The Heartland Institute, the US organisation that plays a key role in organised climate denial, has directly funded New Zealand’s most prominent sceptics, a search of US Internal Revenue Service documents has revealed. In 2007, Heartland granted US$25,000 (NZ$32,000) to the NZ Climate “Science” Coalition, sending the money to NZ CSC member Owen McShane. They also gifted the International Climate Science Coalition US$45,000 (NZ$59,000), forwarding the cash to NZ CSC webmaster and ICSC founding chairman Terry Dunleavy. The documents do not reveal what the money was used for, but four NZ CSC members attended the December 2007 Bali conference as part of an ICSC delegation. Bryan Leyland, energy advisor to both CSCs, confirmed in 2008 that “some expenses” for the trip had been covered by Heartland, but the NZ CSC has never revealed the full extent of the Heartland Institute funding of their operations, or its role in the expansion of their “climate science coalition” franchise.
Details of the payments from the US lobby group come in the “Form 990” statements the US Internal Revenue Service requires non-profit and tax-exempt bodies such as Heartland to file every year. These are available to the public, either by direct request to the organisation, or at various web sites. The Economic Research Institute web site provides a handy search tool for 990 forms, and here’s what they have for Heartland. This is an extract from the return for 2007, annotated by me:
The destination for the NZ payments is easy enough to trace. The Kaiwaka, Northland address belongs to Owen McShane and his Centre for Resource Management Studies, and the PO Box in North Shore City is used by Terry Dunleavy.
Payments of US$25,000 were also made to two Canadian groups actively involved in climate denial — the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP), then run by PR man Tom Harris ((The NRSP also featured Bob Carter as its science advisor.)), and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a neo-liberal think tank which boasts Owen McShane as a member of its expert advisory panel ((Other NZ members of the FCPP expert advisory panel include market fundamentalist politicians Sir Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson.)). $15,000 was donated to Fred Singer’s Science and Environmental Policy Project.
In all, Heartland shipped US$70,000 (NZ$91,000) ((At the NZ$/US$ exchange rate in late 2007.)) to New Zealand in 2007. The money appears to have been used to fund a sceptic presence at the UN conference in Bali in December, and to fund the birth of the International Climate Science Coalition — a spin off from the original NZ climate “science” coalition, which had been established by McShane, Dunleavy, Leyland and others in April 2006.
For details of the Bali beano, I can do no better than to point you in the direction of Vincent Gray’s “what I did on my holiday” essay at the NZ CSC web site. It is amusingly Pooterish, but provides much interesting information ((See also Joanne “Nova” Evans’ account of Bali doings here. Includes pictures!)):
I have just returned from the United Nations’ Climate Conference in Bali where I was part of a small delegation of climate sceptics, as members of a new organisation, the International Climate Science Coalition.
There were four people from New Zealand; myself, Greg Balle, Owen McShane, and Bryan Leyland, three from Australia, David and Joanne Evans, and David Archibald, Will Alexander from South Africa and Viscount Monckton of Brenchley from the UK.
The merry band had some minor triumphs:
We had not managed to book a stall, so I tried being a cuckoo, I found a comparatively unoccupied stall and displayed my pamphlets on it. I had two interested customers before the owner returned. It turned out he was a sympathiser (an organisation called “One World”) and took several pamphlets.
We managed to organize several lectures and a press event where we distributed copies of DVDs of the UK Channel Four programme, “The Great Global Warming Swindle” which is yet to be publicly shown in New Zealand, although it created quite a sensation in Australia. The lectures were given by Lord Monckton, David Evans and Bryan Leyland.
The high point, though, was when they got to play at dressing up:
We carried out a “stunt” in front of the main conference entrance when six of us dressed in lab coats and dark glasses displayed a banner saying “Kyoto 2 is not needed”. This created wide media attention and several at-length interviews. It was given particularly wide TV coverage in China, Malaysia and Japan.
It’s not possible to be certain how much of Heartland’s 2007 grant money was intended to orchestrate denialist “stunts” in Bali, but it’s worth noting that during the conference Tom Harris and Bob Carter of the NRSP coordinated an “open letter” to UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon signed by the crême de la crême of climate denial ((Solicitation of signatories archived here by Deep Climate. Final list at the SPPI site here.)). A good chunk of the money, however, was clearly intended to “launch” the NZ CSC spin-off, the International Climate Science Coalition.
The ICSC business plan published last year by current executive director Tom Harris (pdf here) includes a helpful section on the history of the organisation. In “late 2007”:
In response to strong international interest in the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition’s (NZCSC) science-based approach to the climate debate, ICSC was created by NZCSC participants. ICSC’s mandate was to act as an international organization to:
- Represent climate science realists at UN and other climate conferences, especially the December 2007 Climate Science Conference (COP13) in Bali, Indonesia.
- Coordinate a more effective worldwide climate realists’ response.
- Spawn the creation of ICSC country-specific affiliates around the world so as to help bring
rational science, economics and policy to the debate at national/state/municipal levels.- Terry Dunleavy, MBE, JP, became ICSC Founding Chairman.
- Bryan Leyland, M.Sc. (Power System Design), FIEE, FIMechE, FIPENZ became ICSC Secretary.
- An advisory team of 20 climate science experts and 15 specialists in climate-related economics,
policy and energy engineering were recruited—10 countries represented.
That’s the official version. Plucky Kiwis make the global big time is the preferred narrative. However, it is now clear that Dunleavy, Leyland et al were working hand in glove with the Heartland Institute during the creation of their new baby. The ICSC was being groomed to fit into the global network of organisations committed to climate denial, and it looks likely that Heartland was pulling the strings ((It should be noted that when the NZ CSC launched they did foresee the formation of an “Asia Pacific Climate Science Coalition, or equivalent”, presumably to bring Australia under their umbrella, so they were planning to widen their franchise from the beginning.)).
Dunleavy and Leyland’s key roles in the founding of the ICSC were to prove short-lived. The NRSP’s Tom Harris was appointed executive director ((NRSP became defunct after Harris’s departure.)) in early 2008, and he gave a presentation about the nascent ICSC to the Heartland Institute’s First International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago in March of that year ((Heartland page here, full speaker list.)). The New Zealanders weren’t ignored however. McShane and Gray were flown over to the US to speak at the conference, and received US$1,000 fees for their exertions. Dunleavy and former ACT MP Muriel Newman also made the trip ((Confirmed in another holiday report by Vincent Gray.)).
Heartland and Dunleavy obviously had high hopes for the ICSC — at least, at the time. Announcing Harris’s appointment, Dunleavy wrote:
ICSC is committed to providing a highly credible alternative to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) thereby fostering a more rational, open discussion about climate issues. ICSC will promote a new level of international cooperation and information sharing among climate realist scientists and organizations.
Heartland also had great expectations — both for their sceptic networking event and for their new coalition. Here’s Heartland’s James Taylor waxing optimistic in the conference announcement:
…Other possible follow-up activities now being discussed include:
- an event in London in 2009;
- launch of a new journal devoted to climate change;
- launch of an association of philanthropists willing to support further research and public education opposing global warming alarmism;
- support for an International Climate Science Coalition that will act as an alternative voice to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [my emphasis]; and
- expanded cooperation among the scores of organizations currently sponsoring research, publications, and events on the dubious claims in support of the theory of man-made catastrophic global warming.
Unfortunately for the ICSC, Fred Singer was also in Chicago, giving an early look at his Not the IPCC project. Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate: Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change appeared in mid 2008, and quickly became the preferred denialist alternative to the IPCC. Heartland thought enough of Singer’s efforts to publish the 880 page “full report” in June 2009.
The ICSC, meanwhile, became more Canada-centric and began to resemble Harris’s old home, the NRSP. Harris appointed a Canadian scientist as chairman, and brought in his former NRSP science advisor Bob Carter to fill the same role at the ICSC. Dunleavy continues to be listed as “founding chairman and strategic advisor”, Leyland as “energy issues advisor”, and there are numerous New Zealanders on the various panels and boards — ranging from Alan Gibbs to Chris de Freitas — but it’s not clear how much, if any, input they have to the day-to-day running of the ICSC.
The discovery of Heartland funding of the creation of the ICSC puts the organisation in a difficult position. Its web site has this to say about funding:
Since its formation in 2007, ICSC has never received financial support from corporations, foundations or governments. 99% of all donations have come from private individuals in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, United States and Canada.
Heartland’s $45,000 seed money makes a mockery of that claim — unless of course private individuals have actually donated $4.5 million to the ICSC over the last four years, or an “institute” somehow counts as an individual. But we may never find out: the “funding” statement includes this:
The identities of all donors are kept strictly confidential to protect their privacy and safety.
Heartland’s 990 returns for the next two years are much less informative than that for 2007. The 2008 form records $182,072 as being granted to overseas organisations, but does not identify where or to whom the money was sent, as this excerpt shows:
The 2009 return is slightly more helpful, recording that $115,000 was granted to organisations in “East Asia and the Pacific”.
Given Heartland’s very public links with Australian deniers and the NZ CSC, it would seem probable that “East Asia and the Pacific” is intended to cover activities in the two countries. It would be very interesting to learn where this money went. Half of 2007’s Heartland cash went to New Zealand, or through New Zealand sceptics’ hands. It must be at least possible that similar amounts were paid in the following years. In the interests of complete transparency — something the members of the NZ CSC and Heartland Institute demand of climate scientists and science institutions — perhaps McShane, Dunleavy, and Leyland, together with their US paymasters would care to disclose the full, unvarnished truth.
The members of New Zealand’s climate “science” coalition like to insist that their opinions cannot be bought. Yet by some strange coincidence their views align very neatly with those of the Heartland Institute, its funding sources and the tangled web of organisations that benefit from Heartland’s funding and networking efforts. They are clearly not averse to accepting money from US lobby groups, going on sponsored trips, or performing to the beat of an American drum when it helps what they consider to be “the cause”. Every time you see or hear McShane, Leyland, de Freitas or any of the usual suspects advocating that New Zealand do nothing about global warming, remember who is calling the tune.
My post on Bali 2007 and the anti-science petition from contrarians
touched on the formation of the ICSC under the leadership of Canadian
disinformation specialist Tom Harris (also behind the NRSP).
http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/10/bali-2007-revisited/
http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/10/bali-2007-revisited/
The petition was published in Canada’s National Post during the UN Bali conference. The petition itself was supposedly organized by Bob Carter, but Tom Harris was the prime driving force, a fact assiduously hidden by NP finacial section editor Terence Corcoran. .
So Tom Harris was involved from the very beginning, and it looks like the petition was the first order of business. It would be interesting to know if the formation of the NZCSC really predated the ICSC. At the time (Dec 2007) were there any references to NZCSC?
Great to see you still harping on irrelevant administrative details (some of which are nonsense). Keep it coming.
Rubbish. The NZCSC was started here by a small handful of people of which I was one of the first dozen or so. Augie Auer was very prominent.
As I recall the ICSC was more of a spinoff of the NZCSC rather than the reverse.
I see now that NZCSC was formed in 2006. But there was definitely a CFACT connection to NZCSC members as well. Perhaps CFACT provided some initial funding?
The Australian CSC, on the other hand appears to have been formed alongside the ICSC. I see the ICSC initially as an attempt to unite non-US climate contrarians under one umbrella, using the “brand” of “climate science coalition” invented by the NZers.
It’s also clear there were tight lnks between Friends of Science, NRSP and the NZCSC from the beginning, as they signed on to various petitions from Tom Harris Vincent Grey and Chris de Freitas even signed an earlier 2003 petition.
http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/08/in-the-beginning-the-national-post-terence-corcoran-and-tom-harris/
Speaking of de Freitas, there’s a strong Canadian connection there of course (de Freitas grew up and went to university in Canada).
http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/02/in-the-beginning-friends-of-science-talisman-energy-and-the-de-freitas-brothers/
The web of links between all of these people and organisations is a real cat’s cradle. Vincent Gray, for instance, worked with Fred Singer as far as back 1992 (on an “appraisal” of the first IPCC report), and the Heartland Institute published Gray’s review of the 1995 SAR.
You get the impression that it’s the people that are important. The alphabet salad of acronyms changes as they modify and renew their image and branding. That’s what the ICSC was all about – a new brand.
Talking of cats’ cradles, consider the linkage between Greenpeace, the WWF and the IPCC! Totally unbiased, totally professional of course; if if you want to believe the earth is flat.
Yes, in Canada we are generally rational, level-headed thinkers and can recognize a hoax when we see one. Aside from NZ which leads the pack in this category, Canada appears to have more climate realists per capita than anywhere else.
I’m glad that you admit the ICSC is a hoax, Tom. I suspected it all along.
It is gratifying to see such excited public attention being paid to our organizations by our opponents. Not only is it good publicity, but it tells us that we must be being effective, or they wouldn’t bother spending so much time looking up all these irrelevant details and then trying to make them sound as if they are relevant (those that are actually correct, that is). You know the old air force saying (I was a flight test engineer in the air force for about 4 years), “You get the most flack when you are over the target. They wouldn’t bother to do all this work if they weren’t concerned about our impact.
I say that the information in the article is irrelevant for two reasons:
1 – nature cares no one whit about who funds whom (which is why we say nothing about how climate campaigners such as the David Suzuki Foundation have accepted very large donations from corporations, even energy organizations) . It simply does what it does and it is our job as scientists and interested lay people to do our best to try to understand it. I note that, in all of the above piece, there is no where mentioned whether or not what we are saying is correct scientifically in the opinions of the author. Intelligent people realize that that is all that counts.
2 – Our funding is so tiny that almost everyone doing anything on this project are doing it for free, even covering their own expenses. If you check into the funding of our opponents, you can see that there are orders of magnitude more money being poured into the climate alarmist movement than those of us who are promoting climate realism. For example, one organization alone, Climate Works Foundation, had 1/2 billion dollars in start-up funding in 2008 and they continue to get many millions to keep them in the green. If anyone on our side had even 1/10th that amount of funding, the climate debate would be over long ago since, as ordinary citizens come to appreciate the uncertainties and outright mistakes in climate alarmism, we make progress. Thanks for helping get the word out about us!
Tom Harris
http://www.climatecienceinternational.org
sorry, the link to our Website in my signature block was missing a letter – it should have been:
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org
Check us out when you have a moment. Donations are crucially needed to help us continue to stand up for climate realism.
Tom
Tom, thanks for commenting. Could you please reconcile the documented Heartland funding for ICSC with your current funding statement. I’m sure you’ll appreciate the need for full disclosure on this matter.
That would be this statement from the Irrational Climate “Science” Consortium:
“Since its formation in 2007, ICSC has never received financial support from corporations, foundations or governments. 99% of all donations have come from private individuals in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, United States and Canada.”
Ah, I note with considerable interest that Mr. Harris has apparently been putting Heartland’s educational ‘ideas’ into practice at Carleton University in Canada.
It’s well worth reading the succinct refutation by the Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism of the string of squishy nuggets, many of which are identical to those spattered around by some of our ‘guests’. Given their close association this is hardly surprising.
Those that live in glass houses should refrain from throwing rocks.
To see how U.S. charitable trusts and foundations are interfering in Canadian political decisions with untold millions of dollars under the cloak of environmentalism, go to the website of researcher Vivian Krause:
The ironic part of this is that many of those money bags are funded by inherited oil money.
The whole funding issue is absurd though.
Who funds the politically motivated global warming science of the IPCC ? Taxpayers do.
Who should fund the other side in this scientific debate about the causes of climate change?
Don’t begrudge independent scientists their meagre means of pursuing true scientific debate.
The URL was dropped in transmission.
Google Vivian Krause or go to fairquestions dot typepad dot com
Missing the point by miles: the entire strategy of groups like the ICSC and Heartland is create the impression of debate where none exists. They draw on the old tobacco maxim — “uncertainty is our product” — in order to prevent and derail action.
The “scientific debate” moved on 20 years ago. There’s plenty to argue about in climate science, but it’s not who dunnit.
The best thing about CFACT and the ICSC/NZCSC’s antics (with Monckton) in Bali were the desperate attempts to get attention from – well – anyone.
Somewhere in my files I have a leaflet offering free massages to people who attended the CFACT event. This certainly got the attention of the press centre – roars of laughter from journalists who were there to report the real story – and who largely ignored the CFACT delegation.
CIndy: Please find and post that, it is too precious not ot be made available to the world.
I am delighted to see the sceptics (realists) get a little bit of funding. The amounts you are expressing are a drop in the bucket compared to the politically based funding which the warmists receive.
wkblair – trouble is the fake-skeptics (fantasists) don’t actually spend any of that money on scientific research. And even more troubling is that their funders are those that vehemently oppose action on global warming on ideological grounds and financial self-interest.
The funding kind of explains why the fake-skeptic groups continually write rubbish.
It is certainly true to say that far more more money, almost all taxpayers’ money, has been spent on ‘research’ focussed on proving the AGW hypothesis. Despite the huge amount of money spent there is remarkably little evidence in support of the proposition. The has been much ex cathedra pontificating from the IPCC and academia but there is little substance there. The supposed experts in the IPCC have, all too frequently, been shown to lack the expertise claimed. The IPCC rort has been well documented by Donna la Framboise. Just to remind you that she did not write about climate science, she wrote about those purporting to be climate scientists and the machination and dishonesty in and around the IPCC!
When this global warming / climate change threat was first promoted it had the support of most scientists. Most scientists across the board were prepared to swallow it. I did too at the outset. However a few started to look more carefully at the proposition. They voiced the scepticism and this scepticism spread. The proposition no longer has the support of scientist generally. There are now far more sceptics than there are supporters of the AGW proposition. The supporters hung their hats on numerical models without going out and doing much fieldwork. Those models do not agree among themselves and are, ipso facto, wrong. They never could be right anyway because there are a legion of factors influencing climate which were not, and mostly could not, be incorporated in the models.
Politically the AGW believers still have the apparent backing of most of the countries in Europe, which are rapidly going down the gurgler as a result of their economic and political ineptness, a bunch of tin pot dictatorships wishing to get some money out of it all and, for bizarre reasons which are not explicable, Australia and New Zealand. The countries which matter, China, Russia, India and Brazil and probably the USA, will not have a bar of this nonsense.
I am afraid that you have your money on a horse which is trailing further and further back in the field.
As someone else wisely wrote “The flack is always greatest over the target”. The flack put up you lot and the other ‘climate scientologists’ worldwide indicates clearly enough whose is ‘over the target’! Really your childish rants and attacks on the likes of de Freitas and Leyland demonstrate to all who care to read this blog exactly what you are.
Roger Dewhurst – “However a few started to look more carefully at the proposition”
Back again to chew our legs off eh Roger?
That canard is an oldie but a baddie. How utterly ridiculous. The scientific evidence grows stronger every month, let alone every year. The oceans get warmer and continue to acidify, the ice sheets and glaciers continue to melt away, tens of thousands of plants and animals continue to migrate away from the equator, and up mountainsides to escape the warming. Sea level continues to climb ever upwards in fits and starts (ENSO). The last decade is the warmest in the instrumental record.
And yet in spite of these observations (and many more) you think the exact opposite? They have a word for that. Now what was it?………..oh, I remember – denial!.
Oh, and just remember a climate crank falsehood repeated many times is still a falsehood. For some reason fake-skeptics think otherwise.
Unsupported and unsupportable tosh! These bizarre, grandiose fantasies are simply pitiable.
BOM, CSIRO, NASA, NOAAA, the IPCC itself, the Met Office, and the globe’s Academies of Science, versus a handful of dissenters, ideologues, cranks and malcontents backed by the likes of Heartland using money big oil and coal fear they’ll otherwise stand to lose.
Your grasp of relative credibility is clearly as sound as your grasp of science. When it comes to science you are the irrelevancies!
Yours is a voice that would not even be heard if it was not for the disproportionate power of the wealthy to skew public debates in their favour, but nothing can stop the inevitable destruction of your misiformed and misguided cause! But oh, how much damage you will have caused.
Posterity will not be kind, Roger Dewhurst.
A question about loud-mouthed cranks bill – I see a character called Anthony Violi is active on the Australian Weather Forum – seems to be a particularly offensive anti-warming type. Do you know anything about him or his background?
You have that precisely the wrong way round; real science gets funded within existing research frameworks, while politically motivated tosh gets support from professional politically-motivated tosh generators (e.g. Heartland) and their corporate backers.
You’re looking for disproportionate wealth – and a disporpotionate willingness to pollute the debate with it – on the wrong side!
And of what value to science is ‘research’ that, say, concluded that 2011 was going to be the coolest years since 1956, exactly?
Gosh, wkblair, are all those melting glaciers “warmists” too? Ever been to Mt. Cook National Park? The Tasman used to be a glacier, not a lake!
As I have already pointed out, a large proportion of my income comes from a hydropower station. The station–and my income–benefit from the emissions trading scheme, scaremongering over global warming and the crazy electricity market. Yet I oppose all three.
Jeanette Fitzsimons on the other hand, had shares in a wind turbine manufacturer at the same time as she was advocating renewable energy in parliament. If you want to look for conflict of interest, go right there.
As I’ve already pointed out, to make your case, you need to demonstrate that I changed my views as a result of having my expenses to Bali paid by Heartland. But none of you want to even discuss that.
What none of you seem to be able to understand is that I–and my friends–speak and behave in accordance with our strongly held beliefs. Virtually all of us are retired and have our own income. We are not influenced by money. Climate scientists get huge grants from governments, non-governmental institutions and the like. Yet, you seem to think, that in spite of climategate they are as pure as the driven snow. Yet they depend entirely on supporting dangerous man-made global warming for their income their position and their power.
If you think you have such a strong scientific case, why not argue on the evidence rather than spewing out vague accusations based on the assumption that we all have our opinions for sale.
A red herring, Bryan. The point is that your views (and the policies of the organisations in which you are influential) are so congenial to Heartland that are willing to give those organisations substantial financial support.
And while you are here, perhaps you would be so kind as to let us know how much more Heartland money arrived in NZ over 2008-11.
Another Leyland lie: “Climate scientists get huge grants from governments”.
No, climate scientists get salaries from the institutions they work for. Grants don’t get paid into people’s bank accounts, they get paid to institutions, who use the grants to fund the salaries of scientists, students and support people. Climate science is no different in this regard to any other branch of science.
Stop making stuff up, Bryan.
Why is it Bryan that the deniers like you are always retired old men with too much time on your hands? Consider your ethical position – what if you’re wrong? Probably, at some level, you have your doubts about your position. Have you considered how your actions, by potentially delaying strong climate policy, affect younger generations. Younger people are affected more by climate change, yet they are often too busy studying or working or raising children to make submissions to government, start a website or otherwise promote discussion of the real climate science pointing out the serious threats to NZ and other nations from climate change. Many young people do put in a lot of effort to raise awareness, but they have no where near the amount of time that retired deniers do. Others, such as my children, are too young to get involved yet. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you’ll be dead soon enough, while younger people such as myself and my children have a long way to go and will have to clean up the mess you make.
Because our income does not depend on toeing the party line.
What if you are wrong? The remedies you espouse, if achieved, will lead to immense poverty throughout the third world. They will delay response to what is the greatest risk, global cooling. We do not need much more cooling than took place in the Little Ice Age to cause havoc in the Northern Hemisphere and probably massive bloodshed as those in the north seek living space in a warmer climates.
There is no plausible reason why warming, if it does take place, will make the world a worse place to live in. On past performance it will be a better place for most, if not all. The warm periods in the last thousand years or so coincided with advances in civilization and polynesian exploration of the Pacific as far as South America while the LIA coincided with the outbreaks of the plague, much warfare and cessation of polynesian exploration.
