[/media-credit]Department Chair and Professor of Geology Donald Rodbell asks Lord Christopher Monckton a question at the event on the "other side" of global warming.
And thus, the college environmentalists – including Environmental Club members, the leaders and members of U-Sustain, concerned citizens, and renowned Earth scientists with PhDs from prestigious research institutions – decided to oppose the presence of Lord Monckton on our campus. We collected en-masse before his presentation to make it unambiguously clear that we would not allow such erroneous discourse to go unnoticed.
Firstly, it must be made adamantly clear that we applaud and thank the College Republicans and CFACT for granting the campus the opportunity to discuss this issue. There is much to be debated with regards to global climate change, and a lot remains unknown. What is certain, however, is that the world is warming, climatic patterns are changing, and humans are a driving force.
Lord Monckton does not stand alone in his beliefs on this issue; however, 97 percent of scientists overwhelmingly oppose his viewpoint. He kept asserting that this debate must follow a rigorous, science-based approach, and that the consensus of experts is, by itself, an insufficient basis on which to decide the veracity of the evidence for significant human-induced global warming.
We could not agree more that the scientific method is critical to determining the rate of current warming, the extent to which this warming exceeds the natural variability of the climate system, and likely rates of warming for the remainder of the 21st century. However, without wading through the numerous inaccuracies and misstatements made by Lord Monckton, which would likely exceed the space allotted for this article and the interest level of the reader, we will point out that, in fact, Lord Monckton has no interest whatsoever in pursuing a truly scientific approach to examining the question of global climate change.
Most readers know that the fundamental building block of all science is peer-reviewed publications. It is through the peer-review process that details of the methodology, results and interpretations are scrutinized, and, at the very least, that these details are included in the final published work so that readers may fully understand, and, if necessary, repeat the procedure. Peer reviewed publications are the building blocks of all the pillars of scientific knowledge, and, to be sure, these publications also occasionally require the wholesale modification or replacement of such pillars in order to accommodate new evidence presented in peer reviewed publications. The peer review process is, of course, not infallible and occasionally bad science does get published and good science is rejected, but by and large the systems works well at providing the criticial “checks” that Lord Monckton states are so important.
Lord Monckton has combed through the published literature, including the latest (2007) IPCC report, and carefully cherry picked data sets or sections of data sets that suit his thesis that global warming is not a significant problem, and that we should not therefore spend significant resources in combating it. Regardless of his thesis, what is fundamentally nonscientific about his approach is his unwillingness to publish his own analysis of the global warming. It is impossible to scrutinize his methods, calculations, and conclusions without a complete and detailed peer-reviewed publication that presents the important details. Given the rather substantial errors that were pointed out to him, any reasonable person should have serious doubts about the soundness of his conclusions.
Serious scientific debate cannot be carried out in the blogosphere, nor in highly charged and politically motivated presentations either by Lord Monckton or by Al Gore. The fact of the matter is that science has spoken, the overwhelming bulk of the evidence has shown very, very clearly that global warming is occurring and is at least mostly caused by humans. While scientific consensus can be wrong, it most often is not.
As an Earth scientist I am appalled by the whole tone of this piece. You say “Frankly, the sentiment vacillated between utter disgust and sheer anger. ” You sound like a bunch of priests being appalled at hearing heresy which questions your received truth. In the piece there is nothing but unsubstantiated assertions and appeals to authority not one reference to data of any sort. That you think of yourselves as scientists shows the extent of your self delusion.
There is currently a difference in approach to climate science between the sceptical Baconian – empirical appraoch solidly based on data and the Platonic IPCC approach – based on theoretical assumptions built into climate models.The question arises from the recent Muller – BEST furore -What is the best metric for a global measure of and for discussion of global warming or cooling. For some years I have suggested in various web comments and on my blog that the Hadley Sea Surface Temperature data is the best metric for the following reasons . (Anyone can check this data for themselves – Google Hadley Cru — scroll down to SST GL and check the annual numbers.)
1. Oceans cover about 70% of the surface.
2. Because of the thermal inertia of water – short term noise is smoothed out.
3. All the questions re UHI, changes in land use local topographic effects etc are simply sidestepped.
4. Perhaps most importantly – what we really need to measure is the enthalpy of the system – the land measurements do not capture this aspect because the relative humidity at the time of temperature measurement is ignored. In water the temperature changes are a good measure of relative enthalpy changes.
5. It is very clear that the most direct means to short term and decadal length predictions is through the study of the interactions of the atmospheric sytems ,ocean currents and temperature regimes – PDO ,ENSO. SOI AMO AO etc etc. and the SST is a major measure of these systems.Certainly the SST data has its own problems but these are much less than those of the land data.
What does the SST data show? The 5 year moving SST temperature average shows that the warming trend peaked in 2003 and a simple regression analysis shows an eight year global SST cooling trend since then .The data shows warming from 1900 – 1940 ,cooling from 1940 to about 1975 and warming from 1975 – 2003. CO2 levels rose monotonically during this entire period.There has been no net warming since 1997 – 15 years with CO2 up 7.9% and no net warming. Anthropogenic CO2 has some effect but our knowledge of the natural drivers is still so poor that we cannot accurately estimate what the anthropogenic CO2 contribution is. Since 2003 CO2 has risen further and yet the global temperature trend is negative. This is obviously a short term on which to base predictions but all statistical analyses of particular time series must be interpreted in conjunction with other ongoing events and in the context of declining solar magnetic field strength and activity – to the extent of a possible Dalton or Maunder minimum and the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal a global 20 – 30 year cooling spell is more likely than a warming trend.
It is clear that the IPCC models , on which AL Gore based his entire anti CO2 scare campaign ,have been wrongly framed. and their predictions have failed completely.This paradigm was never well founded ,but ,in recent years, the entire basis for the Climate and Temperature trends and predictions of dangerous warming in the 2007 IPCC Ar4 Summary for Policy Makers has been destroyed. First – this Summary is inconsistent with the AR4 WG1 Science section. It should be noted that the Summary was published before the WG1 report and the editors of the Summary , incredibly ,asked the authors of the Science report to make their reports conform to the Summary rather than the other way around. When this was not done the Science section was simply ignored..
I give one egregious example – there are many others.Most of the predicted disasters are based on climate models.Even the Modelers themselves say that they do not make predictions . The models produce projections or scenarios which are no more accurate than the assumptions,algorithms and data , often of poor quality,which were put into them. In reality they are no more than expensive drafting tools to produce power point slides to illustrate the ideas and prejudices of their creators. The IPCC science section AR4 WG1 section 8.6.4 deals with the reliability of the climate models .This IPCC science section on models itself concludes:
“Moreover it is not yet clear which tests are critical for constraining the future projections,consequently a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet to be developed”
What could be clearer. The IPCC itself says that we don’t even know what metrics to put into the models to test their reliability.- i.e. we don’t know what future temperatures will be and we can’t yet calculate the climate sensitivity to anthropogenic CO2.This also begs a further question of what mere assumptions went into the “plausible” models to be tested anyway. Nevertheless this statement was ignored by the editors who produced the Summary. Here predictions of disaster were illegitimately given “with high confidence.” in complete contradiction to several sections of the WG1 science section where uncertainties and error bars were discussed.
A key part of the AGW paradigm is that recent warming is unprecedented and can only be explained by anthropogenic CO2. This is the basic message of the iconic “hockey stick ” However hundreds of published papers show that the Medieval warming period and the Roman climatic optimum were warmer than the present. The infamous “hide the decline ” quote from the Climategate Emails is so important. not so much because of its effect on one graph but because it shows that the entire basis if dendrothermometry is highly suspect. A complete referenced discussion of the issues involved can be found in “The Hockey Stick Illusion – Climategate and the Corruption of science ” by AW Montford.
Temperature reconstructions based on tree ring proxies are a total waste of time and money and cannot be relied on.
There is no evident empirical correlation between CO2 levels and temperature, In all cases CO2 changes follow temperature changes not vice versa.It has always been clear that the sun is the main climate driver. One new paper ” Empirical Evidence for a Celestial origin of the Climate Oscillations and its implications “by Scafetta from Duke University casts new light on this. http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/scafetta-JSTP2.pdf Humidity, and natural CO2 levels are solar feedback effects not prime drivers. Recent experiments at CERN have shown the possible powerful influence of cosmic rays on clouds and climate.
Solar Cycle 24 will peak in a year or two thus masking the cooling to some extent, but from 2014 on, the cooling trend will become so obvious that the IPCC will be unable to continue ignoring the real world – even now Hansen and Trenberth are desperately seeking ad hoc or epicycle type fixes to locate the missing heat.
You might want to open your closed minds by checking
http://impactofcc.blogspot.com/2012/02/richard-s-lindzen-reconsidering-climate.html
or http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/unified_theory_of_climate_poster_nikolov_zeller.pdf
In my first term as an undergrad at Oxford the value of geologists holding multiple working hypotheses was impressed upon me – y’all would do well to keep that thought in mind.
Norman Page wrote: “You sound like a bunch of priests being appalled at hearing heresy which questions your received truth.”
The following video series will help readers understand the frustration at allowing somebody with zero expertise (i.e. Christopher Monckton) to speak at length on the subject of Climate Change.
Peter Hadfield devastating critique of Lord Monckton.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbW-aHvjOgM
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTY3FnsFZ7Q
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpF48b6Lsbo
[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3giRaGNTMA
[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRCyctTvuCo
Dr Page,
It is incorrect to look at short term variations in temperature , as you do, to draw conclusions about whether GHG’s are driving climate change. The sources of internal variations of climate, such as ENSO, volcanoes, etc. are much stronger even over a decade than the effect of GHG’s. In addition some anthropogenic cooling mechanisms such as SO2 emissions can obscure the warming effects of GHG’s. In fact, looking at the trends involving ocean heating, it is clear that the earth is steadily getting warmer, when the data is smoothed to eliminate noise due to internal variation, such as the peak in 2003.
Your claimed egregious example doesn’t prove that the models are useless. It only shows that there is uncertainty in the magnitude of warming, and that more work is needed to reduce the uncertainty. All the models predict warming between 1.5C and about 6C by 2100, with the most probable result around 3C. In addition some effects which are not included could increase the amount of warming beyond what the models project. This is a useful result for planning purposes despite the uncertainty. The fact that there is uncertainty is not necessarily a conflict with a statement that a certain outcome is highly likely according to the IPCC’s definition as you claim. Their admission that more testing is needed to reduce model uncertainty seems to be honest and praiseworthy.
You misstate the conclusions of the so called Hockey Stick papers. I put that in plural because many papers have been published showing proxy temperature reconstructions that show the recent rate of increase in temperatures are unprecedented in the last 1000 or so years, since the original temperature reconstruction paper was published by Mann et. al. since 1999. Contrary to your claim, they make no statement about the role of CO2.
Our understanding of the role of CO2 does not stem from purely empirical relationships, as you seem to believe. The role of GHG’s in determining the earth’s temperature was originally worked out by John Tyndall in 1859, when he measured the IR absorption of GHG’s. It was followed in 1896 by painstaking hand calculations by Svante Arrhenius who calculated that the impact of atmospheric CO2 concentrations on global temperature was around 6C for a doubling of CO2. More detailed calculations using computers give numbers in a range centered around 3C. This number hasn’t change in over 35 years of refinements. This shows that the physics behind this has a lot of validity. In addition, the feedback associated with increases in concentration of water vapor in clear air, which has long been assumed to be 6% per degree C increase in temperature, has been validated by satellite measurements.
Your statement about CO2 concentrations following temperature does not prove that changes in CO2 cannot cause climate change. The ice age temperature cycles which you refer to , were are triggered by variations in the earth’s axis tilt and orbital precession. It is known that the forcing due to these effects by itself could not have created magnitude of observed temperature fluctuations Modelling shows that feedback mechanisms due to CO2 fluctuations and reflectivity changes due to variations in ice an snow cover, initiated by the triggering mechanisms are needed to explain the amplitude of the observed temperature variations deduced from the ice core records.
In addition, paleontology has shown that CO2 emissions from volcanoes, and absorption of CO2 by weathering rocks has been responsible for changes in climate 100′s of millions of years ago.
Finally, the idea that cosmic rays have been a cause of climate change in the past 40 years cannot be correct. There has been no steady increase in cosmic rays in the past 40 years to parallel the increase in global temperature or global heating. Cosmic rays have oscillated with the solar cycle. Your statement about the experiments at CERN are wrong. The experiments at CERN show that Cosmic rays could have an effect on cloud droplet formation, based on experiments in a closed reactor. This does not mean that such phenomena are a significant contributor in the atmosphere, where there are a significant nuclei available for droplet formation in the absence of cosmic rays.
I don’t know what branch of earth science you work in, but it seems to me that it can’t be climate science, since you have so many misconceptions about this subject.
These attempts -like this one- to vindicate the hockeystick are remarkable.
Please check this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/11/shollenbergers-technical-review-of-manns-recent-book/
One of the key feature being this:
“The most important fact about the Wegman Report is not actually found in the Wegman Report. Instead, it was stated by Gerald North, the chair of the panel which wrote the NAS report:
CHAIRMAN BARTON. I understand that. It looks like my time is expired, so I want to ask one more question. Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman’s report?
DR. NORTH. No, we don’t. We don’t disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report.
The same point was reiterated by another member of the panel, Peter Bloomfield:
MR. BLOOMFIELD. Thank you. Yes, Peter Bloomfield. Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his coworkers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.
So the vigourous mindguarding attempts here are a deeply worrying sign of extreme groupthink and have nothing to do with science.
“……97 percent of scientists overwhelmingly oppose his viewpoint…..”
Are you literally not aware that this particular statement has been debunked on several occasions? Do you accept such statements without doing the least bit of research about how this percentage what achieved??
See “97% cooked stats” – http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/01/03/lawrence-solomon-97-cooked-stats/#ixzz1A5px63Ax
“Weather Channel and Weather.com: the survey says…..” – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/04/weather-channel-and-weather-com-the-survey-says%E2%80%A6/#more-35205
“Ninety Seven Percent Is Not What You Think” – http://www.energytribune.com//articles.cfm/9703/Ninety-Seven-Percent-Is-Not-What-You-Think
“Climate “Consensus” Opiate: The 97% Solution” – http://sppiblog.org/news/climate-%E2%80%9Cconsensus%E2%80%9D-opiate-the-97-solution
If this is the best you have to offer along side your apparently preconceived “utter disgust and sheer anger” and completely unsupported claims of Monckton’s “numerous inaccuracies and misstatements” / “carefully cherry picked data sets”, then astute readers will hardly be convinced that Monckton isn’t credible, but will instead seriously question your own credibility.
For a far longer and arguably more complete version of this Union College event, readers may see this at “Monckton’s Schenectady showdown” http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/10/moncktons-schenectady-showdown/#more-58770
It would appear Lord Monckton answered the critical questions put to him with great detail, and in a manner that did not beg for further rebuttal from his critics.
Oh, come off it, Professor!
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Professor Donald Rodbell’s personal attack on me in Concordiensis (“A Lord’s Opinion Can’t Compete with Scientific Truth”) deserves an answer. The Professor does not seem to be too keen on freedom of speech: on learning that I was to address students at Union College, he said that he “vacillated between utter disgust and sheer anger”. My oh my!
The Professor should be reminded of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech”. I exercised freedom of speech at Union College. The Professor may disagree with what I said (though his article is lamentably unspecific about what points in my lecture – if any – he disagreed with); but, under the Constitution, he may not deny or abridge my right to say it.
He and his fellow climate extremists ought not, therefore, to have talked of “opposing the presence of Lord Monckton”: for that would be to abridge my freedom of speech. It would have been fair enough for the Professor to talk of opposing my arguments – yet that, curiously, is what his rant in Concordiensis entirely fails to do.
The Professor says it is certain that “the world is warming, climatic patterns are changing, and humans are a driving force”. Let us look at these three statements in turn.
The world is not warming at present. It has not been warming for almost a decade and a half, though it has been warming since 1695. In the 40 years to 1735, before the Industrial Revolution even began, the temperature in Central England (not a bad proxy for global temperatures) rose by 4 Fahrenheit degrees, compared with just 1 F° in the whole of the 20th century.
Climatic patterns are indeed changing. But they have been changing for 4,567 million years, and they will go on changing long into the future. However, the fact of climate change does not tell us the cause of climate change.
Humans are indeed exercising some influence. Indeed, though the Professor implies otherwise, I stated explicitly in my lecture that the IPCC might be right in saying that more than half of the warming since 1950 was caused by us. However, that tells us little about how much warming we may expect in future. My best estimate is that the CO2 we add to the atmosphere this century will cause around 1 C° of warming by 2100. But that is not far short of the IPCC’s own central estimate of 1.5 C°.
Next, the Professor asserts, without any evidence, that “97% of scientists overwhelmingly oppose [Monckton’s] viewpoint”. Overlooking the tautology (the word “overwhelmingly” should have been omitted), as far as I am aware there has been no survey of scientists or of public opinion generally to determine how many oppose my viewpoint. I am aware of two surveys in which 97% of scientists asserted that the world had warmed in the past 60 years: but, in that respect, they agree with my viewpoint. No survey has found 97% of scientists agreeing with the far more extreme proposition that unchecked emissions of CO2 will be very likely to cause dangerous global warming. And, even if there had been such a survey, the notion that science is done by head-counting in this way is the shop-worn logical fallacy of the argumentum ad populum – the headcount fallacy. That fallacy was first described by Aristotle 2300 years ago, and it is depressing to see a Professor trotting it out today.
Science is not done by headcount among scientists. It is done by measurement, observation, and experiment, and by the application of established theory to the results. Until Einstein, 100% of scientists thought that time and space were invariant. They were all wrong. So much for consensus.
Next, the Professor says I made “numerous inaccuracies and mis-statements”. Yet he does not mention a single one in his article, which really amounts to mere hand-waving. He then asserts that I have “no interest whatsoever in pursuing a truly scientific approach”. Those who were present, however, will be aware that I presented large quantities of data and analysis demonstrating that the principal conclusions of each of the four IPCC climate assessments are defective; that the warming to be expected from a doubling of CO2 is 1 C°; and that, even if 21st-century warming were 3 C°, it would still be 10-100 times cheaper and more cost-effective to do nothing now and adapt in a focused way later than to try to stop the warming by controlling CO2.
The Professor goes on to say that “the fundamental building block of all science is peer-reviewed publications”. No: rigorous thought is the cornerstone of science. That is what is lacking in the IPCC’s approach. All of its principal conclusions are based on modeling. However, not one of the models upon which it relies has been peer-reviewed. Nor is any of the IPCC’s documents peer-reviewed in the accepted sense. There are reviewers, but the authors are allowed to override them, and that is not peer review at all. That is how the IPCC’s deliberate error about the alleged disappearance of all Himalayan glaciers by 2035 was not corrected. Worse, almost one-third of all references cited in the IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report were not peer-reviewed either. They were written by environmental campaigners, journalists and even students. That is not good enough.
Next, the Professor says that, in not publishing my own analysis of “global warming” in a reviewed journal, I am “fundamentally non-scientific”. Yet he does not take Al Gore to task for never having had anything published in a reviewed journal. Why this disfiguring double standard? The most important thing, surely, is to shut down the IPCC, whose approach – on the Professor’s own peer-review test – is “fundamentally non-scientific”.
The Professor goes on to say, “It is impossible to scrutinize [Monckton’s] methods, calculations, and conclusions without a complete and detailed peer-reviewed publication that presents the important details.” On the contrary: my slides are publicly available, and they show precisely how I reached my conclusions, with numerous references to the peer-reviewed literature and to the (non-peer-reviewed) IPCC assessment reports.
Next, the Professor says that “rather substantial errors” were pointed out to me at Union College. Yet in every case I was able to answer the points raised: and, here as elsewhere, the Professor is careful not to be specific about what “errors” I am thought to have made. I pointed out some very serious errors in the documents of the IPCC: why does the Professor look the other way when confronted with these “official” errors? Once again, a double standard seems to be at work.
The Professor ends by saying that “science has spoken” and that, “while scientific consensus can be wrong, it most often is not”. Well, the eugenics consensus of the 1920s, to the effect that breeding humans like racehorses would improve the stock, was near-universally held among scientists, but it was wrong, and it led directly to the dismal rail-yards of Oswiecim and Treblinka. The Lysenko consensus of the 1940s and 1950s, to the effect that soaking seed-corn in water over the winter would help it to germinate, wrecked 20 successive Soviet harvests and killed 20 million of the proletariat. The ban-DDT consensus of the 1960s has led to 40 million malaria deaths in children (and counting), 1.25 million of them lasts year alone. The don’t-stop-AIDS consensus of the 1980s has killed 33 million, with another 33 million infected and waiting to die.
The climate “consensus” is also killing millions by diverting billions of dollars from helping the poor to enriching governments, bureaucrats, bankers, landowners, windfarm scamsters, and environmentalist racketeers, and by denying to the Third World the fossil-fueled electricity it so desperately needs. It is time to stop the killing. If arguing for a more rational and scientifically-based policy will bring the slaughter of our fellow citizens of this planet to an end, then I shall continue to argue for it, whether the Professor likes it or not. He should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.
Rodbell expressed himself crudely but did not in fact do anything to obstruct Monckton’s freedom of speech.
It is well established that the Earth is still warming when both ocean warming and surface warming are included. Irregularities in surface temperature increase are to be expected as these are modulated by various ocean cycles and other forcings like SO2 emissions (natural and human). The general consensus that AGW is real and dangerous among scientists has been established through official statements by virtually all the relevant major professional scientific societies and been confirmed by surveys. See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-ted-kaufman/climate-change-must-be-ad_b_1179804.html?view=print&comm_ref=false
This past year was the warmest la Nina year on record. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/extreme-weather-2011-warmest-la-nina-year-on-record-around-10th-warmest-overall/2012/01/19/gIQAdzOhBQ_blog.html
I completely agree with the Lord Mockton. Scientific consensus is more often wrong than not. For example, these claims of large metal flying objects called airplanes are absurd. Everyone knows that such an object would not be able to fly without magic and that magic is not real, so by any deduction flying large metal objects is not true. Are we to believe that magic is real? Is this what science is about? Ironically, even the inventor of the Kelvin temperature scale, Kelvin himself wrote in 1895: “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” Such a Lord could not be wrong. The director of the US naval observatory also wrote in 1902: “Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.” (see http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/09/lord-kelvin-1895-heavier-than-air.html). Also, “people” talk about flying around the world. How can someone even fly around something that is flat? There is plenty of evidence that the world is flat: http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm These scientists are criminal. They should be jailed. This including all medical doctors that use the “scientific method” and approve procedures through consensus. I am outraged. Jail the scientists!
Also, regarding climate change, we all know that this is not from CO2 levels. Although there are reports of pirates from some place called Somalia, we know the absolute number of pirates on the whole flat plane of the Earth circling the sun has decreased over the ~6000 year history of the planet. This decrease in the number of pirates is the cause of the temperature increase. So the warming is caused by man, not fossil fuels! This is well documented. See: http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter
Professor, this is all well documented and published on the reviewed websites. I believe you will have no possible counter argument to this.
Here here m’lord!
A magisterial takedown
Oog. If you’re going to use a British Parliament expression of approval to a British Lord, at least get it right:
“Hear! Hear!”
Short for “Hear him! Hear him!”
Professor you must reply. Your honour is at stake!
Dear Professor Donald Rodbell and Student Erin Delman;
I am simply aastounded at your article. It appears to be little more then a whinning unscientific rant, vacuous in scientific content, but bloated with 100% unsupported assertions Much of the comment so far have well addressed the serious flaws. Of particular frustration is the wrong assertion that Lord Monckton does not use peer reviewed sources, and that the peer review literature does not support his P/O.V. So I will address this one area for you both so that you may be more up to date on the scientific literature.
SEA LEVEL RISE Lord Moncktons assertions of Sea Level Rise are well supported in the Peer review Literature. “Recent deceleration of the rate of rise (Houston and Dean 2011) has been detected. Examples of papers that projected sea level increases LOWER than the range discussed in the fourth IPCC report are Bouwer (2011), Chu et al. (2010), Czymzik et al. (2010), and Xie et al. (2010
HURRICANES Hurricane numbers and strength, according to many alarmist articles, is said to be increasing, or warned that it will increase. This is attributed to increasing satellite coverage and resolution, which tends over time to more accurately capture the hours when a storm is at maximum strength. A study that corrects for storm detection ability over time (Vecchi and Knutson 2011) finds no trend in Atlantic hurricanes over the period of 1878 to 2008. Studies of landfall hurricanes (Balling and Cerveny 2003) also show no trend.
DROUGHT Data related to precipitation and drought activity do not appear to support the contention of increasing drought frequency and severity and suggest that drought patterns are complex. For example, there has been a 5% increase in overall precipitation in the US rather than increasing drought. Sheffield et al. (2009) found that large-scale droughts follow ENSO and northern Pacific and Atlantic SSTs. This relation to ENSO activity is confirmed in a study in the US Southwest (McCabe et al. 2010). Globally, the mid 1950s had the highest drought activity and the mid 1970s to mid 1980s had the lowest, rather than a simple increasing trend. Again, picking the mid-1970s as a start date will give a false appearance of an increasing trend.”
And so Dear Professor and Student CAGW activist, my sources on AGW are worldwide, (not outside of mainstream science) and from far more PHD scientists then represented by the IPCC, which in the end (those who write the summaries at least) is a political body with many of the valid fallacies constructed by the critics of religion, equally present in this UN organization. I could quote from among peer reviewed literature, papers by Lindzen, Pielke, Christy, Spencer, Eschenbach, Scafetta, Myhre, Akasofu, Douglass, McIntyre and many others, all of whom have robustly challenged the dogma of a few cloistered warmists. These are not “big oil shills” as some try to claim, nor are they nutters. They are all eminent climate scientists who are showing that observations do not support the hypothesis that CO2 is significantly warming the planet, a hypothesis that is predicated on the false premise that historical climate has remained fixed for millennia, which is in contradiction of overwhelming evidence that temperatures were warmer than today a thousand years ago. I could point to 100 more papers that show that the medieval warm period was real, global, and warmer than today – a mountain of evidence against the warmists broken hockey stick. Additionally these scientist are unafraid to reveal their methodology and data, unlike many deacons high in the AGW hierarchy. The fact that climate alarmists reject the Scientific Method means that they are political advocates first, and mendacious scientists second. (Your article above is an example of just such an attempt.)
Many supporters of CAGW listen to the self-reinforcing echo chamber realclimate. Realclimate and their elk are the real contrarians. They refuse to engage in any neutral, moderated debate, and they censor opposing points of view. From your article above I see that you wish you had the same power. That’s not science, that is political activism. The fact that the planet is falsifying their CAGW alarmism is enough for many. The claim that “mainstream” scientists have reached a consensus is also completely wrong. For one example, more than 31,000 U.S. scientists have already signed the OISM Petition, which states:
The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
Dr Frederick Seitz, past President of the National Academy of Sciences, wrote the petition’s cover letter. You can not get more ‘mainstream’ than Dr Seitz. Yet many alarmist, such as you dear professor and student, futilely attempt to marginalize the tens of thousands of scientists who signed that statement. Compare that number with the fewer than a hundred political appointees who put together the UN/IPCC’s Assessment Reports, and you will begin to understand that there is no “scientific“ consensus.
Going back to your earlier post, I notice a reference to (Houston and Dean 2011). This paper is laugher! They picked a date of 1930 as a reference and claim that sea level rise hasn’t accelerated since then. This link
realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/07/is-sea-level-rise-accelerating/
and this link,
tamino.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/so-what/
shows why this date was used. The acceleration of sea level rise was -0.01mm/year, a minimum for every date that the clock could have been started and a quadratic fit made.It is a classic cherry pick. In fact careful analysis shows that sea level rise doesn’t fit a parabola but actually has accelerated significantly since 1980.
If Monckton is relying on this kind of analysis to claim sea level rise has not accelerated, it is pathetic and downright dishonest.
The frequency of Hurricanes has not been predicted to increase as a result of global warming. What the models seem to show is an increase in the number of higher power hurricanes. The discussion of Hurricanes, and the citation of Houston and Dean 2011, which looked at the frequency of short duration hurricanes, lasting 2 days or less emerges as an irrelevant straw man argument when looked at in this light:
web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/hurricanes.html
“Theories and computer simulations of climate indicate that warming should generate an increase in storm intensity. In other words, they should hit harder, produce higher winds and last longer.
To explore that premise, Emanuel analyzed records of tropical cyclones–commonly called hurricanes or typhoons–since the middle of the 20th century. He found that the amount of energy released in these events in both the North Atlantic and the North Pacific oceans has increased markedly since the mid-1970s. Both the duration of the cyclones and the largest wind speeds they produce have increased by about 50 percent over the past 50 years. ”
So far your score on justification of the science behind Monckton’s position is 0/2.
So now we come to the question of drought. In your attempt to update us on the literature involving drought you said this:
“Data related to precipitation and drought activity do not appear to support the contention of increasing drought frequency and severity and suggest that drought patterns are complex. For example, there has been a 5% increase in overall precipitation in the US rather than increasing drought. ”
What you neglect to factor in this analysis is that global warming , according to the modelling, will intensify rainfall in and heavy rainfall events causing flooding in some areas, and drought in other areas, because higher temperatures intensify evaporation rates, making dry areas dryer, and causing evaporating more water from the oceans which will make rainfall more intense where rain does fall. So if the US contains more areas that are wet than dry, nothing is proven by citing overall rainfall statistics in the US. It is nonsense to use such a statistic to update people on the literature. In fact, while Texas had record drought, my state of Vermont had a record flood event during Irene, which is causing the government to change what it does regarding the structure of roads and the location of buildings.
geography.about.com/od/globalproblemsandissues/a/globalwarming_2.htm
In fact it is predicted that areas of drought will migrate northward in the northern hemisphere as global warming proceeds, and the southwest US will see more intense droughts. Drought is indeed related to ENSO, but the intensity and length of drought events is projected to increase as temperature increases. This was already experienced in Texas this year, during the recent record breaking drought, since the start of the meteorological record.
http://atmo.tamu.edu/osc/library/osc_pubs/2011_drought.pdf
Many towns in Texas are running out of water as a result, and agriculture is collapsing. Many ranches and rice farms are going out of business due to lack of water. How to supply water to these areas is a huge and growing problem.
pbs.org/newshour/bb/climate-change/jan-june12/texaswater_03-22.html
Here is a summary of what is projected and a list of modelling papers.
http://atmo.tamu.edu/osc/library/osc_pubs/2011_drought.pdf
So now we come to the question of drought. In your attempt to update us on the literature involving drought you said this:
“Data related to precipitation and drought activity do not appear to support the contention of increasing drought frequency and severity and suggest that drought patterns are complex. For example, there has been a 5% increase in overall precipitation in the US rather than increasing drought. ”
What you neglect to factor in this analysis is that global warming , according to the modelling, will intensify rainfall in and heavy rainfall events causing flooding in some areas, and drought in other areas, because higher temperatures intensify evaporation rates, making dry areas dryer, and causing evaporating more water from the oceans which will make rainfall more intense where rain does fall. So if the US contains more areas that are wet than dry, nothing is proven by citing overall rainfall statistics in the US. It is nonsense to use such a statistic to update people on the literature. In fact, while Texas had record drought, my state of Vermont had a record flood event during Irene, which is causing the government to change what it does regarding the structure of roads and the location of buildings.
geography.about.com/od/globalproblemsandissues/a/globalwarming_2.htm
In fact it is predicted that areas of drought will migrate northward in the northern hemisphere as global warming proceeds, and the southwest US will see more intense droughts. Drought is indeed related to ENSO, but the intensity and length of drought events is projected to increase as temperature increases. This was already experienced in Texas this year, during the recent record breaking drought, since the start of the meteorological record.
atmo.tamu.edu/osc/library/osc_pubs/2011_drought.pdf
Many towns in Texas are running out of water as a result, and agriculture is collapsing. Many ranches and rice farms are going out of business due to lack of water. How to supply water to these areas is a huge and growing problem.
pbs.org/newshour/bb/climate-change/jan-june12/texaswater_03-22.html
Here is a summary of what is projected and a list of modelling papers.
atmo.tamu.edu/osc/library/osc_pubs/2011_drought.pdf
The implicit argument made by the authors that the debate on global warming is over is a scientific and philosophical nullity. It has no place in the setting of reputedly free campus in a free society. Those who make such arguments are clumsily attempting to dictate truth in the absence of convincing evidence.
“He’s wrong because I said so,” is a pathetic response to the eloquent and concise arguments of Christopher Monckton.
I think that concise is precisely the opposite description of Lord Monckton’s wordy diatribe.
Ah, the old “let me redirect your attention away from the scientific data and reality to instead argue about the definition of ‘concise’ ” argument.
Thanks, but no thanks. Those of us on the Monckton side are making a scientific argument, and welcome a scientific counterargument.
Your efforts at misdirection and the employment of smoke and mirrors might be better employed at the campus pub.
Or, at the campus Kool-Aid stand, Andrew.
Sorry Lord Monckton. All you’ve got is your opinion. How can that possibly compete against . . . The Truth!? (The Scientific Truth, no less; which is even better!) (It’s much easier to win debates when you speak on behalf of The Truth. Remember that.)
regards,
Mr. AssErtion
“It’s much easier to win debates when you speak on behalf of The Truth.”
Monckton keeps winning debates.
Um, he was kidding, Dumb-bell. Note the the jocular fake signature “Mr. AssErtion”.
Alarmists always lose the argument. Their position is and always has been completely unsupportable by the evidence. Monckton is right that climate sensitivity is very low. Most recent evidence suggests strongly negative feedback, to the point that CO2 is nearly meaningless as a contributor to temperature. To regulate CO2, as Monckton points out in his many presentations, is an exercise in wealth destruction, all pain, no gain.
Lord Monckton, for the record, I didn’t see any errors at all in your analysis. It seems most all the errors are owned by the IPCC.
No, Michael, regulating CO2 is not an exercise in wealth destruction. It is an exercise in wealth redistribution. In which those that propose it become very wealthy, i.e, Algore.
It’s both. In the necessary collapse brought on by “de-carbonization”, the pickin’s they figger, will be good. The giga-deaths will make for much more elbow room, too!
Donald Rodbell and Erin Delman, the utter disgust centers on you not on Lord Monckton who seeks a reasoned and factual approach to resolve the climate science meme.
Dr. Curry recently posted an article on Climate Etc.; Messes and super wicked problems.
Curry comment: I find this pretty interesting. Climate change to me seems to be the mother of all messy super wicked problems. I like the mess mapping approach, with scenarios, etc. This makes much more sense to me than developing a scientific consensus that all but demands a specific policy.
===========
Here was my response:
If the true cause is known, it isn’t a problem that needs to be solved its a decision that needs to be made.
Arriving at the right decision requires individuals who are suited to the task of developing definitive solutions which address the needs of end users in an insightful way. The key terms are end users and insightful.
Beyond the inability to properly define the extent of natural climate cycles, the cause of GHGs is known — byproducts of processes.
There isn’t any mess, the cause is known to be pollution from poorly designed artifacts. The only fix to the UN IPCC Climate Science mess is to discard the IPCC and focus the entire funding on developing definitive solutions.
Everyone has had enough of the Climate Science Psychobabble and wants to see definitive solutions that reduce the tax burden, save money, improve the environment and thus the human condition, and have a return on investment. Thus far, there aren’t any definitive solutions.
=======
Clearly Donald Rodbell and Erin Delman, you seek to perpetuate a useless and unrewarding dialogue. One can only hope the faculty at Union College do not support your parochial views.
I am beginning to understand more and more about how the totalitarian mind works. Just shut down those who you disagree with and send them off to the Gulag.
Donald Rodbell and Erin Delman :
You seem very convinced that man is causing dangerous global warming.
Would you be kind enough to tell us what evidence led you to this conclusion?
PS: We all know unusual weather is NOT evidence of its cause, melting ice is NOT evidence of its cause, drowning polar bears are not evidence of man’s CO2, CO2 FOLLOWS temperature in Al Gore’s ice cores, nature emits about 97% of the annual CO2 emissions, water vapor causes about twice as much greenhouse effect as CO2, correlation is NOT evidence of causation, and climate models are not evidence for a variety of reasons including the fact that they are considered crap by the top climate scientists in their emails.
So, please, show us actual real proof.
Thanks
JK
We’ll be able to tell what time Dr. Rodbell gets to work on Monday by the time at which comments to his opinion piece are closed and all existing negative comments deleted.
Ah, the sweet, sweet free speech of academia!
“We’ll be able to tell what time Dr. Rodbell gets to work on Monday by the time at which comments to his opinion piece are closed and all existing negative comments deleted.”
Which is why I have saved the complete web page, just in case!
As have I, ongoing.
I wonder which part of Dr. Rodbell’s professorial conduct is the “sheer anger” stage? Is that the stage after “denial” and before “acceptance”?
I suppose it must be.
Dr. Rodbell, that titter of laughter you hear when you next enter the classroom will have as its source your extraordinarily non-scientific column and the derisive comments it so richly merits.
If your goal was to denigrate your institution by highlighting that not all its academic staff operate at the highest intellectual level, well done, sir, well done, indeed.
If luck is with you, you’re already tenured. If not . . . well, yes, fries would be appreciated with that, thank you.
Admit it, Lord Monckton has won the argument using nothing more than fact based deductive reasoning.
The other fun thing to understand is that this argument is kept in perpetuity by such sites like the Internet Archive; unlike papers published in periodicals and other transient publishing mediums – you would do very well for your future careers to stick to the facts, verify your conclusions to source and keep your emotions under check. It is one thing to be wrong find out it is so and change your mind; it is something completely unemployable to still stick to the wrong point of view in face of clear evidence to the contrary…
Why are you trying to shut down debate? Why not engage them with the facts, if the facts are on your side, surely you will win over any level headed person. What makes you so fearful that he will be heard? Let him make a fool of himself.
Oh Dear !
I’m sure the good Professor felt obliged to have a go at bringing down Monckton, after such an impressive and effective lecture by and following discussion with Lord Monckton. For that attempt I applaud him and he rightly deserves our respect for having the cohones to have a go, like some young buck. (It’s more than can be said for the likes of Ex Vice President Gore for instance).
However, there it must end. I hope he might now begin to see some of the errors of his ways, trotting out the same old hackneyed truisms. I’m sure this excercise will have begun to open some minds at that institution which had the foresight to host it.
From the reaction to this article in the journal of the student body there, it seems rather interesting to note that it doesn’t seem to be the non-consensual position that is isolated any more. Well done to all who took part.
Viscount Monckton starts his presentations and debates by stating unequivocally for the audience to NOT believe him. Monckton provides references to support his arguments on each point and invites the audience to check them for themselves. I have checked most all of them for every video presentation I have seen of the Viscount Monckton.
I would like to equally make the same qualitative check against the professor’s arguments, but quite inexplicably, for a supposedly educated man, he fails to provide ANY references whatsoever to back up his arguments. Even worse, It appears to me that the professor did not even attend and witness the event upon which he casts his unsupportable accusations.
Would we trust a film critic who did not even watch the films he was critiquing? Or would we think him a fool or a fraud?
Such a woefully inadequate critique of Viscount Monckton is not only arrogant and insulting, but utterly devoid of fact, evidence or reason. If this is the standard of the Professor’s science, “I believe the following hypothesis, because someone else said so. or I disagree with another hypothesis based upon nothing more than fashionable hearsay” then he is not fit to teach kindergarten children, let alone University students.
So which of the two should I believe?
The Viscount who provides references, which I have independently checked and and found to be largely correct. Or the Professor who has written nothing more than a hearsay filled rant, devoid of facts or reason?
The Professor failed to use one single substantive, referenced, checkable, evidence-based fact at all to support his own arguments as his “hatchet job” was filled with third-hand hearsay. He should indeed be ashamed of himself.
I shall allow Viscount Monckton to answer elloquently and accurately for himself:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/17/monckton-in-a-rift-with-union-college-earth-scientists-and-activists/#comment-926653
You couldn’t have checked the references very carefully. If you did you wouldn’t be supporting Monckton. A lot of the references are trash, and the good ones are misquoted or distorted.
“Professor” Donald Rodbell, with this piece you have made a complete fool out of yourself.
“On one hand, it seemed ludicrous to give Monckton a second of time or thought.”…what sheer arrogance from you. A humble prediction: in few years time you’ll want to apologize to Lord Monckton.
As an alumnus of Union, I was delighted to learn of Monckton’s address. It bespeaks an all-too-rare airing of an extremely well-informed opinion on a subject where legitimate debate has clearly been suppressed.
To Prof. Rodbell and Erin:
(1)
The grand central number which stands out of your talk is the 97% number …it is unfair
not to give quotes and literature, in which this number can be verified…..
This 97% number is a constant “bone of contention”…..either you provide details on it
or please refrain from mentioning it…..
I read somewhere that the sample people asked to derive 97% was a false number: Instead
of 84 scientists surveyed, of which 97% agreed, there were only 60+something surveyed,
thus a high percentage less….
(2)
…. to the “Consensus”: See good American traditional values: They do not seem
to count for you…..probably you are a stranger…… ONE MAN- ONE VOTE and also
SECRET BALLOT—- achievements of democracy…..
Democratic principles seem to value nothing to you: VOTING by ACCLAMATION (CONSENSUS),
everybody raises the hand, as in the former EAST BLOCK and CHINA……
(3) I hope that undemocratic consensus “do- gooders” will die out like the dinosaurs….
.their time has come….,
Cheers
JS
“Serious scientific debate cannot be carried out in the blogosphere” – indeed. Specifically, it cannot be carried out by Rodbell and Delman.
For those of us who do have the interest, please do post a point-by-point list of the “numerous inaccuracies and misstatements made by Lord Monckton”.
You might start with this: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton_Myths_art.htm
Mike – imagine the situation:
1) You write anything about any topic
2) I write some text at my website “demonstrating” you wrong, with a “list of the numerous inaccuracies and misstatements made by” you
3) I prevent you from replying to my text at my website
4) I pretend your replies don’t exist, or simply use them to “demonstrate” you wrong (back to point 2)
Would you really say I would have demonstrated anything at all? And in particular would you take my “list of the numerous inaccuracies and misstatements made by you” as something else than a fundamentally cretin exercise?
Let me state that I do not agree with everything Monckton says. Conversely, I find it impossible to take seriously Skeptical Science’s repeated and obsessive attempts to demonstrate that everything Monckton says is wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong again.
www skepticalscience com (2008) VS. www skepticalscience com (2010)
(A view from the wayback Machine.)
2008:
web.archive.org/web/20080507024314/www.skepticalscience.com/ocean-and-global-warming.htm
“What the science says…
The notion that the ocean is causing global warming is ruled out by the observation that the ocean is warming (Levitus 2005). Internal climate changes such as El Nino and thermohaline variability stem from transfers of heat such as from the ocean to the atmosphere.
If the ocean was feeding atmospheric warming, the oceans would be cooling.”
2010:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/cooling-oceans.htm
“Claims that the ocean has been cooling are correct. Claims that global warming has stopped are not.”
What to make of this:
2008: “If the ocean was feeding atmospheric warming, the oceans would be cooling.”
2010: “Claims that the ocean has been cooling are correct.”
Andrew’s quotes are badly out of context. People should read the articles and decide for themselves. SkSci is not run by climate scientists. It is however generally a very good source of information on climate change disinformation. For a site run by climate scientists see
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/
and the many links given there.
@mike;
realclimate? the egregiously censored propaganda site owned and operated by the PR firm, Fenton?
Your standards are in need of serious upgrading.
Maurizio Morabito: I suggested SkSci as a place to start. This seems to be what Matt B was looking for.
So I started to listen to the Abraham rebuttal to Sir Monckton’s facts. The first thing Abraham does is list all of his degrees and education, and all of his published papers. He then points out Lord Monckton’s complete lack of degrees in any scientific field, and his complete lack of any peer reviewed published papers. For a presentation of a rebuttal of Lord Monckton’s facts, this was not a very impressive start! His first rebuttal is about a quote Sir John Houghton may or may not have said: “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen”. So Professor Abraham contacts John Houghton, who denies saying this. Okay, fair enough. But a quick google search pulls up this page: http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2010/02/15/is-god-trying-to-tell-us-something/ . It looks like the exact quote was “If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster.” His next point was regarding sea level rise. Monckton claims the IPCC stated 6cm over the next century, but Gore inflated this to 6m, which is a 100x increase! How does Abraham refute this? He goes back to the IPCC documents, and finds a reference that says sea levels will rise by 6m if both the antarctic and Greenland ice sheets completely melt, and therefore Monckton is wrong. Bravo Abraham! What all your vaunted education failed to enlighten you to is this little fact: It will take over a thousand years of temperatures 5.5C warmer than right now in order to completely melt those ice sheets! The 6cm rise represents the first 100 years of melting as our climate continues to heat up to this 5.5C warming. Therefore, it would appear Professor Abraham is wrong on this one too. So after building his own reputation up, and trashing Monckton’s, Professor Abraham is 0 for 2 on his fact checking. That’s enough for me to to write him off as an alarmist who didn’t take Monckton seriously, and couldn’t be bothered to do a proper and thorough job of fact checking.
