Environmental Panic over the decades
Tim Blair reviews the last century of environmental panic:
* In 1902, the Los Angeles Times reported that the great glaciers were undergoing “their final annihilation” due to rising temperatures.
* “Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada,” the Chicago Tribune declared on Page 1 in 1923
* In 1953, The New York Times announced that “nearly all the great ice sheets are in retreat.”
* “The rapid advance of some glaciers,” wrote Lowell Ponte in “The Cooling,” his 1976 bestseller, “has threatened human settlements in Alaska, Iceland, Canada, China, and the Soviet Union.”
“Arctic Ice Is Melting at Record Level, Scientists Say,” the Times reported in 2002.
Blair concludes:
Over the years, the alarmists have veered from an obsession with lethal global cooling around the turn of the 20th century to lethal global warming a generation later, back to cooling in the 1970s and now to warming once again. You don’t have to be a scientist to realize that all these competing narratives of doom can’t be true.
December 26th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
Would be great if at least one of the political parties articulated a positive view of the future.
Humans have always had a fascination with doomsayers. The Earth is a living thing & such is in a constant state of change. Nothing we can do about that. I look out my window at a place that was once under a huge ice sheet 10,000 years now. Now it’s thankfully gone.
Maybe to become a young qualified scientist these days you need to subscribe to certain beliefs. Wouldn’t it be better for NZ to become a world leader, & not be dictated to be pseudo-science, fear & mumbo-jumbo?
December 26th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Oh, and global cooling was never anything near an established theory.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94
December 26th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
The references Blair gives are claims by this newspaper or that newspaper, and occasionally even a scientist or two, papers sell by writing stories that sell.
The present concerns about AGW are not based on stories by one or two newspapers or scientists, but rather on our understanding of the green house effect, which is well understood, the work of thousands of scientists, and the fact that we are likely to double CO2 levels in the atmosphere from the historical levels of 280 ppm to 500-600 ppm before the end of this century, it is universally recognised that the natural green house effect causes the planet to be 33C warmer than it would be without it. So to believe that doubling the concentrations of the most powerful green house forcing gas (water vapour is a feedback) would not result in a stronger green house effect flies in the face of logic.
December 26th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Perhaps the most concerning thing about tropical glacier retreat is the potential for failure of the melt (once the glaciers disappear) in the HinduKush-Himalaya system. These glaciers provide the major source of water for rivers feeding billions of people in India, IndoChina and India. Some of the most populated areas on earth face the prospect of running out of water for much of the year.
A recent survey of the evidence said that the “consequences are likely to be severe”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7066/abs/nature04141.html
I’m sorry, but nothing irks me more than people making dim witted remarks about climate change, with no basis in science, when so many lives are at stake.
December 26th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Well, this link was supposed to precede the other comments, so apologies for confusion, but the evidence is overwhelming. I can’t believe Tim Blair is so stupid (willful blindness?)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=129
December 26th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
When I see repeated use of the words “belief” and “consensus” in a debate I characterise the content as having more political content than scientific.
To say that the majority of the world’s climatologists have reached a consensus and believe the world is doomed kind of sums it up for me.
I am not a climatologist but I do know that there are substantial numbers of reputable climatologists who do not accept the current hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) as being proven on the scientific evidence available so far.
As a layperson I am happy to accept that the jury is still out and let the scientific experts search for answers based on science, not political consensus.
And as for Al Gore………………sheesh. He’s convinced the masses of lay audiences but hey that’s been done before too!
The big problem now is that it is political suicide for any politician to be an AGW-denier (scary parallel here)
December 26th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
Andrew sums up all that needs to be understood to take global warming seriously: the natural greenhouse effect of CO2 is understood, so logically a significant increase of C02 will have a significant effect. Now of course there will be much debate amidst the scientific community about the specific effects of this. Some scientists will exaggerate the magnitude and the imminence of the effect in order to promote worthy changes in energy and industrial policy. Some more conservative scientists will (consciously or subconsciously) react against this and will reflect this in their findings. There are some scientists who will be actively lobbying for environmental causes and renewable energy companies, and some scientists who are employed by traditional industrial and energy companies. But despite all this, all the political divides, and all the disagreement, no scientist worth the name would deny the fundamental logic of the global warming: that it is a logical phenomenon which deserves rational consideration. Of course that doesnt mean that industrialists need to demolish their factories and thermal power plants to make way for an intrusive global nature reserve. Tim Blair, however, is a shortsighted conservative who would never miss an opportunity to poke fun at those on the opposite end of the political spectrum, despite the weakness of his argument. And peterpan simply typifies the entrenched conservative who is mortally afraid of the green/left wing faction, and who thus would never touch one of their initiatives with a bargepole. What a moron.
The sooner we stop paying attention to Tim Blair and his cynical cohorts the better. But I won’t stop there; I don’t want to hear hysterical, unintelligent anarchists either.
However I’m quite interested to hear the opinion of the scientific community: or even any vaguely non-partisan, rational, semi-intelligent individual who can make basic, logical conclusions. Because thats all you need to be to recognise global warming’s significance.
December 26th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
“Oh, and global cooling was never anything near an established theory.”
George crap.
Do not believe all you read from William Connelly the Green candidate for upper woppers!
1. Milankovich, M. Mathematische Klimatehre und astronomische. Theorie der Klimaschwankungen, in Handbuch der Klimatologie (Eds Koopen, W. & Geiger, R.) 1, 1-76 (Gebr. Borntrager, Berlin, 1930).
2. Milankovich, M. Die chronologie des pleisticans. Bull. Acad. Sci. Math. Nat. Belgrade 4, 49-57(1968).
3. Milankovich, M. Canon of Insolation and the Ice Age Problem (Alven Global, 1998).
4. Hays, J.D., Imbrie, J. & Shackelton, N.J. Variations in the earth’s orbit: Pasemaker of the Ice-Ages. Sciense 194, 1121-1132 (1976).
5. Berger, A. Long-term variations of daily insolation and Quaternary climatic change. J. Atmos. Sci. 35, 2362-2367 (1978).
6. Ipatov, S.I. Migration of Celestial Bodies in the Solar System (Editorial URSS, Moscow, 2000).
7 North, G., Mengel, J.G. & Short, D.A. A Simple Energy Balance Model Resolving the Seasons and the Continents: Application to the Milankovich Theory of the Ice Ages (NASA, GLAS, 1982).
8 Rusov, V., Glushkov, A. & Vaschenko, V. Astrophysical Model of Global Climate of the Earth (Naukova Dumka, Kiev, 2003).
9 Petit, J.R., Jousel, J. & Raynaud D. et al. Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420000 years from the Vostoc Ice Core, Antarctica. Nature 399, 429-436 (1999).
10 Shackelton, N.J. & Opdyke N.D. Quat. Res. 3, 39-48 (1973).
11 Kominz, M.A., Heath, G.R., Ku, T.-L. & Pisias N.G. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 45, 394-398 (1979).
12. .Guyodo, Y. & Valet, J. Global changes in intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field during the past 800 kyr. Nature 399, 249-252 (1999).
13 Volkov, Yu.V. Paleoclimates and geochronology. Reports of Russian Acad. Sci. 346, 216-221 (1996).
14 Grant, V. Evolutionary Process (Mir, Moscow, 1991).
December 26th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
maksimovich, are you sure you understand what George means by ‘established theory’? Because if you think it was an established theory, I think you are either wrong, or have a different perception of established theory from most people.
Your footnotes are impressive, though.
December 26th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
The science is not “settled” and certainly the economics is not “settled” and certainly the policies which might flow from the science and the economics is not settled.
The connection between planting forests and reducing carbon emissions is not understood at all.
There are no scientific economic or policy grounds for charging a landowner a fixed charge for converting forest to pasture.
There are as many theories out there as there are scientists and economists. What does seem clear to me is that the scientific support for the tipping point catastrophe doom casting scenarios is incredibly weak and is grounded in politics – not science.
In New Zealand we should recognise out total ignorance of our contribution to any greenhouse gas driven climate change and focus on sound science, economics and policy and withdraw from Kyoto because it was designed and is administered by nations and groups whose interests in no way coincide with our own.
We have virtually no understanding of what is driving changes in methane levels in the atmosphere even though we can all write a list of activities which emit methane. When did you last see mangroves on the list of methane emitters? These lists are driven by fashion as much as science.
December 26th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
Maksimovich, your plagiarising of the first 14 references from Rusov et al proves what exactly?
December 26th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
There must be a million facts pertaining to any situation. In addition opinions are innumerable.
So if three or four facts are presented & an opinion results how can it be even close to accurate? This is the nature of global warming arguements, everytime I’ve seen one.
This approach cannot determine the true or larger picture.
December 26th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
I know exactly what established theory is,at the time of the discussion where Bulkyo’s calculations on the bifurcation of fold theory(warm earth-cold earth)the availability of quantitative external(satellite)analysis was in its infancy.Now we know more of the external exogenous agents that cause phenomena in the earths atmosphere.
http://www.physorg.com/news85938220.html
December 26th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
The glacial-interglacial cycles, and their relationship to the Milankovich cycles is generally accepted. These tens of thousands of years cycles, are irrelevant to the few decades/centurys time scales of the AGW effects of global warming.
Owen, are you ready to answer my questions regarding the nonscience of Bob Carter, and Augie Auer that your group promotes yet??
December 26th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
George it says do not use real climate as a scientific reference for astrophysical changes.
The RAS search linked the papers from the Absudamatov discussion from the Septemeber sun-earth climate conference in Russia.I did not add the other 29000 papers cross referenced.
December 26th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
It is nice to see the latest ”environmental panic” put in a historical context.Anyone who has ever studied the history of science will discover theories emerge,become the accepted orthodoxy and anyone who does not go along with the herd will be ridiculed.
Then surprise,surprise, the mavericks are proved correct quite often.I`m on your side in this one Augie!
December 26th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
Is there a flicker of a trend change?
…. is AGW now officially a religion?
AGW = socialism by other means.
December 26th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Towaka this is my rebuttle to Augie Auer, this was originally given to Fred and Owen so that they could explain how Augie could be so wrong, they haven’t been able to. So now it’s your turn.
Let me quote you some extracts from an article in The New Zealand Herald, Tuesday, May 2, 2006 titled ‘Global warming just ‘hysteria’
Subtitled: ‘Augie Auer hits out at ‘scientifically illiterate’ journalists and poor-science. ”Augie Auer is irritated. The former MetService chief meteorologist is irked by the bad science that has gone into the dire predictions of the effects man-made global warming will have on the planet.’
‘…he said, if we didn’t have the greenhouse effect, the planet would be 33C colder.’
‘Professor Auer said three-quarters of the planet was ocean, and 95% of the greenhouse effect was governed by water vapour.’
“Of the remaining 5%, only about 3.6% is governed by CO2 and when you break it down even further, studies have shown that the anthropogenic contribution to CO2 versus the natural is about 3.2%.
“So if you multiply the total contribution 3.6 by the man-made portion of it, 3.2, you find out that the anthropogenic contribution of CO2 to the global greenhouse effect is 0.115%… that’s like 12c in $100. It’s minuscule…it’s nothing.
I read this article when it was published, I was irritated, it made me angry with the “scientifically illiterate” practicing “poor-science”, in short, it made me angry with Professor Auer
I have managed to find the source of the 95% water vapour contribution to the greenhouse effect that Auer refers to, please check out comments 118, 144, 148-152 here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/11/cuckoo-science/#more-367
You can see from the DOA/EIA site under discussion the accepted values for the CO2 contribution to the greenhouse effect i.e. 12-26%.
Auer uses a figure of 3.2% for anthropogenic CO2 created each year with the balance from natural sources.