What you espouse will make life worse for your children, not better. Perhaps you should look dispassionately at history and the evidence and just swallow, hook line and sinker, the propaganda of those who seek power and control even if indirectly.
Incidentally, even if the remedies you espouse are achieved they will make not the slightest difference as even some on your side of the fence concede. Of course it is quite unreal to expect the China, India, Brazil and Russia will come to your naive party!
This article has just shown that your income does depend on toeing the party line – the reason you lot got funds to go to Bali is so you could pull some denier stunts and try and get noticed. Nice work if you can get it.
Unbiased scientific funding does not depend on the outcome of research. Most climate work is funded by through taxes / government, which, like most of us, would prefer that global warming is not real. Funding sources are usually publicly stated in the peer reviewed journal article. So there’s no bias there. However, wishing something away does not make it so. Saying that all the research is wrong means you must believe in a gigantic conspiracy theory where huge numbers of scientist are in on it. Any scientist who revealed the conspiracy would be more famous than than God. But no-one has. The only “evidence” of a conspiracy was the so called climate-gate but numerous reviews showed that there was no wrongdoing and no case to answer. Not to mention the melting ice, increasing temperatures, and animals moving towards the poles or up mountains – are they part of a conspiracy too??
In contrast, denier “research” / puff pieces are often funded by organisations like Heartland that have in turn received funding from oil gas and coal companies. However, these organisations are very secretive about their funding and finding this out requires digging around through tax records etc. There is a clear conflict of interest here, as combating climate change means less sales of fossil fuels.
As my post above was the first on this site, I have not espoused any remedies to global warming yet. However, last time I checked, petrol is expensive. Reducing fossil fuel consumption would make people richer, not poorer. This applies whether you are a household or small business or a country.
And what if I’m wrong – well I’d still be saving money on petrol, the air would be cleaner, less asthma, less lung disease, less dirty diesel vans, less coal dust. The attendant at my local petrol station is a nice guy but I certainly do not enjoy parting with about $120 every time I fill the car up.
Global cooling – please – is that what you say to justify your activities? Show me the smoking bullet that proves that cooling is happening. Show me the evidence. Show me any 1 scientific organisation that seriously believes that is a threat.
Exactly. Many of these smug old fools will have departed the planet before they can be made to see the worst consequences of the policies and views they support. Their selfishness and stupidity know no bounds. For those of them that are still around however, they had better be prepared for the public fury that will inevitably ensue when reality is too stark to be ignored.
Bryan Leyland, I doubt the corporate front groups would have paid for your trip overseas unless they were convinced you were either a) truly deluded, or b) willing to repeat known falsehoods about climate science. b) is something you have done repeatedly here at Hot Topic over the last week.
I’m sure it’s money the corporate front groups consider well spent. They certainly have enough of it.
And the comment about discussing climate science is yet more self-irony from you given your performances here over the last week.
On reading Heartland’s position on climate change, as shown on its website, it appears to believe that the slight impact that human activities may have on future climate doesn’t constitute a dangerous but avoidable risk, and doesn’t justify massive Government spending. That’s pretty much in line with the majority of the population, according to opinion surveys.
This sceptical view is not in line with those of the hundreds of people we taxpayers pay (salaries as well as full travel costs) to send to IPCC conferences. Nor does it line up with the views of the scores of people sent to those conferences by Greenpeace, EDS, Friends of the Earth, etc, etc, using funds collected by those organisations.
Is it Hot Topic’s view that it’s okay for Greenpeace to pay for people “whose views are congenial to them” but not charities which take the opposing viewpoint?
Does Hot Topic thing that the Science Media Centre should dispense thousand of taxpayer dollars every week for bloggers and others which support the party line on climate change, while contributing nothing to the opposing viewpoint?
Australis – “That’s pretty much in line with the majority of the population, according to opinion surveys”
Last time I checked the physical laws of nature were not determined by opinion polls. It may be different in the fantasy world of the fake-skeptics of course.
Were you not very fond of “consensus” recently?
The physical laws of nature may not be determined by opinion polls but the decisions of politicians surely are. Despite the huge amount of taxpayers’ money spent on ‘research” and propping the corrupt IPCC the general public are increasingly disregarding the “scientific” opinions of those that they increasing regard as shysters and data fiddlers. We can expect the hansenites, shysters and sundry data fiddlers to fight to the bitter end demanding that the ‘deniers’ be prosecuted or worse. Your problem is that the man in the street does not SEE what you claim. What he does not see he will not believe particularly your scenario will hit him hard in the hip pocket. You are backing a loser sonny. [snipped – Roger, any more of that and your comments won’t pass moderation. GR]
Right, so physical laws aren’t decided by opinion polls, but you think the polls are running your way, so therefore it turns out physical laws are determined by opinion polls. What does ‘the man in the street’ know of quantum mechanics or relativity, then?
You make the ludicrous claim about the science and the scientists running your way – the hell! – then, when that nonsense is pointed out you do the Leyland shuffle down the page to somewhere sufficiently distant from your initial absurdity and claim it’s really the public that truly understands the gist of it all.
You are some species of intellectual giant in this movement, I am given to understand?
Oh, and other people are shysters and data fiddlers, you say.
And if that ‘last Moa’ crack is what I think it is, I suggest it be snipped.
[snip]
Go and read Donna la Framboise book. Go and read the submissions to the Canadian government to which Bryan Leyland has given you the URL. Those submissions may well be what caused the Canadian government to see sense. It is a pity that others have not done so.
You lot ‘convinced’ John Howard clone Stephen Harper ‘to see sense’? Gee, bet that took some work…
Australis –This sceptical view is not in line with
those of the hundreds of people we taxpayersthe scientific evidence and observations.I do not know if the themes ofCool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States apply in NZ, but perhaps they may.
Yup, same thing applies here in NZ too John.
What’s so stunning is that these people believe in the equity of their cause! I thought most people subscribed to the Hippocratic Oath of ‘do no harm’.But,clearly not.
Tom Harris has asked me to suggest that you all have a look at the Canadian Senate hearing on our site at
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=612
Someone once said: “I disagree with what you say and I will defend your right to say it.” We all agree with this, why don’t you?
“I disagree with what you say and I will defend your right to say it.” We all agree with this, why don’t you?
Because nobody censors what you say. But I claim exactly the same right to say things that you may disagree with. And so do many others. Disagreeing with something you say is =not at all= the same kind of thing as claiming you have no right to speak.
In exercising my own right to speak, I might say that you’re wrong. I might ask you for evidence to back up what you’ve said so far. I might even be rude or unkind about you or the content of what you’ve said.
None of that is the same as denying you “your right to say it.”
Strawman. It’s entirely legitimate to examine the sources of your funding. Period.
“Someone once said: “I disagree with what you say and I will defend your right to say it.” We all agree with this, why don’t you?”
Someone else has said, “While everyone is entitiled to their own opinion, not everyone is entitled to be taken seriously. On the very important and very complex questions of climate change and its causes, only the carefully formed opinions of relevantly qualified experts should be taken seriously.” From the Australian Sceptics Society.
It’s good to see that this is getting a bit of mileage around the blogsphere, so much so that it could almost be said to be newsworthy. So will the MSM, notably the Herald or the Dom Post, take up the challenge – the work has been done for them. I wait in anticipation.
Good to see that the Herald has picked up on this story – hidden of course in the middle – but none the less good on the Herald for running it!
Disappointing to see that B L continues to deny the fact that they are NOT in anyway influenced by this funding from the Heartland Institute an organisation with a LONG history of disseminating propaganda for the purposes of denial by all manner of corporate bodies such as the tobacco industry, the chemical industry, and now the petroleum industry.
He and his ilk, are the “useful idiots” of the far right.
And on a related note – Graham Readfearn reports on a study tracking the pernicious influence of another toxic thinktank – Australia’s IPA – on the debate in this country.
For examples of typical ‘fantasy themes’ – and by amazing coincidence – you need only scroll through a handful of the missives of our ‘Galileos’ above;
“…without going out and doing much fieldwork. ”
I know this is part of the ‘dastardly models’ meme, but it really gets under my nails.
Cryologists trudging through icy wastes, oceanographers out on the inhospitable Southern Ocean, ecologists wading through tropical swamps – these are the harsh realities of practical science. There are easier locations and more congenial disciplines but none of them involve idly lounging around in the manner implied by this despicable theme.
When do you see a numerical modeller in the field? Rarely indeed.
Have you ever waded through a tropical swamp, shaken scorpions out of your boots in the morning, had to watch where you put your feet in case there is a taipan or king brown in the way?
We had it tooof! That’s a ‘yes’ to all three from me. And this proves?
Um, you said you don’t see ‘supporters’ in the field. This is, yet again, patent BS, as the reams of reports from ocean chemists, biologists and glaciologists – few, if any, of whom agree with you – will testify.
You really just can’t stop yourself from making overstated claims, can you, Roger?
So the next step in the Leyland shuffle is to switch it to ‘the modellers’, a kind of contempt fetish for your tribe. You’ll excuse me for finding this all rather unconvincing.
What never ceases to amaze me is how shameless these pontificating liars are hypocrites are. When you are a true believer, doesn’t intellectual honesty matter?
I guess its like “Telling Lies for God”…
Oops, a typo in the above (the first ‘are’ should be an ‘and’).
No more “Edit” feature, Gareth?
Sorry Rob, technical glitch with the edit comments function at the moment. A recent update went awry. Will fix as soon as I work out how… 😉
For various reasons, including being an AGU member and going to those meetingss, and living next to Stanford, I know quite a few climate scientists,. Let’s compare one (I’ve met) with the folks and tactics ICSC is lined up with.
See Katharine Hayhoe.
From Ray Bradley “Global Warming and Political Intimidation” (2011):, pp.67-68.
Rep Joe Barton (R-TX) was defending his tactics in hassling climate scientists (M, B &H, of whom Ray was the B), whose pushback led to Barton setting up the fraudulent Wegman Report.
(Barton:
“…In the end, however, sharing data seems like all indoor work and no heavy lifting.”
Ray:
“…I’ve adopted it as a mantra in my own research. As I dragged myself up nineteen thousand feet to service our weather station on the ice cap overlooking the crater of Mount Kilimanjaro, I chanted it, step by step. … As my colleagues and I struggled to load four hundred-pound Ski-Doos into the back of a Twin Otter to head off to a remote site in the High Arctic, it was a great teeth grinder. And as we froze our sorry asses off in a tent in the High Andes of Peru, we hummed the words to distract us from the cold. Oh, yes, we love all that indoor work.”
If, as you people seem to believe, the “science is settled” please let us know exactly what science is settled and provide hard evidence to support this contention. As Terry says “show us the science”.
Instead, all you do is run around trying to dream up bogey men in the form of offshore funders. The only conclusion we can come to is that you are unable to show us the science and you are desperately trying to stop us letting the general public know that your emperor has no clothes.
And don’t forget that both Dr David Wratt and Dr David Renwick accept that the world has not warmed significantly in the last 10 to 15 years. So, it would seem, on this critical matter, both the NIWA and the IPCC are not on your side.
“When the facts change, I change my opinion”. Do thou likewise!
Bryan Leyland -“When the facts change, I change my opinion”
How about you make on good on this? We’ve shown that your recent article in the Dompost was rubbish.
Sea level at Tuvalu has risen by 5.1mm per year since the mid-twentieth century. You claimed otherwise. You were wrong – the peer-reviewed scientific literature refutes your falsehoods.. You have not changed your opinion.
Sea level rise has accelerated over the last few centuries. You claimed otherwise. The peer-reviewed scientific literature refutes your falsehoods.. You have not changed your opinion.
Global sea level undergoes temporary fluctuations as a result of La Nina and El Nino. Sea level temporarily drops during La Nina and rises sharply during El Nino. You tried to insinuate that the recent La Nina-associated drop was anything other than temporary. This is wrong. The peer-reviewed scientific literature refutes your falsehoods. You have not changed your opinion
Global temperatures have increased in the last 10-15 years. Over 90% of global warming goes into the oceans and this has increased enormously in the last 10-15 years. You claim otherwise. This is wrong. The peer-reviewed scientific literature refutes your falsehoods. You have not changed your opinion.
So Bryan Leyland, when are you going to stop repeating known falsehoods, and change your opinion?
There is an area in the Pacific where sea levels appear to be rising. There are equally areas where sea level appears to be falling and very much larger areas where sea level is doing nothing at all. When you consider that sea level around the world not only departs from the geoid but the degree of departure from the geoid is changing it is reasonable to conclude that the earth’s gravity has much to do with it and also that the earth’s gravity is in a state of flux. Tectonic activity and glacial rebound are also relevant.
You cannot claim that sea level has risen generally. That is simply untrue, depending of course on the timescale. Of course sea level has risen since the last glaciation, some 90 or 100 metres I think.
Most of the coral atolls managed to build themselves up to keep pace with rising sea level. That is why they are there now, most of them anyway. There is no reason to suppose that they will fail to do so in the future barring stupidity on the part of the island occupants.
There is no reliable measure of global temperature. There is some fairly recent measure of upper troposphere temperature but that does not suit your argument.
Roger “The Black Knight” Dewhurst – “You cannot claim that sea level has risen generally”
Bzzzt.. wrong!. How utterly ridiculous. Do you even consider for a moment the sizeable brain infarction required to actually believe that?
“Most of the coral atolls managed to build themselves up to keep pace with rising sea level………”
Bzzzt..wrong again! Coral reefs and atolls have indeed drowned throughout Earth’s history. Coral are actually fussy little critters too hot they bleach and die. Too acidic they dissolve, die and become extinct for millions of years.
There is a rather large coral reef outside the Great Barrier Reef that drowned as sea level rose coming out of the last glacial maximum. We don’t yet know why, but it did.
“There is no reliable measure of global temperature
Now that is some desperation. Funny how glaciers, icesheets, and tens of thousands of plants and animals are migrating to cooler regions of the Earth. Maybe they’re part of the elaborate hoax?
“Bzzzt..wrong again! Coral reefs and atolls have indeed drowned throughout Earth’s history. Coral are actually fussy little critters too hot they bleach and die. Too acidic they dissolve, die and become extinct for millions of years. ”
What do you suppose the Great Barrier Reef looked like 15,000 years ago? A range of coral hills separated from Australia by the sea?
Roger, your brain is not processing this information correctly. Sea levels were 120 metres lower around 20,000 years ago at the last glacial maximum (ice age). Aboriginals would have seen the The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) as a hillside.
When sea level rose, as the vast ice sheets melted, the area was inundated. Coral began to recolonize this hillside as sea level rose. The GBR was successful in adapting to this sea level rise, but the outer reef (which is vast too) did not. So why not?
You were the one inferring some magic-like ability of coral growth, not me. But clearly the paleo record shows many instances when coral atolls and reefs have ‘drowned’ in the past.
Greatly changing the carbon chemistry of the ocean (ocean acidification) and coral bleaching is set to decimate coral reefs around the world. In fact in the next few years we are likely to see an abrupt spike in mass coral bleaching, due to the upward swing of the solar cycle (pumping more heat into the ocean) and a return to an El Nino-dominant period (Heat welling up to the surface ocean from below).
A classic example of how debilitating ocean acidification and El Nino-related bleaching are is exemplified by the coral reefs of the Galapagos Islands. Because of the La Nina-driven upwelling of acidified deep water there, the coral reef cover is patchy, seawater there is too corrosive for thick coral growth. The 1982-83 El Nino killed over 95% of coral at the Galapagos and it has not grown back.
That’s the future fate for coral with the continued burning of fossil fuels. That’s the future sane people, like myself, want to avoid.
Go and read an introductory text; something like Holmes Principles of Physical Geology.
Arthur Holmes was a great geologist, the father of geochronology and his book is first rate – I have a copy of the 1966 edition on my office shelf. However, for something more relevant to the 21st century and the topics under discussion, I would recommend the 3rd edition of “The Earth System” by Kump, Kasting and Crane.
Roger, armflapping will not hide your lack of knowledge on this topic. How about you try this for a change – actually read the peer-reviewed scientific literature on coral reefs and atolls. I did.
Would you like help in using google?
“Sea levels were 120 metres lower around 20,000 years ago at the last glacial maximum (ice age). Aboriginals would have seen the The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) as a hillside. ”
I suggest they would have seen a coastal plain with a fringing reef. Coral reefs would have formed in the periods of high sea level during the last half million or more years and been eroded away, at the very plausible rate of 1mm per year, during the periods of high sea level, the interglacials. The 100,000 year glacial periods provide more than enough time to completely erode away 100 or so metres or coral.
Every coral atoll stands a few metres above sea level. This is so because the coral grows faster than sea level ever rises. The coral grows to a little above low tide level. Storms smash the coral and cast it up to form the atolls (islands) and the coral regrows. Thus the atolls grow and stay a few metres above sea level. This process continues until humans disturb it.
Corals survive within a range of temperature, a conclusion that it would be hard to disagree with considering the great length of the GBR. If the ocean warms one might reasonably expect the southern end of the GBR to migrate southwards not that the coral along the whole reef die.
Holmes understood that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels was, and is going to, have an impact on climate. “By the time all the reserves of coal and oil are exhausted, and allowing for oceanic absorption, it is estimated that there will be about ten times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is today. On average, temperatures will then be about 12 degrees C higher than they would otherwise have been. Later on, when equilibrium is established by continued oceanic absorption of carbon dioxide, this rise should gradually decrease to 7 degrees C. With the increase of warmth achieved this century glaciers and ice sheets have been melting away faster than they have been replenished by fall of snow. A rise of temperature such as that estimated above would be amply adequate to lead to their disappearance.” Holmes Principles of Physical Geology 3rd Edition 1978. Page 209.
I’m not fixating on his figures here, but the principles he was explaining – an increase in carbon dioxide leads to an increase in temperature, which will have an effect on the planet.
So yes, Roger, even as long ago as 1978, a scientist you respect was warning of the dangers of releasing extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
It seems to me that Bryan doesn’t trust published science papers, only the factual information that gets published in New Zealand newspapers, that he himself has authored.
“Tony January 26, 2012 at 8:01 pm
It seems to me that Bryan doesn’t trust published science papers, only the factual information that gets published in New Zealand newspapers, that he himself has authored.”
I think that he is more inclined to trust real scientists such as Carter, Christie, Lindzen, Clark, de Freitas, de Lange and some others rather than (snip) Mann, his gang and the twerps who worship at the feet of Al Gore and the South Island fungus farmer .
R
“real scientists such as Carter, Christie, Lindzen, Clark, de Freitas, de Lange and some others”
lol
Do you want to name some on the other side whose job, income and status are not tied to AGW?
R
The 97+% of climate scientists, who consider that AGW is real, and that we need to do something about it!
The “scientists” you named have all trudged down false alleyways in the past, and to now admit that they are wrong would undo their whole academic career. Such is the vanity of academia. Much of their “work” now, are attempts to justify untenable positions. Take the recently published paper by Carter et al, so full of error that an undergrad would be ridiculed for it and fail miserably. All in an attempt to justify his position that “there is no warming”. Of course the paper did no such thing.
To sum up:
# The McLean, de Freitas and Carter paper presented unsubstantiated conclusions that are contradicted by a cursory analysis of the very data presented.
# There is widespread agreement among climate scientists that this paper should not have passed review and should not have been accepted for publication.
# The authors actively participated in a deceptive public relations campaign that trumpeted and exaggerated the paper’s claims, a campaign that even substituted a press release headline for the true title of the paper.
The 100,000 year glacial periods provide more than enough time to completely erode away 100 or so metres or coral.
We’ll just chalk this up to willful ignorance then shall we? How do the atolls then get their saucer-like shape? And what about the cores retrieved from legs of the ocean drilling program?
Here’s how it actually works: SkS rebuttal:Coral atolls & sea level rise
It’s perhaps asking a bit much for you read all those peer-reviewed studies which are cited in that SkS post, but miracles sometimes do happen.
Every coral atoll stands a few metres above sea level. This is so because the coral grows faster than sea level ever rises
Wrong again, Roger. As the SkS post points out (with scientific citations) the Pacific (and Indian) Ocean experienced a mid-Holocene sea level highstand. In other words sea level was higher in those regions back then and coral grew up to match sea level. But around 2000-odd years ago sea level fell, exposing the reefs. This gave a solid foundation upon which organic debris could accumulate and also made them resistant to wave attack.
That’s why coral atoll exist. Sand cays, i.e reefs without solid foundations are subject to large alterations in sediment due to persistent weather patterns and storms. That’s why they are not inhabited – they are unstable. Guess what sort of islands made up the bulk of Webb & Kench’s survey? Yup, the uninhabited unstable (and therefore rapidly changing) sand cays.
I would again suggest that you familiarize yourself with the peer-reviewed scientific literature, but then you would not be a fake-skeptic then would you?
Roger – “If the ocean warms
No if about it, the oceans are warming that’s what all those ARGO floats indicate, that’s what the satelitte-measured top-of-the-atmosphere energy imbalance indicates, and that’s what the accelerating melt of the West Antarctic ice sheet indicates too.
” one might reasonably expect the southern end of the GBR to migrate southwards not that the coral along the whole reef die.’
Maybe, but the current observations don’t look very rosy. Coral cover on the GBR has declined in the last decade. Sweatmann (2011) highlights this, but he suggests crown-of-thorn outbreaks and cyclone damage. Only problem being the connection with these is tenuous at best.
Again the paleo-record is probably a better indication of the likely outcome for coral – they repeatedly went extinct when the oceans acidified and when the water got too warm. They have done so many times, under rates of change much, much smaller than present. And those coral did not have to cope with all the other human perturbations that go along with the current coral demise.
In the last 30-40 years 30% of coral cover has disappeared, 30%. It is still dying off at the rate of 1-2% per year. This will likely accelerate in the next few years as we switch to an El Nino-dominant period, and as more heat is pumped into oceans from the upward phase of the current solar cycle.
So far all the fake-skeptics have offered up is wishful thinking. I am certain that that is not going to help coral.
Table 5. Sea level trends for additional Pacific Forum data holdings on the Joint Archive for Sea Level .
http://www.bom.gov.au/pacificsealevel/picreports.shtml
025a
Funafuti-A
Tuvalu
1-Jan-77
31-Dec-99
23 [yr span]
0.9 [mm/yr sea level rise]
5.1 – 0.9 = 4.2 mm/yr, rate of island subsidence or sinking
Poopycock. Your claims about Wratt and Renwick make you either a liar or a moron – choose one, or both.
Q & A with Jim Renwick (the name is not David!) from Weatherwatch recently:
. question to Jim: During the 80s and 90s, and early this century, various climate models predicted that global temperatures would increase significantly due to rising CO2. Over the past decade, however, (since 1998) it is generally acknowledged there has been increasing divergence of temperature records from model predictions, with no increase in global temperature, and possibly a decrease.
Given the lack of warming over the past decade, at what point do you think the climate models should be reassessed and the relationship between CO2 and temperature questioned?
JR: “The lack of warming over the past decade?” The last decade is the warmest on record globally, followed by the previous one, and the one before that. Sea level rise continues without a pause. There is very little sign that global warming has ceased.
I can’t even be bothered to search up some Wratt references to refute the other half of your “assertion”.
“The last decade is the warmest on record globally”.
This comment is about warmth, not about warming. The decade started warm and stayed unchanged – or cooled slightly. No climate change. No anthropogenic global warming. No 0.2°C as predicted by the models. Why not?
As I understand the comments here, the answer is that the heat went into the deep ocean instead. Okay, but let’s agree that the atmosphere didn’t warm as expected.
Another zombie straw man “argument”, Australis; no wonder you hide behind a pseudonym.
