Deltoid

Allow me to kick it off with some of my favourite Brent moments:

ABC Blogs:

What a good article! I have actually found the Great Climate Debate rather distressing, fearing that the "other side" may carry the day, with catastrophic consequences. (I am teasing you here: I'll reveal "my side" later...) The notion that scientific debate is not gentlemanly but instead a pitiless conflict between ambitious combatants has the ring of truth. "Science" has recently stepped into the void left by theologians; the unwashed public have replaced one set of authority figures for another. And we, the public, find it distressing that our experts are in conflict. Like yer parents arguing with each other. But the daft notion that "science" has it all figured out is, well, daft. It's a dynamic process advancing in fits and starts, and (presumably) even through regressions. And is NEVER settled.

Watts Up With That:

I hereby propose a detailed study of the Urban Heat Island Effect. Its null hypothesis would be: “that there is, to 99% significance, no difference between temperatures at the centre of 100,000-population towns and a temperatures at a 10km perimeter.” And then let the facts speak. The Gore Brigade have failed to demolish the null hypothesis that temperatures in recent decades are insignificantly different to those of past centuries. The general public continue to believe in this null hypothesis. This is not surprising: beneath the byzantine complexity of Statistical Method lies a solid core of common sense, a quality which sadly disappears in some scientists who place their seat on the gravy train before their professional integrity.

Watts Up With That:

Following the advice of Jerome Ravetz here on Wattsupwiththat – “Never forget that you might be wrong” – I had a stroll around the RealClimate site looking for their best shot at validating the AGW hypothesis. It linked to a “Stand Up for Climate Science” petition, http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?clim4tr&1 and a sad little entry by Phil Jones: “195. Prof Phil Jones. Thanks guys, I need all the help I can get. Your support is much appreciated.” I guess he had it coming, but he looked like a frightened old man yesterday in London. Guys, the momentum is with us now: shouldn’t we now concentrate on scientific debate rather than further reviling Jones now that he’s down? Some great victories have been won since Climategate emerged; isn’t it time to look for common ground, to capture the parts of climate science that are agreed by both factions? Please, a little magnanimity. Don’t destroy his dignity.

Ritchie, James, I share your fury at the obscene fra*d that is AGW. (RichieP (08:54:05) – “… these wicked conmen”, James Sexton (09:08:39) – “There must be a judgment day…”) If the Hockey Team didn’t believe their own pseudo-science I’d agree with you that the attack must go on. But listen to the interview Mann gave on 26 Feb – http://www.pointofinquiry.org/michael_mann_unprecedented_attacks_on_climate_research/ and I hope you’ll hear what I hear: this guy thinks he’s just an honest scientist being attacked by irrational savages who try to undermine his solid research and the consequent…. aaaah… apocalypse. Yes, he’s barking mad. Steven Mosher, here on WUWT argues that it’s a case of “Noble Cause Corruption”. Mann is wrong, not evil. Ritchie, your references to Virgil and Nelson make your point very well, but the historical metaphors I would offer are 1918 v 1945. The allies foolishly took Germany to the cleaners at the end of WWI, and wisely helped Germany back to health at the end of WWII. Fight the disease (self-calibrating data-withholding gravy-train futurological pseudo-science) not the patient. I suggest that a true victory would be Michael Mann declaring, “Based on the data I then had, the Hockey Stick was good science. But in the light of the new evidence, I agree that recent decades are well within historical range. Maybe the “driver” – if any driver is required – is solar. Whilst we all agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, we now know that its variations are a consequence of temperature changes, not a cause.” And they all lived happily ever after ;-)

Never Yet Melted:

I reckon that the hacker (or was it maybe a mole) who blew the whistle on this scandalous abuse of scientific procedure at East Anglia University deserve a Nobel prize! Professor Jones has paid the price and resigned; I hope that in the US a rigorous examination of Michael Mann’s “Hockey Stick” graph will now be conducted. If, upon accessing Mann’s full methodology and data, the Hockey Stick is discredited, then the reputation of its creator must inevitably crumble.

Climate Audit:

Steve, I think you made a small typo above. Sumbissions by the public to the Muir Russell Inquiry need to be in by 28 Feb, not 10 Feb as you wrote above. I’m going to propose that Boulton’s links to UEA make him an unsuitable member. Keep up the magnificent work. I reckon that your tenacity in demanding scientific rigour is of great importance, and will be celebrated in future accounts of science at the millennium.

Posted by: John | May 16, 2010 11:13 PM

Wow Brent. Wait til the gang hears you've acjieved guest blogger status on Deltoid. You are so busted.

Posted by: Alphonse | May 17, 2010 12:24 AM

Lulz, Brent is obviously a flog of the highest order. Have at it BRENT!

Posted by: Connor | May 17, 2010 6:48 AM

The statements made by Brent, especially those presented in #1, indicate to me that Brent is a fair-minded person. Yes, I disagree with him on many points. But if the primary charge against him is that he is on the "other side", then I say we should pin a medal on him. Scientific integrity is not measured by loyalty to one side or another; the ideal scientist NEVER thinks in terms of "us versus them", because "them" might possess some seed of truth. Normal human beings always think in terms of "us versus them", because that tendency is deeply embedded in human nature. Because scientists are human beings, they frequently get into the "us versus them" mentality, but the good ones always slap themselves and try to get past such prejudices.

Let me also point out that Brent has, to some extent, taken a contrarian position on the anti-AGW boards. That also bespeaks intellectual integrity.

But the most important point here is that Brent has altered his position in response to the arguments made here. How many times have YOU changed your position in response to arguments on a blog?

Those who treated Brent as "the enemy" and subjected him to verbal abuse were wrong. It was the solid argumentation, unsullied by invective, that had an effect. Brent is not a troll. He honestly disagrees with AGW theory. He's wrong, but he's getting better. How many of us can be sure that we have bettered our own thinking while here?

Posted by: Erasmussimo | May 17, 2010 10:44 AM

Erasmussimo.

For a number of postings after Brent first appeared I myself thought that his intent might be as you describe. However, persistent inconsistencies, slippings, and conspicuous out-right admissions on his behalf, here and elsewhere, long ago convinced me that Brent's motivation on Deltoid was based in sport, and not in a pursuit of scientific clarity.

I have no doubt that he "honestly disagrees with AGW theory", but this is no validation of the integrity of his intent.

I certainly saw nothing that would pursuade me that he was "getting better". I saw plenty of boulders that looked to me like troll bubkes.

Perhaps that's just a symptom of my own incurable cyncism.

Posted by: Bernard J. | May 17, 2010 11:33 AM

Brent has, to some extent, taken a contrarian position on the anti-AGW boards. That also bespeaks intellectual integrity.

That does not necessarily follow - there is a reason we have the term "troll" - and to the extent that you think it does, I would argue that his complete disregard for intellectual integrity on this board rather undermines that hypothesis.

But if the primary charge against him is that he is on the "other side", then I say we should pin a medal on him.

No, the primary charge is that he was knowingly a disingenuous and slippery dissembler with a long history of putting on a fair and reasonable cover and blowing it a day or so later - and that he presented the same bogus "arguments" over and over and over, despite clear demonstrations that they were either clearly wrong, or clearly unsupported.

No-one but Brent knows whether the latest somewhat reasonable stance would have lasted any longer, but - just like dealing with a drug addict who is great at putting on a front in order to manipulate people but says they are recovered - I would not make any assumptions about actual persistent change until there was significant evidence over a much longer period than has it previously taken to unmask his facade. And if I were a betting person, given the current evidence...

How many times have YOU changed your position in response to arguments on a blog?

A few. I've certainly learned that I had held a number of misconceptions and tried to eliminate them.

Posted by: Lotharsson | May 17, 2010 7:34 PM

Let's not also forget that Brent facetiously "changed" viewpoints halfway through, and attempted trolling in another thread under a different name.

Posted by: John | May 18, 2010 12:08 AM

he is either an extremely clever propagandist

I can see how he would seem extremely clever to you.

Posted by: truth machine, OM | May 19, 2010 7:16 PM

I sense that the term is morphing into a new meaning: anybody who disagrees with the prevailing set of beliefs on a given board.

That's quite a notion, that the findings of science are a "prevailing set of beliefs" that belong to "a given board", rather than being the best inference from available evidence. Sorry, but AGW is not just one opinion among others on which "intellectually robust" persons can disagree; there are objective reasons why it is the prevailing view in every "intellectually robust" community.

Not to mention Brent's numerous blatant and explicit trolling behaviors that have been repeatedly referenced.

Posted by: truth machine, OM | May 20, 2010 4:08 PM

However, he is either an extremely clever propagandist or a person struggling with the truth. You're welcome to subscribe to the more conspiratorial of the two hypotheses.

As opposed to your subscription to the less evidentially supported one.

Posted by: truth machine, OM | May 20, 2010 4:23 PM

Brent closes his participation in the Empirical Evidence thread with a gracious comment

And yet even there he reveals himself to be a blatant liar:

Mr. Lambert, thank you for providing a platform for the fiery debate on this thread. Before debating with warmists - the smart and the dumb, the professionally cool and the abusive, the qualified and the layman - I had little idea of how cogent the AGW theory was, and rather frustrated that the partisan nature of the Great Debate prevented the creation of common ground.

From Brent's first post one this board:

Whilst much of the supporting logic of the AGW hypothesis is watertight, I doubt the overall conclusion. Given that there are bright, educated, informed, sincere people on both sides, I'll welcome energetic counterarguments but, please, no abuse.

Brent has a few stock phrases and concepts that he repeats over and over again, including a few "gracious" ones. It's a handy strategy for reeling in people with an accomodationist ideology and extraordinary selective perception like our friend Erasmussimo.

Posted by: truth machine, OM | May 20, 2010 4:38 PM

the creation of common ground

Brent has been quite clear as to what "common ground" he would like to achieve:

I suggest that a true victory would be Michael Mann declaring, “Based on the data I then had, the Hockey Stick was good science. But in the light of the new evidence, I agree that recent decades are well within historical range. Maybe the “driver” – if any driver is required – is solar. Whilst we all agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, we now know that its variations are a consequence of temperature changes, not a cause.” And they all lived happily ever after ;-)

Brent appears to truly believe this. It's "gracious" in the sense of accepting that people he disgrees with believe things for good reason; that as least some of us are "wrong, not evil". But it's an idée fixe, a conclusion reached far ahead of the evidence, and held despite the evidence. It is not the sort of view held by "a fair-minded person", one who is "intellectually robust".

Posted by: truth machine, OM | May 20, 2010 4:56 PM

you've more than made your point

I actually made several points.

Brent and Erasmussimo are not both pretentious twits. They're not even similar.

Brent and Erasmussimo are dissimilar in many ways, but they are both most certainly pretentious twits. Most of Erasmussimo's posts of late have been to complain about others insulting poor Brent (and before him James), all the while saying that he's just interested in science, not personalities. You're half-right that he doesn't like confrontation -- he doesn't like to be confronted, but feels free to lecture others about their tone. He's a pathetic coward and a hypocrite.

Posted by: truth machine | May 21, 2010 1:05 PM

I can give you one sure-fire way that the AGW hypothesis can collapse, and it has nothing to do with heroes or one (or three) cold winters.

A clear worldwide, longer-lasting cooling trend that can be plotted, and is not attributable to the plot starting in a massive el-nino year like 1998.

Alas, global temperatures seem to still be at record high levels. Even if 1998 was warmer than 1999-2009 (in itself debatable), almost every one of those years is still among the few warmest years in the instrumental record.

A cooling trend like that seen from 1940 to about 1970 in the GISS graph would most certainly see climate scientists scrambling for answers, and many of them (at least myself), breathing a sigh of relief that the climate system is more resilient than we gave it credit for. The thing that not many people contributing to, for example, WUWT don't realise, is that most people researching climate change (in my experience) would rather be shown that we got it wrong, and how we got it wrong, than to have to be, as they are dubbed, 'prophets of doom'.

It's hard to work you out Brent. Your persistence at least tells me you are either incredibly comitted or genuinely interested. However some of your comments in the Empirical evidence thread seem to betray a certain dishonesty, after you yourself contended that you came with an open mind accepting that the logic behind AGW was 'rock solid' (a strange statement to make anyway, since the hypothesis relies on science and not so much on logic, which can lead to fallacy).

Posted by: MFS | May 24, 2010 8:01 AM

MFS, what you say about any repeat of the 1940-1970 cooling makes good sense. It has been hard to pin people down on 'falsifiability criteria' - either way - and, as you say, a few cold winters are irrelevant to the scientific confirmation/refutation. But the common man's perceptions are partly based on what he can personally observe in his own garden, partly on media reports of the cryosphere (my nifty new-word-of-the week) and on sea levels etc. Until now politicians are not howled down when they allocate billions to fighting climate change. But if Goremageddon fails to materialise that day must come.

Here's my half-baked view of science: I divide the field into three, call them Classical, Modern and Empirical. I am stuck in the classical frame of mind, where Newton and Euclid and - say - Mendeleev make perfect intuitive sense. Modern science - say Einstein and Feynman and Crick - is demonstrably true but exposes the limitations of so-called common sense and intuition. Empirical science would include Bode's Law of planetary distance, earthquake prediction, climate science, stockmarket punditry and Nostradamus's work.