These figures are correct but are being misused, this is the gross, not the net amount of CO2 produced each year, about 98.5% of the CO2 produced, is also absorbed, the problem of CO2 buildup in the atmosphere is a result of the CO2 cycle being out of balance by that 1.5% excess being left in the atmosphere year after year. As a result it accumulates, that accumulation has pushed CO2 levels up by 35% over the last 150 years or so, at the present rate a 100% increase in atmospheric CO2 is expected by the end of the century.
As far as historic CO2 levels are concerned, it’s not the absolute CO2 levels that are considered to be a problem, it’s the rate of change that is now occurring, it is the climatic changes that will occur as a result of this strengthened GH effect over such a relatively short space of time that we need to be concerned about and investigate.
December 26th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
“There must be a million facts pertaining to any situation. In addition opinions are innumerable.
So if three or four facts are presented & an opinion results how can it be even close to accurate? This is the nature of global warming arguements, everytime I’ve seen one.
This approach cannot determine the true or larger picture.”
Indeed. That is why we have the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who’s Assessment Reports survey an incredibly large body of evidence, and produce summary positions.
I heard Augie Auer on the radio the other day, and was incredbly frustrated, because every theory he pulled out, from global cooling to solar variation, has been conclusively debunked as explaining the proven change in global temperature that has been measured. He’d get pulled to pieces in a real debate, but that wasn’t something the talkback host was interested in.
December 26th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
“There must be a million facts pertaining to any situation. In addition opinions are innumerable.
So if three or four facts are presented & an opinion results how can it be even close to accurate? This is the nature of global warming arguements, everytime I’ve seen one.
This approach cannot determine the true or larger picture.”
Indeed. That is why we have the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who’s Assessment Reports survey an incredibly large body of evidence, and produce summary positions.
I heard Augie Auer on the radio the other day, and was incredbly frustrated, because every theory he pulled out, from global cooling to solar variation, has been conclusively debunked as explaining the proven change in global temperature that has been measured. He’d get pulled to pieces in a real debate, but that wasn’t something the talkback host was interested in.
December 26th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Just as well there’s a global scientific concensus.
Otherwise Andy W might have to argue the obvious….
Andy’s is a political position….and who’da guessed?
December 26th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Fred… what?
Owen McShane… There is nothing like the uncertainty that you would like to pretend there is. Land use changes that result in huge increases of greenhouse gas emissions should be penalised.
The forest owners can’t have it both ways. (
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC0601/S00030.htm ) Acknowledging that their forests are valuable carbon sinks, and declaring that there should be no charge for deforestation and conversion to agriculture.
December 26th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Fred… what?
Owen McShane… There is nothing like the uncertainty that you would like to pretend there is. Land use changes that result in huge increases of greenhouse gas emissions should be penalised.
The forest owners can’t have it both ways. (
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC0601/S00030.htm ) Acknowledging that their forests are valuable carbon sinks, and declaring that there should be no charge for deforestation and conversion to agriculture.
December 26th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
“I heard Augie Auer on the radio the other day, and was incredbly frustrated, because every theory he pulled out, from global cooling to solar variation, has been conclusively debunked as explaining the proven change in global temperature that has been measured.”
By who George,it is my understanding the solar variance is to be increased (TSI)by a factor of 3.
And the understanding of the high solar activity since the 1930’s is unusual.
December 26th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
George, this also is a post I put on another thread, again, there has been no reply from the denialist camp.
AGW denialists put forward arguments attempting to dismiss AGW, these arguments are comprehensively refuted, eg. Prof Auers claims discussed previously, Bob Carters claims that 1998 was the peak year for global temperatures and that temperatures have bee declining ever since, 1998, as I’m sure you know, was a temperature spike as a result of a powerful ENSO, a point Dr Carter acknowledge in one of his earlier articles but hasn’t mentioned lately, temperatures after 1998 are higher than those before 1998 and the trend is upwards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png
AGW denialist vertually never even attempt to rebutt the refutation of their arguments, they just walk away to continue making the same discredited claims elsewhere.
To me this is starting to look like a deliberate strategy of hit and run.
The use of hit and run tactics is commonly used by one side in a conflict when it knows it is outgunned. It appears to me that, in terms of science, AGW denialists not only don’t have scientific support for their position, but that they know their arguments are scientifically unsound, hence the strategy.
I am now genuinely wondering if AGW denialists are even slightly interested in the objective scientific facts, or if their motivation is simply to play the political game, irrespective of the environmental consequences.
The motivation for AGW denialism seems to be almost entirely political, most in the denialist camp have little or no understanding of the science involved, all that they recognise is that the policies that may be needed to combat AGW may not be in the interests of the conservative right, so therefore it’s all a greenie plot.
December 26th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
Andy has a bit of the true cross of global scientific consensus….a lock of Al Gore’s hair.
So many Kiwi idiots…so little time.
December 26th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
peterpanz
You’ve got it the wrong way around.
Critics of AGW kept saying “oh, but the experts disagree”. The response to that is that no, actually they don’t – there is consensus about AGW. There’ve been various meta-analyses of reviewed papers to that effect.
You say “I do know that there are substantial numbers of reputable climatologists who do not accept the current hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) as being proven on the scientific evidence available so far.” That’s just false.
Look at NZ. On one side of the debate: climatologists. The other side: a ragtag group of Dennis Dutton (philosopher of art), Augie Auer (retired meteorologist, but every point he’s ever made on the topic is quoted from Fred Singer), Owen McShane (expert on the Resource Managment Act), a retired chemistry professor…
At which point we get people like you saying “consensus has nothing to do with science, it’s about facts”. Marvellous: if the scientists disagree, you say it’s not settled. If the scientists agree, you say that consensus is irrelevant. Just what _would_ convince you – short of chaining you to a lecture theatre desk and forcing you to learn enough climatology that you can figure it our yourself?
December 26th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Ok Kiwi idiots, let’s go with the Kyoto carbon fines that NZ is incurring.
The multi million dollar payments that seems likely from, effectively, NZ to Russia due to Hulun’s politics should be voluntary.
If you are a warming believer then contribute a calculated tax levy to Russia to cover it.
If not, put it towards your private superannuation.
If there’s any shortfall…….. well, who gives a fuck?
December 26th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
Tim Blair’s current thread followed a recent alarmist article in Britain’s “Independent” by their “environment editor”, Geoffrey Lean, who has won several awards from environmental advocacy organisations, and whose journalism is obviously assumed by the latter to be based on scientific arguments.
Except that Lean’s article in this instance is very clearly based on ignorance. No, repeat no, islands have yet vanished in our time because of sea level rise – anywhere. None. Period. Not in the Sunderbans. Very definitely not in Kiribati as claimed by the Independent on Sunday in an “exclusive” eight years ago. Nor are any vanishing in Papua New Guinea due to sea level rise.
Question for environmentalists: by how much have sea levels actually risen in the last 100, 50, 25, 10 and 5 years? In recorded measurements, not estimates. Because we need this kind of hard science in the debate, not the kind of junk science which dominates the headlines.
There are many scientists who are doing their best to gain an accurate scientific picture of the impact, actual and likely, of anthropogenic global warming, and it’s a great pity that the voices currently being heard are largely those of the exaggeraters, the alarmists, the publicity-seekers and the hucksters (Al Gore alone fits all four categories!).
And if people knew the amount of scientific (and other) politics which goes into the deliberations and reports of the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change, there might well be greater public scepticism about their predictions. Which is really the point of Tim Blair’s comments.
December 27th, 2006 at 2:20 am
All you cowards who are scared of global warming can shut the hell up.
If it doesnt happen we have nothing to worry about.
If it does happen…BRING IT ON!!!!! Don’t be such a bunch of pussy willows and start behaving like men. Nothing like a new ice age to cull the herd.
PS = All these taxes on carbon arent going to accomplish anything either so stop talking about it.
December 27th, 2006 at 5:36 am
The above comments by Fred, Kurmudgeon, and Fuck Mother Nature, illustrate my point that the denialist position is based on politics and ignorance.
Kurmudgeon: “And if people knew the amount of scientific (and other) politics which goes into the deliberations and reports of the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change, there might well be greater public scepticism about their predictions.”
Nonsense, Politicians often try to spin the IPCC summaries, but not very successfully, and it seems to be mainly the Bush administration trying to do this, the body of the report is entirely the work of scientists. Scientists are human and can also can be influenced by political thinking, by the thousands whose work goes into the report are from all points on the political spectrum, and most would have little interest in politics anyway.
What you denialists still haven’t worked out is that there are 3 sides to this debate, using arguments against your politically motivated counter-parts on the other side of the debate miss the mainstream science based position that me and others here support.
peterpanNZ, do you actually know what ‘expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’ actually means? Dr Vincent Gray is one of about a thousand scientists often appointed by governments to read and comment on the IPCC reports, it’s not a qualification, and he obviously didn’t read the report closely, as he has been making claims about the IPCC report on the Antarctic ice sheet that are totally untrue.
Augie Auer’s nonsense that no one wants to defend (even his NZ CSC colleague Owen wont support it) came from Bob Carter.
As far as the others go, none have done serious work in climate science, about the only thing that they have in common is that they put their conservative right wing politics ahead of their science.
December 27th, 2006 at 10:16 am
I’m afraid Andrew W’s labelling of me as a “denialist” (and by inference, ignorant and political) is depressingly on a par with the standard of debate by the more zealous climate change advocates.
The fact is that the IPCC is an essentially political body, albeit made up of scientists. Its aim is to influence governments and international agencies towards certain kinds of responses and actions. And it’s definitely not a “rightists versus leftists” kind of politics as he imagines. The problem is that those scientists who contribute most to the drafting of panel reports are those with the biggest scientific and ideological barrows to push – not those scientists “from all points of the political spectrum” who are simply trying to follow their research regardless of where it leads. This is the way that international organisations and meetings largely operate – the enthusiasts who understand how to take charge of the process do so. The IPCC is no exception, not least because of its size. When I looked at the last panel report, is was disconcerting to notice how a relatively few scientific reports were quoted and relied upon, over and again, to support the panel’s various conclusions.
Saying that one supports “the mainstream science based position” is a copout, not a real contribution to a particular debate. I note that Andrew W has nothing to say about the original trigger for the current threads – the specific claim that sea level rise has caused islands to vanish. Or would he acknowledge that the environment editor of the “Independent” is in fact politically motivated?
December 27th, 2006 at 10:19 am
I’m afraid Andrew W’s labelling of me as a “denialist” (and by inference, ignorant and political) is depressingly on a par with the standard of debate by the more zealous climate change advocates.
The fact is that the IPCC is an essentially political body, albeit made up of scientists. Its aim is to influence governments and international agencies towards certain kinds of responses and actions. And it’s definitely not a “rightists versus leftists” kind of politics as he imagines. The problem is that those scientists who contribute most to the drafting of panel reports are those with the biggest scientific and ideological barrows to push – not those scientists “from all points of the political spectrum” who are simply trying to follow their research regardless of where it leads. This is the way that international organisations and meetings largely operate – the enthusiasts who understand how to take charge of the process do so. The IPCC is no exception, not least because of its size. When I looked at the last panel report, is was disconcerting to notice how a relatively few scientific reports were quoted and relied upon, over and again, to support the panel’s various conclusions.
Saying that one supports “the mainstream science based position” is a copout, not a real contribution to a particular debate. I note that Andrew W has nothing to say about the original trigger for the current threads – the specific claim that sea level rise has caused islands to vanish. Or would he acknowledge that the environment editor of the “Independent” is in fact politically motivated?
December 27th, 2006 at 10:46 am
Kurmudgeon, most of what you have said is nothing but an attempt to denegrate the mainstream scientists working on climate change, Jim Hansen, no doubt one of your politically motivated scientists, describes himself as a moderate conservative.
The IPCC’s aim is to understand AGW and use science to understand what the effects of AGW will be, your claim that it has a goal of influencing governments and international agencies towards certain kinds of responses and actions is unsupported rubbish.
you ask:
“Or would he acknowledge that the environment editor of the “Independent” is in fact politically motivated?”