If you really want an answer, try http://www.skepticalscience.com
Climate is not measured by the decade.
Gareth January 26, 2012 at 3:22 pm
“Climate is not measured by the decade.”
Keep censoring my posts and I will put them where they will get wider circulation.
You may put them where the sun don’t shine…
I only pass your comments if I deem they add to the debate. Being rude or racist is explicitly not doing that. Read the comment policy, please.
I rather wish he would – they are complete rubbish anyway!
Australis –“Okay, but let’s agree that the atmosphere didn’t warm as expected.”
Yeah, but previously expectations were on shaky foundations.
Loeb (2012) have looked at the observations and found (within the measurement uncertainty) we have had as much global warming as we would expect. They compare it to 15 CMIP climate models and the observations match those models too.
Yes, the error bars are very large, but then that’s the main gist of what Kevin Trenberth was complaining about in the first place – an inadequate system of measuring Earth’s energy imbalance (i.e global warming).
What I’m saying Australis is that the fake-skeptic claims that we haven’t seen as much warming as expected is now a dead donkey. True they’ll try to re-animate it, but it won’t fool anyone.
And Gareth says: show us the money. How much more Heartland money has been paid to the NZ CSC, and its associates and affiliates over the last four years?
Ignoring the question won’t make it go away. Same goes for global warming.
Oh dear, you sceptics really need to coordinate yourselves a bit better. Chip Knappenberger recently said:
Time to throw him and Michaels under a bus, eh Bryan?
One wonders what scientific evidence you would accept, Bryan. You could start with Tyndall’s publications from the 1850s and work forwards from there.
Global temperatures have not gone up greatly since the big El Nino of 1997/98. Yet, last year was one of the 10 warmest on record, and the warmest La Nina on record (http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_935_en.html). Not exactly the coldest year since 1956, as predicted by McLean et al (http://hot-topic.co.nz/mcleans-folly-2-the-reckoning/). As Jim Hansen notes (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2011/), the recent preponderance of La Nina conditions, and the phase of the solar cycle, have indeed acted to reduce the rate of warming recently. This is a manifestation of “natural variability”, something Bryan and the C”S”C are usually keen to remind us of.
Yet the greenhouse forcing continues to increase. And now we are on the upswing towards the next peak of the solar cycle. Sure as eggs are eggs, the rate of warming will rise again. Like it did last time, and the time before that…
James “David” Renwick
Bryan, I have just emailed you a copy of “Global Warming for Dummies” – once you’ve finished that, you might like to have a look at some of the papers listed in the bibliography.
A fairly basic physics text might help as well – if you can’t find something suitable, you are welcome to one of mine.
Oh, by the way, you may need to take off your ideological blinders.
Bryan, I thought you might also like ‘Climate Change – The Science, Impacts and Solutions’, which has a much more extensive bibliography.
I’m sure a man of your perspicacity will make short work of it, after which you can start on the IPCC reports…
Responding to Bryan
The science is not settled. Never is. So that is a straw man. In addition, volcanic eruptions might happen tomorrow to postpone warming. There might be some amazing scientific breakthrough that makes this all go away.
I would have thought that what is settled is that a number of scientists with relevant expertise have said that unless human GHG emissions are reduced there is a risk of bad things happening. In most areas of life, when a number of scientists with relevant expertise come forward with a common conclusion, that gives rise to a need to manage that risk.
I struggle to understand why that common sense approach is not being applied by you and others here?
“I struggle to understand why that common sense approach is not being applied by you and others here?”
Leyland and his ilk are immune to common sense, as they are radical idealogues, willing to sacrifice their own grandchildren on the altar of willful blindness and deliberate ignorance. They are the Taliban of our times.
“Sea level at Tuvalu has risen by 5.1mm per year since the mid-twentieth century.”
Perhaps it has. But, as I pointed out, the 1998 El Niño biased the record established by the Australian accurate sea level gauges. All I claimed was that the sea level had dropped recently and this is shown clearly by the graph of sea level for Tuvalu.
“Sea level rise has accelerated over the last few centuries.”
Maybe in has, and maybe it hasn’t. The reality is that we don’t have accurate records for more than 50 years or maybe less. But I wasn’t talking about that. But, given that the Little ice age pulled sea levels down, it is only to be expected they should rise again when we came out of the Little ice age.
“Global sea level undergoes temporary fluctuations as a result of La Nina and El Nino. ” I agree, and I pointed this out. But if an El Niño drops the sea levels, La Nina years should raise them. So it is rather odd that during a period when we had an El Niño followed by La Ninas, the sea level appears to have dropped steadily. Remember, all I said was that there had been a recent drop in sea levels. I also said that we didn’t know why. There are explanations aplenty, we don’t know which one is correct.
“Global temperatures have increased in the last 10-15 years. Over 90% of global warming goes into the oceans and this has increased enormously in the last 10-15 years.
All I said was that global temperatures have not shown any significant warming for the last in to 15 years. You people brought in the claim that the sea has warmed. You are welcome to do this, But it is not an argument I am interested in. All I am saying is that there has been no significant warming as shown by all the major temperature records in the last 10 to 15 years. And this is demonstrably true.
Please don’t accuse me of saying things that I haven’t said and then claiming that I am wrong. I phrased my questions carefully and if you keep to the subject rather than changing the subject, you will have to agree that I am right. Which, I suppose, is the reason that you changed the subject.
Jim Renwick:“The lack of warming over the past decade?” The last decade is the warmest on record globally, followed by the previous one, and the one before that.”
More or less correct and quite consistent with the fact that there is been no significant warming for the last 10 to 15 years.
As lots of people seem to have problems with this, I will have to put it into a simple concept. If you climb up an escarpment onto a plateau your altitude is increasing all the time you are climbing. You are at high altitude when you get onto the plateau, but you are no longer climbing. Can you understand that?
Jim’s e-mail to me implied that he accepts that the world has not warmed recently, but he still has great confidence that one day it will warm. I prefer to rely on the historical evidence from sunspots which tells us it will cool. I have offered Gareth a bet based on whether or not it will warm, and he has not accepted it. I have no problem understanding his reluctance. What I do know is that, as a result of the La Nina, most of 2012 will show no significant warming. By “no significant warming” I mean that the temperatures will not get back to their average level in 2010.
“More or less correct and quite consistent with the fact that there is been no significant warming for the last 10 to 15 years.
As lots of people seem to have problems with this, I will have to put it into a simple concept. If you climb up an escarpment onto a plateau your altitude is increasing all the time you are climbing. You are at high altitude when you get onto the plateau, but you are no longer climbing. Can you understand that?”
Can you not get it into you tiny brain that just because atmospheric temperatures remain at around a constant level for a few years there has been no significant warming of the planet. I’m sure you are well aware of the difference between “heat” (energy) and “temperature”. I’m sure you are also well aware that while CO2 is transparent to solar radiation, it is opaque to Infra-red. Ergo increasing CO2 concentrations MUST result in increasing heat. Recent studies show quite clearly that most of this extra heat is being sequested to the oceans. We can see the results of this in the recent extreme weather events experienced in Australia and Thailand and elsewhere. These storms don’t, as you know start overland, but over the increasingly warm oceans.
The continued observations of disappearing glaciers, diminishing Arctic Sea Ice, diminishing Greenland and Canadian Ice Shelves, more extreme weather events globally, as well as rising sea levels and warming oceans (not to mention their increasing acidification to alarming levels) all point to the fact that the Planet continues to warm, and not by an insignificant amount. Furthermore this warming can be directly traced to the rapaciousness of one species – homo sapiens.
Bryan Leyland:
““Sea level rise has accelerated over the last few centuries.”
Maybe in has, and maybe it hasn’t.”
It is definitely a lot faster than the average over the past 6,000 years which is 0.5 mm/year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
“But if an El Niño drops the sea levels, La Nina years should raise them.”
No, even your own citation doesn’t show that El Ninos drop sea level (e.g. 1997/98): http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en/news/ocean-indicators/mean-sea-level/index.html but as we all know, you’re a fan of proof by contradictory citation.
“All I am saying is that there has been no significant warming as shown by all the major temperature records in the last 10 to 15 years.”
Well so what? There rarely is significant warming over any 10 to 15 year period. This is simply because of the noise in global temperature so your point is just a strawman. We can equally well say:
There has been no significant slowdown in the rate of warming in the last 10 to 15 years.
Advice to young lawyers: “If the facts are on your side, then argue the facts; if the facts aren’t on your side, then argue the law; and if neither the facts nor the law are on your side, then try to confuse the issue”.
Sorry, Bryan, but there was no global Little Ice Age, most of the excess heat is stored in the ocean, sunspots do not control the Earth’s temperature, and there is still no fool like an old fool.
I see Mr. Leyland wants to continue reciting bad memes ill-informed by statistics or statistics of noisy time series, for which Open Mind, by a good time-series guy, is a good antidote for all but the D-K-afflicted.
But some of us still want to know how ICSC can claim
“Since its formation in 2007, ICSC has never received financial support from corporations, foundations or governments. 99% of all donations have come from private individuals in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, United States and Canada.”
That is obviously untrue and obviously deliberate, so why would anyone believe anything from ICSC?
Graham Readfearn has a nice article Study Tracks Australian Climate Denial Echo Chamber Back to Think Tank at DeSmogBlog, about IPA in Australia..
Recall that Gareth showed Heartland money going to “South Asia and Pacific”, which possibly includes Australia. See this.
IPA was involved with the Heartland 2010 conference in Sydney.
One wonders if any of the Heartland money went there or to Lavosier, etc.
But perhaps the best reason of all why the GWPF should never have to name its donors is this one, as advanced by Bishop Hill on Twitter:
Greenpeace spokesman: ” We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.”. Why would GWPF donors want their names public?
Just stumbled across this.
I’m calling bullshit, plain and simple, Roger. Why don’t you provide us with convincing evidence that any such event ever occurred?
No, not the tweet from Montford the moribund “dissentient” ; that threat, with that wording, directed at who (Montford?) and originating from a bona-fide Greenpeace ‘spokesman’ (yes, man; it’s still 1965 for Roger!)
Credible evidence on all these points, please.
PS Now ‘advanced’ is an interesting tricksy word, almost worthy of the GWPF itself, don’t you think?
Sorry, of course, how silly of me – it’s still 1956 for Roger! 😉
The “threat” was not directed at Montford but was part of a Greenpeace blog post.
This has been removed, but to give Greenpeace credit they have archived off the original post.
http://weblog.greenpeace.org/climate/2010/04/will_the_real_climategate_plea_1.html
Statement from Ananth, International Programme Director:
You’ve probably come here to read a blog post written by our colleague Gene, in which he addresses climate sceptics by saying:
“Let’s talk about what that mass civil disobedience is going to look like.
“If you’re one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this:
We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. And we be many, but you be few.”
You might have given your quote its full context
Well, Greenpeace clearly did the right thing there, right down to leaving the offending post up for all to read. I’m sure that’s the spirit in which you were going to post your ‘censored’ comments elsewhere, right, Roger?
Thanks for so very clearly demonstrating your cherrypicking technique there, Roger!
What does ‘civil disobedience’ mean? Yeah, I know, red rag to a bull for you lot (and even some of ours)! But clearly the profiteer Denialists were being threatened with sit-ins and occupations, this is not some mafia style menacing as is implied by your (and Montford’s?) convenient truncation.
But nevertheless ‘we know where you live’ was a breathtakingly stupid and dangerous thing to say in any context whatsoever, completely threatening the key distinction between the public and private sphere, and deserves our complete condemnation.
I was listening to National Radio this morning (4:30am) and there was an interesting item from “One Planet” about climate change.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00mwzc6/One_Planet_The_Dry_Lands_of_Texas/
It included an interview with David Jenkins from “Republicans for Environmental Protection.” I was surprised that he believed that the deniers in the GOP were a vocal minority and equally surprised that there are Republicans with a strong environmental focus. How come we never hear about the silent majority, and have to put up with the noise from the likes of Perry, Palin, Inhofe etc.
I was surprised that items like these had filtered through the New Zealand media, especially at peak time, when everyone is listening to National Radio.
Of interest also is the discussion regarding the Texas drought which is devastating agriculture and not to mention half a billion trees dying of thirst. Hardly mentioned by NZ media. Rick Perry is on record as praying for rain, I wonder whether it would be better to pray for a solutiion to climate change and maybe the rain would possibly follow.
Tony, I don’t have access to the full paper. But take a look at the future projections for the USA presented here by Michael Wehner. Quite co-incidentally it was brought to my attention this morning.
The projections are alarming, but they very roughly fit with the drying of the continental USA during the Holocene Climatic Optimum.
Thanks DW, interesting presentation, and yes the changing PDSI affected by rising temperatures is a frightening proposition.
Do you know if there are any published papers that examine the issue of dying trees as a positive feedback, preferably with some observational data, but not a prerequisite. Half a billion trees dying of thirst is about as close to a tree holocaust that we are likely to observe. Only a hard core denier would not consider it a disturbing trend or be alarmed by it. Trees are fairly robust, and it would take a signficant drought to wipe them out.
Tony, I have run across a number of recent papers which show a large die-back of trees occurring in the US and Canada, but it kind of inter-related with pine beetles infestations too – the warming is allowing them to spread into new regions and they’re no longer being killed off by the cold. I’ll see if I saved link or copies of them, and get back to you.
As far as positive feedbacks are concerned, the biggie is wildfires.
DW,
My suspicion is that there are likely to be a whole swag of effects drought, fires, pests. Is it known whether the pine beetles in themselves thrive better in warmer temperatures? Or is it just a lack of biodiversity? Monocultures are generally a haven for pest species.
It’s not the monoculture that’s the problem. In cold regions, extended regions of single species- or a very small number of species is quite common. Warming is simply removing the one and only constraint on this formerly manageable pest. Cold. When the whole forest freezes, so do the great majority of the beetles. When most of it doesn’t freeze, neither do the beetles. So there are more of them and they’re quicker off the mark to reproduce because the right temperature for that occurs earlier in the season.
The result is not just not pretty. It’s wildfire fuel.
Tony here’s one paper on tree mortality. I had about half a dozen papers published in 2011 but must have deleted them from my computer (it’s ancient and short on space):
Widespread Increase of Tree Mortality Rates in the Western United States – Mantgem 2009
Thanks DW, good reference for my collection. ScienceMag seems to be a really good source of references on positive feedbacks. (You should consider getting a new computer or some decent 16Gb USB drives. Theres nothing worse than spending ages trying to track references!)
On a similar theme, has anyone made an attempted estimate regarding how much in the way of emissions are possible from dying forests. I assume that the trees in Texas will all decompose and all the locked up CO2 will eventually end up back in the atmosphere. Surely someone has put together models to project under different scenarios.
Haven’t ever run across such studies at all Tony, I guess there are too possible permutations to consider. I may stand corrected of course.
We ski in British Columbia. When we fly into Kelowna, we can see the dying trees. So can the lumbermen and they know why the beetles are marching North.
If you want to be scared, see Boreal Forest, which is much bigger than the areas of USA (SouthWest) where higher temperatures and less rain cause more forest fires. At least, in those areas, forest fires are part of the natural life cycle. The boreal forest isn’t used to the beetles, which among other things, crate their own organic antifreeze.
See what B.C. govt says or more. .
For context:
945K km^2: size of British Columbia
268K km^2 New Zealand
175K km^2 area of trees in BC already affected. .
Thanks very much John,
Very useful and depressing information, my suspicions confirmed. Clearly the message is that addressing climate change and improving biodiversity would help solve the immense problem of the pine beetle.
Bryan Leyland and Roger Dewhurst, can you confirm that the relentless northwards march of the pine beetle is a result of millions of them being misled by warmist alarmists and dishonest climate scientists?
When can we expect global cooling to stop the little buggers in their tracks?
No, these beetles have a wee problem understanding human language, as do you apparently.
When it gets a bit cooler.
Roger, I understand the meaning of irony, which you apparently do not.
So, why are the beetles moving north, if they’re not susceptible to “warmist” and “Hansenist” propaganda?
Do you think its because of sunspots, cosmic rays, undersea volcanoes or those damn Tuvaluans again?
If they are moving north, a factoid of little credibility given its promoters, they will doubtless move south when it gets colder.
The climate has always changed, quite independently of carbon dioxide. Indeed in Permian times when there was lots of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, there was a glaciation.
When climate changes over long timescales, millions or hundred thousands of years it is simply stupid to get all worked up over a few fractions of a degree over a couple of decades. You have simply lost the plot. Get some perspective on things.
As I said climate is always changing. If the pattern of the last two millions years continues, and you are an ass to assert that it will not on the basis of a few decades of observation, the climatic maximum will be fractionally cooler than the warmest point in the last interglacial and the coming glaciation will be considerably colder than the last one. The trend over the last two million years has been one of cooling with a 100,000 to 150,000 year cycle superimposed on it. The amplitude of the cycle is increasing with time with the climatic maxima gradually declining and the minima declining very much more. What those who follow us on this planet can expect is a very rough time with much bloodshed when the cooling really starts. I will not be around to see that. I doubt that anyone alive now will see that.
However a cooling comparable to that of the LIA will bring much unpleasantness to those in the northern hemisphere. That we may well see in our lifetimes. Frankly I think it is criminal stupidity to fail to plan for that possibility.
“When climate changes over long timescales, millions or hundred thousands of years it is simply stupid to get all worked up over a few fractions of a degree over a couple of decades.”
The only thing that’s stupid is to think that there’s any logic in that statement which is a classic bait-and-switch, i.e. start out by talking about timescales of millions or hundreds of thousands of years and then switch to a couple of decades as if the same principle applies.
Roger, your straw man discussion of the natural (Milankovitch cycles) orbital forcing of the climate is irrelevant, as there is now a far greater artificial forcing, from human CO2 emissions.
Given the rate of forcing is beyond anything seen previously in Nature, barring asteroid collisions, it would indeed be criminal stupidity to ignore the risks; but to actively campaign AGAINST taking any action, as you and your ilk do, is something else again.
Edited version:
Climate changed far faster than can be explained solely by Milankovich theory though that appears to explain the major cycles over the last two million years. Since the orbital cycles existed long before the Pleistocene period started one must assume that some other condition was required. It is at least plausible to suggest that condition was the opening of the Drake Channel in late Tertiary times. However right through the Pleistocene there have been climatic cycles far shorter than the Milankovitch cycles but superimposed on them. You had better be able to explain these before jumping to the conclusion that modern fluctuations in the climate are due to carbon dioxide. No substantial case has been made for carbon dioxide forcing other than some gas in a bottle experiments over 100 years ago. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is trivial, it is little more that is required to support plant life, and thus all life on this planet, and our contribution to the cycle is insignificant. Global temperature, if such a thing can even be determined, has not correlated well with the tenor of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over long periods or short. The carbon dioxide cycle is complex and inadequately understood in sufficient detail to be used in numerical models. Water vapour is a far more powerful greenhouse gas. All in all the case for carbon dioxide having more than a minute influence on climate is too weak to justify the huge amount of money thrown at supposed remedies. What is happening of course is that attention is diverted away from the real threat which is global cooling. A couple of years ago Canada was pretty much brought to a halt due to a brief cold spell. A return to conditions of the LIA would probably bring about the collapse of the power reticulation of Scotland and northern England for long enough to bring about many thousands of fatalities and a clamour to migrate to warmer climates. Guess where those might be. That is what you should be afraid of but you are negligently, criminally in my view, diverting the attention of politicians away from this threat.
Dappledwater. For the history of the GBR try
Coral variation in two deep drill cores: significance for the
Pleistocene development of the Great Barrier Reef
Jody M. Webstera,b,*, Peter J. Davies a
a Division of Geology and Geophysics, School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia
b Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, 7700 Sandholdt Road, Moss Landing, CA 95039, USA
Their interpretation of the history of the GPR is closer to mine than to yours!
Well, you have to acknowledge consistency; you really have not once listened to your critics, have you, Roger?
No, instead you present us with this extraordinary – and yet mind-numbingly dreary – gish-gallop of multiply debunked tripe, irrelevancies and red-herrings!
You seem to live in an intriguing fantasy world where you and Bryan L are the bold defenders of truth against a monumental establishment of corrupt rent-seekers under the pernicious sway of super-svengali Al Gore.
From where I’m standing you rather more resemble grizzled curmudgeons who simply don’t – and won’t – listen. And cannot acknowledge mistakes.
And now can’t, because you’d have to concede that you are wrong about one of the most important things to get right in the 21st Century, and have been fighting on the wrong side of history for decades.
So, you’re reduced to the tedious ‘state / ignore responses / restate’ strategy; when debunked simply move somewhere away from the distressing counter-information and repeat the original claim, because if you see it written down often enough – even if you’re the authors- it must be true! So, above all; Restate! Loudly, obliviously, and, apparently, even obnoxiously, as required.
It’s not even close to making a case. But it sure appeals to some indignant old men, don’t it? ‘Because,’ to quote Terry Pratchett, ‘some minds you couldn’t change with a hatchet’.
Anyone who’d say ‘yeah right!’ to your screed above is a lost cause to rational argument – you can really only hope to enlist those borderline-bewildered misanthropes who are sealing themselves off from the distressing evidence-based community and are now reduced to shouting at the ‘Hansenite’ kids on their lawns and muttering that ‘the Gubmint’ is now out to get them and their money…
A more existentially pointless cause it would be hard to imagine.
Well put, Bill.
I visualise Roger Dewhurst as a little boy with his fingers in his ears, shouting “I can’t hear you, nyah, nyah, nyah!”, rather than admit he’s made a mistake.
I suspect he must be quite an embarrassment to his denialist mates – I notice not even Leyland has come to his defence.
Really the Alinskey type invective you and your ilk spout simply demonstrates that you have no scientific case. If you had a case you could make you would make that case not waste time on abuse.
You just have still not grasped that there are hundreds of highly qualified scientists who are highly sceptical not only of the AGW proposition but the lies and evasion that are used to promote it. Individually these scientist are generally older, with much more experience and widely respected in their fields. They are not jumped up PhD and MSc students trying to make a name for themselves. All you can do is howl that they are in the pay of the oil companies or that they supported a smoking lobby 20 years ago. Big Oil may well have pushed a few dollars to support some group or other. I have no evidence of this. But Big Oil hedge their bets. They will be putting money into windmills and all that sort of stuff just as they back all major political parties come election time. It is good business for them to keep everyone on-side as far as possible. Whatever the outcome they will be winners.
You are simply state of denial compounded with anger. You are ludicrous. You (plural) simply never attempt to make and argue your own case. Always it is read so and so, see what such and such says or refer to the IPPC. You know nothing. You have no experience. I doubt that you have ever had a proper job. You are, I expect, just a bearded, be-sandalled, Labour or Green party voter with a chip on your shoulder and a desire to exercise power without any acceptance of responsibility.
If I posted a long list of reputable scientists and GR could not accuse all of them of taking money from oil companies he would delete the list. He deleted a short list the other day. He does not want such information on his blog. He just wants a synchophantic rabble backing him and, incidentally, supporting the sale of his book.
[Invective snipped: Any more like that Roger and your posts will not pass moderation. GR]
Invective?
(Um, what’s an ad hominem, Roger?)
(Always with Al Gore! C’mon, ‘fess up, it’s a bear thing, right? 😉 )
(And yet immediately thereafter we’re told “[h]owever a cooling comparable to that of the LIA will bring much unpleasantness to those in the northern hemisphere. That we may well see in our lifetimes. Frankly I think it is criminal stupidity to fail to plan for that possibility.” This genuinely gave me a good laugh! If you don’t get it, well, yes, you don’t get it!)