It's maybe perjorative to lump those five together, but I see the following theme running through them:

a. Based on observation and pattern-recognition

b. Has a measure of success in making verifiable forecasts, but expects exceptions to be tolerated.

c. Claims authority due to greater data-gathering than critics can muster.

d. Inelegant.

You wonder why I have such persistence and interest in this subject. The short answer is that I reckon that the IPCC's oeuvre is soft science masquerading as hard, and if Global Warming is a chimera it is starving more deserving causes of precious resource.

You mention the 'dishonesty' I displayed on the Empirical Evidence thread. You're maybe referring to my comical claim to be 'on board', pretending (transparently) not to be a heretic: yeah, it went down badly ('trolling' was my new word in April!). Maybe to being sarcastic to the rude-boys: yeah, should've kept my temper. I came to Deltoid for honourable debate, but quickly learned that the term 'heretic' was pronounced 'troll' in these parts.

Despite the unpleasant sectarianism, I feel that the key areas of sensitivity and feedback are coming into focus, and a resolution a tad closer. May the best clan win!

Posted by: Brent | May 24, 2010 11:41 AM

HI BRENT!!

Brent has an enourmous ego and is unable to leave us knowing he didn't even make a blow against Deltoid or the science of AGW. Surprise, surprise.

"who'dathunkit?!"

Let's play a game I call "Brent then, Brent now"

Brent then:

By the way, we STILL have frost in the mornings. It's nearly May, fer Chrissakes! Outrageous! If a new Little Ice Age has started, triggered by a repeat of the Maunder Minimum, maybe we should be planning a major CO2 Production Programme. Brrr!

Brent now:

It has been hard to pin people down on 'falsifiability criteria' - either way - and, as you say, a few cold winters are irrelevant to the scientific confirmation/refutation.

Brent then:

I share your fury at the obscene fra*d that is AGW

Brent now:

Is the AGW theory a vast conspiracy? I think not

Please, join.

Anyway, I have to say this is the most amusing comment I've read from Brent in a while:

"In this case, we doubting Thomases must shut up and get building that ark, muttering "Sun and cloud have no effect on climate... who'dathunkit?!"."

Where have any of us said that? Prove me wrong or conceed the point.

Oh, you're wrong?

Who'dathunkit?!

Posted by: John | May 24, 2010 12:07 PM

Lotharsson: I concede that if Climate Change is happening as forecast by the IPCC, this must be a great threat to species and habitat.

MFS: I once wrote: "Whilst much of the supporting logic of the AGW hypothesis is watertight, I doubt the overall conclusion." I meant: Yes, there's a greenhouse effect; yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas; yes, fossil fuels produce CO2; yes, more CO2 must result in higher temperatures; yes, ice-ages and interglacials are punctuated by tipping points.

My reservations were twofold: (i)The annual downtick of CO2 every northern summer suggests a very high absorbtion (or is that reaction?) rate rather than an irreversible accumulation, hence my interest in 'residence time' - 10 years by my calculation, 1000 according to the Royal Society. (ii)The claim that we are at this moment right on the brink of a tipping point. If maths be the language of science, who will demonstrate that 392PPM is the tipping point rather than 393 or 394 or 1000PPM?

I concede that the Royal Society is an august institution and that I am Mister Nobody. But I have done a calculation of exponential decay and I suspect that the Royal Society's figure was typed by somebody with good hair and a degree in Public Relations.

Posted by: Brent | May 24, 2010 12:46 PM

Brent, May 24:

I no longer believe that AGW is an obscene fr*ud.

Brent, May 18:

politicians would rather fritter away public resource on this great hoax than [...]

Posted by: Dave R | May 24, 2010 4:18 PM

Shorter Brent: May I please divert attention from the fact that I am a brazen liar?

Posted by: Dave R | May 24, 2010 5:29 PM

TrueSceptic @ 32,

Indeed, but do you not think that a repeat of that cooldown would cause most climate scientists to reevaluate their work? And do you not think that if that event re-occurred and had no clearly identifiable cause, it would test anybody's patience? I would like to think we have long memories but in my experience they are remarkably short.

A common accusation of denialists is that there is nothing that would cause global warming to be discarded by its adherents, they would merely modify the hypothesis to include the observations.

The observed warming trend goes back a little less than 200 years. What length of a cooling trend would start to make us seriously doubt our own results: 30 years? 50? At some point in time, we'd give up, or be overwhelmed by a competing explanation. I see no reason this would occur, but I don't pretend to understand the climate system so completely as to discard the idea out of hand. Not that this has any bearing on the validity of our current research, if you don't base decision-making on the best informed opinion available, what do you base it on?

Of course if for example, Lake Taupo erupted next year with an intensity of VEI8, and blotted out the north island of New Zealand, ejecting many cubic kilometers of aerosols and SO2 into the atmosphere, we'd have a clearly identifiable reason for cooling, which would fail to invalidate anything.

Brent @ 36,

Wind energy is indeed more expensive than burning coal. However, all other things being equal, coal is finite and polluting. Petrol from under the sands of Texas was a lot cheaper than extracted from the North Sea, yet the latter eventually became profitable. Oil shale is still too expensive to exploit, but will this always be the case? If the damage caused by CO2 pollution is high enough, and you can put a price on it, then you have a more realistic basis for comparison.

Nuclear is a logical stop-gap measure but, like coal, finite, and carries a measure of risk that wind and solar do not. There has also historically been a political reluctance to deal with both nuclear waste and decommissioned power plants, and (politicians being what they are) I don't see that changing in a hurry. Hydroelectricity is of course the most efficient, if the price you pay to drown land is low enough (i.e. drowning marginal farmland vs. rare, high biodiversity habitat, or a city).

For your illustration, since you seem interested in how people end up in one camp or another, I will tell you why my views are what they are. I don't have blind belief in everything AGW related. Rather I make my own mind when my expertise are good enough to understand the science, and to an extend defer to people whose expertise are better than mine when I don't have the knowledge to asses the science myself.
I am more in the AGW camp from opposition to the campaign of misinformation and lies coming from the other side. Whenever I see an anti-AGW argument that involves science I know about first hand, it has been invariably misinterpreted or twisted to mean other than what it does. I see Monckton making claims that the globe has been cooling since 1998, when almost every year after that has been among the highest on record, and if you take any other year than 1998 as the starting point, the world has been warming. I see Plimer making claims that it's the volcanoes, even though he has not done any research on undersea volcanoes, yet continues to claim they emit much more CO2 than humans even after being confronted with the truth by people who DO study them. I see people claiming it's the sun, even though the correlation between sun and global temperatures breaks down after the 1970s, and this is the period of the highest warming. I see posts claiming that it was warmer in Iceland in the 1400s, and this invalidates global warming, when Iceland is not the globe and the fact that it was warmer then need not preclude the fact that we are the ones causing the problem now.

More than anything I see people claiming it's a conspiracy of scientists to line their own pockets. Being one myself this seems about as far-fetched as you can get: we earn a pittance compared to private industry, we certainly did not go through a minimum of 8 years training (for those with Ph.Ds) for the money, and research funding is audited as strictly as any other source of public money (Governments and Universities don't like to be rorted or defrauded), precluding the chance of, as some put it, 'lining our own pockets', 'riding the gravy train', or even outright 'perpetrating fraud'.

Do you start to see the picture through my mind?

Posted by: MFS | May 24, 2010 8:33 PM

So much for

I’m afraid that I cannot participate in a “Brent Thread”, which suggests that I personally am the issue, or that my opinions are important.

Of course Brent thinks his opinions are important, despite being the product of mental incompetence at several levels; he's the ultimate demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

If we are so right (which we surely are)

Why, Brent? Why is that surely so?

Posted by: truth machine | May 24, 2010 8:54 PM

HI BRENT!!!!!

Nice work Dave R, there is coffee all over my monitor now.

May I please ask any warmists listening in for their views on energy security?

No.

It seems you took literally my tongue-in-cheek complaint about chilly May mornings in England.

That's funny. You admit yourself that you don't see the difference between weather and climate so it doesn't appear very tongue in cheek.

'Ne'er cast a clout 'til May be out'. I wish he'd said: 'Yon John be so sharp 'ee be likely cut imsen.'

Ah yes, the famed wit that's been missing here since your seventeenth (or is it eighteenth?) announced exit.

I no longer believe that AGW is an obscene fr*ud.

A lie.

I concede that folks like you genuinely believe we're on the brink of runaway Global Warming.

Find anywhere I've said words to that effect or conceed you're wrong.

My crack about 'building an ark' is ironic of course.

Of course.

My crack about 'building an ark' is ironic of course but, irony aside, are you personally making preparations for the wellbeing of your nearest and dearest?

Sigh.

Do you worry about, say, food supplies or coastal flooding or hordes of climate refugees?

Is there any answer I could give that won't result in more pushups?

More crap from Brent - who'dathunkit?!

Posted by: John | May 24, 2010 11:39 PM

The annual downtick of CO2 every northern summer suggests a very high absorbtion (or is that reaction?) rate rather than an irreversible accumulation, hence my interest in 'residence time' - 10 years by my calculation, 1000 according to the Royal Society.

Once more around the goldfish bowl.

Posted by: Lotharsson | May 25, 2010 2:43 AM

Stu (38): Thank you for distinguishing between a 'warmist' position and an 'alarmist' one. I stand corrected. So the 'tipping point' with disappearing polecaps and consequent lower albedo and positive feedback loop should not be attributed to the entire warmist movement then.

And thank you for your straight answer on energy security.

Several of your comments fall into that third category of science I was trying to sketch out in my #29. I have a problem with 'fuzzy science', science which makes qualitative claims but shies away from quantitative prediction. For instance, your words "what could reasonably be termed within the range of natural variation" and "goes outside natural bounds at some point". The Lotharsseon is another such example.

The emergence of Chaos maths shone a light on those awkward nonlinear areas of nature which had previously defied definition; it helped define the limits of knowability, and not just in meteorology. When the UK Met Office subsequently gave up on its notorious Long Range Weather Forecasts there was an audible sigh of relief. I imagine that the Met men were thinking, "It WASN'T that we were rubbish at it; we were attempting the mathematically impossible. We now know it was a mug's game."

My point is maybe best summed up as "Soft science making hard predictions puts its reputation in peril."

Posted by: Brent | May 25, 2010 4:47 AM

Brent:

I have a problem with 'fuzzy science', science which makes qualitative claims but shies away from quantitative prediction.

No you don't, you liar. You have made numerous such claims about volcanoes, cosmic rays etc without making any quantitative predictions and you have consistently refused to address the real quantitative predictions that others have made.

Posted by: Dave R | May 25, 2010 5:52 AM

The Lotharsseon is another such example.

As I said, reverting to the mean - your "Lotharsseon" was a lie about my position the first time you said it - and still is.

Posted by: Lotharsson | May 25, 2010 7:55 AM

More irony from Brent. He prefers the "hard science" on offer at WUWT.

Posted by: John | May 25, 2010 9:19 AM

Dave (49): "....you liar. You have made numerous such claims about volcanoes, cosmic rays etc without making any quantitative predictions..."

Dave, must you use that language? Are you saying that the burden of proof on me - in wondering out loud whether solar and other forcings are weighted correctly relative to CO2 forcing - is subject to the same QA as these weighty bodies advising governments on billion-dollar projects to combat Global Warming?

I point out a correlation between the Maunder Minimum and the LIA, and speculate that (maybe, one day, and maybe never) the astrophysicists will give us the physics governing causality; the Government Chief Scientist says, "Yeah, let's stick CCS units on our power stations. Efficiency losses will be measured in TWh and billions of pounds, but at least we'll get the face-painted drum-beating neoapocalypticists off our backs". Burden of proof is on your tribe, Dave.

I was reading somewehere recently about a calculation of how many tenths of a degree could be knocked off global temperatures if we shut down the western economies for a year. Of course, this ain't going to happen, but I do wonder whether the philosophical fault-line between us is one of pro-or-anti development.

One small example: I see Kenyans building up a highly professional infrastructure to supply green beans to UK supermarkets, and admire the management skills and service-sector spin-off; you (driving your Hummer to the local farm shop) tut-tut and preach about the carbon footprint of Nairobi-Manchester airfreight.

Tell me, if a new age of carbon-free energy were to arrive, would you celebrate that or would you resentfully accept the consequent development opportunities through gritted teeth? Is carbon dioxide a surrogate for your real bete noire: energy usage?

Posted by: Brent | May 25, 2010 10:26 AM

Brent,

Some of your logic is impeccably simple and stupid, if I may say so.

You ought to learn a little about the economics of exploitation in Africa (Books by Patrick Bond, Pepe Escobar or Amir Amin might be good sources to start with). Export crops that are grown in Africa generally do not support local economies, but are used to pay off IMF and World Bank structual adjustment loans. Have you ever been to Africa? Spoke with the locals? Read some appropriate literature on the matter? In 1983, African exports accounted for 4% of the global economy. By 2003 this had shrunk to 1.3%. Essentially, the west 'loots' Africa's vast resource wealth.