Abraham has a long history of being intellectually disembowelled by Monckton. A yapping mutt pursuing a racecar.
You call yourselves “Scientists”, yet you appear to advocate the suppression of a dissenting view?
That is the response of religious fanatics and intolerant politicians.
Your faith in peer-revue process is misplaced, read the various Climategate e-mails, leaked by a true whistle blower. See how this process has been corrupted to prevent views unpalatable to the political paymasters, being published.
Do you support Mann’s refusal to publish the full statistical analysis behind MBH98 &99?
Do you support Jone’s refusal to supply data, because the purpose of the requesting person is to show it to be wrong?
Lord Monkton not only heard your objections, but politely answered them, showed you where you were wrong.
Maybe you’d be happier to hear Dr Gleick speak, perhaps you may like to invite him to speak on scientific ethics, fraud & forgery?
Wow!
This phrase, “decided to oppose the presence of Lord Monckton on our campus” is scary, scary stuff.
From where I sit it’s a sure sign of America’s demise.
Ah, well, we’ve been put on our heels before, from enemies both foreign and domestic.
Almost invariably at considerable cost to those who sought to put us on our heels.
May history repeat itself.
Quote ‘Frankly, the sentiment vacillated between utter disgust and sheer anger.’
That seems like a narrow range of reactions to the views of someone who has regularly published his analyses and logic, and sought open debate and discussion at every turn. He has laid out his position and invited criticism, even rebuttal. He listens, he takes questions, and he responds with reasoned argument and data.
I wonder if the professor can point us to where he may have done the same with regard to his own position? I am interested as to how he came to have his apparently very strong views. But first, I think common courtesy, and respect for his students who may take him seriously, require him to justify the word ‘disgust’ and the words ‘sheer anger’ as the bounds of his shared reaction to the prospect of someone visiting his university as a guest intent upon open debate and discussion.
Graphite (in NZ) writes: From where I sit it’s a sure sign of America’s demise.
Ah, well, we’ve been put on our heels before, from enemies both foreign and domestic.
Almost invariably at considerable cost to those who sought to put us on our heels.
May history repeat itself.
Come on the Students of Union College. Is noone going to support their Professor, in his moment of glory ?
A wholly inadequate and embarrassing response to Mr. Monckton’s lecture. It is an insult to the intelligence of Concordiensis readers and only stands to confirm Monckton’s opinion regarding a lack of free and open debate. Pitiful.
Here is the argument that 97-98% of scientists say the planet has warmed and human activity is one of the factors. Let me answer the survey questions myself:
Q1. “When compared with pre-1800s levels (ie: the Little Ice Age), do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?”
JF: Risen
Q2. “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?”
JF: Yes
I am the 98 percent! So are nearly all of the global warming “realists” that the alarmists rants about.
Yet these two questions do not even remotely address the far more important and central question of whether or not humans are causing a global warming crisis. The mere fact that humans are likely responsible for some of the warming that has lifted the earth out of the Little Ice Age does not necessarily mean that climate Armageddon is at hand. For those who believe otherwise, please do some research on the strikingly negative climate consequences of the Little Ice Age and the striking beneficial climate consequences of the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Climate Optimum.
The alarmists know or should know that most global warming “realists” believe the earth has warmed since the Little Ice Age and that human activity is a partial cause. By erroneously claiming that these two banal questions define the split between “alarmists” and “realists,” They reveal their deceitfulness or ignorance on the core issues that divide “alarmists” and “realists.”
All the realists need to realise is that there is no point whatsoever in debating CAGW with a true believer alarmist. We all know that these watermelons have a “World View” and this view is their religion. Even prove to them with peer reviewed science that they are wrong and they will lash out with extreme violence as to them the very idea that you have questioned them is heresy. The Manns, Hansens , Gores and Gleicks are the high priests and they are the flock. The “true believers” in the dogma of global warming are beyond being interested in evidence; it is impossible to reason people out of positions they have not been reasoned into in the first place. These people are full of hate. Eric Hoffer observed in his classic analysis of mass movements: “Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.” The mass movements of today are not so much cultural but anti-imperialism, anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, environmentalism, scientism, and others are millenarian and apocalyptic. The progression from communism to fascism in the creation of the new world was bridged by Nietzsche which led to an association between ecologists and German nationalists, among whom a number subsequently became Nazis. Certain German “volkish” ideas that were central to fascism: about the organic harmony of the earth, the elevation of animal rights and the denigration of humans as enemies of nature are today presented as the acme of environmentalist progressive thinking. When I point out to warmists that their roots lie in Fascism, hell begins to freeze over. Interestingly the environmentalists are today’s Gnostics. Have a read of the British National Party manifesto and you will see hardly any difference from a socialist manifesto. One needs to be a student of history to see the madness of these people.
Thick green goggles and decades of outcome based education have finally had the desired outcome. We now have a large population of Earthlings who will fall for the “Super Sized Chicken Little and Falling Sky Trick”. Carbon Climate forcing has always been about FORCING an unneeded Carbon Commodity Market. All of the worlds big lies are brought to you by the fraudlent banking system….see “Fractional Reserve Banking Begat Faux Reality”….and do what you came to college to do…..LEARN SOMETHING.
History tells us, over and over again, that the only way to sustain incorrect dogma is to suppress all debate about it.
Miss Delman is undoubtedly a bright & talented young lady. I’m sure she will have the wisdom to learn from the experiences afforded her by Lord Monckton this week and turn her undoubted talents to truly serving the environment which she clearly loves. In time she will come to learn too not to let her undoubted passion & dedication be highjacked in the service of populist but fallacious notions such as the catastrophism of AGW.
Whether the same can be said for Professor Rodbell, I’m not so sure, though I certainly hope so.
I suspect that the Professor from Gilligan’s Island, might be better versed on climate, than rodbell or delman.
ha, ha, haha, hahahahah, bonk
oops, sorry, my head fell of with laughing.
I know 15 year olds in England that can come up with a better arguement against what, I have to say, was a very clear, concise and referenced presentation by a very careful, respectfull gentleman.
perhaps you could try learning a little before your next attempted ripost
best regards
As Professor Rodbell says:-
” Lord Monckton has combed through the published literature, including the latest (2007) IPCC report, and carefully cherry picked data sets or sections of data sets that suit his thesis that global warming is not a significant problem, and that we should not therefore spend significant resources in combating it. Regardless of his thesis, what is fundamentally nonscientific about his approach is his unwillingness to publish his own analysis of the global warming. It is impossible to scrutinize his methods, calculations, and conclusions without a complete and detailed peer-reviewed publication that presents the important details. ”
Oh come on Professor, is this all your own work, or are you just parroting the usual suspects who try to make a name for themselves by knocking Monckton ?
It used to be “scientific truth” that black people (or anyone that wasn’t British/German/Scandinavian or generally Caucasian) were inferior, but this “truth” has been proven false time and time again. It used to be “scientific truth” that women were not capable of dealing with educated nor political matters, such as voting, else there brains would expand and their foreheads would manifest cranial ridges — didn’t happen. It used to be scientific truth that the world was flat, or that if you couldn’t see something with your eyes then it didn’t exist. All “truths” of the day, without any real evidence, just educated men spouting off their opinion and trying to convince the world they were right.
Before you start claiming truths or proofs, you ought to have proven something as fact first. You haven’t, Professor, nor has anyone else. We don’t believe you. We don’t believe any of this any more. You should resign, Professor. You’re a disgrace to the educational system.
You are scared of Lord Monckton, aren’t you? Scared of the truth.
Right now, at this moment, there’s an academic at Union College who is sitting on her bed, shivering with fear in her night gown, shaking in anticipation of being called to the Dean’s office on Monday to explain what in the world she was thinking, as a representative of the College in posting such a bunch of anti-intellectual tripe on a publicly accessible forum.
And, no, I’m not talking about Erin Delman.
Andrew: you have done absolutely nothing in this forum to fight for either side the debate after a few of your so called arguements. you are childish and pathetic. from further embarrassing yourself, i suggest you stop posting on here.
You claim:
“Most readers know that the fundamental building block of all science is peer-reviewed publications.”
Well, maybe in post-modern science, in the liberal arts ‘science’, and other pseudo sciences, this is true (although I hope not over the board). In reality however, peer review a part of the publication process. It is neither designed to assert truth, correctness of calculation, veracity of data, observations, experimental results or other referred-to results. (It might attempt at the latter, but if so usually only superficially). It is mostly a descision of ‘publishability’ and may catch some obvious errors and/or improve of the presentation of the work. (Nothing wrong with that!)
However, those who seek to elevate ‘peer review’ to the highest standard of quality for science are either extremely ill-informed or out deceive in some manner.
The highest standard of quality in science is when it meets, is confronted with reality, with experiments and/or observations and survives, hold up to scrutiny when compared to it. When it can ‘explain’ and also predict the outcome of empirical observations: past, present and future experiments. And when it does so consistently, even when subjected to challenging tests.
A lesser, but nevertheless equally paramount requirement for having (any sort of) scientific quality is: Repeatability, and/or replicability. That others can repeat and replicate the same calculations, experiments, simulations if they (independently!) use the same described methods, input data etc, and arrive at the same (similar) results.
Then there is the ‘scientific method’ which dictates how one goes about collecting information, handling and presenting it which should be a given (but is not).
All these are what real science is about. ‘Peer review’ is nowhere a substitute for any of the above. And anyone (knowledgeable and) serious about scientific quality should have known this long before. Long before bringing up ‘peer review’ as an argument ..
Perhaps when The Professor fully realizes . . . . he will have a Homer Simpson Moment . . . .
‘DOH!
Andrew from MA March 17, 2012 at 8:12 pm said:-
” Right now there’s an academic at Union College ….sitting on her bed, shivering with fear in her night gown, shaking in anticipation of being called to the Dean’s office ….. to explain what in the world she was thinking, ….. in posting such a bunch of anti-intellectual tripe ….”
If it’s the Editor your referring to Andrew , or ‘Editor-in-Chief’ as they might have it, then they should have nothing to fear. As I hope the Dean may appreciate, publication of this piece has done a great service. It has certainly put Union College on the map, and may even herald a new age of enlightenment. I exagerate not.
I was most certainly NOT referring to the Editor. It’s remarkable that was your first assumption. I acclaim the Editor for publishing a piece so ripe for vivisection.
Were there not TWO authors of this intellectually noxious article? One of them, Erin Delman, is apparently a student, and therefore both expected and supposed to make sometimes silly mistakes in advancing her knowledge. Her co-author represents himself as a man of deep learning. Recovering that reputation may be more difficult.
You confuse me Andrew. I can hardly imagine Erin’s co-author in a nightgown.
I can but admire Donald for speaking out, however misguidedly, as so many academics have just sat on the fence.
You do not go to this school, Andrew. Therefore, you have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what Mrs. Erin Delman has done for Union in her 4 years of attending here…Like I advised before, I STRONGLY SUGGEST you quit posting on here about things that you have no idea about.
Useless commentary..
It seems that Donald Rodbell and Erin Delman need a 101 course in logical fallacies.
From wikipedia: To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.
Indeed, Rodbell and Delman, rather than responding with evidence to Lord Monckton’s presentation, have created a straw man.
Their straw man? Lord Monckton has not published a peer reviewed paper.
Wow, that was easy.
Lord Monckton is wrong, all of the peer reviewed evidence he presents is wrong, and indeed, he barely deserves to speak publicly because he has not published a peer reviewed paper.
This entire article, published in a student newspaper, only builds and then knocks down a straw man. The entirety of it is a logical fallacy. I am not surprised to see such amateurism published in a student newspaper. I am very surprised to see it co-signed by professor Rodbell.
Prof. Rodbell got pwned by Sir Monckton. Disgraced is thus so. Perhaps the prof. needs to turn in his PhD? The biggest mistake the professor did was to write a very public whining piece…laid bare for all to see his actual incompetence.
How……”unprofessorial.”
Jason Bruckman writes: “You confuse me Andrew. I can hardly imagine Erin’s co-author in a nightgown.”
Nor would I encourage you to do so (shudder). The comment was in jest, along the lines of “he whines like a little girl.”
But a joke is not funny if it requires explanation. I claim the fail and denounce myself.
Ok , point taken Andrew. I was reading too much into your allusion.
I wouldn’t be too hard on the Professor though. Don’t imagine his postion as being anything other than typical of many of his peers, although they’re perhaps better at knowing when to sit on it & review before publishing. He is just one of many. I sure hope he will learn to challenge his own ideas & grow from the experience though.
Sorry, I do see the Professor shaming himself. By neglecting a scientific counter argument to Lord Monckton, and instead resorting to an appeal to authority–this mythical “consensus” of ~70 self-interested researchers benefiting richly off global warming grants, conference speeches, and press esteem–he is no better than a primitive unscientific savage who believes the imaginary “wind god” took his child’s life because the “village elders” say it is so. And he “believes” it in part because he knows that stating the truth would threaten his professional position and income.
Except it’s not HIS children who are dying, it’s the standard of living of the parents and children and grandchildren of the west, and the ACTUAL lives of the second and third world children of the globe who lack even clean drinking water and basic vaccinations and medical care and education–clean water and disease prevention and medical care and education that we could easily deliver to them if we weren’t wasting billions of dollars on the imaginary danger of catastrophic anthropomorphic global warming.
In effect, he is condemning to death many millions of poor children throughout the world by misdirecting public funds and resources to the rich wallets and retirement accounts and winter-season conference seats in exotic warm weather locals (e.g., most recently Bali) of himself and his CAGW religion peers, tenured academics, unaccountable UN governmental bureaucrats, and NGO trust-fund employees throughout the world.
Shame, shame, shame. How people like him can look themselves in the mirror is beyond me. And they call themselves “scientists”? Despicable.
You’re right, people like the professor are beyond shame.
I note from his University profile that he has a direct financial interest in the ‘truth’ of CACW, since his speciality seems to be the geochronology of glaciation. He is a reporter of past climatic changes – someone Lord Kelvin might have deemed a ‘stamp collector’, rather than a real scientist.
I suspect that, as a consequence, all his self-worth derives from climate change; this is not a man who would ever wish to review the underlying science or question its validity.
So much for your belief in free speech.
The Professor is free to say whatever he wishes.
His empolyeer can and should use his statement to judge how qualified he is to do the job for which he is paid.
I’m hoping that something constructive can come of this. Lord Monckton deserves respect regardless of whether you agree with his position on climate change.
Perhaps you should focus on the content of his argument rather than make yourselves and your ‘environmental movement’ look all the more foolish by resorting to ad-hominems, handwaving arguments such as your “97% of scientists” nether-regions pulled statistic, and vague references to what he said that wasn’t factual but no specifics (argumentum ad vaporum?).
Anger and disgust, indeed.
Scott, what are you talking about? What was ad hominem about my remark? Nerd called Rodbell “incompetent” and Bob seems to also wish him fired for expressing his opinion. And I did post a response to Monckton’s claims but it is stuck in moderation for some reason.
Scott,
The content of his arguments is precisely why scientists hold him in such disdain. Every statement that he makes is either misdirection, a logical fallacy, or contrary to facts.
Care to name a few examples?
Eric,
Apparently I had missed your examples. Sorry about it. So, lets look at them:
“The best estimate of the earth’s warming is the total heat increase in the oceans. This has shown a considerable increase in the last decade and a half even though the record is noisy. Check out the graph in the following.
tamino.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/fake-predictions-for-fake-skeptics/”
Interesting. When land temperatures were going up the CAGW proponents were using them. IPCC were using them. The models were calculating them. Everyone was talking about them. After all, how can you have global warming when temperatures were not increasing! Now, that temperatures had been flat for about 15 years, suddenly they are no good anymore? SO, you come up with new metric? That is nice…. I assume we can just completely forget all of thermal reconstructions of the past, because there is no way you can accurately measure total heat increase in the oceans before last 10 years (when Argo system went online), and simple temperatures are not good anymore, right? So, what is that you use to show warming, everything that you can think of or do you have actual measurement that you can stick with? That was a rhetorical questions.
“How can a single small area like Central England be used as a proxy for global temperatures? This is clearly unscientific nonsense.”
So, using actual measurements with actual thermometers from a whole country is “unscientific nonsense”, but using 3 trees from Siberia (see Briffa’s reconstructions) or few bristlecone pine trees in North America (see “Hockey Stick Mann”) that are essentially pillars of whole CAGW science is OK? Or would it be “scientific nonsense”?
“In fact, based on paleontological studies, CO2 has been shown to be a cause of climate change in the past. In some cases it was heavy emissions from volcanoes that increased global temperatures, in other cases it was absorption by weathering of rocks that drove decreases in CO2.
”
The studies are very, very clear – CO2 increases FOLLOW temperature changes by few hundred years, not lead them. How could they be a cause? Did climate scientists manage to violate causality somehow?
And this is where I have lost my interest in your examples. Sorry.
Udar,
Your points echo points made by other posters and have all been answered by me.
The surface temperatures when internal noise variations are subtracted out, do show a global warming signal.
While Central England temperatures increased 4F, the best estimate of the global temperature increase in the 40 years ending in 1735 was about 0.4F ten times smaller that what Monckton calls a proxy.
The fact that CO2 increases do not lead temperature increases is because during the ice ages, CO2 in the atmosphere was delayed feedback, which amplified climate change rather than a trigger for climate change. It was a result of warming and a cause of further warming. Today’s increase in CO2 is a result of industrial emissions and is forcing warming. Future warming itself will reduce the absorption of CO2 by the oceans and eventually could cause oceans to emit more CO2.
It is appalling to me how such fallacious thinking pervades among so called “skeptics”.
Eric,
Thank you for your responses, they are refreshing to read!!
Eric Adler,
Its very important for the Faculty and Students at Union to fully understand the principal concern in this debate.
Discard the Affirmers who blindly trust the IPCC conclusions and the Deniers who haven’t spent the time to properly research the science. Everyone left is a Skeptic. Skepticism is at the heart of the Scientific Method.
Those of us who are Skeptics feel the UN’s IPCC and FCCC are rushing to judgement without proper governance and due diligence. As Monckton clearly pointed out in his Union lecture, the world has warmed, the Green House effect does exist, and there is a human contribution to the warming.
The principal issue relates to the IPCC Feedback multiplier which is not proven science and inflates the warming signal in their models. IPCC Feedback conclusions are based on educated guesses and can not be considered settled science.
The idea of claiming consensus over unsettled science is difficult to support but the idea of claiming unsettled science as Truth is blatantly absurd.
There is a consensus over the small portion of the science that is settled but its nothing to hang a multi-Trillion dollar price tag on. Faculty and Students should also be aware that the IPCC includes solution work groups. Solution groups that are acting on their own conclusions. This, in and of itself, should be a major red flag for the general public and sufficient to pull all future funding.
John from CA March 19, 2012 at 3:55 pm
You are straining to find something reasonable about Monckton’s presentation. The many misstatements of fact which he makes, should make people skeptical of what he has to say. He needs to be classed among those who hasn’t done proper research on the science. His opinion is in opposition to the opinions of about 70% or more of climate scientists on the question of the problems associated with climate change.
In fact the IPCC’s conclusions are right in the center of what specialists in climate science believe according to a poll by Pielke and Annan. About 50% believe the IPCC’s report got the situation about right, 20% think the situation is more dire and about 20% believe the IPCC overestimated the danger.
pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2008/02/22/is-there-agreement-amongst-climate-scientists-on-the-ipcc-ar4-wg1/
Since Monckton is not a climate science expert, and propagates misinformation, why should one accept what he says?
Alleged Professor Eric Adler writes: “Since Monckton is not a climate science expert . . . ”
Ah, the “appeal to authority” argument from the extremist warmists, once again. They never tire of it.
You are doing nothing to increase anyone’s perception of YOUR scientific expertise, “Doctor”. Can a man of science really continuously make this error of reason, even after it’s been repeatedly pointed out to him? Really?
Any Jackass who wishes to impugn Moncton’s Presentation on the basis of Moncton’s lack of ‘Climate Science’ credentials needs to do so while noting Al Gore’s lack of ‘Climate Science’ credentials. To do otherwise demonstrates a level of “intellectual flexibility” that renders their contributions “suspect to the point of irrelevance”.
Eric Adler March 19, 2012 at 4:43 pm
I listened to Monckton’s Union presentation before commenting and I don’t mince words.
If you present what you believe to be misstatements of fact, I assure you, Lord Monckton will be happy to set you straight.
I’ll take a look at the Pielke and Annan survey but suspect I’ll either find poorly designed questions or demographics that explain the response.
To John from CA:
Ah, the “appeal to authority”
John from CA, wrote:
“There is a consensus over the small portion of the science that is settled but its nothing to hang a multi-Trillion dollar price tag on. Faculty and Students should also be aware that the IPCC includes solution work groups. Solution groups that are acting on their own conclusions. This, in and of itself, should be a major red flag for the general public and sufficient to pull all future funding.”
The problem with your proposition is that decisions are needed even when the future appears uncertain. We can never be totally sure of anything about the future. Since the future is uncertain, more effort, not less effort is needed in order to understand what action to take, or not to take, since there is a possibility that the seriousness of the problem has been underestimated.
Eric Adler writes: “The problem with your proposition is that decisions are needed even when the future appears uncertain. We can never be totally sure of anything about the future. Since the future is uncertain, more effort, not less effort is needed in order to understand what action to take, or not to take, since there is a possibility that the seriousness of the problem has been underestimated.”
Ah, the wonders of the Ivory Tower.
By this measure, the worse the science, the more catastrophically wrong the forecasts, the increasing degree to which hypothesis after hypothesis falls in burning debris in the face of reality–all that merely means that “more effort, not less effort is needed to understand what action to take”.
Really.
Must be nice to live in a world of unlimited resources.
In reality we need to array limited resources against a broad spectrum of risks. The less likely a risk appears, the FEWER resources are allocated to it. The demonstrably less accurate a hypothesis, the LESS effort devoted to proving or disproving it–if it’s wrong, as CAGW so clearly is, by it’s OWN benchmarks, why invest further time, money, effort?
Those of you dependent on tenure and funding on the “reality of CAGW” naturally want to instill in the populace a sense of certain catastrophe. Why else would we pay your way? But as CAGW doom seems increasingly tenuous, the responsible among us are asking ourselves, why can’t we take these many millions of dollars being directed to increasingly erroneous CAGW advocates, and instead redirected to meet the IMMEDIATE (not year 2100) needs of the world’s poor, like water, housing, clothing, education, medicine.
The CAGW professors, like Dr. Adler, already enjoy all these benefits of 1st world life, although their quality may diminish in proportion to the declining perceived need for their climate “expertise”. In contrast, the people of the 3rd world are literally dying for lack of such resources. It takes a few dollars a day to make a substantive and sustainable change in the survivability and quality of life of someone living in the third world–imagine the impact that millions upon millions of re-directed CAGW “research” funds and “conference” funds and “speaking” fees and UN IPCC bureaucratic salaries could have.
A fair case can be made that the CAGW extremists, and their lowly foot soldiers like Dr. Adler, by directing scare resources into their own pockets on a demonstrably false scientific premise and away from the world’s poor who are dying today, and tomorrow, and the next day, are directly or indirectly responsible for the unnecessary mortality and morbidity of millions upon millions of men, women, and children around the world. THAT is the true cost of the false religion of CAGW.
I doubt the year 2100 will thank you for your efforts, Doctor. Scientist, indeed. Shame on you, sir. You’re just following the implicit “orders” of your academia superiors, I know, but we’ve heard that excuse before, haven’t we?
Andrew sarcastically writes:
“Must be nice to live in a world of unlimited resources.”
Funny, because if we were to conserve some of our resources, climate change would not be such an issue. If we were to conserve (i.e., burn less) fossil fuel resources we would emit less CO2 and would not see as much warming.
Why is this hard to understand? Well, I have some hypotheses as to why it might be hard for you to understand this…
Please help me understand: Burning ANYTHING produces CO2. The earliest technological discovery of humanity was Fire. So you are suggesting that we abandon one of our most fundamental discoveries for the sake of some dodgy and politically-motivated “science”.
Very well. What will be your excuse for insisting that we abandon the wheel?
You misunderstand, Craig, it’s not about the science of CO2 at all, or any science whatever.
It’s about tenure, salary, sabbatical, funding, conferences, speaking fees, book fees, societal fame, peer influence, peer prestige, and seeing the starry-eyed looks in those young undergrads, maybe, if they are ever lucky enough to be as competent a scientist as Al Gore, a Nobel prize. For the bureaucrats, on the other hand, it’s about sheer power–meaning also position, money, influence.
After all, as their Woodstock-era parents (or grandparents) told them, if you can’t be with the science you love, love the science you’re with, right? Even if she is a bit of a . . . well, not the kind of science you’d take home to mother, after all, is she? A bit embarrassing, that. The parents tend to have higher expectations than that, don’t they?
But still, they manage to put a smear of lipstick on her and trot her out for cameras, hoping nobody looks too close, and never EVER in daylight. A press release here, a UN bureaucrat’s re-writing of the science of the IPCC there, yet another paper peer reviewed by colleagues carefully selected for being devoted to the “cause” . . . it’s all good.
Until that uncomfortable burning sensation kicks in 7-10 days later. THAT might be difficult to explain to the wife (e.g., the taxpaying public).
Andrew from MA March 19, 2012 at 9:05 pm | Permalink | Reply
“You misunderstand, Craig, it’s not about the science of CO2 at all, or any science whatever.
It’s about tenure, salary, sabbatical, funding, conferences, speaking fees, book fees, societal fame, peer influence, peer prestige, and seeing the starry-eyed looks in those young undergrads, maybe, if they are ever lucky enough to be as competent a scientist as Al Gore, a Nobel prize. For the bureaucrats, on the other hand, it’s about sheer power–meaning also position, money, influence. ”
It is pretty clear that you have no ability to discuss the science. The crux of your argument is that climate scientists are just money grubbers who are conspiring to commit a hoax on the public. It amounts to a paranoid conspiracy theory. There is really no evidence of that, but it justifies ignoring the discussion of the scientific evidence.
You have made totally unjustified assumptions about who I am, and what I do for a living, claiming that I incited students to impersonating you online. If you truly are finished with this thread, it is a good thing.
Andrew from MA,
“I doubt the year 2100 will thank you for your efforts, Doctor. Scientist, indeed. Shame on you, sir. You’re just following the implicit “orders” of your academia superiors, I know, but we’ve heard that excuse before, haven’t we?”
It seems that you are unable, or unwilling, to defend the merits of statements made by Monckton, so you are reverting to ad hominem remarks. You make assumption that I am a faculty member at some university, who is federally funded to do climate research. You are making an insulting illusion, implying that the majoirity of climate researchers are behaving like “good Nazis” taking orders despite their doubts about the correctness of their research. You have no evidence for this over the top assumption. It is nothing but a conspiracy theory.
I never claimed to be a professor at a university.
In fact I am retired from my work as an electrical engineer, and have no one giving me orders about what I should believe about global warming. All of your pretentious prose is nothing but blathering trash talk.
Eric Adler March 19, 2012 at 4:50 pm
The problem with your proposition is that decisions are needed even when the future appears uncertain. We can never be totally sure of anything about the future. Since the future is uncertain, more effort, not less effort is needed in order to understand what action to take, or not to take, since there is a possibility that the seriousness of the problem has been underestimated.
============
I agree Dr. Alder and please excuse my earlier informality,
Decisions are needed to mitigate harmful pollution if its mandatory, makable, and realistic. Example: eliminating heavy metals from flue gasses is mandatory for public health reasons, makable, and is realistic (sufficient resources exist including the technology).
Climate Science research is focused on the theory not on the industrial solutions. As Dr. Curry pointed out over a year ago before Congress, climate funding was slated to determine the impact of AGW and that’s exactly what they have received. It was not slated to properly define the climate system. This has turned into a catch 22, the latter is required before the former can be projected with confidence.
From a pragmatic point of view, the current situation is extremely frustrating. Far to much effort is being devoted on the definition of a problem whose true cure is already known and far to little on definitive solutions that simply mitigate environmental impact while addressing other concerns. Concerns like a 21st century energy policy that includes a potable water supply (holistic solutions).
I fully support Climate Research and the pursuit of refined climate models that account for the regional aspects of the global climate system. I do not support bandaid approaches and poorly thought out solutions to mitigating the byproducts of processes.
Lord May, former President of the Royal Society, gave an interesting presentation Science as Organized Skepticism. I ran across it as I was reading Dr. Curry’s article regarding the motto of the Royal Society — Nullius in verba: on the word of no one. Apparently the Royal Society has abandoned the motto for political reasons.
I don’t happen to agree with Lord May regarding consensus but he does lay out the need for complete honesty in scientific research — something the IPCC is having trouble doing. He also does a nice job of discussing the uncertainty issue you mentioned.
Science as Organized Skepticism
By Lord May, Professor at Oxford and former President of the Royal Society
http://downloads.royalsociety.org/audio/DM/DM2010_03/May.mp3
Source article:
Nullius in Verba
by Dr. Judith Curry
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/10/nullius-in-verba/
Eric,
You say:
“The surface temperatures when internal noise variations are subtracted out, do show a global warming signal.”
That is funny. I think you are the only one who is actually making that statement. I mean, look at the darn graph, you are saying that temperature is actually raising? Even CAGW scientists admit that surface temperatures have been flat. As far as “subtracting” things out, I am not sure what you talking about. The graph of surface temperature is pretty clear. If you look at last 10-15 years there had been no warming! If you look at temperatures before, there had been warming. Then it stopped. Everyone who keeps track of temperature show that. Satellites, GISS, NOAA, CRU, everyone. The only argument right now is when did warming stopped exactly – 10, 12, 14 or 15 years ago.
Why? Nobody knows. Models did not predict it. There are no good explanation as to why. During that same time, CO2 had been raising at good speed. If that doesn’t falsify models and whole CAGW “science”, what does?
But we got sidetracked. You made an argument, that Lord Moncton was wrong to state that there had been no warming in last 15 years. But he is absolutely correct, and it is you who are wrong.
You are making argument that he is wrong, because there are other indicators that show that warming had continued. Unfortunately, none of those indicators are commonly accepted as such. So, until we have, for example, good quality data on total ocean heat content, for hundreds of years, you CAN NOT use it as a proof of anything.
Incidentally, can you cite a reference to a “subtraction method” you talking about, the peer-reviewed one, which would put warming back into last decade?The one that based on real temperature measurements, not models? I’d genuinely like to know. In fact, I’m sure pretty much every CAGW scientist want to know. With something like that, you would be able to prove your point. So, please show it.
“While Central England temperatures increased 4F, the best estimate of the global temperature increase in the 40 years ending in 1735 was about 0.4F ten times smaller that what Monckton calls a proxy.”
Right. Are you aware of Mann’s “Nature Trick” to “Hide the Decline”? This is the trick he used to hide the fact that trees were not showing temperature increase in 20th century, but were showing temperature decline. No-one knows why. They just do. Yet, only few trees in Yamal, Siberia, are used as proxy for WORLD temperature for last thousands of years. The “scientists” conveniently do not talk about it. They use “tricks” to hide that. And you are complaining about Central England? The selectiveness of your argument is mind boggling. Central England might not be a very good proxy for the world, but it is all that we have. The real deal. The actual thermometers. Not the black magic of tree-rings. Nothing else is direct measurements. Why is it that you think that “best estimates”, as you call them, better than actual measurements?
“The fact that CO2 increases do not lead temperature increases is because during the ice ages, CO2 in the atmosphere was delayed feedback, which amplified climate change rather than a trigger for climate change. It was a result of warming and a cause of further warming. ”
Let me make a few questions, and then offer answers.
The questions are – What had caused ice ages? What made earth to come out of them? If there are no all-powerfull CO2 to cause them or to come out of them what did it? And How do you know that CO2 feedback was present and did anything at all?
Here are the answers – Some say it was sun. Some say asteroid impact. I say it was those dang Flinstones in their stone cars who did it. In reality – we do not know.
You make it sounds like we do, but we really do not.
Why would someone make a claim that there are feedbacks? Well, that because they use models. And guess what – those models have those positive CO2-H2O feedbacks built into them. So of course they show feedback effect. And since we can not go back in time, the “CAGW scientists” make it sound like an absolute truth. But here is the problem – the model have no predictive skill. None. They all had failed.
None of them had predicted recents temperature flattening. They all show temperature increase during last 15 years. And it didn’t happen. I do not know what kind of science you working with, but in my area – engineering – that means hat models are falsified. Done, finished. No amount of hand-waving, or pulling other metrics out of your … neither region, can save them. The models DID NOT PREDICT LAST 15 YEARS. And this is what Moncton was talking about. This, al in itself, enough to take down whole CAGW house of cards.
“It is appalling to me how such fallacious thinking pervades among so called “skeptics”.”
Yeah, right.
udar @March 19, 2012 at 11:26 pm
The data shows actually that you are wrong when you say no global warming in the past 15 years. The best fit straight line through the last 15 years has a positive slope. It is wrong to look at the noise in year to year variations in global temperature to draw your conclusions.
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/petergleick/files/2012/02/GlobalT-15yrs.png
I did provide a reference for the method of subtracting the internal variation in the earth’s temperature in an earlier post. Here is another one:
tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-real-global-warming-signal/.
Your criticism of models is also off base. The models are not able to predict volcanic eruptions and El Nino events. When the models are adjusted for these events. They also are unable to predict the economic systems well enough to determine human emissions, so the results are based on scenarios of what might happen. Looking at hindcasts, and adjusting the models to reflect the forcings that really occurred in the past, they models seem to be pretty good.
Check out figure 3 of this following link.
skepticalscience.com/hansen-1988-prediction-advanced.htm
The causes of the most recent ice ages is understood, and I alluded to them in previous posts. The Milankovich cycles, which are predictable variations in the earths orbital precession and axis tilt change the pattern of radiation on earth and trigger warming or cooling events. There are no papers claiming it was variations in solar radiance or asteroids. The radiation pattern change by itself cannot account for the amplitude of the global temperature changes detected by the ice cores. Changes in albedo and CO2 emission and absorption provide the feedback that accounts for the amplitude of the temperature variations during the ice ages. Here is a reference which provides details and links to peer reviewed papers on this subject.
skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature-intermediate.htm
The image of a “house of cards” is not an accurate one for climate science. AGW has many different supports from physics, satellite observations and paleoclimatology. An overwhelming majority of climate scientists, about 70%, support the position of the IPCC, or believe the predictions of clmate change are too conservative according to the poll performed by Pielke and Annan.
I hope that you learn something from the exchanges on this thread. However, I realize that information which contradicts strongly held opinions by someone, is almost always rejected as false or ignored rather than understood. This has happened so far as I can tell.
Said by: Eric “…you are wrong when you say no global warming in the past 15 years.” “The best fit straight line through the last 15 years has a positive slope.”
Buzzzz, wrong-O Eric.
Udar is correct there hasn’t been; because what little upward temperature change that AGW pro-pundits have claimed is Statistically Insignificant. If AGW pro-pundits were ethical and moral scientists they would have noted that fact. (So much for honest debate.)
Further, the AGW pro-pundits would be using the raw temperature data corrected downward for urban heat island effect, instead of using positively biased temperatures, coupled with Lemon picking of stations. Finally, if the AGW pro-pundits had even one ounce of integrity they would acknowledge that claiming even 0.5 degree C of accuracy is unscientific; since in general 70% of weather stations have at least 2.0 degree C of error. In general, only 7.4% of weather stations have an accuracy that is below 1.0 degree C.
As for your (Eric’s) claimed positive slope (0.12 degree C), that slope runs counter to the negative slope found when using HadCRUT data from 1995 to present. With HadCRUT data showing a negative slope of 0.14 degree C (a downward trend). Given, this value is also outside the accuracy of the majority of Weather Stations – it comes down to a draw.
But that draw does mean the proponents of AGW loose their claim that man-made CO2 is causing Global Warming.The evidence being CO2 levels have continued to climb, whereas Global temperatures have remained neutral.
For Education of Prof. Donald Rodbell and student Erin Delman, not to mention a few others…
“… the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.
The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html#ixzz1pfve8nmG
Can’t help but wonder why the Met Office and UEA/CRU released such great news “without fanfare”?
Should not the claimers of AGW be gladly relieved and celebrating:
a) man was not the problem (although Mann was) -and-
b) global temperatures are not rising (let alone jumping like a hockey stick)?
Note to Red-Tape Bureaucrats at the E.P.A. —- CO2 is NOT a hazardous gas.
Darren Potter March 20, 2012 at 12:50 pm | Permalink | Reply
“Said by: Eric “…you are wrong when you say no global warming in the past 15 years.” “The best fit straight line through the last 15 years has a positive slope.”
Buzzzz, wrong-O Eric.
Udar is correct there hasn’t been; because what little upward temperature change that AGW pro-pundits have claimed is Statistically Insignificant. If AGW pro-pundits were ethical and moral scientists they would have noted that fact. (So much for honest debate.) ”
As a matter of fact, when asked about the amount of warming last 15 years, Phil Jones, who is reviled by the AGW deniers as dishonest, said honestly that the warming trend was there but not statistically significant, but just barely. That is the situation. It is indeed wrong to say that there has been no global warming in the past 15 years because the statistics do not enable you to make that statement. The slope is actually positive.
“Further, the AGW pro-pundits would be using the raw temperature data corrected downward for urban heat island effect, instead of using positively biased temperatures, coupled with Lemon picking of stations. Finally, if the AGW pro-pundits had even one ounce of integrity they would acknowledge that claiming even 0.5 degree C of accuracy is unscientific; since in general 70% of weather stations have at least 2.0 degree C of error. In general, only 7.4% of weather stations have an accuracy that is below 1.0 degree C.”
The Berkley project run by professor Muller, reported on their analysis which used all the stations they could find. Their method was endorsed by the famous global warming denier, Anthony Watts. The came to the conclusion that the existing land temperature records, NCDC, GISS and Hadcrut were valid, and that the Urban heat Island effect has not had a significant effect on the temperature record. When their conclusions were announced, Watts was embarrassed because it knocked down his thesis that bad stations and the UHI make the data unreliable. References to the BEST project have disappeared from his web site in recent months.
Asking scientists to read the London Daily Mail to get their information is nonsensical. In fact, analysis of the upcoming decline in solar intensity indicates a temperature reduction of 0.06 to 0.1K by 2100. This is not going to usher in “the mini ice age” suggested by the Daily Mail, based on conversations with unnamed scientists from NASA.
agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2011JD017013.shtml
A search of the NASA web site for “solar cycle 25″ shows only one paper published in 2006, which does predict a a very weak cycle 25, but no projection of the effect on the earth’s climate.
One thing to note about the last 15 years is there was a strong El Nino at the beginning of this period, which boosted the global temperatures enormously, and ended with a weak solar cycle and a La Nina which made the earth much cooler. Despite this, 2010 was the warmest on record according to the latest Hadcrut4 data and 2005 the second warmest. Please show me the graph which proves that there has been a cooling trend over the past 15 years.
metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2012/hadcrut-updates
As far as agreement with models is concerned, this shows the IPCC models are in pretty good agreement with the data.
realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/02/2011-updates-to-model-data-comparisons/
Eric,
Looks like this it. You won.
My reply to you had been in moderation for a whole day, and it doesn’t looks like its coming out of it. You must be awfully proud of your side.
All the best.
Eric
“Every statement that he makes is either misdirection, a logical fallacy, or contrary to facts”
Easily falsifiable, ie nonsense. Maybe you should start by looking up the word ‘every’ … (the others might be on the too difficult yet)
Specific examples?
Over 97% of the comments here go against the opinion of the authors.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/21/gmu-on-climate-scientists-we-are-the-97/
Are these the 97% you speak of?
Students of Union College:
Professor Rodbell is letting you down. He is inviting you to settle for less than you might otherwise acheive. He accepts the concensus, and declares, “the science is over.” Great scientists, no, great people, don’t hear that there is a concensus, then say, “Oh, well, the concensus has been reached. Nothing to see here. Move along.” No, they challenge the concensus. Great things come from challenging the concensus, from questioning the status quo, from not accepting business as usual.
Do the science, study the data, reach your own conclusions. Don’t allow your professors to talk you into believing the science says something that it does not.
Who funds Monckton’s campaign? I know the scientists are mostly funded by the Federal Government and list their funding agencies in their reports – Monckton should show where he gets his funds from.
Monckton is a private individual. Where he gets his funding from is none of our business.
Whilst we are on the subject of funding – where does Al Gore get his money from – which enables him to fly around the world in his private jet giving lectures on subjects in which he has no qualifications. He retired as Vice-President with something like 2 million dollars in net wealth and is now a billionaire with several homes which produce more carbon than some small towns. His latest purchase on the Californian coast seems at odds with his dire predictions of rises in sea levels doesn’t it? Or James Hansen (a Government employee) who is raking in millions as a speaker at various conferences around the world on Global Warming/Climate Change – is any of this going back to the public who have paid his wages for most of his career and still do!
Or Dr Pachauri the Railway Engineer who heads up that august body the IPCC – his income certainly isn’t entirely derived from his sinecure at the UN – the money that allows his to fly from New York to India and back just to watch his national cricket team practice. Read up on his association with the petroleum industry and government grants to companies he is involved with.
If the source of funding indeed drives the position of a proponent then the findings of a company that receives funding from the following organizations would be suspect:
British Petroleum (Petroleum , Methane), Royal Dutch Shell (Petroleum, Methane), UK Nirex Ltd (Nuclear Waste), Tate and Lyle (Food to Ethanol), Broom’s Barn Sugar Beet Research Centre (Food to Ethanol), Greenpeace International (Political Action), World Wildlife Fund for Nature (Political Action), Sultanate of Oman (Liquefied Methane), Norwich Union (Insurance), Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates (Insurance) , KFA Germany (Nuclear Power), National Power (Rechargeable Exotic Batteries), etc.
What organization is it that has received for many years and continues to receive funding from these (Big Oil, Nuclear, Food to Ethanol, Exotic Battery, Insurance and Political Action) companies?
It is The Climate Research Unit at the University of East Angela (where Phil ‘Hide the decline ‘Jones works).
If you are surprised then you do not understand why you have been deceived. All of the above companies (including the CRU itself) profit from the Carbon Dioxide causes Global Warming conjecture, all of them
See for yourself: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history
Wow – seems like you guys do care where the money comes from! So my questions still stands, where does Monckton get his money from? Oh, and by the way, Gore is not a climate scientist and as the article says:
“Serious scientific debate cannot be carried out in the blogosphere, nor in highly charged and politically motivated presentations either by Lord Monckton or by Al Gore.”
Neither of these guys are qualified.
[Neither of these guys are qualified.]
Is a librarian qualified to hand out a reading list?
Is a reading list qualified to indicate a list of papers?
Is a paper qualified to present observations from nature?
It is after all just some wood pulp and ink
The name and background of the student reading a paper is irrelevant, only the content is significant.
The name and background of the person presenting a speech is irrelevant, only the content is significant.
To attacking the messenger is to concede an inability to refute the content of the message.
And, by what accreditations are you are is qualified to write that they are not qualified?
What exactly are your qualification qualifications?
What peer-reviewed literature have you published on the assessment of qualifications?
Or do you just ‘believe’ they are not qualified to make presentations.
Please tell me that Professor Rodbell and Ms. Delman are not really involved in the earth sciences? I am very curious how a department chair and a professor of Geology could ever allow themselves to be so taken in by the CAGW scam.
Geology is a solid respectable science with a very long pedigree. Whether one is analyzing molecular ratios or determining the age a particular strata all geologists are very aware that there is no such thing as settled science. Tell me Professor Rodbell, what is your response to someone who believes amethyst or any other rock heals them? Do you personally wonder if the amethyst is natural or manmade or just why these people have such belief in colored stones? Please also tell me, when faced with a person who believes in beneficial mineral harmonics and that person tells you that 97% of the mineral specialists they know agree with them, do you bow to their consensus? When this admittedly mythical person, but still is factually based on people I’ve met, assures you they’ve read published papers verifying the rocks beneficial qualities and these papers are all reviewed by experts in the field; do you sigh with relief because the science is settled?