(The very ‘fungus farmer’ who’s hosting your intemperate ramblings, we might add!)
And, of course, I read the original ‘last Moa’ crack before it was – quite rightly – removed.
These are what remains after you’ve been snipped, as is sadly apparently so frequently necessary!
(And do you really imagine publishing these ‘censored’ gems elsewhere would further your cause, incidentally? How would you rate your self-awareness? )
And, finally,
Ah, beautiful; Roger, are you a Poe?
“Always it is read so and so, see what such and such says or refer to the IPPC. You know nothing. You have no experience. I doubt that you have ever had a proper job. You are, I expect, just a bearded, be-sandalled, Labour or Green party voter ”
Why re-type what is already available? You have no idea what we know nor what experience we have – and you don’t want to know because that would spoil your pre-determined ideas. Is exploration geologist for a gold-mining company a proper enough job? Been there, done that. I’ve had plenty of other jobs, too. I’m still working 4 decades later. When did you last work, Roger? I have never had a beard, my sandals are rather pretty and who I vote for is none of your business.
You are not interested in debating, your interest is baiting. And you have mistaken the friendliness amongst regulars here with sycophancy (note how the word is spelt) – how sad! Gareth provides a forum for discussion. You have not provided a milligram of knowledge to this discussion.
Men such as Singer, Carter, Plimer, Leyland and de Freitas have lost respect not because they are exposing flaws in climate science and scientists (atmospheric physicists and paleoclimatologists, in the main) but because they refuse to change their minds when their errors are shown to them. A wise man learns from his mistakes, a fool repeats them.
“Men such as Singer, Carter, Plimer, Leyland and de Freitas have lost respect not because they are exposing flaws in climate science and scientists (atmospheric physicists and paleoclimatologists, in the main) but because they refuse to change their minds when their errors are shown to them. A wise man learns from his mistakes, a fool repeats them.”
This paragraph encapsulates your problem. You cannot concede that science is never settled and you cannot concede that you might be wrong. The fact that there are wide differences of opinion on this matter should ring some warning bells for you. That you, and others here, do not hear those warning bells suggests a fundamental lack of understanding of the principles of science. You choose to deny that there is a difference opinion despite the very long list of respected scientists who do not accept AGW. Your response to this is that these people cannot be respected scientists if they disagree with you. As you wrote “…..because they refuse to change their minds when their errors are shown to them. A wise man learns from his mistakes, a fool repeats them.” That applies to you.
Some months ago I went to a marine biological lecture at Auckland University. The lecturer was clearly a believer in AGW. At the end of the lecture I asked her if she had discussed some aspect of it with Chris de Freitas. The answer was: No because he will not change his mind!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Neither would she but she was too stupid to see that.
Not one of you has attempted to deal with the quality of the contributors to the IPCC or the administration of the IPCC as described by Donna la Framboise. Her case is excellently documented and any reasonably dispassionate person would accept that her demonstration of the dubiousness of the ‘research’, documentation and personnel associated with the IPCC casts considerable doubt on its pronouncements. You base your case very largely on the pronouncements of the IPCC. The very foundations of your case have been shot away. It is time for you to apply your own maxim.
Roger Dewhurst said:
“You base your case very largely on the pronouncements of the IPCC. The very foundations of your case have been shot away. It is time for you to apply your own maxim.”
That just shows you know nothing about how scientists and science work. The IPCC is just a collation and interpretation of thousands of science papers.
Any scientist worth his salt, which excludes any denier scientist, goes to the the actual papers so that they can see the data for themselves and are intelligent enough to make their own interpretations and conclusions. Thus real scientists can sort the real papers from the junk that denier scientists write since the denier scientists’ data and conclusions are most often incorrect due to lack of ability or cherry picking or gross dishonesty.
“The fact that there are wide differences of opinion on this matter should ring some warning bells for you. ”
Roger, it is not a matter of opinion; the likes of Singer, Carter, Plimer, Soon and de Freitas have zero credibility amongst their peers because they have published fraudulent “research” with unscientific methodology and false data.
For just one example of this chicanery, see
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/the_science_is_missing_from_ia.php
Clearly, these corrupt old curmudgeons, who were second-rate scientists in their time – a time that has long passed – must now resort to blatant untruths to get any attention.
Frankly, its pathetic.
I disagree: Soon got his PhD ~1991, and he isn’t old enough to have achieved curmudgeon status, although he has been well-paid for his efforts that have little to do with astrophysics.
However, give de Freitas credit for the dandy “pal review” scheme at CR, see Skeptics Prefer Pal Review Over Peer Review: Chris de Freitas, Pat Michaels And Their Pals, 1997-2003. He even got a Vincent Gray piece in there.
I stand corrected, John – Willie Soon is hired help, rather than a curmudgeon. Vincent Gray is definitely a curmudgeon, whereas Chris de Freitas is a wannabe curmudgeon.
Doubtless you are privy to his tax return?
In respect of pal review have you not read the UAE emails?
Having you people involved with peer review would be like having Amnesty International run by Saddam Hussein, Papa Doc, Pol Pot and Mugabe.
The mind boggles!!!!!!!!
Yeah, that was the intended effect. It’s good for you
So, Roger, Plimer’s credibility – or lack thereof – is all in our stubbornly non-conforming little heads, is it?
Perhaps you’d like to enlighten us about Plimer’s views on how much CO2 is put into the atmosphere each year by volcanoes of all kinds, how that relates to human production, what the USGS has to say about this, what Plimer said the USGS says about this, and give us a rough idea of how many submarine volcanoes there are, how they might be defined relative to their terrestrial counterparts, and how much CO2 they’re responsible for producing both according to Plimer and in any conceivable reality?
Bearing in mind, of course, that CO2 is a trace gas and it doesn’t make any difference anyway, as you’ve already told us.
Oh, and remembering that thoroughly documented temperature rises of a few fractions of degrees each decade don’t make any difference and awaken no risk management issues unless certainty of attribution is running at 100%, apparently, but we’re living on the verge of an impending devastating Ice Age and it would be criminally negligent not to act on it because? Well, really because this is a convenient ‘contra’ belief among some reactionary hysterics who nevertheless are quick to condemn ‘catastrophism’!
Even though there’s really no such thing as a global average temperature, of course! Enlightenment, what enlightenment?
Truly, you couldn’t make it up! What a cartoon (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Oh, and while you’re there, could you please tell us what the SIPLE and Muana Loa databases give as the atmospheric CO2 concentration in 1900 and 1960 respectively? Then tell us what Plimer says on the same subject in ‘How to get Expelled from School’. Since this harmless trace gas makes no difference anyway I’m sure you won’t feel any pressure not to gives us the straightest of straight answers…
I am not particularly familiar with Plimer’s views. I found his book irritating to read and, in fact, I never finished it. As a teacher he may be good but as a communicator with the lay public he is not very good at all. That however says nothing about his views. I would suggest though that his comments are based on a much longer term perspective than those of his critics. After all he is a geologist and a pretty successful one at that.
All the carbon that is in or on this planet has been here for about 4500 million years. I doubt that anyone wants to dispute that in principle. About the first 3500 million years after the creation (I do not mean this in any biblical sense in case some idiot wants to jump up and down about it) of this planet we know almost nothing. About the next 1000 million years we know a little bit more than nothing. That is an awfully large part of the history of this planet. Thus we do not have a massive knowledge base on which to pontificate and shout the odds. Our knowledge of the remainder of the history of this planet is based almost entirely on fossils and stratigraphy, both of which are inter-related. The decay of radioactive elements adds a little to this knowledge.Where do your climatologists fit in this scheme of things? In the last 50 years perhaps. Perhaps Ian Plimer has got something to tell you.
Obfuscation by generalisation, Roger. We know enough about the paleoclimate to know we are in deep trouble in the here and now.
The last time the Earth suffered a “carbon burp” was the PETM, which led to mass extinction – yet the rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere then was only a few percent of the equivalent rate today.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-rising-ten-times-faster-than-petm-extinction.html
Who knows, perhaps we may yet learn something from Ian Plimer? Stranger things have happened.
If, of course, Ian Plimer can ever sort out what it is he thinks he knows.
Like some other folks we know (who cannot, of course, concede the point – don’t think we didn’t notice), he also cannot necessarily read a chart; in this case, one he’s actually published himself, and not just referenced as being authoritative.
Thanks, Bill, these links are hilarious. The logical conclusion one can draw is that:
a. Plimer is senile
b. Plimer is telling lies for money
c. both of the above
[Tone it down in future, please Rob. GR]
Accusation like that are simply out of the gutter, from which you come too.
Gee, Roger, that self-percetion filter of yours is really playing up! Talk about pots acusing kettles – need I roll out some of your own quotes again? All the reader has to do, after all, is scroll up.
I rather suggest you get your own house in order; you look pretty ludicrous on a high-horse.
Apologies, Gareth, of course I meant to say Plimer is Telling Lies for Mammon… geddit?
This is hilarious indeed. From the images of Pilmer (left and right) one would conclude that there might be a correlation between hair loss and the loss mental powers…. 😉
[snip – that sort of speculation is not encouraged. GR]
This was in reference to Bills excellent find on Pilmer versus Pilmer above. The WP engine’s comment edit is not working…
150 years, not 50 years, Roger.
And just because a few prolific geologists dispute the consensus does not mean that all or even most geologists do. Professor Tim Naish for instance, confirmed the theory of Milankovitch Cycles with his studies of cores in the Waikato Basins and led the ANDRILL project which gave us great insight into the behaviour of the WAIS, going back some 20 million years.
Your ignorance is astounding Roger.
Roger, I have been studying climate change since 1979 – long before the formation of the IPCC. The IPCC was formed, at the behest of governments, to pull together what was being published on global warming and climate change. Their “pronouncements” are largely for the benefit of those who do not have time, inlcination or ability to study the published reports. I would hold the same opinions I have without the existence of the IPCC, it is of no importance to me.
When you say hundreds of scientists do not ‘believe’ in AGW, are they scientists who have actually studied the data? Because, from my observation, many of those scientists cited as ‘non-believers’ have no direct knowledge of the subject – eg. veterinarians. It would be like me saying, “I don’t believe in cognitive therapy” when I have never studied the subject, merely read some articles in Time magazine or the Daily Mail.
What I am trying to say is, that the vast majority (97%) of those who have taken the time to study the subject, make observations, analyse measurements and publish what they have discovered in science journals are in agreement that our world is warming and that human actiivty plays a part in that warming.
Perhaps someday someone will come up with a totally different reason for the warming we have seen, with ample proof – then it would be sensible for me to change my mind. Until then I base my opinion on the vast body of knowledge that has been published until now, and my personal observations of the world around me. That is the sensible thing to do.
#1. Most of my geological work has involved unconsolidated sediments, thus younger rocks. The sedimentary facies are always influenced by climate and sea level. Thus both are in the back ones mind at all times. I also spent quite a bit of time considering numerical models, simple ones with many variables. What became very clear to me is that a numerical model is nothing more than a plaything if all the factors involves are not included in the model with the correct equations properly weighted. Simply those conditions do not and cannot apply in the case of climate. Furthermore the models all produce different outcomes. Therefore all but one, at the most, must be wrong. The predictions of these models have not matched the real world. Therefore they are useless.
Whatever the reasons for the formation of the IPCC it is now a political organisation with a political agenda which uses whatever science suits its agenda. It does not produce a fair and dispassionate summary of all the science. This will be apparent to you if you care to read Donna la Framboise excellently referenced book on the subject.
#2. I think you are going back to the argument “If you do not believe in AGW” you are not qualified to have a viewpoint. The lists that I have seen suggest to me that there are hundreds who are qualified by training and or experience to have an opinion on the matter. The fact is the history of climate and the influences on it go far beyond any single discipline. Neither geologists, physicists, geographers, meteorologists, oceanographers, palaeontologists, botanists or chemists have the whole field at their fingertips. Mostly they are not very good at talking to each other either. What are climatologists anyway? Just one of the above.
#3. I suspect that you have got your 97% from Oreskes. This is a pretty dubious source for at least two reasons. Firstly she does not seem to be able to count very well and secondly the peer review process was, and still is, controlled by the Mann gang and the UEA. There was only one journal, and that briefly, was prepared to publish opposing points of view. How this was achieved is evident on reading the UEA emails.
#4. Doubtless our understanding of the mechanism will improve and when it does scientific opinion will drift in that direction. Our understand will certainly speed up if the emphasis is returned to dispassionate investigation rather than endeavour to prove a point, as it is at the moment. Science is not advanced when certain groups get control of the peer review process, when the prospects of academics are threatened when they do not toe the party line and when rude little nobodies insist on calling respected scientists and engineers liars and deniers. I suspect that the state has been reached at least in Wellington and Christchurch where it is abundantly clear to any student that departure from the AGW line will mean a poor degree or no degree at all. You say that your opinions are based on what you have read and your own observations. I suggest that the former weigh most heavily. Bear in mind that what you have read is largely what you have been permitted to read! My opinions are based on what I have read and what I have observed though the latter carries more weight than it appears to do in your case. There is one one thing that weight heavily also; it is the integrity of those involved in the process. When the protagonists need to massage the data to make their case my inclination is to suspect that they have case at all. When the police trot out jail-house witnesses my immediate inclination, as a juror, is to say “Not guilty”. I am not hugely concerned with what people choose to believe. But I am concerned, and angry, when people demand that their unsubstantiated beliefs should require much loss of freedom and financial sacrifice on the part of the taxpayer. I am utterly opposed to the ‘Precautionary Principle’. There is only one rational way to make economic decisions where probability is involved. It is to consider all the options, PC or otherwise, and multiply the probabilities by the estimated costs. The lowest cost-risk multiple is the best choice. With events in the future the costs have to be discounted at an appropriate rate. It not useful squeal, “But we do not know the cost, we do not know the time frame and you have set the discount rate too high” therefore we must throw money at it, the taxpayers’ money of course. Stern knew that he was talking to people who had the normal discount equations at the fingertips; thus he had to resort to a massive understatement of the discount rate to make his case for spending taxpayer’s money far out into the future. He did it because the government wanted a person with status to make the case they wanted. [Snip: GR]
correction:
I also spent quite a bit of time considering numerical models, simple ones with not many variables.
………. at their fingertips;
Roger Dewhurst:
“Furthermore the models all produce different outcomes.”
No-one claims the models all produce the same timing for El Nino/La Nina. Their timing is unpredictable. So your point is just another strawman. The models produce a set of runs which each have different timings for El Ninos/La Ninas and other unpredictable phenomena. So they produce a range of outcomes that encompass the actual temperature.
“The predictions of these models have not matched the real world.”
Wrong. They match the real world quite well: http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/ar4mods.jpg and http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-8-1-figure-1.html
Nothing that fact-denialists suggest (which ignores CO2 forcing) comes anywhere near this match.
I’ll let you get back to your conspiracy theories now.
“No-one claims the models all produce the same timing for El Nino/La Nina. Their timing is unpredictable. So your point is just another strawman. The models produce a set of runs which each have different timings for El Ninos/La Ninas and other unpredictable phenomena. So they produce a range of outcomes that encompass the actual temperature.”
So they cannot predict El Nino and La Nina. Thanks. So you finally concede that they are utterly useless.
If the models work nothing is unpredictable. If the models cannot predict they are useless, as many of us understand.
“So they cannot predict El Nino and La Nina. Thanks. So you finally concede”
No-one has claimed that weather events a long time in the future are predictable. There was never any claim that is conceded to be wrong.
“that they are utterly useless.”
Predicting the climate is not utterly useless even if the weather can’t be predicted more than several days in advance.
“If the models work nothing is unpredictable.”
The models don’t need to predict the weather to be able to predict the climate.
“If the models cannot predict” weather “they are useless”
That’s just like saying it’s useless to compile climate statistics because they don’t tell us what the weather will be.
“as many of us understand.”
Sure, just like you understand the difference between weather and climate.
Did I mention weather? (snipped)
“The 97% figure comes from two independent studies, each employing different methodologies. One study surveyed all climate scientists who have publicly signed declarations supporting or rejecting the consensus (Anderegg 2010). Another study directly asked earth scientists the following question “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” They found 97% of actively publishing climate scientists answered yes (Doran 2009). As “climate scientists actively publishing peer-reviewed research on climate change” doesn’t really roll off the tongue, I abbreviated that down to “climate experts”.
One feature of Doran’s survey results is that while 97% of climate expert said “yes, humans are causing global warming”, only 1% said “no, we’re not”. The other 2% were unsure:” http://www.skepticalscience.com/Infographic-97-out-of-100-climate-experts-think-humans-causing-global-warming.html
Roger, you are quite prepared to cast aside my 30 plus years of study on this subject without knowing anything about me except you disagree with me (more accurately, you disagree with your assumptions about me). I think you are so determined to ignore anything that doesn’t fit your conceptions of what is happening to this world of ours that it’s pointless discussing this with you.
Yes, Carol, you may as well attempt teach your cat to play the piano as hope for Roger to learn anything from actual real-live bona-fide qualified climate scientists who genuinely know what they’re talking about.
However, it’s certainly worth educating the lurkers, and for that reason I’d like to, perhaps surprisingly, thank Roger and Bryan L for their recent clear demonstration of both their arguments and their calibre.
Like many hovering somewhere on the far side of the Dunning-Kruger ledger I am frequently concerned that there may well be things I haven’t grasped adequately and I sustain a continual sense that maybe there really is some trenchant counter-argument out there that will leave me no alternative to revising my opinion on this matter.*
Believe me; while the latter is certainly, while unlikely, always still possible – if you guys are an example of the best your side has to offer, any such apprehensions on my part have been baseless!
And I say that in all sincerity.
‘Underwhelming’ doesn’t even come a tenth of the way to describing the inadequacy of your efforts, and I suggest that only the already similarly-ideologically-afflicted could possibly be vulnerable to them.
You really are left with nothing but your alleged popularity. That there may indeed me a very large number of fools in the world – perhaps, sadly, even a majority, at least for a time in the self-indulgent West – strikes me as very Pyrrhic cause indeed for triumphalist celebration.
Instead, what Roger and Bryan L have been paying a great deal of [in]attention to is Figures 1 and 2 here.
*I suspect you don’t feel any such doubts, Bryan, Roger? Remember Bertrand Russell?
I am sure that the lurkers are being educated, though not perhaps in the manner that you hope and anticipate.
For those lurkers who genuinely want to be educated, Sceptical Science is an excellent place to start:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
PS: Speaking of chaotic system, Gareth, what’s up with the threading on this site?
I notice you didn’t answer my question about self doubt, Roger. Remember what I said about the triumphalism of fools?
And still *crickets* on the money issue, boys? Why, you’d almost think you didn’t want to answer the question…
“One feature of Doran’s survey results is that while 97% of climate expert said “yes, humans are causing global warming”, only 1% said “no, we’re not”. The other 2% were unsure:” ”
Of those 97% some believe in AGW and some believe in the Heat Island Effect. I am surprised that the result was not 100%.
“One study surveyed all climate scientists who have publicly signed declarations supporting or rejecting the consensus (Anderegg 2010).”
The outcome of depends, inter alia, on who Anderegg considers to be a climate scientist, does it not?
Both numbers happen to coincide with that of Oreskes. What a coincidence.
When you are happy enough to discount the science of Carter, Lindzen, de Freitas, de Lange, Christie, Clark, Kininmonth and a host of thers whose names I cannot, on the spur of the moment, extract from my memory, do not be surprised if your 30 plus years of study is discounted, particular as nobody seems to have heard of you.
“particular as nobody seems to have heard of you.”
Don’t be silly, Roger. I have never claimed to be a publishing scientist.
There we are then. Neither have I except for half a dozen documents in various Australian department of mines and one in a United Nations agency. Of course they were not peer reviewed even by the Mann gang.
R
To cut to the chase, Roger – are you and your fellow cranks still on the take from the US Heartland Institute, itself funded by the fossil-fuels lobby?
Failure to answer will be taken as assent.
I have not had a cent from the Heartland Institute, or any other such organisation in the USA or anywhere else and I do not expect to. (Snipped)
Roger, I note you have carefully answered my question as an individual, whereas my question was to “you and your fellow cranks” in the collective sense.
So, in the interests of precision, is your organisation, the so-called NZCSC, still on the take from the US Heartland Institute, itself funded by the fossil fuels lobby?
You asked me if I am “still on the take” from the Heartland Institute. I answered your question. I do not speak for the NZCSC in any circumstances.
Thank you, Roger, I will take your refusal to answer as assent; it appears that NZCSC still receives funding, through Heartland, from ExxonMobil, Koch Industries and other fossil fuel interests.
Which comes as no surprise…
So what? The CRU at East Anglia university received funding from Oil Companies. What point are you trying to make here?
So-called charities in the UK receive millions from the government and the EU so that they can lobby on behalf of the government for government policies. All this is funded by the taxpayer.
An independent group of people gets a few thousand to fly to Bali and, by the looks of it, hardly make a ripple.
I really don’t see what the big deal is.
The big deal is that, just as tobacco companies set up fake “medical” groups to try to confuse the public about the dangers of smoking, fossil fuel companies have set up fake groups of “scientists” to confuse the public as to the dangers of global warming.
The grandiloquently-named “NZ Climate Science Coalition” is but one of these astroturf groups.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing
Do you have any evidence that (a) the NZCSC have “confused” the public, and (b) that the funding received from Heartland assisted this?
Re your first point, Andy, I suggest you peruse the comments from NZSCS members Brian Leyland and Roger Dewhurst on this site, plus the misinformation, half-truths and downright falsehoods regularly promulgated by Leyland and Chris de Freitas in newspaper op-ed pages.
Re the second, if they have nothing to hide, I look forward to a full release of their financial records .
Yeah, right…
(snipped) Big oil will happily fund windmills, solar power, any greenie nonsense as long as they get subsidies, as they usually do. Why work and take risks when the government takes the risks and pays you a subsidy? They have no interest whatever in the debate or the outcome. They will make their profits whichever way the cat jumps.
UK charities can not lobby, it is an offence to do so.
When they do (eg Strange organisation run by mates of Defence Secretary’s best man) it is a scandal. We in the UK have recently seen the charity ‘Renewable Energy Foundation’ (AKA NIMBYs R Us) split up and we are watching the GWPF with interest.
It may be illegal to actively lobby, but when you are in the public pocket it is in your interests to play to the same tune as your paymasters.
Example: Royal Society for the Protection of Birds:receives 18.5% of its income from public funds, totalling £22.6 million in 2010.
It formed “Stop Climate Chaos” in 2006, and now of course is actively working with the wind industry, providing suitably sanitised reports of bird mortalities. When my “NIMBY” friends try to get information relating to bird deaths from turbines from RSPB, they refuse.
You’d think they might have an interest in birds, but this seems to be of secondary importance now that the snout is firmly in the climate trough.
Please provide an example of a ‘suitably sanitised report of bird mortality’ as provided by the RSPB, NE, SNH or any other British competent ornithology charity or executive agency in when responding to a wind turbine planning consultation. All such planning applications are in the public domain so you should have no problem referring to the actual document and providing a web link.
I listen to reckless claims like this quite a lot through my work, never substantiated.
On the other hand, I talk to this same RSPB professionally, and rather than your glib characterisation of them, there is no default approval of any wind farm application.
This post shines light on the shoddy activity of the NZCSC, and you start making unfounded claims against RSPB, apparently because you think they should agree with your personal dislike of wind turbines. Shame on you.
“Shame on you”
This post has been a series of unmitigated abuse and baseless slurs against the NZCSC. I don’t have any skin in the game, but I find it a bit rich that I am being chastised by a wind troll who admits that he has financial interest in the industry for giving examples of the financial support that government gives to so-called “charities”.
