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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?