I think what bothers me most is that you espouse irrational beliefs about the science of earth’s climate and you hold these beliefs in your position as a department chair. Does that mean you mark down or discourage students from open ended scientific research that depends on full release of research and independent duplication and verification?
Postulating the what if’s that impact students because you hold what amount to climate religious beliefs and your positions of professorship and department chair is a very scary undertaking. Your whole rebuttal in the school’s newspaper depends on multiple ad hominem, strawmen, demeaning implications that are all delivered in a sneering condescending attitude. I assume you were the professor who questioned Lord Monckton during the presentation? If so, your above false rebuttal is a very sad and unprofessional self solace in response to your absolute inability to find any real flaw in Lord Monckton’s presentation. Whether during Lord Moncton’s talk itself or afterward during what must’ve been your period of soul searching for coming across as such a fool in public. What is very sad is that the fool came across as very unamerican and very anti-science.
How anti-climatic, the nadir of Union College’s earth science department and the department chair’s childish rant. Grow up! Promote science, not the consensus version of don’t ask, don’t tell science, but the science of ask, study, learn and if possible contribute!
“without wading through the numerous inaccuracies and misstatements made by Lord Monckton, which would likely exceed the space allotted for this article and the interest level of the reader, we will point out that, in fact, Lord Monckton has no interest whatsoever in pursuing a truly scientific approach to examining the question of global climate change.”
Good Grief!….. The arrogance inherent in Rodbell’s statement above is breathtaking… He waves away the opportunity to address the “numerous inaccuracies and misstatements” made by Lord Monckton and instead indulges in a banal ad homenum attack on Monckton!… but not only that, Rodbell assumes that we, “the reader” are so lacking in attention span that we would loose interest in a structured criticism of Lord Monckton’s presentation, the very thing Rodbell was supposed to be doing. The whole point of the exercise of his putting pen to paper….. So not only does Rodbell insult Lord Monckton, he insults the intelligence of anyone reading his article.
The guy does nothing but bask in the amniotic fluid of his own hubris….
J.Hansford
“Rodbell assumes that we, “the reader” are so lacking in attention span that we would loose interest in a structured criticism of Lord Monckton’s presentation”
I think you are missing the point. The ‘readers’ Rodbell and Delman are addressing and appealing to are most likely just as they describe them. Very likely the authors are too, because their ‘arguments’ have exactly the very same ring to it: Repetition of assertions you just want to believe, but never bothered to check, nor compare to what they supposedly addressed (and probably couldn’t evaluate whose side had more merit, even if you tried).
Appeal to authority is what the ‘argument’ is about, since they lack the capability to argue or address the issue and the facts. It explains both how they arrived at where they are, and why they hope to argue their position by just restating: ‘Because I said so .. trust me, other’s have told me so!’
This explains a lot – from Wikipedia:
Mentally, Graves’ disease can be very disturbing. Mood swings, thinking impairment and other mental symptoms can be difficult to handle, and make it appear that the patient is suffering from a severe mental disorder. There have even been cases where patients have been placed in mental institutions. Given the sometimes dramatic impact and long duration of the disease and its treatment, identifying and maintaining emotional support systems (which are frequently affected) can help patients and their families cope. Because emotional lability of the thyrotoxic patient may create interpersonal problems (often producing significant marital stress and conflict), thorough explanation of the disease can be invaluable. In Graves’ disease, the accent should lie on written information, as a host of mental problems, such as decreased attention span and memory problems, can impair a patient’s ability to absorb details of doctor visits. In a complicated and difficult illness like Graves’ disease, physicians should therefore furnish patients with educational materials or resources such as handouts, website links and community support groups.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graves%27_disease
Have a look at Notable cases.
Is that the best you’ve got Fred?
Fred said (Mar17 2012 11.30 pm:
“…..decreased attention span and memory problems can impair a patient’s ability to absorb details…”
Not sure I get your point Fred. Given Monckton’s ability to deliver long and complicated addresses, replete with intricate scientific detail, and including all relevant references, I suspect you are implying the possibility that there has been a misdiagnosis in the case of Lord Monckton’s suffering from Grave’s disease?
Perhaps you think that science is not settled, or that he is an exception to the ‘accepted’ rule?
Ah, science is so complicated, isn’t it?
I see not many warmists here, hello where are you all, Oh I see there is on called Fred, who can only go on about Lord Monckton having Graves’ disease, so that is it Fred?Nothing intelligent to say, oh I see wiki, great source of one sided alarmist information on CAGW too. Typical, abuse is always the warmist way. Pathetic!.
@Fred, thank you for showing the world how messed up you alarmists are and how you’ll stoop to anything pursuant of your cause. Disgusting. Why don’t you try arguing the science instead of taking pot shots at people with disabilities. Monckton’s mental prowess is well known. What’s wrong with you people?
Erin Delman is a mini-Al Gore “do as I say, not as I do” type. If we really want to save the planet from global warming, how about this idea? No one can attend university further than 100 miles from their home. Oops, Erin, that means you! No more energy wasting cross country trips between New York and California. There are plenty of universities in California. There is no need for Erin to attend school in New York. It is just preference on her part. Her use of carbon spewing jets on the trips home don’t count…because she REALLY care about the environment. Sure she does!
Hello Ted,
Allow me to elucidate my environmentalism for you. I enrolled at Union as a pre-med student, and knew relatively little about the quantitative impact my actions had on the environment. I am now well aware of the implications of air travel on my carbon footprint. As a matter of fact, I frequently calculate my resource usage on the internet, and at my level resource consumption, we would need 2.6 planet Earths to support 7 billion people. So, rest assured that I am uniquely cognizant as to my impact on this planet, and I take all action possible to reduce it. What I find so disconcerting about your comments on this and past articles, as well as comments from all those who disagree with Don and me, is the lack of civility. Why, exactly, do people find a need to be so mean? “Ronald Dumbell,” “incompetent,” etc…how can decent human beings with a sense of propriety find this acceptable, particularly those who espouse a need for openmindedness and public debate. I appreciate your comments, but please make an effort to infuse them with intellectual discourse; without such a conscious attempt, the blogosphere quickly devolves into a playground cat fight.
Why is it mean to say “incompetent”, but ok to say:
“…hosting Lord Monckton…..we were not quite sure how to respond. Frankly, the sentiment vacillated between UTTER DISGUST and sheer anger.” [emphasis mine]
???
Erin,
Good on you for engaging here. I agree, the reviews have been somewhat harsh, but so were your statements about Lord Monckton. I would suggest you still know little about your impact on our planet. Perhaps even less about the coupled nonlinear dynamics of our climate. If you do understand, then I do not see how you can be so confident in your opinions on this matter.
I would suggest Dr Judith Curry’s blog “Climate etc.” to understand the science of climate. Some of the key issues are sensitivity, chaos, structural stability, and clouds. There are many other issues that both sides obsess about such as the HS and exactly how much temperature has risen in the last 150 years, but they make little difference to the science.
Erin, it’s funny, but having followed this debate for years, I was thinking that this comment thread was one of the more civil given most others.
But more to the point, after all the comments correctly noting that your “rebutal” was essentially an appeal to authority and totally unsubstantiated assertions that Monkton is wrong, do you not have anything substantive to add to your piece? Nothing but complaints about “meaness” after you wrote how Monkton’s visit caused you to feel anger and disgust?
Pot, meet kettle? (Except in this instance, Monkton has been incredibly patient, polite, and NOT uncivil)
Erin, thanks for having guts to answer.
You say:
“So, rest assured that I am uniquely cognizant as to my impact on this planet, and I take all action possible to reduce it. ”
What kind of actions? Are you buying carbon indulgences (sorry, offsets) when you travel or are you transferring to college closer to home?
“What I find so disconcerting about your comments on this and past articles, as well as comments from all those who disagree with Don and me, is the lack of civility Why, exactly, do people find a need to be so mean?”
Erin, let me elucidate for you the reasons why some of us find it difficult to be civil. It’s the language you use when addressing us that makes us a little bit upset. You know, something like:
“Frankly, the sentiment vacillated between utter disgust and sheer anger. On one hand, it seemed ludicrous to give Monckton a second of time or thought. … he would have an impact, and a dangerous one at that.”
You really don’t see a problem here, do you?
To further elucidate you, people who are accused of being stupid and dangerous are generally not very happy about it. Even nice, polite people might use words that they would not use otherwise if called thus.
I guess that you thought you were writing this for people who’d agree with you, who’d just laugh about us “flat earthers”, “deniaers/denialists” and such – and so the response had caught you by surprise.
I hope you will get a valuable lesson from this – if you want to have civil discussion, do not frame your opponents like you did in this article. if you do, grow a thicker skin.
Erin Delm March 18, 2012 at 1:53 pm | Permalink | Reply
Hello Ted,
Allow me to elucidate my environmentalism for you.
============
Based on your comments, I’m more than a bit surprised you’re not focusing on Ecology. You’re citing factors which impact the environment without regard for appropriate solutions. I encourage you to consider the following research which was sponsored by the DOE.
http://youtu.be/KTtmU2lD97o
Let’s stop the urban myth of “97 percent of climate scientists agree that man made global warming is real.”
(With apologies to meteorologist Art Horn for paraphrasing from him…)
In the survey cited there were two key questions asked, ‘Compared to pre-1800 levels, do you think mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?’ (This is obviously a loaded question as we have constantly warmed coming out of the Little Ice Age in the 1850s.)
Question number two was even more suspect, ‘Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures? (What is ‘significant’ 25%, 50% 75%?)
The 97% figure from the survey comes from a whittling down of the accepted number of responses from 3,146 to 79. The 79 scientist are those that said they have recently published 50% of their papers in the area of climate change. Of these, 76 of 79 answered “risen” to questions one (96.2%).
It is interesting that of the 36 meteorologists who responded to question number two, only 23 of 36 or 64% thought that human activity was a “significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures”. The authors dismiss this group of trained atmospheric scientists outright even though their size is almost half of the 79 climate scientists used in generating the 97% figure! Apparently the 64% number was not convincing enough.
The Global Warming Petition Project has been signed by 31,487 scientist including 9,029 with PHDs in their fields. The petition states that: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that the human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth”. It would appear that there are many well educated people who do not agree with the survey and its 97% figure.
What a tragedy for students at Union College that they’re being taught science by someone who clearly has some fundamental misunderstandings about what science even is.
“what is fundamentally nonscientific about his approach is his unwillingness to publish his own analysis of the global warming.”
Without touching on whether the Lord guy is right or wrong about the climate or whether or not he’s published anything, or has an analysis, I’d just advise fleece vest guy to read up on falsification. It’s an important part of empirical science. You can certainly and conclusively show a hypothesis to be wrong without having to advance your own competing hypothesis. I’m not saying I think the Lord guy has conclusively falsified AGW — I really don’t know — but if fleece vest guy has this very fundamental misunderstanding I don’t know how he’s ever going to come to correct conclusions about the real world. I mean, if fleece vest guy has a hypothesis that his car’s going to reliably start every morning and then one day it doesn’t, and to make matters worse he can’t think of and publish an analysis of why not, is he going to be forced to come to the scientific conclusion that he’s already at work? This is not someone I’d trust to be molding young minds or spending my money for me.
Rodbell
“These aren’t the fact that your looking for”
Students:
“These aren’t the facts that we are lookin for”
Rodbell:
“He should go”
Students:
“You should go”
Delman (aside):
“How did you do that?”
Rodbell (aside):
‘It’s easy to control the simple minds of the storm troppers, in time I will teach you power of the farce”
Editor/proof reader rewrite:
Fr: “These aren’t the fact that your looking for”
To: “These aren’t the fact that you’re looking for” [notice the change to comprehensible meaning?]
The Professor losing his sinecure over this would be no achievement. His seems just typical of the thinking , if we can call it that, that inhabits acadademe these days. He is not one of the perpetrators of the phoney science, the doctored peer review or the misrepresentation of results. He is a mere follower, though clearly not as wise a follower as many of the students he is supposed to be leading.
No, firing him for poor judgement would serve nothing, other than to distract attention from the main suspects, while they still walk free.
Donald Rodbell: Here’s a couple of simple questions for you. What is the level of CO2 in our atmosphere that plants will stop growing. Hint, it’s about 200 ppm less that current levels. Next question. What was the level of CO2 in the atmosphere AND the average global temperature when those huge dinasours were eating all that lush vegetation growing all over our planet. Dont rush now take your time…… and do try the see the significance..
Sir, you are both unbelievably uninformed and also the most arrogant of people.
How much professing does it take to become a professor in US learning institutions anyway?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarly_method
Are there really more professors than real professing going on these days ?
“Why are you trying to shut down debate? Why not engage them with the facts, if the facts are on your side, surely you will win over any level headed person. What makes you so fearful that he will be heard? Let him make a fool of himself.”
Oh, he has, repeatedly. He continues to do so. The facts are, alas, not on his side.
I understand that several people are keeping a record of this article and the comments following, should someone decide to ‘disappear it’ in order to save face. Your face-plant will be remembered long after your religion is dead and dust, next to Lysenkoism.
Perhaps next time the two of you will actually attempt to address the ‘errors’ which you don’t even bother to list, in Lord Moncton’s well laid-out argument.
Do you even know how to do so?
Last saved as PDF file on the date/time-stamp of this comment reply.
And again.
In old Europe, we always had this debate shutdown from the climate alarmists, see eg what the totalitarian IPCC vice president van Ypersele,recently did to Fred Singer. But Europe had started 2 world wars !
Please, don’t do it in the US, professor Donald Rodbell, and don’t brainwash your students to do it.
I feel great pity for the two authors of this article, Donald Rodbell and Erin Delman.
Going into a scientific career with a happy acceptance of the status quo means it is likely they will do little to advance the knowledge of the human race.
To blithely go along with the belief that “….The fact of the matter is that science has spoken, the overwhelming bulk of the evidence has shown very, very clearly …” takes an almost religious ‘faith’, especially in an area as complicated and chaotic as trying to model the myriad systems and interactions of an entire planet’s climate system. (And even more so when most of the more serious data collection has only begun in the last 30 years!)
I can only guess they have been thoroughly imbued with the ‘nobleness’ of the cause without stopping to think that we’d be wise to gather data and get the science correct before we commit ourselves to action.
Please calm down, Johnathon. Personally I can see no value in such an attack.
Markx: Why not, he said: “Frankly, the sentiment vacillated between utter disgust and sheer anger. On one hand, it seemed ludicrous to give Monckton a second of time or thought.”
That is an attack as well.
I wonder why your name is so? Are you proud of it? Do you know your history Markx?
Jonathan, it is a valid point, and it has been made on a number of Skeptic blogs.
I won’t be surprised if, upon seeing this comment thread, rodbell and delman begin to twitter that they are now receiving ‘hate’ mail. They’ve got to maintain the fiction, dontcha know.
Johnathon.
The advice was meant kindly. There usually some advantage in holding the ‘moral high ground’.
But, re names: I must ask, is personal attack your default method of debate?
[A lord’s opinion can’t compete with scientific truth]
That statement illustrates you your cognitive system.
A scientist is always trying to understand observations and measurements from nature in order to postulate their relationships and make useful predictions that lead to understanding. There is no ‘truth’ in nature; ’truth’ is a construct of the human mind. Truth is a concept which requires and is enclosed by a dogmatic belief system; truth is not a scientific thing.
“The opposite of a correct statement is an incorrect statement. The opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth”: Niels Bohr
Once you understand the above quote you will understand the difference between science and religion. You may not think of yourself as having a dogmatic belief system, but your writing indicates otherwise.
We all know that this is not from CO2 levels. Although there are reports of pirates from some place called Somalia, we know the absolute number of pirates on the whole plane of the Earth circling the sun has decreased over the ~6000 year history of the planet. This decrease in the number of pirates is the cause of the temperature increase. So the warming is caused by man, not fossil fuels. This is well documented. See: http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter
Also, I completely agree with the Lord. Scientific consensus is more often wrong than not. These claims of large metal flying objects called airplanes are absurd. Everyone knows that such an object would not be able to fly without magic and that magic is not real, so by any deduction flying large metal objects is not true. Are we to believe that magic is real? Even the inventor of the Kelvin temperature scale, Kelvin himself wrote in 1895: “”Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” Such a Lord could not be wrong. The director of the US naval observatory also wrote in 1902: “Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.” (see ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/09/lord-kelvin-1895-heavier-than-air.html). You’d have to be an uneducated idiot to think we could fly such objects. Also, “people” talk about flying around the world. How can someone even fly around something that is flat? There is plenty of evidence that the world is flat: http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm These scientists are criminal. They should be jailed. This is including all medical doctors that use the “scientific method” and approve procedures through consensus. I think we should all boycott all doctors. Do not seek medical assistance, they are ALSO scientists! I am outraged. Jail the scientists! Bring back the dark ages. They were much cooler!
WTF?
I think he is trying to pass himself off as a Skeptic… or he is being sarcastic. Which way he is being sarcastic, is hard to tell.
He is right about the Dark Ages, though, it was a period of cooling, similar if not as deep as the LIA.
I haven’t clicked on his links. If he is what I think he is, they likely go to porn. I’ve gotten a lot of such links from AGW believers.
In an article whose title talks of truth, why base your whole argument on a lie?
“97 percent of scientists overwhelmingly oppose his viewpoint”
Wow. That is the worst misrepresentation of that statistic that I have ever seen. OK, for a start even the frauds who came up with the statistic didn’t claim 97% of scientists. In fact their dishonest method of coming up with the 75 people representing 97% of 77 relied on the sample being recently-published climate “scientists” (sorry, as a graduate of a real scientific discipline, Earth Sciences, at one of the world’s great universities, I cannot in honesty call some of them scientists myself; I accept only their self-proclaimed status).
Just for the facts: two questions were asked from the answers to which this figure was taken, one as to whether the Earth had warmed and one as to whether man’s carbon dioxide emissions had a “significant” effect on this.
Firstly, for a given definition of “significant” (none was given in the survey) very few sceptics would give a different answer to warmists to these questions. Lord Monkton would probably have answered “yes” to both. Most think the Earth was warmer in the 1990s than in the 1850s. Most think that man-made carbon dioxide had some effect, typically put at around half of the actual warming among sceptics.
The dispute is purely over feedback. Very, very few sceptics dispute anything else about the process of greenhouse warming. The survey did not ask about feedback.
Those questions were sent to over 10,000 scientists, over 3,000 of whom responded. Then the next stage of dishonesty started, when these 3,000-odd were whittled down to 77 people, of whom 75 agreed. I am surprised it was not 77. The other two, I can only assume, had opinions on the low side for human influence and the high side for the definition of “significant” or else did not believe the temperature record.
So the statistic of 97% is simply dishonest, in every possible way. To then make it “97% of scientists” is simply a lie. I call on you to retract that lie.
Despite the serious problems with the temperature record in the USA, Canada, Bolivia, the Antarctic, the Arctic, Russia, New Zealand, Australia and all the oceans (i.e. somewhere over 80% of the world’s surface), of the dishonest handling of UHI effect and of the handling of those data by the CRU I still believe that the Earth is warmer now, in general, than in 1850. I don’t attach much meaning to the idea of global mean temperature, because I taught meteorology so I know what a ridiculous concept it is, but I believe that by most measures it would be higher now than 1850. I don’t know how much. I also believe that human influence is responsible for maybe 0.1 to 0.4 degrees of that warming, and that calling this influence significant is reasonable. I expect if we ever have any real idea it will be found to be about half of total warming, That is significant.
So count me with the 77 members of the 97%. Yet I am a confirmed sceptic. I don’t believe there is positive feedback.
The positive feedback as indicated by Doubting Rich is practically refuted by two lines of evidence, first the predicted hot spot in the tropical troposphere cannot be demonstrated to be present and secondly autocorrelation of positive feedback data series should show persistence over several time intervals and this can’t also be demonstrated. See for instance just about all papers of Olavi Karner: http://www.aai.ee/~olavi/
So it doesn’t look that actual sensitive with all feedbacks can exceed one degree per doubling.
Bravo to Lord Monkton and his reasoning. I can envision the Global Warming Alarmists on the Papal Inquistion panel forcing Galileo to recant his theory of heliocentrism. The same dogmatic approach to mythical AGW is the same as a belief in a religion. Other erudite readers above me have eloquently stated the uselessnes of a ‘consensus’ of science – it only takes one scientist to be right to revolutionize thought. The heterodoxy of the past often becomes the orthodoxy of the future. Once one understands that the AGW issue is not scientific, but political in nature, it becomes clear.
If one notices closely, there are no socialists (except, perhaps, for Hugh Chavez) or communists or fascists professing their beliefs as a political philosophy any more, as it is no longer popular; they’ve become ‘Progressives’ and ‘environmentalists’. ‘Environmentalism’ is nothing more than an attempt to collectively control people based on central planning. If you study your history, the KGB of the old Soviet Union encouraged and funded the ‘Green’ movements of the 1970′s and 1980′s as they saw them as an effective way to destabilize capitalism and the western democracies. Unfortunately for them, their country fell apart before the fruits of their labors could be harvested, which, unfortunately, is apparently happening now. As Lord Monkton pointed out, most of the misery over the past 100 years on this planet have been at the hands of leftist political movements of which ‘environmentalism’ is one the latest incarnations. While Lenin’s apocryphal term ‘Useful Fools’ might be not be accurate, certainly Ludwig Von Mises’ ‘useful innocents’ can be used is to describe the ‘confused and misguided’ adherents of AGW. If critical thinking and logic were still effectively taught in our universities, AGW may not have as much traction as it has today. Why the philosophy of environmentalism must be stopped is that even if AGW exists, its effects are lost in the noise of normal climatic change and the plans to try to reverse any AGW will be ineffective and will result in untold costs and calamity for the world’s population.
Bob: Well said. Also: The Russian revolution was “made by Jewish brains, Latvian bayonets, and Russian stupidity.”
Great to see a libertarian viewpoint. We need more of that.
[“Serious scientific debate cannot be carried out in the blogosphere…]
This article is not about ‘Serious scientific debate … in the blogosphere’ it is about freedom of speech, freedom of thought without persecution and freedom of assembly. The people that freely assembled to hear the presenter speak did so in an auditorium, not the blogosphere. I suspect that even you might agree that school auditoria are places for ‘Serious scientific debate’.
I understand two view points on the conjecture that: human reintroduced atmospheric carbon dioxide causes catastrophic global warming, were presented consecutively in two different auditoria so all could attend both presentations. It is unfortunate that both presentations were not combined in to a formal debate. Such an arrangement would have given the authors of this article an opportunity to present different observations and measurements form nature to support their position.
What I do not see in this school papers ‘Opinion’ section is a corresponding condemnation of the second presentation that included views that were contradictory to the one that is the topic of this article.
Why is that?
I’m guessing that “John” is another tenured member of the Union College faculty.
Or is that you, Dr. Rodbell, having finally come to join us?
This professor & student present an argument that is almost as coherent as those from the occupy Wall Street movement. I understand their commitment to the “cause” and their anger, but their arguments are weak and underscore their lack of understanding of the issues.
Monkton’s claims are generally fallacious. They are so numerous, that refuting them will obviously take too much time and space to be done in a single post. Let us look at a couple of paragraphs in his comment above.
“The world is not warming at present. It has not been warming for almost a decade and a half, though it has been warming since 1695.”
The best estimate of the earth’s warming is the total heat increase in the oceans. This has shown a considerable increase in the last decade and a half even though the record is noisy:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/fake-predictions-for-fake-skeptics/
“In the 40 years to 1735, before the Industrial Revolution even began, the temperature in Central England (not a bad proxy for global temperatures) rose by 4 Fahrenheit degrees, compared with just 1 F° in the whole of the 20th century.”
How can a single small area like Central England be used as a proxy for global temperatures? This is clearly unscientific nonsense.
“ Climatic patterns are indeed changing. But they have been changing for 4,567 million years, and they will go on changing long into the future. However, the fact of climate change does not tell us the cause of climate change.”
In fact, based on paleontological studies, CO2 has been shown to be a cause of climate change in the past. In some cases it was heavy emissions from volcanoes that increased global temperatures, in other cases it was absorption by weathering of rocks that drove decreases in CO2.
“ Humans are indeed exercising some influence. Indeed, though the Professor implies otherwise, I stated explicitly in my lecture that the IPCC might be right in saying that more than half of the warming since 1950 was caused by us. However, that tells us little about how much warming we may expect in future. My best estimate is that the CO2 we add to the atmosphere this century will cause around 1 C° of warming by 2100. But that is not far short of the IPCC’s own central estimate of 1.5 C°.”
The quotation of the IPCC’s central estimate is clearly incorrect based on what the IPCC’s report says. Check out the 6 model ensembles which estimate temperature change by year 2100, based on different scenarios. The median estimate for the scenario with the SMALLEST temperature change is 1.5 C°. The median estimate of all the six scenarios is about 2.75-3C°, and the 1 sigma uncertainty for the worst case extends to 6 C°.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-10-26.html
Note that CO2 is not the only GHG that the IPCC looks at. The models include NO2 and CH4, as well as the cooling effect of SO2.
Judging from this small sample, every point that Monckton makes is incorrect based on the scientific record. The sheer number of errors, misrepresentations and fallacies in one of his talks is mind boggling. This is what fuels the outrage among scientists.
Oh Dear !
Where’s the Climate Rapid Reaction Force when you need them, with their ad homs & non sequiturs?
To busy falsifying evidence no doubt.
How can you tell when someone is lying about the climate … they quote the 97% figure or call us deniers.
I can be 99.7% sure that if Lord Monckton were asked whether it had warmed since the end of the little ice-age, he would like this 97% agree.
The big question is why were 3% of respondents unable to answer yes? Perhaps they saw it was a con and refused to comply with the idiotic question? Perhaps like all the temperature records, they made a mistake?
This has been hilarious to watch… Now that the authors have been sufficiently softened up by that amazing brow-beating, hopefully both of them will make the effort to study the science adequately to present a coherent argument (which could take many years by the looks of it, and I’m an optimist).
Arguing with Monckton is like playing chicken with a freight train. The only safe outcome is to walk away before you find yourself in the proverbial train wreck, which would have been the advisable strategy. It’s a little late as they attempt to disentangle themselves from the twisted wreckage of their ignorance of the science. It seems by their silence that they may have decided to “shut up” rather than “put up”.
Arguing with Monckton is actually like trying to make an insane man understand the voices are not real. You are right, Monckton is a train wreck! Wow.
I’m sure the student and professor have just been watching the views increase on their article, laughing at the absurdity of the Mockton cronies.
There’s a lot of laughing going on, that’s for sure, though I suspect Dr. Rodbell might not be happy when he realizes he’s made himself the target of the jest.
Certainly, I chuckled out loud reading your comment above, so many thanks for contributing to the humor index.
This issue is far less complicated than it appears. Yes, sure, climatology can be a legitimate science, if it acts like other sciences, but currently it doesn’t. Currently, it’s a taxation-related scheme supported by old and new corporate industries, market speculators, local and national governments, scores of parasitical and state-sponsored NGOs and the UN. None of the big names, big conventions, flag-waving, Panda-bear peddling, threats, promises and naked can a make a pseudoscience into a science. “Follow the money” and see who profits (we’re talking about the billions in PR and subsidies, not The Heartland Institute’s piddly pittance).
The science behind all this is important, of course, but the crucial battle is not over the science, which the Warmists have trampled underfoot. The mad rush to scare people, to trash opposing or even mildly skeptical views and to urge (very selective) action…”now-now-now!”…is what should set everyone’s alarms buzzing. A tiny community of bureaucrats and state-supported scientists have suddenly become unquestionable experts in a new field, and get to determine not only what science is and when it’s supposed to be settled, but to plan domestic and international policy affecting billions of people and trillions of dollars. If that sounds reasonable and seems fair, then I have no further arguments to make.
As for those current students of Doctor Rodbell’s who understandably realized with this incident that the chap is clearly not up to the rigorous challenges of science (I’d hire him for social activism, PR or marketing, though), they should submit the article with a request to have their course fees refunded. Such worked for me about 20 years ago with an embarrassed department of history at a major Canadian university when one of my profs turned out to be a has-been who tried to revive his mediocrity and professional decline by turning himself into a hip, politicised, pseudoscientific crank.
Monckton is not a bureaucrat, why are you attacking him like this?
Fred – what’s your problem. Lord Monckton is a Lord and Lords are not insane or train wrecks – Lords are honorable people and can’t be wrong. Get with it dude. Even Lord Kelvin who invented your temperature scale we all argue about was a Lord. Stick that in your hat Fred. BTW – my links are not to porn, but point to the real science!
Does Dr Rodbell know that a Freshmen is impersonating him, and writing editorials pretending to be a college professor?
Or – is the state of “Earth Science” so low – that this is a real professor at a supposed real University?
Monkton was too kind in his response – if this is the real Dr Rodbell, whatever institution gave him that degree, and certainly Union for hiring him – should be under deep suspicion. Unless he just went off his medication last week – plenty of people should have been aware of this pretender to “science”.
A weak article – but understandable – if written by a freshman. But a professor? Writing like some nutter on a blog?
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. And – common.
Well well! It would seem that Dr Rodbell’s gravy train is coming well and truly off the rails! You’ve been rumbled, professor!
As they say, Dr Rodbell, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
I wonder how many decades it will take for the politicians to realise they’ve been sold a pup (they are slow on the uptake, what with not living in the real world), and stop hosing squillions of taxpayers hard-earned money at useless projects to “halt climate change”.
Ha! The arrogance! To think that us mere humans can influence or change the climate anyway!
The Rodbells of this world have already cost more lives than any “climate change catastrophe” could by diverting money and practical solutions away from where needed; where real poverty exists; where people don’t need “green” energy, they need cheap energy.
I completely disagree. If anything, this asinine internet slap fight has made Union earth scientists appear mature and together, while Monckton and his supporters look certifiably insane and completely and utterly rude. Do you all realize that you are supporting a man who parades around as a Lord, although the House of Lords has issued a PUBLIC cease and desist? Fundamentally, on all basic levels, Monckton is a fraud.
Ah, the old “let me redirect your attention to Monckton’s alleged personality defects, and away from the scientific data and reality” argument.
Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll stick to the science.
Monckton has with scientific fact and rigor and humor lampooned and harpooned the catastrophic warmists’ arguments for why they and their funders should be handed control of the world’s productive resources.
Their response? Well, he’s not REALLY a Lord, doncha know.
Pathetic. How about a scientific counterargument, instead? Not so much, eh? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Are you reading the same comment thread that I am reading? While I see a large number of silly or childish remarks. The bulk of the real comments are actually civil and reasonable.
In fact, despite the fact that I have read this far longer than I really have time for, I have yet to find a competent defense of the article in question or a competent rebuttal to Monkton’s original speech. The only civil and meaningful comments on the side of the Professor were generic links to outside sources, and that was in a single reply thread.
Lord Monkton himself gave a detailed reply, but when Ms. Delman came up (the professor is still notably absent), it was barely a few sentences complaining about how uncivil the whole thing was. No defense, no reply. No NOTHING.
Awesome work Delman and Rodbell – more than 4,500 visits to this opinion piece in 11 days! Imagine having a peer reviewed paper cited 4,500 times! You two certainly must have struck some fear-chord in the climate doubter’s world. Seems they are not used to battling educated people who know what they are talking about (probably a result of hanging out with the Lord M or reading his gibberish). Congratulations! You really put the fear of science in them!
Seems they are not used to battling educated people who know what they are talking about…
Interesting theory. I fail to see even one example in the original post that suggests they know what they’re talking about. What aspect of this post suggests a certain level of education or understanding of the topic? Perhaps you see something here that I’m missing.
The only attempt at factual content is the 97% of scientists figure which I assume is meant to suggest that Lord Monkton’s argument is contrary to 97% of scientists. Given the basis of this 97% figure which has been mentioned throughout the comments and elsewhere, you would have to conclude that this figure was intentionally misrepresented and is either an attempt to deceive the reader or that the authors argument was simply unresearched. Not overly impressive by any standard, let alone what we might expect from an academic.
Obviously he’s being sarcastic.. idiots.
Dr. Appleton
March 18, 2012 at 1:24 pm
“Monckton is not a bureaucrat, why are you attacking him like this?”
———————————-
You are either addressing someone other than me, have misunderstood what I wrote, or you’re trying to be clever and funny, but failing at it like John and Fred here, Dr Appleton. In the event it’s the former, no, I didn’t say that Lord Monckton is a bureaucrat. The bureaucrats I refer to are…well…the bureaucrats. The ones who have helped themselves to public money by transfering billions in subsidies to traditional and “green” energy corporations, favoured institutions, select and compliant academia, approved NGOs, cooperating PR and marketing firms and assorted cronies who manged to make out handsomely while the going is still good.
I honestly believe that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Donald Rodbell is an amazing teacher and person. Who are you people to be ripping a widely respected and published scientist apart, not to mention a student? Ignorant conservatives with nothing better to do.
Who are you people to be ripping a widely respected and published scientist apart, not to mention a student?
Have you actually read the comments?
A bit less respected now though i suspect.
The sad fact here is that the claim made for consensus at the end of this editorial is flat out wrong. The actual track record for ‘consensus’ is not only bad, it is atrocious. And for good reason…empirical reality has no connection, whatsoever, with the votes of any demographic on how it operates.
To be examined rationally, each time a ‘consensus’ idea undergoes a single change to accomodate fact…the consensus was WRONG. Allowing ‘consensus’ to also account for every change along the way turns the claims of ‘consensus’ into a useless point…after all, of course anyone claiming to agree with what is correct at any given instant ….will be correct.
The true history of ‘consensus’ is one of failure and being nearly always wrong, as is shown by each and every change necessitated in ‘consensus’ positions over the history of science.
And the saddest part is this…only those who need to use ‘consensus’ to argue a ‘scientific’ point will find this fact the least bit contentious. If you don’t need to use *political* and *social* methods to try to push a ‘scientific’ claim, you don’t need to try and defend ‘consensus’ as anything but what it is…a completely irrelevant, nearly always wrong, demographic snapshot of who believes what when, with zero predictive power, no objective impact on reality itself, and an abysmal track record.
You completely missed the point you buffoon. The consensus they are talking about means the general acceptance of a scientific idea by the scientific community – such as like the consensus that bacteria make us sick (germs) and that washing hands can save lives. In Geology it took a while for the theory of plate tectonics to be accepted (or to reach scientific consensus). Do you not agree with plate tectonics either? Science does work by consensus you idiot.
Anthropogenic climate change has reached consensus – look at any science society’s position statement and you will see this is true. They don’t care about what the non-scientific community’s opinion on the science is. That’s NOT part of the consensus. So in short – you don’t matter.
Ah, it’s Fred again, this time with the universally feared “you buffoon” scientific argument.
Good grief. Please, Fred, tell us you’re not actually an employee or student of Union College.
Or at the very least, for the sake of all the parents paying many thousands of dollars of tuition to Union College, assure us that you are not Professor Donald Rodbell.
“The consensus they are talking about” was a response to two questions (Zimmerman 2008):
1) ‘When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally
risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?’
2) ‘Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?’
I’m a self described skeptic, but I answer yes to both those questions.
“and that washing hands can save lives”
only now they’re suggesting that all the hand washing is weakening our natural resistance to germs, and washing our hands so often may actually be harmful to us in the long term. And the antibiotics we take so liberally are causing standard viruses to mutate and evolve in order to survive, resulting in some new “superbugs” that are much worse than the old viruses they evolved from. There’s nothing wrong with reaching a consensus on a topic. But it is wrong to try and stifle a differing opinion by claiming a consensus has already been reached.
“Donald Rodbell is an amazing teacher and person. Who are you people to be ripping a widely respected and published scientist apart, not to mention a student? Ignorant conservatives with nothing better to do.”
Let’s see what we have here:
Appealing to authority
Appealing to consensus
Ad hominem attacks
Assumptions
And no, I’m not a conservative
If the Lord is so wrong, it shouldn’t be very hard for the professor to provide some examples.
How dare you say the “Lord is so wrong” !!! As a Christian, I am highly offended. You should be ashamed.
Ok, Appleton, stop calling yourself a professor until you can make a cogent argument based on something other than empty rhetoric and faux outrage.
Because Lord is the proper title for a member of the British nobility, such as Viscount Monkton?
Must be one of the “professor’s” “students”.
Probably earned an A for this approach to “science”.
Name calling and pouty looks.
As the “professor’s” note points out – this is an acceptable format for discussion.
A scary sad farce. Not even educated enough to know how silly it looks.
It is scary to think of who “respects” this “scientist”. Mush heads and teenagers?
“Donald Rodbell is an amazing teacher and person. Who are you people to be ripping a widely respected and published scientist apart, not to mention a student? Ignorant conservatives with nothing better to do.”
What is more amazing is how this “widely respected and published scientist ” so nicely plants his own foot into his own mouth !
A beautiful instance of hanging oneself by one’s own petards !
He can’t be tenured, can he………?
Monckton is not tenured. He’s not a professor. He is a Lord! What is wrong with you people?
Heh. Dumbell – good one. I see the wits you speak of.
My argument is that Graves disease explains why He comes across as someone with a severe mental disorder. Have you ever seen this guy speak? He’s completely insane. He doesn’t even understand his own gibberish.
One might suggest that any time one’s argument has fallen to the level of “hey dumbell”, the “dumbell” may be found in the mirror.
Not that I would suggest this. But perhaps a mirror is handy to you? ;-
“Hey dumbell”–really, this is the height of scientific discourse to which Union College aspires? The intellectual standard with which they expect the tuition-paying parents of their students to be satisfied?
Really, Union College? Is there no one from the administration who cares to make a comment on either the piece authored by Rodbell or Delman, or their purported supporters? Do they not realize that this scientific article by their employee and student in the body of a University-controlled publication, if left uncommented by the administration, will be seen as a powerful reflection of Union College itself?
Is there any truly educated individual, with any scientific background whatever, who has the educational interests of their child in mind, who would pay tens of thousands of dollars to send their children to such an institution?
I beseech you, Union College, redeem yourselves. You are better than this.
Andrew, you might want to check the name of the guy Fred was talking to. Just saying
Got it, my bad, missed that joke.
The essence of my remarks stand, however–Fred has throughout this thread made numerous derogatory remarks of this nature (e.g., “you buffoon”), and in so doing has staked out his stature, or lack thereof, in a scientific discussion.
Andrew,
There has been no scientific discussion on this thread as far as I can see. All there has been is invective, most of it emanating from the self styled skeptics, who can see nothing wrong with anything that Monckton says, even though all of it is sheer trash. This kind of talk is what one expects from the posters at WUWT, who are posting on this blog in large numbers. It is useless to attmept to discuss climate science with such people.
Where are your facts, man? Not in that post, that’s for sure.
Really, “all” of what Monckton has to say is “sheer trash”? Every little tiny bit of it? There’s no truth there whatever?
Wouldn’t that make it child’s play to smash his 90+ minute presentation, variations of which he’s been giving for many, many years now?
Then why don’t YOU volunteer to debate him? Shall we await your arrangements in this thread?
When a supposed scientist such as yourself states that it is “useless to attempt to discuss climate science” with ANYONE, even a total layman, particularly in the shadow of the total failure of CAGW models on which billions of dollars have been wasted, and in which total control of the globe’s productive resources are sought by the self-interested and power-hungry, he’s merely showing his unwillingness to engage in science.
And yet despite this you call yourself a scientist? Even a school child can apply the scientific method. In your failure to do so, sir, you hold yourself to an explicitly non-scientific standard. The standard of a “believer”, rather than a “scientist”.
You are, of course, entitled to believe whatever unicorn-style nonsense you like. Those of us who still believe in the scientific method reserve the right to a more rigorous and rational view of the world, of science, and of policy.
Andrew,
Why don’t you take a look at my above post where I take apart 3 of his statements, check out the references and engage in a real discussion. Apparently you have overlooked it.
See Eric Adler March 18, 2012 at 9:03 pm
Why would I bother to review your post and references, when you’ve clearly stated that your position is that Monckton’s presentation is, as you put it so concisely, “all of it is sheer trash.” You say your post contests 3 of his statements. Yet over a 90-plus minute speech he certainly, by my recollection in viewing the video, made many scores of factual and scientific statements, taking on an equal number of extremist warmist alleged facts and statements–and you can find serious debate with three of them? That’s your stand? Seriously? That’s pathetic.
I have reviewed Monckton’s references, in substantial part, and know them NOT to be all “sheer trash”.
A hypothesis–in this case yours–is proven incorrect simply by proving the null. You should know this if you are a scientist of any sort.
You yourself have established your null hypothesis, sir. You claim the entirety of his presentation to “all of it is sheer trash”. Therefore, if ANY part of Monckton’s presentation is true, your hypothesis has failed. THAT is the scientific method.
Since I know at least portions of Monckton’s to be certainly true (and likely, but less certainly, the vast majority of his presentation to be true), your hypothesis as YOU define it has failed without me needing to make the effort to follow up on your alleged “scientific” work. I need not even get to the total failure of all the IPCC models to accurately predict even their most conservative claims–that lies outside your specific hypothesis.
Again, if Monckton’s presentation is entirely a falsification of reality, how soon can we look forward to your debate with him?
(Heaven forbid, it suddenly occurs to me–are you ALSO a tenured professor at Union College?)
Or are you the Eric Adler who is a Professor of Classics at Connecticut College, currently on sabbatical? Therefore far more qualified than Lord Monckton to speak on matters climate related?
Eric, where’d you go, dude? Hello? Hellooooooo?
Andrew,
You are chickening out, to say the least, and covering up with claims that Monckton is some kind of authority and that you believe his material is factual.
In fact, many people have written material that refutes almost all of Monckton’s claims. You can’t pretend that I am the only one to do so.
Your declaration of victory is premature. You haven’t replied to any of the points that I made.
If you reply to my points, I will oblige you with some more examples of misstatements, to which you can reply and we can have a scientific discussion. If you don’t do so, it is pretty clear that you are simply engaged in ad hominem remarks here.
Eric, I did reply in detail, check it out. For the future instead why do you not reply to Monckton’s 80 page rebuttal (complete destruction more like) of Abraham’s work, as I am certain your criticisms will be similar, if not identical.
Where to even begin with this childish drivel.
“You are chickening out, to say the least, and covering up with claims that Monckton is some kind of authority and that you believe his material is factual.”
One need not be “some kind of authority” in order to communicate “material [that] is factual”, so it matters not whether Lord Monckton is an “authority” or not. My twelve-year-old child is an authority on nothing, yet routinely is required to communicate “material [that] is factual” or suffer poor grades as a consequence. Your point is simply more extremist warmist misdirection, and such efforts no longer carry any weight with a non-extremist audience.
“In fact, many people have written material that refutes almost all of Monckton’s claims. You can’t pretend that I am the only one to do so.”
A great many people have sought to refute Moncton’s claims. They have overwhelmingly failed. And I never pretended that you are the only one to fail to do so. More misdirection.
“If you reply to my points, I will oblige you with some more examples of misstatements, to which you can reply and we can have a scientific discussion. If you don’t do so, it is pretty clear that you are simply engaged in ad hominem remarks here.”
I see that during my sleeping hours another poster has effectively demolished your “points”. There is no need for me to duplicate the effort. And I hardly need to defend myself against a charge of making ad hominem attacks when that charge is laid by someone who begins their missive by referring to me as a “chicken, by which I assume you mean “coward”. I haven’t heard that particular use of the word “chicken” since grade school, but perhaps you are much younger than I.
Said by Eric Adler: “I take apart 3 of his statements, ”
Hate to burst your bubble Eric, but you did no such thing.
For example, you criticize Monckton with the following: “How can a single small area like Central England be used as a proxy for global temperatures?” Yet proponents of AGW have done similar with their extrapolating for entire areas of the Earth’s using a few not so nearby cherry picked Weather Stations. The grey area in this image was entirely extrapolated, thus making it a false proxy for inclusion into global temperatures. http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/animationimage897.jpg
(At least with Monckton’s use of Central England, there has been and is local thermometers.)
Then you stated: “In fact, based on paleontological studies, CO2 has been shown to be a cause of climate change in the past. ” You need to quit watching Al Gore’s Convenient Lies. Since Al’s bogus claim of CO2 driving temperatures, it has been shown that changes in CO2 levels lags behind changes in Temperature by several hundred years. As for recent times, you did say the past, CO2 levels have not correlated with Global temperatures (CO2 up to highest in 53 years, while Temps are not).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/25/warming-trend-pdo-and-solar-correlate-better-than-co2/
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png
Look again Sir, I took apart your criticism.
Thirty-two (32) years— little-to-no warming:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_February_2012.png
Seventeen years— no warming ( as in zero, nil, none, nada):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/normalise
The author of the comment below is Dr. Jonathan Jones, professor of physics at Brasenose College, Oxford University.