Economic plundering has always been a core of western economic policy. Our government planners are smart enough to know that there are not enough resources to go around, especially at western levels of consumption and waste production. But they cannot say this to the masses; instead, our politicians have to wring their hearts in public and claim to want to do everything they can to create a sustainable world. Only its a big, bald, lie. They know damend well that if everyone on Earth consumed resources like the average American or west European, that we would need three or four Earth-like planets to sustain this. And Earth-like planets, at least the last time I looked, are in short supply. We have but one. At the same time, so long as most people remain dirt poor in the south, this will allow us to reach beyond our borders and take - as cheaply as possible - the raw materials we require to maintain consumption as currently defined. This is how ecological debtor nations - which describes every developed country as a matter of fact - can maintain ecological deficits in their own countries. They can do this by taking the materials from less developed nations with ecological surpluses. This isa done through wholly unfaor trade practices. Essentially, trade does not increase carrying capacity, it just shuffles it around. Once the poor countries, however, begin to experience significant per-capita increases in consumption and affluence, by exploiting the resources in their own countries, this will conflict with the consumptive levels in the north, because we exploit their raw materials as well. Something would have to give.

With respect to 'development', what the hell do you mean by that? Its a word with a million meanings that mean different things to different people. Moreover, the western economies might not shut down because of concern over climate change, but there is little doubt that they will shut down eventually if we continue on the present course. That course is based on the profoundly large (and growing) ecological deficit that essentially supports one fifth of the world's population. Given that the material (= human) economy is utterly dependent on the health and vitality of natural systems (= the natural economy), and that the latter is is terminal decline, it does not take much brain power to realize that the material economy is heading for a wall. The question is in determining when we are going to hit that wall, of if we will finally wake up to the abundant signs before it is too late. No amount of human ingenuity or arrogance will suffice if we past a critical point; by then we will have to brace ourselves for a period of consequences: nasty ones.

Finally, given that the proceeds of development are primarily monopolized by the rich in the north (and elites in the south), how do you reconcile the fact that there has never been any real attempt to reduce the levels of grinding poverty in the south by the quad? There is abundant evidence for this, but many of us who are benficiaries of wholly unjust economic policies do not apparently want to face up to it and to rock the boat. Social injustiece lies at the hear to of many of the world's most pressing environmental problems.

Your 'highly professional infrastructure' comment is therefore a load of b*s. Its comic-book level analysis of the truth. I have been too busy of late to respond to the crap peddled by some on Deltoid (you, Tim Curtin, Sunspot and a few others) but your last post was so shallow that even I had to respond. Finally, climate change will not have a trivial effect on western economies. Given the fact that it is likely to ravage the ecological infrastructure underlying western economies, the costs may very well be profound. Your problem is that you write a lot of anthropocentric gibberish that expunges the utter dependence of our economic well-being on natural systems. It is high time that you learned a little about the inexorable link between the material and natural economies.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | May 25, 2010 11:44 AM

John (56): As you rightly say, I failed to 'cite' my source for the CO2 benefits of shutting down the world economy. It's a lovely chap called Monckton during a debate at the Oxford Union: http://sppiblog.org/news/oxford-union-debate-on-climate#more-1756. And he won!

Stu (54): I just dipped into James Gleick's 1988 book, Chaos. Talking about Lorenz and something called an intransitive system: "It can stay in one equilibrium or another, but not both. Only a kick from outside can force it to change states." This fits nicely with what we know of ice ages and interglacials and, yes, one such kick can be manmade CO2. But Lorenz then went on to describe "almost intransitivity", where a modest or even a tiny kick can do the job. Gleick concludes: "The Ice Ages may simply be a product of chaos." Much of our merry debate here hinges on 'drivers' and 'causality'; maybe we're all being a bit too - er - Newtonian (yeah, I know, I'm the worst culprit!)

I can't find references for Met guys benefiting from the new chaos theory in the 1980s and 90s, and pulling their horns in, so maybe I imagined it!

Jeff (57): You doubtless know Africa better than I do; I only know one corner, Morocco. I've seen camel caravans come in from the desert three decades ago, entranced and appalled at the same time. Last year, passing acres of poly-tunnels and highly organized clothing factories was very encouraging. My wife and I admired how this feisty little country is playing its many trump cards. You warn darkly of impending 'periods of nasty consequences' and 'the wall' and 'something would have to give'. I can't figure out if you see development in Africa as a good or a bad thing.

Imagine for a moment you're wrong about CO2, about climate change. (Go on, close your eyes and imagine it.) What a burden is lifted from your shoulders. The words 'electric power supply' are shorn of all the grinding guilt association. We lucky pampered westerners are hooked on energy; it supports our civilization. Could it be that the recent demonization of carbon is an irrational guilt trip, a mass psychological convulsion?

Posted by: Brent | May 25, 2010 4:08 PM

Imagine for a moment you're wrong about CO2, about climate change. (Go on, close your eyes and imagine it.) What a burden is lifted from your shoulders. The words 'electric power supply' are shorn of all the grinding guilt association. We lucky pampered westerners are hooked on energy; it supports our civilization.

That'd be great, but we'd still have that energy gap to fill. You know, the one you mentioned previously.

Posted by: Stu | May 25, 2010 4:37 PM

Bremt said: "Luminous Beauty ....If you're so clever why aren't you rich?"

Leaving aside the standard obvious answer I might ask in turn, Brent if your so stupid, why are YOU here?

Here's a little project for you Brent. Go outside and take a look at the ash and chestnut trees. Here in the UK, we're about two weeks into a late spring. Why are great bunches of their leaves looking like early autumn already?

Do your bookbinders, accountants and mining consultants and weathermen's mobs have any answers for that? I've never seen any evidence of any genuine scientific understanding from any of them.

You can learn stuff here, but somehow in your case I doubt you ever will.

Posted by: chek | May 25, 2010 5:58 PM

I do wonder whether the philosophical fault-line between us is one of pro-or-anti development.

No.

This has been another edition of short answers to silly questions.

Posted by: Lotharsson | May 25, 2010 8:06 PM

It's a lovely chap called Monckton during a debate at the Oxford Union...

ROFLMAO! Seriously, Monckton?!

I believe we need a corollary to Godwin's Law - anyone who needs to reference Monckton to support their argument in a thread about climate change is automatically and universally deemed to have failed.

Posted by: Lotharsson | May 25, 2010 8:20 PM

John, the SPPI article contradicts itself in the first two paragraphs:

...an audience of university undergraduates has decisively rejected the notion that “global warming” is or could become a global crisis.

Last week, members of the historic Oxford Union Society, the world’s premier debating society, carried the motion “That this House would put economic growth before combating climate change” by 135 votes to 110.

The motion does not preclude the notion that was stated.

Posted by: Lotharsson | May 25, 2010 10:21 PM

Ah, wait, I posted without checking my memory - which I have problems with sometimes.

The 5.35 factor is in the radiative forcing formula (W/m^2), not the resulting temperature change. I have to run now, so until further investigation, note that my inferences about climate sensitivity based on Monckton's argument may be entirely wrong.

Posted by: Lotharsson | May 25, 2010 10:35 PM

Imagine for a moment you're wrong about CO2, about climate change. (Go on, close your eyes and imagine it.) What a burden is lifted from your shoulders.

And then what? Try to make that fantasy real? Perhaps by following the script in Google Galileo?

Posted by: jakerman | May 26, 2010 12:34 AM

He concluded that shutting down the entire global economy for a whole year, with all the death, destruction, disaster, disease and distress that that would cause...

Monckton is thus implying that it is impossible to adapt an economy to one that is not so heavily reliant on current increasing rates of fossil fuel conbustion.

Thus Monckton perscription is to continue the acceleation of fossil fuel combustion and thus reduce our adaptation time when we do run hard into depleation of the fuel which we'd structured our economy around.

Surely if energy productivity is critical to complex, healthy and high poplulous civilisations, then we need to chose a managed transition on our terms; rather than have the shock of a transiton imposed by scarcity and the slippery slope of the downside of a bell curve.

Monckton's apocalyptic vision is a future he'd bring us closer to rather than furthr away from.

Posted by: jakerman | May 26, 2010 12:56 AM

Lord Lawson of Blaby [...] opened the case for the proposition by saying that [...] It would be better to wait and see whether the scientists had gotten it right.

Firstly one can only wonder what would convince Lord Lawson of something he's so committed to being unconvinced of. The evidence is already overwhelming that the risks are extreme. Just as the evidence is overwhelming that the EGHE has inertia, meaning that we are committed to more warming (until temperature reaches to new radiative equilibrium) even if and when we curb emissions.

Lawson's appraoch is the oppostie of cautious. It is high risk committing us to a prolonged time of accelerating emissions which extend the committment to warming far further. All while we wait for the fantasy moment when a group of contraians supposedly say 'sorry the scientist were close enought to being correct'. That is never going to happen, there will always be those idelogues committed to "suspicious thinking", and those who will never be convinced.

James Delingpole is a scientifically illiterate moron and a suitable representative of those who believe the empty trash he delivers.

To the proposition: That this House would put economic growth before combating climate change.

A misframed (and biased) question that establishes a false dichotomy and thus puts vital questions beyond the scope of debate. The two prefered elements (stable climate, and sound economy) are more interdependant than mutually exclusive. If find it hard to understand why the three arguing againt the propostion agree to it.

Posted by: jakerman | May 26, 2010 1:48 AM

So now that we've had a little discussion about the Monckton distraction, do you think Brent will return to (say) the substantive topics raised by Jeff Harvey or the key question posted by John or posed by chek?

Posted by: Lotharsson | May 26, 2010 2:45 AM

John (68): A challenge well put! In 50 words or fewer, eh?

The rotten edifice of AGW has so far failed to crumble because (whoa! Those twelve don't count! The fifty start... NOW)

Because the programmes built up by profligate statesmen misled by Strangelovian apocalypse merchants advance with great momentum. [That's 17 so far. Hey, can I swap 'great' for 'titanic'? Thanks, John.]

Democracy being what it is, the politicians will react only when the Good Ship Global Warming hits the iceberg of...

[Quick count up. Dammit, only 13 left. Bloody prepositions are so expensive...]

...Stage 4 Public Opinion public opinion in the sequence Credulousness, Indifference, Scorn, Anger.

[Can we agree that AGW counts as one word? Yes? I could've used CAGW instead, then, at no extra cost. Have you noticed the acronym inflation? I wonder if the four letters of CAGW will grow further? Will it one day reach BSASSFOCGW?]

Posted by: Brent | May 26, 2010 4:19 AM

Because the programmes built up by profligate statesmen misled by Strangelovian apocalypse merchants advance with great momentum.

So, basically, a political non-answer to the science...

Posted by: Lotharsson | May 26, 2010 4:33 AM

The sceptics can only dream of Inconvenient Truth 2.

You forgot "Al Gore is fat". That usually helps when you're trying to distract from your non-argument against the science by pointing to movies and non-scientists...

Posted by: Lotharsson | May 26, 2010 5:54 AM

Brent, and of course you are operating from this script:

As a consequence they have to disprove the science via a fantasy of a global conspiracy amongst scientists in collusion with governments and green groups.

Posted by: jakerman | May 26, 2010 6:35 AM

Help me out here: were Spencer, Ball and Lindzen among the two who said no?

Ball? Your kidding right? Lindzen, don't know, names were not idenfied.

I'm not banging the 'global conspiracy' drum any more,

Huh? What is this then?

programmes built up by profligate statesmen misled by Strangelovian apocalypse merchants...

You don't seem to have got that argument sorted out in your own mind.

You'd better give John a another 50 words that fit with your new position.

Posted by: jakerman | May 26, 2010 7:50 AM

80 P Lewis,

Great stuff. Does it work over the intertubes?

Posted by: TrueSceptic | May 26, 2010 8:20 AM

It's sad watching Brent use what he deems "irony" to deflect the tough questions. Shows the depth (or lack of) behind his arguments. His facetious attitude also betrays his true feelings towards me.

Pathetic.

Posted by: John | May 26, 2010 8:24 AM

Is this comment more irony Brent?

Of course, your comments are so facetious, full of lies, trolling, attempted irony and completed fail it's hard to tell what you truly believe.

Here's a list of things I gathered from your comment. Please advise me on which points you actually believe:

1. You think Monckton is a "git" but still continue to cite him.

2. Mysterious unnamed pro-AGW forces are paying off Al Gore and he is only in it for personal gain. Because documentaries are so lucrative.

3. You believe local weather is climate.

4. You believe the polar ice caps aren't melting.

5. You believe scientists say Florida is supposed to have flooded by 2010.

6. Grapes annecdotally grown in the past in areas they are grown today is proof of a warmer climate.

Using "irony" and "humour" are well known trolling tactics that enable you to lie your head off, or make the same incorrect points and then accuse everyone of being humourless so I apologise* for nipping this behaviour in the bud.

*not really.

Posted by: John | May 26, 2010 8:46 AM

80 P Lewis, Great stuff. Does it work over the intertubes?

I wish! :-(

But kill file is the next best thing. :-)

Posted by: P. Lewis | May 26, 2010 9:22 AM

So a troll walks into a bar, and takes a dump.

The room turn back to their work thinking that taking a dump is aspirational achievement for trolls. Thought they all make a mental note not to step where the troll makes his treats.