He would be happy to acknowledge that is almost certainly the case, I’m surprised you ask. The editorialship of the Telegraph is also politically motivated.
I thought my first post on this thread made it clear that I have little faith in the objectivity of newspapers.
You say that “it’s definitely not a “rightists versus leftists” kind of politics as he imagines.”
But then everything you say seems to argue otherwise.
Perhaps you can explain how Augie (and Bob) can be so wrong about the simplist aspects of GW, as explained in my rebuttle of his NZ Herald article? In my view his nonsense is a clear example of a political motivation being put ahead of science.
December 27th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Happy New Year to all..
I am not a Global Warming denyer.
Nor am I a Global Cooling denyer.
Since it is inconcievable that the planet will remain unchanged in the future these two trends must by definition take turns.
Looking backwards into history shows that both warming and cooling have indeed, indisputably, taken turn about.
Looking now at the “rate of change” it’s easy to accept that warming at a local level is very slow and that related effects such as mean sea level or enviromental shift of plant species are not easy to observe anywhere.
So very slow indeed, are these changes, that the uninformed observer cannot be expected to notice any change for perhaps 100 years..
How long do you expect to live??
How far would your children or grand children have to travel to find an environment that is similar to what we expect for today.
How long untill the next Global Cooling scare??
Andrew W. get some perspective, take a few deep breaths and use your brain.
December 27th, 2006 at 11:09 am
Happy New Year to all..
I am not a Global Warming denyer.
Nor am I a Global Cooling denyer.
Since it is inconcievable that the planet will remain unchanged in the future these two trends must by definition take turns.
Looking backwards into history shows that both warming and cooling have indeed, indisputably, taken turn about.
Looking now at the “rate of change” it’s easy to accept that warming at a local level is very slow and that related effects such as mean sea level or enviromental shift of plant species are not easy to observe anywhere.
So very slow indeed, are these changes, that the uninformed observer cannot be expected to notice any change for perhaps 100 years..
How long do you expect to live??
How far would your children or grand children have to travel to find an environment that is similar to what we expect for today.
How long untill the next Global Cooling scare??
Andrew W. get some perspective, take a few deep breaths and use your brain.
December 27th, 2006 at 11:17 am
David Baigent, please point out the comments of mine that you believe to be out of perspective.
December 27th, 2006 at 11:21 am
It’s amusing to go back and flip through Blairs posts from early 2003, when he mocks all the stupid hysterical lefties for predicting that things in Iraq weren’t gonna work out.
http://timblair.spleenville.com/
That’s my major case against the global warming deniers – they tend to be the same clowns that are dead wrong about every other important issue they’ve weighed in on
December 27th, 2006 at 11:34 am
If we use the hypothesis of Danyl does this mean we can disregard the hypothesis of Arhennius (ghg)
as he hypotheisied that life did not form on earth it came from mars.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
Hi Andrew W.
As requested, here are a few quotes that, although taken out of context, are interesting. But are they accurate??
Posted by Andrew W | December 26, 2006 3:08 PM
“…but rather on our understanding of the green house effect, which is well understood, the work of thousands of scientists,..”
Posted by Andrew W | December 26, 2006 6:09 PM
“…These tens of thousands of years cycles, are irrelevant to the few decades/centurys time scales of the AGW effects of global warming…”
Posted by Andrew W | December 26, 2006 7:07 PM
“I read this article when it was published, I was irritated, it made me angry with the “scientifically illiterate” practicing “poor-science”, in short, it made me angry with Professor Auer…” (Hint: If you get angry in a debate situation, beware, it usually means you are wrong.)
Posted by Andrew W | December 26, 2006 7:07 PM
“…is a result of the CO2 cycle being out of balance by that 1.5% excess being left in the atmosphere year after year. As a result it accumulates, that accumulation has pushed CO2 levels up by 35% over the last 150 years or so, at the present rate a 100% increase in atmospheric CO2 is expected by the end of the century…”
Posted by Andrew W | December 26, 2006 7:48 PM
“…The motivation for AGW denialism seems to be almost entirely political, most in the denialist camp have little or no understanding of the science involved, all that they recognise is that the policies that may be needed to combat AGW may not be in the interests of the conservative right, so therefore it’s all a greenie plot…”
(Now that is an interesting observation.. In a day or so you may choose to review and reconsider this statement, but take a break first.)
There are more but this comment is too long already.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Well David, I am baffled as to what point you are trying to make, all of the statements of mine you quote are accurate, if they were not I’m sure you would have corrected me.
You say that “If you get angry in a debate situation, beware, it usually means you are wrong.”
But like Owen, Fred, Towaka, and others, you totally fail to point out in what way I am supposedly wrong and Augie right.
Again I’m forced to ask you to point out the comments of mine that you believe to be out of perspective. If you believe my comments are out of perspective or inaccurate, please show me in what respect. So far all you have done is provide further evidence supporting my statement that “The motivation for AGW denialism seems to be almost entirely political, most in the denialist camp have little or no understanding of the science involved, all that they recognise is that the policies that may be needed to combat AGW may not be in the interests of the conservative right, so therefore it’s all a greenie plot.”
December 27th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
Andrew W:
I’m not at all baffled by David’s post – his point is very clear, but I can understand why you may not find it so.
December 27th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
I read recently that banks are no longer loaning money to ski fields in Europe below a certain altitude, and also that insurance is unavailable or very expensive for weather events that are predicted to increase over the coming decades due to AGW.
Seems like a perfect opportunity for skeptics on this matter to pool their funds and put their money where their mouths are. No one seems to be taking advantage of this however. Very strange.
December 27th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Oh, dear, Andrew W is upset. Again. Sigh.
Nothing I have said would give any true indication of my personal political inclinations. Andrew’s statement about the motivation for “AGW denialism” (that sweeping generalisation about any criticism or scepticism about any aspects of climate change) is itself nonsense – he is the one who is clearly hung up on the supposed ideological basis of all debate.
Nor have I denigrated (note the spelling) any “mainstream scientists” as “politically motivated” – I have simply pointed out that it is generally the most opinionated (and pushy) scientists who succeed in getting their views accepted as the received ICPP wisdom. That’s human nature, not rocket science. It is also the nature of international bodies and meetings. That many ICPP members have their own agendas (which are nothing to do with right/left politics, as I have noted) is a fact of scientific life, and the panel does indeed – like it or not – play a very political role in the climate debate.
It is definitely not “rubbish” to note that ICCP reports are intended to influence governments and international organisations – there would be no point to the IPCC’s existence if its reports were not so intended. I am surprised that Andrew, who discerns political motivation in everyone and everything, disagrees so vehemently about this statement of the obvious.
And in keeping with someone who cannot tell any difference between a newspaper editor and an “environment editor”, Andrew is remarkably lame and evasive in his response about sea level rise and those pesky “vanishing islands”.
December 27th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Before anyone points out that I have rearranged the intitials of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change into three different acronyms – yes I somehow did (but got it correct in the end) – however that’s the only error in my posting!
December 27th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
There is an important part of the scientific structure it is called observation.Whilst we see arguments over where the climate will be in n-years by P-parmeters I thought I would explain why this summer is cold and the climate here 3c below normal levels,
http://outsidethecube.blogspot.com/
December 27th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
Who said that talking about the weather was boring!
It is interesting to see the religious fervour this debate about a theory to do with future weather patterns has taken on!
And I ”confess” that deep down in my marrow I can not ”believe” that oily politicians promoting AGW like Al Gore do not have some nefarious purpose.
December 27th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
Andrew,
You make the mistake of defending AGW. It is not necessary to do so, you have an established body of scientific work backing you. There is no requirement to demonstrate that the earth is spherical to someone who insists it is flat, nor to “argue” Darwinian evolution to someone who wants to believe God made all creation in 7 days about 30,000 yrs ago.
It is in fact up to the AGW skeptics to demonstrate that it is possible to continue to dump billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere annually and NOT have an effect on the climate. If as they claim AGW is a myth, then it is up to them to produce the science that proves that it is possible to double or triple the CO2 levels to whatever level they deem essential to the survival of the carbon economy they are the fiscal and emotional slaves of. The onus lies with them to prove their case with real data, research and a mass of peer reviewed papers supporting their contentions.
In fact it should be a simple matter for them to tell us how much total oil, gas and coal is available for extraction over the next century, and then calculate what ppm of CO2 that would produce in the atmosphere, and then prove that such a level would have NO greenhouse effect. Simple really.
If the skeptics could produce a convincing argument along such lines they would have done so by now, but in fact being scientifically illiterate and more importantly, utterly unqualified in the actual field of climate science, they cannot, and never will be able to do so.
December 27th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
These people are prepared to argue fervently against an overwhelming amount of evidence to make reality shape their political viewpoint… which really demonstrates a particular intellectual immaturity.
It also brings into question the validity of everything else Tim Blair et al have to say.
December 27th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Kurmudgeon, bemused perhaps, definitely not upset. Where did you get that idea from? Or is suggesting I’m upset some sort of debating technique?
“Nothing I have said would give any true indication of my personal political inclinations.”
And yet I nailed your politics so easily! How did I do it?
There are a limited number of methodologies that people can base their opinions of AGW on:
1. Objectively studying the science in detail and from all angles, spending months to understand it so you can form your own opinion based on sound scientific knoweledge.
2. Accept the opinion of the weight of experts.
3. Have no opinion.
4. Base your opinion on mysticism, astrology
5. toss a coin
6. Adopt an opinion based on your politics, and the opinion of your peers.
For you only option 6. fits with what you have said, you obviously haven’t studied the science to any great extent.
The IPCC reports are, as close as can be realistically achieved, an objective assessment of the science of climate change, what the politicians do with the information is up to them, not the scientist contributing to the IPCC reports.
Your attack on my comment regarding the Telegraph editorialship being politically biased is what’s “remarkably lame”.
Kurmudgeon, despite my best efforts you still seem to have failed to understand that I support the IPCC position, not the claims of either the alarmists or denialists, the IPCC does not claim that islands have disappeared due to the, to date, very modest rise in sea level.
You still fail to address my criticisms of Auer’s article, is this because you accept my points, or because the maths is too hard for you?
December 27th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
Evidence comes after the event, until then it is only conjecture.
It’s tiresome to listen to the “Ya boo hiss” from the fundamentalists of the new religion.
December 27th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Towaka, Politicians do what they can for power, this rule applies across the political spectrum, Bush used the (real) threat of terrorism, and the (imagined) threat of Saddams WMD.
How real or otherwise the threat is, is not always as important as how it can be used. Does Gore overstate the threat of AGW, in my opinion somewhat, but I understand much of what he claims in his movie, which I haven’t seen, falls within the margines of what science says is possible.
December 27th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
George I have already adressed that argument from Danyl,it is obviously intellectually challenging for you, and you do not seem to have an understanding of the scientific history, and the stochastic arguments or indeed the Merton norms of scientifc debate, and the philsophical attributes of science.
So is Arrhenius correct on the greenhouse effect,does this by your supposed logic of continuity also mean that life came from mars,the solar system was formed in an astronomical collision,or that radiation pressure formed comets.
Or are you just following the manifesto from the central committee.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
December 27th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
RedRag, In some respects you are probably right, Overall though, I disagree with you.
Firstly it can be a lot of fun dealing to these yo-yo’s.
Secondly, as I mention above, the denialist use a hit and run strategy to avoid having to answer difficult questions about the lies they peddle. The best military counter strategy for hit and run is one of relentless pursuit.
This was the technique employed by General Grant against the weaker Confederate Forces of Lee, with orders like : “Lee’s army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.”
To leave them to peddle their trash unopposed simply prolongs the fight.
Sorry if that all sounds overly dramatic
December 27th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
Maksimovich, I will say nothing about the origin of life on earth, or the origins of the solar system and comets. They are subjects I know nothing about.