Quote:
Richard, I can’t answer for our host, but you have to remember why some of us got involved in the climate wars in the first place.
For me this has never really been about climate itself. I don’t find climate partcularly interesting; it’s one of those worthy but tedious branches of science which under normal circumstances I would happily leave to other people who like that sort of thing. My whole involvement has always been driven by concerns about the corruption of science.
Like many people I was dragged into this by the Hockey Stick. I was looking up some minor detail about the Medieval Warm Period and discovered this weird parallel universe of people who apparently didn’t believe it had happened, and even more bizarrely appeared to believe that essentially nothing had happened in the world before the twentieth century. The Hockey Stick is an extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence, so I started reading round the subject. And it soon became clear that the first extraordinary thing about the evidence for the Hockey Stick was how extraordinarily weak it was, and the second extraordinary thing was how desperate its defenders were to hide this fact. I’d always had an interest in pathological science, and it looked like I might have stumbled across a really good modern example.
You can’t spend long digging around the Hockey Stick without stumbling across other areas of climate science pathology. The next one that really struck me was the famous Phil Jones quote: “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it”. To any practising scientist that’s a huge red flag. Sure we all feel a bit like that on occasion, but to actually say something like that in an email is practically equivalent to getting up on a public platform and saying “I’m a pathological scientist, and I’m proud.”
Rather naively I initially believed that Phil Jones was just having a bad day and had said something really stupid. Surely he couldn’t really think that was acceptable? And surely his colleagues would deal with him? But no, it turned out that this apalling quote was only the most quotable of several other remarks, and he really was trying to hide his data from people who might (horror of horrors) want to check his conclusions.
That’s when I got involved in my FOI request. And consequently got exposed to the full horror of “big climate”, as clear an example of politicised and pathological science as I have ever seen. And then came Climategate 2009, and “hide the decline”. All downhill from there.
When will I be done with climate? Quite simply when it stops being a pathological science and starts acting according to the normal rules and conventions of scientific discourse. At that point I will, I’m afraid, simply lose interest in the whole business, and leave it to the experts to get on with their stuff, just as I leave most of the rest of science to the appropriate experts.
To put it another way, I will be done with climate once I can trust that Richard Betts can be left to do good work on his own. I absolutely trust you to get on with doing good stuff under normal circumstances. But I’m afraid I don’t trust you to do good work under current pathological conditions, because you don’t stand up against the all too obvious stench emanating from some of your colleagues.
For me the Hockey Stick was where it began, and probably where it will end (and I will daringly suggest that the same thing might be true for our host). The Hockey Stick is obviously wrong. Everybody knows it is obviously wrong. Climategate 2011 shows that even many of its most outspoken public defenders know it is obviously wrong. And yet it goes on being published and defended year after year.
Do I expect you to publicly denounce the Hockey Stick as obvious drivel? Well yes, that’s what you should do. It is the job of scientists of integrity to expose pathological science, and it is especially the job of scientists in closely related fields. You should not be leaving this to random passing NMR spectroscopists who have better things to do. But I’m afraid I no longer expect you to do so. The opportune moment has, I think, passed. And that is why, even though we are all delighted to have you here, and all enjoy what you have to say, some of us get a trifle tetchy from time to time.
You ask us to judge you by AR5, and in many ways that is a reasonable request. Many of us will judge it by the handling of paleoclimate, not because this is all that important an aspect of the science, but rather because it is a litmus test of whether climate scientists are prepared to stand up against the bullying defenders of pathology in their midst. So, Richard, can I look forward to returning back to my proper work on the application of composite rotations to the performance of error-tolerant unitary transformations? Or will we all be let down again?
Dec 3, 2011 at 6:11 PM | Jonathan Jones
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/12/2/tim-barnett-on-the-hockey-stick.html
Said by Eric Adler: “There has been no scientific discussion on this thread as far as I can see.”
At least, you backed your point with your own commenting:
— “… most of it emanating from the self styled skeptics,”
— “… even though all of it is sheer trash”
— “This kind of talk is what one expects from the posters at WUWT”
— “… to discuss climate science with such people”
“even though all of it is sheer trash”?
Yeah, we WUWT posters are all so judgmental.
Of course many are about the worthlessness of the professors article, but you miss at least three in the first ten. Eric, you missed some real good ones. http://www.concordy.com/article/opinions/march-7-2012/a-lords-opinion-cant-compete-with-scientific-truth/4222/#comment-19594 Here is a rebutal of the only “fact” in the professors rebuttal… http://www.concordy.com/article/opinions/march-7-2012/a-lords-opinion-cant-compete-with-scientific-truth/4222/#comment-19616
Here is my first comment with reference to at least nine peer reviewed papers.. http://www.concordy.com/article/opinions/march-7-2012/a-lords-opinion-cant-compete-with-scientific-truth/4222/#comment-19683 That was in the first ten comments. There are many others, including Monckton’s first comment, and my rebuttal to your criticism of Moncton’s statements.
AHha, I see you did notice the first comment, and made an attempt to respond. Very good then. My response to your detailed attempt to condem Moncton’s statement answers most of your assertions here, but, just for fun, lets examine this statement of yours…
“You misstate the conclusions of the so called Hockey Stick papers. I put that in plural because many papers have been published showing proxy temperature reconstructions that show the recent rate of increase in temperatures are unprecedented in the last 1000 or so years, since the original temperature reconstruction paper was published by Mann et. al. since 1999. Contrary to your claim, they make no statement about the role of CO2.”
==========================
My response,
Very pendantic of you. While it is literally true that they make no direct statement about CO2, by inference they attempt to leave CO2 as the only real factor in climate. My statement linked above addresses this directly. It was an attempt for the “cause” to destroy the null hypothesis, which remains solid and states that current climate is within past historical parameters and past slopes of change. Now let us examine for a moment those plural papers which you claim support the hockey stick. Let us see what the “team” of scientist who did these studies you are referring to thought of Mann;s work in particular, and there own work in general.
Bradley:
“I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year “reconstruction”.
Cook:
“I am afraid that Mike is defending something that increasingly cannot be defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the science move ahead.”
Then Cook proposes a new climate reconstruction to sort out all the past one’s, a best effort if you will of the team..
with a tentative title: Cook writes…
“Northern Hemisphere Temperatures Over The Past Millennium: Where Are
The Greatest Uncertainties?”
Authors: Cook, Briffa, Esper, Osborn, D’Arrigo, Bradley(?), Jones
(??), Mann (infinite?) – I am afraid the Mike and Phil are too
personally invested in things now (i.e. the 2003 GRL paper that is
probably the worst paper Phil has ever been involved in – Bradley
hates it as well), but I am willing to offer to include them if they
can contribute without just defending their past work”
==================================================
Cook next (in seven steps) articulates what he thinks can be learned from this team effort after describing it in detail ending with step 7
Cook writes…
“…7. Publish, retire, and don’t leave a forwarding address
Without trying to prejudice this work, but also because of what I
almost think I know to be the case, the results of this study will
show that we can probably say a fair bit about 100 year variability was like with any certainty i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all.
Of course, none of what I have proposed has addressed the issue of
seasonality of response. So what I am suggesting is strictly an
empirical comparison of published 1000 year NH reconstructions
because many of the same tree-ring proxies get used in both seasonal
and annual recons anyway. So all I care about is how the recons
differ and where they differ most in frequency and time without any
direct consideration of their TRUE association with observed
temperatures.”
Wow, now having trashed all the reconstructions as junk, Cook the desribes how to make them appear credible in the next IPCC report…
” I think this is exactly the kind of study that needs to be done
before the next IPCC assessment. But to give it credibility, it has
to have a reasonably broad spectrum of authors to avoid looking like
a biased attack paper, i.e. like Soon and Balliunas.”
So Eric, you are “defending the indefensible”
I suggest you read the paper by McShane and Wyner in The Annals of Applied Statistics (Vol. 5, No. 1, p. 5-44). You can see in their study they found that random noise was as effective as the proxies processed by the Mann algorithm in predicting temperatures. As they put it “random series that are independent of global temperature are as effective or more effective than the proxies at predicting global annual temperatures in the instrumental period.
Dr. Jonathan Jones, Professor of Physics, Brasenose College, Oxford University made on the Bishop Hill blog ( http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/12/2/tim-barnett-on-the-hockey-stick.html ) at December 3, 2011 at 6:11 PM. Professor Jones makes an unequivocal condemnation of the “Hockey Stick” and much of climatology.
Do you have a scientific reason for ignoring the conclusion of all of these scientists or of Prof. Wegman who concluded in a report to Congress that the Mann conclusions were not statistically valid? (You may recall that Dr. Gerry North, who was head of an NAS panel reviewing climate reconstructions testified under oath that he agreed with the conclusion of the Wegman report).
This is not a scientific debate you buffoon.
I hate to break it to you Andrew, but Union totally supports Erin and Prof. Rodbell and the green movement. Students and faculty and administration like what they do.
Well, that’s too bad. It’s always unfortunate when an institute of alleged learning falls to the whims of a false god. And it’s not as if I send any tuition money their way–I suppose it only impacts me to the extent they receive Federal government grants.
They DO receive Federal government grants, do they not? At least some in the area of the climate? For allegedly “scientific” purposes?
Oh, my, that really IS too bad.
Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens.
Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; and a determined woman undertakes the most treacherous of journeys. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.
“Andrew from MA” writes: “Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing.”
Ah, but of course, that post was not written by me, who has identified himself as “Andrew from MA” since this thread began.
Clearly, they are fouling their britches if they feel compelled to revert to the “sock puppet” strategy. You have taught your students well, Dr. Adler. When reason and science fail you, go to the burning torches.
As I apparently can’t prevent people from impersonating themselves as me in this thread, I will leave the field to the “victors”.
Congratulations. 
I heartily whole heartedly agree with myself. Whoever has written such an erroneous statement is wholly out of line and must be pooing all throughout their trousers. Whomever this “Dr” Adler is, may he be branded as a coward for instructing select members of his student cronies to impersonate me in the comments bar of the opinions section of a student newspaper.
All that I have been trying to do is engage those students that disagree with my standpoint on global climate change, and take part in civil discussion. I have simply been trying to state that there is always more then one way to view any position, and that those concerned should have their views reviewed by experts in their position’s given field to come to some sort of consensus. Its not like I would have taken to the internet to print selective facts in favor of my view point in hopes of ultimately wining the global climate debate once and for all. And to insult people who I have never met in the process. Thats completely ridicules. This is a comments section of a student newspaper of an institution that i do not even belong to. HAH, the thought of it makes me chuckle (see: HAH). Its a good thing i spent so much time writing on this opinion article, boy was it a fantastic use of my time.
oh dear, it appears that i have already declared my departure, so congratulations again people who disagree with me.
i am off to peruse the noble craft of muppetry, the highest art of puppetry. may you sock puppeteers reconsider your life choices.
Andrew,
Gladiator, I salute you! You fought well, but when people start goofing about with your identity, it’s probably time to split. Anyhow, the authors…Fleece Jacket and Green Hoodie…took off in a huff and with their tails between their legs, and all you’ll be facing is the short-attention-span crowd to whom this is a fad and the nasty little rent-seekers, the “Dr” Adlers, who’ll hang onto this scam like rats to a meat truck. Not much room for science or discussions, not with people whose intellectual prowess, self-control and “depth of field” can be defined by the first paragraph of their insipid article.
Now, for the good news prediction…or “projection,” to borrow from the IPCC. This Great Global Warming Bubble will burst because it’s a scam and sca,s can only last so long and because the funds that are sustaining it are rapidily shrinking. Pretty soon we’ll wince as we watch Fleece Jacket and “Dr” Adler as they snarl at each other over the diminishing and leaner swill at the trough, while Green Hoodie and the anti-plastic bottle warriors move onto better or different things. Not much choice there, with the floor sinking under their feet and the young, sharp, ambitious and well-socialized kids coming up to replace this sad generation of sustainability and equity moaners. Interesting times, these “changing of the guard events.”
Anyhow, ’nuff said. A roaring good battle you waged, Andrew…I enjoy your stuff… but there’s little left to do here. Do consider dropping by, at least from time to time, at Anthony Watts’ http://wattsupwiththat.com ! Lots of adults there, many scientists, writers, engineers, artists …and even a very precocious 12 year-old young lady with her own climate blog who bested me and a few others in spotting Peter Gleick’s document forgery goof-ups. Hoping to see you around on the blogosphere!
Hallo Peter,
Thanks for the kind words. The level of competition has seemed to have fallen off rather steeply in recent hours–but then, it IS Union College, not exactly famed for its intellectual endurance, at least among its climate faculty.
As for WUWT, it is one of the two first buttons on my menu bar, and I frequently it daily, as Boston12GS. I rarely comment, as I find few opportunities there for lampooning pathetically poor science. So, although WUWT provides great reading and excellent intellectual stimulation, it supplies not nearly as much visceral fun as Union College has provided these past couple of days.
Still, all good things must come to an end. Adieu, Union College, at least until one of your climate faculty or their students or one of the “vice provosts of the chancellory of student affairs of the administration of the college of alumni” posts another comment that seems a productive field for mockery.
Seems likely, though, doesn’t it?
I assure you, us skeptics are well aware of the Orwellian dogma that permeates academia.
Indeed. Fools of a feather flock together. And bad money drives out good.
Anyone sane or with a shred of self-respect would flee the place, in horror.
I only have one thing to say to Ms. Delman and Prof. Rodbell,
Next time, before writing your op-ed piece as reply to Lord Monckton (or any people who doesn’t believe in catrastrophic man-made global warming), stop for a while, take a deep breath, and think seriously about this:
What would you do if all the current things believed about global warming by you is mistake. No catastrophic, man-made global warming. The earth is cooling, despite the higher concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. And all happen in only 20 or 30 years in the future. What are you going to say if that happen. How will you feel looking back at this reply in 20 or 30 years from now.
No, I am not telling you to abandon your belief in what you believe now. But I hope you will be able to write a more cogent and reasonable reply. Not something like this, which I judge to be more or less a whine from someone who caught with their lies and faults exposed.
Being a scientist, it is always important to remember that everything we are doing as a scientist, can be completely wrong. History have taught us too well about that. Believing religiously in a scientific theory, any scientific theory, not just global warming, is something any scientist should never do. Even if what you believe is turned out to be right, there is not need to act like what you have shown here.
Now this is a great post. If we are wrong about climate change in the future – we all will rejoice. “Meet you at the bar – we’re buying” type of stuff. But if you’re wrong. Oops! Perhaps we’ll get lucky and only lose half the world’s population? That would be a mere 3.5 Billion people. Which do you choose? Free beer or 3.5 billion dead?
Hyperbole much?
If you truly believe that to be the case, then why do you think most of the CAGW crowd fly in private planes, have multiple enormous houses, and generally live a very high CO2 lifestyle?
3.5 billion I though it was:
“Over 4.5 Billion people could die from Global Warming-related causes by 2012″
“Runaway Global Warming promises to literally burn-up agricultural areas into dust worldwide by 2012, causing global famine, anarchy, diseases, and war on a global scale as military powers including the U.S., Russia, and China, fight for control of the Earth’s remaining resources.
Over 4.5 billion people could die from Global Warming related causes by 2012, as planet Earth accelarates into a greed-driven horrific catastrophe.”
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2007/01/08/01291.html
There’s a major issue with this line of argument. Your suggestion is that given uncertainty we should err on the side that causes the least harm. The only real question (in this case) is the extent of any environmental harm (or benefit) that would result from status quo projections of CO2 emissions. According to your argument any unsubstantiated claim can gain credence by conceiving of a more extreme or harmful outcome. When the question answers itself it is not a question. If it is not a question it is not science. Then again, I’m under no illusion that you’re trying to argue the science.
“Donald Rodbell is an amazing teacher and person. …”
Perhaps, but the Donald Rodbell who wrote this article is not a scientist, educator, or decent human. If Lord Monckton is wrong then he should debate him and show facts that demonstrate that. I am reminded of the “Hundred authors against Einstein” and his answer that “If I were wrong, it would only have taken one.”
Donald Rodbell should now offer to debate, in a neutral place, the man he so horrible attacked.
As they say in the legal profession:
If the facts are on your side, pound the facts.
If the laws are on your side, pound the laws.
If neither are on your side, pound the table.
Donald Rodbell has certainly provided an excellent example of a mock-scientist “pounding the table”.
As for the example he is providing his students, I would point them to Wellington’s response when after his retirement he was asked about a badly managed battle he participated in as a very junior officer many years before–”Well, at least it taught me what NOT to do.”
In Science we say: what do the data show. No need for Rodbell to reinvent the wheel and do this, Professor Abraham already looked into the Monckton method:
http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/jpabraham/global_warming/Monckton/Monckton%20Presentation%20June%2022/index.htm
Problem is that Abraham got a little bit destroyed here.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/monckton-warm-abra-qq2.pdf
Ouch, that’s going to leave a mark.
But Fred’s got to be pretty used to tripping over himself by this point.
Keep it up, Fred, whenever I’m feeling down I be sure another of your posts will make me LOL.
Fred March (to MntGoat) 18, 2012 at 2:21 pm
“….The consensus they are talking about means the general acceptance of a scientific idea by the scientific community – such as like the consensus that bacteria make us sick (germs) and that washing hands can save lives. In Geology it took a while for the theory of plate tectonics to be accepted (or to reach scientific consensus). Do you not agree with plate tectonics either?”
Ummm, I’m afraid it’s actually you who’s a bit of a buffoon and an idiot, Freddie. You just provided examples of why consensus and “settled science” can be not only stupid, but deadly too. That chap who proposed continental drift was ignored, even though any child could see that the continents fit together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Lister was ignored and thousands of women died needless deaths. Both were examples of the *failure* of consensus, you silly man. And, being a consensus kind of a scientist, you should know that bacteria and germs are not interchangable but are, in fact, two very different organisms, right? Of course.
PS: If “Dr Appleton” is a dorm-mate of yours, be a good buddy to him and hide his bong for a while. Get him some food and about a litre of orange juice or double the daily reqs for vitamin C, and even do some breathing exercises with him until he settles down a bit. Dude thinks he’s a riot right now, undoubtedly howling at every missive he manages to post, but if his folks happen to call or do their Sunday visit, he could be in serious trouble with his allowance.
Dear Physicist,
I hope, more than anything in the world, that I (as well as the members of the GSA, National Academies of Science, and National Research Council, to name a few) am wrong.
Erin
Hey Erin, kudos to you for posting a message. However misguided you may be, you obviously have bigger cojones than Rodbell. Good for you.
Incidentally, I’m curious as to why you and Rodbell would write a critique of a scientific presentation without yourselves presenting any scientific counterargument (and, no, consensus and ad hominem attacks do not constitute a counterargument). Was there a reason for this? If so, would you share with us what that reason was? Is it considered the norm at Union College to contest scientific argument with ad hominem attack and appeal to consensus?
Where are you, Erin? You started so bravely, and as a student, no less. I had grown to expect great things of you.
Don’t worry Erin. You won’t be disappointed.
Carry on your good work of protecting the environment, but leave CO2 alone. There’s nothing you can do about it that will make any significant difference, however much you might spend trying.
Dear Erin,
gave you a negative impression of Monckton from the get-go. This causes you to not even listen to the man. I think it would help if you tried to be a little more open minded and scientific about it. Talk about the contents of what he said and not about him. If you are so adamant about your hope to be wrong about CAGW, go study those arguments saying it is wrong. Question those fundamental and basic items of the hypothesis (the positive feedback issue for instance, still being conjecture) and be sceptic, as any intelligent person should be. Nothing wrong with being sceptic, even though in your circles apparently it is a “bad thing” to do, earning the “denier” brand if one is not carefull…
I am also interested to know where your scientific arguments are to refute Monckton. Because as an outsider (Engineer from The Netherlands) it looks like the stuff you read and the people you listen to, learn from and hang out with (your environment, no pun intended
And please, dig into the only fact you stated in your piece. Follow some “sceptic” links posted above about this 97% issue, because it really is a silly story and to anyone who has learned the facts about this 97%-survey your reference to it makes you look uninformed and, well, silly…
All the best,
Wijnand
Oh and by the way, reflect on this: if you “hope more than anything in the world to be wrong about CAGW”, then why would Moncktons impact be dangerous? Would it not be wonderfull?
From the article:
” On one hand, it seemed ludicrous to give Monckton a second of time or thought. On the other, however, dismissing him and allowing his speech without rejection risked that he would have an impact, and a dangerous one at that.”
Completely off topic, but your name is refreshing to see, Wijnand, and brings back some very nice memories. I recently returned to the US after two years at the University of Maastricht, and I developed a great appreciation for the Dutch during my stay. They are a wonderfully befriending people (although my efforts to learn the language were less than fully successful–in large part because everyone there speaks such perfect English). Groeten, Andrew from MA
Hi Andrew,
You picked one of the best spots in Holland too, Maastricht is beautifull and relatively laid back. I really like it there. I am from The Hague myself, part of the busy, crowded and industrious province of South Holland. But hey, thats where the jobs are unfortunately…
Kind regards,
Wijnand
Erin Delman March 18, 2012 at 2:53 pm
“Dear Physicist….I hope, more than anything in the world, that I (as well as the members of the GSA, National Academies of Science, and National Research Council, to name a few) am wrong.”
————————————————–
Don’t worry, Erin, you’re dead-wrong and so is this government science which is already unravelling at the seams. Won’t be the first time the “consensus” has been wrong and has destroyed millions of people. But still, do go ahead and combine a smattering of science and a large dollop of pseudoscience with a law degree, because there’ll be plenty of work for you. You might have to switch sides from time to time as suits and counter-suits fly hither and yon, but trial lawyers do that faster than changing socks. All the best.
Tony Watts posts a link on his webpage and his followers come out in force to write the same nonsense which is repeated day in and day out on Tony’s site.
Thank you to the authors of this post for responding to the alarmism which Mr. Monckton preaches.
Yet no one–no one–from Union College has yet presented a scientific counter-argument to the ponts made in Monckton’s lecture. Not the least of which is more than a decade’s absence of global warming despite every increasing levels of human-produced CO2 emission.
Instead they stamp their feet and offer childish ad hominem attacks and appeals to majority opinion.
And they call that science, and themselves scientists.
Shameful.
Surely if the facts were on your side you would make short work of the matter, yes?
One wonders why you don’t, then, do so. Well, that’s a lie. One wonders not at all.
Fred
March 18, 2012 at 2:42 pm
“Now this is a great post. If we are wrong about climate change in the future – we all will rejoice. “Meet you at the bar – we’re buying” type of stuff. But if you’re wrong. Oops! Perhaps we’ll get lucky and only lose half the world’s population? That would be a mere 3.5 Billion people. Which do you choose? Free beer or 3.5 billion dead?”
———————————
A modest reality check, if I may. The hypothetical disasters, a la Ehrichman and Holdren, with seemingly precise projections of future deaths (three and a half million? Wow!) are unfounded in anything but an unchanged and untested hypothesis from the early eighties, faulty computer models and threats from vested corporate interests, a UN agency and self-interested activists. The disasters occuring now, in the form of rising fuel and food prices, job-killing taxation and massive subsidy transfers to shadowy corporations, organizations and government bodies, may not have been calculated yet, but is evident if one cares to look. Africa is devastated by fuel poverty, wind turbines and solar panels are using up far more energy than they can ever replace, while poor people die of cold and economies worldwide are crashing like dominoes. Millions are suffering and dying, right now as we chat, thanks to this insanity. It took nearly forty years and a genocide to kill the settled science and conensus of eugenics; let’s hope this idiocy will die a faster and a more peaceful death.
Right – it’s those damn climate scientists and all the loads of money we spend being green that causes the suffering. Consider that the CEO of ExxonMobil alone makes more than $5 million per year! It’s not the nice petroleum companies that are causing the shortage, it the climate scientists that make $70K per year. Make sense to me!
Man you guys are dumb!
Al Gore was worth $2 million when he lost his run for President (election reporting documents). He’s now worth billions, with multi-million estates all over the world, each of which releases more CO2 than a small village, as well as traveling the world in a private jet which I am sure has no carbon footprint. Hansen, Jones, Gleick, et al. are the beneficiaries of many millions in government funding, as well as rich speaking fees and paid for vacations–sorry, “conferences”–at idyllic vacation spots around the globe, all in first class airfare and five-star hotels, and their careers and personal wealth and reputation are all totally, totally dependent on this “tulip-bulb frenzy” of catastrophic global warming continuing to be perceived as real. The governmental agents arguing the extremist warmist cause are attempting to seize a degree of power unrealized by even the hardest core communists of the soviet union or red China.
Yeah, they’re all doing it for the “good of mankind”. Sorry, not buying it. And only a child WOULD buy it.
Follow the money, Fred. Look at the massive sums “invested” in “new” energy boondoggles, the millions donated to Big Green corporations like WWF, Greenpeace, Tides, etc., money generously donated by energy corporations like BP and the Exxon you mention. Look at the powerful wind and solar lobbies which are siphoning subsidies for inefficient products, be disgusted by the graft collcted and starvation caused by an obviously eco-unfriendly biofuels program; calculate the amount of PR and “education” money that has gone into promoting “climate change.” Take a stock of the mainstream media’s heavy pro AGW bias, the insultingly sneaky and corrupt “pollutant” designation of CO2 by your EPA; the cynical attempts to tax the very air we all share. Ponder the mystery of hundreds of departments and thousands of researchers appearing out of the woodwoork to jump on the climate change milch cow and the billions in grands, chairs and publication deals…all this when there is a consensus and the science is settled for all eternity. And then, ask yourself why, with those billions arrayed against skeptics, why the Warmist side is losing so badly that data has to be hidden, researchers have to be blackballed and small think tanks have to be defrauded. And no, it’s not “the economy, stupid,” as the latest apologetics would have it.
Here is how they conclude: “The fact of the matter is that science has spoken, the overwhelming bulk of the evidence has shown very, very clearly that global warming is occurring and is at least mostly caused by humans.”
Wrong, science has not spoken. Furthermore, it is irrelevant how large the “bulk” of that “evidence” is, just one measurement can wipe out all of it. I will do exactly that to your “evidence” now. The scientist whose work I will refer to is Ferenc Miskolczi, a Hungarian scientist at NASA who studied absorption of infrared radiation by the atmosphere. Using NOAA database of weather balloon observations that goes back to 1948 he was able to show that the transparency of the atmosphere in the infrared where carbon dioxide absorbs has been constant for the last 61 years (E&E 21(4):243, 2011). During that same period of time the amount of carbon dioxide in the air increased by 21.6 percent. This means that the addition of all this carbon dioxide to the atmosphere had no effect whatsoever on the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. There goes your “evidence” with all its “bulk.” This is an empirical observation, not derived from any theory, and it overrules any deductions from theory that contradict it. Specifically, it invalidates all climate models that use the greenhouse effect to predict warming. That means that all predictions of dangerous warming emanating from the IPCC are dead wrong. Carbon dioxide simply does not warm the atmosphere, even if you double it, which means that temperature sensitivity becomes exactly zero. His paper was peer reviewed and has been available in scientific literature for more than a year now. No peer reviewed articles opposing it have appeared, presumably not for lack of trying. It follows that belief in an Armageddon caused by greenhouse warming is just a fairy tale. Unfortunately those who believe this fairy tale have instigated governments to pass laws detrimental to living standards of all citizens. It is time to start reversing this trend by voiding these irrational laws.
Arno,
I was sure there must be some peer-reviewed challenges you might have missed, given how potentialy (if not actually) damaging the impact of Miskolcz’s research on UN-IPCC’s climate doctrine is, but wasn’t able to find such. Seeing how poorly the Warmies here are faring, I thought it would be sportsman-like to play the Devil’s advocate, so I looked, although not intensely or deeply. Lots of hollering from the PR sites, but zilch from the peer review press I could see. I welcome corrections on this. Here are links to an unpublished critique on a blog and an attempt to get someone to refute him:
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/Miskolczi.html
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=232818
Now, I’m leary of Rodbell’s claim that the “fundamental building block of all science is peer-reviewed publications (sic.),” but seeing how good the East Anglia and Mann crowd have been at controlling and bullying the process, it’s indeed surprising that there is no credible refutation of his hypothesis. Miskolczi, it appears, has been black-listed as well (see: http://www.omsj.org/authors/blacklisted-scientist-challenges-global-warming-orthodoxy).
The facts don’t matter to these people Arno. There are countless examples of studies that demolish the ‘C’ part of CAGW, and these are regularly dismissed and ignored by the IPCC, which is why there are thousands of scientists that don’t trust a word they say anymore. To address these irrefutable facts carries the risk of collapsing the entire house of cards. So the promoters, like Rodbell and Delman, try to marginalize their opponents through censorship and personal attack, and NEVER on the science. There is no alarmist on the planet that can defend against facts. There is a group that thinks they are right and gets crushed at every turn by science, the other group knows the science won’t hold water and will therefore never argue salient points, but will instead deceive people and manufacture “commissioned” studies that support their position. These are the transparently garbage “science-free” studies we see coming out every week by activists, NGO’s, Greenpeace and WWF, which are immediately debunked by anyone with any ability to fact-check at all. In either case, there is no chance to win against logic and facts. Most alarmists will never try.
The scientific case, in the beginning, had some merit, since there is a risk of warming from CO2. But in the intervening years, we know a lot more. The amount of “climate science” out there has increased dramatically. Some percentage of it is based on models, the rest is based on observations and shows that EVERY model is fundamentally wrong (since not a single one has any predictive skill). Each one is programmed using positive feedback to H20, which has never been observed in nature, while the observational datasets show that the feedback is negative. Observations win, models fail. After 30 years of trying, the models still do not handle H20 properly and as everyone admits, no one knows how to program clouds. So the scientific case is basically dead, and has been for a few years now. Pretty much everyone accepts that there will be a little warming, perhaps as warm as the MWP or RWP. There are still interesting things to learn, I would like to see some work put into the models to fix them, but ONLY for clouds and convection, since the last 30 years has been completely lost working on all of this other failed science. Fix the models first and bring them closer to reality, then we would probably have something to talk about. Not that doing something about it would make any sense, but at least we would learn something useful.
Nope, this whole think is and always has been about money. I’m sure Rodbell and Delman are glad to be part of the Climate Industrial Complex, now valued at somewhere north of $1 trillion. A giant machine hoping to gain legislated advantage over your pocketbook to impose wasteful strategies to improve their profits, expand regulation, and decrease your wealth to that of a third worlder. They have gained a lot of ground in Europe, Australia, and Great Britain, and are successfully destroying those economies by wasting wealth that took generations to create, in a fleeting moment of legislated highway robbery. $Billions have been wasted on useless windmills, carbon capture schemes that failed decades ago, and solar panels that nobody wants. Fortunately, there are a lot of smart people in the US that have opposed such waste, and so far we have been able to watch from the sidelines as these entire economies collapse into the Green Abyss. We may only have to pay the cost of bailing them out to shut down the CIC forever. Not a bad bargain compared to the proposed total collapse of the US economy.
Thanks for that piece, I hadn’t seen it before.
Arno, please… you know they won’t pay attention to the SCIENCE.
That would require make an actual, Reasonsed response. Instead we already have phrases such as ‘conservatives’ and ‘idiots.’
That’s the best they can manage. At least until they can scrub our posts from this page, and pile on the True Believers’ comments.
I for one would Love to see them explain why temperatures have flatlined the last 12 years. (Hint: flipped PDO. Sun heading for a Grand Minimum. More and more feedback mechanisms proving out to be NEGATIVE. But don’t let the Science stop you guys…. throw some more ad homs!)
But you know that’s not going to happen.
Ummm, after pondering the phenomeonon of offset fields with white backgrounds under some posts and discerning a certain pattern worth a serious interface analysis, I finally noticed the “reply” button. Egg on my face. Sorry, everyone, for making a goulash out of this page. I would fix it all, if I could. Perhaps your mods can give me administrator status for a while? BWA-HA-HA-HA!
Dr. Rodbell to the white courtesy phone, please. Dr. Rodbell to the white courtesy phone, please.
Dr. Rodbell?
Are we sure there really IS a Dr. Rodbell?
Incidentally, took a lengthy motorcycle ride with my daughter this afternoon in metrowest Boston, 74F on March 18, 2012. If this is global warming (which, of course, it’s not, but if it were), I am totally for it.
To borrow an apt description, this Opinion Piece is simply more “intellectual baby-talk”.
Copied again to PDF, for posterity, and future laughs.
I find it remarkable that after over 170 comments to his article in a bit over a day, Rodbell still can’t rouse himself to a response. Even his student has done that much.
He might be on a field trip & it is still the weekend. Paid Academics can check their e-mails/Internet in company time, so they can enjoy their weekends, unlike the rest of us sados, who have to do it in our own time.
I suppose we will see on Monday, yes? Either Professor Rodbell will substantively engage in discussion, responding with scientific argument and data . . . or he shall remain in hiding (sad, that) . . . or he will press Union College to delete the negative comments and prohibit further comment on his piece (the 1984/Gleick-like option).
Oh, it’s all so very exciting! I can’t wait to see how things turn out.
Wilma March 18, 2012 at 2:04 pm | Permalink | Reply
“I’m sure the student and professor have just been watching the views increase on their article, laughing at the absurdity of the Mockton cronies.”
It is not for me to say that you are delusional. But you seem to be saying such about the Student and Professor.
Donald Redbell and Erin Delman, I suggest you read this article and give some serious thought to your position.
http://minx.cc/?post=327601
All here who have read your diatribe will agree with the conclusions offered. Of that, I am assured.
Wilma March 18, 2012 at 2:09 pm | Permalink | Reply
I completely disagree. If anything, this asinine internet slap fight has made Union earth scientists appear mature and together, while Monckton and his supporters look certifiably insane and completely and utterly rude. Do you all realize that you are supporting a man who parades around as a Lord, although the House of Lords has issued a PUBLIC cease and desist? Fundamentally, on all basic levels, Monckton is a fraud.”
OTOH . . . I would wager money on you being Delusional.
Citation please. That the House of Lords has issued such a cease and desist letter.
Monkton Himself posted that at Watts Up With That. It was a posting on a web page made by a clerk. It was not an official proclamation. I never bothered researching the follow-up.
The basic argument is that in the 90s, Parliament removed voting privileges from hereditary members of the House of Lords (such as Monkton, the 3rd Viscount of Brenchly). However, as Monkton pointed out. That action neither revoked actual membership of the House of Lords, nor peerage, nor title. “Lord” is the proper mode of address to any member of the British nobility. Use it as you will or not. However, Monkton has as much right to use the title of Lord due to the accomplishments of his grandfather as Rodbell has to the title of Doctor.
For a novice scientist, unfamiliar with the intricacies of the AGW debate, such as it is , he didn’t actually do too badly. As it seems the principles of scientific enquiry are no longer taught in our Universities, he was indeed sorely ill equipped for stepping into this highly evolved debate and by engaging with the master himself that most seasoned warmers would run a mile to avoid. Naivety is no reason to make mincemeat of him. Now he is either learning very fast, or entrenching his position. The silence, might suggest the former, unless he is still truly unaware of the unprecedented interest in his post.
George Fraser
March 18, 2012 at 5:30 pm
“For a novice scientist, unfamiliar with the intricacies of the AGW debate, such as it is , he didn’t actually do too badly. As it seems the principles of scientific enquiry are no longer taught in our Universities, he was indeed sorely ill equipped for stepping into this highly evolved debate and by engaging with the master himself that most seasoned warmers would run a mile to avoid. Naivety is no reason to make mincemeat of him. Now he is either learning very fast, or entrenching his position. The silence, might suggest the former, unless he is still truly unaware of the unprecedented interest in his post.”
———————————————
Begging to differ, George. A professor cannot be a “novice scientist.” The principles of science and proper discourse are covered in grade and high school, with the new “process-oriented” curriculums every teachers’ college is raving about. Unfamiliarity with AGW does not provide an excuse either; many of us in these debates have little in the ways of physical sciences, but we strive to operate under its strict principles and if depart, someone drills us a new one.
The other bit is that such blatant violation of major fallacies, juvenile discourtesy and surrender to anger are unbecoming of a professor, of students and higher instiutions of learning. Rodbell has obviously accepted or fallen for the latest professional PR maneuvers taught by the Warmies, namely to treat skeptics as abominations, as “deniers,” a word evoking Holocaust-denial; to declare them as enemies of knowledge (“anti-science”) and to equate them to Creationists and pseudoscientists while studiously avoiding debate as a waste of time or fraternising with evil, nature-hating, world-killing right-wingers. Someone, an educated adult living in a democracy at that, who can write such shockingly authoritarian, rude and fundamentally anti-scientific drivel the kind I haven’t seen since the Soviet era, cannot be easily defended.
(CAPTCHA Code word: “5 FUN.” Dang, “4 FUN” would have deserved a screen capture!)
Lord E of Minnesota March 18, 2012 at 3:17 pm | Permalink | Reply
Tony Watts posts a link on his webpage and his followers come out in force to write the same nonsense which is repeated day in and day out on Tony’s site. ”
You ought to spend some time there, do a lot of reading. The comments are often as
worthwhile in terms of Science as the posts. Even a Fool can be enlightened by visits to that site, as to the sheer complexity and chaotic nature of what goes into the Climate equation.
But feel free to sing from the Hymnal, if that gives you comfort.
There is no such thing as “scientific truth”. The two components of science are hypotheses and observations. Read about the scientific method.
If anyone wants a break, folks, I need help at WUTW (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/17/monckton-in-a-rift-with-union-college-earth-scientists-and-activists/#comment-927730) to explain the meaning of “eugenics” to a self-declared physician, a believer in “neo-eugenics” who can’t seem to understand that eugenics, as the word understand the term, was a deadly pseudoscience, not what the word literally means, i.e., “good births.” He goes by the moniker “Michael Palmer” and I’m my wits’ ends trying to explain his fairly basic error. This is a game both sides of the climate debate can play; “raciology” as a historian once called eugenics is abhorent to all of us.
Do I have other motives? Heck, yeah! I would that one or two of you might see the uncanny parallels between eugenics and catastrophic warming, namely in the perversion of scientific principles, the power of political and financial pressures and the wages of fear. While there, feel free to join our discussions, to lay your opinions on the table; we are not SkS, DeSmog or other heavily-censored Warmie PR agency-run echo-chambers you people are used to. Introduce yourself, fire the first shot and we promise to attack you like the skeptic fiends we are, with vigour and en masse. Intimidating it may be at first, but the moderators police bad behaviour no matter who displays it, most of us are courteous and fair, and if you behave similarly, you will be treated with respect as guests should. Go on, don’t fret, team up in bunches and holds hands if you will, but let’s get some unfettered dialogues going!
He’s engaged in misdirection. Simply make that point, provide a basic background, and move on.
Misdirection is one of the classic weapons of the red-greens. But it only works if you allow it to work. Treat it like the jab it is, let it slide off to one side, and respond responsibly.
Just my two cents.
I think you make a good point, Andrew. I’ve tried, others have tried. I doubt Dr Palmer is a clever strategist on this, though; I think he’s just got a bee in his bonnet and is delighted for the opportunity to get a “buzz” from it. I don’t think climate science and its issues are much of an interest to him, and I don’t know which side he is on, not that it matters in this case. Perhaps I’m getting suckered-in, but this is one of those issues that others, less familiar with the horrors of eugenics may want to see countered. I’m hoping that there might be a biologist or geneticist here who can make a better argument than I.
Can Dr. Palmer address the issue of why there has been no global warming for more than a decade, despite continuing increases in man-made CO2? Can he address why EVERY IPCC forecast has been wildly off the mark?
If not, why is his opinion worth anything at all. The hypothesis of the catastrophic warmists is disproved by the failure of their own predictions, even by their own corrupt and self-serving computer “models”.
Their efforts to divert matters to whether eugenics means this or that, or Lord Monckton is truly a Lord, or the mythical “97%”, or this or that or the other thing are all intended as sleight of hand.
There, I’ve said it in, what, three paragraphs. Do that, then move back to the relevant facts–and they will go mad.
Right you definitely are, Andrew, but the issue he and I are doggedly pursuing is the question of eugenics. He defends it as a proper scientific field with a few regretable mistakes and describes it as a benign form of genetic medicine which needs to be separated from ethics, while I’m trying to explain to him that Lord Monckton’s example of eugenics as a horrible pseudoscience still stands, given its record and that scientific fraud is also ethically problematic. The dude doesn’t seem to get it, and I don’t see how his distraction is of any use.
Yeah, and I gotta work on the brevity thing too, I guess.
(CAPTCHA Code word: 7 UP 4. Sorry, I get a kick from these.)
“… without wading through the numerous inaccuracies and misstatements made by Lord Monckton, which would likely exceed the space allotted for this article …”
Translation: Rodbell & Delman can’t find any inaccuracies or misstatements made by Lord Monckton, so the best they can do is imply there were.
But its like all in the data
“… carefully cherry picked data sets or sections of data sets …”
Only seems appropriate that Lord Monckton be allowed to cherry pick, since AGW scientists have been Lemon picking weather station temperature data to falsify their claims of AGW.
AGW scientists have been reducing the number of weather stations with full year’s temperature data entered in NOAA’s GHCN database from over 5,380 in 1980 -to- 3,270 in 1990 -to- 1,070 in 2000 -to 210 in 2006. With those reductions, AGW scientists dropped more weather stations located in colder areas than in warm areas. Thus souring the data to fit with their claimed AGW. Even more conveniently, AGW scientists were creating upwardly “adjusted” temperature data in the database to use with their models and claims, instead of the raw collected data. With the upwardly “adjusted” data being exactly opposite of what should have been done to compensate for Urban Heat Island effect on weather stations.
You’re totally right – only appropriate that Monkton cherry picks!
I am Fred and I am YOUR lord
Ah, the madness revealed.
Good show.
There like just making reasons to study stuff I bet they have no street sense
Jolly good
The following is a response to Mr. Monckton’s rebuttal of the article that I wrote with Erin Delman to the Concordiensis on 7 March, 2012. I will not respond to the vitriolic, personal attacks that have been made against me, except to say that they are proof positive of the main point that I raised with Mr. Monckton when he was at Union College, and later in our opinion piece to the Concordiensis, which is that real scientific debate has no place in the blogosphere. Such debate belongs in the light of day, in the real scientific literature where it can be made plainly clear exactly what data sets are being used and exactly what points are being made about the data sets. Just as serious news analysis cannot occur in the tabloid press, serious scientific debate cannot occur in the blogosphere where anonymity makes personal attacks the norm. Yes, one could argue that the IPCC reports are not peer reviewed in the sense of journal peer review, but they are published and anyone with access to the internet can download them and critique them in any way they see fit.
Mr. Monckton began his talk at Union by admitting that the world has been warming and that humans are (or may be) at least partially responsible for that warming. This reasonable statement put Mr. Monkton in agreement with 97% of climate scientists in a 2008 Gallup Poll (Doran and Zimmerman, 2009). According to Doran and Zimmerman (2009, p. 22), “it seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes. The challenge, rather, appears to be how to effectively communicate this fact to policy makers and to a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate among scientists.” If you or others disagree with the authors’ interpretation of the poll’s results, I would urge you to publish your own interpretations in the scientific (or other) literature so that we may all benefit from your insights.
In Mr. Monckton’s rebuttal to our opinion piece, he noted that the Earth has not been warming for nearly 15 years. If one picks 1998 as one’s starting point and ends with the current year, one does indeed get a negative slope. This is due to the fact that 1998 was an exceptionally warm year due to the strong El Nino event that year. If one considers the long-term trend, however, the slope remains positive with warming continuing. If this were not the case, the decade from 2001-2010 would not be the warmest in instrumental record, which it is. What is troubling about this is that Mr. Monkton has made a big point in many of his presentations that one can clearly find any trend one wishes to find by carefully choosing where to start and ending a clipped time series. Why then would Mr. Monckton choose to use this dubious strategy to argue that warming has not been occurring for nearly the last decade and a half? Indeed this contradiction has been pointed out before (http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2011/02/20/potholer54-rips-apart-christopher-monckton-then-reveals-his-identity/).
Further examples of Mr. Monckton mischaracterizing science are evident in the talk that he gave at Union College. He chose a record of Beaufort Sea Ice (Melling et al., 2005) to illustrate that from 1991 to 2003, sea ice there has not been declining, and that, by inference, sea ice in the arctic is healthy. In fact, 30-year records from the (U.S.) National Snow and Ice Data Center reveal that arctic sea ice, as a whole, is declining precipitously, and even when Antarctic data are included, the global average is declining. Clearly Mr. Monckton knows of the NSIDC data sets, so why would he choose to show an audience with no background knowledge of the topic what can only be characterized as a misleading graphic of the state of arctic sea ice?