Posted by: spot | May 26, 2010 9:40 AM

Given that this year is heading to be the warmest on record, I cannot wait for sunspot to claim in 2011 that global cooling began in 2010. The Heartland Conference, as everyone here knows or should know, is a corporate-funded side show; a denialist shindig where is just fine to mangle science so long as the proper directed conclusions are produced.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | May 26, 2010 10:39 AM

HI BRENT!!!

You really are thin skinned, you know that? Your sooky, snivelling ad homenim attacks aren't bolstering your case at all. They're making you look like a petulant child who won't play nice because he's been called out on his bullshit.

Plus, I am still awaiting an answer to my questions as I am simply dying to know what your actual views are.

Surely an honest, reasonable person who just wanted to dig to the scientific truth would lay his cards on the table.

Posted by: John | May 26, 2010 11:46 AM

[Ironic mode off] Jeff (92): An article on today's UK Independent says that the Aloatra grebe is now extinct. Terrible news. Nowhere in the article is AGW mentioned, I'm glad to say. If, in the fullness of time, the AGW theory is resolved as an expensive unfounded panic, I hope that people such as yourself who work in the area will insist that funding is targeted at real issues rather than fantasies like AGW.

I share your view on the military gravy train. I am deeply ashamed of the UK's role in Iraq and Afghanistan; I pestered my MP, the PM and the Queen in 2003 in a puny attempt to prevent war. Tony Blair's attitude, I think, was 'what's the point in having armed forces if we never deploy them?'

[Ironic mode back to normal]

The latter was a wild goose chase for weapons of mass destruction; the former is a weapon of mass taxation.

Robert Murphy (60): You shoot down my suggestion that Jeff imagines how the world would look if the CO2 thing were exposed as wrong. "Wishin' don't make it so, alas." You got me! It looked like I was proposing to delete a serious problem by pretending. Mea culpa. My half-arsed idea was to look forward to a post-Gore world, when we can buy fresh produce from developing countries without that pang of carbon-footprint guilt. We look back on late-50s USA crapping itself when Sputnik flew overhead with a superior chuckle at their faulty risk assessment. I was hamfistedly proposing to look back from 2040 with a similar chuckle.

You mention the fallacy that "if AGW is true that somehow means capitalism is false". We've pretty much avoided talking left/right here - by accident or by tacit agreement I don't know. There are people here in Britain - scary fundamentalists - arguing that AGW is so important that democracy should be suspended whilst those-who-know-better than the dumb electorate impose the remedies. I view them as Watermelons: green on the outside and red on the inside.

Posted by: Brent | May 26, 2010 3:10 PM

HI BRRRENT!!!!

"There are people here in Britain - scary fundamentalists - arguing that AGW is so important that democracy should be suspended"

But Brent, the only political parties in the UK who have an official policy of denying AGW (the fascist BNP and the comical UKIP whose science spokesman is your hero Lord Monckton) don't have a single elected MP between them. Tory, Liberal and Labour all accept AGW exists and they account for almost all the democratically elected MPs in parliament. Seems you want to override democracy in the name of your Moncktonesque delusions.

Posted by: lord_sidcup | May 26, 2010 5:35 PM

Jakerman,

You're right about peak oil. But the confident predictions were about literally running out. As in: The motorways strewn with abandoned vehicles, and people walking home. You're maybe too young to know this; I am not. I went to buy stacks of A4 paper (panic buyer) so that I'd be able to complete my studies properly.

Naive? Sure! I bet you could write a list of absurd fallacies that whole societies have bought into.

Just suppose we meet up in 20 years. Which of these scenarios is most likely: (a)You paddle past me on your boat, and I scream out, 'Jakerman, you were right, come over and rescue me.' or (b)I buy you a pint at a 16th century beachfront pub and you say, 'This was supposed to be underwater by now! OK, you were right, Brent, but you had a head's start. You'd already made a fool of yourself buying a previous scare story.'

Posted by: Brent | May 26, 2010 7:21 PM

Brent, are you really this stupid, or are you just pretending?

re peak oil. Cite for us soem scientific or technical artielcs predicting, confidently or otherwise, that in 1973 we're just going to flat run out of oil and cars will be abandoned on the roadways.

I suspect you might find some popular articles, or even some economics or engineering articles stalking abut the effects of the oil embargo and that act of economic warfare, but that was NOT about running out of oil, Brent. That was about withholding production of what was still abundant oil.

I don't care how old you are, Brent, nothing in the scientific literature was predicting that in 1972 there would be plenty of oil, and in 1973 we'd be out and abandoning cars on the roadway.

Similarly, no one serious is predicting that in "20 years" seaside pubs will be under water.

When you manufacture this kind of idiocy and attribute it to 'the other side' is just makes you look like an idiot, Brent. By now, I've become pretty sure you aren't having to work at all hard to give that impression.

Posted by: Lee | May 26, 2010 8:35 PM

Brent, Now there is a 1970s Oil-scare : "predictions were about literally running out. As in: The motorways strewn with abandoned vehicles, and people walking home".

Forgive me my scepticism, but thanks to the supposed "Global Cooling" scare of the 1970s, which turned out to be a 2000's invention of the Denialists, I won't accept these stories of previous scares at face-value. Please provide evidence for these "confident predictions" you refer to.

Posted by: Vince Whirlwind | May 26, 2010 9:41 PM

...Lotharsson's bag was flying saucers - had a collection of fuzzy photos. ...

Wow, you really can't handle people who disagree with your arguments and back them up with evidence, can you? You project mindless conspiracy theorism onto them in order to dismiss any argument they might make. That will do wonders for your own credibility - in your own mind, if nowhere else.

Ah, wait, Lee's already covered that point:

When you manufacture this kind of idiocy and attribute it to 'the other side' is just makes you look like an idiot, Brent.

Shorter and sweeter.

Posted by: Lotharsson | May 26, 2010 10:45 PM

Brent, while your multiple personalities move in and out of psychotic episodes I'm still waiting.

Posted by: John | May 26, 2010 11:19 PM

Here's something interesting - Brent publicly admitting that AGW has yet to have been disproven:

The assumption that climate is governed by unstable equilibrium needs to be debunked. The other major assumption – that greenhouse gases drive temperature vastly more than solar or volcanic activity – also needs debunking.

There are names for people who believe things they admit aren't supported by science.

Here's another interesting post. Wondered why those boneheads showed up at the Empirical Evidence thread as Brent threw another hissy fit and abandonded us for the umpteenth time?

For the opposite to witty banter, come and join in the fun at: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man.php where more typical language is: ‘We defer to the scientists, you denialist moron troll”. I’m seriously outnumbered there, and could do with backup.

Brent on why he left Deltoid:

Wally (11:24): After ten weeks of trading ideas and insults with that nest of Warmist vipers on Deltoid, they have exiled me as denialist persona-non-grata.

Liar. You left of your own accord.

Here is an example Brent's hilarious dad humour.

What deplorable laziness to call the volcano E+15! Look, it’s easy, it’s Eya…. correction…. Eyjafallyajok…. oh all right it’s EyetawdItawapuddytat.

Uncle Vince, is that you?

Posted by: John | May 27, 2010 12:09 AM

Brent has a very fragile ego.

Posted by: John | May 27, 2010 1:20 AM

@Brent #110

Quote mining - science denialist handbook, paragraph.....

Posted by: lord_sidcup | May 27, 2010 4:19 AM

Hey Brent, that TV you've got over there is a whopper !!!!

try this channel, http://www.tinyurl.com.au/91z

your visitors will luv it.

Posted by: sunspot | May 27, 2010 6:04 AM

Some of us [believe] the dangers are overhyped...

Yeah we see how you come to that conclusion, by knocking over strawmen, then thinking your can transfer that success the issues you have just dodge by instead attacking a strawman.

Here is some assistance for development of self awareness: your joke register is a trick to dodge issues. Transparent to others, perhaps harder to see if you tricking yourself.

Posted by: jakerman | May 27, 2010 7:16 AM

Look, isn't it fair to say that we operate here in two distinct 'registers'? There's firstly the fun aspect, slagging each other off and cheerfully insulting each other.

If my insults seem cheerful I apologise, they aren't meant to be taken that way.

all I see is a few lousy tenths of a degree on some dodgy thermometers.

So you keep repeating. Doesn't make it true.

Kill off the global warming hysteria and we can get down to the real business at hand.

The only hysteria here is coming from you.

Isn't it funny that after maybe 100+ comments from you we're still no closer to knowing what you actually believe and your scientific reasons for believing it. Everything you've wrtten has been based on your ideological views, and you still wonder why the pesky "rotten edifice" won't tumble down no matter how hard you kick.

Delusional.

Now be a dear answer my simple, simple questions.

Posted by: John | May 27, 2010 8:34 AM

Stu (112): Thanks for reassuring me about the fate of seaside pubs.

Lee (113): No, I really am that stupid. Stu's a student I think. Ask him to calculate how much water we all have to drink to cancel out 1.8mm per annum of sea level rise.

Posted by: Brent | May 27, 2010 9:53 AM

HI BRENT!!!!

Thanks for answering my questions. Hopefully next time it won't take 40 comments.

Yes, Mockton is a git, but if he can help sway public opinion to discount the AGW myth then the lad's doing good.

So what you're saying is it's okay to fraudulently lie to the public as long as you get the outcome you'd like. That's to be expected, it's been your modus operandi all along.

Gore has financial interests in the CCX, trading in (and profiting from) hot air.

No, your comment hinted that Gore was being paid off and could be swayed by money - that he had been "signed" by "our side". It might interest you that Gore funnels the money from his investments into the Alliance for Climate Protection. Hardly a financially savvy move if he was only in it for the money.

Local weather isn't climate, true. But both of them are business-as-usual, or variation within historical bounds.

So you now admit to changing your mind on the subject? Climate scientists might be astonished to discover that climate is merely "business is usual". You should contact Phil Jones and report this to him immeadiately.

Oh wait, you've already admitted that the AGW theory is yet to have been disproven, meaning your case is (surprise!) based on faith and not evidence.

Pole caps ditto. Look at the data. If they were melting you'd be the first to shout about it.

Care to point me to the data? That is, a primary source showing no polar icecap melting. I'd be delighted to see it. Or will it just be another trip around the goldfish bowl?

Grapes! The Romans grew them in England. Business as usual, no?

Goldfish bowl. As I pointed out grapes are grown in England today. Your point?

Lies, misrepresentation, distortion, no citations...."business as usual" from Brent.

No irony this time! Disappointing. I guess I've, dog gone it, blown that little trick.

Posted by: John | May 27, 2010 10:13 AM

Brent,

In response to your posting above:

1. Who says AGW is a myth. You? What special scientific wisdom gives you the ability to draw this conclusion?

2. There is a lot more profit in denial; at least that is why polluting industries invest millions to debunk the science that they hate.

3. See my point # 1. What do you know about 'historical boundaries?' One might just as well say that there is no concern about the felling or burning of tropical forests since during the period leading up to and including the last ice age the area covered by tropical forests worldwide decreased profoundly; that had nothing of course to do with human actions. But the process lasted several thousand years. Similarly, the rate of climate warming currently occurring falls well outside of 'natural boundaries', whether one is looking globally or locally. How can you reconcile a 7-10 C increase in temperatures in parts of the Arctic over the past centruy as 'within natural boundaries'? What do YOU of all people know about it? You are not a scientist and have openly admitted that you are a layman. Basically, your position is one of faith: hoping that a few primarily right wing sceptics like Monckton are correct because it fits in with your pre-determined view. Correct?

4. Like many of the laymen in the denial camp, you do not tackle the science which is beyond you; instead you go for soft targets like Gore, creating numerous strawmen along the way.

5. A non-starter. I won't even discuss the lack of science wrapped up in the silly argument as to whether Romans grew grapes in the UK or not.

The major points are (1) that the climate is changing very rapidly (fact), (2), that there is significant scientific evidence to show that humans are the primary culprit (fact), and (3) that the consequences of doing nothing about it are already manifesting themsleves on natural systems very negatively (fact). Further inaction is very likely to have serious consequences.

You can take the rest of your grade-school pontificating elsewhere. If truth be told you do not know what the hell you are talking about. You do not read any of the empirical literature showing effects of regional warming on food webs and species interactions (and there is lots of it). You rely on those, like Monckton, distorting science to promote their own libertarian political agendas. If you want to believe in the tooth fairy, so be it. But do not claim for a second that AGW is a myth based on your puny knowledge base.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | May 27, 2010 10:29 AM

Reading the IPCC document yeaterday I was wondering why they divided the variations in solar output by four...

Elementary geometry. The plane of intersecting solar insolation projects on the spherical surface of the Earth, πR^2/4πR^2 = 1/4.

Some engineer you are.

Posted by: luminous beauty | May 27, 2010 10:31 AM

I propose Gore's Law -

The more a denialist is losing an internet debate on global warming, the more the likelihood of said denialst mentioning Al Gore conspiracy theories approaches one.

Posted by: John | May 27, 2010 10:36 AM

I propose Hargreaves's (Brent) folly:

The more a denialist doesn't want to address points, the more they do this.

Posted by: jakerman | May 27, 2010 10:47 AM

Being a jerk, minus a million points.