I could see nothing on your blog worth mentioning, apart from an odd quote, where you blame global efforts to confront global warming as being the fruits of
“command and control neo-Stalinists searching for new methodologies to re-introduce 1984 control manifestos since the inability to command economic parameters has been removed on the macro scales from governments.”
Which says it all really.
December 27th, 2006 at 11:33 pm
I grow weary of this debate. Now I am really am beginning to believe that there is a Church of the Revealed Wisdom About Climate Change. And that Andrew W is a High Priest of that Church . . .
The fact is that Andrew W has not “nailed [my] politics” at all. He simply makes assumptions based on his particular prejudices – yes, that’s the word (possibly even “bigotry”) – about those who dare to show any scepticism about any aspects of the revealed truth (as he regards it) on anthropogenic climate change. Labelling such persons as “denialists” who are motivated by conservative right wing politics may satisfy his particular political soul, but it just aint so.
My assessment is that I am considerably more politically liberal than Andrew, whose intolerance is obvious to all who encounter his “grumpy old scientist” persona. Andrew evidently feels that people who don’t share his particular world view are just wrong, wrong, wrong.
I prefer to deal with the world as it is, not the world I might like it to be. My point about IPCC reports is that they are somewhat less objective than Andrew thinks. Scientific politics – or the politics of science (take your pick) – are indeed involved in the preparation of the international panel reports. That’s reality – because human beings are involved, and not omniscient beings.
I’m pleased that he doesn’t support the claims of the alarmists – although the statement that much of Al Gore’s claims “falls within the margins of what science says is possible” is a wonderful way of avoiding any specifics on the actual claims in Gore’s movie.
And Andrew’s references to the political bias of the editor of the Telegraph remain weirdly bemusing – this is a red herring he has introduced. My reference to the environment editor of the Independent was simply a comment on Andrew’s evident belief that only the “denialist” (I would prefer “sceptics”) position is motivated by politics and ignorance.
Similarly with another of his red herrings – I have no need to either defend or attack Andrew’s criticisms of Auer’s article, neither of which have anything to do with my views or my postings in this thread.
Sheesh, I indeed grow weary – this is the first occasion on which I have put my head above the parapet on climate change issues, and I see why sensible folk stay out of such involvement. Seeing an avowedly mainstream science based advocate becoming so exercised about my modest dissent, I’m beginning to doubt whether there’s any place for rationality or common sense in the debate. Heck, I have been sucked in to more personal comment than I ever intended or feel comfortable with. Which is as good a note as any to bow out of this thread.
December 28th, 2006 at 1:54 am
I do resent being called a holocaust denier just because I care about NZers enough to advocate against giving away $0.5 Bn to third world countries to buy guns with and build nuke stations with. Especially when these same third world’s nations are competing with us hard out in the global economy. But long term…
The thing with climate uncertainty is that while we live in a (so called) democracy, if the cure is too bitter pill to swallow the electorate will vote a change in government policy.
We’ve seen it before with the death of the 70s environmental movements. Until environmentalists divorce themselves from those that would continue to advocate we give our money to third world countries (even though we cannot afford it) then real environmentalism in NZ is doomed to fail (because we cannot afford it).
December 28th, 2006 at 2:16 am
“Seems like a perfect opportunity for skeptics on this matter to pool their funds and put their money where their mouths are. No one seems to be taking advantage of this however. Very strange.”
Oh yes there will be people taking advantage of it Al Gore and his company for one) – just the climate sceptics dont have the money or the resources, which also answeres Redrags question – Research is expensive when you need a satellite to do it and you have to be a yay sayer to get the funding. come on, for goodness sake – if you replaced climate change sith any other political cause we would likely be on the same side – doesnt that raise a few alarm bells!
Even if the cause isn’t bullshit the cure sure as hell is!
Not that it really worries me too much because the costs will be passed on to the consumer, and we are busy making sure that our kids have internationally recognised qualifications so that they will have escape velocity when our government gives all our money away to third worlds countries that are better equipt and armed than us already.
Andrew W – btw you mean employed by the (pro slavery) Grant against the (antislavery) Lee? Such are the ironies of hiostory eh?
December 28th, 2006 at 8:59 am
Just rereading my post at 9:36pm yesterday, I just want to clarify that the yo-yos I was refering to are not the people I am debating with on this thread, I was speaking in more general terms and refering to AGW denialists who come back again and again with the same discredited arguments. eg Professor Auer.
“the lies they peddle” does not mean that Prof Auer was himself lying in his Herald article, I’m sure at the time he believed every word he said.
December 28th, 2006 at 9:32 am
Andrew W,
Yes Andrew it was extremely over dramatic!You really are looking like a young punk completely full of yourself!
One day when you grow up you might be able to tell the difference between a scientific theory and scientific fact(or law).With the latter having to be observable!And then you might not be so dogmatic in regards to AGW.
December 28th, 2006 at 9:39 am
well andrew if you are so clever and scientific, perhaps you would like to explain how Michael Mann was allowed to publish falsified information, picked up with great prominence in IPCC3 to “prove” that the earth was experiencing a recent increase in temperature.
You might also like to reflect on the reaction of the “consensus” to finding out that their (allegedly peer reviewed) hero had no clothes before you start lecturing the rest of us about the virtue of “scientific consensus”.
For those who don’t know what I am getting at, google hockey stick and M&M, its really very funny reading.
Think about it. When did science ever require “consensus” to be true? Consensus is a political process, science used to be about empirics. Did Galileo worry about consensus? Darwin? Newton? Pascal? Curie?
When you have to falsify the empirics and burn heretics to protect the consensus, you do indeed have something powerful going on, but its a long way from being science.
December 28th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
george you prove what is seen that you do not even understand the science.
It is somewhat a paradox that the ones who understand science least, or are the vocal proponents of science and cite the uncertainty principle to encite the unwashed in their arguments against scientific progress, use the double standard to voice their agendas stated or perceived, in say climate change by saying there is a scientific consensus, or the scientific evidence is unimpeachable.
The philosophical ideology of what is, or not real are continuing debates. The primary questions being ontological and epistemological. The former is about being: what is real? Is there reality and form behind appearance? The epistemological question is about knowing: what is truth?. Is knowledge by reason or experience? Or do our everyday systems distinguish between reality and appearance, and truth from falsity. We expect the system of road rules to regulate the traffic, and do not question if the other drivers are rationalists, or empiricists . Previously the normality of the result of an experiment, performed by a scientist, did not rest on whether the scientist performing the experiment is an idealist or materialist, or the source of funding, but the outcome and replicability of the experiment that showed reality.
The spurious arguments that a scientist worked for an energy company ,or was an advisor to XYZ corporation is as relevant as if the scientist used his left or right hand, indeed these idealistic arguments used, are normally seen in the areas of pseudoscience.
December 28th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
Andrew keeps asking me to defend Augie Auer’s claims.
I am chair of the NZSCS policy panel and am not a scientist as such so I am not about to represent a scientist.
I have explained that the statements Andrew keeps referring to, were published as a result of a telephone interview. Augie has explained to us in the group that he was convinced that he made the distinction between net and gross etc but the reporter conflated the two items into a single summary. On the other hand he did not tape his own interview so cannot be sure. But Andrew calls Augie (and me a liar) because of this and yet must surely understand that making such claims on the basis of a newspaper interview is likely to discourage busy people from entering a personal debate.
Finally, I notice that the latest Scientific American pours very cold water on ethanol as a substitute for oil if only because it has a neutral or even negative impact on greenhouse gas concentrations.
Now some of the conclusions relate to the US market and environment but I wonder if anyone here did similar sums before assuming that biofuels are “a good thing”. Producing ethanol in the US uses either natural gas or coal. The energy and emission arithmetic does not stack up.
December 28th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
Nigel,
Unfortunately your dismissal of “consensus science” is utterly bonkers. Actual science and engineering is routinely built upon an enormous base of ideas accepted by consensus.
Nobody questions Newton’s laws of gravity for instance, and in general once such an idea is widely accepted, changes to it, such as the modifications demanded by Relativity, are usually evolutionary in nature rather than a 180deg U-turn that entirely ditches the old theory.
Evolution is another example; Darwin’s ideas have been shown to be not so much wrong by modern genetics, but rather genetics has given us a deeper insight into the underlying processes than Darwin deduced from largely empirical observation. Genetics has shown that Darwin was wrong in some of his specifics; but nontheless absolutely right in the overall picture.
Plate tectonics was for many years a renegade idea; nowadays it is an established theory with a solid consensus backing it. Quantum mechanics utterly defies “common sense”, and much work is still being undertaken to gain deeper understandings of the subject; yet upon the consensus knowledge we DO have of the subject, we can build almost all of our modern electronic technologies.
This is how science works. Not all new ideas are good ones, not all new ideas are bad ones…but with time and work from many independent researchers the initial data is shown to be repeatable, the theory withstands challenges and a consensus builds around it. This does not mean of course that the consensus is immune to further challenge and refinement, but in the meantime it IS the best science we have and the only valid challenge to it is a BETTER science. The uninformed harpings of the unqualified, who do not like what they are being told… do not count.
Again I draw the comparison with a fishing industry that for decades was being told that it was over-extracting the wild resource, and yet despite repeateded local collapses, and another dramatic warning just a few months ago from a consensus of very senior researchers that we run the risk of a total collapse of all life in the oceans with a few decades…the industry has for the most part ignored the science…and carried on fishing. Why? Because they do not like what they are being told.
Similarly AGW science has faced a some special challenges:
1. Climate science is VERY hard. Look back over the history of science and have regard to the enormously difficult problems science HAS solved; many of them well over a century ago. By contrast a decent understanding of the total planet’s climate has had to await the era of supercomputing power, advanced numerical analysis techniques and sophisticated satellite-sourced data to feed the models with. In this regard climate science is still a young field with much of the real progress happening in just the last decade.
2. Climate science is still short of being able to offer a mature and complete model of the planet. Unquestionably there is more to be discovered and the current ideas will be refined…but nor are they likely to be proven totally wrong either.
3. The results are very inconvenient to the establishment. Our entire economies are based on the premise of unlimited, cost-free CO2 emmissions. AGW is a direct challenge to that “business as usual” paradigm. It is in the very nature of Conservatives to be change-averse; and it is obvious to even the dimmest of them, that AGW threatens dramatic changes.
4. The Green left of course has been comprehensively proven right about AGW. It is not often a political movement stakes it’s credibility on an idea that science subsequently proves is 100% correct. And AGW of course comes upon a litany of humilations for the right wing in recent decades. Thus backed into such a discomforted corner, we see polemic bigotry take more than it’s usual noisy precedence over reality.
December 28th, 2006 at 7:57 pm
Owen, as I have pointed out on a previous thread, this article on Bob Carters site appears to be the source of the information in Professor Auer’s Herald article. It predates the article, and Dr Carter is also a member of the NZ CSC, Auer quotes Carters claims almost word for word.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_9241.htm
I find it disappointing that no correction has been made and that Dr Carter still has these incorrect claims (I take it your statement is a confirmation of its inaccuracy) on his site. I’m inclined to believe that Professor Auer and you are both victims of Dr Carter’s BS.
December 28th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
towaka,
I assume your personal attack on me is simply an admission that you can’t find fault with my arguments.
There are a lot of scientific theories that are overwelmingly subscribed to by those scientists that specialise in the relevant fields, AGW is one of them.
December 28th, 2006 at 9:40 pm
Nigel: I believe you are referring to this graph? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
The debunking was debunked earlier this year…
December 28th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
Nigel, This is a Nature Summary of NAS report on Manns hockeystick. There is no suggestion of the falsification claims you make, the fact you have been misinformed that Mann falsified his work is simply a reflection of the sort of sources you choose to rely on.
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060626/full/4411032a.html
The entire NAS report is online if you look for it.
December 28th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
my God! Andrew you call that a debunking of the debunking!
This looks like the most almighty kicking for Mann.