An exhaustive analysis of one of Mr. Monckton’s prior presentations by Professor Abraham at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) reveals that the aforementioned cherry picking of data sets, or start and stop dates for time series, are part of his modus operandi (http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/jpabraham/global_warming/Monckton/Monckton%20Presentation%20June%2022/index.htm). One new misstatement not recorded to my knowledge in Professor Abraham’s presentation is the assertion that Venezuelan glaciers are, in fact, advancing. Having worked on deciphering the record of glacier margin fluctuations in the Andes for more than two decades, this was news to me! My relatively recent review paper on the subject reports no evidence of ice front advances anywhere in the tropical Andes (Rodbell et al., 2009).
The main comment that I made to Mr. Monckton at Union College and again in the Concordiensis article, is the importance of him publishing his assessment in a scientific journal. There are many journals that he could choose from, and one need not be a scientist to publish. If he is correct, and I do hope he is, that global climate change is nothing that we should be fretting over, then his analysis needs to be spelled out carefully in the peer-reviewed literature. It is not enough to orally cite strings of publications in his talks or paste references on his slides, we need his written word on, for example, exactly how he bases his climate sensitivity calculations, or why he thinks climate feedbacks have been and will continue to be responsible for homeostasis on Earth. It is not enough to state that those interested can contact him for details – the details need to be published for all to evaluate. That is how science works.
The peer review process does not substitute for a sound scientific methodology, analysis, and clear multiple working hypotheses that can be tested. However, the peer review process at the very least should ensure that all parts of an analysis are included in a report (including complete references cited) so that others can fully evaluate the work and attempt to replicate the analysis. The fact that Al Gore has not done this is no defense. Al Gore has done a disservice to climate science by politicizing the issue, and, on occasion, overstating some evidence (e.g., tropical storm frequencies). Nevertheless, it should not have taken weeks for Professor Abraham to sleuth out exactly how Mr. Monckton has used or misused the published science. It should be noted that for his efforts to clarify Mr. Monckton’s analysis, Professor Abraham was subject to personal attack by Mr. Monckton in which he (Mr. Monckton) demanded that Professor Abraham’s presentation be removed from the University of St. Thomas servers, and he charged that “the head of the University, Father Dennis Dease, was a “creep”, that John Abraham was a “wretched little man” and that the University itself was a “half-assed Bible college”” (http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Lord_Monckton). So much for Mr. Monckton’s concerns over free speech and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution!
Mr. Monckton closes his latest missive by telling me that I am to be thoroughly ashamed of myself for arguing for a radical response to climate change that would divert billions that could be used to save suffering children in Africa. This is a false choice. If rainfall projections for tropical Africa and South America are even remotely accurate, then climate change itself may be an especially serious threat to those living on the margins in these underdeveloped regions. In my view, it is not a few degrees of warming that we need to worry most about, it is changes in the distribution of rainfall on the planet and the inability of large numbers of people to respond. No, I am not even slightly ashamed to point this out.
This is my first and final entry into this thread. I simply do not have time to spend on this futile form of dialog. I have absolutely no control over the Concordiensis or their web site. You all may have the last word. Have fun!!
References Cited
Doran, P. T., and Zimmerman, M. K., 2009, Examining the consensus of climate change: EOS v. 90, p. 21-22.
Melling, H., Riedel, D., and Gedalof, Z., 2005, Trends in thickness and extent of seasonal pack ice, Canadian Beaufort Sea: Geophysical Research Letters, v. 24, p. 1-5.
Rodbell, D.T., Smith, J. A., and Mark, B. G., 2009. Glaciation in the Andes during the Late Glacial and Holocene: Quaternary Science Reviews 28, 2165-2212.
…real scientific debate has no place in the blogosphere. Such debate belongs in the light of day, in the real scientific literature where it can be made plainly clear exactly what data sets are being used and exactly what points are being made about the data sets
Apparently, Dr. Rodbell, you have not kept yourself up to date, no matter whether outside of the blogosphere or within it: the “mainstream” Climate Science “hypotheses” involved with the assertations that “CO2 = CAGW” have not produced even one relevant empirically confirmed prediction yet.
Professor Rodbell’s latest response to me contains a little science surrounded by various ad hominem attacks. So let me begin this answer by pointing out that the argumentum ad hominem, the attack on the man and not on his argument, is yet another of the elementary logical fallacies codified by Aristotle some 2300 years ago. It has no place in scientific discourse. For this reason, I have been careful not to call the Professor names or to make any personal attack on him. I have confined my self to addressing his arguments (such as they are). I shall do so again now.
He begins by saying, “One could argue that the IPCC reports are not peer reviewed in the sense of journal peer review, but they are published and anyone with access to the internet can download them and critique them in any way they see fit.” And that is what I do in my talks. But it is disingenuous to imagine that my talks – or any ex-post-facto commentary, however splendidly learned – can ever constitute peer review as it is usually understood. The essence of peer review is that if the reviewers identify errors the paper cannot be published until the errors have been corrected to the reviewers’ satisfaction. This did not happen with the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, which – for instance – contained a nonsensical assertion that all of the Himalayan glaciers would be gone in 25 years. This assertion came not from a peer-reviewed source but from a student activist. The “reviewers” of the IPCC’s report said the assertion was incorrect and insisted that it should be removed, but the IPCC paid no attention because, as the co-ordinating lead author of the chapter in question said, it was desirable to influence governments. In short, he lied. Worse, as I demonstrated in my talk at Union College, the IPCC tampers with the final reports prepared by its scientists after they have been submitted and before publication. It has been caught out doing this over and over again. Accordingly, one cannot be sure whether any part of any IPCC document is what the scientists concluded or what the bureaucrats wanted because it was politically expedient, socially convenient and, above all, financially profitable. The IPCC is a detriment to science. It should be abolished.
Next, Professor Rodbell falls back on the argumentum ad populum, Aristotle’s now shopworn headcount fallacy, by saying 97% of climate scientists in a Gallup poll agree that “the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent” among scientists. Science is not done by head-count, and the endless reassertion of meaningless poll results will not change that. It inches forward by experiment, measurement, observation, and the application of established theory to the results. As I showed in my talk, the IPCC’s 1990 forecast of how much warming should have occurred by now is wrong. I do not care whether 197% of “scientists” agreed with the IPCC’s now-failed forecast. They were wrong. I prefer to adhere to the observed data.
The Professor seems annoyed at my pointing out that there has been no statistically-significant global warming for a decade and a half. Let us begin by asserting that the statement is true (the Professor does not deny this, but he does not quite admit it either). However, I also fairly pointed out in my talk that warming since 1950 was equivalent to 1.2 Celsius degrees per century; I displayed the entire instrumental temperature record; I looked at the Central England temperature record for 1695 to 1735; at the record for the last 1300 years; and at the record for the past 750 million years. His implicit (and, on the day, explicit) allegation of cherry-picking is, accordingly, unjustifiable.
Next, the Professor said my presentation of a peer-reviewed result showing that the sea ice extent in the Beaufort Sea had if anything grown somewhat for a dozen years to 2004 was intended to imply that sea ice in the Arctic was “healthy”. No: I had specifically used the result to demonstrate that Al Gore had been wrong to state that the (just four) polar bears killed by high winds and waves in an Arctic storm in the Beaufort Sea had died because the loss of sea ice meant they were having to swim more than 60 miles to find the ice. Elsewhere in my talk I pointed out that there had been a strong decline in Arctic sea ice, but that this had been almost matched by a growth in Antarctic sea ice, and I showed that the global sea-ice extent had hardly changed in the 30-year satellite record.
The Professor then cites a “exhaustive analysis” of one of my previous talks by a “professor” at a no-account bible-college in Minnesota. He somehow fails to point out, however, that I had written a substantial and, in the words of one commentator, “devastating” refutation of that “professor’s” intellectually-dishonest ramblings.
Then the Professor said I had asserted that Venezuelan glaciers are advancing. I do not recall making any such assertion: however, I did cite Polissar et al. (2006) to the effect that the normal state of the Cordillera de Merida in the Tropical Andes, except for the very highest peaks, had been ice-free throughout most of the past 11,400 years. Accordingly, the recession of the glaciers there today may be doing nothing more than restoring the Andes to their normal, near-ice-free state, in which event it cannot be safely said that anthropogenic “global warming” is causing unprecedented changes.
The Professor next says I should publish my “assessment” in a scientific journal. He may care to read my invited paper Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered in Physics and Society for July 2008. The editor who commissioned the paper, and the editor who thoroughly reviewed it before writing a supporting editorial, were both dismissed for publishing it. Naturally, I am not anxious to subject any further editors to the bullying that led to these two editors’ dismissal. My paper was a reasonable expression of doubt about how much warming we are likely to see. And has the Professor asked Al Gore to get his nonsense peer-reviewed? No: for there is a poisonous double standard at work. I am glad, thought that the Professor, who had said after my talk that I had not cited a single peer-reviewed source, now accepts that I had cited “strings of publications”. Since I did so, the Professor may legitimately infer that the science in the peer-reviewed literature is by no means as settled as he has, until now, led his students to believe.
Finally, the Professor says that, “if rainfall projections for tropical Africa and South America are even remotely accurate, climate change itself may be an especially serious threat to those living on the margins in these underdeveloped regions”. However, the IPCC (admittedly not peer-reviewed) says there are very substantial uncertainties in its regional projections. In effect, they are guesswork. And, given that temperatures are not rising globally as fast as the IPCC has predicted and are most unlikely to do so, there is simply no reason to imagine that the numerous dire consequences of warmer weather that the IPCC imagines will in fact occur.
Accordingly, the notion of catastrophic global climate change is mere speculation at this stage, but the needs of the poor in Africa for food, water, education, health, housing and other basic necessities are immediate. It is cruel to deny them the help we could and should give because we have instead diverted trillions to making academics, scientists, bankers, politicians, bureaucrats, landowners, journalists and corporate vested interests still richer than they already were at the expense of the poor.
Interestingly, the Professor’s responses have been culpably silent on the erroneous and in some aspects fraudulent principal conclusions of each of the four IPCC Assessment Reports, and also on the fact that it is orders of magnitude cheaper, more cost-effective and more responsible to do nothing now, to sit back and enjoy the sunshine, and to adapt in a focused way to any adverse consequences of such future global warming as may occur than to do anything about it now. Since the Professor thinks that science is done by consensus, he should know that the near-unanimous consensus in the economic peer-reviewed literature is that there is no economic case for doing anything whatsoever about global warming now. Better to wait and see. One should deal with the immediate and urgent problems of poverty and disease and lack of electricity in the Third World today, and leave global warming until the day after tomorrow. The correct policy response to a non-problem – however profitable that non-problem may be – is to have the courage to do nothing.
You’re an idiot.
“Courtesy Phone to Mr. Mockton. Courtesy Phone to Mr. Mockton” Could you please address the issues in your response to Rodbell. Where are the ad hominems?
Mr. Mockton:
That courtesy phone is still ringing. Your silence is deafening. Perhaps your ad hominem shield keeps you from hearing it!!
Thank you Lord Monckton.
I just wanted to post your testimony to the California Assembly from today so that interested parties can follow that story as well. All the best, Michael Smith
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/21/the-heavy-cost-of-a-non-problem/
Excellent, Dr. Rodwell, you have decided to present yourself. You have finally shown yourself as willing to present your arguments as is your student.
I have other responsibilities this evening, but I very much look forward to reading your post above in detail, and enjoying the rebuttals that even a quick reading of your post make quite predictable.
If you are very, very fortunate, Lord Monckton will gift you with a personal rebuttal. He is, however, a very busy man, and as your supporters are so fond of pointing out, not a “tenured professor” like yourself.
Dr. Rodwell:
Assuming you really mean this: “Such debate belongs in the light of day, in the real scientific literature where it can be made plainly …” and applying it to your following remark: “Yes, one could argue that the IPCC reports are not peer reviewed … ” then one can conclude the IPCC reports have no place in science involving claimed AGW.
“If you or others disagree with the authors’ interpretation of the poll’s results, I would urge you to publish your own interpretations …”. Be glad too. The claimed “97% of climate scientists” is not Science in support of claimed AGW, but an example of group think sampling. For example; specifically polling “climate scientists” as to their belief in AGW is like polling kids if they want to get paid to play at recess.
Then we have the old argument – only those who are smart enough, can comprehend, thus agree. “… is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.” The first problem with this argument is the assumption by those making it that they are so smart, while those they disagree with are not. The second problem is this argument has a bad historical record. In that it has been used by radicals and dictators to force their beliefs and rule on those supposedly to dumb and ignorant. But the real fallacy is the argument shows those making the claim are not smart enough to communicate with those they claim are unable to understand. Right, Professor?
(BTW: We deniers do understand “the nuances”, in that promoting AGW pays off in both job security and funding.)
Your counter argument that Lord Monckton’s choosing start and endpoints to counter claims of AGW as being wrong, really does nothing more than show proponents of AGW to be hypocrites. Especially when you state the following “… the decade from 2001-2010 would not be the warmest in instrumental record, which it is”. How convenient of you to pick those particular start and end points, while of course ignoring all non instrumental dates. You do realize a mere decade of warm temperatures does not prove AGW? Especially not by science (scientific method / debate) you started out touting.
Despite your once again lecturing on start and stop dates, “An exhaustive analysis of one of Mr. Monckton’s prior presentations … reveals that the aforementioned cherry picking of data sets, or start and stop dates…”. You again, showed your double standard with, “In fact, 30-year records from the (U.S.) National Snow and Ice Data Center reveal that arctic sea ice, as a whole, is declining precipitously,”. Never mind any other years out of Earth’s billions, or pointing out the recent fast recovery of arctic sea ice at the last of those 30-years. ‘http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/07/sea-ice-news-rapid-re-refreeze-of-the-arctic-in-october-40-faster-than-normal’
On this subject of start and stop dates, why is it the claimers of AGW never want to talk about Earth’s distant past? You know before man came up those supposed horrendous CO2 puffing engines, back when the Earth was much warmer, and arctic sea ice wasn’t (or far less than now). Given your implication of Lord Monckton trying to be deceptive with the following, “Clearly Mr. Monckton knows of the NSIDC data sets …”; are you not throwing stones by not highlighting Earth’s warmer past with less ice? You have heard of the “Piri Reis” map? Medieval Warming? Warmer Greenland?
D.P.
“Such debate belongs in the light of day, in the real scientific literature where it can be made plainly clear exactly what data sets are being used and exactly what points are being made about the data sets”
LMAO!!!!
Maybe you could mention this to Hanson, Mann and everyone else who refuse to reveal their “data sets” or say they can’t find them.
You’re going to have to do much better than this!
We have read the ClimateGate e-mails, both sets, and it doesn’t show the warmistas have much in the way of integrity, sir.
Sea ice? You really want to go there? Please, this is not the first nor the last time Arctic ice cover has retreated!
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm
As I understand it the primary argument in the “human-sourced, atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-induced, global-warming-to-the-point-of- danger” issue is whether or not such warming as is added to the earth and its atmosphere by human-generated carbon dioxide is amplified, diminished, or left alone by atmospheric wator vapor.
Let me take that step-by-step:
1) It is NOT seriously contested that human activity adds CO2 to the Earth’s atmosphere;
2) It is NOT seriously contested that all atmosheric CO2, including that added by human activity, has a greenhouse effect on this planet in that more heat is retained in our atmosphere with CO2 than would be the case without CO2;
3) It NOT seriously contested that such additional heat as is retained in our atmosphere because of the greenhouse effect of CO2 is very small in and of itself;
4) What IS seriously contested is WHETHER OR NOT the heat added to Earth’s atmosphere by human-sourced CO2 is amplified by the process of: first, CO2-generated heat increasing the volume of water vapor in our atmosphere, and then, said added water vapor adding additional heat to our atmosphere by virtue of its own greenhouse capability.
THAT IS THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION OF THE GLOBAL WARMING CONTROVERSY AS I PERCEIVE IT. If you seriously disagree with my premises stated thus far, you need read no further.
NOW MY POINT.
In the vast majority of discussions of global warming which I read, just about every possible angle on the controversy is addressed EXCEPT the primary one which I state above.
We see arguments of character, of shenanigans, of scholarship, of motivation, of experience, of funding etc. etc., but we see very very few arguments of science which actually try to persuade or dissuade on the subject of CO2′s greenhouse effect being amplified by H2O’s greenhouse effect.
Whether or not Lord Monkton is sufficiently educated or published, whether or not Dr. Mann is fibbing, whether or not a valid consensus exists among qualified scientists – are all points which are ULTIMATELY IRRELEVANT. The heat in the atmosphere, or lack of it, pays no heed to the names we call one another or how much we agree or disagree. All atmospheric heat arrives because of scientific facts, and nothing else.
COULD WE PLEASE ADDRESS THE TRULY PERTINENT ASPECTS OF THE CONTROVERSY?
I think you are asking a little too much of science when you expect it to speedily establish the question of whether we are warming, whether this warming is unusual, whether we have anything to do with it, whether it’s actually bad for us (odd assumption, given historical examples of the opposite), whether we can stop or slow it down and how, we can and whether the presribed cure addresses the problem and if it does, whether it will work, or whether it’ll be more harmful than beneficial. Quite a tall order, no?
Consider then, E.Z. Duzzitt, the high probability that given the newness of climate science, the difficulty of dealing with the myriads of factors, our present state of technology and that the computer models on which climate projections are made, consider then, that it will not be possible to arrive at a science-based certainty. The motives, the money flow and the power plays, on the other hand are much more evident and are wreaking an unholy havoc on our economies, causing misery and death to the poor of the world. Many of us, like me, who are not conversant with the physical sciences do, however, understand its guiding principles, have studied other disciplines and have even witnessed similar events. In my case, I was alerted by the sudden “flattening” of the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods by Mann and was struck by the eerie resemblance of the artificially-induced global waming panic to the numerous orchestrtated scares by communist regimes in Eastern Europe well before I could even understand the bare outlines of the “crisis.” The whole thing basically smelled bad, felt wrong, and I had to reverse-engineer my way towards rational markers to understand the issues. And also, when I see the billions that have been bilked from the taxpayer in my province alone, the subsidies for useless windmills and deals with Samsung, the doubling of our price for electricity to pay government cronies for make-work “green jobs” and “green technology,” the scare-mongering in the schools, and the down-turn of our economies thanks to this orchestrated madness, I begin to see the science as a mere prop of receding sigificance. In other words, artsies and regular folks who can think between jobs or while lying in bed with thr flu can still vote, for whatever it’s worth, so no point in trying to cut us out of the discussion. We’re paying the bloody bill for this bonanza, after all.
“… but we see very very few arguments of science which actually try to persuade or dissuade on the subject of CO2′s greenhouse effect being amplified by H2O’s greenhouse effect.”
“COULD WE PLEASE ADDRESS THE TRULY PERTINENT ASPECTS OF THE CONTROVERSY?”
How about this addressing Greenhouse Gas effect:
Man made CO2 contributes only 0.12%
Natural occurring CO2 contributes 3.5%
Man made Water Vapor contributes only 0.001%
Natural occurring Water Vapor contributes a whopping 94.999%
Conclusion Man isn’t the problem, Mother Nature is!
Time to ban Mother Nature’s exhaling and cloud making.
Put a Cap on Mother Nature, and Tax her into compliance.
Make Mother Nature meet Man’s lower contributions by 2030.
Anyway, here’s something that looks like right out of our gun-toting, ‘baccy-chewing, climate-deenier handbook. The one with the mirror on one side, to deflect killer laser rays from the black helicopters. Spine-chillin’ stuff this here:
“EFFECTIVE WORLD GOVERNMENT WILL BE NEEDED TO STAVE OFF CLIMATE CATASTROPHE”
Well, much worse, actually. This is by Garry Stix, for the AGW-friendly Scientific American online mag of all things. Do a look-see and marvel at the chutzbah, kids: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/03/17/effective-world-government-will-still-be-needed-to-stave-off-climate-catastrophe/ . (Hat tip for finding this imbecility to David Spurgeon at WUWT.)
The end-game behind the “climate change” charades isn’t the shocker here, but the carelessness is. Did someone among our Philosopher Kings out there forget that a few of us skeptic peons can actually read when sober? Even such gosh-darn-tootin’ big-word papers like Sign-tiffic ‘Merican. Yes, you can, ah says! Who’d've thunk, huh? The next time some skeptics are called paranoid right-winger conspiracy mongers, can they point to this nice article?
Anyone remember the 60s line, “Stop the world, I wanna get off?”
LOL! Nice catch, Peter!
All of the pitch for control of CO2 and AGW in general is really for consolidation of power and control of the world’s resources by a single body. Whether it be the UN or some other control group.
They even admitted that it didn’t matter if AGW was a fact, it was the result that was desired. No more. (I’d cite the quotation but, I’m too lazy to do so right now and it doesn’t matter to these clowns!)
When one of them can explain to me why farming in Greenland or England having a wine industry (as both have occurred in the past without the assistance of SUVs) is a bad thing, maybe I’d give them the time of day. If that.
Ha! I’m too lazy to root around for it too, but I think it’s the main thrust of the upcoming Rio 2012 UN-IPCC vacation, I mean conference, this June. The catastrophic anthropogenic warming which turned to catastrophic climate change is about to morph into “sustainabiity,” since everyone now seems to think the climate stuff’s all pike of steaming hooey anyway. Much easier to spin “sustainability” and now the social sciences crowd will finally get its turn at the trough…they’ve been patient and supportive troopers after all. As one of the big shots witht the IPCC quipped, “whoever controls the definition of sustainability controls the world.” At Union college, whoever controls the fate of the plastic bottles on campus, controls the campus itself…and that would be their Erin Delman here. I think she’ll do better than the IPCC, although she’ll miss out on Rio.
Donald, the sea ice has been lower in the past. There is nothing unique about the recent trends. Look at figure 5 in this Peer reviewed article:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0485%281979%29009%3C0580%3AAAOASI%3E2.0.CO%3B2
Monkton’s claims are generally fallacious. They are so numerous, that refuting them will obviously take too much time and space to be done in a single post. Let us look at a couple of paragraphs in his comment above.
“The world is not warming at present. It has not been warming for almost a decade and a half, though it has been warming since 1695.”
The best estimate of the earth’s warming is the total heat increase in the oceans. This has shown a considerable increase in the last decade and a half even though the record is noisy. Check out the graph in the following.
tamino.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/fake-predictions-for-fake-skeptics/
“In the 40 years to 1735, before the Industrial Revolution even began, the temperature in Central England (not a bad proxy for global temperatures) rose by 4 Fahrenheit degrees, compared with just 1 F° in the whole of the 20th century.”
How can a single small area like Central England be used as a proxy for global temperatures? This is clearly unscientific nonsense.
“ Climatic patterns are indeed changing. But they have been changing for 4,567 million years, and they will go on changing long into the future. However, the fact of climate change does not tell us the cause of climate change.”
In fact, based on paleontological studies, CO2 has been shown to be a cause of climate change in the past. In some cases it was heavy emissions from volcanoes that increased global temperatures, in other cases it was absorption by weathering of rocks that drove decreases in CO2.
“ Humans are indeed exercising some influence. Indeed, though the Professor implies otherwise, I stated explicitly in my lecture that the IPCC might be right in saying that more than half of the warming since 1950 was caused by us. However, that tells us little about how much warming we may expect in future. My best estimate is that the CO2 we add to the atmosphere this century will cause around 1 C° of warming by 2100. But that is not far short of the IPCC’s own central estimate of 1.5 C°.”
The quotation of the IPCC’s central estimate is clearly incorrect based on what the IPCC’s report says. Check out the 6 model ensembles which estimate temperature change by year 2100, based on different scenarios. The median estimate for the scenario with the SMALLEST temperature change is 1.5 C°. The median estimate of all the six scenarios is about 2.75-3C°, and the 1 sigma uncertainty for the worst case extends to 6 C°.
ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-10-26.html
Note that CO2 is not the only GHG that the IPCC looks at. The models include NO2 and CH4, as well as the cooling effect of SO2.
Judging from this small sample, every point that Monckton makes is incorrect based on the scientific record. The sheer number of errors, misrepresentations and fallacies in one of his talks is mind boggling. This is what fuels the outrage among scientists.
It is amazing how the so called “skeptics” can worship such a phony.
To Eric Adler:
You said:
“The best estimate of the earth’s warming is the total heat increase in the oceans. This has shown a considerable increase in the last decade and a half even though the record is noisy.”
Ocean heat content, a good measure of global temperatures as you suggest, has been essentially flat since the ARGO era began in 2003. Prior to that, measurements are suspect, but some warming has of course occurred. No one is claiming there has been no warming, only that it is less than the IPCC models, and does not march in lockstep with CO2 concentrations, therefore there are other forcings that need to be considered. Compare the IPCC ocean heat content model with actual. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/image24.png
“How can a single small area like Central England be used as a proxy for global temperatures? This is clearly unscientific nonsense.”
The Central England temperature data is the longest running instrumental record, and has tracked pretty well with global temperatures during the instrumental record era. There are a few others that are almost as long. None of them show a dramatic change when we started to emit more CO2. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/tbrown_figure5_thumb.png?w=593&h=484. Monckton stated it is a pretty good proxy, which it apparently is.
“In fact, based on paleontological studies, CO2 has been shown to be a cause of climate change in the past. In some cases it was heavy emissions from volcanoes that increased global temperatures, in other cases it was absorption by weathering of rocks that drove decreases in CO2.”
CO2 concentration had some influence on temperatures, but based on ice core derived data there is no obvious cause and effect, and fairly large increases in concentration did not result in a run-away greenhouse effect. In fact, the majority of the record indicates that temperature leads CO2, presumably due to CO2 being driven out of the oceans. Remember, no one is claiming that CO2 has no influence, only that it is much less than the IPCC claims it to be. Some correlation and causation should be detectable.
From http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarmingGW_Part1_PreHistoricalRecord.htm#paleo: Although Al Gore claimed in his movie that this figure demonstrates that CO2 drives the climate, he got it backwards. The IPCC, in the AR4 Scientific Basis report, Part 6, p444 (May 2007), makes the following statement: “Variations in CO2 over the last 420 kyr broadly followed Antarctic temperature, typically by several centuries to a millennium” [http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch06.pdf]
“The quotation of the IPCC’s central estimate is clearly incorrect based on what the IPCC’s report says. Check out the 6 model ensembles which estimate temperature change by year 2100, based on different scenarios. The median estimate for the scenario with the SMALLEST temperature change is 1.5 C°. The median estimate of all the six scenarios is about 2.75-3C°, and the 1 sigma uncertainty for the worst case extends to 6 C°. ”
I looked for but did not find where Monckton had claimed that IPCC central estimate was 1.5C. He did state that the IPCC estimate was about 3C per century. He also made the point that actual temperatures are closer to a rate of 1C per century. I think you are referring to the fact that he mentioned actual rate of change is less than the lowest IPCC estimate of 1.5C.
“How can a single small area like Central England be used as a proxy for global temperatures? This is clearly unscientific nonsense.”
Really? So Mann using a couple of trees is a better proxy?
David @March 19, 2012 at 1:52 am
Your rebuttal to the first point I made doesn’t hold water.
Monckton claimed that there has be no warming in the last decade an a half. This is clearly untrue. When the internal noise is eliminated from the temperature record a strong global warming signal emerges very clearly in the graphs shown in the Tamino link, as well as this peer reviewed paper by Foster and Rhamsdorf, in which 5 global temperature records are analysed.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022
Tisdale never shows a global sea surface temperature record in the link you provided. He has divided the earth’s oceans in two parts and shows each part separately. He never shows a single graph of the global temperature record, so this can’t be used as a rebuttal at all. It is simply misdirection.
Your answer to the second statement is not a really a rebuttal of my point. Monckton’s said central England temperature tose 4F in a 40 year period ending in 1735, and this was a good proxy for global temperatures. In response you linked to a graph on the JoAnn Nova website entitled “The best and latest temperature picture.”. If you look at the time period referred to by Monckton, the global temperature rise is about 0.2C during that period, which is about 10 times lower than the 4F given by Monckton. This clearly shows that central England temperature is not a good global proxy.
You are guilty of making a straw man argument regarding the role of CO2 in the ice ages.
You wrote: “Nobody disputes that as the oceans warm they out-gas more CO2, but as CO2 increase lags the T increase, it is clearly an effect, and can not be the primary cause.”
No one claims that variation in CO2 was the initial cause of the recent ice age global temperature cycles. It is a feedback mechanism which amplifys the temperature excursions triggered by the earth’s axial and orbital variations. You are simply choosing to ignore the peer reviewed literature which shows how CO2 concentrations affected past climates, during climate cycles in the ice ages, because you can’t really find a scientific rebuttal.
pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Book_chapters/Rahmstorf_Zedillo_2008.pdf
Your point about the ocean currents causing the global warming trend is nonsense. As I pointed out above, removal of the internal noise due to ENSO, volcanoes as well as solar variation leaves us with a strong and clear global warming trend over the last 40 years. Warming during the first half of the 20th century was driven by solar radiance increases.
skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
Finally, Monckton claimed that the IPCC’s CENTRAL estimate of global warming was 1.5C. This was clearly false. The CENTRAL estimate as you agree was 3C. There is a big difference between 1.5C and 3C . Certainly there is a big difference between 3C of warming and 1 C. I don’t see how you can dismiss my criticism as pendantic, especially when the IPCC estimates go up to 4.5C for a the median result on one of the scenarios. Clearly Monckton is attempting to mislead his audience by claiming that his estimate agrees with the IPCC.
This kind of discussion is very time consuming and I really need to spend time doing other things right now than replying to more nonsense by written by Monckton. I would like to point out, that I didn’t have to look hard to find false statements by Monckton. I merely took the first three scientific statements, that Monckton made in his comments in rebuttal to Professor Rodbell. Why would these not be representative of the quality of his arguments in general? Is he foolish enough to lead with his weakest arguments?
David @March 19, 2012 at 1:52 am
Your rebuttal to the first point I made doesn’t hold water.
Monckton claimed that there has be no warming in the last decade an a half. This is clearly untrue. When the internal noise is eliminated from the temperature record a strong global warming signal emerges very clearly in the graphs shown in the Tamino link, as well as this peer reviewed paper by Foster and Rhamsdorf, in which 5 global temperature records are analysed.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022
Tisdale never shows a global sea surface temperature record in the link you provided. He has divided the earth’s oceans in two parts and shows each part separately. He never shows a single graph of the global temperature record, so this can’t be used as a rebuttal at all. It is simply misdirection.
Your answer to the second statement is not a really a rebuttal of my point. Monckton’s said central England temperature rose 4F in a 40 year period ending in 1735, and this was a good proxy for global temperatures. In response you linked to a graph on the JoAnn Nova website entitled “The best and latest temperature picture.”. If you look at the time period referred to by Monckton, the global temperature rise is about 0.2C during that period, which is about 10 times lower than the 4F given by Monckton. This clearly shows that central England temperature is not a good global proxy.
You are guilty of making a straw man argument regarding the role of CO2 in the ice ages.
You wrote: “Nobody disputes that as the oceans warm they out-gas more CO2, but as CO2 increase lags the T increase, it is clearly an effect, and can not be the primary cause.”
No one claims that variation in CO2 was the initial cause of the recent ice age global temperature cycles. It is a feedback mechanism which amplifies the temperature excursions triggered by the earth’s axial and orbital variations. You are simply choosing to ignore the peer reviewed literature which shows how CO2 concentrations affected past climates, during climate cycles in the ice ages, because you can’t really find a scientific rebuttal.
pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Book_chapters/Rahmstorf_Zedillo_2008.pdf
Your point about the ocean currents causing the global warming trend is nonsense. As I pointed out above, removal of the internal noise due to ENSO, volcanoes as well as solar variation leaves us with a strong and clear global warming trend over the last 40 years. Warming during the first half of the 20th century was driven by solar radiance increases.
skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
Finally, Monckton claimed that the IPCC’s CENTRAL estimate of global warming was 1.5C. This was clearly false. The CENTRAL estimate as you agree was 3C. There is a big difference between 1.5C and 3C . Certainly there is a big difference between 3C of warming and 1 C. I don’t see how you can dismiss my criticism as pendantic, especially when the IPCC estimates go up to 4.5C for a the median result on one of the scenarios. Clearly Monckton is attempting to mislead his audience by claiming that his estimate agrees with the IPCC.
This kind of discussion is very time consuming and I really need to spend time doing other things right now than replying to more nonsense by written by Monckton. I would like to point out, that I didn’t have to look hard to find false statements by Monckton. I merely took the first three scientific statements, that Monckton made in his comments in rebuttal to Professor Rodbell. Why would these not be representative of the quality of his arguments in general? Is he foolish enough to lead with his weakest arguments?
Eric said:
“Monckton claimed that there has be no warming in the last decade an a half. This is clearly untrue. When the internal noise is eliminated from the temperature record a strong global warming signal emerges very clearly in the graphs shown in the Tamino link, as well as this peer reviewed paper by Foster and Rhamsdorf,”
It occurs to be that this is a rather flawed statement. The lord shows the clean data sets with the obvious conclusions. Foster and Rahmsdorf apply multiple fudge factors on the data and sure enough after those suppositions the warming is back. It doesn’t change the fact that the data show no significant warming and it’s nonsense claiming that the Foster and Rahmsdorf magic is a rebuttal.
The latter merely apply some hypotheses about the influence of some phenomena, while omitting others and you can’t claim anything with hypotheses.
See also: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/17/frank-lansner-on-foster-and-rahmstorf-2011/
Eric, as you did not respond to much of my comments, your responses therefore lost context and were often not cogent to my main point, I must herein put everthing in context by showing Monckton’s statement, your rebuttal, my response, your rebuttal, and my response.
Monckton’s statement..
“The world is not warming at present. It has not been warming for almost a decade and a half, though it has been warming since 1695.”
===========================
The criticism
The best estimate of the earth’s warming is the total heat increase in the oceans. This has shown a considerable increase in the last decade and a half even though the record is noisy. Check out the graph in the following.
tamino.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/fake-predictions-for-fake-skeptics/
——————————————————————————
My rebuttal;
Not even the alarmist say this. Deep ocean warming is an ad-hoc patch attempt to explain the fact that Moncton’s statement is indeed true according to what most consider to be the most accurate measurement of atmospheric temperature. Your rebuttal is nothing more then an attempt to move the pea to a different shell, and does not, in any way, refute the factual content of the statement.
It is unscientific of you to use the term “considerable” to describe an increase. A scientist would quantify that term and discuss the error bars of the estimate. The facts regarding ocean warming are that over the last eight years, from 0 to 700 meters deep, the Argo buoys show a slight cooling, nothing statistically significant. Now there is MAYBE some “minor “ warming in the deeper ocean, but it is a very small amount and the oceans, like the atmosphere have not warmed anything like the models predict. Are you familiar with Dr. Trenberth’s paper in the journal Science on Tracking Earth’s Energy (16 APRIL 2010 VOL 328)? You may know that Dr. Trenberth is an IPCC lead author. In that paper, he shows that measured heat in the oceans is far lower than predicted by climate models. More recently he has hypothesized that the “missing heat” is in the deep ocean, but the mechanism for said heat to by-pass the atmosphere, and the 0 to 700 meter depth oceans is not explained, and our current capability to measure the deep oceans is inadequate at best. So your first attempt to debunk Monckton is to not answer his statement, and to make a misleading assertion not accepted by the scientific community. For some details on ocean warming study this article…http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/does-the-sea-surface-temperature-record-support-the-hypothesis-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/#more-595
===========================================================
Eric Adler response.
Your rebuttal to the first point I made doesn’t hold water.
Monckton claimed that there has been no warming in the last decade an a half. This is clearly untrue. When the internal noise is eliminated from the temperature record a strong global warming signal emerges very clearly in the graphs shown in the Tamino link, as well as this peer reviewed paper by Foster and Rhamsdorf, in which 5 global temperature records are analysed.
Tisdale never shows a global sea surface temperature record in the link you provided. He has divided the earth’s oceans in two parts and shows each part separately. He never shows a single graph of the global temperature record, so this can’t be used as a rebuttal at all. It is simply misdirection.
———————————————————————————————
My second response…
Well Sir, good for you to actually engage in real discussion. I see you have moved the pea to yet another shell. First, to dispute the atmosphere measurements, you said the heat was in the ocean, I pointed out some (there are more) of the flaws and uncertainties in that assertion.
Now you move back from the ocean to the atmosphere to one study, which, by the way, has been heavily criticized by many PHD scientist, and look to that to rescue the day for CAGW. In order for Foster and Rhamdsorf to be correct they would have to be the greatest climatologists to ever live. They would have to properly understand all details of cloud formation, water/vapor, solar changes, ocean currents, jet stream patterns, UHI, land use changes, GHGs, soot, snow, particulates, etc, etc. Even the IPCC admits to a low level of understanding in many of these areas, including the most important ones of clouds and w/v feedbacks.
Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) attempted to remove from 5 global temperature datasets the linear effects of ONLY 3 factors that are known to cause variations in global temperature. These three are, El Niño-Southern Oscillation, volcanic aerosols, and solar variations. In the scientific literature ther is a cogent comment from Compo and Sardeshmukh (2010) “In particular, defining ENSO in terms of a single index and ENSO-related variations in terms of regressions on that index, as done in many previous studies, can lead to wrong conclusions. This paper argues that ENSO is best viewed not as a number but as an evolving dynamical process for this purpose.”
Yet that is exactly what Tamino, aka Foster did. Additionally, Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) assumed that the global warming signal is linear and that it is caused by anthropogenic forcings, but those assumptions are not supported by the satellite-era Sea Surface Temperature. The global warming signal is not linear, and the El Niño events of 1986/87/88 and 1997/98 are shown to be the cause of the rise in sea surface temperatures, not anthropogenic greenhouse gases. The current flat line and decline in SSTs as ESNO system revert to their well known cooler patterns support this assertion. Using TSI as a solar proxy is another mistake made in this process and one that the warmist brigade are happy to use. Solar influence on climate is best analyzed at the surface, not the TOA.
This is reinforced by numerous recent papers showing the strong possibility that solar influences are far greater then the small flux in TSI. By artificially reducing the impacts of ocean cycles, TSI, and volcanic effects, and using GISS as their preferred data set, they leave CO2 as the only culprit. Their paper is a self- fulfilling prophecy.
BTW Tisdale’s article is not miss-direction at all. He separates many of the ocean basins to provide evidence for his assertions, one of them being that the affect of ocean SST events does not end when the T in a narrowly defined area has changed, but, for instance, in a large La Nina even much of the warm water has simply moved out side the area measured defining La Nina.
=====================================================
Next Monckton’s statement
“ Climatic patterns are indeed changing. But they have been changing for 4,567 million years, and they will go on changing long into the future. However, the fact of climate change does not tell us the cause of climate change.”
The criticism…
In fact, based on paleontological studies, CO2 has been shown to be a cause of climate change in the past. In some cases it was heavy emissions from volcanoes that increased global temperatures, in other cases it was absorption by weathering of rocks that drove decreases in CO2.
My rebuttal
Well well, as they say in England, “not, not definitely not.” What the record actually shows is that CO2 follows T increases and decreases by about 800 years. Nobody disputes that as the oceans warm they out-gas more CO2, but as CO2 increase lags the increase, it is clearly an effect, and can not be the primary cause. Climate sensitivity to doubling CO2 will have to be determined by far more detailed observations of today’s climate with today’s instruments. From about 1915 to 1945 there was a steep increase in global T. This was before CO2 could have had a major worldwide affect. From 1945 to about 1975 the earth cooled, despite ever increasing CO2, from 1975 to about 2000 the earth warmed, temporarily in sync with CO2 increases, for the past 12 years, even as CO2 increases continue unabated, the earth atmospheric T is flat or slightly down, So for 45 of the 70 years or so the CO2 could have a chance to drive T, it has failed to do so. However T trends have most exactly followed changes in ocean currents. Monckton’s statement stands.
=============================================
Response to my rebuttal
You are guilty of making a straw man argument regarding the role of CO2 in the ice ages.
You wrote: “Nobody disputes that as the oceans warm they out-gas more CO2, but as CO2 increase lags the T increase, it is clearly an effect, and can not be the primary cause.”
No one claims that variation in CO2 was the initial cause of the recent ice age global temperature cycles. It is a feedback mechanism which amplifys the temperature excursions triggered by the earth’s axial and orbital variations. You are simply choosing to ignore the peer reviewed literature which shows how CO2 concentrations affected past climates, during climate cycles in the ice ages, because you can’t really find a scientific rebuttal.
pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Book_chapters/Rahmstorf_Zedillo_2008.pdf
Your point about the ocean currents causing the global warming trend is nonsense. As I pointed out above, removal of the internal noise due to ENSO, volcanoes as well as solar variation leaves us with a strong and clear global warming trend over the last 40 years. (My response to the last paragraph here…I pointed out the flaws in your assumptions in the last section in regard to this last paragraph. The oceans contain a thousand times the heat content of the atmosphere, changes in SWR at the surface drive the ocean T , the oceans, being a locomotive next to a unicycle, drive the atmosphere, this is common sense, not nonsense.
============================================================
My response continues. Well, you call it a straw man when you ignored the non disputed fact in your statement. You said… “In fact, based on paleontological studies, CO2 has been shown to be a cause of climate change in the past.“ when if fact it is , as you admit, a KNOWN effect known via the observed lag, and A POSTULATED feedback. You then state, “It is a feedback mechanism which amplifys the temperature excursions triggered by the earth’s axial and orbital variations. You are simply choosing to ignore the peer reviewed literature which shows how CO2 concentrations affected past climates, during climate cycles in the ice ages, because you can’t really find a scientific rebuttal.”
Really, so the earth’s axial and orbital variations were the only causes of past flux in climate, HUMM?, time to rescind thousands of scientific papers. (sarc)
My pointing out that CO2 flux is for certain an affect, and only potentially a cause, when you left off the effect part is not a straw man, but adding cogent information you conveniently forgot. You then point to one paper, by a familiar name from the “team” supporting the “cause”, as your black and white conclusion that CO2 drives climate at all timescales, (except of course the last 100 years as I showed)
If the MWP was real this alone destroys your CO2 drives climate, as your team has flat lined CO2 during this period. Borehole temperature measurements at 6000 locations (Huang et al., 1997). as one of several dozen other studies I can find, show the MWP was real, was global, and was as warm, or warmer then the current warm period.
Here is another 2,000 yr reconstruction that strongly dings the Hockey stick papers.
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2010/sep/23sep2010a3.html
Here is a 4,000 year reconstruction of Greenland showing 72 decades were warmer then the current decade, all contradicting your CO2 flat line, http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2012/feb/14feb2012a1.html
Of course there is Loehle’s reconstruction 2007, based on all temperature proxies except tree rings. It used 18 proxies over a wide geographical range, including sediments, boreholes, pollen, oxygen-18, stalagmites, magnesium to calcium ratios, algae, and cave formation. First reconstruction in which every proxy was calibrated to temperature in a peer reviewed article; arguably about as good as it gets.
Let us progress from centuries and thousands of years to millions of years…
Recently Berner et al looked at carbon dioxide and temperature variations over the last 470 million years. An analysis of that paper shows…
“Assuming Berner’s figures are correct, then both CO2 and cosmic rays affect the temperature over the last 450 million years.
The correlation with log(CO2) alone is R^2 = 0.63.
Using log(cosmic rays) alone is R^2 = 0.42. (The log of both CO2 and cosmic rays give a much better fit to temperature than the data itself.)
Using a linear regression with both gives R^2 = 0.79.
A very interesting finding from this analysis is that the resulting climate sensitivity is 1.0 C +/- 0.2 (2 std. dev.) per doubling of CO2.”
Of course there are many other factors beside those mentioned would could affect T which place senstivity right in line with Lindzen’s estimate here…http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060126/20060126_13.pdf
I have dozens more peer reviewed papers, some for century scales, some for thousands of years, some for millions, I am afraid sir that it is you who are “ignoring the peer reviewed literature”
————————————————————————–
Monckton’s statement…
“ Humans are indeed exercising some influence. Indeed, though the Professor implies otherwise, I stated explicitly in my lecture that the IPCC might be right in saying that more than half of the warming since 1950 was caused by us. However, that tells us little about how much warming we may expect in future. My best estimate is that the CO2 we add to the atmosphere this century will cause around 1 C° of warming by 2100. But that is not far short of the IPCC’s own central estimate of 1.5 C°.”