This information is freely available at http://fakecharities.org
Wind troll, so-called charities Yadda yadda yadda.
Your posts seem to conflate government activity and wind turbine developers. Here in the UK all but a handful of wind turbines have been put up by private enterprises. In NZ with its range of SOE power generators there are plenty more that are not state controlled, and the development activity of those SOE does not appear to be under the direction of a government department.
Your fake charities link is a hoot! Are you in UKIP? I particularly like the insinuation that these charities are covert agents of the government when the Woodland Trust link highlights their activity opposing the highest profile government transport proposal in the whole of the UK for decades. Frankly, this website you link to is just dumb. Why should government not channel disaster relief funds through Oxfam if they are best placed to help. More shame upon you.
“Your posts seem to conflate government activity and wind turbine developers. Here in the UK all but a handful of wind turbines have been put up by private enterprises.”
Per se that is not surprising, I doubt that the UK government has an organisation that is equipped to erect wind turbines.
Now perhaps you can tell us which of these companies erected a wind turbine without a subsidy and which companies will operate wind turbines without a subsidy.
Snipped Bryan
The IEA points to the enormous global subsidies paid to fossil fuels, let alone the unaccounted external costs resulting from their burning. Any subsidies to renewable energy generally pale by comparison and are in any case well and truly justified if they hasten the transition to renewable energy.
Bryan,
I don’t really know about all these hidden subsidies to fossil fuel and nuclear.
What we do know is that there is a very high cost on wind energy in the UK, in the form of the Renewable Obligation Certificate scheme.
There is very little doubt that this scheme is driving up power prices in the UK, and driving a significant proportion of the population into so-called “fuel poverty”.
As you may have noticed, it has become very cold in Europe right now. This is the 4th cold winter in the trot. People are struggling to pay their power bills, whilst a number of rich landowners become richer at their expense by placing wind turbines on their properties.
I have yet to see any evidence that wind energy will reduce CO2 emissions (some studies have shown the reverse) or indeed provide any kind of serious alternative to the fuel mix we have right now.
I believe., Bryan, that you are a compassionate and genuine man, but you seriously have to look at the numbers on this one.
“struggling to pay their power bills”
A little more restrained than the murdering the elderly charge you leveled on Perrott’s blog.
Andy, it is not difficult to find information about fossil fuel subsidies, on which the IEA regularly reports. Here, for example.
The unaccounted externalities are an additional matter. Fossil fuels are not cheap if their contribution to greenhouse gases is factored in, which in an unregulated market it is not. Indeed, their cost is enormous in terms of their effect on vulnerable populations today and on upcoming generations, but that’s not a cost we bear.
Renewables avoid no such cost. They may appear more expensive than fossil fuels, though as their scale increases this looks likely to diminish rapidly – and, as Thomas has pointed out on a different thread, in New Zealand wind is already competitive. In any case this question can’t be argued on economics alone. The climate crisis demands that we cease using fossil fuels as quickly as possible. That demand trumps other arguments. And my admittedly general reading suggests there is more economic opportunity than pain in following such a course.
“The unaccounted externalities are an additional matter. Fossil fuels are not cheap if their contribution to greenhouse gases is factored in, which in an unregulated market it is not. Indeed, their cost is enormous in terms of their effect on vulnerable populations today and on upcoming generations, but that’s not a cost we bear.”
That is a circular argument.
There is one and one only rational way of choosing between options.
All possible options must be costed and their probabilities estimated. The costs and multiplied by the probabilities and the lowest cost-probability multiple selected. When the event to be costed occurs in the future the cost must be discounted at an appropriate rate. Since the taxpayer has to pay the discount (interest) should be set at a rat which is real to the taxpayer, perhaps midway between the bank borrowing rate and lending rate. Stern was appointed to justify spending large sums of taxpayers money to ward off some hypothetical problem in the distant but undetermined future. Using the standard equations, which he was pretty much bound to do, he could only justify spending this money by setting the discount rate close to zero. If you are prepared to lend your money at a close to zero interest rate please lend it to me. I wish to be first in line to borrow it.
If the cost (of remediation, prevention or whatever) cannot be estimated, if the probability cannot be estimated or if the time frame (time is a factor in the discounting equation) cannot be estimated the sensible thing is to do nothing not to wave ones arms and throw someone else’s money at it.
As for the cost of preventing the supposed negative effects of carbon dioxide we do not have a clue. We do not know how negative the effects will be or even if they are negative at all. Common sense and actual history suggest that the net effects of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be positive and not negative.
We do not have clue what the probabilities are and we do not have a clue what the time frame is. Therefore it is simply stupid to throw money at the supposed but probably non-existant problem.
Roger Dewhurst has surpassed his previous nonsense:
“As for the cost of preventing the supposed negative effects of carbon dioxide we do not have a clue. We do not know how negative the effects will be or even if they are negative at all. Common sense and actual history suggest that the net effects of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be positive and not negative.
We do not have clue what the probabilities are and we do not have a clue what the time frame is. Therefore it is simply stupid to throw money at the supposed but probably non-existant problem”.
What a load of verifiable rubbish. Effects and costs of effects are already being felt and they can only get worse not better with increasing release of CO2.
Cost of food is going to sky rocket since agricultural will face impossible challenges in the future; high temperatures, droughts, floods will cause havoc worldwide.
Will you feel ashamed in a few years when you are shown to be wrong and have caused these hardships for so very many people?
(Ian, personally I have every sympathy for your characterisation of the position Roger represents, but in the interests of politeness (see comment policy) I’ve snipped your final sentence. Bryan)
(Roger, I’ve edited out some of what Ian had to say about you, and therefore also some of this comment. I’ve also taken out of your comment the rhetoric about manipulation, suppression, and corruption on the part of scientists. Differ from them if you want, but we won’t host your intemperate accusations. Bryan)
Climatic warming will reduce the temperature gradient between the poles and the equator. Nobody disputes that. Climatic extremes relate to temperature gradient. The steeper the gradient the more extreme the climate. The flatter the gradient the less extreme the climate. Common sense and logic tell us this and history tells us this also. Bury your head in the sand if you wish. If the climate warms it will become more stable as it did in the mediaeval warm period; if it cools it will become more unstable as it did in the Little Ice Age. If it cools, rather than warms, as I anticipate, there will be difficulties particularly for those living in high latitudes. It is more than stupid, it is just about criminal, to fail to plan for the cooling that all the real world evidence suggests is upon us in the next decades.
“What a load of verifiable rubbish. Effects and costs of effects are already being felt and they can only get worse not better with increasing release of CO2.
Cost of food is going to sky rocket since agricultural will face impossible challenges in the future; high temperatures, droughts, floods will cause havoc worldwide.”
You have not got a shred of evidence for this, only patently defective numerical models. Pull your head out of the sand and look at the history.
If it warms further agriculture will spread northwards and improve the productivity of the near polar regions. That is obvious enough, is it not? The effects of warming at low latitudes will be less because the warming, if any, will be less.
Frankly you are just ranting. You have no evidence and you cannot construct a plausible argument why your bizarre scenario should prevail.
(Concluding paragraph snipped as needlessly abusive. Bryan)
“If it warms further agriculture will spread northwards and improve the productivity of the near polar regions.”
Just which crops are suitable for regions of little/no soil e.g Canada north of current cropping areas, or of melting tundra/permafrost eg Russia north of ditto? Which crops are suitable for the vastly different seasonal insolation of these northerly regions?
And we should take careful note of the distortions we perceive when looking at mercator projections of land areas. If we exchange a band of 5 degrees of latitude of current cropping area for 5 degrees further north, not only are we losing soil and sunlight, we lose land. Lots of land.
Even the most extreme ‘projections’ of climate change suggest that the temperature bands will move no further than the middle of the North Island to the middle of the South Island. No-one is proposing that temperature agriculture will move to the sub-arctic. However, if your climatic warming does come about it may perhaps be possible to grow grapes again in Scotland. After all it has happened before. And of course Greenland might have some grass again. Warming is only a possibility of course. The probability is that the climate will cool, as it appears to be doing, and the outcome of that will be far more serious.
“And of course Greenland might have some grass again” So where do you think the ice sheet covering Greenland now will go Roger???
Alas poor fool,how they have baffled thee!
I suppose that you have never heard of Eric the Red? He and his followers settled in Greenland and farmed between about 1000AD and 1300AD. The colony was abandoned with the onset of the LIA. It was a bit warmer then, a fact you will have difficulty accomodating along with your quasi religious belief in Mann’s hockey stick.
The paid-for nonsense emanating from the rent boys of denialism is well explained by Bill McKibben:
“The open question is why the industry persists in denial in the face of an endless body of fact showing climate change is the greatest danger we’ve ever faced.
Why doesn’t it fold the way the tobacco industry eventually did? Why doesn’t it invest its riches in things like solar panels and so profit handsomely from the next generation of energy?
Part of it’s simple enough: The giant energy companies are making so much money right now that they can’t stop gorging themselves.
Still, they could theoretically invest all that cash in new clean technology or research and development for the same. As it happens, though, they’ve got a deeper problem… Put briefly: Their value is largely based on fossil-fuel reserves that won’t be burned if we ever take global warming seriously..
If you run an oil company, this sort of write-off is the disastrous future staring you in the face as soon as climate change is taken as seriously as it should be, and that’s far scarier than drought and flood. It’s why you’ll do anything — including fund an endless campaigns of lies — to avoid coming to terms with its reality.”
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/07/climate_change_denials_new_offensive/
🙂 I see that you would rather believe in anecdotal evidence Roger, (If it’s ok for you, then I suppose you would have to admit the anecdotal evidence in the IPCC papers as well 😉 ) rather than deal with verifiable and repeatable scientific data.
Talk about “pot”, “kettle”, “black”! Have you used a mirror lately?
You are, of course, well aware that the “so called” MWP and the LIA, were localised climatic episodes, and were not representative of average global conditions.
Believe whatever you wish to believe. It has little to do with reality. You have not seen the research and published papers simply because you do not wish to believe that they exist. If you wish to consider written history as simply anecdotal it is your problem and not mine.
How are you going to deal with the greenie german professor who has just shat on the IPCC from the stratosphere?
I could say the same Roger – “you BELIEVE what you wish to BELIEVE”
The trouble with your argument is that, your so called “written history” may not, in fact, be all that you imagine it to be.
From a purely epistemological point of view, I have a more firmer basis for my knowledge, than you do for your beliefs,
Roger Dewhurst, thank you for showing us just how ignorant of the world you are:
“If it warms further agriculture will spread northwards and improve the productivity of the near polar regions. That is obvious enough, is it not?”
NO, it is not even close to reality.
I live on the Canadian prairies. It is not temperature which limits agriculture as you go north but the availability of soil. As you go north from Edmonton you quickly get into musk keg country where you cannot farm. Further west you can go almost to the northern boundary of Alberta and find agriculture along the Peace River valley (Fort Vermillion for instance). However, this is only small scale. You people never go and check your information but just regurgitate what your handlers tell you. No wonder you are referred to as “puppets”.
Further east in Canada, in Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, agriculture once gain is limited by soil, not temperature, since you quickly get on to the Canadian Shield which has almost no soil at all.
So please do some reading before uttering more nonsense about how we can just move our agriculture polewards. Then again, it does show that AGW deniers are completely lacking in common sense.
No. It is a gradual change and Canada is not northern England, Scotland, Russia or Scandinavia,
Roger Dewhurst at least knows a little bit about geography:
“Canada is not northern England, Scotland, Russia or Scandinavia”.
But don’t expect to get much credit for that since probably any Grade three child knows that.
So maybe you’d like to comment on the latest offering from the UK govt:
Natural forms of climate variability are likely to be the main influence on the UK’s climate over the next few decades.
http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/POST-PN-400.pdf
So where did AGW go?
andyS, “…look at the numbers…”
In the UK about 40% of electricity generated is from Gas and gas prices have been quite volatile over the last few years, the direction of travel being up. they have dropped a little lately but cf 5 years ago, still very high. As gas is the major source of electricity generation on the UK grid, it is unsurprising that gas price rises have resulted in electricity price rises.
The ROC incentive you note is payable to all forms of new renewable generation on a MWh basis. Costs of this incentive comprise a fraction of the aprox 10% surcharge on electricity bills for climate change. most of this fund goes to energy efficiency such as the free cavity wall insulation being offered by the energy firms at present. If you have little doubt that incentives to wind generation are pushing UK households into fuel poverty then you are either innumerate, or you swallow whole sensationalist trash from the Daily Mail.
If you want evidence of wind turbines reducing CO2 emissions, the small diesel powered grid at Port Stanly in the Falklands is a simple enough story even for a Daily Mail reader, and it even has a Royal link! http://www.enercon.de/p/downloads/WB-0407-en.pdf
“People are struggling to pay their power bills, whilst a number of rich landowners become richer at their expense by placing wind turbines on their properties.” Yeh, power to the people! They also sell the food that just grows on their land to the poor and hungry instead of just giving it away, heartless fascist overlords etc etc. (just for the avoidance of doubt andyS, as I don’t have much faith in your powers of comprehension, I am taking the mick)
As a wind developer I work with many landowners with unprofitable enterprises (eg suckler cows) on marginal land who can not afford to invest or wind up the farm. Should I start means testing landowners and only proceed with sites where you think the owner is deserving?
Oh well, it looks like the subsidies might come to an end sooner than you thought.
A total of 101 Tory MPs have written to the Prime Minister demanding that the £400 million-a-year subsidies paid to the “inefficient” onshore wind turbine industry are “dramatically cut”.
The backbenchers, joined by some MPs from other parties, have also called on Mr Cameron to tighten up planning laws so local people have a better chance of stopping new farms being developed and protecting the countryside.
The demands will be a headache for Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary, who joined the Cabinet on Friday when Chris Huhne resigned after being charged with perverting the course of justice.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9061997/100-Tories-revolt-over-wind-farms.html
I am particularly delighted by that last statement of course.
andyS – re your 101 tory MPs in revolt over wind farms, that they claim wind turbines are “inefficient” demonstrates their ignorance on the issue. They are simply parroting the childish nonsense of the likes of Moncton, Dellinpole and Booker that is given so much room in the Telegraph and Mail.
The same MP’s bill to limit turbines to beyond 2km is going nowhere because although you can get 101 nutters to sign a letter, rather more MPs know better.
(Well off topic. And sneering tone not appreciated either. Deleted. Bryan)
If they are so good why have so many been abandoned?
Roger Dewhurst – “Now perhaps you can tell us which of these companies erected a wind turbine without a subsidy and which companies will operate wind turbines without a subsidy.”
In the UK thanks to the dash for gas (where new gas plant was built supplanting the existing coal generation rather than as a replacement for the generator) we have much more generation capacity than our peak demand. We are not in the position of NZ in recent times where there is a push to get new plant in to meet rising demand and lessen the impact on capacity of drought.
The obligation you call a subsidy is an incentive to bring in new renewables into an already crowded generation marketplace.
Oh and the UK government does have an organisation that is equipped to erect wind turbines, it specialises in developing sites that are on publicly owned land.
“baseless slurs against the NZCSC”?? Howlingly funny, yet quasi-tragic. NZCSC is a collection of liars who have been insulting eminent scientists from day one, and repeating falsehoods and mistakes endlessly long after refutations have been provided.
NZ Climate Scam Coalition = Pollutocrat$ Pet$
andyS – you are Andy Scrace, aren’t you? I rather assumed so judging by both the handle and content of your first (re?)appearance post.
If you are, you have some rather spectacular ‘form’ on this site, and various others, to boot. I confess I’ve just been waiting for it all to start again since the name cropped up.
I’m so glad you have been anticipated my reappearance Bill. I feel flattered.
Since you are so interested in me, I am enjoying the benefits of living in a small NZ town south of Christchurch that doesn’t have the big scary shakes every six months, and the large cracks that appear from every wall. We are enjoying the local markets, the school for my son that is walking distance from home, and easy access to summer and winter sports.
I work from home, doing software development for guys on the other side of the planet.
I’ve seen some of your photo work Bill. It looks great. There’s some really amazing scenery round here too.
You should drop by sometime.
Has your kind offer been taken up?
Bob Jones, no doubt his name is anathema to you, wrote an entertaining book “New Zealand The Way I Want It” some years ago. He summed up the Values Party very nicely. Were you a member? You beliefs appear to fit.
I suggest that Gareth provides a forum for those who believe as he does to slap each other on the back. It is not really a forum for discussion. If he wanted a forum for discussion he might provide a list of banned words. Among these would be ‘denier’ and ‘lie’.
I believe that Chris de Freitas was on your side of the fence some twenty or thirty years ago before concluding that the evidence was inadequate. I was too, in a half hearted sort of way, until I looked at it objectively. In those days there was much more of a consensus than there is now because, superficially, the AGW argument made enough sense to be easy to accept. Many unthinkingly accepted it until they began to think. Some have not yet reached that point!
Ah, one of the interesting things about this posts thread having been scrambled is that one stumbles back over these intriguing bits and bobs.
You’re referring to Saul Alinsky – note the spelling – here, right, Roger? Not many other alternatives available on Google!
I’d just like to flag what a level of blatant wingnuttery is involved with such a citation. Alinsky is another hate-fetish figure of the lunar US Right, and a man equally irrelevant to both our lives here in the Antipodes and the AGW debate.
For a start, he died in 1972.
But what Saul Alinsky still is is a favourite whipping boy of the pseudo-populist Right; for instance, of that galactic lachrymal clown, Glenn Beck, hyper conspiracy-theorist, AGW denier, Libtard, and all round crank’s crank.
Oh, and Newt Gingrich. And the Tea Party. Oh, but some of them also hand out copies of his ‘Rules for Radicals’ as a primer on how to run a grassroots campaign! Rewritten as ‘Rules for Patriots’! You couldn’t make it up…
Why do they hate him so much? Because he was a highly-successful radical community organiser from Chicago, and therefore Barack Obama is responsible for him, and probably really is him.
(You know – it’s like Denier think. It doesn’t have to make sense!)
This is a pretty revealing insight into the circles of thought in which Roger and co. are moving. Lots and lots of baggage, much of it heavily imbued with The Crazy… Remember that question about Tobacco / Second-hand Smoke / Ozone / DDT etc. you ducked, Roger? I’m sure we’d still be interested to know…
‘Puppets on a String’ indeed!
Might I say, though I have only known of him peripherally until doing some quick research just now, I feel not the slightest pain at being compared to Alinsky.
I look forward to being compared to, oh, let’s say Frances Fox Pliven, shall we?, with considerable interest. At least she’s still alive… and a grand, feisty old lady she is, too!
Seems to me to be a shame to lose this one.
Saul Alinsky it is, right, Roger?
Searches for ‘Alinskey NZ’ and ‘Alinskey New Zealand’ didn’t produce anything… hang on! wait- maybe… no, probably not a horse… as you were…
So I figure it’s probably not some Kiwi thing I’m just not getting being a clodhopping Aussie and all that?
Anyway, while I was over at the Christian Science Monitor website learning about Barack, Hilary, Saul and Newt, I took my US Citizenship test online, and got 86%; slightly embarrassing (who the hell has house of reps terms of 2 years? How do they get anything done? You’d never do anything but campaign! And then there’s my mental block about Washington or Oregon being further north…) but easily enough to join the club, apparently! I’m expecting my Green Card in the mail any day now… 😉
PS people might want to add the permalink of each post they’re responding to on this rather mangled thread!
“The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is trivial, it is little more that is required to support plant life, and thus all life on this planet, and our contribution to the cycle is insignificant.”
Human emissions of CO2 equivalent reached 33.5Gt per yer last year. This is in ADDITION to the CO2 already existing in the atmosphere. So this is “trivial” is it? Who says so? You?
The radiative forcing of a doubling of CO₂ is about 1300 trillion watts – or 28 times the energy released by plate tectonics. This is insignificant? Who says so? You?
Humans have already increased the CO2 levels above pre-industrial by about 30% This is trivial?
You live in a parallel universe of your own creation Roger, it’s about time you stepped outside for a moment, and had a long hard look around you.
Perspective is not a word in your dictionary is it?
Where did you get the figures for energy released by plate tectonics? [Snip]
What you should be considering is the tenor of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere throughout geological history and not the last 150 years. What it was 150 years ago, which you do not know with any certainty anyway because the data was fiddles with, is utterly irrelevant to all but those whose perspective is even shorter than their own lives.
It is you who needs to [snip] see how far you have been led up the garden path.
“Where did you get the figures for energy released by plate tectonics? [Snip]”
They are a direct quote from someone who probably knows a great deal more about the subject than you Roger! Surprising as it may seem. His profile reads as follows:
“Mike Sandiford is Professor of Geology and the Director of the Melbourne Energy Institute at the University of Melbourne. His research interests include tectonics, earthquake geology, geomorphology and geothermics with a special focus on the young tectonic activity in the Indo-Australian tectonic plate. His work on the thermal structure of the Australian crust provides an important framework for understanding the extraordinary abundance of Uranium in Australia, and has lead to the current upsurge of interest in geothermal energy exploration in South Australia. He has published 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers and supervised more than 80 young researchers at Honours, Masters, PhD and junior postdoc level. Since 2000 his group has been awarded ~$4.0 million in ARC competitive grants. He was awarded consecutive ARC professorial fellowships, in 2000 and 2005, the Mawson Medal by the Australian Academy of Sciences in 2004 (for outstanding contributions to Australian Earth Science), and the Stillwell Medal by the Geological Society of Australia a total of three times. He was editor-in-chief of the international journal Tectonophysics from 2004-2009. He chairs the Science Advisory Framework for NCRIS geoscience capability AuScope, and is a member of the ARC College of Experts. He directs the Melbourne Energy Institute – one of a set of new interdisciplinary institutes established at the University of Melbourne to address issues of global concern. He regularly contributes to the broader scientific debate through media appearances and public lectures.”
This will probably end up all over the shop, but Macro, I saw a presentation of Mike Sandiford’s at Womad Earth Station late last year, and it was fascinating. I’ve been hoping it will find its way online – as I saw it being videoed – but haven’t tracked it down yet. I’ve even emailed the organisers – there were many very interesting talks, almost all of which were recorded – but have received no reply.
There is only one word to describe that; rubbish.
After they kill all the mature trees of the type they like, they go away.
See more, including pictures.
The “good news” about beetles is that once they’ve killed the relevant mature trees, they die off. They did Colorado lodgepoles a while ago, see this. Of course, the spruce beetles are working there way along.
Needless to say, you don’t want these in NZ. Sad to say, insects migrate faster than trees. Like bark beetles, kudzu is killed by sharp cold spells. Sadly, the vien that ate the South has been moving steadily North, has actually been seen in Canada. Researchers at U Toronto expect it to survive quite well in lower Ontario by 2020. That’s a nice presentation that lots of pictures of kudzu and other Really Bad Plants, plus maps that show its spread as a function of warming temperatures. Recall that both theory expects more warming to happen in winter/night, meaning less cold spells to kill the stuff. Apparently its in Queensland, don’t let it into NZ. It is especially responsive to higher CO2, like poison ivy.
Near where we ski most often in B.C. is Lake Okanagan, the prime wine area of Canada. When I first heard the phrase “Canadian wine” I laughed, but with global warming, the vineyards have marched up the lake valley over the last 30 years. It’s not Napa, but there are decent wines.
Of course, Napa won’t be the same Napa.
Roger, your decrepit old zombie tropes have been debunked many times before, and are listed, for your convenience and (who knows?) education at http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
At least you acknowledge that the basic science of IR absorption by CO2 was settled 100 years ago!