And this is the best spin the reporter could put on it:
“In its report, released on 22 June, the NAS committee more-or-less endorses the work behind the graph. But it criticizes the way that the plot was used to publicize climate-change concerns. And it leaves open big questions about whether researchers should be obliged to make their data available (see Plotting a course).”
Well talk about damning with faint praise.
Its beautiful, Nature, which prostituted its reputation to try and nail M+M is forced to this. Look at what they say:
Umm, yes, well … it turns out that using Bristlecone pines wasnt really that clever after all.
Oh, and sorry, yes the methodology was in fact flawed, and Mann was wrong to have refused to share data to ensure his work could be replicated (scientific method and all that).
oh, and yes, we suppose we should have mentioned that evidence for anything before the 19th century is probably completely speculative, and there might have been a mediaeval warm period.
and, um, yes ok it was probably a bit naughty to have used the chart all over IPCC3 and global media for political purposes without letting on how speculative the research findings really were.
But, hey, it was an honest mistake, and after all it has clearly warmed up in the last 50 years, sooooooo, but for all the above, the work is essentially right.
woooweee! glad we’ve cleared that silliness up then.
So that ends the sorry saga of the incontrovertable and final “proof” that the whole argument about human induced global warming hung off in IPCC3.
Great stuff. Got any more debunkings as good as that one?
December 29th, 2006 at 2:37 am
Nigel, though short, you obviously didn’t read my post properly.
I did not say Mann did not make some mistakes
I did say he did not falsify his results
I did not say I my post was a debunking of a debunking.
I was correcting your slur of dishonesty on Mann part, no more.
To balance your comments I point out the following:
“says Peter Bloomfield, a statistician at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who was involved in the latest report. “This study was the first of its kind, and they had to make choices at various stages about how the data were processed,” he says, adding that he “would not be embarrassed” to have been involved in the work.”
December 29th, 2006 at 10:22 am
Andrew W,
I guess you were asking for it with that arrogant and smug posting of yours,esp. the bit about yo yo`s.And also the silliness of comparing your debating here with a military campaign!
I am pleased that you recognise that AWG is a theory.Then you should also know that in the history of science quite often the majority view has proved to be wrong when dealing with ”theory”.
The reason why I would often back the mavericks postion is that it takes strengh of character and courage of conviction to go against ”the crowd”.
December 29th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Nigel: “So that ends the sorry saga of the incontrovertable and final “proof” that the whole argument about human induced global warming hung off in IPCC3.”
This is where you can find the Third Assessment Report, as you can see, Manns paper is not a significant factor in the body of the report or the conclusions, infact it is essentially irrelevant. Chapter 12 in the ’scientific basis’ is probably the most significant part of the report.
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/
December 30th, 2006 at 9:08 am
Owen, I wasn’t sure if your point below were directed at me so I didn’t respond:
“Finally, I notice that the latest Scientific American pours very cold water on ethanol as a substitute for oil if only because it has a neutral or even negative impact on greenhouse gas concentrations.
Now some of the conclusions relate to the US market and environment but I wonder if anyone here did similar sums before assuming that biofuels are “a good thing”. Producing ethanol in the US uses either natural gas or coal. The energy and emission arithmetic does not stack up.”
Firstly, I haven’t seen the Scientific American article, secondly, not wishing to be pedantic but two minor corrections, ethanol is a substitute for petrol for petrol, and, a neutral or even negative impact on greenhouse gas concentrations would mean maintaining constant or decreasing GHG concentrations.
My position on biofuels is this:
1. The EROEI (energy return on energy invested) of biofuels is marginal, but positive.
2. Biofuels require vast amounts of arable land to produce significant quantities of fuel when compared to the amounts of petroleum currently consumed. In the USA most of the land now used for food production would be needed to used to replace that nations petroleum consumption, for most other Western nations the sums are even worse.
Therefore biofuels are not a practical alternative to fossil fuels.
December 31st, 2006 at 5:27 am
Porcupine: “Andrew W – btw you mean employed by the (pro slavery) Grant against the (antislavery) Lee? Such are the ironies of hiostory eh?”
I don’t know what Grant and Lee’s personal views on slavery were, but Grant was leading the Norths troops (anti), and Lee the Souths (pro).
January 1st, 2007 at 8:33 am
Towaka, Nigel, Owen, how do you score yourselves on the point I raised with Kurmudgeon:
“There are a limited number of methodologies that people can base their opinions of AGW on:
1. Objectively studying the science in detail and from all angles, spending months to understand it so you can form your own opinion based on sound scientific knoweledge.
2. Accept the opinion of the weight of experts.
3. Have no opinion.
4. Base your opinion on mysticism, astrology
5. toss a coin
6. Adopt an opinion based on your politics, and the opinion of your peers.”
Do you think I’ve missed any methodologies out?
January 2nd, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Here’s something for you political partisans to consider, it explains how your political bias blinkers you.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=13&articleID=000CE155-1061-1493-906183414B7F0162
January 2nd, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Towaka:
“The reason why I would often back the mavericks postion is that it takes strengh of character and courage of conviction to go against ”the crowd””
If that is supposed to be your reason for taking an AGW denialist position, it rates as one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever heard!
I’m sure being a Communist in New Zealand would also take strength of character, maybe you should take it up.
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Just a small enforced return to the fray, since Andrew W is continuing to be so obsessively assiduous in his many postings on this and other Kiwiblog threads.
What is you own methodology, Andrew? Of your self-selected list, it is certainly not 1, because you could never claim to be objective in any sense of the word. Therefore, in your own eyes, it must be 2 – accepting the opinion of the weight of experts. These are clearly revealed to you in the Reports of the IPCC.
As I have tried to indicate, gently, the IPCC reports do not in fact distil the wisdom of the thousands of panel members. They simply present the views of those who actually drafted the reports. (And have them rubberstamped by the bigger group.)
This is true of all international bodies, organisations and conferences. Virtually the only delegates/members who count in the long run are those engaged on the drafting committee. Put crudely, if the drafting committee says something happened at the meeting, then it happened. If the report doesn’t include it, it didn’t happen. Which is why representation on the drafting committee is the principal goal of delegations to any and all international conferences. (This is an area in which I have some direct experience, including some modest expertise in the drafting of reports and communiques.)
It’s not the weight of views that counts; it’s not even the quality of the views: it’s the selection of views that counts. And this is why I do not have the same blind faith in the IPCC reports that Andrew W has.
But of course, this statement is heresy to Andrew W – it reflects on (to mix religious metaphors!) the Immaculate Conception of his Holy Scriptures.
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:53 pm
yeah sure andrew, everyone who disagrees with you is politically partisan, only you can see the one true way….
Nice to see that you ignore the fact that Mann’s work was used as a central argument in the public relations campaign for IPCC3. You also ignore that the “hockeystick” was physically one of the largest pictures in the report, and was the one on all the news reporting.
Oh, but I hear you say, chapter 12 was far more complete. Mann is terribly inconvenient now isnt he?
Yes and how much of chapter 12 was used to argue the Global warming case, and how much was the hockeystick used? I certainly saw the hockeystick used all over the media, in fact its still being used.
You and George deliberately drew attention to it above. Whats even more amusing is that you attempted to rubbish my pointing out that Mann’s work was fundamentally flawed and had been debunked and you tried to defend it. You even provided the citation that “proved” your argument.
Delicious.
I in fact do understand scientific method. I also understand precisely what the article in Nature means, as, I suspect from your wriggling do you. It means that Mann is finished as a serious scientist. The failing is not that his work was bleeding edge and therefore speculative, it was his behaviour in denying his data to other scientists, and then engaging in political activity to try to suppress criticism – the absolute opposite of good scientific method, he deliberately tried to prevent people from testing his hypothesis.
This is what exposes him as a charlatan and those who trumpeted his work are heading for the moral high ground at a rate of knots. Or at least they need to get there in the next 150 years, and by high ground we do in fact mean 10 centimetres (plus or minus 8cm) heh!
Perhaps out in your world its ok that the “good” scientists lie about how speculative their theories are, suppress their data sets, exaggerate worst case scenarios, use their political power to rubbish dissent, and engage in egregious scaremongering (cue Al Gore and Nick Stern).
Nothing politically partisan there at all, oh, no. Yeah OK Andrew, whatever you say, persuade me some more big boy.
bwuhahahaha
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:10 am
Oh Andrew, you are a tool aren’t you?
your latest article, apparently linked in an attempt to prove that anyone who disagrees with the politically correct view of global warming is partisan concludes with the following:
“Skepticism is the antidote for the confirmation bias.”
All the article says is that a recent study suggests that those who start with a political position tend to see all new information through that lens. Well, duh!
It then suggests that being sceptical is a GOOD thing.
Maybe deep down inside there is hope for you after all? Of course in your case, there may be a difference between reading and comprehension?
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:50 am
Andrew W
Yes, its almost self evident that your bias will determine what you conclude and thats why science has cehcks and balances such as experimental (not just observational) verification, repeatability, peer review, etc.
But why do the yay sayers wheel this paper out (like they did on realclimate) as though it only applies to the nay sayers? It applies to all sides of any debate.
Are you suggesting we should run some double blind experimental verification of climate change – that would certainly convince me if it could be done, which of course it can’t – convenient.
If there was a drug that could save millions of lives it would have to go through $bn anf a minimum of 5 years of clinical trials, but we dont seem to have to subject the bitter pills for climate change to the same scientific rigorous analysis. Alarm bells anyone??
Another article is this one debunking the idea that most voters rationally think out their choices before voting – seems self evident to me again but interesting.
Voting with the Heart
Emotion trumps reason at the ballot box
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=5&articleID=D3EDA471-E7F2-99DF-38AA801C028EDACE
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Andrew W,
No Andrew you are the ”Dumb” one!The history of science is littered with the mavericks ending up being proved to be correct.One classic example was Nicola Tesla(a maverick)who when he expressed his views on AC/DC transmission of power and induction motors was ridiculed because it did not stack up against the accepted ”theory” of the time.Well Andy every time you turn on a light switch now it is the Tesla invented system.
But that is alright Andrew you just keep following the herd,it is nice and safe there aye!
January 4th, 2007 at 12:45 am
Kurmudgeon:
“it is certainly not 1, because you could never claim to be objective in any sense of the word.”
Presumably your definition of the word objective is simply something or someone you agree with. I would define an objective understanding as being a good fit with reality, I am not a climate scientist so for the more technical bits I have to trust in their expertise, but I have studied AGW from all angles, read hundreds of papers and articles, and haven’t found a scientific denialist argument that stands up to even my understanding of the issues. I note that you still have been unable to refute any of the science that you disagree with.
Also you still haven’t given a scientific reason for holding the denialist views that you do.
You continue to claim that the IPCC reports do not represent the views of the many hundreds of scientists who contributed to the reports, but what is your evidence for this claim? Nothing!
There is no significant dissent, there are no legions of scientists objecting to the way that the reports present their work! Infact there is overwelming support for the reports both by those that contributed their efforts to them and others who did not take part.
Nigel:
“only you can see the one true way….”
No Nigel, It’s not only me, it’s the vast majority of those who have a good understanding of the science.
“You and George deliberately drew attention to it (Mann’s work) above” No Nigel I didn’t, I only refuted your claim that Dr Mann had falsified his work, do you still claim this? You present no evidence.
Mann and his colleagues made mistakes in their paper, the NAS report assessed these mistakes, the NAS report also was critical of the high profile Mann’s work was given in promoting the report, largely this latter criticism was because Mann’s palioclimatology work was not central to the TAR.
I am happy to accept the NAS report in its entirety. It is you who continue to misrepresent the facts.
You refer to the SciAm article I linked to, mentioning: “Skepticism is the antidote for the confirmation bias.”
Absolutely true, however in the context of a scientific issue, it would be a reference to scientific scepticism, not political scepticism,
There certainly is room for improvements in our understanding of AGW, this is why there is such a wide range in climate projections. Our understanding of the science is good enough however to say that AGW is a fact, it is real.