The criticism…
The quotation of the IPCC’s central estimate is clearly incorrect based on what the IPCC’s report says. Check out the 6 model ensembles which estimate temperature change by year 2100, based on different scenarios. The median estimate for the scenario with the SMALLEST temperature change is 1.5 C°. The median estimate of all the six scenarios is about 2.75-3C°, and the 1 sigma uncertainty for the worst case extends to 6 C°.
ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-10-26.html
Note that CO2 is not the only GHG that the IPCC looks at. The models include NO2 and CH4, as well as the cooling effect of SO2.
My rebuttal…
First of all Christopher Moncton is clearly not agreeing with the IPCC, but making a considerably lower estimate of climate sensitivity. His statement was in fact factual, as you say, “The median estimate for the scenario with the SMALLEST temperature change is 1.5 C°. “ which came from one of the IPCC models. All the models can not be right now can they. Monckton is saying he that his estimate of climate sensitivity to doubling CO2 is not far from the model mean of an IPCC report. This is true. Your assertion that the model mean of all the IPCC models is higher is somewhat pedantic. The real issue is if there is support within the peer reviewed literature for Monckton’s assertion. The answer is ONCE AGAIN yes.
The models very large range, and the fact that the observations do not match any of them, indicate a lower sensitivity and a lack of understanding. “The large uncertainties in both the observations and model simulations of the spectral amplitude of natural variability precludes a confident detection of anthropogenically forced climate change against the background of natural internal climate variability”. (BAMS, Dec, 2011, p. 1686-7). Furthermore numerous studies , based on observations, not models, have also predicted a climate sensitivity in line with Moncton’s assertions, or lower. I am referring to Lindzen work, and also Spencer’s peer reviewed work, and others.
——————————————————————————————
Your response to my rebuttal
Finally, Monckton claimed that the IPCC’s CENTRAL estimate of global warming was 1.5C. This was clearly false. The CENTRAL estimate as you agree was 3C. There is a big difference between 1.5C and 3C . Certainly there is a big difference between 3C of warming and 1 C. I don’t see how you can dismiss my criticism as pendantic, especially when the IPCC estimates go up to 4.5C for a the median result on one of the scenarios. Clearly Monckton is attempting to mislead his audience by claiming that his estimate agrees with the IPCC.
———————————————————————————
My response…
You are the one creating the straw man. Monckton just stated that his 1C estimate for doubling of CO2 was not far from what was published in the last IPCC meeting. He did not claim it was the mean of all the models. Many scientist feel that using the mean of all the models is a poor way of simply guessing, when in fact all the models show a very large range which is simply an indication of their lack of certainty. As several commentators pointed out to you, the mean in the last IPCC meeting was lowered to close to 2C. Also Monckton, in other parts of his presentation, points out the range of the models forecasts, so in context he is evading nothing, but simply saying that 1C is not far outside of what the IPCC admits to as possible. Furthermore the higher range of extremes is do to all GHGs, whereas you point out, the response to CO2 alone would be lower. Finally Monckton’s point here it is not a crucial point, and is cogent and true to the message he was giving, which I explained. The real issue is if there is support within the peer reviewed literature for Monckton’s assertion? As the answer to that question is in the affirmative, and you avoided this, twice now, the word “pedantic” is appropriate.
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2011/sep/20sep2011a1.html
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2011/mar/8mar2011a2.html
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2010/jul/08jul2010a1.html
There are more if you wish.
If I may paraphrase you, Judging from this small sample, most every statement Christopher Monckton makes is well supported within the scientific literature, and or the data bases used world wide.
Eric adler says there is no science in the responses so far. Of course many are about the worthlessness of the professors article, which, being vacant of any science, did not need any to rebut the attitudes expressed, but you miss at least three in the first ten… http://www.concordy.com/article/opinions/march-7-2012/a-lords-opinion-cant-compete-with-scientific-truth/4222/#comment-19594 Here is a rebutal of the only “fact” in the professors rebuttal… http://www.concordy.com/article/opinions/march-7-2012/a-lords-opinion-cant-compete-with-scientific-truth/4222/#comment-19616
Here is my first comment with reference to at least nine peer reviewed papers.. http://www.concordy.com/article/opinions/march-7-2012/a-lords-opinion-cant-compete-with-scientific-truth/4222/#comment-19683 That was in the first ten comments. There are many others, including Monckton’s first comment, and my rebuttal to your criticism of Moncton’s statements.
AHha, I see you did notice the first comment, and made an attempt to respond. Very good then. My response to your detailed attempt to condem Moncton’s statement answers most of your assertions here, but, just for fun, lets examine this statement of yours…
“You misstate the conclusions of the so called Hockey Stick papers. I put that in plural because many papers have been published showing proxy temperature reconstructions that show the recent rate of increase in temperatures are unprecedented in the last 1000 or so years, since the original temperature reconstruction paper was published by Mann et. al. since 1999. Contrary to your claim, they make no statement about the role of CO2.”
==========================
My response,
Very pendantic of you. While it is literally true that they make no direct statement about CO2, by inference they attempt to leave CO2 as the only real factor in climate. My statement linked above addresses this directly. It was an attempt for the “cause” to destroy the null hypothesis, which remains solid and states that current climate is within past historical parameters and past slopes of change. Now let us examine for a moment those plural papers which you claim support the hockey stick. Let us see what the “team” of scientist who did these studies you are referring to thought of Mann;s work in particular, and there own work in general.
Bradley:
“I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year “reconstruction”.
Cook:
“I am afraid that Mike is defending something that increasingly cannot be defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the science move ahead.”
cont below
Eric, of of course many comments are about the the professors article, and as it had 0 scientific content, either did their response, but you miss at least three good ones within the first ten. http://www.concordy.com/article/opinions/march-7-2012/a-lords-opinion-cant-compete-with-scientific-truth/4222/#comment-19594 Here is a rebutal of the only “fact” in the professors rebuttal… http://www.concordy.com/article/opinions/march-7-2012/a-lords-opinion-cant-compete-with-scientific-truth/4222/#comment-19616
Here is my first comment with reference to at least nine peer reviewed papers.. http://www.concordy.com/article/opinions/march-7-2012/a-lords-opinion-cant-compete-with-scientific-truth/4222/#comment-19683 That was in the first ten comments. There are many others, including Monckton’s first comment, and my rebuttal to your criticism of Moncton’s statements.
AHha, I see you did notice the first comment, and made an attempt to respond. Very good then. My detailed response attempt to condem Moncton’s statement answers most of your assertions, but, just for fun, lets examine this statement of yours…
“You misstate the conclusions of the so called Hockey Stick papers. I put that in plural because many papers have been published showing proxy temperature reconstructions that show the recent rate of increase in temperatures are unprecedented in the last 1000 or so years, since the original temperature reconstruction paper was published by Mann et. al. since 1999. Contrary to your claim, they make no statement about the role of CO2.”
==========================
My response,
Very pendantic of you. While it is literally true that they make no direct statement about CO2, by inference they attempt to leave CO2 as the only real factor in climate. My statement linked above addresses this directly. It was an attempt for the “cause” to destroy the null hypothesis, which remains solid and states that current climate is within past historical parameters and past slopes of change. Now let us examine for a moment those plural papers which you claim support the hockey stick. Let us see what the “team” of scientist who did these studies you are referring to thought of Mann;s work in particular, and there own work in general.
Bradley:
“I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year “reconstruction”.
Cook:
“I am afraid that Mike is defending something that increasingly cannot be defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the science move ahead.”
Then Cook proposes a new climate reconstruction to sort out all the past one’s, a best effort if you will of the team..
with a tentative title: Cook writes…
“Northern Hemisphere Temperatures Over The Past Millennium: Where Are
The Greatest Uncertainties?”
Authors: Cook, Briffa, Esper, Osborn, D’Arrigo, Bradley(?), Jones
(??), Mann (infinite?) – I am afraid the Mike and Phil are too
personally invested in things now (i.e. the 2003 GRL paper that is
probably the worst paper Phil has ever been involved in – Bradley
hates it as well), but I am willing to offer to include them if they
can contribute without just defending their past work”
==================================================
Cook next (in seven steps) articulates what he thinks can be learned from this team effort after describing it in detail ending with step 7
Cook writes…
“…7. Publish, retire, and don’t leave a forwarding address
Without trying to prejudice this work, but also because of what I
almost think I know to be the case, the results of this study will
show that we can probably say a fair bit about 100 year variability was like with any certainty i.e. we know with certainty that we know SNIP-all.
Of course, none of what I have proposed has addressed the issue of
seasonality of response. So what I am suggesting is strictly an
empirical comparison of published 1000 year NH reconstructions
because many of the same tree-ring proxies get used in both seasonal
and annual recons anyway. So all I care about is how the recons
differ and where they differ most in frequency and time without any
direct consideration of their TRUE association with observed
temperatures.”
Wow, now having trashed all the reconstructions as junk, Cook the desribes how to make them appear credible in the next IPCC report…
” I think this is exactly the kind of study that needs to be done
before the next IPCC assessment. But to give it credibility, it has
to have a reasonably broad spectrum of authors to avoid looking like
a biased attack paper, i.e. like Soon and Balliunas.”
So Eric, you are “defending the indefensible”
I suggest you read the paper by McShane and Wyner in The Annals of Applied Statistics (Vol. 5, No. 1, p. 5-44). You can see in their study they found that random noise was as effective as the proxies processed by the Mann algorithm in predicting temperatures. As they put it “random series that are independent of global temperature are as effective or more effective than the proxies at predicting global annual temperatures in the instrumental period.
Dr. Jonathan Jones, Professor of Physics, Brasenose College, Oxford University made on the Bishop Hill blog ( http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/12/2/tim-barnett-on-the-hockey-stick.html ) at December 3, 2011 at 6:11 PM. Professor Jones makes an unequivocal condemnation of the “Hockey Stick” and much of climatology.
Do you have a scientific reason for ignoring the conclusion of all of these scientists or of Prof. Wegman who concluded in a report to Congress that the Mann conclusions were not statistically valid? (You may recall that Dr. Gerry North, who was head of an NAS panel reviewing climate reconstructions testified under oath that he agreed with the conclusion of the Wegman report).
Eric Adler says March 18, 2012 at 9:03 pm
Monkton’s claims are generally fallacious. They are so numerous, that refuting them will obviously take too much time and space to be done in a single post. Let us look at a couple of paragraphs in his comment above.
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My response. You will then agree that if I demonstrate you ignorant of facts on your assertions in some, if not all of this current post, then Monckton’s other assertions, which you also hold baseless and unsupported by the literature, may instead be correct.
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Monckton’s statement..
“The world is not warming at present. It has not been warming for almost a decade and a half, though it has been warming since 1695.”
===========================
The criticism
The best estimate of the earth’s warming is the total heat increase in the oceans. This has shown a considerable increase in the last decade and a half even though the record is noisy. Check out the graph in the following.
tamino.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/fake-predictions-for-fake-skeptics/
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My rebuttal;
Not even the alarmist say this. Deep ocean warming is an ad-hoc patch attempt to explain the fact that Moncton’s statement is indeed true according to what most consider to be the most accurate measurement of atmospheric temperature. Your rebuttal is nothing more then an attempt to move the pea to a different shell, and does not, in any way, refute the factual content of the statement.
It is unscientific of you to use the term “considerable” to describe an increase. A scientist would quantify that term and discuss the error bars of the estimate. The facts regarding ocean warming are that over the last eight years, from 0 to 700 meters deep, the Argo buoys show a slight cooling, nothing statistically significant. Now there is MAYBE some “minor “ warming in the deeper ocean, but it is a very small amount and the oceans, like the atmosphere have not warmed anything like the models predict. Are you familiar with Dr. Trenberth’s paper in the journal Science on Tracking Earth’s Energy (16 APRIL 2010 VOL 328)? You may know that Dr. Trenberth is an IPCC lead author. In that paper, he shows that measured heat in the oceans is far lower than predicted by climate models. More recently he has hypothesized that the “missing heat” is in the deep ocean, but the mechanism for said heat to by-pass the atmosphere, and the 0 to 700 meter depth oceans is not explained, and our current capability to measure the deep oceans is inadequate at best. So your first attempt to debunk Monckton is to not answer his statement, and to make a misleading assertion not accepted by the scientific community. For some details on ocean warming study this article…http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/does-the-sea-surface-temperature-record-support-the-hypothesis-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/#more-595
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Monckton’s next statement…
“In the 40 years to 1735, before the Industrial Revolution even began, the temperature in Central England (not a bad proxy for global temperatures) rose by 4 Fahrenheit degrees, compared with just 1 F° in the whole of the 20th century.”
The criticism of Monckton statement…
How can a single small area like Central England be used as a proxy for global temperatures? This is clearly unscientific nonsense.
The central England record is thought to be a decent proxy for global records because of it correlation to changes in AMO, AO, NAO and ENSO, SST LEVELS and the jet streams. See this global graph taken from a peer reviewed literature study..
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=global+temperatures,+1695+to+1735&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&qscrl=1&nord=1&rlz=1T4TSHB_en___US337&biw=1280&bih=685&tbm=isch&tbnid=8LOnDUiAQExecM:&imgrefurl=http://joannenova.com.au/2010/10/is-the-western-climate-establishment-corrupt-part-4-past-temperatures/&docid=gdu3XANCW_RvMM&imgurl=http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/guest/de/temp-0-web.jpg&w=512&h=480&ei=drZmT9yNMcq2iwLNoP2hDw&zoom=1
Notice the sharp uptick right at the time Lord Monckton mentions. Loehle’s reconstruction in 2007 is based on all temperature proxies except tree rings. It used 18 proxies over a wide geographical range, including sediments, boreholes, pollen, oxygen-18, stalagmites, magnesium to calcium ratios, algae, and cave formation. First reconstruction in which every proxy was calibrated to temperature in a peer reviewed article; arguably about as good as it gets. So here also Monckton’s assertion is backed by peer reviewed literature, where as your assertion has zero backing. He double hockey sticks, the original IPCC graph of past T history showed a sharp increase in T in the same location, only they removed it from subsequent IPCC reports. Monckton’s statement is supported by scientific peer reviewed literature.
———————————————————————————
Monckton’s statement
“ Climatic patterns are indeed changing. But they have been changing for 4,567 million years, and they will go on changing long into the future. However, the fact of climate change does not tell us the cause of climate change.”
The criticism…
In fact, based on paleontological studies, CO2 has been shown to be a cause of climate change in the past. In some cases it was heavy emissions from volcanoes that increased global temperatures, in other cases it was absorption by weathering of rocks that drove decreases in CO2.
My rebuttal
Well well, as they say in England, “not, not definitely not.” What the record actually shows is that CO2 follows T increases and decreases by about 800 years. Nobody disputes that as the oceans warm they out-gas more CO2, but as CO2 increase lags the T increase, it is clearly an effect, and can not be the primary cause. Climate sensitivity to doubling CO2 will have to be determined by far more detailed observations of today’s climate with today’s instruments. From about 1915 to 1945 there was a steep increase in global T. This was before CO2 could have had a major worldwide affect. From 1945 to about 1975 the earth cooled, despite ever increasing CO2, from 1975 to about 2000 the earth warmed, temporarily in sync with CO2 increases, for the past 12 years, even as CO2 increases continue unabated, the earth atmospheric T is flat or slightly down, So for 45 of the 70 years or so the CO2 could have a chance to drive T, it has failed to do so. However T trends have most exactly followed changes in ocean currents. Monckton’s statement stands.
=============================================
Monckton’s statement…
“ Humans are indeed exercising some influence. Indeed, though the Professor implies otherwise, I stated explicitly in my lecture that the IPCC might be right in saying that more than half of the warming since 1950 was caused by us. However, that tells us little about how much warming we may expect in future. My best estimate is that the CO2 we add to the atmosphere this century will cause around 1 C° of warming by 2100. But that is not far short of the IPCC’s own central estimate of 1.5 C°.”
The criticism…
The quotation of the IPCC’s central estimate is clearly incorrect based on what the IPCC’s report says. Check out the 6 model ensembles which estimate temperature change by year 2100, based on different scenarios. The median estimate for the scenario with the SMALLEST temperature change is 1.5 C°. The median estimate of all the six scenarios is about 2.75-3C°, and the 1 sigma uncertainty for the worst case extends to 6 C°.
ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-10-26.html
Note that CO2 is not the only GHG that the IPCC looks at. The models include NO2 and CH4, as well as the cooling effect of SO2.
My rebuttal…
First of all Christopher Moncton is clearly not agreeing with the IPCC, but making a considerably lower estimate of climate sensitivity. His statement was in fact factual, as you say, “The median estimate for the scenario with the SMALLEST temperature change is 1.5 C°. “ which came from one of the IPCC models. All the models can not be right now can they. Monckton is saying he that his estimate of climate sensitivity to doubling CO2 is not far from the model mean of an IPCC report. This is true. Your assertion that the model mean of all the IPCC models is higher is somewhat pedantic. The real issue is if there is support within the peer reviewed literature for Monckton’s assertion. The answer is ONCE AGAIN yes.
The models very large range, and the fact that the observations do not match any of them, indicate a lower sensitivity and a lack of understanding. “The large uncertainties in both the observations and model simulations of the spectral amplitude of natural variability precludes a confident detection of anthropogenically forced climate change against the background of natural internal climate variability”. (BAMS, Dec, 2011, p. 1686-7). Furthermore numerous studies , based on observations, not models, have also predicted a climate sensitivity in line with Moncton’s assertions, or lower. I am referring to Lindzen work, and also Spencer’s peer reviewed work, and others.
——————————————————————————————
Last criticism (actually a cheap insult, my response in caps and parenthesis’ )
“Judging from this small sample, every point that Monckton makes is incorrect based on the scientific record. (AS IS SEEN, IT IS YOUR POINTS THAT MISREPRESENT MONCTON’S ASSERTIONS AND THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE) The sheer number of errors, misrepresentations and fallacies in one of his talks is mind boggling. This is what fuels the outrage among scientists. (ACTUALLY WHAT IS CLEAR IS WHY CAGW ADVOCATES GENERALLY REFUSE TO DEBATE MONCKTON AS HE DOES NOT, IN A DEBATE, ALLOW THEM TO MISREPRESENT HIS STATEMENTS OR THE LITERATURE, JUST AS I HAVE NOT ALLOWED YOU, ONLY HE IS MORE ARTICULATE THEN I AM)
It is amazing how the so called “skeptics” can worship such a phony. (THE ONLY “WORSHIP” I SEE IS MISINFORMED STUDENTS WORSHIPING A PROFESSOR WHO IS NOT QUALIFIED FOR ADMIRATION, LET ALONE WORSHIP)
Eric, while I may disagree with your conclusions, and I do not have time to address your points individually, I would like to thank you. After this entire, obcenely long comment thread (several dozen pages at least), you are the sole person on the activist side of the table to adress the actual issue of global warming and its consequences. Not even the authors of the article actually engaged on the topic at hand, though the Professor did dance around it somewhat.
That is worthy of respect. Just cut the ad hominem and it might actually be a pleasant debate.
Or are you the Eric Adler who is a Professor of Classics at Connecticut College, currently on sabbatical? Therefore far more qualified than Lord Monckton to speak on matters climate related?
Andrew,
Your question is very lame. Monckton himself did not have a formal education in science. He studied classics and journalism. My education was in Physics and my professional life was in electrical engineering.
It seems that you are reluctant to discuss the lack of scientific merit of Moncktons statements, and are making some kind of argument from authority, claiming Monckton has scientific credentials.
Eric Adler – “Monckton himself did not have a formal education in science. He studied classics and journalism. My education was in Physics and my professional life was in electrical engineering.”
Great, you studied Physics and worked in Electrical Engineering.
Now, have you taken the time to look at, understand, and analyze NOAA’s GHCN database (Global Weather Station Temperature data) that proponents of AGW base some of their claims of increasing global temperatures on?
Professor Donald Rodbell wrote, “Given the rather substantial errors that were pointed out to him … ”
Could Professor Rodbell care to enlighten us as to just what these “rather substantial” errors were? … I notice that none of them managed to make their way into this article … an editing oversight, no doubt.
Nest person to post is he dumbest person on Earth – go ahead.
Nest person to post is he dumbest person on Earth – go ahead!
So many winners!
You all are so dumb it’s starting to smell in here!
Do you all know today is Already Monday! Holy cow!
Lord Mockton is no lord, I am. Nor was he ever Maggie’s science advisor, though he is happy to be introduced as such!
-Lord Voldemort
From the Clerk of Parliaments:
I must therefore again ask that you desist from claiming to be a Member of the House of Lords, either directly or by implication, and also that you desist from claiming to be a Member “without the right to sit or vote”.
I am publishing this letter on the parliamentary website so that anybody who wishes to check whether you are a Member of the House of Lords can view this official confirmation that you are not.
David Beamish
Clerk of the Parliaments
Tom,
Surely you noticed how David Beamish’s letter was addressed: “Lord Monckton.”
Learn something about Peerage and Labour politics in the UK.
no need to apologize Udar – we lost interest in you a long while back
OK – you all are boring me now Fred and Ted are done – oh I mean Fred and John. Good night crazies.
Stated by Eric: “… the impact of atmospheric CO2 concentrations on global temperature was around 6C for a doubling of CO2.” “More detailed calculations using computers give numbers in a range centered around 3C. This number hasn’t change in over 35 years of refinements.”
Actually that number has changed, and changed downward. With a doubling of CO2 being closer to 1.85 C if the effects of other Greenhouse gases are ignored, and we start with CO2 PPM close to per-industry levels.
Include all Greenhouse gases and a doubling of CO2 comes closer to 1.02 C.
This graph shows a true picture of the effects CO2.
http://www.randombio.com/temperatures6.png
An explanation for what is seen in the graph above:
“The net effect of all these processes is that doubling carbon dioxide would not double the amount of global warming. In fact, the effect of carbon dioxide is roughly logarithmic. Each time carbon dioxide (or some other greenhouse gas) is doubled, the increase in temperature is the same as the previous increase.
The reason for this is that, eventually, all the longwave radiation that can be absorbed has already been absorbed. It would be analogous to closing more and more shades over the windows of your house on a sunny day — it soon reaches the point where doubling the number of shades can’t make it any darker. “
Darren Potter March 19, 2012 at 2:26 am
Darren ,
The graph you pointed to is based on a flawed argument on the Rambio web site from which it originates:
randombio.com/co2.html
The problem with the argument, is that it is using a dynamic temperature curve to estimate the equilibrium warming. Since there is a lag time for equilibrium to be established due to the large heat capacity coming from the oceans, it is clearly incorrect to use such a graph. Anyone who is familiar with the fundamental physics involved in global warming should know such an elementary principle. Of course people who don’t understand the physics involved will easily be deceived by such a fallacy.
In addition the calculation neglects global dimming, less sunlight reaching the earth’s surface as a result of SO2 emissions creating aerosals during the second half of the 20th century.
I suggest that you acquaint yourself with the fundamental physics behind global warming, and take a course from the fine professors at colleges such as Union College.
Eric:
“I suggest that you acquaint yourself with the fundamental physics behind global warming, … ”
I have, which is why I know those like yourself pushing AGW have been misleading the general public, all to often by trying to baffle (using terms/concepts) or intimidate (using titles/positions).
I would suggest you aquatint yourself with something known as “street smarts” and logic. If you had already, you would know that man made CO2′s Greenhouse gas effects (at 0.12%) are negligible in comparison to Water vapor’s effects (at 95.0%). At a ratio 1 to 791, the basis of AGW is unscientific. Additionally, you would also be able to connect the dots that despite CO2 having continued to increase, Global Temperatures are not rising as claimed by AGWers, not even close. Continuing to claim AGW, when the facts (raw temperature data) goes against the claim of AGW is illogical.
Here is new scientific information that shows proponents of AGW (aka IPPC) who have tried to claim a doubling of CO2 results in 6C or 3C change are wrong. “Our analysis also leads to a relatively low and tightly-constrained estimate of Transient Climate Response of 1.3–1.8°C, and relatively low projections of 21st-century warming…” (From “Improved constraints on 21st-century warming derived using 160 years of temperature observations,” by Nathan Gillett et al., 2012:)
You attempted to dismiss the calculations made by RandomBIO with the following “In addition the calculation neglects global dimming, less sunlight reaching the earth’s surface as a result of SO2 emissions creating aerosals during the second half of the 20th century”. Sorry, but the aforementioned study counters your argument of neglected calculations, because the study used actual temperature observations.
Feel free to continue to dismiss the graph (http://www.randombio.com/temperatures6.png), but it is showing itself to be far more accurate than any of the CO2/Temp. claims made by Mann, Hansen, Gore, IPCC, et al.
D.P.
Darren,
“I would suggest you aquatint yourself with something known as “street smarts” and logic. If you had already, you would know that man made CO2′s Greenhouse gas effects (at 0.12%) are negligible in comparison to Water vapor’s effects (at 95.0%). At a ratio 1 to 791, the basis of AGW is unscientific.”
Whatever “street smarts” means, it is no substitute for thorough analysis. There is general agreement that by itself, doubling of CO2 concentration results in a 1C increase in global temperatures. This is significant because CO2 concentration in the atmosphere changes slowly, making it possible for CO2 to be a long term driver of radiation imbalance. The rapidity with which H2O concentration with temperature, makes it a strong feedback mechanism. The roles of these two GHG’s have been understood since Arrhenius wrote his paper on climate change due to CO2 emissions in 1896, and has been confirmed by research performed since then. Unfortunately the knowledge has not reached the people whose web sites you seem to consult.
You also don’t understand the difference between equilibrium climate sensitivity and transient climate sensitivity. Despite my attempts to explain this to you, you refer to a paper which determined transient climate sensitivity to argue the equilibrium climate sensitivity is small.
I suggest that you take a course in climate science at college or university, instead of relying on street smarts.
Eric: “Whatever “street smarts” means, it is no substitute for thorough analysis”
Since you do not know what “street smarts” mean, it is no surprise you easily fell for the claims of Global Warming. With regards to “thorough analysis”, I do find your mentioning such analysis ironic since you did not even bother to factor in the essentially flat trend of Global Temperatures over the past 15 years, despite the continued increase of CO2. Nor did you bother to factor in that man-made CO2 has such a negligible effect on atmospheric temperatures for two reasons as to make the claims of AGW (human caused global warming) unscientific.
The first reason being the ratios of man-made CO2 vs. natural CO2 and natural occurring Water Vapor as Greenhouse gases. The second reason is that CO2 reached its near maximum effect at 300ppm (around 1910) with most of CO2′s effect on earth’s temperature happening before 150ppm (well before man’s CO2 puffing machines).
Eric: “rapidity with which H2O concentration with temperature, makes it a strong feedback mechanism.”
If you had “street smarts” (or done your analysis), you would have realized that if the claims of AGW and proponents of AGW post-created claim of “strong feedback mechanism” indeed been correct, the Earth would have already experienced a CO2 / temperature (GW) runaway effect; resulting in uninhabitable planet. The “strong feedback mechanism” was creatively theorized (pulled out of their tails) by proponents of Global Warming after evidence came out that CO2 did not drive their claimed Global Warming.
One last point on your “thorough analysis”: I previously asked you the following: “Now, have you taken the time to look at, understand, and analyze NOAA’s GHCN database (Global Weather Station Temperature data) that proponents of AGW base some of their claims of increasing global temperatures on?”. You never replied, which indicates to all of us – you have not done even a basic analysis, let alone a “thorough analysis”.
Eric: “I suggest that you take a course in climate science at college or university, instead of relying on street smarts.”
Why? When it is clear the climate science courses you are advocating have not helped you understand that Global Warming is not fact, was at best a theory, and is not supported by science.
We have the same trouble in Australia where the same poisonous repressive toxin has infected most of our universities. The University of Western Australia is a particular hot bed of CAGW believing academics who shrivel up in fright when challenged to a real debate, and live i fear of their unfortunate students being exposed to views that confict with their own. Apparently a statue of Socrates graces their grounds. What irony!
This happened last year.
“Academics want climate sceptic’s lecture cancelled”.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/full-coverage/carbon-tax/a/-/article/9756509/academics-want-climate-sceptic-s-lecture-cancelled/
This is a fascinating commentary on the current state of education. It is heartening to know there are some equipped to consider evidence contrary to their received opinion and to reasonably evaluate different perspectives, even as some have been conditioned merely to parrot their professors’ grade points. Reason vs. repetition. This thread constitutes an interesting case study that may well be an embarrassment to some of you, in time to come. If so, consider you would not be embarrassed unless you had grown in wisdom and knowledge.
Monckton has relied suitably to Rodbell’s post. I would add a few comments.
Don again uses the fatuous 97% number which turns out to be 75 out of 77 carefully selected responses to a carefully worded questionaire. He further says
“This is due to the fact that 1998 was an exceptionally warm year due to the strong El Nino event that year. If one considers the long-term trend, however, the slope remains positive with warming continuing If this were not the case, the decade from 2001-2010 would not be the warmest in instrumental record, which it is.”
I pointed out in my earlier post ( #1 here) that there has been no net warming since 1997 and that the warming trend peaked in 2003. Don also uses the favourite warmist gloss on the data re 2001 -2010 being the warmest. He is being entirely disingenuous . When you climb a mountain the last 5 steps up and the first 5 down are the highest. We are now on the downslope – the slope since 2003 is negative and warming is not continuing.
Andrew from MA @ March 19, 2012 at 12:36 pm
” I see that during my sleeping hours another poster has effectively demolished your “points”. There is no need for me to duplicate the effort. And I hardly need to defend myself against a charge of making ad hominem attacks when that charge is laid by someone who begins their missive by referring to me as a “chicken, by which I assume you mean “coward”. I haven’t heard that particular use of the word “chicken” since grade school, but perhaps you are much younger than I.”
On the contrary, the attempted rebuttal my “points” by David March was a total failure. I demolished it. You are an accomplished “trash talker”, who won’t really engage in a true scientific discussion.
Eric, the simple facts are that you misrepresented my viewpoint with strawman assumptions and selectively responded to only out of context portions with those same misrepresentations. Just as Abraham never responded Monckton’s 100 page rebuttal of his mis-representations, so you did not respond to my follow up posts.
I see that eric Adler is adding his ill informed attempts here.
He claims to know what is signal and what is noise in the record, and says if you remove noise (= what he doesn’t like) and lokk at the remainder (= what he indeed does like), then you see what he also wants there to be seen.
He also pretends to speak for ‘other scientists’ somehow.
Quel surprise ..
I’ve encounted one Eric Adler before (2011) and that one was very very ignorant about what science is and what the arguments are around climate science. The above comments suggest that it is 1) the same Eric, and 2) that he hasn’t learnt anything since then (which I didn’t expect)
I am so sick of you, Andrew, and Mr. Mockton hiding behind “ad hominem.” You clearly do not understand the meaning of the phrase. Perhaps a basic level LSAT class is in order?
Mr. Monckton,
I challenge you to specify the various ad hominem attacks. You keep saying “ad hominem attack ad hominem attack!!”…well, quite frankly, I am struggling to see an ad hominem. It sounds like you are whining.
Wilma,
Thanks for the encouragement.
Unfortunately Global Warming Denial is caused by a need to avoid cognitive dissonance between a right wing conservative mind set, and the need for cooperative action, to avoid climate change which will severly damage the environment and civilization we are used to. Under such circumstances, all kinds of justifications are invented to avoid the facts and science. The sheer volume of trash generated as a result is mind boggling.
Citation of facts and logic will not cure those suffering from GW denial. The main purpose of replying to such nonsense is to avoid spread of this mental disease.
Taken separately, the first and third of these two phrases are good examples of the second:
1. Unfortunately Global Warming Denial is caused by a need to avoid cognitive dissonance between a right wing conservative mind set, and the need for cooperative action, to avoid climate change which will severly damage the environment and civilization we are used to. Under such circumstances, all kinds of justifications are invented to avoid the facts and science
2. The sheer volume of trash generated as a result is mind boggling.
3. Citation of facts and logic will not cure those suffering from GW denial. The main purpose of replying to such nonsense is to avoid spread of this mental disease.
Together they are a good example of the depth of argument among the climate scare faithers.
Said by Eric – “You are an accomplished “trash talker”, who won’t really engage in a true scientific discussion.”
Can you say 2-faced: Eric – “Unfortunately Global Warming Denial is caused by a need to avoid cognitive dissonance …”
Can you say 2x-standard: Eric – “Citation of facts and logic will not cure those suffering from GW denial.”
Can you say Hypocrite: Eric – “… such nonsense is to avoid spread of this mental disease.”
“Unfortunately Global Warming Denial is caused by a need to avoid cognitive dissonance between a right wing conservative mind set, and the need for cooperative action, to avoid climate change which will severly (sic) damage the environment and civilization we are used to.”
So now you resort to Psychobabble? Further Evidence that The Left usually makes their first and last stand on the Altar of Emotional Appeal.
How very sad. In reality, the “Environment and Civilization you are used to” is already being destroyed by Knee-Jerk Reactionaries who Deny their ignorance of understanding and comprehending the Climate System, yet promiscuously embrace every ‘solution’, no matter how destructive to the “. . . .environment and civilization . . .” they are “…. used to”.
– the ‘solution is to “damage the environment and civilization they are used to”. So much Irony, so inadequate the means to portray it.
PS If you derive ‘Support’ from the likes of Wilma, you really ought to rethink your position from the very beginning -, else you may get your inspiration from one of Lenin’s(?) “Useful Idiots”.
real men don’t eat quiche
real Lords don’t whine
Lord Voldemort
Quiche is yummy. I still don’t know what you are all talking about.
Dr. Eric Adler writes in response to one of my previous posts: “It seems that you are reluctant to discuss the lack of scientific merit of Moncktons statements, and are making some kind of argument from authority, claiming Monckton has scientific credentials.”
The scientific merit of Monckton’s statements and the deficiencies of the attacks on them, are wildly distributed throughout this thread. If you care to see them, they shall appear to you. If you choose to remain blind to them, there is no reason to expect any benefit from my providing you with yet more of the same.
Further, if you perceive an effort on my part to make an “argument from authority”, your reading comprehension is really not very good. It is Lord Monckton’s denigrators who make such, and similar arguments, relentlessly.
How many times have we heard, many times in this thread alone, that “Monckton is not a Professor”, that “Monckton does not have tenure”, that “Monckton is not a true Lord”, that “Monckton has not published a peer-review paper” — all of it smoke and mirrors to divert from the easily verifiable facts that Monckton is communicating. The intent is to deny him the “authority” presumably required to make his statements “factual”. It is utter nonsense.
Were Monckton to aver that the force of gravity on our planet is 9.8 meters per second per second, would this factual statement be any less true because of his lack of an academic post, his lack of tenure, his (alleged lack) of a hereditary title, his (alleged) lack of having published a peer-reviewed paper on the subject?
I think not.
But no one following the track record of these extremist warmist so-called “climate scientists” who refuse to disclose their data or the inner workings of their models, who scheme to suppress the peer-reviewed publication of opposing views, who seek to damage the careers and employment prospects of those with whom they disagree, who “live large” on millions upon millions of dollars of grants drawn from the public treasury and yet hold themselves accountable to no one, who hold themselves above the Freedom of Information Act despite feeding at the trough of public funds, who through either incompetence or fraud seek to compel through their GIGO computer models such a false sense of fear of “catastrophic anthropomorphic climate change” in the public mind that free people will devastate their standard of living and that of generations to come (the 3rd world poor hardest hit, as usual) and even sacrifice their democratic way of life to an unelected and unaccountable body of international overseers (as most recently advocated in the journal Science, such body no doubt to be in substantial part constituted of “climate scientists”) . . . ah, the list of their misdeeds is very near endless . . . no one could be surprised that such deceiving, greedy, power-hungry mock-scientists would feel the need, as their false models collapse around their ears and even their near-term predictions writhe in agony on the floor for all the world to see, to resort to such unscientific and personal attacks.
Had they only reality “in the bag” such despicable conduct would not be necessary. But, alas, they do not, and all the pretending in the world will not make it so. Perhaps if the governing model advocated in this month’s issue of Science is realized the extremist warmists will be able to force reality (or at least those who seek to find and communicate reality) to bow to their whim at the point of a gun.
[The Science article mentioned above is "“Navigating the Anthropocene: Improving Earth System Governance,” Science 16 March 2012: 1306-1307, the most recent issue as of the writing of this post. I encourage all free-loving people to take a read and ask themselves, what could possibly go wrong?]
just passing through @ March 20, 2012 at 5:18 am
If your post is in earnest, you are seriously ignorant. A vacuum does have a temperature. If you understood the theory of radiation and thermodynamics you would know that. You are also mistaken about what CO2 does regarding IR radiation. It does trap radiation. It absorbs and re-emits IR radiation, tending to randomize the direction of radiation which would otherwise escape to outer space. By doing that it slows the radiative cooling of the earth’s surface.
It seems that you do not understand the fundamentals of physics well enough to grasp how GHG’s affect the temperature of the earth.
Please pass through, and come back later after you have learned something about this subject.
Eric: “If your post is in earnest, you are seriously ignorant. A vacuum does have a temperature.” “If you understood the theory of radiation and thermodynamics you would know that.”
Eric, you lecture all of us on lacking an understanding of Physics and now thermodynamics, yet you have just demonstrated your own ignorance.
Enjoy the following…
—————————————————————————————–
“The vacuum space is neither cold nor hot, being void of all molecules/atoms (or almost void) and as such has no temperature.”
“Astrophysicists will tell you that the vast emptiness of outer space has no temperature. Space is empty, thus it is temperature-less.”
“Everyone who has studied thermodynamics knows space doesn’t have a temperature. That’s the first trick question you get on the first day of the first semester of introductory thermodynamics. That 2.7K is the ‘temperature’ of the CMB radiation found in space. It is not the temperature OF space!”
Q:”If temperature is ‘The average kinetic energy of particles’ (i.e. if you measure the temperature of a cup of water it is the average of all the water molecules in the cup), then how does one determine the temperature of a vacuum?”
A: “One doesn’t determine the temperature of a vacuum. Just as ‘nothingness’ has no color, taste, smell, etc. it also has no temperature. That is because, as you point out in your question, there are no particles whose kinetic energy can be measured or averaged. Only objects within a vacuum can have a temperature, and that temperature will depend on the balance of incoming and outgoing radiation.”
“Temperature is a property of matter (it is related to how much energy is stored in the mater in the form of motion — vibrations) and hence does not apply to a vacuum.”
—————————————————————————————–
Well, clearly we’ve somehow confused the comments function of the Union College web site–comments written as replies are instead inserted as new posts, and further they are inserted randomly in the thread. That’s too bad, it was such great sport for a time.
Best of luck to the students of Union College. They’ll need it, given the obvious state of at least their climate faculty. I’d suggest a fallback for when there are not just 15 years of no statistically significant global warming, but 20 years, 25 years, 30 years of the same. Might I suggest scheduling an LSAT exam? Or marry rich? Actual science, though, perhaps not so much.
Disclaimer
I am not affiliated with Cavalli Audio (Cavalli). I derive no fiscal or other benefit or gain in exchange for writing this review of the Cavalli Audio Liquid Lightning (CLL). In exchange for my agreement to transport the amplifier to the Head-Fi Fall NYC Meet in White Plains, NY and provide them with feedback for the purposes of product improvement, Cavalli mailed the amplifier to me to audition for several weeks. The writing of this review was not a condition for my having the amplifier, and I am writing this as a service to those who have asked me about the amplifier.
Appearance/Design
If I had to describe the design principles of the CLL in one word, that word would be “minimalistic”. As quite the contrast to the wonderful-sounding Cavalli Liquid Fire (which I found to be a gaudy eyesore), the CLL has an understated elegance to it. A pure black chassis, two blue LEDs (one piezoelectric LED switch for powering the unit on, and one under the volume control to indicate the unit is receiving power and is in standby), a blue stepped volume potentiometer and blue silkscreened lettering. I suggested white lettering and LEDs, which is being taken into consideration. At any rate, no plexiglas windows, no glowing tubes, no dozen LEDs lighting up the room like the damn sun. The only other casework is in the form of ventilation holes in the top panel, oriented to form a “yin yang” type design, similar to the Liquid Fire. There are two Stax jacks, which can be biased as the user chooses (Pro bias, normal bias, HE90). On the back of the unit, the final production version will include a standard IEC power plug, and balanced (XLR) and unbalanced (RCA) inputs.
The chassis is big. Measuring in at approximately 17.0” x 14.25” x 3.5” (43 cm x 36 cm x 9 cm), it dwarfs every other audio component I own (though it’s a one-box solution, and is smaller than the HeadAmp BHSE). There are no plans to make it smaller when it goes into production either, as it needs to house a rather large power supply to support the high-voltage rails. In short, I hope you have a big desk/table or a vertical rack. Even with its enormous size however, it’s not particularly hefty weight-wise. The Liquid Fire, which weighs in at approximately 8.5 lb (3.9 kg), is proof that an amp need not weigh a ton in order to sound good. The CLL, with a similar design principle, weighs around 12 lb (5.4 kg), and is light enough for me to carry around under my arm (I’m by no means a strong person). So, you don’t need to have Herculean strength to lift/carry/move it.
Not being an electrical engineer by trade, I can’t really say much about the circuit design. What I will say is, it’s solid state, and it’s not an eXStatA. The design goals of this amplifier were vastly different from the design goals of the eXStatA, resulting in different circuit topologies. As far as heat management goes, the amplifier got warm to the touch, but never truly hot, even after prolonged listening sessions.
Listening
Equipment:
· Transport: Laptop (Foobar2000, WASAPI)
· Bridge: Audiophilleo1 USB-to-S/PDIF converter
· DAC: Cary Xciter DAC (AKM4399)
· Amp: Cavalli Liquid Lightning
· Headphones: Stax SR-009
Music:
· Classic rock: The Eagles, The Beatles, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Billy Joel, Electric Light Orchestra, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Journey
· Progressive rock: The Mars Volta
· Grunge rock: Soundgarden, Audioslave
· Alternative rock: Radiohead, Broken Bells, The Black Keys, The Good The Bad & The Queen, The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather, Muse, Modest Mouse, Cake, Smashing Pumpkins, The Flaming Lips
· Jazz: Thelonious Monk, Clifford Brown, Max Roach, Oscar Peterson, The Seatbelts
· Big-band: Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Brian Setzer Orchestra, Count Basie Orchestra
· Fusion: Shakti, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Tabla Beat Science, Bond, Santana
· Contemporary R&B: 112, Usher, Lauryn Hill
· Rap/hip-hop: The Roots, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Black Star, Reflection Eternal, DJ Hi-Tek, Little Brother, Lupe Fiasco, Outkast, Immortal Technique
· Classical: Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Holst, Rachmaninoff
· Folk: Rodrigo y Gabriela, Simon & Garfunkel
· Female vocals: Diana Krall, Patricia Barber, Norah Jones, Sarah Brightman, Fiona Apple, Adele, Amy Winehouse, Janelle Monae
· Pop: Michael Jackson
· Techno/Trance/Lounge: Buddha Bar, Armin van Buuren, Daft Punk
· OST: The Dark Knight, Inception, Game of Thrones, Tron: Legacy, The Nightmare Before Christmas
· Basically anything that’s not death metal or country.
Sound
Here we are, then. The meat of the review. But, first, let’s get one thing out of the way. The common denominator gnawing at everybody’s brain is, “Is the CLL better than the BHSE?” I’m going to be honest here: I’m tired of hearing this question. When you’re dealing with TOTL gear at this price range, most equipment is going to perform well with regards to the fundamental aspects of sound reproduction. Differences in the way these pieces of equipment sound are not going to be unequivocally “better” or “worse”, but simply *different*. Sometimes, these differences are subtle, and other times they are not. I hate to break it to you, but if you’re in the market for a DAC or amplifier in the $1k-5k range, or the $5k-10k range, diminishing returns are very much at work, and you’re going to have a hard time finding a general consensus opinion on what is the “best” available. This is where it becomes the responsibility of the individual buyer to get out there and audition the equipment. If possible, try it before you buy it, either at a meet/shop, or via an in-home trial. I do not recommend blind buys at this price range.
The sound signature of the CLL is warm and smooth, akin to what is considered “classic tube sound”. This was clearly one of the design goals of the CLL, to render a “liquid” quality in the sound. In the past, I’ve been (mis)led to believe that warmth and smoothness are synonymous with a loss of detail. With the CLL, I can’t say this was the case. Details were present and accounted for, and I didn’t find anything to be missing when I was critically listening to familiar tracks. Music was organic, musical and emotional, but the amp didn’t gloss over my recordings either. It was certainly more forgiving than the other setups I’ve heard, and I was able to listen to some of my more poorly-recorded music (which tends to be sibilant) without nearly as much ear fatigue. Soundstage was good but not amazing. PRaT, speed, attack/decay were all excellent. Highs, mids and lows were all well-represented, and I didn’t find the amp to be either dark or bright.