As for atmospheric CO2 influencing the paleoclimate, have you never heard of the PETM, or Snowball Earth?
I suggest you do some basic reading on the subject – Bryan Leyland has a copy of “Global Warming for Dummies” that you could share.
Thanks for summarising the twaddle in one place. That saves some searching.
The people you like to describe as scientists are, by and large, paid propagandists.
Gore got right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That sums up your case.
.
Epic fail, Roger – your scientific ignorance appears to be matched only by your gullibility and boorishness.
Ignorant, obnoxious troll – you deserve (re)banishment.
Roger said, ‘A couple of years ago Canada was pretty much brought to a halt due to a brief cold spell.”
We generally call those cold spells, ‘winter’. They happen on a cyclical basis, especially the further you move north or south from the Equator.
Seriously Roger, why can’t you put your point across without being rude? I wonder if you do it on purpose to get a rude reaction back, thus to justify your labelling of people who disagree with you and to uphold as a trophy to your contrarian mates?
There is no global cooling happening. Sell your shares in fur-lined parkas and buy some in sun-shades instead.
I’m not sure how this ended up above Roger’s post instead of below it.
For examples of rudeness just consider the writings from those on your side of the fence, GR for example : “Put them where the sun does not shine”
As for Holmes. He wrote the first edition in 1942. I have no doubt that he was long dead before the third edition appeared.
For examples of rudeness, I would note that this thread has been spared about two thirds of all Roger’s submitted comments because they have failed to pass moderation — and I consider I’ve been fairly liberal!
There are two dates shown, Durham 1942 and Edinburgh 1944.
Holmes died 20th September 1965. His wife Doris, also a geologist, edited the third edition.
(Couldn’t use edit function). Principles of Geology was first published in 1944. I hope that if Roger ever needs an operation his surgeon isn’t relying on a 68 year old text book.
Sorry about the edit… Got the buttons back, which is progress, but they don’t work…
Given that representatives of ICSC and NZCSC have appeared, it’s sad that time is wasted repeating wornout memes and arguing about the existence of winter. After all, the topic of this post was *money* and there are so many interesting questions.
Here are a few, just for starters?
1) Were ICSC and NZCSC tax-exempt charities in 2007 when the money arrived? If not, did they have IRS Determination Letters?
2) USA 501(c)3 rules can be tricky, especially when one first starts doing grants outside the US. (I think 2007 was the first time Heartland ever did it.) There are many ways to go wrong, including having to get the money back. Can one presume the NZ entities were familiar with these rules before they took the money, including the necessary record-keeping? And making sure benefits did not inure to individuals?
They have appeared, but have chosen not to address the substantive matter – the money they have received from the Heartland Institute.
I can confirm that neither the ICSC or NZ CSC are registered charities in New Zealand. Nor are they registered societies. How they have accounted for the Heartland income in terms of NZ tax law is not clear. Perhaps Bryan would care to let us know? I’m sure they would rather not have their tax affairs investigated by our Inland Revenue Department.
Oh, my.
Shades of Friends of Science, Calgary Foundation, Barry Cooper and the University of Calgary.
I hope that the Canadian Revenue Agency is still investigating that misuse of charitable donations. Are you reading this Tom Harris? Have they come after you lot yet?
Roger, given your failing and flailing performance above, your opinion on anything is nothing but a “factoid of little credibility”…
Well put, Bill.
I visualise Roger Dewhurst as a little boy with his fingers in his ears, shouting “I can’t hear you, nyah, nyah, nyah!”, rather than admit he’s made a mistake.
I suspect he must be quite an embarrassment to his denialist mates – I notice not even Leyland has come to his defence.
What worries me more than the Big Oil and Big Coal funded denialist nonsense in so many of these posts is that Joe Soap,an innocent punter whose AGW concerns are growing,joins up and reads the comments.He’ll conclude reasonably that there are major disputes in the science’s bona fides.Accordingly,what his mates say–it’s all rubbish–is right! I think the time has come for the moderator to close this thing down.It’s gone to lala land notwithstanding the fact that there is no dispute over the science–the nonsence here is just fabricated,and remunerative junk.
Peter Cummins
I’m still waiting for Cindy Baxter to provide evidence that, as a result of Heartland paying some of my expenses to Bali, I changed my views on man-made global warming.
I’m still waiting for Gareth and Cindy to provide a list of the lies that we are supposed to have told together with evidence demonstrating beyond doubt, that they are lies.
I’m still waiting for Gareth to do something about his bet that the world would soon warm.
And here is some evidence that the world has cooled and is likely to continue cooling.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html
Hey, Bryan, how did you get on with “Global Warming for Dummies”?
Bryan Leyland!
You’ve taught me a lesson.I didn’t believe big,big lies were so popular! The punters adore them.They all pile in with lots of support for AGW denial and lots of ire for those that don’t.And in propogating big,big lies as in that Daily Mail article,you truly emphasise your gruesume ethicality.
The journalist who wrote the piece (or rather fabricated it) has reversed (yes,reversed!) the scientists’ conclusions–the big,big lie–and then contacted the usual extreme scientist outliers for supporting comments.
If someone told me this story,I’d have been sceptical of it.But,you have to live egregious behavior to learn it.Astounding!
And,how the people (sheeple) love denial–that’s so dangerous:the biggest problem of all.
Peter Cummins
Lots of rant with no substance. Go through the article and point out, if you can, those paragraphs which justify your conclusions. It appeared to me to be a pretty dispassionate article which puts both points of view but the writer came to a conclusion that you do not like. Your response, a childish one indeed, but par for the course in this forum, is to yell lies, lies lies. Rather than reposting the text have a look at what I wrote in response to Carol Cowan.
See Barry Bickmore’s analysis of the Mail on Sunday article here.
Plus: David Rose has previous form.
See also: Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy: a superb overview of solar activity and the prospects for extended cooling.
Strawman. Neither Cindy nor I accused you of changing your views, merely that they were so congenial to the notorious Heartland Institute that they were happy to give the NZ CSC and ICSC US$70,000 in 2007.
Please do tell us how much more money Heartland has supplied to these organisations over the last four years. Purely in the interests of transparency, you understand.
I have provided you with a list of the factual inaccuracies in your recent Dom Post article earlier in this thread, and provided an example that proves one misrepresentation. You simply refuse to accept that you have made any error – which is I suppose understandable in a man who fails to understand the difference between “no significant warming” and “warming that narrowly falls to meet one test of statistical significance”.
It proved impossible to agree terms. You want to bet on short timescales – which are dominated by natural variability like ENSO – not over the longer periods over which the long term trend becomes clear.
Ha! A piece of sceptic fluff in the Daily Mail by David Rose! Show me a peer-reviewed paper that makes the same argument.
So: to return to the point of this article. How much money has the Heartland Institute provided to the NZ CSC and ICSC, and what was it spent on? Your failure to address this question to date speaks volumes.
“In those days there was much more of a consensus than there is now because, superficially, the AGW argument made enough sense to be easy to accept. ”
Roger, I am curious to learn your position regarding the Arctic. Do you agree with Vincent Gray that there is little or no melting? Or do you accept that there is significant melting, its just natural variation. Or would you say that it is melting rather quickly, but an ice free Arctic is nothing to be concerned about. Or do you think cooling is going to prevent further melting?
You are spoilt for choice when it comes to options here.
I stand corrected, John – Willie Soon is hired help, rather than a curmudgeon. Vincent Gray is definitely a curmudgeon, whereas Chris de Freitas is a wannabe curmudgeon.
” After all he is a geologist and a pretty successful one at that.”
“Where do your climatologists fit in this scheme of things? In the last 50 years perhaps.”
Wee-eell> Perhaps your history of science is a bit lacking.
One of geology’s main underpinnings is plate tectonics. Which wasn’t sorted out until after 1950.
The radiative properties of CO2 were well-known the previous century (Tyndall & friends) and the possible climate warming effects were carefully calculated by Svante Arrhenius in 1896. Half a century earlier than the geologists got their act on the road.
Geology has =no= claims to being older, more established or any other virtue you might want to ascribe to it.
Actually it was F B Taylor in America 1908 and Alfred Wegener in Germany in 1910, but they called it something else!
If I recall correctly William Smith (1769–1839) was was the real pioneer and it all started off with stratigraphy, he beat Arrhenius by quite a few years, close to a century. Really you should acquire a few facts before you spout!
Careful there! In 1897, geologist T. C. Chamberlain developed the theory that climate (glacial) cycles involved feedbacks in the the global biogeochemical cycling of carbon between atmosphere, ocean and land. He also developed the approach of multiple working hypotheses to the study of complex natural system. You can learn more at http://www.eoearth.org/article/Chamberlin,_Thomas_Chrowder.
In no way should this comment be taken as an apology for Dimhurst’s brand of misinformation.
I see the Herald has picked up this story.
How about reading this and responding to the evidence he quotes rather than ad hominem abuse and claims of lies that you then don’t back up with evidence.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/global-warming-nonsense-gets-a-true-cold-shoulder/story-e6frezz0-1226258756363
I read the first paragraph and saw a gross lie. How can you even think that anything written by A Bolt will be even close to accurate?
Here is the proof for the lie in the first paragraph:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1997/plot/gistemp/from:1997/trend
When will you issue an apology for all the lies you have been spreading?
I suppose you think that a linear regression through the currents in a pudding must prove something.
Remove that meaningless regression line and you are left with nothing but some very noisy data.
Linear regressions are fine when you have good reason to suppose that the data would fall on a straight line but for small errors of measurement. That is not the case here. Linear regression has no useful application here.
It seems that there are other sets of data from which entirely different conclusions can be drawn.
Roger, why do you keep on showing your ignorance, arrogance and complete lack of anything do with science with every post? It was obvious from your first post what your motives are.
You certainly cannot draw a linear regression through the neurons in your scalp (I hate to call it a brain) since you need more than one to be able to do so.
Ian, the Woodfortrees link you provide uses GISSTemp which does indeed show a warming trend for the last 10 years.
However, if you use the same link with HADCrut3, you get a horizontal line, and other series show a slight decline or incline.
Perhaps a more interesting discussion is to look at how the land and sea temperature records are performing against IPCC models.
Nir Shaviv’s post suggests that the temperature series are underperforming the models.
How about you stop spamming this thread with nonsense, and answer the question you’ve now ignored three times:
How much money has the Heartland Institute provided to the NZ CSC and ICSC over the last 4 years, and what was it spent on?
I suppose that it is the article in the (Australian) Telegraph that offends you. I realise that the writer has pointed out some rather inconvenient facts but that happens from time to time. If you choose to promote a cause which will cost people both political freedom and quite a lot of money you can expect a backlash from time to time. I have no doubt that these sort of newspaper articles will become increasingly frequent and increasingly notices by the general public. The press, generally, has been riding on the AGW bandwagon for many years. Now some of the journalists are showing a bit of independence.
Exactly; Bryan / Roger, stop the bafflegab – and show us the money!
Back to the money, which is far more interesting than repetition of worn memes from teh SkS catalog.
Having seen the NZ Herald piece, I was especially fascinated by:
“Asked why the coalition did not disclose its funding from Heartland, Mr Leyland said the money came from private donors who “had no interest in climate change”.
It is demonstrably true that some money came from Heartland. It is demonstrably true that money is fungible. Heartland has gotten money over the years from ExxonMobil, Chevron, Amoco, American Petroleum Institute and various big family foundations, some of whom have *intense* interest in climate change, as they fund most of the other climate in the US. So, the only way Leyland’s statement can be true is if:
a) He *knows* the exact identities of the donors
b) They had no interest in climate change, but specified that the money be sent through Heartland to NZCSC and ICSC. ) If they just gave the money for general Heartland operations,then Heartland made the decision and they do have an interest. I’ll have to think about that: American donor, zero interest in climate, so send money to 2 little groups in NZ, who are not charities so cannot take charitable deduction. Well, that makes sense 🙂
Alternatively, Leyland may really not be able to specify the donors and does not know exactly where the money originated and how it got to NZ.
On the 97%
Take Professor Naomi Oreskes, the author of Merchants of Doubt who famously tried to prove that not one scientific paper dissented from the global warming “consensus”.
Last week she complained people still “cling to the idea it is reasonable to maintain an open mind — It isn’t”.
Is that the article referring to the very sensible judge?
The one who asked prospective jurors about what to do when they hadn’t made up their minds. She asked for those who’d not decided (on the hypothetical situation she posed) that the accused should be convicted, how many thought they should acquit and how many wanted more information.
The ones who wanted more information before they could make up their minds ……… had clearly not absorbed the the “innocent until proven guilty” message, and were dismissed from service. Because they so clearly demonstrated that they didn’t understand the process.
The parallel to deciding on science is not especially neat. But it’s there. If any of us lacks the scientific skills to come up with better data, analysis, theory than those who are expert, our only option is to accept expertise. We don’t have to be eager or glad, let alone gleeful. We can be reluctant, unhappy or downright grumpy.
Much the same as we are when a doctor tells us we have to give up our favourite food or pastime, or we have to take nasty, smelly medicine. We don’t have to like it. We can get a second opinion —– from another expert — but we have to go with the expertise. And the more experts tell us the same thing, the more we have to resign ourselves to what they’re telling us.
Rubbish. Read Donna la Framboise and you will see what the IPCC really is.
But who are the experts?
I have never heard of that extraordinary example. The presumption is that the prosecution presents its best case and so does the defence. In practice there are deficiencies, more often in the defence case than the prosecution case because they have less money and the defendant has no experience to guide him in the selection of his lawyer. Defence lawyers are more likely to be incompetent particularly if they are legal aid lawyers. A juror may well believe that deficiences need to be queried because justice is not served if the guilty go free or the innocent are convicted. Some judges are inclined to forget that, at bottom, their job is to deliver justice and not the law.
What Adelady said. Your very stock-in-trade is Unreasonable Doubt.
As the behaviour of some around here makes abundantly clear, in the face of overwhelming evidence piling up over decades a determination to maintain ‘an open mind’ merely leads to one’s brain falling out.
Are you a smoking / secondary-smoking / ozone / asbestos ‘skeptic’ as well? Whatever the answer, many of your fellow-travellers certainly are.
How about the Iron Sun? The Ether? HIV?
We call this, justly, ‘Crank Magnetism’. You can tell yourself it’s all ‘open mindedness’ if you wish…
I’ll take open eyes over an open mind any day
Dravitzki, S. and McGregor, J. 2011. Extreme precipitation of the Waikato region, New Zealand. International Journal of Climatology 31: 1803-1812
“Results of this study show there is no evidence for the projections of Trenberth and the IPCC over a 107-year period — when climate alarmists claim the world warmed at a rate and to a level of warmth that were unprecedented over the past millennium or more, at least for this important part of New Zealand …”
Whilst I have never met Roger Dewhurst, my mental model of him predicts, with confidence, that he will continue to make a fool of himself here.
***************** 97% ***************
In June 2009, the first full NIPCC report was published by The Heartland Institute. It is titled Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). The new report, some 880 pages in length, is the most comprehensive critique of the IPCC’s positions ever published. It lists 35 contributors and reviewers from 14 countries and presents in an appendix the names of 31,478 American scientists who have signed a petition saying “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.”
Yeah, right….
http://www.skepticalscience.com/OISM-Petition-Project.htm
God Almighty, Roger, the Oregon Petition? Really? You might as well cite ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’!
Bill: this may be hard to believe, but some people think the following are credible: global warming experts:
Joseph Bast, President of Heartland, who calls himself a climate expert.
Art Robinson (OISM), i.e., Oregon Petition
Oops, and I forgot, regarding Heartland, here’s a nice little article from Nature, a journal that might be unfamiliar to some. It is worth reading, 1 page.
Quote from Nature link above
Does the following sound familiar? “They distort science, ignore reality and will not tolerate opinions or facts that conflict with their beliefs.”
Sounds very familiar to me. Not, perhaps in the way you imagined though.
Roger Dewhurst – “Most of my geological work has involved unconsolidated sediments, thus younger rocks”
Uh, oh……. false appeal to authority here!!!! The topic under discussion is climate science.
Roger, experts are those that publish in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and whose works stands up to scrutiny by other experts.
You haven’t done that. Your comments are contradicted by the peer reviewed literature and the observations – like the Earth continually getting warmer as a result of increased greenhouse gases.
Therefore your comments are useless.
A Russian scientist is predicting a Little ice age.
http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/apr/article/view/14754/10140
A well-known climate scientist. It is well worth reading.
Where is all this warming?
Where was all the evidence of all the lies we are supposed to have told?
What has happened to the bet that Gareth was supposed to make with me?
All lost in a cooling world?
Are you still on the take from the U$ Heartland In$titute, Bryan?
If the TSI did drop as low as 1360 as Abdussamatov predicts, that might happen—but a simple check on another source on what the estimated TSI was at 1364 in 1700, not 1360 as depicted on the graph in his paper. No doubt there’s some shonky science there, for some real science see http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
Bryan Leyland:
“Where was all the evidence of all the lies we are supposed to have told?”
You might not have lied about the acceleration of global sea level rise and the effect of El Nino on sea level but you certainly didn’t tell the truth:
http://hot-topic.co.nz/puppets-on-a-string-us-think-tank-funds-nz-sceptics/comment-page-1/#comment-28808
For those lurkers who genuinely want to be educated, Sceptical Science is an excellent place to start:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
Abdussamatov is familiar, even has a Wikipedia entry, which has at least 2 of the bad arguments from SkS.
In any case, I’d suggest the LIA was a combination of:
1) The striking CO2 dip from ~525 -1600AD where it then stayed for ~200 years.
2) The Maunder Minimum, which started *after* that drop, so did not cause it.
3) Volcaoes.
But Why 1)? Best explanation I’ve seen is the 50M-person die-off from disease post-Columbus in the Americas, allowing massive reforestation in high-biomass areas. That’s the biggest die-off in human history.
Polar amplification works both ways with CO2, so the drop would tend to have more effect on land further North, especially near the snow-line … i.e., Europe was a good spot to see it.
For anyone interested in the die-off, see this paper.
Unless one rejects the basic physics of greenhouse gases (as Abdussamatov does), then one might well have another Maunder, but we’re not going to be at 275ppm. Serious scientists think we’re likley not to even have a short at anotehr ice age for 50,000 years, althouhg it’s tricky. David Archer’s “The Long T haw” is a good one for a general audience.
But still, all that’s science.
Money is more interesting, especially when one can follow it by official tax forms filled out by people who might not know what they are doing. Why is it people go into “look! a squirrel!” mode instead of discussing the topic of this post, which is money? 🙂
But still, there is the money, far more interesting.
“Did I mention weather?”
You excluded it from being unpredictable with this statement:
“If the models work nothing is unpredictable.”
Judging by the articles that have been written in the Press by some of the named gents I would suggest that a lot of the public already have quite strong views either way on climate issues (judging by recent comments in the online editions).
It is up to a newspaper editor whether to publish a piece, and anyone can set up a blog site.
I’m not really sure that the existence of the NZCSC changes any of this, anymore than the existence of the Global Warming Policy Foundation does in the UK.
If your objection is that these betitled organisations are somehow giving undue credit to what you consider “pseudo-science” then I can see your point, but I don’t agree with it.
My view is that the science and policy is skewed towards the “consensus” position, and that the general public should at least have some other views, especially with regard to the policy aspect. Gordon Brown’s description of those who had doubts (about 50% of the UK public at the time) before the last UK election, as “flat earthers and deniers” was a low point in my view.
Ultimately, shutting down debate is not healthy and it will harm the public’s perception of science.
Question for the NZ Climate Scam Coalition: have you used your funding from foreign pollutocrats to bankroll your Court action against hard-working NZ government scientists?
http://hot-topic.co.nz/when-asses-go-to-law/
How does Piers Corbyn produce better forecast than the Met Office?
WeatherAction
Delta House, 175-177 Borough High Street. London SE1 1HR +44(0)207939 9946
http://www.weatheraction.com From Piers Corbyn +44(0)7958713320
http://twitter.com/Piers_Corbyn , piers@weatheraction.com
Earth facing Coronal Hole triggers major quake and severe weather as predicted by SLAT7 = Pdf link
http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews12No6.pdf
Thanks
Piers
Remainder snipped. There’s no way we’ll accept the great long list of links you provided to accompany this. This is a comment thread, not a free parking place. Bryan
“How does Piers Corbyn produce better forecast than the Met Office?”
He doesn’t. Just says he does, and in some quarters thats good enough.
For anyone who doubts that Corbyn’s forecasts are worse than useless overall, just take a look over at uk.sci.weather. Of course, the intellectual capacity of some of his clients is so low that they can’t even pick up gross errors.
Really, Andy, a “wind troll”? Is that anything like a “concern troll”?
A concern troll is a false flag pseudonym created by a user whose actual point of view is opposed to the one that the user claims to hold. The concern troll posts in Web forums devoted to its declared point of view and attempts to sway the group’s actions or opinions while claiming to share their goals, but with professed “concerns”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29
More rubbish from Roger Dewhurst:
“It is more than stupid, it is just about criminal, to fail to plan for the cooling that all the real world evidence suggests is upon us in the next decades”
You are completely wrong. You are denying the science.. There is no reputable science telling us we are going to cool. That is just a lie. Continued release of CO2 will only result in the climate doing one thing and that is warming. Global warming will have drastic effects on the distribution of precipitation, making drought much more common (see Texas) or increased flooding (see Mississippi basin). That will have dramatic spin off effects on world food supply and cost.
Increasing temperatures will also affect agriculture. There are numerous reports showing that increases in night time temperature has a negative effect on rice yields (http://www.pnas.org/content/101/27/9971.full). As you may, or may not, be aware, increasing night time temperature is one of the fingerprints for AGW.
You and your cabal of Tom Harris paid deniers are the ones acting in a criminal manner by distributing your lies and distortions.
Roger, I can see why they have to pay you to spout this nonsense!
There has been a lot of discussion on this so it seems like a good opportunity to summarize where we have got to.
1st, Cindy Baxter claimed that because I got some of my expenses paid by Heartland, nothing that I say should be taken seriously. I pointed out that what really mattered was whether or not it could be shown that I had changed my opinion as a result of getting the money. I also pointed out that a major part of my income comes from renewable energy and this benefits from the emissions trading scheme that I oppose. Cindy has never responded. One to me.
2nd. Cindy and Gareth are both accused me of telling lies. I am challenged them to say exactly what lies I am supposed to be telling and provide the evidence that demonstrates that their claim is justified. No response of any substance. Two to me.
3rd. I pointed out that according to all the major temperature records, the world is not warmed significantly in the last 10 to 15 years. No one has brought up any evidence to the contrary. Three to me.
4th. In response to the 3rd point, People have claimed that the ocean is warming and therefore the world is warming. If it has, there is no way you can definitely link the warming to man-made carbon dioxide because ocean currents move in strange ways that we do not fully understand and the time cycle is long.
5th. I have pointed out that, recently, the rate of rise in sea level has slowed and, according to some reports, the sea level has gone down. None of the arguments respond to this as they all refer to longer time periods.
In the main, the responses seem to bring up new subjects upon which I made no statement or continue to accuse me of speaking as I do only because of a little bit of money from Heartland. Which I have comprehensively refuted.
In general, the attitude of those who choose to believe in dangerous man-made global warming is to avoid debating the critical points and, instead, do everything they can to deny free speech to the skeptics. At the same time, by refusing to respond to support accusations they have made, they are clearly abusing their right of free speech.