As I have repeatedly said on this site, I put the science before the politics, I have also said that I don’t know with any certainty what the economic consequences of AGW will be. Alarmists and Denialists on the other hand, seem to believe they know what the economic consequences will be without knowing any of the science.
Porcupine:
“Are you suggesting we should run some double blind experimental verification of climate change – that would certainly convince me if it could be done, which of course it can’t – convenient.”
What the hell is that supposed to mean? that scientists deliberately set up climate science so that they couldn’t run double blinds?
I am certain that the fact that the scientists involved in studying AGW find their limited ability to run much experimental verification very, very inconvenient.
“But why do the yay sayers wheel this paper out (like they did on realclimate) as though it only applies to the nay sayers? It applies to all sides of any debate.”
I agree, but think of it this way, in many forums it is the denialists that the mainstream keeps having to do battle with, on other forums there is more of a mix. When I encounter Alarmists I refute their claims and give them the mainstream position, when I encounter denialists I refute their claims and give them the mainstream position. On this site, because of the denialist leaning of most of the participants, (DPF I would describe as conservative mainstream) all I get to refute are denialists claims, show me an alarmist claim on this thread. By the way, what did you think of my comment today on RC?
Towaka
Gosh, I’m sorry I have never really appreciated how brave you are! Tell you what, since you’re sooo brave, why don’t you take your closely guarded secrets about AGW, or the lack of it, and reveal them on Realclimate, since you’re sooo brave that is.
There have been many rebels in science, some who successfully changed our way of looking at the world, far, far more who didn’t, (Copernicus is my favorite) one thing that all the successful ones had in common though was that they understood the science at the highest level. Auer doesn’t, Carter doesn’t, there are some who do understand it at that level and disagree with the broad range of projections that the IPCC makes; some above, and some below, however they all accept that some AGW has occurred, and that with future increases in CO2 concentrations, further AGW will occur, what these people rely on though for their own expectations to come true are hypotheses involving (respectively) negative and positive feedbacks forwhich there is no evidence.
January 4th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Oh how brave Andrew, standing up to the nasty denialists.
Get a grip sunshine, this is a blog, you have completely failed to convince anybody.
You have accused anyone who professes scepticism as a “denialist” whatever that may be, and consistently attempt to claim the moral high ground.
Now you even attempt to suggest that the article you quoted about confirmation bias only applies to science rather than politics.
Don’t you even appreciate that you are engaging in marxist dialectic?
Like Kurmudgeon, I have sat through enough drafting committees to understand how this process works. Read his comment above, it is a very crisp description of how “consensus” emerges. It is not a scientific process, its a political one, mediated by political interests and by who can stay awake longest.
The climate change debate is not about science, its about politics, which is why we see such a concerted attempt to silence and punish “denialists”.
Most of this climate change debate is about European interests trying to cement the European project, and to impose European standards onto the rest of the world. With the end of the Cold War, it was necessary to create some new “Other” to justify trans national government. Voila, after the false alarms of SARS, Y2K and GM, comes climate change, the perfect unprovable crisis that justifies cross border economic management (- oh and just coincidentally targets the US economy).
Perfect! If it works on the US, then the same tools can be used to cripple the Chinese and Indian economies in turn.
And you really think this issue is about science. Cute, but ultimately naive.
January 4th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Andrew W (dec 26):it is universally recognised that the natural green house effect causes the planet to be 33C warmer than it would be without it.
The 33c degree is universally cited but it isn’t true. The calculation behind it is laughably naive.
January 4th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
RedRag (dec 28):Nobody questions Newton’s laws of gravity for instance…
Offtopic I know but in fact physicists do question Newton’s law of gravity and have done for decades.
January 4th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Andrew W,
You posted this ”There are a lot of scientific theories that are overwelmingly subscribed to by those scientists that specialise in the relevant fields, AGW is one of them”
And then posted this ”Our understanding of the science is good enough however to say that AGW is a fact, it is real”.
I see that AGW has gone from a scientific theory with all the uncertainty that brings with it to now AGW being a ”fact”.
Well for me that sums up everything about your juvenile rantings.
January 4th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
Thanks, Andrew, for acknowledging that you’re not a climate scientist – something increasingly clear from the nature of your arguments. Perhaps you should read other postings, including mine, without the “denialist” preconceptions you currently bring to all who can’t agree with you. I would be happy with “sceptic” – it remains a valid scientific position.
Note again that the only “science” I have (originally and specifically) challenged is the “sea level rise/vanishing islands” proposition. It took several postings before you would acknowledge the loopiness of such claims – and then only because your beloved IPCC “does not claim that islands have disappeared”. More rational thinkers can work that one out by themselves.
The climate scientists I know are generally ready to acknowledge that the politics – including the scientific politics – of climate change have considerably outrun the hard science, and that much of the current state of the science is overly dependent on computer modelling, with all its inherent assumptions. (I have been involved with computers for 30 odd years, and GIGO is still the basic question to ask about outputs.)
Those same scientists also acknowledge that the only really valid current argument for the kind of drastic climate change action now being demanded is the “precautionary principle” – which is worth an entire debate to itself.
And those IPCC reports – yes, they do indeed “represent the views of hundreds of scientists who contributed to the reports” – but these are a self-selected grouping. And the reports are drafted accordingly. Dissidents have no influence, before, during or after the process.
A somewhat jaundiced view, I would concede. But one based on the psychology of international gatherings/groupings, witnessed over many years, which have left me with considerable cynicism about the way in which meetings can be manipulated to produce pre-determined outcomes. My own experiences in the “dark arts” of international report drafting have hardly dispelled that cynicism!
January 5th, 2007 at 5:35 am
Thank you Nigel, finally you have admitted what I have been claiming all along, Your denialist beliefs have no scientific basis, instead your belief that AGW is not occurring is based on FAITH, a faith that somehow the IPCC process is somehow faulty to the point that the work of the scientists involved is totally misrepresented (though these same scientists have never made this claim), a faith that you present no evidence in support of. In fact no one other than you and Kurmudgeon have actually made this claim about the IPCC, or do you have evidence to the contrary? No of course you don’t, you don’t need evidence, you have your faith.
Then you go on to explain the true reasons in your faith that the IPCC process is faulty;
“Don’t you even appreciate that you are engaging in marxist dialectic?”
And;
“Most of this climate change debate is about European interests trying to cement the European project, and to impose European standards onto the rest of the world. With the end of the Cold War, it was necessary to create some new “Other” to justify trans national government. Voila, after the false alarms of SARS, Y2K and GM, comes climate change, the perfect unprovable crisis that justifies cross border economic management (- oh and just coincidentally targets the US economy).
Perfect! If it works on the US, then the same tools can be used to cripple the Chinese and Indian economies in turn.”
So in your mind it all turns into a conspiracy by the Europeans to destroy the world, you are beginning to sound quite deranged Deity formerly known as nigel6888.
January 5th, 2007 at 5:45 am
To the deity formerly known as nigel6888,
You also state that “you have completely failed to convince anybody.”
I have completely failed to convince you and atleast two others, but I never expected to change your minds, people are rarely, if ever converted from a religious faith by scientific evidence, to them, the science is not relevant. And I agree, science and religion are incommensurable.
January 5th, 2007 at 9:17 am
Realclimate recently posted this:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/01/consensus-as-the-new-heresy/#more-386
It is a good summary of the mainstream science position, I link to it because I get the impression that some in this forum still don’t know what the mainstream position is.
January 5th, 2007 at 11:41 am
very childish, yet again Andrew. Funny how you forgot to defend your absurd “denialist” claims.
So, yet again, only you know the one true way as set out in your holy book of IPCC as interpreted by the doctrine of realclimate(Tm).
I argue that I think you are wrong to take so much certainty from highly uncertain hypotheses, some of which have clearly been manipulated for political purposes.
You argue that I am a “denialist”, taking a religious position or am basically evil.
And this supposedly demonstrates that I am the religious fundamentalist, and you are the cleaver to rigorous scientific objectivity. Have you tried looking in the mirror?
Which way do I queue for the reeducation gulag?
January 5th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Towaka, Arrhenius theory of ionic dissociation, Pasteur’s germ theory of disease, Kirchhoff-Bunsen spectroscopy theory, Darwin’s theory of evolution, Agassiz’s theory of ice ages, Rumford’s theory of heat, I could go on listing the theories that are accepted as fact all day.
Chiz;
“The 33c degree is universally cited”
Correct.
“..but it isn’t true. The calculation behind it is laughably naive.”
On what do you base this claim?
January 5th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Oh and Andrew, before you keep linking us to realclimate, you might like to note that Michael Mann is one of the authors, and has something of a vested interest in the topic.
Full disclosure and all, you are quoting from one partisan source while claiming that all other viewpoints are partisan.
Naughty.
Try prometheus, or even debunkers.org. You don’t have to agree but sometimes its worth seeing the other side of the debate. You could also read M&M directly. Their work is pretty compelling, and the behaviour of Mann and his people is pretty damn shabby.
But I guess scientific dishonesty, falsified results and refusing to share data is what you have to do when you are speaking truth against the “denialists”?
January 5th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Wow. Do you guys understand how uninteresting all this trolling is. I’m pointing fingers squarely at Fred, Kurmudgeon, Peter Pan, Nigel, towaka, et al. How Andrew W has the patience to keep talking to you is well beyond me.
You do realise that almost no one is interested, amused or entertained by someone simply turning the debate into insults and simply trying to irritate the person they’re debating as if making someone angry is winning the argument.
And don’t even pretend that you’re not trolling. You are. You know you are. What I don’t understand is how you think it’s clever.
Heaven praise the day David actually makes the point of getting rid of pointless, troll comments, so that there might actually be some discussion that people from outside the blogging community (i.e. 99.99999% of the population) might get some value out of looking at.
Because at the moment it’s just… embarassing.
January 5th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Andrew W,
Scientific theories come in and out of fashion as much as flared jeans.Even the much lauded ”big bang”theory is now under pressure from the latest astronomical findings.
On the other hand scientific fact(law) has to be observable and repeatable!
As AGW is all about predicting future weather patterns mainly using computer modelling it has to be considered a theory.I just wish you would see this and not be so dogmatic in your position.
And if you can not see the political and financial machinations also at play with the AGW hysteria then you are a naive fool!
January 5th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
AndrewW: not precisely the subject of this thread, I know, but I don’t suppose you could comment on Bjorn Lomborg’s critique of the Stern Review? See http://www.nzbr.org.nz/documents/perspectives/perspectives-2006/issue82.pdf
Based on your numerous contributions above, I presume your response will cover the following points: (1) politically-blinkered analysis from a right-wing thinktank, and – wait for it – (2) completely inconsistent with the “mainstream” IPCC view, on which you’re so keen to educate us. Are we in the ballpark, AndrewW?
January 5th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Chiz:The 33c degree is universally cited…
Andrew W:Correct.
Chiz:..but it isn’t true. The calculation behind it is laughably naive.
Andrew W:On what do you base this claim?
I base this claim on the fact that physics involved is wrong.
The 33c claim arises from a simple model in which the surface of the earth is taken to be in radiative equilibrium with the solar flux. Take into the account the albedo and perform a little high school algebra and voila the surface temperature of the earth thus caluclated turns out to be 33c below the observed temperature. It is therefore assumed that the atmosphere must be responsible for the extra 33c. However if you try calculating the surface temp for the moon, which receives the same flux as us, or for mercury you also get the wrong temperature by about 20c or so in each case and there is no atmosphere to blame the discrepancy on.
The problem is that there is more to the surface temperature than assumed. You need to take the heat capacity of the air and the surface into account to give one example. The climate modelling software does apparently take these sort of factors into account. One or two climatology books will mention this stuff but you rapidly enter differential equation territory unlike the method in the first paragraph which can be followed by anyone who completed high school math.