It wasn’t until I went back to my stopgap setup (Virtue TWO.2 -> Woo WEE), however, that I realized what I had lost. Within minutes of listening, I realized that the setup had sucked all the life and soul, body and weight out of the music. The emotion, the musicality had vanished completely. The recordings sounded boring by comparison. The foot-tapping and head-bobbing, the “fun factor” is what had vanished. Without question, this is the aspect of the CLL I missed the most when I returned it to Cavalli.
Comparisons
I’m going to be brief here, reflecting the brevity of my listening time with the electrostatic competitors. The HeadAmp BHSE was incredibly neutral, had no warmth, and had a slightly wider and deeper soundstage than the CLL. I’m not going to say that the BHSE was more detailed than the CLL, but I will say that detail was more forward in the BHSE, to an unnatural extent at times. The Woo WES had good soundstage and detail resolution as well, but was too bright to my ears. Most of the people at the Fall NYC Meet who had the chance to hear both amps stated that they preferred the CLL’s sound to that of the WES. I haven’t heard the Woo GES, HeadAmp KGSS, Headamp Aristaeus, KGSSHV, Sennheiser HE90/HEV90 or T2DIY, so I can’t comment on those. The Eddie Current Electra and Electra SE are in the pipeline, but I don’t think anybody’s heard them yet. I personally liked the SR-009 with the CLL better than with the BHSE, but the O2Mk1 with the BHSE represented an excellent combination.
The Schiit Lyr (Siemens & Halske CCa) with HiFiMan HE-6, despite being a great-sounding setup, simply could not compete with the electrostatic setup, and was bested in every regard.
Conclusions
“Is the CLL better than the BHSE?” I can’t say. Variation in personal taste is the only consideration that can be utilized in order to truthfully answer this question. Personally, I like both amplifiers, as they represent two different (and complementary) sound signatures to me. What I do know is that the CLL represents excellent value at a lower price than the competing TOTL electrostatic designs. The CLL is priced at $4250, well below the stock HeadAmp BHSE at $4995 (or with the Alps RK50 at $5995) and the stock Woo WES at $4990 (or $7730 with all available Woo-offered upgrades). And those prices do not take into consideration the cost of additional EL-34, 6SL7, 5AR4 and 12AU7 tubes, which, as I understand, can have a significant effect on improving the sound quality of the BHSE and WES. The CLL doesn’t have costly upgrade options, and it doesn’t need expensive NOS tubes to sound great.
The other thing to keep in mind is that the unit I had on loan was a preliminary prototype. Cavalli is building several more prototypes, with a number of tweaks aimed at shoring up the supposed “shortcomings” of the amp, based on listener feedback. I truly expect that the finished product will sound better than what I had a chance to listen to, and such a prospect is, to me, quite thrilling. I’ve always felt that being receptive to customer concerns and putting time and effort into improving an already-great product, with hopes of making it even better, are essential to successful customer-centric business, and Dr. Cavalli is making sure that this happens.
So, should you buy this amp? I cannot recommend a *blind* purchase of this amp, simply due to the staggering cost. What I can recommend, however, is that you listen to this amp for yourself. I understand that the HeadAmp BHSE has been around for a long time, and has come to be accepted as the electrostatic “gold standard”, but please do try to put aside personal biases and give it a fair shake. You might like what you hear, and if you value musicality and emotional resonance with music, you owe it to yourself to hear it. Just be honest with yourself, and let your ears do the deciding, rather than taking Head-Fi reviews and propaganda as gospel, and basing purchasing decisions on hearsay.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with the CLL very much, and I was sad to see it go. It did nothing wrong and most everything right. It had an element of emotion and musicality that I felt simply didn’t exist with the BHSE. Don’t get me wrong, the BHSE is a great-sounding amp that has certainly withstood the test of time, and I already have one on pre-order. But these two amps are really quite different in what they do for me. Different enough, in fact, that I’ll likely end up eventually owning both. Ultimately, the Cavalli Liquid Lightning receives my seal of approval, and my unequivocal recommendation.
The Cavalli Liquid Lightning is currently up for pre-order via the website (http://www.cavalliaudio.com). A deposit of $2125 is made upon placing an order. Delivery is projected to take place in April/May of 2012.
Also, a special thanks to everyone who reviewed this article and provided useful suggestions.
Sorry Dr. Alder, I didn’t realize you were a PHD or I would have referred to you as Dr. Adler or Alder in my comments.
Please excuse the informality.
I heartily whole heartedly agree with myself. Whoever has written such an erroneous statement is wholly out of line and must be pooing all throughout their trousers. Whomever this “Dr” Adler is, may he be branded as a coward for instructing select members of his student cronies to impersonate me in the comments bar of the opinions section of a student newspaper.
All that I have been trying to do is engage those students that disagree with my standpoint on global climate change, and take part in civil discussion. I have simply been trying to state that there is always more then one way to view any position, and that those concerned should have their views reviewed by experts in their position’s given field to come to some sort of consensus. Its not like I would have taken to the internet to print selective facts in favor of my view point in hopes of ultimately wining the global climate debate once and for all. And to insult people who I have never met in the process. Thats completely ridicules. This in a comments section of a student newspaper of an institution that i do not even belong to. HAH, the thought of it makes me chuckle (see: HAH). Its a good thing i spent so much time writing on this opinion article, boy was it a fantastic use of my time.
i am off to peruse the noble craft of muppetry, the highest art of puppetry. may you sock puppeteers reconsider your life choices.
Donald Rodbell March 18, 2012 at 7:50 pm:
“In Mr. Monckton’s rebuttal to our opinion piece, he noted that the Earth has not been warming for nearly 15 years… If one considers the long-term trend, however, the slope remains positive with warming continuing…
…The challenge, rather, appears to be how to effectively communicate this fact to policy makers…”
=============================================
The problem is, that nothing can be warming and not warming at the same time. The long-term trend is a purely statistical thing. If temperature goes down, people call it cooling, if temperature goes up, people call it warming. So, if you tell the policy makers, that the warming is continuing, then you simply mislead the policy makers, because they think, that the temperature goes up, and that is not true.
“Sustainability” is an interesting word. The human race has sustained itself for around half a million years by basically letting individual humans do their own thing, joining in communities, leaving communities, building this and trading for that. The only times “experts” have been allowed to run things — the Ceresco commune, the Soviet Union, the Third Reich — the result has been total disaster.
The only unsustainable social path would seem to be following the “sustainability” experts, whatever they may be calling themselves today…
Andrew, it is never a waste of time to assert the truth, whether or not anyone listens. As the general tenor of the comments shows, people by and large are coming to realize that the whole CAGW meme was a gigantic fraud. They are also coming to see that, for example, the whole “wind farm” business is a phony environmentalism that is destroying the environment at a far greater rate than ordinary industrialization ever did.
So don’t be discouraged.
excerpt from the article:
“And thus, the college environmentalists – including Environmental Club members, the leaders and members of U-Sustain, concerned citizens, and renowned Earth scientists with PhDs from prestigious research institutions – decided to oppose the presence of Lord Monckton on our campus.”
Should we tell the whole truth about climate change?
by Dr. Judith Curry
excerpt:
“Journalists, like everyone else, have their biases and perspectives. And on the issue of climate change journalists are as prone as any of us to the seductive siren of tribalism, with good guys on one side and evil ones on the other. But does this framing actually serve the interests of the broader climate science community? I think not.
“The realities of the most intensely contested aspects of the climate debate are that there are human beings on both sides — complex, contradictory, red-blooded, imperfect human beings. When the media places scientists up on a pedestal and does so via the spinning of untruths, they simply set the stage for a bigger fall when the scientists cannot live up to their adulatory press coverage. And besides, many of us know better. The media should cover science in three dimensions, and eschew the two-dimensional fiction of good vs. evil, even if that means exploring nuance and contradiction.
Regards,
John from CA
real scientists collect stamps
real Lords do not whine
Lord Voldemort
How does carbon dioxide warm the earth?
Eric Adler writes: “It seems that you are unable, or unwilling, to defend the merits of statements made by Monckton, so you are reverting to ad hominem remarks. You make assumption that I am a faculty member at some university, who is federally funded to do climate research. You are making an insulting illusion, implying that the majoirity of climate researchers are behaving like “good Nazis” taking orders despite their doubts about the correctness of their research. You have no evidence for this over the top assumption. It is nothing but a conspiracy theory.”
You, sir, are very funny.
The statements of Lord Monckton have been defended rigorously in this thread by innumerable individuals, including Lord Monckton himself. The fact that I don’t choose to duplicate their efforts does nothing to save your position from failure. Don’t worry, I’m told that it only hurts the first few times.
And the “fact” that you are not a tenured professor in the field of climate science who is participating in a multi-year pattern of lies, deceit, and scientific falsehood is of no matter–there are scores of others who DO fit that description, even if you do not, presumptively including Dr. Rodwell participating in this thread. For further evidence provided by the extremist warmists’ themselves, simply review the Climategate 1 and Climategate 2 emails to receive your fill.
Incidentally, I note that no one from the “skeptic” side of the discussion is pretending to be a person of the opposition, an act of abject intellectual fraud. No, sir, it is those on YOUR side of the discussion who feel compelled to do so. I wonder why?
Such fraud is totally in character for the extremist warmists, of course. When the smoke and mirrors cease to work, when the extremist warmist GIGO computer models are repeatedly and without exception proven wrong by reality, when the audience that does not consist of students depending on your grade or superiors depending on your grants starts to laugh out loud at your catastrophic proclamations, what is there to do but lie, lie, lie. Even to the point of identity fraud. That, I suppose, is how YOU define “science”. “Science” by fraud, “science” by deceit, “science” by intimidation, “science” by the consensus of the illusory 97%.
That, sir, is not and has never been science.
Oh, wait, is Peter Gleick participating in this thread? That would certainly explain matters.
Eric Adler writes: “All of your pretentious prose is nothing but blathering trash talk.”
Really, Doctor, do you know what “pretentious” means? I do appreciate the alliteration of “pretentious prose”, but nevertheless, if you mean your claim literally and wish to claim that I do not understand what I am writing, you’ll need to do more than simply state the hypothesis.
Where are you facts to support such a supposition, sir? Where are the facts? Ah, yes, your side does not need facts, does it? Ad hominem attack, appeal to authority, appeal to consensus, it’s all good.
Ah, I’m sure your “sock puppet” will step up shortly, assuming his stash hasn’t done him in for the evening, to post more nonsense as “me”. Wow, you must be so proud to have him on your side. Another Union College scientist, I presume.
Andrew. What are your qualifications for anything? ever. in life. seriously.
The grand deception revealed. Stepping out.
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
All, I have had the most wondrous time working with this group. The time has come though to step out of character and return to my normal life as Sacha Baron Cohen. This has been a great show, but I don’t want to run the Lord Monckton character into the ground and it is getting old. I am even surprised myself with the number of followers I was able to amass. It has been fun.
Best wishes,
Sacha
What is this?
Craig Goodrich March 19, 2012 at 7:36 pm
Please help me understand: Burning ANYTHING produces CO2. The earliest technological discovery of humanity was Fire. So you are suggesting that we abandon one of our most fundamental discoveries for the sake of some dodgy and politically-motivated “science”.
Very well. What will be your excuse for insisting that we abandon the wheel?
_________________________
I do hope that you are kidding. If not, you seriously need to spin up on the carbon cycle. My, you deniers are certainly distinguishing yourselves with posts such as this one. A mind is a terrible thing to waste
It should be known that I have two comments to Eric Alder, each well rebutting his comments to me and others, all polite, all cogent and filled with peer reviewed lliterature links. Both are in moderation, one since Sunday evening.
Well we can actually estimate the temperature of deep ocean waters simply by looking at simple scientific facts
Water is the most dense at 4C. If it is cooler than 4C then it will actually expand. Most deep ocean waters are around 2.5C. Warming of these water would result in significant drop in ocean water levels. We are talking about drops in meters considering there is alot more water in the ocean that is under 4C then there is over 4C.
ARGO bouys have shown hardly any change in surface water temperatures so surface water has nor expanded, so it is safe to estimate deep ocean water are pretty much the same as sea levels have NOT fallen.
I guess most of you have also missed the most recent news. The greenhouse effect has been dis-proven. The Greenhouse effect works on the premise of Co2 trapping heat directly or indirectly from escaping in the colder space.
Unfortunately we all seem to have forgotten that space is actually NOT cold nor is it or HOT, because space actually has no temperature.
Space is actually a vacuum to adsorb heat energy you need matter. How far does a scream travel through space. It doesn’t as there is no matter to transfer on the sound energy. NASA has known about this for some time that’s why spacesuits and spaceships have cooling systems not heating system so astronauts wont get cooked alive in their own body heat in space.
Point being no matter how much you increase co2 by it will not blanket the escape of heat into a vacuum as a vacuum cannot absorb heat energy.
Actually, though most of your argument still “holds water”, the 4°C max density rule applies only to pure/fresh water. Saline/sea water gets denser all the way down.
Well we can actually estimate the temperature of deep ocean waters simply by looking at simple scientific facts
Water is the most dense at 4C. If it is cooler than 4C then it will actually expand. Most deep ocean waters are around 2.5C. Warming of these water would result in significant drop in ocean water levels. We are talking about drop in meters considering there is alot more water in the ocean that is under 4C then there is over 4C.
ARGO bouys have shown hardly any change in surface water temperatures so surface water has nor expanded, so it is safe to estimate deep ocean water are pretty much the same as sea levels have NOT fallen.
I guess most of you missed the most recent news. The Greenhouse effect works on the premise of Co2 trapping heat directly or indirectly from escaping in to space.
Unfortunately we all seem to have forgotten that space is actually NOT cold nor is it or HOT, because space actually has no temperature.
Space is actually a vacuum to adsorb heat energy you need matter. How far does a scream travel through space. It doesn’t as there is no matter to transfer on the sound energy. NASA has known about this for some time that’s why spacesuits and spaceships have cooling systems not heating system so astronauts wont get cooked alive in their own body heat in space.
Point being no matter how much you increase co2 by it will not blanket the escape of heat into a vacuum as a vacuum cannot absorb heat energy.
just passing through, you need to go back to school.
You wrote: “Water is the most dense at 4C. If it is cooler than 4C then it will actually expand. Most deep ocean waters are around 2.5C. Warming of these water would result in significant drop in ocean water levels. We are talking about drop in meters considering there is alot more water in the ocean that is under 4C then there is over 4C.”
This is for freshwater, not seawater. Saltwater is even more dense at 2.5C and even more at 0C! Also, you are probably reading potential temperature values, which would be colder than true temperature at depth.
You also wrote: “Point being no matter how much you increase co2 by it will not blanket the escape of heat into a vacuum as a vacuum cannot absorb heat energy.”
If this is how you think, how does the heat get from the sun to the earth? I think you need some basic schooling.
But thanks – this is such a prime example of how scientific information can be misapplied to develop bogus statements.
Andrew,
Ha! Ah, yes, the visceral fun of lampooning…that too I shall miss, and I must thank Concordy for the platform and its courage in pishing-off puffed-up academic curmudgeons. A mocking salute too to the handful of numpties for the generous supply of cartoonish numptiness; alas, poor focus and no staying power and no brain-Viagra on the market yet. Not that focus and persistence would improve the pathetic content. Well, off we go for now then, brother carbon knights, cantering off into the sunset to tilt at the proverbial and real windmills!
It is painful to see the world of science reduced to this. Is this man Rodbell really a professor? If I were a student paying to be taught at this college I would ask for my money back.
Eric,
You say:
“The data shows actually that you are wrong when you say no global warming in the past 15 years. The best fit straight line through the last 15 years has a positive slope. It is wrong to look at the noise in year to year variations in global temperature to draw your conclusions.
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/petergleick/files/2012/02/GlobalT-15yrs.png
”
I believe I was very clear, when I said “The only argument right now is when did warming stopped exactly – 10, 12, 14 or 15 years ago”. So, you have found a dataset where it did not stopped 15 years ago. What exactly does it prove?
“I did provide a reference for the method of subtracting the internal variation in the earth’s temperature in an earlier post. Here is another one:
tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-real-global-warming-signal/.
”
I am not sure which reference you speak of. I must have missed it. But thanks for reference to Foster&Rahmstorf paper.
I suggest you read this, to understand how mistaken they are.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/14/tisdale-on-foster-and-rahmstorf-take-2/
But here is my statement again, the one for which you did not bother to respond – temperatures were going up at much faster rate up to about 15 years ago. And then they stopped. El Nino? What, were there no El Ninos before that? Volcanic eruptions? Recession? Really, that is all you have got? Models did not predict that change.
“Your criticism of models is also off base. The models are not able to predict volcanic eruptions and El Nino events. When the models are adjusted for these events. They also are unable to predict the economic systems well enough to determine human emissions, so the results are based on scenarios of what might happen. Looking at hindcasts, and adjusting the models to reflect the forcings that really occurred in the past, they models seem to be pretty good.
”
If models can not predict El Nino and other climate-related events, what good are they? Those are MAJOR events, that affect our climate (not wether) for years, and here we have models that claim to predict our climate 100 years into the future and they can not deal with some little ocean temperature change?
As far as volcanic events go, those are pretty short-lived, and dissipate within 6 months. And adjusting models (fudging really) to cover specific time period is not a science. No models can show both medieval warming and little ice age and current temperature at the same time. But most importantly, no models had shown last 15 years of no statistically significant warming! The models that were making prediction 15 years ago, that is. And since CO2 had been continually raising, at levels often higher than models assumed (due to countries like China and India massively increasing their energy consumption), economy have nothing to do with it – a red herring you warmists like to use so much.
“The causes of the most recent ice ages is understood, and I alluded to them in previous posts. The Milankovich cycles, which are predictable variations in the earths orbital precession and axis tilt change the pattern of radiation on earth and trigger warming or cooling events. There are no papers claiming it was variations in solar radiance or asteroids.”
What, you never heard of Younger Dryas impact hypothesis? How is this one for a paper with that claim of asteroid-based reasons:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/03/01/1110614109.abstract
Are making a claim that reason for ace ages is “settled science”? There are number of competing hypotheses out there. I am personally staying with my Flinstones hypothesis.
CAGW is built on 1 major assumption – that CO2 to H2O positive feedback exists. They use 2 pillars as a proof of that hypothesis – models and temperature reconstructions of the past. The models have been proven to be wrong, by not predicting last 15 years. THe past temperature reconstructions are all hinges on Mann’s “hockey stick” and its derivatives, that used same flawed statistics and data.
While CAWG advocates a scrambling to somehow rescue their models by trying to change the subject and come up with some reason why failure of prediction doesn’t mean failures of models, they had not been very successful so far.
“I hope that you learn something from the exchanges on this thread. However, I realize that information which contradicts strongly held opinions by someone, is almost always rejected as false or ignored rather than understood.
”
Exactly.
Eric Adler March 20, 2012 at 10:20 am
==========
I’m uncertain why you wish to mislead students but you are clearly spinning the facts.
Is there agreement amongst climate scientists on the IPCC AR4 WG1?
source: http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdannan/survey.pdf
excerpt:
ABSTRACT. An online poll of scientists’ opinions shows that, while there is strong agreement on the important role of anthropogenically-caused radiative forcing of CO2 in climate change and with the largest group supporting the IPCC report, there is not a universal agreement among climate scientists about climate science as represented in the IPCC’s WG1. The claim that the human input of CO2 is not an important climate forcing is found to be false in our survey. However, there remains substantial disagreement about the magnitude of its impacts. The IPCC WG1 perspective is the mean response, though there are interesting differences between mean responses in the USA and in the EU. There are, also, a significant number of climate scientists who disagree with the IPCC WG1 perspective.
In our poll, there were 140 responses out of the 1807 who were contacted by the first author.
bold emphasis for highlight
You are leading students to believe that the 8% of climate scientists who bothered to respond to the Pielke and Annan climate survey represent a consensus of opinion?
Please be more honest about the situation and please don’t direct students to Skeptical Science which is not trusted nor a factual site for climate science information. If you feel compelled to point students to the facts, point them to Climate Etc.
Dr. Curry has done and excellent job of documenting the real issues.
Do any of you have day jobs?
I don’t have a day job. I am retired. I do have other things to do however, and may quit soon.
Your stamina is impressive. I’ve not seen anyone capable of keeping up with the misinformed/ crazies. I enjoy your posts and hope you don’t quit soon. Perhaps you’ll find someone with an open mind and they might learn something. But, perhaps not. Please keep up the good work.
My comments here David March 20, 2012 at 4:07 am and here David March 19, 2012 at 10:17 am are being kept in moderation. Eric Adler was the only one trying to engage in a scientific discussion concerning Christopher Moncton’s message. Both my posts are polite and contain peer revierwed literature well supporting Moncktons statements. With out my responses being allowed to post no one should consider Eric Adlers comments to have any veracity.
Thanks
Eric Adler links to Peter Gleick to show that the world is still warming. Really, Peter Gleick??? Anyway, Mr Gleick is no doubt using the GISS distorted numbers to show warming for the last 15 years.
Eric also said, “I did provide a reference for the method of subtracting the internal variation in the earth’s temperature in an earlier post. Here is another one:” and he links again to what is the same paper, or at least the same author, the dicredited Tamino, aka Grant Foster. Gleick and Foster, now there is a pair to draw to. At any rate I posted this about Taminos work in another post, but it is held up in moderation…It is unscientific of you to use the term “considerable” to describe an increase. A scientist would quantify that term and discuss the error bars of the estimate. The facts regarding ocean warming are that over the last eight years, from 0 to 700 meters deep, the Argo buoys show a slight cooling, nothing statistically significant. Now there is MAYBE some “minor “ warming in the deeper ocean, but it is a very small amount and the oceans, like the atmosphere have not warmed anything like the models predict. Are you familiar with Dr. Trenberth’s paper in the journal Science on Tracking Earth’s Energy (16 APRIL 2010 VOL 328)? You may know that Dr. Trenberth is an IPCC lead author. In that paper, he shows that measured heat in the oceans is far lower than predicted by climate models. More recently he has hypothesized that the “missing heat” is in the deep ocean, but the mechanism for said heat to by-pass the atmosphere, and the 0 to 700 meter depth oceans is not explained, and our current capability to measure the deep oceans is inadequate at best. So your first attempt to debunk Monckton is to not answer his statement, and to make a misleading assertion not accepted by the scientific community. For some details on ocean warming study this article…
===============================================================
Eric Adler response.
Your rebuttal to the first point I made doesn’t hold water.
Monckton claimed that there has been no warming in the last decade an a half. This is clearly untrue. When the internal noise is eliminated from the temperature record a strong global warming signal emerges very clearly in the graphs shown in the Tamino link, as well as this peer reviewed paper by Foster and Rhamsdorf, in which 5 global temperature records are analysed.
Tisdale never shows a global sea surface temperature record in the link you provided. He has divided the earth’s oceans in two parts and shows each part separately. He never shows a single graph of the global temperature record, so this can’t be used as a rebuttal at all. It is simply misdirection.
========================================================================
my response to this…My second response…
Well Sir, good for you to actually engage in real discussion. I see you have moved the pea to yet another shell. First, to dispute the atmosphere measurements, you said the heat was in the ocean, I pointed out some (there are more) of the flaws and uncertainties in that assertion.
Now you move back from the ocean to the atmosphere to one study, which, by the way, has been heavily criticized by many PHD scientist, and look to that to rescue the day for CAGW. In order for Foster and Rhamdsorf to be correct they would have to be the greatest climatologists to ever live. They would have to properly understand all details of cloud formation, water/vapor, solar changes, ocean currents, jet stream patterns, UHI, land use changes, GHGs, soot, snow, particulates, etc, etc. Even the IPCC admits to a low level of understanding in many of these areas, including the most important ones of clouds and w/v feedbacks.
Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) attempted to remove from 5 global temperature datasets the linear effects of ONLY 3 factors that are known to cause variations in global temperature. These three are, El Niño-Southern Oscillation, volcanic aerosols, and solar variations. In the scientific literature there is a comment cogent to Foster’s paper from Compo and Sardeshmukh (2010) “In particular, defining ENSO in terms of a single index and ENSO-related variations in terms of regressions on that index, as done in many previous studies, can lead to wrong conclusions. This paper argues that ENSO is best viewed not as a number but as an evolving dynamical process for this purpose.”
Yet that is exactly what Tamino, aka Foster did. Esentially they reduced the affect of ESNO warming events by neglecting the fact that the warm water , when it was no longer in the “defined” El Nino region, was gone, and that warmth was assigned to CO2. Additionally, Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) assumed that the global warming signal is linear and that it is caused by anthropogenic forcings, but those assumptions are not supported by the satellite-era Sea Surface Temperature. The global warming signal is not linear, and the El Niño events of 1986/87/88 and 1997/98 are shown to be the cause of the rise in sea surface temperatures, not anthropogenic greenhouse gases. The current flat line and decline in SSTs as ESNO system revert to their well known cooler patterns support this assertion. Using TSI as a solar proxy is another mistake made in this process and one that the warmist brigade are happy to use. Solar influence on climate is best analyzed at the surface, not the TOA.
This is reinforced by numerous recent papers showing the strong possibility that solar influences are far greater then the small flux in TSI. By artificially reducing the impacts of ocean cycles, TSI, and volcanic effects, and using GISS as their preferred data set, they leave CO2 as the only culprit. Their paper is a self- fulfilling prophecy.
BTW Tisdale’s article is not miss-direction at all. He separates many of the ocean basins to provide evidence for his assertions, one of them being that the affect of ocean SST events does not end when the T in a narrowly defined area has changed, but, for instance, in a large La Nina even much of the warm water has simply moved out side the area measured defining La Nina.
There are many papers which reject the assertions of Foster, but Eric finds one paper and, the rest of the scientific literature be dammed, the science is settled, l and the world will end from CAGW.
David,
I understand using ENSO as a variable in a regression analysis of global temperature to eliminate its role as internal variation makes some assumptions that are unjustified, and could lead to errors. However it is a means of removing sources of cyclical noise in the global warming signal as a result of internal variation. It is basically driven by ocean currents which have not been successfully simulated. There is no doubt that solar intensity variations at the top of the atmosphere are a driver of global temperature, even though their effects may be modulated by clouds. If a better means of subtracting out these considerable drivers of climate can be found, I am all for it. So far, I haven’t seen one that is described. In fact regression is not the only means by which the effect of CO2 as a driver has been estimated. GCM’s have also shown the GHE due to CO2 to be a driver of the current trend of increasing temperature.
I believe you have alluded to other influences due to solar cycle, besides the solar radiance. If you are talking about cosmic, rays, there is really no evidence for this as a factor actually driving cloud cover. Cosmic ray observations show it has the same periodicity as the solar cycle, so it would be included in a regression analysis. There has been no real trend in cosmic rays.
Eric, your first sentence admits to “unjustified assumptions” which “could“ lead to errors. Ocean observations have shown how they do in fact lead to clear errors. Concerning this statement of yours, “However it is a means of removing sources of cyclical noise in the global warming signal as a result of internal variation” is part of the problem if that “noise” is really just another natural forcing, then removing it naturally leaves what ever is left, now considered not-noise, as the main driver. You see, removing it, is not the same as subtracting it from the total energy available.
You next state “There is no doubt that solar intensity variations at the top of the atmosphere are a driver of global temperature, even though their effects may be modulated by clouds. If a better means of subtracting out these considerable drivers of climate can be found, I am all for it. So far, I haven’t seen one that is described. In fact regression is not the only means by which the effect of CO2 as a driver has been estimated.”
Wow, full of assertions with no peer reviewed references, and clearly wrong.
Take the first statement concerning TSI. There are at least five papers within the last year that demonstrate that the small flux in TSI as a whole is not indicative of solar affects on climate. They refer to many other solar induced variable which do affect cloud formation, and albedo, and W/V, all of which have a far larger W/M2 impact on surface level insolation then either direct TOA TSI changes, or GHGs. These papers are all peer reviewed, but ignored by the IPCC.
Water vapor and clouds effect a much larger portion of the TSI then CO2, and effect it not only at the LW spectrum in the atmosphere, but where it matters the most, at the SW spectrum entering the oceans. Check out any good solar modification spectrum chart. It will show that about 98% of that energy lies between about 250 nm in the UV and 4.0 microns; with the remaining as 1% left over at each end. Such graphs often have superimposed on them the actual ground level (air Mass once) spectrum; that shows the amounts of that energy taken out by primarily O2, O3, and H2O, in the case of H2O which absorbs in the visible and near IR perhaps 20% of the total solar energy is captured by water VAPOR (clear sky) clouds are an additional loss over and above that!!! So W/V alone can have a negative feedback of surface insolation in the tropics of twenty or more times the affect of CO2
How the oceans absorb that reduced various spectrum energy, and the residence time within the oceans of said various solar spectrum which do reach and penetrate the ocean surface, are, along with cloud formation and albedo changes, all areas of much mystery and poor scientific understanding. Knowing this to then assert that, “ There is no doubt that solar intensity variations at the top of the atmosphere are a driver of global temperature” in affect assigning to the sun’s role only the linear forcing as it relates to TSI changes, is clearly an absurd assumption, yet this is exactly what the IPCC does in admitting to only small solar affects, while they ignore the peer reviewed literature which makes far more nuanced observations and have far greater long term affects on earths energy balance.
You next assert, “If a better means of subtracting out these considerable drivers of climate can be found, I am all for it. So far, I haven’t seen one that is described. In fact regression is not the only means by which the effect of CO2 as a driver has been estimated.”
I am glad you admit to some limitations of the described methods, however observastions of earths incoming and outgoing energy flows, and seeing if these observations match the models is a different method.. Are you aware of Dr. Singer’s recent scientific papers showing that tropical hotspots predicted by climate models are not being seen in the actual measurement data? This has now been accepted (after years of disagreement) by such mainstream scientists as Dr. Ben Santer.
Ross Mckitrick produced a similar paper demonstrating via “observations” that the climate models predicted one to two times the warming actually observed, and this was before that last year of cooling in this very same region. Are you aware of Lindzen’s two recent papers in this area? Are you aware of the paper in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by Dr. Judith Curry (head of Earth and Atmospheric Science at Georgia Tech, and Dr. Peter Webster of the same university, who is the incoming president of the atmospheric science committee of the American Geophysical Union) where they concluded “…The large uncertainties in both the observations and model simulations of the spectral amplitude of natural variability precludes a confident detection of anthropogenically forced climate change against the background of natural internal climate variability”. (BAMS, Dec, 2011, p. 1686-7).
I am very certain the science is not settled and your assumptions of KNOWN climate are incorrect.
David,
“David March 22, 2012 at 9:01 am | Permalink | Reply
Eric, your first sentence admits to “unjustified assumptions” which “could“ lead to errors. Ocean observations have shown how they do in fact lead to clear errors. Concerning this statement of yours, “However it is a means of removing sources of cyclical noise in the global warming signal as a result of internal variation” is part of the problem if that “noise” is really just another natural forcing, then removing it naturally leaves what ever is left, now considered not-noise, as the main driver. You see, removing it, is not the same as subtracting it from the total energy available.”
What were are doing is looking at correlations when regressions are performed. It is not the same thing as looking at a model that examines physical causation. So “total energy available” is not relevant, if we are talking about a temperature change, unless a heat capacity is specified. The regression procedure doesn’t involve either of those variables. You need to explain this better.
“You next state “There is no doubt that solar intensity variations at the top of the atmosphere are a driver of global temperature, even though their effects may be modulated by clouds. If a better means of subtracting out these considerable drivers of climate can be found, I am all for it. So far, I haven’t seen one that is described. In fact regression is not the only means by which the effect of CO2 as a driver has been estimated.”
Wow, full of assertions with no peer reviewed references, and clearly wrong
Take the first statement concerning TSI. There are at least five papers within the last year that demonstrate that the small flux in TSI as a whole is not indicative of solar affects on climate. They refer to many other solar induced variable which do affect cloud formation, and albedo, and W/V, all of which have a far larger W/M2 impact on surface level insolation then either direct TOA TSI changes, or GHGs. These papers are all peer reviewed, but ignored by the IPCC.”
I can’t address your statement unless you provide references to the five papers. Since the IPCC has not issued anything in the past year, it doesn’t make sense to complain that they have ignored them.
The topic I was discussing was a regression analysis, where the correlation between ENSO, Solar insolation, and volcanoes, which are all major cyclical drivers of temperature have been removed. There is no statement about mechanisms by which the sun influences climate in this. It simply points out that when these known CYCLICAL drivers are removed, an increasing trend clearly emerges. Your argument about specific models has no bearing on this kind of regression. If you want to add other variables to the mix, such as clouds, such as clouds, it would be well to figure out if they depend on the variables already being used. For instance, cloud cover would be dependent on volcanoes, and insolation, so it wouldn’t make sense to add these to the regression. The same could be said for Cosmic Rays, which are connected to the solar cycle, which is already included in the regression.
By the way, you haven’t provided references to the 5 papers you referred to, so complaining about the lack of references in my post seems a bit hollow.
David,
“David March 22, 2012 at 9:01 am | Permalink | Reply
Eric, your first sentence admits to “unjustified assumptions” which “could“ lead to errors. Ocean observations have shown how they do in fact lead to clear errors. Concerning this statement of yours, “However it is a means of removing sources of cyclical noise in the global warming signal as a result of internal variation” is part of the problem if that “noise” is really just another natural forcing, then removing it naturally leaves what ever is left, now considered not-noise, as the main driver. You see, removing it, is not the same as subtracting it from the total energy available.”
What were are doing is looking at correlations when regressions are performed. It is not the same thing as looking at a model that examines physical causation. So “total energy available” is not relevant, if we are talking about a temperature change, unless a heat capacity is specified. The regression procedure doesn’t involve either of those variables. You need to explain this better.
“You next state “There is no doubt that solar intensity variations at the top of the atmosphere are a driver of global temperature, even though their effects may be modulated by clouds. If a better means of subtracting out these considerable drivers of climate can be found, I am all for it. So far, I haven’t seen one that is described. In fact regression is not the only means by which the effect of CO2 as a driver has been estimated.”
Wow, full of assertions with no peer reviewed references, and clearly wrong
Take the first statement concerning TSI. There are at least five papers within the last year that demonstrate that the small flux in TSI as a whole is not indicative of solar affects on climate. They refer to many other solar induced variable which do affect cloud formation, and albedo, and W/V, all of which have a far larger W/M2 impact on surface level insolation then either direct TOA TSI changes, or GHGs. These papers are all peer reviewed, but ignored by the IPCC.”
I can’t address your statement unless you provide references to the five papers. Since the IPCC has not issued anything in the past year, it doesn’t make sense to complain that they have ignored them.
The topic I was discussing was a regression analysis, where the correlation between ENSO, Solar insolation, and volcanoes, which are all major cyclical drivers of temperature have been removed. There is no statement about mechanisms by which the sun influences climate in this. It simply points out that when these known CYCLICAL drivers are removed, an increasing trend clearly emerges. Your argument about specific models has no bearing on this kind of regression. If you want to add other variables to the mix, such as clouds, such as clouds, it would be well to figure out if they depend on the variables already being used. For instance, cloud cover would be dependent on volcanoes, and insolation, so it wouldn’t make sense to add these to the regression. The same could be said for Cosmic Rays, which are connected to the solar cycle, which is already included in the regression.
By the way, you haven’t provided references to the 5 papers you referred to, so complaining about the lack of references in my post is a bit hollow. This is especially true because what I say is not based on references and doesn’t need references if you understand the purpose and limitations of regression analysis.
David,
“David March 22, 2012 at 9:01 am | Permalink | Reply
Eric, your first sentence admits to “unjustified assumptions” which “could“ lead to errors. Ocean observations have shown how they do in fact lead to clear errors. Concerning this statement of yours, “However it is a means of removing sources of cyclical noise in the global warming signal as a result of internal variation” is part of the problem if that “noise” is really just another natural forcing, then removing it naturally leaves what ever is left, now considered not-noise, as the main driver. You see, removing it, is not the same as subtracting it from the total energy available.”
What were are doing is looking at correlations when regressions are performed. It is not the same thing as looking at a model that examines physical causation. So “total energy available” is not relevant, if we are talking about a temperature change, unless a heat capacity is specified. The regression procedure doesn’t involve either of those variables. You need to explain this better.
“You next state “There is no doubt that solar intensity variations at the top of the atmosphere are a driver of global temperature, even though their effects may be modulated by clouds. If a better means of subtracting out these considerable drivers of climate can be found, I am all for it. So far, I haven’t seen one that is described. In fact regression is not the only means by which the effect of CO2 as a driver has been estimated.”
Wow, full of assertions with no peer reviewed references, and clearly wrong
Take the first statement concerning TSI. There are at least five papers within the last year that demonstrate that the small flux in TSI as a whole is not indicative of solar affects on climate. They refer to many other solar induced variable which do affect cloud formation, and albedo, and W/V, all of which have a far larger W/M2 impact on surface level insolation then either direct TOA TSI changes, or GHGs. These papers are all peer reviewed, but ignored by the IPCC.”
I can’t address your statement unless you provide references to the five papers. Since the IPCC has not issued anything in the past year, it doesn’t make sense to complain that they have ignored them.
The topic I was discussing was a regression analysis, where the correlation between ENSO, Solar insolation, and volcanoes, which are all major cyclical drivers of temperature have been removed. There is no statement about mechanisms by which the sun influences climate in this. It simply points out that when these known CYCLICAL drivers are removed, an increasing trend clearly emerges. Your argument about specific models has no bearing on this kind of regression. If you want to add other variables to the mix, such as clouds, such as clouds, it would be well to figure out if they depend on the variables already being used. For instance, cloud cover would be dependent on volcanoes, and insolation, so it wouldn’t make sense to add these to the regression. The same could be said for Cosmic Rays, which are connected to the solar cycle, which is already included in the regression.
You haven’t provided references to the 5 papers you referred to, so complaining about the lack of references in my post is a bit hollow. This is especially true because what I say is not based on references and doesn’t need references if you understand the purpose and limitations of regression analysis.
David,
Sorry for the duplicate posts. The program that runs this web site seems to reject and loose my submissions, making me resubmit them, and suddenly find the ones that it rejected.
David,
“Water vapor and clouds effect a much larger portion of the TSI then CO2, and effect it not only at the LW spectrum in the atmosphere, but where it matters the most, at the SW spectrum entering the oceans. Check out any good solar modification spectrum chart. It will show that about 98% of that energy lies between about 250 nm in the UV and 4.0 microns; with the remaining as 1% left over at each end. Such graphs often have superimposed on them the actual ground level (air Mass once) spectrum; that shows the amounts of that energy taken out by primarily O2, O3, and H2O, in the case of H2O which absorbs in the visible and near IR perhaps 20% of the total solar energy is captured by water VAPOR (clear sky) clouds are an additional loss over and above that!!! So W/V alone can have a negative feedback of surface insolation in the tropics of twenty or more times the affect of CO2″
Please find me a chart which shows those things if you want a discussion of them to continue.
What is the significance of you your last claim?
The effect of water vapor in clear air has been thoroughly evaluated by advanced spectroscopy and has been shown to be a positive feedback mechanism long ago. Why are you bothering to discuss this. It is settled science.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radmath.htm
The role of clouds is less certain, and this is reflected in the IPCC radiative forcing chart as well as different models.
ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/fig/figure-spm-2-l.png
“How the oceans absorb that reduced various spectrum energy, and the residence time within the oceans of said various solar spectrum which do reach and penetrate the ocean surface, are, along with cloud formation and albedo changes, all areas of much mystery and poor scientific understanding.”
This is clearly untrue. Light from the sun is absorbed instantaneous and and converted to thermal energy. At vertical incidence a tiny fraction is reflected.
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/ocng_textbook/chapter06/chapter06_10.htm
This is the characteristic form of argument of Global Warming Deniers – claiming that the well understood is the unknown.
” Knowing this to then assert that, “ There is no doubt that solar intensity variations at the top of the atmosphere are a driver of global temperature” in affect assigning to the sun’s role only the linear forcing as it relates to TSI changes, is clearly an absurd assumption, yet this is exactly what the IPCC does in admitting to only small solar affects, while they ignore the peer reviewed literature which makes far more nuanced observations and have far greater long term affects on earths energy balance.”
Provide a reference for the peer reviewed papers you claim to cite. Please don’t bring up Cosmic Rays again. We have already discussed this.
“You next assert, “If a better means of subtracting out these considerable drivers of climate can be found, I am all for it. So far, I haven’t seen one that is described. In fact regression is not the only means by which the effect of CO2 as a driver has been estimated.”
I am glad you admit to some limitations of the described methods, however observastions of earths incoming and outgoing energy flows, and seeing if these observations match the models is a different method.. Are you aware of Dr. Singer’s recent scientific papers showing that tropical hotspots predicted by climate models are not being seen in the actual measurement data? This has now been accepted (after years of disagreement) by such mainstream scientists as Dr. Ben Santer.”
I have seen the analysis of Douglass et al, (Singer the cigarette man is a coauthor) regarding the tropical hot spot, and a convincing rebuttal. Basically, the historical observations of temperature, and the uncertainty of the models overlap, making the question of agreement uncertain. If it were true, it would call into question the fundamental physics of what happens when moist air rises.
This phenomenon is independent of whether or not CO2 is causing global warming, so it is an example of misdirection of the argument by AGW deniers. However a real fingerprint of GHG induced warming is Stratospheric Cooling and a rise in the tropopause, which has been observed.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Dispelling-two-myths-about-the-tropospheric-hot-spot.html
If you are going to cite Ben Santer, please link to a quote.
“Ross Mckitrick produced a similar paper demonstrating via “observations” that the climate models predicted one to two times the warming actually observed, and this was before that last year of cooling in this very same region. Are you aware of Lindzen’s two recent papers in this area? Are you aware of the paper in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by Dr. Judith Curry (head of Earth and Atmospheric Science at Georgia Tech, and Dr. Peter Webster of the same university, who is the incoming president of the atmospheric science committee of the American Geophysical Union) where they concluded “…The large uncertainties in both the observations and model simulations of the spectral amplitude of natural variability precludes a confident detection of anthropogenically forced climate change against the background of natural internal climate variability”. (BAMS, Dec, 2011, p. 1686-7).”
I am very certain the science is not settled and your assumptions of KNOWN climate are incorrect.”
The fact the some scientists believe the IPCC overstates the risks associated with global warming is not news to me, nor should it be news to anyone. A poll by Annan and Pielke reports that 15 to 20% of climate scientists believe this. That doesn’t make Monckton’s fabrications about climate science go away, and it doesn’t eliminate the many mistakes about climate science that you, Potter and Myrrh make in your posts, in support of Monckton.
Eric Adler asserts..”The causes of the most recent ice ages is understood, and I alluded to them in previous posts. The Milankovich cycles, which are predictable variations in the earths orbital precession and axis tilt change the pattern of radiation on earth and trigger warming or cooling events. There are no papers claiming it was variations in solar radiance or asteroids. The radiation pattern change by itself cannot account for the amplitude of the global temperature changes detected by the ice cores. Changes in albedo and CO2 emission and absorption provide the feedback that accounts for the amplitude of the temperature variations during the ice ages. Here is a reference which provides details and links to peer reviewed papers on this subject.”
================================================
My response…
The causes of the recent Ice ages and interglacial are well known not to be settled science. (is everything settled science to you) Your claim of CO2 explaining all past changes, short term and long term, just by removing “noise” is easily dismissed simply by showing that the scientific literature does not support the hockey stick, and changes within the last 4,000 years do not follow CO2 as the models interpret it. Here is more from my non posted response…
Monckton’s statement
“ Climatic patterns are indeed changing. But they have been changing for 4,567 million years, and they will go on changing long into the future. However, the fact of climate change does not tell us the cause of climate change.”
The criticism from Eric…
In fact, based on paleontological studies, CO2 has been shown to be a cause of climate change in the past. In some cases it was heavy emissions from volcanoes that increased global temperatures, in other cases it was absorption by weathering of rocks that drove decreases in CO2.
My rebuttal
Well well, as they say in England, “not, not definitely not.” What the record actually shows is that CO2 follows T increases and decreases by about 800 years. Nobody disputes that as the oceans warm they out-gas more CO2, but as CO2 increase lags the increase, it is clearly an effect, and can not be the primary cause. Climate sensitivity to doubling CO2 will have to be determined by far more detailed observations of today’s climate with today’s instruments. From about 1915 to 1945 there was a steep increase in global T. This was before CO2 could have had a major worldwide affect. From 1945 to about 1975 the earth cooled, despite ever increasing CO2, from 1975 to about 2000 the earth warmed, temporarily in sync with CO2 increases, for the past 12 years, even as CO2 increases continue unabated, the earth atmospheric T is flat or slightly down, So for 45 of the 70 years or so the CO2 could have a chance to drive T, it has failed to do so. However T trends have most exactly followed changes in ocean currents. Monckton’s statement stands.