Posted by: John | May 27, 2010 11:28 AM

John (141): Gore's Law states: "The rate of return on Generation Investment Management's stake in the Chicago Carbon Exchange is directly proportional to the investment in Inconvenient Truth's CGI."

Your proposal will have to be Gore's 2nd Law.

There's a meeting you should all attend:

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/dealingwithdenialism_poster.png

If the flights are free I'll see you there and buy a round of drinks. Air miles as well (but not in Jeff's league!)

Posted by: Brent | May 27, 2010 12:06 PM

Washington Post 26 May:

"With public faith in the global-warming myth on the wane, leftist zealots are desperate to spin a new tale - and they’re spending your tax money to do it. Three years ago, Congress appropriated $5,856,600 for the National Academy of Sciences to complete a climate-change study. This bureaucratic attempt to cook the books, which was completed last week, may be too late to save this dying religion."

and

"A recent Rasmussen survey found that a majority (59 percent) think it’s more likely that scientists are falsifying research data to support their own personal theories about global warming."

If my division of science into Classical, Modern and Empirical science 'has legs', the damage being done to the reputation of the wider profession by the third branch calls for urgent action.

If the science fraternity were the platoon in Full Metal Jacket, it's maybe time for the fat guy to get whacked by bars of soap in GI socks. Peer group pressure urgently needed. Hide-the-decline is a lousy motto.

Posted by: Brent | May 27, 2010 1:01 PM

Brent - your 1st quote comes from the Washington Times, not the Washington Post. The Washington Times was founded in 1982 by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon. It's the newspaper of the Moonies.

Can you possibly get more fucking idiotic?

Posted by: lord_sidcup | May 27, 2010 1:19 PM

If my division of science into Classical, Modern and Empirical science 'has legs'...

It doesn't.

Posted by: luminous beauty | May 27, 2010 1:51 PM

Maybe this thread might be more accurately renamed "The Thread For Dumb Trolls Wot Know Nuffing About Nuffing Presuming to Instruct Actual Scientists Who Do".

Why stop at climate science?

Why isn't Brent telling everyone from neurosurgeons to aerodynamicists about how they've got it all wronge, because some ex-TV has-been and/or accountant said so?

Posted by: chek | May 27, 2010 4:31 PM

Please point me to where any of us cite Gore as an authority, or where Al Gore said Florida would be underwater by 2010, as per your comment.

Brent is lying of course, for the umpteenth time -- or, rather, he is just too stupid to understand the truth. First, Gore is not a scientist (that's what John asked about). Second, Gore did not show simulations of Florida going under water in 2010 or any other year; what he showed was a simulation of what would happen if the Greenland ice sheet were to melt.

Posted by: truth machine | May 27, 2010 5:24 PM

Truthmachine,

Rather than seizing negatively on fragments of other people's postings, how about something more positive? Let's assume that there's an undecided lurker reading these exchanges; please write - to a maximum of 200 words - your most compelling argument for AGW.

In fact, other unsceptics may wish to have a shot at The Two Hundred Word Challenge. As a mark of goodwill, I'll promise not to trash your 200 unless you expressly say, 'Do your worst'.

Posted by: Brent | May 27, 2010 6:06 PM

In fact, other unsceptics may wish to have a shot at The Two Hundred Word Challenge.

In deed, lets hear an 'unskeptics' descrition of what they belive science's best case for AGW is. It could be quite instructive. I know that unskeptics like Dr O sign anti AGW petitions without even reading what AGW science is.

Since Brent has nominated unspectics to have a go, I'll nominate that the true skeptics follow. ( Where true skeptics are those committed to a process of assessing and synthesising evidence, whist avoiding Google Galileo traits, strawmen dodges, implausible conspiracy, and Heagreave's folly).

Brent please lead off the case.

Posted by: jakerman | May 27, 2010 9:39 PM

Let's assume that there's an undecided lurker reading these exchanges; please write - to a maximum of 200 words - your most compelling argument for AGW.

Nah, let's not do that.

Instead, assuming the tiny possibility of an undecided lurker who surprisingly thinks this thread is the best place to figure it out, please write your best remaining anti-AGW-science argument, i.e. one that you haven't already tried once or more in your dozens of comments on the Empirical Evidence thread.

And remember that to do this correctly you have to understand and critique the actual scientific argument, not a strawman or a political stance.

Have at it.

Posted by: Lotharsson | May 27, 2010 10:49 PM

Hi fellers!

Hey, lady!

I'm going for the moment to write on the asumption that there is any truth to what Brent claims about herself. It's a ridiculous assumption given how obviously mendacious she is, but it allows me to make a point (which has likely been made here before, but anyway...).

But the confident predictions were about literally running out. As in: The motorways strewn with abandoned vehicles, and people walking home. You're maybe too young to know this; I am not. I went to buy stacks of A4 paper (panic buyer) so that I'd be able to complete my studies properly. Naive? Sure! I bet you could write a list of absurd fallacies that whole societies have bought into.

I've always found people who make statements like this - attesting to radical shifts in beliefs - fascinating. It's like a public acknowledgement that they've never learned to critically evaluate evidence or its sources. They have no evidentiary basis or evidentiary requirement for their beliefs, and are thus at the mercy of, well, anyone (especially the powerful). I find this condition weak and shameful.

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | May 28, 2010 12:00 AM

You know, I went to a pretty rough school as a child. There were a fair few "special" children at the school - mostly deaf kids, but there were some drooling simpletons as well. The cruel children used to have fun with the "retards" - as they were known - putting them in garbage bins, throwing food at them, dropping lit fireworks in their pockets, that sort of thing.

I see that adults are no different - you've spotted a Grade "A" retard in Brent, and you're falling all over yourselves to give him wedgies and feed him shit sandwiches.

I think you should all be a lot kinder to Brent - he needs love, not cruelty, to get through life with the hand he's been dealt.

Posted by: Vince Whirlwind | May 28, 2010 12:30 AM

Not that it bears any relation to the strength of the science underpinning the theory of AGW, but a UK Judge has ruled “Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate”. That’s “Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate”. Yep, he agreed that “Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate”. What was that again? Oh yes, “Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate”. Or to put it another way “Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate”. Or, “Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate”.. Did he say “Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate”. Yes, he said

“Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate”.

Posted by: Hasis | May 28, 2010 6:09 AM

MFS, I bet you could summarise one of the laws of thermodynamics or one of Newton's laws in fewer than 200 words. Why? Because they reveal the elegant simplicity of the laws of physics.

A body of work which requires 30 years and thousands of reports to explain is either very complicated (e.g.,Nostradamus's, or sociology or acupuncture) or lacks that elegant simplicity.

The torrent of abuse unleashed by my straightforward proposal speaks volumes.

This reaction reminded me of reactions seen in another area of debate but, as if on the tip of my tonge, I couldn't quite dredge up the memory, and then it came to me. It's when somebody pats a bible and says with a mad twinkle, "It's all in here, sonny."

Posted by: Brent | May 28, 2010 12:25 PM

CO2 is transparent to visible light (from the sun) but not to infrared. Therefore more CO2 = higher temp. since the energy gets in (from the sun) but has a hard time leaving (like adding a blanket on your bed). We (see isotopes of Carbon) have doubled the amount of CO2 in the air. It is much warmer than it has been for 2000 years, and there are no credible alternate explanations for this. QED Cue lying troll in 4 3 2 1.

Posted by: elspi | May 28, 2010 1:39 PM

Sunspot, remember telling us about Prince Charles's statement that we only had 96 months to save the world?

"brent, your a goner ! we are all doomed. http://www.tinyurl.com.au/3aa nobody in here will or has got off their arse's to do anything about it". We're now down to 87, and they're still sat on their arses.

Fantastic news from the Royal Society, eh? A group of Fellows, remembering the old motto "Nullius in verba" (take nobody's word for it) are insisting that the RS's website be quality-checked for warmist mumbo jumbo. The BBC's Environment Correspondant says that "there is debate on the 'feedback' effects on climate". Great! This is one of AGS's Achilles' heels. If the RS and your NAS declare positive feedback to be unfounded conjecture then it's game over.

Guy on WUWT says "their support for the rigid political line of AGW is making them look like Soviet Lysenko Lackies". Ouch! Another guy wonders how the Hockey Team 'got their own "ology"!' Is there a place for climatology? Yeah, between ufology and phrenology.

Posted by: Brent | May 28, 2010 2:29 PM

Elspi (173): Thanks for your lucid summary of the theory. No need for the footnote about lying trolls, though.

Dhogaza: A well-made point about elegantly simple physics leading to great complexity. In biology, Darwin's work gives the same joy. That his books became bestsellers are a good illustration of the public's pleasure when bewildering complexity is explained by straightforward concepts we can all understand - in principle if not in detail. Have you ever met somebody who leaves you thinking: 'he/she must be very clever; I didn't understand a damn word he/she said'? And the opposite: 'Wow, that person just explained in simple words how [...] works. It takes real mastery to reveal the essence of [...] to nonspecialists.'

I think that, among climatologists, Prof Alley is the closest thing to the latter. I think I'm going to watch his superb presentation to the AGU again: http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml If you haven't seen it, I'd recommend it.

Posted by: Brent | May 28, 2010 3:06 PM

A well-made point about elegantly simple physics leading to great complexity.

Ironically in this case, simple physics applied even to very simple scenarios such as the 3-body problem leads to chaotic system behaviour - and (lack of understanding of) said behaviour in the earth's climate system has led Brent to all sorts of wild and unjustified conclusions in the past.

Fantastic news from the Royal Society, eh?

Excellent.

But still no scientific argument from you against the current science.

The BBC's Environment Correspondant says that "there is debate on the 'feedback' effects on climate".

Yes, there is. There'd better be when the best range estimate for climate sensitivity based on a range of empirical data is as wide as "2-4.5 degrees C", and sensitivities up to about 10 degrees still cannot be ruled out. This is one of the active and important research areas...

...oh, wait, you didn't mean that. You were merely speculating on something for which there is little supporting evidence:

If the RS and your NAS declare positive feedback to be unfounded conjecture then it's game over.

And if I win Lotto I'll be rich. But don't bother calling me about it until my numbers come up.

So still no scientific argument from you.

Guy on WUWT says "their support for the rigid political line of AGW is making them look like Soviet Lysenko Lackies". Ouch!

ROFL! This is what passes between your ears for science?

Or, like most of what you write, is it an attempt to distract from having no scientific support for your argument about the science?

Posted by: Lotharsson | May 28, 2010 8:50 PM

Brent said:

Have you ever met somebody who leaves you thinking: 'he/she must be very clever; I didn't understand a damn word he/she said'?

No but I have read posts by deniers like Brent which have left me thinking "he/she must be really stupid, I didn't understand a damn word he/she said."

Posted by: Ian Forrester | May 28, 2010 9:06 PM

Oh I get it now, Brent's threatened by people who are smarter than he is.

I'm delighted to see he brought up the Royal Society debacle, a piece of nonesnse brought on by 43 out-of-field retirees. They'll be dead soon and the natural order of science will be restored.

Waiting on the concession.

Posted by: John | May 28, 2010 10:00 PM

Excuse my formatting there, I was playing with the markup code.

Posted by: John | May 28, 2010 10:27 PM

"Actually, we've increased it by about 40% since (say) somewhere around the mid-1700s, not doubled it."

I blame it on the oceans (they keep hidin the increase).

Posted by: elspi | May 28, 2010 11:33 PM

Rather than seizing negatively on fragments of other people's postings

How about you not being an intellectual coward and actually acknowledge the hundreds of errors you have made in your various posts here.

Posted by: truth machine | May 29, 2010 2:59 AM

Einstein's theory of general relativity is remarkably elegant. Perhaps Brent can honor us with a 200 word essay that both lays out the theory and provides convincing evidence that it is valid.

If he can't do that, there's another Einsteinian example of elegance that he could emulate: "It is tasteless to prolong lifetrolling artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly."

Posted by: truth machine | May 29, 2010 3:31 AM

Truthmachine, since you and other unsceptics have huffily refused the Two Hundred Word Challenge (with the honourable exception of Elspi), I will play your little game.

(You have to imagine Sylvester's voice when he agreed to Tweety Pie's order to sing along.... 'oh, all right, then!')

General Relativity is a geometric theory of gravitation, which is considered a property of spacetime, which can be considered curved. The Einstein Field Equations which underpin it predict that light paths are bent by a massive body, that photons' frequency varies with gravitational potential, that escape velocity from sufficiently massive bodies exceeds the speed of light in a phenomenon dubbed 'black holes', and that major gravitational events such as stellar collapses or fast-rotating binary stars will emit gravity waves. In the first two of these, observations conform precisely to prediction; there is strong evidence for the third (including a yet-to-be-confirmed black hole at the centre of our galaxy) ; the fourth has been indirectlt detected.

Posted by: Brent | May 29, 2010 5:05 AM

Chek (182): You propose that (a rather petty alphabetical point) climatology should fit between biology and geology.

Sorry, mate, there's already a hard science beginning with C - chemistry.

Among the fuzzy sciences there's astrology, graphology, criminology, theology, sociology with quite a range of mathematical foundation. (Who was it said "all science is maths?")