I have not seen an estimate of what the actual warming due to the atmosphere is when you take the various extra factors into account, nor have I seen an argument that they “cancel” out with the 33c turning out to be correct still.
January 5th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
AndrewW: not precisely the subject of this thread, I know, but I don’t suppose you could comment on Bjorn Lomborg’s critique of the Stern Review? See http://www.nzbr.org.nz/documents/perspectives/perspectives-2006/issue82.pdf
Based on your numerous contributions above, I presume your response will cover the following points: (1) politically-blinkered analysis from a right-wing thinktank, and – wait for it – (2) completely inconsistent with the “mainstream” IPCC view, on which you’re so keen to educate us. Are we in the ballpark, AndrewW?
January 6th, 2007 at 6:05 am
Nigel: “…Michael Mann is one of the authors, and has something of a vested interest in the topic.”
Vested interest means a strong personal concern in a state of affairs usually resulting in private gain.
Michael Mann has no more vested interest in AGW than any other climate scientist, of course People have been running the “we shouldn’t rely on professional climate scientists to tell us about climate science because they all exaggerate how big a problem it is so that more money will be put into research and that’s going into their pockets” nonsense for some time now.
I suppose that with your way of looking at the world you think we should really go and learn about climate science from people with no interest in the topic, my way of looking at it is that if you need heart surgery you should get a heart surgeon to do the job, getting a plumber to do the job because he has no “vested interest” doesn’t sound too bright to me.
Over a year ago I was listening to Leighton Smith talking about global warming and how much nonsense it was, at the time I was interested in AGW but hadn’t studied the matter in any detail, and had no opinion either way, Leighton was interviewing Ken Ring, and said that this article was “the best thing (he) had ever read on AGW” and that it totally debunked “all that global warming nonsense”:
http://www.predictweather.com/global_warming/index.asp
So I went and read it, I was stunned, the piece is complete nonsense! A few months after this, the NZ CSC got their site up and I thought I would finally get some quality information from the sceptics perspective. The NZ CSC links to numerous other sites, Junkscience, CO2science, climateresearch, prometheus, drudge, The Telegraph, etc, all sceptic/denialistin sites (some to their credit, eg prometheus, are far better than others in understanding the science), in fact most of what I have read on AGW is from these sites, and very little of it holds up to scientific scrutany, as I have told you, my view on AGW is a result of studying the science, not the politics.
You keep claiming that I am making Marxist claims, this just demonstrates how much you are confused about the relationship between politics and AGW, I have made no political statements or claims on this thread, in fact, and ironically, Kurmudgeon claims he is to MY political left.
Again you make the claim of falsified results, and again you know you are lying, so it is you who is dishonest, or don’t you know the difference between the errors that can and do occur in complex statistical equations and lies?
January 6th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Lets re-examine Auer and Carters claims but insert more accurate figures:
1. “If we didn’t have the greenhouse effect, the planet would be 33C colder.” No dispute there.
2. “95% of the greenhouse effect is governed by water vapour, Of the remaining 5%, only about 3.6% is governed by CO2.” The contribution from the various greenhouse gases overlap, if all GH gases except CO2 could be removed the GH effect would be 26% as strong as it is now; If CO2 could be removed, leaving the other gases in place, the GH effect would be 88% as strong as it is now.
3. “when you break it down even further, studies have shown that the anthropogenic contribution to CO2 versus the natural is about 3.2%.” In fact CO2 concentrations are now 35% higher than historical natural levels and are expected to rise to 100% natural levels with no efforts to curb emissions (BAU).
So if we use Auer’s/Carter’s method correctly, picking the lower 12% CO2 contribution to the GH effect and the BAU scenario, for the end of the century anthropogenic contribution we get:
12% x 100% = 12% stronger GH effect due to Man’s activities.
If we were to naively multiply this by the 33C natural warming we would expect 3.6C anthropogenic warming.
Two principle factors make this simply sum incorrect 1. The contribution from additional GH gases is logarithmic not linear, this means the effect of adding more CO2 will be far less the doubling its effectiveness at trapping more heat. 2. Water vapour is a feedback, as additional CO2 warms the atmosphere, the air is able to support more water vapour at constant relative humidity. This additional atmospheric water vapour will increase the strength of the enhanced GH effect.
Though other complicated feedbacks (remember something has to change before a feedback can have an effect, if you argue, as R. Lindzen does, that changes in the Earths albedo as a result of his hypothetical Iris effect will partly mitigate AGW, you have first to acknowledge AGW) and forcings need to be taken into account, the above reasoning is the core of our understanding of AGW.
If someone can point out a fault in it, they will have an argument against AGW. If there is no fault, AGW is a certainly.
January 6th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
nigel,
Your tiresome repetition of the the acknowledged weaknessess in Mann’s groundbreaking work is denial at its most instrangient. The entire AGW debate gained much momentum from that original paper, but since that time it derives it’s weight of argument from a whole range of subsequent work by others, using a much wider range of improved methods.
The same historic process occured with Darwin. “The Origin of the Species” contains many errors and rests on some data that has been subsequently shown to be badly interpreted…but the underlying idea of evolution has been resoundingly proven to be absolutely correct by genetic techniques Darwin could not have even dimly suspected back in those times.
The obvious point is that Mann’s original work has it’s well-known failings….almost inevitably any pioneering work will by definition make mistakes and errors…but it is the subsequent science that either confirms or debunks it. As much as it is an amusing diversion for the denialists to manically replay over and over “hockey-stick debunking” meme; the actual science has simply moved on amply confirming Mann (and his contemporaries) ideas. Carping on about Mann’s original paper is directly analogous to attempting to debunk Darwin’s original work…the modern’s either laugh at you, or more likely, politely ignore the meaningless noise you are making from the margins.
January 7th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Kurmudgeon,
You have been whining that you think my labeling you an AGW denialist is inaccurate. I have tried to explain exactly what my position on AGW is, you have had every opportunity to do the same.
Also, when I first referred to editorial bias in The Telegraph I was referring to their bias on AGW, I think you may have inexplicably assumed I was referring to their political edatorials in general.
They have been pushing the claims of Lord Lawson, and Lord Monkton hard. They also made a recent claim that a leak from the AR4 revealed that the report would show a decrease in the forecasts for the rate of sea level rise, I am sceptical of the accuracy of this claim as the measured changes in the greenland icecap mass, polar glacial flow rates, and a better understanding of how water movement into and under the icesheets all indicate that previous estimates in sea level rise rates were too conservative.
We will just have to wait and see before drawing conclusions.
Towaka
I earlier drscribed the hit and run tactics of the NZ CSC in military terms, suggesting that the best method of countering their strategy of generally avoiding debating their claims was relentless pursuit, as used by General Grant in the US civil war.
While comparisons with actions in that war may have been “over the top” (as I said), explaining the NZ CSC tactics in military terms, certainly was not. Many strategies in fields of Human activity eg. sport, business, and politics, are based on those used in military conflict, perhaps you didn’t know this.
Perhaps you also didn’t know that the Chairman of the NZ CSC in one of New Zealands foremost military strategists in the form of Rear Admiral (retired) Jack Welsh. Funny that.
January 7th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Owen,
I notice that this article on the NZ CSC site: “Who we are and what we stand for …” has been closed, and that all of your own articles have been put under archives, (even though they were, in themselves, reasonable) why? Is it because you (and others?) have finally gotten sick of the embarrassment that the dishonesty of some of the NZ CSC members causes you, and so you have finally quit? If so well done! You shouldn’t have to sacrifice your principles.
One correction to my previous post, it’s Jack Welch, not Welsh.
January 7th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
David, could you update this thread please
January 7th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
It has been instructive to follow this thread to the bitter end. Clearly, I have suceeeded in irritating Andrew W. That was never my intention (despite peterc’s claims) – but it’s evidently all too easy to do.
The main thing I have learned is that Andrew W (and his ilk) in reality have three principal methodologies:
(1) Abusive (mis)labelling of their interlocutors,
(2) Misrepresentation of their arguments,
(3) Obsessive postings of increasing freneticism (32 so far from Andrew in this thread).
Instructive, but very wearying. As previously indicated, I know enough genuine climate scientists to know that these are not the tactics of the true scientist. They are, however, the tactics of Zealots of every cause.
January 7th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Chiz, you raise an interesting point, but I think that the discrepancy that you have spotted is probably a result of your source not properly weighting the mean temperature for the Moon and Mercury.
If you check this site you will see that for Mercury the theoretical mean temperature (blackbody temperature), derived by applying the Stefan-Boltzmann law as you have outlined, and the observed mean surface temperature are almost identical.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/mercuryfact.html
It should be noted that a day on Mercury is 176 Earth days long, and that the Lunar day is about 30 Earth days long, this results in huge surface temperature ranges in the hundreds of degrees C, making an unweighted average surface temperature pretty meaningless.
You make the observation: “You need to take the heat capacity of the air and the surface into account to give one example. The climate modelling software does apparently take these sort of factors into account.”
I don’t think that’s quite correct, while this information would be necessary to model and understand the dynamics of the atmosphere, the heat capacity, and thermal conductivity of the surface (both on Earth and Mercury) is irrelevant to calculating the mean surface temperature, a greater thermal capacity would simply serve to reduce the variation around the mean, not shift it.
January 7th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Graham Miller: “I presume your response will cover the following points: (1) politically-blinkered analysis from a right-wing thinktank, and – wait for it – (2) completely inconsistent with the “mainstream” IPCC view, on which you’re so keen to educate us. Are we in the ballpark, AndrewW?”
Graham, you are not in the ballpark, infact, your not even in the same county.
This was my reply to a similar question on a previous thread from Captain Crab:
I’ve tended to stick to the science and have avoided the politics as logically only after the science is reasonably well understood can you make sound political decisions.
Ditto for economic decisions, I don’t know enough about the economics to have an opinion, and I haven’t seen any sign of a consensus amongst economists familiar with the issues.
I would say that though we can be certain that AGW is occurring, the confidence that we have as to exactly the scale of the warming and it’s effects is low enough so that doing a cost/benefit analysis in dollar terms seems a little optimistic to me.
January 7th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Thanks for the support peterc.
I’m afraid the patience that I’ve shown is because I have been playing another game.
Earlier in this thread I asked Porc what he thought of my post on RC (Realclimate), this is the post I was referring to:
“Humans have a powerful evolutionary instinct to demonise their adversaries, in a world of intense competition for limited resources it’s a powerful survival tool.”
Their insults were expected, because they had no answer to my arguments they instinctively tried to belittle, and demonise me in their own minds.
I followed up with another post on the same RC thread which said in part:
“In the AGW debate I find the science interesting, but I find the various positions people have taken, and the reasons for them taking those positions fascinating.
Consider some of the arguments that are proposed and promoted by well-qualified scientists in the denialist camp:
Global warming stopped in 1998.
The calculation that supposedly shows that Man’s contribution amounts to 0.12% of the GH effect.
The Khilyuk and Chilingar paper in Environmental Geology, and the fact it was passed for publication.
There are claims in these arguments that I think even my 10 year old daughter could refute, so why do these well qualified people make these claims? Consider the following possibilities:
1. These arguments are actually far sounder than I realize
2. These scientists are far stupider than I realize
3. They are lying when they say they believe in these arguments
4. Some other factor, surely something very powerful, has destroyed their ability to examine the evidence with any objectivity.
I think we can accept that peoples political position influences their views on AGW, there seems to be a high correlation between conservative politics and having a denialist perspective, and also between liberal politics and having an alarmist perspective, but why?”
It’s obvious that these people (Towaka & Co) will never be convinced by scientific evidence, they are too strongly motivated by their belief that AGW is all a greenie/socialist plot, they have in their own words, made this perfectly clear.
Ultimately the only thing that will change their minds is their peers, we have seen a steady shift to accepting AGW over recent years, when enough of their peers accept it, so will they. Of course, having their egos bruised like this will only draw more insults.