=============================================
Eric’s Response to my rebuttal
You are guilty of making a straw man argument regarding the role of CO2 in the ice ages.
You wrote: “Nobody disputes that as the oceans warm they out-gas more CO2, but as CO2 increase lags the T increase, it is clearly an effect, and can not be the primary cause.”
No one claims that variation in CO2 was the initial cause of the recent ice age global temperature cycles. It is a feedback mechanism which amplifys the temperature excursions triggered by the earth’s axial and orbital variations. You are simply choosing to ignore the peer reviewed literature which shows how CO2 concentrations affected past climates, during climate cycles in the ice ages, because you can’t really find a scientific rebuttal.
pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Book_chapters/Rahmstorf_Zedillo_2008.pdf
Your point about the ocean currents causing the global warming trend is nonsense. As I pointed out above, removal of the internal noise due to ENSO, volcanoes as well as solar variation leaves us with a strong and clear global warming trend over the last 40 years.
(My response to the last paragraph here…I pointed out the flaws in your assumptions in the last section in regard to this last paragraph. The oceans contain a thousand times the heat content of the atmosphere, changes in SWR at the surface drive the ocean T , the oceans, being a locomotive next to a unicycle, drive the atmosphere, this is common sense, not nonsense.
============================================================
My response continues. Well, you call it a straw man when you ignored the “non disputed fact” in your statement. You said… “In fact, based on paleontological studies, CO2 has been shown to be a cause of climate change in the past.“ when if fact it is , as you admit, a KNOWN effect, known via the observed lag, and A POSTULATED feedback. You then state, “It is a feedback mechanism which amplifys the temperature excursions triggered by the earth’s axial and orbital variations. You are simply choosing to ignore the peer reviewed literature which shows how CO2 concentrations affected past climates, during climate cycles in the ice ages, because you can’t really find a scientific rebuttal.”
Really, so the earth’s axial and orbital variations were the only causes of past flux in climate, HUMM?, time to rescind thousands of scientific papers. (sarc)
My pointing out that CO2 flux is for certain an affect, and only potentially a cause, when you left off the effect part is not a straw man, but adding cogent information you conveniently forgot. You then point to one paper, by a familiar name from the “team” supporting the “cause”, as your black and white conclusion that CO2 drives climate at all timescales, (except of course the last 100 years as I showed)
If the MWP was real this alone destroys your CO2 drives climate, as your team has flat lined CO2 during this period. Borehole temperature measurements at 6000 locations (Huang et al., 1997). as one of several dozen other studies I can find, show the MWP was real, was global, and was as warm, or warmer then the current warm period.
Here is another 2,000 yr reconstruction that strongly dings the Hockey stick papers.
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2010/sep/23sep2010a3.html
Here is a 4,000 year reconstruction of Greenland showing 72 decades were warmer then the current decade, all contradicting your CO2 flat line, http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2012/feb/14feb2012a1.html
Of course there is Loehle’s reconstruction 2007, based on all temperature proxies except tree rings. It used 18 proxies over a wide geographical range, including sediments, boreholes, pollen, oxygen-18, stalagmites, magnesium to calcium ratios, algae, and cave formation. First reconstruction in which every proxy was calibrated to temperature in a peer reviewed article; arguably about as good as it gets.
Let us progress from centuries and thousands of years to millions of years…
Recently Berner et al looked at carbon dioxide and temperature variations over the last 470 million years. An analysis of that paper shows…
“Assuming Berner’s figures are correct, then both CO2 and cosmic rays affect the temperature over the last 450 million years.
The correlation with log(CO2) alone is R^2 = 0.63.
Using log(cosmic rays) alone is R^2 = 0.42. (The log of both CO2 and cosmic rays give a much better fit to temperature than the data itself.)
Using a linear regression with both gives R^2 = 0.79.
A very interesting finding from this analysis is that the resulting climate sensitivity is 1.0 C +/- 0.2 (2 std. dev.) per doubling of CO2.”
Of course there are many other factors beside those mentioned would could affect T which place senstivity right in line with Lindzen’s estimate here…http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060126/20060126_13.pdf
I have dozens more peer reviewed papers, some for century scales, some for thousands of years, some for millions, I am afraid sir that it is you who are “ignoring the peer reviewed literature”
David,
You objected to the use of ENSO as a regression parameter to fit the modern temperature record, because it doesn’t reflect the complexity of the process. It is of course only an approximate way to factor out internal variation, and sources of climate noise like the solar cycle and volcanoes. In practice it helps to reduce the noise and expose a trend.
On the other hand, you recommend regression fitting of 450M years of data by 2 parameters, one of which, Cosmic Rays is controversial, since attempts to prove it actually has affected climate through cloud cover in modern times has failed. In addition you omit great changes in land forms, and the increase in solar radiance that has occurred with time.
“Let us progress from centuries and thousands of years to millions of years…
Recently Berner et al looked at carbon dioxide and temperature variations over the last 470 million years. An analysis of that paper shows…
“Assuming Berner’s figures are correct, then both CO2 and cosmic rays affect the temperature over the last 450 million years.
The correlation with log(CO2) alone is R^2 = 0.63.
Using log(cosmic rays) alone is R^2 = 0.42. (The log of both CO2 and cosmic rays give a much better fit to temperature than the data itself.)
Using a linear regression with both gives R^2 = 0.79.
A very interesting finding from this analysis is that the resulting climate sensitivity is 1.0 C +/- 0.2 (2 std. dev.) per doubling of CO2.”
Then you yourself provide a reason to reject this analysis”
Of course there are many other factors beside those mentioned would could affect T which place senstivity right in line with Lindzen’s estimate here…”
Yes there are many factors which Eshenbach, who did the regeression analysis left out, and it totally negates what he has done. Why should we be surprised. This was not actually a peer reviewed publication.
Sorry Eric, but you are misunderstanding the paper Willis examined, as well as what I was saying about it. That was not a “sceptic” paper. Willis was simply showing that the paper, with the forcing weightings assigned by it to that papers conclusion, did not support its CAGW conclusions. Neither I nor Willis ever said those were the only factors considered so I am not certain why you assume that. Willis was jsut using their numbers to show that their conclusions did not support their message.
Again howver, you miss the forest for the one tree that you choose to focus on. You ignored the other links. This one report was the least important to dozens of papers which in combination support the long held settled science that the MWP was real, global, and as warm or warmer then current temperature.
Eric Adler claims, “In fact, based on paleontological studies, CO2 has been shown to be a cause of climate change in the past. In some cases it was heavy emissions from volcanoes that increased global temperatures, in other cases it was absorption by weathering of rocks that drove decreases in CO2.”
===================================
My response…
The causes of the recent Ice ages and interglacial are well known not to be settled science. (is everything settled science to you) Your claim of CO2 explaining all past changes, short term and long term, just by removing “noise” is easily dismissed simply by showing that the scientific literature does not support the hockey stick, and changes within the last 4,000 years do not follow CO2 as the models interpret it.
What the record actually shows is that CO2 follows T increases and decreases by about 800 years. Nobody disputes that as the oceans warm they out-gas more CO2, but as CO2 increase lags the increase, it is clearly an effect, and can not be the primary cause. Climate sensitivity to doubling CO2 will have to be determined by far more detailed observations of today’s climate with today’s instruments. From about 1915 to 1945 there was a steep increase in global T. This was before CO2 could have had a major worldwide affect. From 1945 to about 1975 the earth cooled, despite ever increasing CO2, from 1975 to about 2000 the earth warmed, temporarily in sync with CO2 increases, for the past 12 years, even as CO2 increases continue unabated, the earth atmospheric T is flat or slightly down, So for 45 of the 70 years or so the CO2 could have a chance to drive T, it has failed to do so. Let us check (the peer reviewed literature) and see if T followed CO2 in the last 4,000 years.
eric points to one paper, by a familiar name from the “team” supporting the “cause”, as his black and white conclusion that CO2 drives climate at all timescales, (except of course the last 100 years as I showed)
If the MWP was real this alone destroys your CO2 drives climate, as your team has flat lined CO2 during this period. Borehole temperature measurements at 6000 locations (Huang et al., 1997). as one of several dozen other studies I can find, show the MWP was real, was global, and was as warm, or warmer then the current warm period, despite your flatlined CO2
Here is another 2,000 yr reconstruction that strongly dings the Hockey stick papers.
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2010/sep/23sep2010a3.html
Here is a 4,000 year reconstruction of Greenland showing 72 decades were warmer then the current decade, all contradicting your CO2 flat line, http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2012/feb/14feb2012a1.html
Of course there is Loehle’s reconstruction 2007, based on all temperature proxies except tree rings. It used 18 proxies over a wide geographical range, including sediments, boreholes, pollen, oxygen-18, stalagmites, magnesium to calcium ratios, algae, and cave formation. First reconstruction in which every proxy was calibrated to temperature in a peer reviewed article; arguably about as good as it gets.
Let us progress from centuries and thousands of years to millions of years…
Recently Berner et al looked at carbon dioxide and temperature variations over the last 470 million years. An analysis of that paper shows…
“Assuming Berner’s figures are correct, then both CO2 and cosmic rays affect the temperature over the last 450 million years.
The correlation with log(CO2) alone is R^2 = 0.63.
Using log(cosmic rays) alone is R^2 = 0.42. (The log of both CO2 and cosmic rays give a much better fit to temperature than the data itself.)
Using a linear regression with both gives R^2 = 0.79.
A very interesting finding from this analysis is that the resulting climate sensitivity is 1.0 C +/- 0.2 (2 std. dev.) per doubling of CO2.”
Of course there are many other factors beside those mentioned would could affect T which place senstivity right in line with Lindzen’s estimate here…http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060126/20060126_13.pdf
I have dozens more peer reviewed papers, some for century scales, some for thousands of years, some for millions, I am afraid sir that it is you who are “ignoring the peer reviewed literature”
Eric Adler claims, “In fact, based on paleontological studies, CO2 has been shown to be a cause of climate change in the past. In some cases it was heavy emissions from volcanoes that increased global temperatures, in other cases it was absorption by weathering of rocks that drove decreases in CO2.”
===================================
My response…
The causes of the recent Ice ages and interglacial are well known not to be settled science. (is everything settled science to you) Your claim of CO2 explaining all past changes, short term and long term, just by removing “noise” is easily dismissed simply by showing that the scientific literature does not support the hockey stick, and changes within the last 4,000 years do not follow CO2 as the models interpret it.
What the record actually shows is that CO2 follows T increases and decreases by about 800 years. Nobody disputes that as the oceans warm they out-gas more CO2, but as CO2 increase lags the increase, it is clearly an effect, and can not be the primary cause. Climate sensitivity to doubling CO2 will have to be determined by far more detailed observations of today’s climate with today’s instruments. From about 1915 to 1945 there was a steep increase in global T. This was before CO2 could have had a major worldwide affect. From 1945 to about 1975 the earth cooled, despite ever increasing CO2, from 1975 to about 2000 the earth warmed, temporarily in sync with CO2 increases, for the past 12 years, even as CO2 increases continue unabated, the earth atmospheric T is flat or slightly down, So for 45 of the 70 years or so the CO2 could have a chance to drive T, it has failed to do so. Let us check (the peer reviewed literature) and see if T followed CO2 in the last 4,000 years.
eric points to one paper, by a familiar name from the “team” supporting the “cause”, as his black and white conclusion that CO2 drives climate at all timescales, (except of course the last 100 years as I showed)
If the MWP was real this alone destroys your CO2 drives climate, as your team has flat lined CO2 during this period. Borehole temperature measurements at 6000 locations (Huang et al., 1997). as one of several dozen other studies I can find, show the MWP was real, was global, and was as warm, or warmer then the current warm period, despite your flatlined CO2
Here is another 2,000 yr reconstruction that strongly dings the Hockey stick papers.
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2010/sep/23sep2010a3.html
Here is a 4,000 year reconstruction of Greenland showing 72 decades were warmer then the current decade, all contradicting your CO2 flat line, http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2012/feb/14feb2012a1.html
Of course there is Loehle’s reconstruction 2007, based on all temperature proxies except tree rings. It used 18 proxies over a wide geographical range, including sediments, boreholes, pollen, oxygen-18, stalagmites, magnesium to calcium ratios, algae, and cave formation. First reconstruction in which every proxy was calibrated to temperature in a peer reviewed article; arguably about as good as it gets.
Let us progress from centuries and thousands of years to millions of years…
Recently Berner et al looked at carbon dioxide and temperature variations over the last 470 million years. An analysis of that paper shows…
“Assuming Berner’s figures are correct, then both CO2 and cosmic rays affect the temperature over the last 450 million years.
The correlation with log(CO2) alone is R^2 = 0.63.
Using log(cosmic rays) alone is R^2 = 0.42. (The log of both CO2 and cosmic rays give a much better fit to temperature than the data itself.)
Using a linear regression with both gives R^2 = 0.79.
A very interesting finding from this analysis is that the resulting climate sensitivity is 1.0 C +/- 0.2 (2 std. dev.) per doubling of CO2.”
Of course there are many other factors beside those mentioned would could affect T which place senstivity right in line with Lindzen’s estimate here…http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060126/20060126_13.pdf
I have dozens more peer reviewed papers, some for century scales, some for thousands of years, some for millions, I am afraid sir that it is you who are “ignoring the peer reviewed literature”
Carol March 20, 2012 at 7:08 pm
I said that CO2 did cause climate change in the past and this is based on paleontological studies.
bitsofscience.org/mass-extinction-methane-clathrates-triassic-2300/
bitsofscience.org/permian-triassic-mass-extinction-climate-forests-2635/
I was not referring to the recent ice ages, where CO2 concentration lagged climate change by 800 years, where CO2 was a feedback mechanism, amplifying the changes initiated by the triggering mechanism . The triggering mechanism for the climate changes during the recent ice ages, as I mentioned in a previous post on this thread is the regular orbital precession of the earth around the sun, and the wobble in the earth’s axial tilt, called Milankovitch cycles, named for the scientist who discovered it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
You are misstating my point, in order to make a straw man argument. I never said that “CO2 drives climate at all timescales” or made the claim of “CO2 explaining all past changes, short term and long term, just by removing “noise” ” . I pointed to some cases in which natural emissions of CO2 have driven climate changes. In fact the driver of global warming in the first part of the 20th century is known to be an increase in solar radiance. You are committing a basic fallacy in logic with your argument. You are claiming that since CO2 has not been responsible for all of the climate change in the past, it cannot be causing climate change at the present time. You repeat this fallacy many times. You need to learn how to read more carefully and take a course in basic logic.
The paper on Greenland snow temperature history which you cited, represents only one location on Greenland It is wrong to use it to as a counterargument, regarding the relative levels of global temperature during the MWP and the present. In fact the paper contains the following discussion paragraph, explaining the differences between its conclusions and previous papers.
“[W]e conclude that the current decadal mean snow temperature in central Greenland has not exceeded the envelope of natural variability of the past 4000 years.
“This conclusion differs somewhat from the result of a recent reconstruction of Arctic summer air temperature over the past 2000 years, which indicates that a long cooling trend over the last 2000 years ended with a pronounced warming during the twentieth century [Kaufman et al., 2009]. Possible reasons for the differences are numerous, and include at a minimum 1) our record is a mean%u2010annual temperature, not a summer temperature, and variability is minimal in summer but highest in winter [Box, 2002]; 2) differences between air and snow temperature may be influenced by changes in cloud cover and wind speed, which affect the strength of the near%u2010surface inversion; and 3) our site is not necessarily representative of the whole Arctic, and may respond in opposite ways to annular mode fluctuations.”
There seems to be an important fact left out by the web site you linked to
nipccreport.org/articles/2010/sep/23sep2010a3.html
which you claim contradicts the dozen or so papers which show a “Hockey Stick” shape for global temperatures.
In their zeal to show that the paper, which they referenced,contradicts the “Hockey Stick” ,they left out the following statement by the authors of this paper:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0459.2010.00399.x/abstract
“The temperature of the last two decades, however, is possibly higher than during any previous time in the past two millennia, although this is only seen in the instrumental temperature data and not in the multi-proxy reconstruction itself. ”
I leave it up to you to figure out whether the omission of this key sentence, made by the “Climate Change Reconsidered” web site, constitutes purposeful misinformation, or resulted from ignoring facts which contradict their global warming denier mindset. I recommend you stay away from such web sites to avoid being misinformed, or carefully check everything that they say.
Lindzen’s opinion piece is not actually a peer reviewed paper.
The mystery analysis which you copied from an AGW denier web site, based on a publication by Berner, apparently was done by Willis Eschenbach. It does not belong to the category of peer reviewed papers either.
It is nonsense to attempt a regression analysis on 450M years of global temperatures using two variables, CO2 and cosmic rays. It leaves out the changes in land mass distribution which have a profound effect on global temperatures as a result of snow and ice distributions which provide albedo feedback. In addition cosmic rays have been shown to cause water droplet formation during physics experiments in a cloud chamber, but there is no credible data linking cosmic rays to actual atmospheric cloud cover.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/30103
It is pretty clear that you understand little about climate science, base your information on web sites that misinform and can’t distinguish between peer reviewed literature and opinion pieces.
Eric Alder, what is clear is that I quoted your statement, Eric Adler claims, “In fact, based on paleontological studies, CO2 has been shown to be a cause of climate change in the past. In some cases it was heavy emissions from volcanoes that increased global temperatures, in other cases it was absorption by weathering of rocks that drove decreases in CO2.”
Your claim was not specific in time scales, so the fact that you linked to some long term paleontological studies does not mean that you DO NOT consider CO2 to be the driver of climate at all time scales. In fact, your defense of the Hockey Stick studies, (one to two thousand year reconstructions) which have been disclaimed by the authors themselves in revealed FOIA e-mails, supports my statement that Eric Adler considers CO2 to be the driver of climate at all time scales.
The Hockey Stick reconstructions, along with the flat line in temperature and CO2 covering this time scale, all give weight or authority to how the models weigh CO2. Yes, I know you do not mean CO2 as the only influence on climate, but the warmist scenario depends on it being THE driver of past and current climate. If you want to argue for billions of years of climate with solar changes and claim that rescues you, well then you have a very small pedantic point.
Eric states, “In fact the driver of global warming in the first part of the 20th century is known to be an increase in solar radiance.” Please show me a CAGW advocates paper which asserts solar influence as THE driver. You are talking about the warming from about 1915 to 1975, which when matched to the satellite observed warming from 1975 to now is about the same in slope and degree, and also matches several ESNO cycles. If you find such a paper please demonstrate that the same mathematical W/M2 “solar forcing” ascribed to this warming period (1915 to 1945) is also used by the climate models in their projections, both past and forward. You know it is not, because if it was then CO2 would not be needed to explain the past. Yes I am aware you are admitting other long term factors, but still you assert CO2 to be the driver.
You criticize me stating “You are claiming that since CO2 has not been responsible for all of the climate change in the past, it cannot be causing climate change at the present time. You repeat this fallacy many times. You need to learn how to read more carefully and take a course in basic logic.”
Since I never claimed that perhaps you need to look up “straw man” and take a remedial logic course. Clearly I am saying that their is little evidence of CO2 being anything but a follower (about 800 year lag) of earths historic T changes, and that the fact that the Hockey teams millennial reconstructions are trashed by some “team” members, as well as many PHD skeptics, and further more contradicted by dozens of papers which show that the MWP was real, was global, and was as warm or warmer then the current time period, during a time when CO2 was flat lined, all work together, along with modern observations, to show that currently the IPCC assigns way to much weight to CO2.
Eric Adler states, “Lindzen’s opinion piece is not actually a peer reviewed paper”
Wow, my oh my!; if Peer Review is the holy grail of all assertions, then 1/3rd of the IPCC report must be thrown out. You make many non-peer reviewed statements yourself, and do not back many of them up with links. However I still do you the curtsey of addressing them logically. Additionally you KNOW full well the same information and observation based evidence concerning climate sensitivity can be found within the peer reviewed literature…
xvii Lindzen and Choi 2009, Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 36: http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf. The paper was corrected after some criticism, coming to essentially the same result again in 2011: www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf.
So, does you remitting what we know you knew “constitutes purposeful misinformation”?
The same goes with the Willis Eschenbach reference, peer reviewed or not, either the math is correct to the paper, or it is not. You can say you have not had time to verify this, as your characterization of the paper shows, but it is evasion to simply deny it.
Your entire comment about the Greenland paper is a straw man to what I actually I said. I never stated this ONE PAPER destroyed the Hockey stick papers, I said, “If the MWP was real this alone destroys your CO2 drives climate assertion, as your team has flat lined CO2 during this period, and at the same time claimed flat temperatures. The CO2 forcing affect used in the models is therefore substantially over weighted . I also said, “I have dozens more peer reviewed papers, some for century scales, some for thousands of years, some for millions, I am afraid sir that it is you who are “ignoring the peer reviewed literature” and concerning the Greenland paper, I only used it as one of many examples. In fact I said, “I have dozens more peer reviewed papers, some for century scales, some for thousands of years, some for millions, I am afraid sir that it is you who are “ignoring the peer reviewed literature” The scientific literature in total, of which this Greenland paper was only one, are what demonstrate the MWP.
Your commentary, where the Greenland papers states that have been other results from other studies, and it articulates honest points of uncertainty is called good science. In other words, the science is not settled!! This is quite unlike the Hockey Stick, or for that matter the other deeply flawed climate reconstructions.
You then make what you claim as a revelatory comment from that paper, which does, by the way, contradict the Hockey Stick papers. The astounding comment is “The temperature of the last two decades, however, is possibly higher than during any previous time in the past two millennia, although this is only seen in the instrumental temperature data and not in the multi-proxy reconstruction itself.”
Please Sir, are you funning me? This statement is asserting a well known fact, which is that most historic millennial time scale reconstructions do not have the resolution to show small decadal scale swings in temp. However the main point of the paper is this, “The three U.S. scientists report that their SST reconstruction “shows cooler temperatures between about AD 400 and AD 950 [the Dark Ages Cold Period] than during much of the so-called Medieval Warm Period (about AD 900-1300).” Of this latter period, they say “reconstructed SSTs were warmest from AD 1000 to AD 1250,” when “SSTs within error of modern SSTs occurred in the IPWP,”
Anyone interested in more from the peer reviewed literature can check here http://www.nipccreport.org/archive/archive.html
And here… http://www.co2science.org/
Eric, my response to your statements here, March 212012 at 12:21, is in the moderation que. Perhaps to many links. However an objective reading of it will show that you continue to miss-represent the science as well as the fact that you miss-represent the central message of many statements I have made. It is perhaps not surprising that you do this in a manner similar to how Abraham, in his many misrepresentations of what Christopher Monckton has said, does similar distortions. I will include herein a portion of that response, sans links, as two examples..
Eric Adler states, “Lindzen’s opinion piece is not actually a peer reviewed paper”
If Peer Review is the holy grail of all assertions, then 1/3rd of the IPCC report must be thrown out. You make many non-peer reviewed statements yourself, and do not back many of them up with links. However I still do you the curtsey of addressing them logically. Additionally you KNOW full well the same information and observation based evidence concerning climate sensitivity can be found within the peer reviewed literature…
xvii Lindzen and Choi 2009, Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 36: http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf. The paper was corrected after some criticism, coming to essentially the same result again in 2011: www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf.
So, does you remitting what we know you knew “constitutes purposeful misinformation”?
The same goes with the Willis Eschenbach reference, peer reviewed or not, either the math is correct to the paper, or it is not. You can say you have not had time to verify this, as your characterization of the paper shows, but it is evasion to simply deny it.
Your entire comment about the Greenland paper is a straw man to what I actually I said. I never stated this ONE PAPER destroyed the Hockey stick papers, I said, “If the MWP was real this alone destroys your CO2 drives climate assertion, as your team has flat lined CO2 during this period, and at the same time claimed flat temperatures. The CO2 forcing affect used in the models is therefore substantially over weighted . I also said, “I have dozens more peer reviewed papers, some for century scales, some for thousands of years, some for millions, clearly meaning that their combined mountain of evidence, done at hundreds of locations around the world more then the Hockey reconstructions, done with far more a varied proxies, destroys the H.S. reconstructions. I honestly just grabbed a couple of dozzens available. I am afraid sir that it is you who are “ignoring the peer reviewed literature” and concerning the Greenland paper, purposefully misrepresent my use of it as one of many examples. In fact I said, “I have dozens more peer reviewed papers, some for century scales, some for thousands of years, some for millions, I am afraid sir that it is you who are “ignoring the peer reviewed literature” The scientific literature in total, of which this Greenland paper was only one, are what demonstrate the MWP.
Your commentary, where the Greenland papers states that have been other results from other studies, and it articulates honest points of uncertainty is called good science. In other words, the science is not settled!! This is quite unlike the Hockey Stick, or for that matter the other deeply flawed climate reconstructions, where there doubts, really trashing of their own reconstructions, are mainly expresssed only in e-mails to each other.
You then make what you claim as a revelatory comment from that paper, which does, by the way, contradict the Hockey Stick papers. The astounding comment is “The temperature of the last two decades, however, is possibly higher than during any previous time in the past two millennia, although this is only seen in the instrumental temperature data and not in the multi-proxy reconstruction itself.”
Please Sir, are you funning me? This statement is asserting a well known fact,(and playing lip service to the IPCC) which is that most historic millennial time scale reconstructions do not have the resolution to show small decadal scale swings in temp. However the main point of the paper is this, “The three U.S. scientists report that their SST reconstruction “shows cooler temperatures between about AD 400 and AD 950 [the Dark Ages Cold Period] than during much of the so-called Medieval Warm Period (about AD 900-1300).” Of this latter period, they say “reconstructed SSTs were warmest from AD 1000 to AD 1250,” when “SSTs within error of modern SSTs occurred in the IPWP,”
Eric, I also notice you never answered my statements, or the question I asked of you at the end from here. http://www.concordy.com/article/opinions/march-7-2012/a-lords-opinion-cant-compete-with-scientific-truth/4222/#comment-20072
David,
It seems that the revisions made by Lindzen and Choi in response to the withering criticisms were insufficient to get it published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences so the had it published by the Asia Pacific J of Atmospheric Science.
The PNAS felt the paper was not worthy of publication because its conclusions were not justified.
masterresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Attach3.pdf
One reviewer says:
“The paper is based on three basic untested and fundamentally flawed assumptions about global climate sensitivity: 1) Correlations observed in the tropics reflects global climate feedbacks. As justification: the authors state ‘ we argue that feedbacks are largely concentrated in the tropics’ (see line 33 and 34 in abstract). The only argument given in the text is lines 126 and 127, where they state: ” However there are good reasons to consider the tropics; for example, concentration of water vapor in the tropics”. This is not an argument; more an assertion. This assertion is also radiatively wrong, for it is well known, the lower the water vapor concentration, the larger the flux changes. Since the entire paper relies on this assumption, they must prove it.
2) Their analyses ignore changes over land areas in the tropics. It is well known that adjustment in the atmosphere is over the entire length scale of the tropics (due to the large Rossby radius of deformation). We know,warming over the tropical pacific leads to the walker circulation on thousands of kilometers length scales; thus rising motions over the oceans (more cloudiness) in the tropics will lead to subsidence (less water vapor and clouds) over land areas. Thus, even for just the tropics, neglect of land surface temp changes and fluxes is unjustified. 3) Lastly, the authors go through convoluted arguments between forcing and feed backs. For the authors’ analyses to be valid, clouds should be responding to SST and not forcing SST changes.
They do not bother to prove it or test the validity of this assumption. Again this is an assertion, without any testable justification.”
The other reviews are in a similar vein. Here is summary of the content of their criticism:
greenerblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/lindzen-and-choi-2011-have-they.html
The paper gives insufficient detail of the methods to allow other workers to reproduce them. This is a grade A, fundamental scientific error.
The paper does not address criticisms of LC09 by Trenberth et al 2010, nor Dessler 2010.
The paper studies only tropical processes, (a term that it fails to define) and unsafely assumes that this can be extended to the whole globe.
They ignore changes that occur over land.
They confuse forcing and feedback. In other words, they assume clouds to be causes, and not effects, of surface changes, and make no attempt to justify this assumption.
Month-to-month variability of the tropics may have nothing to do with climate feedback processes.
Detailed analysis of the “lagged regressions” (which are beyond my ken) show deficiencies.
The authors chose time periods for the lags that suit their conclusions.
The claim to deal with equilibrium climate sensitivity is not substantiated.
You remind me that I didn’t make the time to deal with your false claim about the significance of the MWP:
“If the MWP was real this alone destroys your CO2 drives climate assertion, as your team has flat lined CO2 during this period, and at the same time claimed flat temperatures.”
This statement consists of two fallacies.
1) The original Mann et. al. 1999 reconstruction of global climate did underestimate NH temperatures during the MWP( Medieval Warming Period). About a dozen papers were published since them Subsequent reconstructions corrected this underestimation, but showing a wiggley hockey stick, but a hockey stick nevertheless.
2) The fact that CO2 was not responsible for all climate change, doesn’t prove that no climate change was caused bye CO2, or that CO2 was not a feedback mechanism at some times in the past.
Indeed there is strong evidence that CO2 has been a cause and feedback mechanism in the past, and is currently a driver. I have provided examples of both in the natural world, and modelling and regression analysis shows that CO2 and other GHG’s are driving climate change today.
The “climategate” email you are so fond of shows that there is rivalry between scientific colleagues, and denigration of one another’s work. This is not unusual, and doesn’t prove that the “Hockey Stick” graphs derived by different researchers as the result of PaleoClimate reconstructions are invalid.
The summary you provide comes from the “Climate Change Reconsidered” web site, not the authors of the paper.
If my memory serves me correctly, ice cores cannot be used to infer temperatures that are less than 2 decades in the past. So the thermometer record must be used instead. It is the last two decades that make the current temperature warmer than the MWP.
Yet one more paper supporting the MWP
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/22/more-evidence-the-medieval-warm-period-was-global/
To understand why the “team” is so desparate to destroy the MWP is crucial to the debate. In trying to support the “cause” they trapped themselves. They flatlined CO2 and temperatures for the one to two thousand year HS reconstructions. This allowed them to assign an artificially high weight to modern CO2 increases. They further increased the weight of CO2 by only considering solar influence on climate to be a lineal response to TSI changes, ignoring many other possbilties within the peer reviewed literature. They allowed these flawed studies to set the CO2 senstivity used in the models. Now, having flatlined CO2 for the period of the reconstuctions, if the MWP is shown to be real then their theory is destroyed, and their failed models are sent to the garbage pile. (What a tangled mess we weave…..)
I don’t understand your preoccupation with the MWP. If the MWP globally were warmer than today, this by itself doesn’t contradict the GHG theory of global warming. It only shows that other driving forces have warmed the earth in the past.
Eric: “It only shows that other driving forces have warmed the earth in the past.”
Thank you Eric for the lead in. Likewise, the original claim of AGW did not rule out that other driving forces warm the earth. A fact conveniently left out by Global Warming alarmists.
Thanks to proponents of AGW trying to cover for the 800 year lag of CO2 with their claim, CO2 had a “delayed feedback, which amplified climate change” came their admittance that some other force (or forces) were warming the earth.
Darren Potter said,
“Thank you Eric for the lead in. Likewise, the original claim of AGW did not rule out that other driving forces warm the earth. A fact conveniently left out by Global Warming alarmists. Thanks to proponents of AGW trying to cover for the 800 year lag of CO2 with their claim, CO2 had a “delayed feedback, which amplified climate change” came their admittance that some other force (or forces) were warming the earth.”
You are either being silly or ignorant, and inventing the history of science based on a conspiracy theory. Once again global warming denierism shows itself to be a case study in psychology.
I don’t know of any climate scientists that claimed that CO2 is the only driving force for climate change. The idea of Milankovitch cycles, named for its originator dates from the 1912, when he refined some ideas about the astronomical origin of the ice ages using his prowess in mathematics. Over time, this idea has been confirmed by data. In the 30′s and 40′s Milankovich refined his theory and introduced the change in snow and ice cover to understand the evolution of climate. His work was ignored for a while, but became more accepted in 1976 after paleoclimate data confirmed his analysis. This work came well before the CO2 emissions became an issue. There was never any attempt to hide other sources of climate change.
Eric: “You are either being silly or ignorant, and inventing the history of science based on a conspiracy theory. Once again global warming denierism shows itself to be a case study in psychology.”
Oh come on Eric, you know fully well that the proponents of Global Warming (AGW) have been blaming it on CO2, specifically man-made CO2 for years. It was only after the Global Warming wagon wheels started falling off did proponents of Global Warming start changing their tune as to what role CO2 played.
Witness all the name changes Global Warming has undergone by proponents of AGW in attempt to get themselves out of the corner they painted themselves into and to sell** the GW scam.
Global Warming
Climate Change
Global Climate Disruption
Climate Challenges
How convenient the latter two are, since the pundits of Global Warming can now disavow themselves from their failed CO2 and Temperature change claims.
** “Overall, 74 percent of people thought the problem was real when it was referred to as climate change, while about 68 percent thought it was real when it was referred to as global warming.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110308173242.htm
Darren Potter March 22, 2012 at 11:36 pm | Permalink
says:
“Eric: “You are either being silly or ignorant, and inventing the history of science based on a conspiracy theory. Once again global warming denierism shows itself to be a case study in psychology.”
Oh come on Eric, you know fully well that the proponents of Global Warming (AGW) have been blaming it on CO2, specifically man-made CO2 for years. It was only after the Global Warming wagon wheels started falling off did proponents of Global Warming start changing their tune as to what role CO2 played.
Witness all the name changes Global Warming has undergone by proponents of AGW in attempt to get themselves out of the corner they painted themselves into and to sell** the GW scam.
Global Warming
Climate Change
Global Climate Disruption
Climate Challenges
How convenient the latter two are, since the pundits of Global Warming can now disavow themselves from their failed CO2 and Temperature change claims.”
You have a good imagination.
The different terminology used by publicists is totally irrelevant to the scientific literature on the causes of the current global warming trend, or the projected future trend. None of the terms you mention has any bearing on the magnitude of climate sensitivity due to CO2 or other GHG’s.
There is no logical or factual basis to your post.
That comes as no surprise, because it fits the pattern of your other posts.
Darren Potter,
wrote:
“** “Overall, 74 percent of people thought the problem was real when it was referred to as climate change, while about 68 percent thought it was real when it was referred to as global warming.”
sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110308173242.htm ”
Your link is an interesting story. It seems that political affiliation determines whether one is susceptible to changes in the terminology used. The name change only affected opinions of Republicans.
“…And when the researchers analyzed responses to the survey by political orientation, they found that the different overall levels in belief were driven almost entirely by participants who identified themselves as Republicans. While 60 percent of Republicans reported that they thought climate change was real, for example, only 44 percent said they believed in the reality of global warming.
In contrast, about 86 percent of Democrats thought climate change was a serious problem, no matter what it was called. Why weren’t they influenced by question wording? “It might be a ceiling effect, given their high level of belief,” Konrath said. “Or it could be that Democrats’ beliefs about global climate change might be more crystallized, and as a result, more protected from subtle manipulations.
..”
Below this post Eric, Myrrh, and Darren go off on a long tangent, not cogent to my debate with Eric. Feel free to read this tangent at your own risk, but if you wish to see the dialogue between Eric and I, move to here March 27th 8:48 am to read my last three responses to Eric, and his last comment to me.
Furthermore, I don’t believe the models used in the IPCC projections were calibrated using proxy data from the MWP. So whatever happened during the MWP has no relevance regarding these models.
Eric: “I don’t believe the models used in the IPCC projections were calibrated using proxy data from the MWP.”
Thanks for pointing out another flaw with Global Warmer’s climate models and IPCC’s projections based on those models. Likely another reason why climate models continue to get the global climate wrong.
“Data from NASA’s Terra satellite shows that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.” http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2011/07/27/nasa-satellite-data-shows-climate-models-are-wrong-again
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/image22.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/image24.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/image25.png
“The Terra satellite data also support data collected by NASA’s ERBS satellite showing far more longwave radiation (and thus, heat) escaped into space between 1985 and 1999 than alarmist computer models had predicted. Together, the NASA ERBS and Terra satellite data show that for 25 years and counting, carbon dioxide emissions have directly and indirectly trapped far less heat than alarmist computer models have predicted.”
http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-global-warming-alarmism-192334971.html
“When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a “huge discrepancy” between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice.”
“Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.”
So Eric Adler, Donald Rodbell, and Erin Delman – Are you ready to be honest or is it still GW alarmism full speed ahead?
David,
I haven’t read the 2011 McShane Wyner paper you alluded to above. It is behind a pay wall. The claim that the original Hockey Stick graph can be a result of the original procedure used by Mann et. al., non centered Principal Components Analysis, which can produce a hockey stick from data generated by noise, has been made before and debunked. Centered PCA, the more usual procedure also produced a Hockey Stick from the original data.
The original Mann paper did have flaws. It was a ground breaking paper, and lead to a line of research that has produced a dozen or so papers in which the flaws were corrected.
David,
For details on why the Cosmic Ray hypothesis of Shaviv has gotten so little respect from climate scientists, here is a critique written shortly after the Shaviv paper came out:
pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2004/2004_Rahmstorf_etal.pdf
The critique contains what I wrote about before, the many factors neglected in the regression fit, using only CO2 and Cosmic Rays, as well as the way in which Shaviv fudged time data to obtain correlations between Paleo Climate and Cosmic Rays. It explains why Shaviv’s paper has been ignored by the scientific main stream.
How does Carbon Dioxide heat the Earth?
Rather than type in an explanation, you can paste the following link into your browser line and get an elementary illustrated explanation:
earthguide.ucsd.edu/earthguide/diagrams/greenhouse/
Hi Eric, thanks for the responses. I will get back to you this evening.
Eric Adler March 22, 2012 at 6:38 pm | Permalink | Reply
Rather than type in an explanation, you can paste the following link into your browser line and get an elementary illustrated explanation:
earthguide.ucsd.edu/earthguide/diagrams/greenhouse/
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KT97 and its kin. The comic cartoon of an imaginary world’s energy budget – where visible light heats the land and oceans of the Earth and the direct heat from the Sun doesn’t reach the surface and plays no part in heating said land and oceans; where the Water Cycle has been missed out completely; where clouds appear magically because gases aren’t buoyant in air; and because that’s where there is only radiation and no convection because the atmosphere is empty space with ideal gases, confusingly also called nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide, which have no weight or volume or attraction travel at immense speeds bouncing off each other and thoroughly mixing; where consequently there is no sound.
Yes, I know the one, the through the looking glass with Alice impossible fisics, where the properties of one thing are given to another and laws taken out of context to descibe these fictions. But that wasn’t what I asked for.
How does Carbon Dioxide heat the Earth?
Myrrh,
Phew, what a bunch of hot air you have spewed out.
It is clear that you are not really interested in an answer and think you know it all anyway.
I think you need to take a powder. Maybe sniffing some Frankincense would do you good.
Said by Eric: “Their method was endorsed by the famous global warming denier, Anthony Watts.”
The original proposed idea was endorsed, but not the method BEST finally did.
Said by Eric: “The came to the conclusion that the existing land temperature records, NCDC, GISS and Hadcrut were valid, and that the Urban heat Island effect has not had a significant effect on the temperature record.
Key wording being “land”, along with a further catch.
“… none of the warmistas have apparently listened to the somewhat skeptical pronouncements from Prof. Muller. He emphasizes that the analysis is based only on land data, covering less than 30% of the earth’s surface and housing recording stations that are poorly distributed, mainly in the U.S. and Western Europe.”
As for BEST’s findings on UHI, that is only true when one looks at all Weather Stations, but is not true when Global Warmers go Lemon Picking (including more UHI stations, while leaving out more non UHI stations); which is seen with NOAA’s GHCN data that is used by proponents of Global Warming.
Said by Eric: “When their conclusions were announced, Watts was embarrassed because it knocked down his thesis that bad stations and the UHI make the data unreliable.”
Seems BEST’s Prof. Muller actually backed Watt’s thesis, despite what you try to sell: “In addition, he admits that 70% of U.S. stations are badly sited and don’t meet the standards set by government; the rest of the world is probably worse.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/why_best_will_not_settle_the_climate_debate.html#ixzz1pu1oAxdy
Said by Eric: “References to the BEST project have disappeared from his web site in recent months.”
Why Eric do you persist with your dishonesty? Do you think people are so dumb you can get away with it?
Here is a recent link to BEST project update (02/17/2012) on Anothy’s website: “http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/17/berkeley-earth-releases-new-version-of-the-best-dataset/”
There are plenty more just Google: WUWT BEST project
On the entirety of your post pointing to BEST Project results, why did you leave out the following Inconvenient Truth?
From the newstory: “Scientist who said climate change sceptics had been proved wrong accused of hiding truth by colleague”
“the Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.
“Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.”
“Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers. Her comments, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, seem certain to ignite a furious academic row. She said this affair had to be compared to the notorious ‘Climategate’ scandal two years ago.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html#ixzz1pu6TWHH5
BEST data when graphed to show last decade (been there before with Mann’s Hockey Stick).
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/10/30/article-2055191-0E974B4300000578-6_634x639.jpg
“Contrary to claims being made by the leader of the Best global temperature initiative their data confirms, and places on a firmer statistical basis, the global temperature standstill of the past ten years as seen by other groups.”
http://thegwpf.org/the-observatory/4230-best-confirms-global-temperature-standstill.html
“It is a statistically perfect straight line of zero gradient. Indeed, most of the largest variations in it can be attributed to ENSO and la Nina effects. It is impossible to reconcile this with Professor Muller’s statement. Could it really be the case that Professor Muller has not looked at the data in an appropriate way to see the last ten years clearly?”
Chart: http://thegwpf.org/cache/multithumb_images/1500539555.jpg
D.P.
That’s a weaselling out. This is a serious question. I’m looking for a serious, physical, explanation.
You warmists, CAGW & AGW, make claims for Carbon Dioxide which don’t stand to rational scrutiny. For example, the claim that carbon dioxide is well mixed in the atmosphere and accumulates for hundreds and even thousands of years – utter codswallop, not physics. Which you’d know if you knew anything about real molecules which have volume and weight relative to air which means that carbon dioxide because heavier than air can’t defy gravity etc., and if you knew that real molecules have attraction you would have noticed by now that the water cycle is missing from your comic cartoon energy budget and it’s the water cycle which also brings carbon dioxide back to the surface – all pure, clean rain is carbonic acid.
Any idea why the water cycle is missing from your comic cartoon? Think deserts, imagine our Earth with our fluid gaseous atmosphere of practically 100% nitrogen and oxygen but without water. If you’re capable of imagining that you’ll get a grip on what the water cycle does – the main ‘greenhouse gas’ water vapour cools the Earth to bring it down to around 15°C, by around 52°C. Your claim that ‘greenhouse gases warm the Earth from -18°C by 33°C’ is clearly falsified – or rather – shown to be the sleight of hand it is by those pushing this nonsense, fictional physics in support of the brainwashing which is AGW.
So, what I’m asking is for you supporters of this conjecture to give me your explanation of how carbon dioxide heats the Earth. It’s your claim and you’ve been yelling ‘it’s true!’ for some time now, surely you have it somewhere? Or do I just have to add you and this university and its ‘earth sciences’ department to the now long list of those claiming it heats the Earth who have no idea how it does this?
How does carbon dioxide heat the Earth?
Myrrh,
Your language tells me that you don’t have enough of a background in Physics and Chemistry to understand a more complex explanation, and your attitude makes you incapable of making the effort to understand the Physics and Chemistry. You think that you understand much more than you actually do.
Your mindset in opposition to the idea of global warming has caused you to accept a conspiracy theory which falsifies history, as well. The understanding of the role of “greenhouse gases” in setting the temperature of the earth, dates from 1859, when John Tyndall measured the IR spectrum of GHG’s and explained how they kept the earth from cooling rapidly at night. The first calculations of how much industrial emissions of CO2 will change the temperature of the earth dates was the work of the Nobel Prize winning physicist, Svante Arrhenius in 1896. What would their motives to brainwash the public be? Were they rent seekers, or scammers, looking for government grants? Where is the evidence?
Why not read about the history of global warming at the American Institute of Physics web site, and lay off WattsUpWithThat for while?
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
If you are really interested in this subject, rather than ranting, you would take a course at a college or university, and com