Are we, in our playful way, sneaking up on an important point here: that the very titles of sciences have 'just happened', or at least highly inconsistent? Geography, for instance, has the humility to badge itself as a mere graphy. (Their big tough cousins, the Geologists, snarl menacingly "We drill for oil. Just as long as you stay in your fucking place we'll get on fine."

Astronomers should take their weakbrained horoscope-producing cousins into a dark alley, give 'em a good kicking, and then come out saying, "Right, that's sorted! From this day on, the name 'Astrology' belongs to us! The name 'Astro-nomy' is quarantined, and the horoscope boys will need a new job title."

The possibly important etymological point: If your seers had called themselves Climatographers rather than Climatologists we'd have been spared all this unpleasantness. The Climatography industry would've stayed as tiny as the Geography industry (career path: school - uni - teaching - retirement). Shall we propose a rebranding?

Posted by: Brent | May 29, 2010 5:56 AM

Brent channels wikipedia.

Even my first-year students would edit better than that when they pliagarise.

Posted by: Bernard J. | May 29, 2010 10:08 AM

John, sorry about not replying to your questions in #166. I somehow figured that you wouldn't be happy whatever I say.

No, no, no, yes, no.

Posted by: Brent | May 29, 2010 12:18 PM

Brent said: "You propose that (a rather petty alphabetical point) climatology should fit between biology and geology".

Brent, me poor ol' misguided missile, if you're attempting to indulge in observational comedy, your observations need to be at the very least correct. Only in a dyslexic's nightmare universe does a 'C' subject appear between 'P' and 'U'.

Brent also said: "Shall we propose a rebranding"?

No, I think climate denial moron still fits the bill very well. Thanks for supplying abundant proof that any reconsideration is required.

Posted by: chek | May 29, 2010 6:31 PM

Brent

No, no, no, yes, no.

John said: "If you don't wish to conceed these points please provide me with primary evidence stating otherwise."

Do so or concede the remaining points.

Brent:

200 word description

Likewise.

Posted by: Dave R | May 29, 2010 9:36 PM

Brent.

If you are so desperate to have a 200-word précis describing the underlying thrust of climate change, why don't you just chop and stitch the IPCC summary, as you did with the Wikipedia entry for Relativity?

Or, heavens forfend [gasp!, swoon!], are you playing an evil game of some sort?

Surely not...

Posted by: Bernard J. | May 30, 2010 12:00 AM

TM:

Rather than seizing negatively on fragments of other people's postings... How about you not being an intellectual coward and actually acknowledge the hundreds of errors you have made in your various posts here.

To which Brent demonstrates that very practice of dodging the issues addressed by TM with typical hand waving.

Well demonstrated Brent.

Posted by: jakerman | May 30, 2010 12:50 AM

[Repeat whatever "hard science" was in the WUWT comment section today. Ignore substantative criticism. Make loaded demands of other commenters in vain attempt to trap them.]

In 30 years I'll be in tenured in Sir Lindzen University looking back to the dark ages of 2010 with a superior chuckle as Mann, Gore, and Hansen are forced to toil in underground sugarcaves (for their crimes against humanity) muttering to themselves "who knew that solar was the only force on the climate?".

Of course, it is the hottest year on record but I'll just ignore that and....ICE AGE!! OVER THERE!!! LOOK!!!

Seriously, like, get a sense of humour doofuses.

Posted by: Shorter Brent | May 31, 2010 11:47 AM

Thinking out loud here...

I like where this is going.

"Thinking out loud" is just setting up the inevitable exit clause for when you get trashed by all the much smarter people here.

Here's what I think Brent -

I think you're a surly child who should grow up, or leave this blog.

Again and again you've been proven wrong. You've weaseled. You've lied. You've actively posted things you know are wrong.

You've admitted that Climategate has fizzled out. You've admitted that the science of AGW (despite being such a "rotten edifice") is yet to have been disproven. You've admitted to supporting Christopher Monckton even though you know he's a liar because he's all you have.

If there is anyone here basing their beliefs entirely on faith and not science, it's you.

If there's anyone suffering a fatal case of pride here, it's the person who has announced his exit, loudly and obnoxiously, on multiple occasions before returning because that pride was wounded.

Here we have another one of your sooky attack posts because the science has stood rock solid no matter how hard you've shouted it at.

And. The. Temperature. Continues. To. Go. Up. Like. The. Models. Predict.

And your 200 word challenge can go and screw itself in the bottom. How stupid do you think we are? Nobody here is going to fall into your little simplification trap. Simplified science is the only level you understand.

You've lost Brent.

Face it.

Posted by: John | June 1, 2010 12:01 PM

Brent,

How many times do you have to be told, Central England is not the globe, and comparing one month to another is not a trend.

All you are demonstrating is that you are both stupid and delusional.

Posted by: luminous beauty | June 1, 2010 1:15 PM

I award him/her 2 points.

Bully fuck for you. Who the fuck do you think you are? Who the fuck do you think we think you are? Just some stupid narcissistic piece of shit.

Posted by: truth machine | June 1, 2010 2:38 PM

Zero for everybody else

You forgot Hasis, who wrote (several times, so as to read 200 words) “Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate”. That's considerably more informative than your handwaving about the GToR. But now that we know from #193 just what sort of gloss you're willing to accept, perhaps someone willing to play your game will offer an equivalent for AGW -- someone so gullible (Erasmussimo?) that they think that you would change your tune if your were given a summary of AGW just like yours for the GToR.

your reluctance to attempt a concise 200 word description of the AGW position speaks volumes

Yes, it speaks volumes about our understanding of the nature of science, of the dishonest intent behind such challenges, and of our regard for you, just as your challenge speaks volumes about your dishonesty and stupidity.

Posted by: truth machine | June 1, 2010 8:00 PM

Try looking out of the window. If your cataclysm had any substance it would be affecting the Real World.

This, folks, is the comeplete detachment from reality denialists need in order to believe their little fantasies.

See what Brent's saying?

The warming (which is or isn't happening, depending on what day you ask him) isn't affecting the real world!

Not a jot!

Without watching the empirical evidence vid again, aren't there 23,000 or so biological indicators showing warming?

So unless Brent has detailed data going back at least five decades of all the records he's obviously keeping, I'm going to go with them scientists and not the disingenuous, lying little rodent.

Posted by: John | June 1, 2010 10:29 PM

I have a question for you Brent:

Why do you think it matters that May 1833 was hotter than May 2010 in Central England?

Posted by: Stu | June 2, 2010 6:35 AM

Brent said: "Warmists love dodgy data "

Which, despite the temperature record being the focus of all the denialist horses and all the denialist men for months now, they've been singularly unsuccessful in showing how the data is "dodgy".

What is amazing is how quickly it has become an article of faith to be fervently believed in. To be clear, being misunderstood by the moronocracy that Watts cultivates and you parrot isn't the same thing at all.

Incidentally Brent, you refer to yourself as an "engineer" which for various reasons scattered throughout your posts here, I find hard to believe. A clerk whose main interests are morris dancing and watching TV - fine. But an engineer? Really?? Not like any I know.

Posted by: chek | June 2, 2010 6:50 AM

G/day brent,

accurate temp data... after snowmaggedon I don't believe the global temperature record's, any of them, in january & february almost the entire northern hemisphere was covered in snow and ice, yet the global land temps were above average, bullshit ! there was a couple of warm places but not enough to cook up the temps, there's to much of this goin on..........

'THE Bureau of Metereology has backed down from a claim that temperatures at Australia's three bases in Antarctica have been warming over the past three decades.'

'The trend of temperatures and ice conditions in Antarctica is central to the debate on global warming because substantial melting of the Antarctic ice cap, which contains 90 per cent of the world's ice, would be required for sea levels to rise.'

'Contrary to widespread public perceptions, the area of sea ice around the continent is expanding.'

'The Weekend Australian reported last month a claim by Bureau of Metereology senior climatologist Andrew Watkins that monitoring at Australia's Antarctic bases since the 1950s indicated temperatures were rising. A study was then published by the British Antarctic Survey that concluded the ozone hole was responsible for the cooling and expansion of sea ice around much of the continent.'

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/9m7

on and on it goes, temp data ????????

Posted by: sunspot | June 2, 2010 7:33 AM

"I don't believe the global temperature record's, any of them..."

So they got Roy Spencer in on the Conspiracy too? Because satellite records indicate that Dec. to March was very warm globally, despite a small strip of cold in the NH. Maybe he's been taken over by the Reptile People like the Royal Family has. I'm sure you conspiracy nuts will think of something, you always do.

You denialists are getting more and more desperate every year. :)

Posted by: Robert Murphy | June 2, 2010 7:49 AM

Stu (221): You ask why I think it matters that May 1833 was warmer in Central England.

Because (a) The CET data is of high quality, not least due to its consistency of method and length and (b) if the world were warming then it'd be getting warmer here.

It matters because Climatography's claimed profound changes would be visible in Central England if they were true. In Central England, at least, it's business as usual.

Posted by: Brent | June 2, 2010 7:58 AM

"Because (a) The CET data is of high quality, not least due to its consistency of method and length and (b) if the world were warming then it'd be getting warmer here."

The data from CE does show it's getting warmer. One month in a year is meaningless; the entire year itself wasn't close to being the record. And one year of course is not climate, nor is one tiny section of the globe representative of the whole. But even so, the CE temp data clearly shows it has been warmer in CE now than in the 1833, or the 1830's.

Posted by: Robert Murphy | June 2, 2010 8:28 AM

Stu (221): You ask why I think it matters that May 1833 was warmer in Central England.

Because (a) The CET data is of high quality, not least due to its consistency of method and length and (b) if the world were warming then it'd be getting warmer here.

Not sure why I should explain that you're confusing weather with climate (again), and cherry picking (again), as it's been explained to you, what, 100 times? 200? Never mind.

I will ask you some more questions though. Do you think that it matters that the warmest month in the CET record was July 2006? Or that 2006 as a whole was the warmest year in the CET record? Clearly if May 1833 and 1833 as a whole have been outstripped in terms of anomaly by quite some margin, maybe it is warming?

On the other hand, perhaps it's instructive to look at the series as a whole! Silly Brent.

Here's a graph of the CET: http://climate-graphs.co.uk/graphs/cet_image.php?SelectSeries=HADCET&SelectFilter=None&SelectRes=Annual&StartYear=1659&EndYear=2009, there is a trendline under all that noisy data and, yes, the trend it up. In fact, the rate of warming has increased, so a linear trend isn't the best representation!

You can also see a shortened graph here: http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/

It's shortened because prior to 1772 only monthly data is available; the above series makes use of higher resolution daily data.

So, based on the above, what convinces you that an accelerating warming trend constitutes 'business as usual'?

Posted by: Stu | June 2, 2010 8:39 AM

Jakerman (224):

"Brent based on your understanding of science would you suggest that 1833 was globally warmer than any year in the last decade?"

You'll doubtelss say that I'm sidestepping your point, but I would say the following:

Empiricism supports a null hypothsis better than it does a wild-arsed theory. Let me rephrase that: A person with zero understanding of science, but armed with reliable experience can legitimately say, "I see no change"; If some clever dick comes along claiming, "Ah, yes, poor innocent yokel, you are blind to the great threat facing you", the onus is on the clever dick to demonstrate it.

In the case of a tuberculosis infected cow, or a drumful of radioactive waste, the expert will promptly show the yokel how right he is. But let's imagine a family of Central England farmers, growing cauliflowers over eight generations. JACS arrives, insisting on date palms and lavander in the next few years. The farmer says, "Now look 'ere young feller, you no doubt spent years at yon Agricultural College, and Jakerman Agricultural Consultancy Services no doubt pays well, but I'll only stop planting collies when they stops being so profitable."

It's business as usual. The onus is on YOU to prove that something exceptional is afoot. Come the day we have a thriving lavander industry here I'll invite you all over for a boozy weekend. You can all throw cauliflowers at me as punishment for being so slow to believe in AGW.

Posted by: Brent | June 2, 2010 8:43 AM

You'll doubtelss say that I'm sidestepping your point, but I would say the following:

Yes, you knew you were dodging and you did.

So how about answering my straight and direct question?

Brent based on your understanding of science would you suggest that 1833 was globally warmer than any year in the last decade?

Posted by: jakerman | June 2, 2010 8:55 AM

Brent,

You would not understand the thrust of a testable hypothesis if it hit you in the 'nads.

What is most tiresome is that you are basically scientifically illiterate yet you pontificate here as if you have some innate wisdom that thousands of qualified scientists lack.

Of course there is empirical evidnence that it is warming - thousands of biotic indicators are proof of that. From latitudinal and elevational range shifts, to earlier breeding and flowering cycles, to changing phenologies - all provide more than enough proof that there is warming and that it is indeed a global phenomenon. And many of the patterns being observed suggest that many species are failing to adapt to current regional changes in temperature with consequences for the food webs and ecosystems in which they are embedded. Just because you've probably never read a scientific journal in your life does not mean that studies aren't there. They are - hundreds of them.

At the same time, there is ample proof that humans are the primary culprit for the current warming pattern.