January 7th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
AndrewW:
I’ve read through the cut-and-thrust debate on this thread with considerable interest. I’m not widely-read on this subject (and don’t pretend to be) – but, with respect, you do seem more than a little excitable about global warming.
The reason why I sought your comments on Bjorn Lomborg’s article is that he states:
The review correctly points out that climate change is a real problem, and that it is caused by human greenhouse-gas emissions. Little else is right, however, and the report seems hastily put-together, with many sloppy errors.
This thread is (or was seemingly intended to be) a debate about whether global warming is real or imaginery. The premise of the Stern review is that global warming is real – and it calls for urgent action.
Mr Lomborg also appears to accept that global warming is real – but argues that the Stern review over-prescribes the action required.
If Mr Lomborg’s opinion is respected, there appears to be room for debate as to whether global warming advocates overstate their claims and, therefore, overstate the extent of the urgent action required. I may be wrong, but I think this is the point from which others have engaged with you on this thread.
January 8th, 2007 at 4:00 am
Graham, I have been very careful when stating my view on AGW on this thread, my post on January 5, 9:17 AM and link, illustrates this.
Your statement “This thread is (or was seemingly intended to be) a debate about whether global warming is real or imaginery.”
Is exactly right.
You conclude “there appears to be room for debate as to whether global warming advocates overstate their claims and, therefore, overstate the extent of the urgent action required. I may be wrong, but I think this is the point from which others have engaged with you on this thread”
I don’t see this as being correct, my position is that the denialists just don’t accept AGW is anything but imagined, and I have made the point that alarmists don’t have scientific support for many of their claims, so in my view many of their claims are overstated. I see both positions as politically motivated, and recognise that in short term _political_respects_ both positions are actually logical, as accepting AGW as a fact probably leads to dealing with it – this is seen by conservatives as resulting in society moving left politically, and if AGW were imagined, as my opponents believe, this would not be necessary, therefore no move left.
The Kyoto accord and carbon trading were advocated as a non-socialist free market way to reduce GHG emissions, and so get the conservatives on board. But it hasn’t been accepted as free market enough by conservatives.
In longer term objective respects both positions are illogical as politics wont alter the science. Whatever happens to the planets climate will be as a result of the influences on it through whatever agents act on it, natural or anthropogenic, and the laws of science, not on what we might want to happen.
You raise good points, I think I addressed them throughout the thread, but possibly not clearly enough for my opponents to recognise.
January 8th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
nice points Graham. You will note that Andrew doesn’t refer once to Mr Lomburg, nor has he explained why calling anyone who isnt part of the in-group a “denialist” is a sensible approach.
This is because Mr Lomburg, despite being an impeccable social democrat, who believes that climate change is occurring, has wandered off the plantation, so must be a “denialist” and therefore his dangerous views must be ignored.
Lomburg is, in my view spot on with his analysis of Stern, and if anything is embarassingly kind to Nick Stern’s hysterical analysis. Every economist I know has cringed when looking through Stern’s assumptions. He starts from IPCC3, treats it as gospel, then chooses the worst case scenario, then he adds a few assumptions to make it worse, and then fiddles his discount rates to make action appear affordable.
Even with those scenario “adjustments” the best he can come up with is that if there are no changes in human behaviour whatsoever under his one scenario, growth potential could be 20% lower – ie., not a cut in global wealth (as all the media reported), but a reduction in possible growth potential (assuming that no adaptation by people occurs).
He then fiddles his time periods to compress data, so he starts talking about events that might happen hundreds of years in the future as though they are definite and will impact quite soon.
There is a reason why he was asked to write this report by Gordon Brown.
The reason of course is that Brown was looking for cover for political intervention now that the UK has failed to meet its Kyoto obligations, and the Stern report delivers the recommendations he wanted. Unfortunately the analysis such as it was can’t support the recs and that is the reason why the UK Treasury has quietly shuffled him sideways to a comfortable office with a window seat.
Your last point is also a fair assessment of where I would regard myself. I see the advocates consistently misrepresenting tentative data and overstating their arguments to try and push for what they see as desirable political responses. I think that is a pretty normal political process, but I tend to get annoyed when people like Andrew then get all righteous when pinged for it.
For his benefit, for I know he can’t resist scratching away at this topic. I have no doubt that the climate is changing. It always has and always will. I even don’t dispute that at the moment we are going through a warming period (although in Wellington this Christmas it seemed a somewhat hollow claim). I am less certain that the warming is human caused, although it is highly conceiveable that there must be some impact from human activity.
Where we part company is on what to do about it. No Government will agree to cripple their economy and damage the welfare of their citizens for a possible risk 3-5 generations in the future, when they can’t control other state actors. Its simply not going to happen. As long as major global players opt out or cheat – I think all, with the exception of Russia (whose economy had collapsed) failed to meet their Kyoto obligations – and these were the believers! Then collective action is doomed.
This is the reason for the hysterical pumping of the issue by the believers – they are trying to move public opinion, and by God they are on a mission (or on a mission from God – heh)
My solution is to encourage technology and prepare to adapt – people have adapted to ice ages, we can handle a little weather particularly over 100s of years. Yes it is nice to continue to reduce emissions, and we should do so.
Yes we should do lots more research, but lets try and keep the science out of the hands of the politicians until the results are respectable (or at least replicable).
But the big problems that are starting are in Asia, India – these countries are going to industrialise and fast. No amount of taxing trees in New Zealand is going to stop them.
For that matter, no number of rich white wstern liberals telling them they should abandon industrialisation and stay poor for the sake of the planet is going to deliver a compelling argument.
Right now, I would prefer to breathe the air in LA than in Shanghai – whats it going to take for China to start caring about pollution, the only way that I see is for them to get middle class PDQ.
January 8th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
nice points Graham. You will note that Andrew doesn’t refer once to Mr Lomburg, nor has he explained why calling anyone who isnt part of the in-group a “denialist” is a sensible approach.
This is because Mr Lomburg, despite being an impeccable social democrat, who believes that climate change is occurring, has wandered off the plantation, so must be a “denialist” and therefore his dangerous views must be ignored.
Lomburg is, in my view spot on with his analysis of Stern, and if anything is embarassingly kind to Nick Stern’s hysterical analysis. Every economist I know has cringed when looking through Stern’s assumptions. He starts from IPCC3, treats it as gospel, then chooses the worst case scenario, then he adds a few assumptions to make it worse, and then fiddles his discount rates to make action appear affordable.
Even with those scenario “adjustments” the best he can come up with is that if there are no changes in human behaviour whatsoever under his one scenario, growth potential could be 20% lower – ie., not a cut in global wealth (as all the media reported), but a reduction in possible growth potential (assuming that no adaptation by people occurs).
He then fiddles his time periods to compress data, so he starts talking about events that might happen hundreds of years in the future as though they are definite and will impact quite soon.
There is a reason why he was asked to write this report by Gordon Brown.
The reason of course is that Brown was looking for cover for political intervention now that the UK has failed to meet its Kyoto obligations, and the Stern report delivers the recommendations he wanted. Unfortunately the analysis such as it was can’t support the recs and that is the reason why the UK Treasury has quietly shuffled him sideways to a comfortable office with a window seat.
Your last point is also a fair assessment of where I would regard myself. I see the advocates consistently misrepresenting tentative data and overstating their arguments to try and push for what they see as desirable political responses. I think that is a pretty normal political process, but I tend to get annoyed when people like Andrew then get all righteous when pinged for it.
For his benefit, for I know he can’t resist scratching away at this topic. I have no doubt that the climate is changing. It always has and always will. I even don’t dispute that at the moment we are going through a warming period (although in Wellington this Christmas it seemed a somewhat hollow claim). I am less certain that the warming is human caused, although it is highly conceiveable that there must be some impact from human activity.
Where we part company is on what to do about it. No Government will agree to cripple their economy and damage the welfare of their citizens for a possible risk 3-5 generations in the future, when they can’t control other state actors. Its simply not going to happen. As long as major global players opt out or cheat – I think all, with the exception of Russia (whose economy had collapsed) failed to meet their Kyoto obligations – and these were the believers! Then collective action is doomed.
This is the reason for the hysterical pumping of the issue by the believers – they are trying to move public opinion, and by God they are on a mission (or on a mission from God – heh)
My solution is to encourage technology and prepare to adapt – people have adapted to ice ages, we can handle a little weather particularly over 100s of years. Yes it is nice to continue to reduce emissions, and we should do so.
Yes we should do lots more research, but lets try and keep the science out of the hands of the politicians until the results are respectable (or at least replicable).
But the big problems that are starting are in Asia, India – these countries are going to industrialise and fast. No amount of taxing trees in New Zealand is going to stop them.
For that matter, no number of rich white wstern liberals telling them they should abandon industrialisation and stay poor for the sake of the planet is going to deliver a compelling argument.
Right now, I would prefer to breathe the air in LA than in Shanghai – whats it going to take for China to start caring about pollution, the only way that I see is for them to get middle class PDQ.
January 8th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
As I said earlier: “In the AGW debate I find the science interesting, but I find the various positions people have taken, and the reasons for them taking those positions fascinating.”
I think people can see why.
Nigel is simply unable to comprehend that someone can accept AGW as a fact, based on the science, and not feel they have the information to take a political position on what, if anything, needs to be done to address it. It’s just outside his ability to comprehend, so he tries to draw inferences from what I say that simply aren’t there to fits his own understanding of how things are supposed to be.
January 8th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
See as I said, Andrew cannot resist returning to the scene to bludgeon the unbelievers some more – although how he can take that stance from my last post is in itself instructive.
I note he still hasn’t explained why calling people “denialists” is appropriate, or a useful contribution to the debate he claims to be willing to participate in.
I also note that the term “denialist” seems in common use at realscience – so therefore it is clearly an “in-crowd” means of labeling the political enemy, sigh so mature.
I see AGW is now a fact again, I thought it was a theory a few posts back, sloppy work andrew.
I am also surprised (not!) as to why he won’t respond to Graham’s reasonable questions about Lomburg or Stern. Check the archives at “realscience” andrew, I am sure they have some talking points you can quote.
Its also fascinating that Andrew seems pathologically unable to read or to comprehend – must be one of those “mainstream scientists (sic)” things. But what the hey, I have a life, outta here.
January 8th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Nigel, you seem to be under the impression that I am somehow wrong to reply to your misrepresentations of my position, this simply demonstrates your fanatical belief in your own self righteousness.
In a post on this thread I stated: “Alarmists and Denialists on the other hand, seem to believe they know what the economic consequences will be without knowing any of the science.” and just a couple of posts back “my position is that the denialists just don’t accept AGW is anything but imagined”
That is how I define these two groups, they believe they know, without any rational foundation to this knowledge, like a faith.
Nigel, I have addressed Graham’s questions, you’re just too blinkered to realise it, my response was:
“I’ve tended to stick to the science and have avoided the politics as logically only after the science is reasonably well understood can you make sound political decisions.”
“Ditto for economic decisions, I don’t know enough about the economics to have an opinion, and I haven’t seen any sign of a consensus amongst economists familiar with the issues.
I would say that though we can be certain that AGW is occurring, the confidence that we have as to exactly the scale of the warming and it’s effects is low enough so that doing a cost/benefit analysis in dollar terms seems a little optimistic to me.”
I’m pretty sure it’s you Nigel who is: “pathologically unable to read or to comprehend.”
January 9th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Nice site actually. Gone to my favourites. Thanks for creation.
February 17th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Andrew,
I would like to invite you to visit http://www.climateaudit.org. It is Steve McIntyre’s blog and some really good scientific discussion happen there. I disagree with your view that more people are joining the AGW camp, at least I disagree if you are talking about scientists. Claude Allegre joined the skeptics camp recently and Nir Shaviv joined a while back. And there are many more who joined after McIntyre broke Mann’s Hockey Stick. I hope you come and visit McIntyre’s blog.
June 6th, 2007 at 10:28 am
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