/Fortune exchange. And they did this skit nearly a year ago – amazing!
Not up to Max’s contribution but this is quite good.