Science has moved on from your inflatile level of discourse. The pressing question challenging the scientific community is to what the outcomes of the warming are likely to be. For morons like you and sunspot who stick their finger to the wind or head out the window every so often and claim that they don't notice anything, well, ther eis little hope of getting through to you. I will repaet because it has not sunk in to your head: humans have not evolved to respond to what we perceive as gradual threats but which in the context of complex adaptive systems constitute very significant rates of change. Large scale systems function deterministically and take a major forcing to knock them out of equilibrium. And that is what is happening now - in slow motion.

As for sunspot, what can I say - his scientific illiteracy matches yours. Most of Canada - the world's second largest country - experienced its warmest winter ever and most places had very little snow at all. By early March in Ontario one had to travel north of Cochrane to find any snow on the ground, an event unprecedented in recorded history. Sunspot's inability to provide much in the way of scientific evidence (except from contrarian sites and the right wing media) has led him to coming up with the mother of all conspriacy theories.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | June 2, 2010 9:25 AM

Lord Sidcup (230): Thanks for the link to Wikipedia. Did you ask Bernard J's permission first?

You point out that 2006 is hottest, and ask if I feel foolish. Well, I see a series of peaks and a series of troughs. There's a peak around 1730 which is about 0.3C cooler than the 2006 peak.

Do I "feel foolish"? Let's agree that two degrees would be bad news for the planet. As you may know, I consider trend-extrapolation to be dumb nomerology unless the underlying physics is understood. But if I try to join in with your mindset, well yes, as Cole Porter wrote "There may be troubles ahead."

Ask me again in 3006.

Posted by: Brent | June 2, 2010 9:39 AM

Stu, Brent's finally admitted there is a difference between weather and climate.

As for his mentioning of the CET data from the 1600's, we're just going around the goldfish bowl.

Let's summarise what's Brent's conceeded:

He's admitted that the "supporting hypothesis" is "watertight"

He's admitted that Mann is "sincere".

He's admitted that "Hadley CET and UAH MSU" are "trustworthy".

He's admitted that biosphere has adapted to warming.

He's admitted that he knows nothing about climate sensitivity, which he's now claiming can disprove global warming for ever and ever. If only the science will show what he knows in his heart to be true.

He's admitted that global warming is "relgious not scientific", despite the fact that he's also admitted it's yet to have been disproven.

He's supported the urban heat island effect, even though he'd previously stated the ">data was trustworthy.

Speaking of faith, Brent's admitted not being able to name an time when he would accept AGW.

Then when he did...he admitted that his definition of when he finally would accept warming was "absurd".

He's admitted that he really should just defer to people who know what they are talking about.

He's admitted that the earth has cooled since 1998 meme is wrong.

He's admitted the "AGW hypothesis is logical".

He's admitted being crap at maths.

He's admitted that he lied.

He's admitted wanting to have Steve McIntyre's babies (this must be the humour Brent is so renowned for).

He's offered to "'surrender' if the black dots go into the red zone twice."

He's said that if we are right he will encourage other sceptics to change their views. Since then he's admitted that global warming has yet to have been disproven but hasn't change his views.

He's admitted that he "doesn't doubt" it starting getting warmer around 1975, which clashes instantly with his other claims that the data is "dodgy".

In fact, he doesn't "even doubt that it's been getting warmer since 1860. The Aletsch Glacier has been getting shorter since then."

He's admitted the IPCC has been right about warming so far and he will concede if it gets warmer in the next decade.

He's admitted the urban heat island effect is wrong.

That's only up to comment 378 and already full of contradictions!

Posted by: John | June 2, 2010 9:46 AM

Right.

Posted by: Brent | June 2, 2010 10:37 AM

Oh man I can't stop laughing! You guys have got to see this.

So, @234 John linked to a comment thread which Brent posted in over at not-so-super Nova's. Everyone's favourite lunatic geologist Louis Hissink is there! What with his previous geothermal heat argument, he's now contending for most desperate ABCDer (Anything But Carbon Dioxide) ever.

Quoting:

I have to stress one crucial fact – the downwelling IR that is measured and interpreted to be due to gaseseous radiation (back radiation which violates known laws of physics)is a patently wrong interpretation. So what is producing the downwelling IR at night?

Invisible electric currents permeating the atmosphere.

Oh good gravy. Brent, you just ain't in the same class mate.

Posted by: Stu | June 2, 2010 11:11 AM

John FTW!

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 2, 2010 11:15 AM

"Do I "feel foolish"? Let's agree that two degrees would be bad news for the planet. As you may know, I consider trend-extrapolation to be dumb nomerology unless the underlying physics is understood."

Having made a fool of yourself citing "high quality" data to bolster your case but end up underminding it, you now switch tack to the "underlying physics" and try to create a "AGW is based on trend-extrapolation" strawman. Pathetic. I'm done here.

Posted by: lord_sidcup | June 2, 2010 1:00 PM

Lotharsson, thanks for the reference to the Amano & Smithers study. Is their paper available free online?

It's good news that nature adapts to variations in temperature. So, a full degree of change results in just a 5-day shift in blossoming. This'll upset Jeff "Linear" Harvey. We sit at the knee of the great man as he tells us patiently that current conditions are not unprecedented; no, it's the speed of change that's the key point. And then he hits us with his punchline: "And that is what is happening now - in slow motion."

We were having a laugh about the late-flowering English daffodils a few weeks ago, as I teased people with dire warnings that this presaged a new ice age. But what the hell are we to make of Jeff's intelligence about lack of snow at Cochrane, Canada? Is this humour? Or does he need a refresher course in statistics?

C'mon, guys... I know he's one of yours, but can you stand by and watch the Cochrane Declaration enter the record unchallenged? Time for a bit of peer-group pressure, I'd say.... Full Metal Jacket... blanket.... GI socks.... bars of soap... John whacks him, Jakeraman joins in, Bernard J sheds a little tear but puts his back into it...

Posted by: Brent | June 2, 2010 4:08 PM

Brent:

It's good news that nature adapts to variations in temperature. So, a full degree of change results in just a 5-day shift in blossoming.

Put your head out of your arse, mate.

It differs for different species: some more some less. Further, what seems to you like a small shift represents a profound alteration of phenological relationships, and where such phenologies include the asynchronisation of food sources for reproducing species, such subtle effects are catastrophic.

Oh, and the flowering-delay response of plant species is not linearly related to temperature over more than a few degrees - and I doubt that, with sufficient resolution, it would be linear even at the tempeature changes that are currently being experienced. Of course, if you subscribe to the Tim Curtin School of Extraordinary Regression Techniques^TM such physical constraints are entirely beside the point...

We were having a laugh about the late-flowering English daffodils a few weeks ago...

Oo, a coincidence! We've had late-flowering quinces and medlars... the problem is that where I live is almost half way to the South Pole from the Equator. Having quinces and medlars flower in late April is bizarre for this area, and indeed the medlar leaves in my district are still robustly green and the plants are still growing, where in the past they've always been aflame with autumn (and now winter) senescence.

I rather suspect that my 'late' observed flowering behaviours trump yours. The variation that you speak of is expected within the noise inherent in the system: the behaviours that I have noted are completely out of character for fruit trees here.

Of course, you'll simply move the goal posts to a new pitch now.

Posted by: Bernard J. | June 2, 2010 9:26 PM

BTW Brent, would you accept that your reduction of the warming impact to be 'just' about the timing of blossoms fits with a pattern?

Also what consideratin have you given to the the pattern 'godfish bowling' of which Lotharsson has shown your continued use of?

Posted by: jakerman | June 2, 2010 11:47 PM

Jakerman, we know what Brent thinks the case for AGW is. It is "logical" and "watertight". There are two descrpitons I'd agree with.

Posted by: John | June 3, 2010 12:31 AM

Jakerman @258,

That quote is from Louis Hissink, not Brent (re-read my post). We all know that he is at the extreme end of the D-K spectrum. It does show what passes for reasoned discussion at Nova's though.

Posted by: Stu | June 3, 2010 3:36 AM

Fuck you.

Posted by: truth machine | June 3, 2010 3:54 AM

Thanks for the correction Stu, And applogies to Brent.

It was an undesereved slight to mis-attribute Hissink's DK to you.

I'm sure Brent will head straight back there to set them straight at Nova's. Won't you Brent? Surely it would be unkind to let them continue to discredit themselves. Surely you want your crack-team of "skeptics" to be inforom on the basics of what y'all skeptical about?

Posted by: jakerman | June 3, 2010 3:59 AM

To be fair to Brent (God Forbid!), after being explicitly asked to do so, he made a nice summary of the Wikipedia entry on general relativity

No, that's not what I asked him to do. And do try to remember why I asked him, and note that he does not accept a comparable response to his "challenge".

Don't talk about being "fair" to Brent -- he will never receive what he truly deserves.

Posted by: truth machine | June 3, 2010 4:07 AM

One last point for Brent:

What you stupidly refer to as the "Cochrane declaration" was meant to counter sunpsot's ridiculous assertion that (1) the northern hemisphere in general was snow-packed this past winter, and that the record temperatures shown by NASA must be false, and (2) that MOST of Canada had its warmest winter on record and that the snowline in March was hundreds of kilometers north of where it usually is on average. The whole of southern Canada was snow-free throughout most of February and March and areas of northern Ontario and the prairies experienced temperatures 10-20 C above normal in much of March.

In 2008 a right wing hack in Canada wrote an article discounting global warming because eastern Canada had experienced heavy snowfalls and cold temperatures in January of that year; in March I wrote to him and asked, using his inane logic of mistaking weather and climate, if would write a new article arguing that warming was confirmed by Canada's record warm winter in 2010. In true hypocritical fashion, he responded to me by saying that I was mistaking weather and climate. But of course I was, but he was too in his wretched 2008 article. The difference is that it is apparently wrong when the 'warmists' do it, but perfectly acceptable when the denialists do it. Pure and utter hypocrisy. When I pointed this out to him in a subsequent email he did not reply.

Most importantly, when the likes ofou and sunspot can produce so much gibberish then do not complain when it is countered.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | June 3, 2010 4:42 AM

Jeff Pinocchio Harvey, your nose just grew another foot ! You know Canada's temperature anomaly was caused by El Nino & ENSO, it was just weather stoopid

Posted by: sunspot | June 3, 2010 5:12 AM

I'm not one for profanity usage ordinarily, but truth machine's recent postings seem to have that apposite touch about them.

It really is about time that these extremely good examples of bottom-of-the-class fuckwits were just ignored. There really are better things to waste one's time on (like navel clean-ups, counting sand grains in the Sahara, ...) than corresponding with fuckwit goldfish-trolls.

Bandwidth still costs. Use it wisely.

Posted by: P. Lewis | June 3, 2010 5:57 AM

Jeff Pinocchio Harvey, yep, I read it again, still no mention about the fact that Canada's high temp's were caused by El Nino & ENSO, you never tell that little secret in your little spiels about Canada.

'explained fully' - ha

Posted by: sunspot | June 3, 2010 6:28 AM

Chek (254): You speak of "exposing the scam". Well, I no longer believe in a conspiracy theory. I previously figured that the Global Warming theory was so obviously codswallop that there had to be a scheming Doctor Evil orchestrating the scare story on behalf of a wicked enclave of billionaires. I no longer believe that scientists cynically concoct a global warming 'angle' to improve their funding prospects.

My best shot at an explanation is that this great myth meets a basic human need which has been satisfied by a variety of demons down the ages, AGW being the latest incarnation. It even occurs to me that the journalistic ethos of "If it bleeds it leads" is not cynical but satisfies the urges of newspapers and readers alike.

There's more mileage in predicting disaster. In England we once had nightwatchmen who would patrol the streets incanting "It's three o'clock and all is well!" These days they'd be yelling "It's three o'clock and the church hasn't yet burned down. Without a bigger budget our luck may not hold..."

What pisses me off is that precious resource is being squandered on this myth.

To cite a small example, Michael Mann's faculty has bagged $1.8m to study global warming's effect on malaria. Great for his career, admittedly, but I daydream that he might call a news conference and declare: "We've spent the whole lot on a vaccination programme in Africa. Oh, by the way, we spent five minutes agreeing that global warming has stopped. Misappropriation of public funds??? Gitouttahere!!"

Bigger examples include fortunes spent on zero-yield windmills and major efficiency losses to power stations when saddled with pointless carbon capture devices.

Scam? No, it's an unfortunate mass hysteria which I fear will persist for between 10 and 30 years.

Posted by: Brent | June 3, 2010 6:52 AM

My best shot at an explanation is that this great myth meets a basic human need...

Brent posts, Brent projects.

Film at 11.

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 3, 2010 7:05 AM

Jeff Harvey (269):

I owe you an apology. I thought that you were seriously advancing Cochrane's snowless condition as a symptom of global warming. Instead you were parodying those who unfairly quote 'outliers', as in "My uncle Henry smoked sixty a day and lived to be 99". Missed the little wink you gave.

You wrote: "Then, for some stupid reason, you accuse me of arguing that natural responses are linear." Not quite, Jeff. In many of your postings you make a case for a tragic 'undoing of Nature's balance' happening before our eyes, that half of humanity is fiddling while Rome burns and the other half is torching the place. In awarding you a 'Linear' middle name I meant that your view of nature seems to one of ideal optimums, where departures from a narrow path lead to further disruption in a complex and fragile web. The fragility you ascribe to nature, you also ascribe to climate, I think.