The right of free speech is a privilege that we enjoy as a result of living in a Western society. It is a privilege that our predecessors died for. Those who want to deny this to people who they disagree with are doing their best to turn our society into one that is more like the societies that relatively recently, ruled Russia and Germany and still rule in many parts of the world.
Why do deniers always have to lie? Bryan Leyland has a list of claims which he assures us are correct and truthful. Well, surprise surprise, nothing could be further from the truth.
For example his claim #3:
“I pointed out that according to all the major temperature records, the world is not warmed significantly in the last 10 to 15 years. No one has brought up any evidence to the contrary. Three to me”.
Is a blatant lie since I responded to this rubbish immediately following his claim. See http://hot-topic.co.nz/puppets-on-a-string-us-think-tank-funds-nz-sceptics/#comment-28977 where I showed him a graph of temperatures for the past 15 years which show an increasing trend, contrary to what he claimed:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1997/plot/gistemp/from:1997/trend
I’m sure his other claims can also be disproved but why waste time and effort when it is a well known fact that deniers and the truth are not well acquainted.
Are Bryan Leyland and Roger Dewhurst the best that Tom Harris can find, surely they must be considered as “second string”?
You describe this as a “lie”, yet you cherry pick the only temperature record (GISSTemp) that supports this assertion to any degree. As I have pointed out in previous comments, HadCrut3 and its permutations don’t show any warming.
When are you lot ever going to learn a little fundamental physics? Temperature and Heat are NOT synonymous. It is perfectly possible for the earth to be warming without an increase in atmospheric temperature. Melting glaciers, reducing Arctic ice, and warming oceans are obvious signs of global warming (ie increasing heat). Nevertheless atmospheric temperatures have been tending upwards over recent decades and that is undeniable.
You might also, while you are at it, learn a few fundamental statistical techniques, (ie 132 month running averages for a start) Why 132 months? Well that is 11 years – just enough to smooth out variables like ENSO and Solar irradiance, and when that is done, the trend is clearly obvious – Global temperatures ARE increasing no matter which set of measurements you pick.
AndyS: http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47
So Bryan, let’s summarise, shall we. The “some expenses” or “little bit of money” paid by Heartland amounted to US$70,000 in 2007, and you have failed to provide any comment on the amount, or whether there were any further payments.
The rest of your comment amounts to simply putting your fingers in your ears and shouting “la la la, can’t hear you”.
Meanwhile the world continues to accumulate energy, ice melts and temperature rises. The judgement of future generations (let alone this one) will be harsh.
Bryan:
1) I think you got the money because of your opinion and because you offered to be a pawn on the chessboard of the disinformation game run by the circles behind the denial campaign in the USA.
2) You have constantly repeated nonsense about climate change and alternative energy concepts as has been aptly pointed out to your here and elsewhere.
3) The temperature record is a bumpy one. As has been pointed out to you too many times to count: The GW trend is seen in the long term averages. We had many periods along the line where short term averages looked like horizontal or even declining lines despite the fact that overall the warming progresses along the model predicted trend.
4) Irrelevant. What counts is the radiative energy balance which as we know due to rising greenhouse gases is tilted towards global warming. Many systems on Earth soak up the added flow of energy, not just the atmosphere.
5) … because again short term fluctuations are irrelevant for the long term trend. Last year a lot of water has been delivered onto flood stricken land masses of Asia and elsewhere. As has been aptly pointed out, that water has to come from somewhere….
You are entitled to your free speech. Your “little bit of funding” from Heartland simply lays bare the motives. Speech paid for by industrial lobby groups and right wing political interests such as Heartland simply shows the rest of us how “freely” you form your opinions and whether science or political interests inform the process by which you do so.
So would you assert, Thomas, that anyone who receives funding from industry groups that favour their point of view should be ignored? I think for example, of Lord Oxburgh who was involved in the climategate enquiries, who is on the board of Falck renewables.
Bryan Leyland is not ignored at all. His views have been looked at and considered and found not to stack up. Many people have tried to educate him to no avail. Same with Monckton and the other lordship and the cabal of deniers and their conferences…They are not ignored. They have the right to their opinion but not to their own facts….
A few more points.
The world continues to cool and will remain cool until August 2012 at least. So 2012 will not be a warm year. http://web.me.com/bryanleyland/Site_3/Global_Cooling.html
The lack of warming has gone on so long that there is no chance that, even at unprecedented rates of increase in temperature, the trend line of actual temperatures could coincide with the trend line of the temperatures predicted by climate models this side of about 2030 or even later. http://web.me.com/bryanleyland/Site_3/Climate_models.html
And here is a peer reviewed paper predicting a Little ice age.
http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/apr/article/view/14754
What continues to amaze me is that you “warmers” predict (against all the historical evidence) that if the world warms, it will be a disaster for mankind. Yet when people produce evidence that it may not be warming, you attack them like mad dogs. A rational response would be to examine the evidence closely, and if that is true, rejoice.
Just thought you might like to know.
Nir Shaviv makes a similar point here
http://www.sciencebits.com/IPCC_nowarming
in which he claims that the land and sea temperature records are tracking below IPCC projections, and that estimates to climate sensitivity to CO2 need to be adjusted accordingly.
Bryan Leyland, why do you lie so much?
“The world continues to cool”
You have no scientific proof for that statement, it is only a regurgitated piece of nonsense spewed out by a few dishonest scientists. You mange to name four of them in one post.
You and your fossil fuel funded stooges are so completely wrong on this but you continue to show your ignorance of the science and your hatred of scientists with every post you and your cabal of deniers make. Why are you so full of hatred? Why do you refuse to actually go to sites and sources of accurate information? It is really quite easy if you really wanted to. Your refusal to go to accurate sites after been told over and over again that you are wrong means that your ignorance is based on your political and economic beliefs and that you are not really concerned with the actual science.
(Final word snipped Bryan)
Agreed.
(Snipped in interests of politeness, however difficult that may sometimes be. Bryan)
On a related note, the word from the UK Met Office is this:
(This was an article from the Sunday Times, but reproduced on the GWPF website).
Perhaps the simplest first step is to put aside the arguments and get back to the data. Is it really true that global temperatures have not risen since 1997?
The simple answer is: they have risen, but not by very much. “Our records for the past 15 years suggest the world has warmed by about 0.051C over that period,” said the Met Office. In layman’s terms that is 51 thousandths of a degree.
These figures come from the Met Office HadCruT3 database, which takes readings from 3,000 land stations around the world, along with oceanic readings from a similar number of ships and buoys.
http://thegwpf.org/science-news/4902-sunday-times-why-has-it-warmed-so-much-less-than-ipcc-predicted.html
Note, I am not getting into any arguments or slanging matches here. Just relaying the facts.
The thing about neural-outsourcing your thinking to the likes of the GWPF (and Jonathon Leake!) and then cherry-picking away (which you’re possibly even not aware of; did you perhaps pluck this little morsel straight out of the Deniosphere chum-bucket without any checking?) is that you’re liable to end up looking a bit silly. ( 😉 )
Let’s go to the source, shall we? Sans the cherrypicking?
And:
Just the facts, ma’am.
You’ve been away, Andy, but you haven’t changed a bit!
The article was from the Sunday TImes, and I was not cherry picking. I was taking a direct quote from the Met Office to back up the claim that there has been little or no warming in the last 15 years. I was not talking about the last 30 years, as you seem to claim.
As for the claim that 15 years is too short a time, then that’s fine, it’s a different argument.
Same old strawman arguments. Not much changes.
You were not talking about the last 30 years, you say?
But I’ve just looked back through the exchange above, and that 15 year claim was only made in the chunk you pasted; so you were sort-of using it to back up a claim it actually made itself! Cosmic!… Don’t get excited; doubtlessly there was some previous bunfight elsewhere, since ‘not warming enough for 15 years so it actually counts as cooling’ is a contrarian shibboleth at the moment, but it’s this exchange I was responding to.
And remind me; are the 30 year trends (technically significant indeed!) more meaningful than the 15 year ones? Could you actually answer this question?
So I’ll just review the exchange again:
Bryan L’s got his ‘belief in the models*’ on, and can now predict how far temperatures will rise by 2030 with full confidence! Oh, and he’s also confident the world has been cooling since last Wednesday, so no changes there.
(Oh, and ‘2012 will not be a warm year.’ How ‘not warm’ will it be, Bryan? Relative to all those years in the 20th Century, for example? As ‘not warm’, say, as 1956? Please don’t duck the question, we really want to know!)
Then you’ve found a nice, Moncktonesque graph. Hmmm. Why do I suspect those supposed IPCC projection curves don’t match the actual IPCC projection curves. Anyway, I see your graph, and raise you this and this.
This from a nice man whose post begins –
Woah! That’d be Andrew Bolt the world-famous brainy scientist guy, then?
Then we get your Met Office via Leake via Murdoch via the GWPF. (Now, that’s provenance!) And a reminder you’ve no dog in this fight; you’re just here as a public service, right? 😉
And then it seems 15 years may well be too short a time, after all? Can I take it that’s at least part of an answer to the question I asked above?
‘Same old strawman arguments. Not much changes.’ Indeed.
*Only that small number whose results he likes, of course. He’s also found a peer-reviewed paper he likes, too, even though peer-review is a corrupt and broken institution, and all that.
Bill, I will recap the exchange since the thread is a bit messed up.
Bryan Leyland claims there has been no warming for over a decade (or something like that)
Ian Forrester accuses Bryan Leyland of lying ( a fairly strong phrase in my books) and uses a cherry picked temperature series (GISSTemp) on WoodForTrees. As I point out to him, you can chose just about any other temperature series on WfT to come to any other conclusion you want, whether it be mild warming, cooling or flatline.
Note, I am NOT making any deductions as to the veracity of the approach, the statistical significance, etc.
So then, I produce a quote from the Met Office. Now I am really sorry if Mr Leake is not an “approved person”, but I believe the quotes are directly attributable to the Met Office.
So, given that the Met Office claim that there has been no warming for the last 15 years (I think we can all agree that 0.015decC over 15 years is as close to zero to make no difference), will Mr Forrester be contacting the Met Office and accuse them of lying?
This comment is in reply to the nonsense put up by AndyS at February 7, 2012 at 9:11 am.
All of his posts and also those from the other two trolls who present their rubbish in this thread are wrong. Is it because they are too lazy to actually find out what the true facts are or do they have dishonest motives for their misinformation?
AndyS quotes a long list of proven liars (Leake, Murdoch Press and the GWPF) to distort what the Met Office have said about warming in the past 15 years or so. All of these sources are full of lies and misquotes (surprise surprise).
Here is how the Met Office responded to these lies:
“This article includes numerous errors in the reporting of published peer reviewed science undertaken by the Met Office Hadley Centre and for Mr. Rose to suggest that the latest global temperatures available show no warming in the last 15 years is entirely misleading.
Despite the Met Office having spoken to David Rose ahead of the publication of the story, he has chosen to not fully include the answers we gave him to questions around decadal projections produced by the Met Office or his belief that we have seen no warming since 1997.
For clarity I have included our full response to David Rose below:A spokesman for the Met Office said: “The ten year projection remains groundbreaking science. The complete period for the original projection is not over yet and these projections are regularly updated to take account of the most recent data.
“The projections are probabilistic in nature, and no individual forecast should be taken in isolation. Instead, several decades of data will be needed to assess the robustness of the projections.
“However, what is absolutely clear is that we have continued to see a trend of warming, with the decade of 2000-2009 being clearly the warmest in the instrumental record going back to 1850. Depending on which temperature records you use, 2010 was the warmest year on record for NOAA NCDC and NASA GISS, and the second warmest on record in HadCRUT3”.
So no I am not going to contact the Met Office and accuse them of lying since I am in complete agreement with what they have to say.
It is scoundrels like you, AndyS, who should write to the Met Office and apologize for spreading lies about what they say.
Note that there were two dishonest reporters telling lies about the Met Office science, Rose and Leake in different papers.
In response to Ian Forrester:
It is scoundrels like you, AndyS, who should write to the Met Office and apologize for spreading lies about what they say.
(a) Please give me a reference or citation to the quote you provide
(b) If the Met Office are incorrect in their statement that the world has warmed by 0.051degC in the last 15 years, please provide an alternative figure, with references
(c) Please explain to me why you chose GISSTemp over HADCrut3 to support your assertion that Bryan Leyland is a liar.
(d) Please explain why the Sunday Times is “spreading disinformation” and the steps that you intend to take to rectify this.
(e) Please explain why you use the response to David Rose’s article in the Mail when it was an article in the Sunday Times that I was talking about.
“Please explain to me why you chose GISSTemp over HADCrut3 to support your assertion that Bryan Leyland is a liar.”
One system uses a dataset extended from actual shore station readings, in the other the hemispheric mean temperature anomaly is extrapolated. Now tell us which one you would expect to be more accurate and your reasoning.
Also, why are denialists able to frame the debate to no warming in the past 15 years and get away with it? Why not ask the question, why has there been no cooling to pre 1940 levels? The way the glaciers are disappearing, many countries are being hammered by floods and extreme weather events, among other things should be enough of a warning signal that we might be heading in the wrong direction. Nature will not wait until Bryan Leyland understands the full force of a warming planet to wreak a bit of havoc. How many people will have to suffer and die before he gets the message. It takes quite a few deaths at intersections before authorities decide it is time to put up traffic lights. How bad does it have to get before the Leylands et al., decide it is time to act and that it is no longer appropriate to mislead the public on climate change. Perhaps we need to ship the denialists to Tuvalu so that they can reassure the world that everything is fine over there.
Tony February 7, 2012 at 8:17 pm
So you are asserting that we should ignore the HADCrut datasets as unreliable, and only use GISSTemp?
When you refer to “denialists” and15 years etc, please note that I am talking about the last 15 years as a piece of standalone data, and what deductions that can be made from that. I am not trying to deduce whether there is a long term warming trend. I am not taking into account glaciers, I am not taking into account Arctic sea ice, the “missing heat”, or whether we should “think of the children”.
Why is it impossible to look at a single piece of data without some massively loaded political and emotional baggage being attached to it?
This bit of the thread works – links not required!
Andy, you accused me of setting up a strawman with the 30 year quote – also directly from the Met Office via Leake, but I skipped the GWPF, happily – whereas it’s rather ridiculous to expect that I could have ‘got’ the whole ‘debating 15 year trends relating to Bryan L’s’ claim thing, so I say I was doing nothing of the sort!
It’s really not important or interesting – what is though is Bryan L’s claim that is in this thread.
C’mon Bryan, don’t wimp out on us. Please explain:
How ‘not warm’ will it be?
This remarkably woolly use of language is in some danger of being seen as perhaps best intended for pulling over the eyes, no?
I guess 2011 was ‘not warm’, either – at least in an ‘as / as’ relative sense – when compared to, say, 2010, 2005, or 1998, but it was the warmest recorded El Nino year, was it not? It was also the 9th warmest year on record, according to NASA! And the 11th according to NOAA.
Bloody warm year!
I know: why not watch the video on the NASA page, and then pick a year that you think 2012 will be about equally as warm as? Now, would most people say that was a ‘warm’ year in the context of the temperature record, or a ‘not warm’ one?
Sorry to harp, but remember, you’ve endorsed people who claimed that last year was going to be as ‘not warm’ as 1956. The notion that temperatures could have dropped so precipitately is so patently absurd it doesn’t even make it to the status of being wrong! And yet you’re constantly claiming both scientific rigour and credibility…
Oh, and Andy. And comment on whether Shaviv’s curves really are those of the IPCC?
“So you are asserting that we should ignore the HADCrut datasets as unreliable, and only use GISSTemp?”
I have given you a substantial hint at why there is a difference. Read again what I said, and try to answer the question. If you don’t want to answer it fine, just say you don’t want to answer it.
“Why is it impossible to look at a single piece of data without some massively loaded political and emotional baggage being attached to it?”
Equally, why focus on a single piece of data in the first place? How does it advance our understanding in any way or fix any problems? Life is short enough as it is without having to focus heavily on trivia, its just time wasting. Surely you must have more important things to do with your time.
AndyS shows us his complete lack of understanding of how science works.
He asserts:
‘When you refer to “denialists” and15 years etc, please note that I am talking about the last 15 years as a piece of standalone data, and what deductions that can be made from that. I am not trying to deduce whether there is a long term warming trend. I am not taking into account glaciers, I am not taking into account Arctic sea ice, the “missing heat”‘.
He doesn’t realize that science doesn’t work that way, you have to look at all the bits and pieces of related research to find out exactly what is happening.
A good analogy of AndyS’s thinking would be if you were feeling unwell, a pain in the chest and numbness in your arms. You go the doctor and he looks at you and says “You look all right, I’ll just take your temperature”. Your temperature is perfectly normal so he sends you home with a “Nothing to worry about.” Next day you die of a heart attack. Of course the doctor was being extremely negligent in only looking at one parameter, temperature. He should have performed numerous other tests which would have shown problems with your heart but he was too lazy to be bothered.
That is exactly how AndyS thinks climate science should be conducted, find one parameter which is 100% normal and pronounce “we are all right Jack”.
Here is what the Met Office has to say about the one piece of evidence which is normal while all others point to a nasty outcome:
‘However, HadCruT3 is just one of several global temperature databases, each overseen by different scientists and calculated in slightly different ways. This allows each group to cross-check results, confirming findings or spotting errors.
One, held at the National Climate Data Centre (NCDC), run by America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, suggests that global temperatures rose by an average of 0.074C since 1997. That’s small, too — but it is another rise.
A third and very different data set is overseen by John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He gathers figures from three satellites that orbit the Earth 14 times a day. They measure the average temperature of the air from ground level to a height of 35,000ft, a method completely different from those of the Met Office and NCDC. Oddly, given his reputation as a climate sceptic, he found the biggest rise of all.
“From 1997-2011 our data show a global temperature rise of 0.15C,” he said. “What’s more, our satellites have been taking this data since 1979, and over that period [the] global temperature has risen 0.46C, so the world has been getting warmer’.
http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/category/met-office-in-the-media/
Of course there is also the GISS data set which I provided which shows warmer too.
There are also many indirect methods to confirm the warming, ice melt, sea levels rising, plants and animals migrating polewards etc.
WOW, how can any intelligent person be so wrong?
“However, if your climatic warming does come about it may perhaps be possible to grow grapes again in Scotland. After all it has happened before. And of course Greenland might have some grass again. Warming is only a possibility of course”.
Wrong on both counts. There are grapes growing in Scotland, whether it is a first or not I don’t know but there is now a vineyard on the south shore of Loch Tay. A little bit of googling should find it.
Secondly, agriculture is booming in Greenland:
“Agriculture is presently of little importance in the economy, but climate change has enabled its expansion, by obtaining higher production of existing crops, introducing new ones, and extending the cultivated areas. Roughly 1% of the total land area can be used for growing crops. Presently 10% of all potatoes consumed in Greenland are produced locally, with a projection of 15% by 2020. Due to the lengthening of the productive season new crops have been introduced, such as apples, strawberries, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and carrots. In southern Greenland the growing season is mid-May through to mid-September, on average three weeks longer than a decade ago” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Greenland).
Growing season is now 3 weeks longer than 10 years ago. But you told us that there has been no warming in the past 10 years, the strawberries and potatoes in Greenland didn’t get the message.
I’m glad that Roger, Bryan and AndyS keep responding since they are showing all intelligent people how unintelligent and anti-science the members of the NZ Climate “Science” Coalition are. I’m pretty sure that Tom Harris will cut their strings shortly if they continue to show him up.
(Roger, Ian’s comment is now on the site so there’s no need to reproduce it here. Your response to him is here.)
Perhaps there is a greenhouse with a grapevine in it somewhere in Scotland. In Roman times, and mediaeval times too perhaps, wine was produced in Britain. Now it is not except the odd place in the south of England.
There is horticulture in Greenland now; they can even grow bananas in their geothermally heated hothouses. But this has little to do with farming dairy cattle on grass as did Eric the Red and his mates.
As expected you have got things back to front on the intelligence issue.
(Final sentence snipped, in the interests of politeness. May I ask all making comments to exercise restraint. The thread is getting overheated. Bryan)
Roger is wrong again.
Here is a quote about the owner and chef of the Ardeonig Hotel on the shores of Loch Tay:
“The South African chef was inspired by dessert wines produced in countries including Canada and Sweden.
He planted 48 vines in the hotel grounds and, if they are successful, he plans to follow that with 800 more”.
Not one vine in a greenhouse but 48 outside with plans for 800 more.
http://tinyurl.com/82bs5j3
He is also wrong about agriculture in Greenland. Why do deniers have to lie every time their “facts” are shown to be wrong? A decent and honest person would fess up to their mistakes.
I hope his vines are frost resistant. After a warm start, this winter in the UK has got decidedly chilly, with seas freezing over in the south of England .
Weather isn’t climate of course, but it’s the 4th year on the trot that Britain has had very cold weather.
And I recommend Richard Selley’s WInelands of Britain for a return to reality. There are several vineyards in N. Yorkshire. There are complexities to using vineyards as proxies, since soils and sunlight matter, and some good old vineyards sites got developed. Selley knows his stuff, being a geoscientist with a long hobby as oenophile and interest in vineyard archaeology.
A slightly better proxy is the Northwards march of the grapes in B.C.’s Lake Okanagan area. When I first heard the phrase “Canadian Wine”, I laughed … but we try some very year when he go to ski, an while not Napa/Sonoma, there are decent wines to be had.
I
Some of the western islands, directly in the flow of the Gulf Stream, have a sub tropical climate and sub tropical plants grow there. But those islands are not all of Scotland!
Rubbish. The western isles certainly benefit from a milder climate than the mainland, but by no stretch of anyone’s imagination could it be called sub-tropical.
That is sometimes said of the Scilly Isles, with a great deal more truth.
And before you ask, I know this because I spent a significant chunk of my childhood on Tiree and Benbecula.
Well, they do grow palm trees on Colonsay, and I did get sunburnt on the Colonsay ferry once, although I still wouldn’t call it sub-tropical 🙂
There are quite a lot of microclimates in Scotland. For example, soft fruit has been grown for years in the Inverness area.
I think you are reading a bit too much into it by quoting a single example of a few Scottish vines. Also note the “if they are successful” quote.
Folks, folks! This thread is a mess!
Seriously; if you’re responding to something that’s in the WordPress Twilight Zone (begins about half way down the comments thread) please include a link to the post your’e responding to, or it’s all just a random series of acontextual statements.
It’s easy – find that post that’s peeved or pleased you, click on the date link next to the name of that poster (if you hold the ‘Ctrl’ key this will open on a new page/tab and you won’t lose your place). There you have a URL for that comment (the address will end in #commentXXXXX)
Creat a weblink for the whole address as normal. Like so.
“Roger Dewhurst February 6, 2012 at 9:21 am
Even the most extreme ‘projections’ of climate change suggest that the temperature bands will move no further than the middle of the North Island to the middle of the South Island.”
Well that’s just dandy news for Australia. The outlet of the Murray River is at 35 degrees latitude – marginally south of Whangarei – which is closer to the equator than your “middle of the North Island”. The Murray provides 40% of Australia’s food supply and lord knows how much export $$.
You seem to be proposing that Aussies should shift our agriculture so that xx% will have to be produced somehow in Tasmania, Kangaroo Island and ….. ? the Southern Ocean perhaps? And also replace the whole of Western Australia’s wheatbelt – Perth 31S latitude to Albany35S on the southern edge of WA. Won’t do a lot for the total world wheat export trade. (Australia’s no 2 on that list some years, 4 or 5 in others.)
As for getting cooler. What do you think will happen during the next El Nino? The next biiiig El Nino? We’ve just had the hottest La Nina year ever recorded. Or do you think all our experience of ENSO will be overturned and that El Ninos will be cooler than La Ninas in the future.
As you must know I expect that it will get cooler and not warmer. When that happens Australia may well become wet and green as it was when Lake Eyre was a real lake. If it is going to get warmer you are wasting time expecting India, China and Brazil to cut their production of carbon dioxide, not that it would make any difference if they did. Get ready to adapt to climate change not wave your arms and scream.
“The projections are probabilistic in nature, and no individual forecast should be taken in isolation. Instead, several decades of data will be needed to assess the robustness of the projections.”
i.e we need twenty or thirty years of data, by which time we will all be retired, before anybody can say that we were wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!
So they concede that their projections may not be robust, indeed they may be utter rubbish.
Dewhurst, (February 7, 2012 at 3:31 pm) were you too lazy to actually read the full quote or did you just decide to be your dishonest self?
Here is the part of the quote that he dishonestly omits:
“However, what is absolutely clear is that we have continued to see a trend of warming, with the decade of 2000-2009 being clearly the warmest in the instrumental record going back to 1850″.
This thread is a perfect example of how Tom Harris’ puppets are completely dishonest in their treatment of climate science. I would be embarrassed to have so many lies and distortions publicized with my name attached but Dewhurst, Leyland and AndyS seem to lack some psychological attribute which enables them to lie boldly and publicly. Do they never wonder what friends, family and colleagues think about their dishonesty?
“However, what is absolutely clear is that we have continued to see a trend of warming, with the decade of 2000-2009 being clearly the warmest in the instrumental record going back to 1850″.
There are plenty who consider the instrumental record very dubious indeed for a multitude of reasons. Thus they are under no obligation, despite your ranting, to take it without a large grain of salt.
(Snipped.)
Not feeling the BEST, Roger? 😉
Ian Forrester February 7, 2012 at 3:11 pm
” This comment is in reply to the nonsense put up by AndyS at February 7, 2012 at 9:11 am.”
Forrester seems utterly incapable of accepting that other people may weigh the evidence differently, and may also discount evidence from individuals they consider to have bent the rules or are unreliable. It is not reasonable to call such people liars, scoundrels and the like. The abuse he heaps on some others suggest to me that he is paranoid in the medical sense of the word. Leyland, Scrase and I discount the official (IPCC) word for reasons which may well differ as all have different backgrounds and life experience. Personally I am not obsessed whether the climate is warming, cooling or pretty much on a plateau, though I think that the latter is probably true. Although accepting that gas in a bottle experiments do show that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, in the bottle, I am not persuaded that a few parts per million are significant in the real world and in the presence of a much larger amount or water vapour. In my view theory has to fit the real world experience. I am afraid that the real world experience is written history.
Remainder snipped. Not the place for lengthy expositions of how you see the carbon cycle.
Do have a look at this:
http://notrickszone.com/2012/02/06/body-blow-to-german-global-warming-movement-major-media-outlets-unload-on-co2-lies/
and this
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/news-cache/germanys-green-energy-supply-transformation-has-already-failed/
In response to bill; not as warm as 2010. Remember, if CO2 really causes dangerous warming it should be warmer.
Bryan, what are you going to say when we get a new record when the sun switches back on and we get another major El Nino?
Oh, I know – ‘It’s the Sun’ ‘It’s the El Nino!’ Oh, and ‘It’s been cooling since 201X!’
Trend / Noise : Climate / Weather
PS did you see what’s happening to the Pine Island Glacier? Good thing it’s not going to be a ‘warm’ year, isn’t it? 😉
Ian Forrester February 8, 2012 at 5:54 am
AndyS shows us his complete lack of understanding of how science works
Strange, I thought I made it clear that i was looking at the last 15 years of data as a standalone problem, in a mathematical and statistical sense.
I said I wasn’t considering the glaciers, the arctic sea ice. etc etc.
An inquiring mind might look at the last 15 years of data and ask why there has been a hiatus. perhaps there are other factors at play.
Perhaps fitting a straight line trend line to temperature data isn’t a valid technique. Who knows? Not me, clearly, I don’t understand how science works.
AndyS is so stupid that he shows once again why he doesn’t understand how science works. You don’t look at one isolated piece of information you look at all information which is available to you.
Selecting one piece of information which leads to the wrong conclusion but to one which you really want to happen is called “cherry picking” and is scientific malfeasance.
Also, when one finds a piece of contradictory information a good scientist studies it to find out why it is saying some thing different from the rest of the data. In the case of HadCrut3 it is well known why it shows different results from GISS, UAH, etc. Try reading a bit more and you will find out for yourself.
Just a side note, if you look at HadCrut starting in 1996 rather than1997 you find much closer agreement with the other temperature data sets.
AndyS, if you understand science and statistics perhaps you will be able to tell the less informed of the deniers why that is so and what it means.
I am looking at a single dataset as a standalone problem. I am not drawing any conclusions from it other than the trend of that data as a standalone problem
I will keep repeating this until it enters your thick skull. You repeatedly use abusive terms like denier, liar, malfeasance. Now others are using terms like “rent boy”. It gets better and better, it really does.
This might come as a surprise to you, but I was accused (semi-jokingly) of being a “warmist troll” on another site when trying to present an argument in a dispassionate and neutral stance.
This might come as a surprise to you, but I was accused (semi-jokingly) of being a “warmist troll” on another site when trying to present an argument in a dispassionate and neutral stance.
Perhaps we should provide links to some of your previous efforts.
Look AndyS, stop your insults. Scientists do not look at stand alone problems unless they are explaining why the data differ from other sources. They certainly don’t tell everyone that the “stand alone data” shows that everyone else is wrong. You have been told why the data from HadCrut3 do not conform exactly to GISS, UAH etc especially for the cherry picked start of 1997.
You should stop being so arrogant when you are continually being shown that you are wrong.
That is why I call you dishonest and a liar. People can make honest mistakes but when they are told over and over again that they are wrong and why they are wrong then one must make the only obvious conclusion that you are being deliberately dishonest in an attempt to show the climate science is wrong.
Why can’t you get that through your thick skull?
That is why I call you dishonest and a liar. People can make honest mistakes but when they are told over and over again that they are wrong and why they are wrong then one must make the only obvious conclusion that you are being deliberately dishonest in an attempt to show the climate science is wrong.
I am not trying to show climate science is wrong. I am trying to look at the temperature series from 1997 to 2012 as a standalone problem
Am I not allowed to look at standalone problems? I f I take my beat up car to the garage and the mechanic claims that the brakes are working fine, do I call him a denialist liar for not looking at the rust, the bald tyres, and the broken indicator? Do I shout at him and claim that he is the pay of “Big Car” and that he needs to think of the poor children who will inherit my car?
Oh Dear, why are some people so abusive and ignorant of science? How many times must you be told that scientists do not continually insist that their “stand alone problem” can negate the consensus of science shown by using other data sources? Science is based on looking at all information not your pet data point which you try and use to negate what you don’t like to be told.
I am getting sick of this troll highjacking this thread with his anti-science junk. Unfortunately, it seems to be the MO for this troll. Why do people with no understanding nor background in science think that they know better than scientists how science works? It takes a terrible arrogance to think like that.
Ian Forrester February 8, 2012 at 10:49 am
Oh Dear, why are some people so abusive and ignorant of science?
That is a good question to ask yourself Ian. You are the one being abusive. You call me a liar, troll, denialist. Apart from referring to your “thick skull”, I have tried to remain polite.
I am a scientist and I get very angry when I see people like you abusing science and scientists. You have been told many many times that you are wrong but you keep on repeating your, what are now classified as lies.
They are lies since you have been told the truth but refuse to accept it and you try and fool people that global warming has stopped. It has not stopped and will be a problem for future generations if we don’t do our utmost to do some thing about our release of CO2 into the atmosphere. Why do you have no concern for what we are inflicting on future generations with your dishonesty. There are names for people like you but it would get “snipped”.
Ian Forrester February 8, 2012 at 12:37 pm
I am a scientist and I get very angry when I see people like you abusing science and scientists. [..] Why do you have no concern for what we are inflicting on future generations with your dishonesty. There are names for people like you but it would get “snipped”.
To whom is this latest invective addressed? Me?
If so, which scientists and which science have I abused?
By the way, there is quite a long list of establishment climate scientists discussing the hiatus in warming that you are in denial of over at Pielke Snr’s blog here
These honest comments on your behaviour are directed at you AndyS . When you and your denier associates abuse science and lie then you are indirectly abusing every honest scientist. You are trying to make out that scientists, climate scientists in particular, are dishonest and fudge data. Well, as any intelligent person can see it you and your denier friends who lie and fudge data.
Every time you lot shout “hoax” “fraud” “conspiracy” it is a projection on your own obnoxious behaviour, not that of honest climate scientists, who thankfully, greatly outnumber the dishonest ones.
These honest comments on your behaviour are directed at you AndyS . When you and your denier associates abuse science and lie then you are indirectly abusing every honest scientist
That’s good to know then. Good to know because nothing that you have said about me is true and therefore I would characterise you as a paranoid fantasist.
However, keep up with the abuse, slander and lies. It might come in handy later.
By the way, what kind of “scientist” are you?
We now know why AndyS is so dishonest, he cannot differentiate between truth and lies:
“Good to know because nothing that you have said about me is true”.
I think that there are many contributors to this blog who think otherwise. It seems that you have a history of being called out on your dishonesty.
You ask:
“By the way, what kind of “scientist” are you?”
The answer is “an honest one”, one who will show every lie that deniers like you tell about the science and the scientists. I expect to be very busy on this but I wont let any lie go unexposed.
Why did you put scientist in quotation marks? Is that another of your dishonest techniques, try to make out that I am not a scientist?
Ian Forrester February 8, 2012 at 3:58 pm
We now know why AndyS is so dishonest, he cannot differentiate between truth and lies:
There is some validity to this statement, but I am getting a better handle on what is “true” and what is propaganda.
Of course, the concept of objective reality and truth is difficult to define in the environmental and political sciences. That’s why I prefer the more comforting disciplines of mathematics and physics. That is why I like to look at simple time series and see whether there is a trend or not, as a standalone dataset without inferring any conclusions or wider implications from them.
Clearly, this kind of activity is frowned upon, which makes me very happy I never pursued an academic career.
AndyS persists in his dishonest behaviour:
“That is why I like to look at simple time series and see whether there is a trend or not, as a standalone dataset without inferring any conclusions or wider implications from them.”
How many times must you be told that you cannot take stand alone data which is in total disagreement with the consensus of other data?
You must have some belief that consensus is not part of science. Well I can tell you that that is one of the biggest myths expressed by you deniers.
You must look at all available data sets not just the one out of many which confirms your wanted outcome.
You say:
“which makes me very happy I never pursued an academic career”.
I’m sure that there must be many students with similar views after seeing your abuse of science.
You must have some belief that consensus is not part of science
Yes, I do
AndyS’ comments to my last post proves my case:
“You must have some belief that consensus is not part of science
Yes, I do”
Only an anti-science crank believes in that sort of nonsense.
Are you one of these nutters that think Pi should be equal to 3? Or maybe you don’t like the consensus which tells us apples fall down from the tree and not up into the tree?
You have shown yourself to be an anti-science nutter, a dishonest one at that.
QED
AndyS’ comments to my last post proves my case:
Only an anti-science crank believes in that sort of nonsense
On Karl Popper and his philosophy of science:
The way in which Popper demarcates pseudo-science from genuine science is that the pseudo-scientist does everything to make his “theory” immune to any potential refutation, whereas the genuine scientists is willing, even eager, to take bold risks in advocating theories that have the potential to be refuted by observational evidence. It is this willingness to take risks that accounts for the growth of genuine scientific knowledge; its absence in the pseudo-sciences makes these bodies of belief stagnate,
http://www.loyno.edu/~folse/Popper.html
Check my comment at February 9, 2012 at 3:51 am
I’m finished with these three dishonest trolls. They have no ability to discuss or understand science. They are complete ideological cranks and will never free themselves from the strings of the puppet master. Pitiful indeed that people can actually sink so low in their self esteem that they have to be manipulated like puppets.
The Hansenite proposition that the world is headed for disaster if the
anthropogenic output of carbon dioxide is not reduced rests on three
propositions, firstly that the world is warming, secondly that humanity is causing this warming and thirdly that the net effect of warming is negative.
Most of the argument appears to revolve around the first of these,
whether the world’s climate is warming or not. This is the proposition
about which the climatologists claim their greatest expertise. The
weakest of the propositions, in my view, is that warming will have a net negative effect. This is an area largely outside the expertise of
climatologists and the area which attracts the least discussion.
If you cannot show that there is a net negative effect the whole Hansenite proposition collapses. You cannot, and it has.
This whole ‘Hansenite’ thing is straight out of the Creationist playbook: theyr’e not scientists, you see, they’re Darwinists. A personal cult. Of Belief! Aha!
Well, that makes you a Moncktonite, Roger! And much diginity it lends you…
In actual real-live bona-fide science the correct responses to your propositions are already well known, and are yes, yes, and yes respectively.
The only show in town, debate-wise, is climate sensitivity. You’re not winning it.
Rubbish. None of those you choose to slander are creationists as far as I am aware. Certainly I am not.
You, presumptuously, insist that you must be right. Britain is now the only country committed to economic suicide by reduction of carbon dioxide emission. The major emitters, China, India, Brazil, were never committed to limiting their emissions, the USA and Germany are backing off and Australia and NZ are sitting on the fence. You are flogging a dead horse, but your stupidity is still going cost us a lot of money and probably a lot of lives in the third world.
One of your problems is that you do not know anything about the hansenite proposition you demand that all accept or you are too inarticulate to actually summarise it. All you can do is to refere to the IPCC propaganda despite being shown where you can find out for yourself just how dubious this stuff is.
Um, what does the phrase ‘out of the XXXX playbook’ mean?
I’m inarticulate you say? Couldn’t possibly summarise my own cause? Gosh, and I’d guess you’d know, then, would’n’ ya, what with you being such an edjukated gent, what speaks proper ‘n’all? Gosh. Whatever shall I do? However shall I struggle to convey my teeming, inchoate thoughts if I can’t turn to the IPCC?
Hang on; look over there!:
Just found it lyin’ around, Guvnor…
You’re funny, Roger!
It now appears that everyone on this blog accepts what I claimed–that there has been no significant warming in the last 10 to 15 years.
Would those who called me a liar please apologize.
For the last time: Warming, i.e. the adding of energy to a system can result in more than just one parameter such as the rise of atmospheric temperatures. Melting of ice, warming of oceans are examples of other pathways that retained energy takes.
Natural variability (solar cycle, La Nina etc cycles) on top of a sustained GW trend creates exactly what is observed.
Natural variability (solar cycle, La Nina etc cycles) on top of a sustained GW trend creates exactly what is observed.
OK, let’s take that as a given. Are you sure we know how much natural variability there is mixed in with any anthropogenic component? The fact that there has been little or no measured warming in the land record over the last 15 years has been explained away using these arguments:
(1) It is too short a time frame
(2) Data too noisy
(3) Heat has gone to the deep ocean
(4) Aerosols are masking the warming
plus others I may have missed.
Given that these are arguments that are used to explain the lack of warming, we may assume that there is a lack of warming to be explained.
AndyS you are lying again. Warming has not stopped as you have been constantly told. You are too lazy to look for support for your specious arguments or may be you did look and found that you were wrong so you wont bring them up.
Tamino at Open Mind has done exactly what is needed and that is to look at warming after removing the natural variations thus letting us see exactly the AGW trend.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-real-global-warming-signal/
You can fit a polynomial through all the currants in a cake. That polynomial will tell you nothing about the distribution of currants in the next cake.
The document to which you refer is such a demonstration of the adjustment of polynomial co-efficients to fit the data to a pre-determined line. It may be good mathematics but it is crappy science.
No Bryan, you may not assume that we “accept” your claim of no significant warming in the last 10-15 years. If you had actually read the replies to your earlier comments then this would be obvious to you.
Good grief more lies and dishonesty from the denier trolls. What on earth makes you think (I know, I use that word loosely) that warming has stopped. Just look at the science, not lying denier blogs and you will see just how dishonest that claim is.
And who, apart from the three trolls, are claiming it on this site?
Ian Forrester February 8, 2012 at 12:18 pm : Good grief more lies and dishonesty from the denier trolls. What on earth makes you think (I know, I use that word loosely) that warming has stopped
I never said that warming had stopped. I said that the trend over the last 15 years showed little or no warming, according to most of the major series. This is quite a different thing
I don’t recall getting this information from a “denier blog”. I believe the original quote came from the Met Office using HadCrut3 data as the basis for this claim.
You appear to be projecting stuff onto me that I didn’t say or imply.
Stupid you, but I can see why you would think that any accusations of telling porkies would refer to you. If you follow the thread you will see that it is a response to fellow troll Bryan Leyland.
It is interesting to see how the denier trolls use differing periods of time to try and find “flat spots” in some data bases.
For example, it used to be “no warming since 1998” which was their rallying cry. Of course honest people showed that this was cherry picking.
Then early in 2010 Dr Phil Jones was interviewed by BBC where he stated that “there has been no statistically significant warming for the past 15 years.”
Of course dishonest denier trolls twisted this to mean that there had been no warming over the previous 15 years.
The HadCrut data for the period Jones referred to can bee seen here:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1994/to:2009/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1994/to:2009/trend
This then became the rallying cry for the deniers. They got lucky since in the past 15 years one (HadCrut) of a number of data bases shows very little warming over this period but as has been pointed out frequently on this thread the other data sets all show a good bit of warming. It is also interesting to note that if you go back 16 years in the HadCrut data you see a whole lot of warming.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1995/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1995/trend
Sorry, Bryan, I should not have called you a liar. I should, instead, have called you a hierodule in the service of the Church of Denial.
Gareth
We are you going to provide the evidence supporting your claim that I have told lies, and the evidence supporting the claim that, as a result of getting a small amount of expenses from Heartland, I’ve changed my opinions?
Just to show good faith, you could also tell us is the extent to which your website supports the sales of your book and whether or not you get money as a result of your association with the science media Centre. Do they pay you for articles?
As I have pointed out repeatedly, I do not claim you changed your views, only that they were so congenial to the Heartland Institute that they felt it worthwhile to sponsor your activities at the NZ CSC and ICSC to the tune of US$70,000 in 2007 alone.
What do you call it when someone misrepresents the facts, and continues to misrepresent them despite having the truth pointed out to them? Whatever you call it, you do it.
This web site did initially support sales of Hot Topic, but I doubt anyone has bought a paper copy for at least a couple of years. And the sales of the PDF version in the last year can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Not surprising, when you consider that it was first published in 2007.
The SMC syndicates posts from Hot Topic as part of its SciBlogs network. Neither Bryan nor I receive any money for those posts, nor do we when – as sometimes happens – articles are reposted at the NZ Herald web site.
The only income of any size generated by HT comes from affiliate arrangements on book sales through Fishpond, Amazon and the Book Depository, but the amounts earned are barely sufficient to meet the site’s internet hosting costs.
So: please tell us all how much money the Heartland Institute has sent to New Zealand since 2007.
You are also a trustee of the NZ Climate Science Education Trust. Please tell us all how that charity has raised money, and what it has spent those funds on. I imagine you will be able to point to some educational activities over and above the Trust’s attempt to sue NIWA.
Ian Forrester February 8, 2012 at 12:37 pm
” I am a scientist and I get very angry when I see people like you abusing science and scientists.”
Are you indeed? We might be excused for thinking otherwise.
“You have been told many many times that you are wrong but you keep on repeating your, what are now classified as lies.”
It is a bit presumptuous of you to assume that you are right. There are plenty of people much smarter than you who think otherwise.
Your hansenite doom-laden proposition rests on three legs. All of those have to stand up. Without all three your proposition fails. The sceptics only have to kick away one of those legs, not all three. Keep that in mind. You carry on about whether warming is current or not. I presume you think that is your strongest point.
I am inclined to think that it is one of the other legs that is folding under you.
The three trolls on this thread have shown their anti-science conviction. Nothing I nor other scientists say will make them change their minds. They are incapable of and unwilling to understand science.
I think that their motives have been well shown on this thread and that any thing they say is not related to reality but is done for strictly political and selfish motives.
I will not be indulging in any more futile discussions with these three trolls. They are despicable in the way they are condemning future generations to a very uncertain future.
Quite justified. I really wonder how useful it is to gives these types so many opportunities to warp the views of at least some casual visitors to the forum. Those who are not prepared to do proper follow-up reading might conclude that issues covered here are really quite murky, and that there is actually a “debate” on matters lomg since settled.
But, RW, that is what these rent-boy propagandists are here to do, to help their corporate masters to a few more years of gigaprofits by trying to confuse the issues in the public mind.
They fear an informed citizenry that will pressure governments to act in their best interests – as the UK government is finally doing in another sphere, journalism, after decades of cowering to the Murdoch press.
What might the climate equivalent of the Milly Dowler scandal be, I wonder?
The events unfolding in the UK do show an increasing level of public awareness, and that’s encouraging. Perhaps your question will be answered soon ….
One hopes that the ignorance, irrationality and sheer unmitigated unpleasantness of the trolls inhabiting this forum will cause more poeple to realise the pernicious nature of their project.
Which events unfolding in the UK?
Gareth
So now I understand. You accept that I am not a hired gun. Quite clearly you disagree with what I am saying and you want to use all means to stop people hearing what I have to say. The skeptics, on the other hand, defend your right to free speech and want open debate and free exchange of information.
But don’t forget that much of my income comes from renewable energy. Much more significant. I really should be pushing global warming and subsidies for renewable energy. You must find it difficult to understand someone who has principles.
Twist Cindy’s arm to release her financial information and I’ll oblige with mine.
You will be horribly disappointed…
Much depends on how you define “hired gun’. You are apparently very happy to accept money from a US think tank and to play along with the tune it calls. You might call it strategic cooperation. Is that why they gave you US$45,000 for the ICSC when you were secretary?
I will defend your right to free speech, as long as you accept that it comes with responsibilities – one of them being that you should tell the truth. All I ask of the NZ media is that they should ensure that you are not given a platform to misrepresent the truth, and that when they do publish something by you on climate-related issues, they should note that you are a lobbyist against climate action with ties to far-right US think tanks.
It’s not for me to twist Cindy’s arm about anything, and it’s not relevant to my request – ignored to date: how much money has the Heartland Institute and its affiliates supplied to the NZ CSC, ICSC and NZ CSET since 2007? And do please advise us about the charitable educational actions the NZ CSET has undertaken. I wouldn’t want anyone to think that you had created the trust in order to protect yourself from a judgement of costs in your court case against NIWA. That would hardly be charitable, would it? And the NZ taxpayer has a right to know…
See my comment at February 9, 2012 at 3:51 am. The three trolls have shown exactly their motivations and inability to argue science. They do not want to understand climate science so continued discussion is pointless.
All: please note that I have not had the time to moderate this thread as fully as I might have wished, due to a family bereavement. Please tone down the accusations and invective. I encourage robust debate, but keep it polite please. From now on, I will snip or delete anything I deem impolite. Thanks.
PS: the comment editing function is still borked, and that may have affected the threading of comments. Sorry about that, but I am dependant on someone else’s coding (a WordPress plug in) for that facility.
Comments on subjects not related to the funding of the NZ CSC/Hearltand should be posted to an open thread. One is on its way.
Sorry to hear about the death.
Sorry indeed, Gareth.
Might I suggest then that this NZCSC discussion could benefit from the opening of a new sandbox of its own, with properly functioning sub-threads and all that, if you have the time?