Is this a fair summary of your view? If so, it helps focus this idea of mine that the two camps stand either side of a chasm marked "unstable v stable equilibrium" or "fragile v robust".

When I see drivers of 4-wheel drive wankmobiles taking a speed-bump with great delicacy I want to jump out and ask them why. The answer I expect is, "Any faster, and the wheels'll go up and down," to which I would yell "They're SUPPOSED to! They're designed to!" (More likely, just as I open my big gob I'll see an ancient lady in the back seat holding a wedding cake.)

If this idea (fragile v robust) has legs, we'll doubtless start bickering over which view is 100% correct and which 100% rubbish. But if this philosophical divide truly exists, we'd probably do better to seek a synthesis. (sings) 'Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends...'

Posted by: Brent | June 3, 2010 8:02 AM

Well, I no longer believe in a conspiracy theory. I previously figured that the Global Warming theory was so obviously codswallop that there had to be a scheming Doctor Evil orchestrating the scare story on behalf of a wicked enclave of billionaires. I no longer believe that scientists cynically concoct a global warming 'angle' to improve their funding prospects.

I'll add this to my list of things you will go back on in 2 days.

My best shot at an explanation is that this great myth meets a basic human need which has been satisfied by a variety of demons down the ages, AGW being the latest incarnation. It even occurs to me that the journalistic ethos of "If it bleeds it leads" is not cynical but satisfies the urges of newspapers and readers alike.

That's not science, and you yourself admit AGW is yet to be disproven. You've got to throw out these faith based arguments, kid.

What pisses me off is that precious resource is being squandered on this myth.

It's not a "fraud" or "hoax" now, it's a "myth". Your evidence? That it hasn't been disproven. But you know it will. One of these days....

To cite a small example, Michael Mann's faculty has bagged $1.8m to study global warming's effect on malaria. Great for his career, admittedly, but I daydream that he might call a news conference and declare: "We've spent the whole lot on a vaccination programme in Africa. Oh, by the way, we spent five minutes agreeing that global warming has stopped. Misappropriation of public funds??? Gitouttahere!!"

Maybe it's because a) global warming is happening (you admit it hasn't been disproven!) and b) it will devestate the poor of Africa. Do you think he's spending this money on sportscars? You've previously conceeded that scientists do not apply for grants for personal gain so what's your point?

Bigger examples include fortunes spent on zero-yield windmills and major efficiency losses to power stations when saddled with pointless carbon capture devices.

Yes it's such a shame that technology can't advance and we'll be tied to fossil fuels forever. Luckily, they're abundant and not mostly in hostile territories.

Scam? No, it's an unfortunate mass hysteria which I fear will persist for between 10 and 30 years.

So if the scientists aren't scamming anyone, and you can't disprove the science....it looks like it's real in that case!

Posted by: John | June 3, 2010 9:07 AM

Please see this space tomorrow for a typically cutting comment which will be posted (presumably) as soon as Tim allows.

Posted by: John | June 3, 2010 9:13 AM

Another way of improving getting away from reductio absurdism is to ask how much are certain ecosystems robust and fragile to stressors?

Like, how are different wild fish stocks robust and fragile to various fishing regimes operating in different places? (And the you might ask how might we chose to adjust our approach considering this information).

Or you might ask, how robust in the general extinction rate of species to various behaviors we are responsible for? (And the you might ask how might we chose to adjust our approach considering this information).

Or you might ask how robust are various ecosystems to ozone depletion? Or indeed you might ask how robust in the ozone layer to various manufactured chemicals?

On the question of robustness and fragility we dodged a bullet on the ozone hole by pure chance:

… if chemists in 1928 had decided to make bromofluorocarbons instead of chlorofluorocarbons, I don’t think we would be here today. The reason they didn’t use bromine instead of chlorine was that bromine was a little more expensive than chlorine and it had a couple of characteristics that made it a little bit less favorable for the particular applications that they had imagined for these chemicals.

But the big thing about bromine is that it is 46 times more effective at destroying ozone than chlorine. So we would have had no ozone layer and wouldn’t have known what had gone wrong. It would have happened before we had really come to grips with the problem.

Posted by: jakerman | June 3, 2010 9:56 AM

Brent,

jakerman sums it up nicely. But let me expand upon this a little bit.

I have never said that natural systems are fragile; fragility is a purely anthropocentric concept that is based on the misplaced notion that natural systems cannot respond to perterbations. But of course they can: natural sytems have been exposed to changes for millions of years since the explosion of life began during the Cambrian explosion as evidence by the fossil record in the Burgess Shale. Many of these perterbations led to mass extinction events that, had they occurred today, would have doomed humanity to the same fate. But when they did occur, our primitive ancestors - from Picaia gracilens to Purgatorius - were minor players on the global stage and had little impact on the functioning of thir local ecosystems. Moreover, they had good luck as well as good genes on their side: the major forcings that precipitated the mass extinctions may have occurred on the other side of the Earth, allowing them to slip through the bottleneck.

The problem is that humans have already changed and are increasingly changing natural systems at rates exceeding those experienced across the biosphere in at least 65 million years. These changes cover a range of processes and scales. These include the destruction (read: simplification) of terrestrial and marine ecosystems through direct elimination of habitats, various forms of pollution, overharvesting, changes in biogeochemcial cycles, competition and exclusion from invasive (non-native) species, and, last but not necessarily least, rapid climate change. Given these facts, it is clear that nature has been very resilient, otherwise the cost on humans in terms of lost or decreased ecosystem services would have been far greater than has already occurred.

But there is no guarantee that the gradual loss of these vital services will continue at the same slow rate, as in all liklihood we are approaching critical thresholds. Beyond these ecological ssytems will switch to alternate states (see work by Martin Scheffer and colleagues in this field) that are much less able to sustain humanity and which are much more prone to collapse. This is why I have been saying for some time now that cause-and-effect relationships in natural systems over variable spatial and temporal gradients are non-linear. Most worrying of all is that systemic resilience is much stronger than the resilience of provisioning services: in other words, further simplification of nature may not result in the total breakdown of food webs and ecological netoworks but important services - such as nutrient cycling, water purification, pest control and pollination - may be much more deleteriously affected. And without these services freely emerging from nature in copious quantities there will be profound consequences for human civilization. There are few technological substitutes for most of them.

I suggest that you read Simon Levin's quite outstanding book, "Fragile Dominion: Complexity and the Commons" (1999) which I reviewed for the journal Nature. The come back to me and try telling me that climate change is a minimal threat to nature.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | June 3, 2010 10:03 AM

Brent's 'philosophical' delusion about the robustness of natural ecosystems in the face of human depredation doesn't seem to have much support in the historical record.

It is clearly fallacious to argue that because natural systems can recover from short term perturbations of a few years (Tamboura) that they can respond as well to orders of magnitude larger disruptions that will persist for millenia.

It is the psychology of denial that drives Brent to engage in his persistent irrationality. The only hope for Brent to recover his sanity is to admit his problem is in his own mind, rather than projecting his neurotic fear onto others. As long as he can retreat into the online community of fellow deniers who share his disease, this is not likely to happen. It is much like drug addiction, only here the substance of abuse is a socially reinforced tendency for over-weaning narcissism.

Posted by: luminous beauty | June 3, 2010 11:56 AM

Does Global Warming deserve to be included in that list? If it's a frothy frilly futurological[sic] fantasy, then no: save your tears (and your energies) for what's real, man.

Big if. Especially considering that Global Warming is a present reality and the disruptions of ecosystems is already discernible with less than a degree of increase. Except to those in denial.

Posted by: luminous beauty | June 3, 2010 1:54 PM

the Global Warming theory was so obviously codswallop

This is the beginning and the end for Brent, it is his religious faith, he has numerous ways to defend his belief from challenge, and as has been demonstrated) nothing will move him from it.

Posted by: truth machine | June 3, 2010 4:31 PM

Fuck you.

Posted by: truth machine | June 3, 2010 7:32 PM

Does Global Warming deserve to be included in that list? If it's a frothy frilly futurological fantasy, then no: save your tears (and your energies) for what's real, man.

I think you've been forced to answer many of the elements of that question in the affirmative if reluctantly.

But more specifially can you lay out your risk assessment grid of hazard and probability?

My understanding puts AGW at high probability and high hazard. Do you dispute this finding? If so describe your own risk matrix?

Posted by: jakerman | June 3, 2010 10:02 PM

Oh, and Jakerman, what I love about that post is he didn't go back on statement that scientists aren't in it for the money in two days, he went back on it in two paragraphs.

The mind! It boggles!

Posted by: John | June 3, 2010 10:28 PM

I think we need a standard metric for orbital velocity of goldfish in a bowl

Heagreave cycle per metre? or Contradictins per minute?

Posted by: jakerman | June 3, 2010 11:41 PM

Brent daydreams that global warming has stopped, whereas our dreams of that end when we wake up in the morning and face reality.

Posted by: truth machine, OM | June 4, 2010 1:02 AM

John (304):

You miss the point about Mann's $1.8m. Sure, he won't be spending it on the high life. But that's real money, serious money, better spent elsewhere. So he'll spend it on extra staffing and office furniture. It's still a monstrous waste.

Posted by: Brent | June 4, 2010 3:58 AM

You ought to contact him and tell him why he's wrong Brent, and why malaria in a warmer climate on a poor continent won't be a problem.

Posted by: John | June 4, 2010 4:48 AM

serious money, better spent elsewhere.

Brent show us your risk assessment matrix.

Posted by: jakerman | June 4, 2010 6:37 AM

slothful research slothy, you jumped on that like it was the last tim tam, hahaha

'DISEASE CONTROL, NOT CLIMATE CHANGE, KEY TO FUTURE OF MALARIA A study published today in the journal Nature casts doubt on the widely held notion that warming global temperatures will lead to a future intensification of malaria and an expansion of its global range. The research, conducted by the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP), a multinational team of researchers funded mainly by the Wellcome Trust, suggests that current interventions could have a far more dramatic – and positive – effect on reducing the spread of malaria than any negative effects caused by climate change.'

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/9v4

Posted by: sunspot | June 4, 2010 7:27 AM

Brent said: "Science good; Climatography bad".

Explain please, as I'm sure you realise by now your unsubstantiated declarations carry less weight than a multiple amputee flea.

Oh, and your continued tiresome riffing on the name of a branch of scientific research, based on nothing but your own uncomprehending ignorance, is about as funny as necrotizing fasciitis.

Posted by: chek | June 4, 2010 10:07 AM

Chek, I'll pass the mike to Karl Popper to deal with this one:

"Hi, Chek. Karl here! The criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability. I may perhaps exemplify this with the help of [ ] various theories [ ]. Einstein's theory of gravitation clearly satisfied the criterion of falsifiability. Even if our measuring instruments at the time did not allow us to pronounce on the results of the tests with complete assurance, there was clearly a possibility of refuting the theory.

Astrology did not pass the test. Astrologers were greatly impressed, and misled, by what they believed to be confirming evidence — so much so that they were quite unimpressed by any unfavorable evidence. Moreover, by making their interpretations and prophesies sufficiently vague they were able to explain away anything that might have been a refutation of the theory had the theory and the prophesies been more precise. In order to escape falsification they destroyed the testability of their theory. It is a typical soothsayer's trick to predict things so vaguely that the predictions can hardly fail: that they become irrefutable."

Thanks, Karl. Good guest appearance! So, Chek, if you substitute "Climatography" for his mention of astrology, if you think of our newly-developed unit of time - the Lotharsseon - when Popper writes "sufficiently vague", and if you think of IPCC Scenarios A1, B2 etc (which can be revised up or down depending on.... well, depending on whether or not they get lucky and if their luck doesn't hold then by the time of the 5th or 7th or 19th IPCC report the neccessary "refinements" can be conjured up, not that you'll care because you'll be in the next world by then.)

See: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/popper_falsification.html

This is what I meant when contrasting science with what you believe in.

Posted by: Brent | June 4, 2010 11:44 AM

Brent said: "This is what I meant when contrasting science with what you believe in".

Yes, by now we're all very familiar with your constantly repeated but unsubstantiated assertions, Brent. What you continually and conspicuously fail to demonstrate though is specifically how climate science has got it all wrong.

I'd hazard a guess that because the case is so watertight you wouldn't know where to begin, but you don't allow that small matter to interfere with your misplaced faith that it can't be right.

Posted by: chek | June 4, 2010 12:16 PM

Luminous Beauty (316): So health care is a bigger factor in life expectancy than wealth? OK, you win.

In posting that link (http://www.gapminder.org/world/) I was just sharing the startling new insight that the brilliantly vivid animation gives us. I have only just begun reflecting on the implications of continued growth; in posting that link I certainly was not implying that a repeat of the 1800-2000 success story would be a good idea.

If, as I expect and hope, the CO2 scare story is debunked in the next decade it will "clear the radar" and help us focus on genuine risks. Instead of concentrating on a Gypsy Moth farting about doing acrobatics over Dover, if there are incoming Luftwaffe squadrons over the Channel, we need to know about it ASAP. Of course, being able to actually deal with real and major threats is another matter.

Posted by: Brent | June 4, 2010 12:48 PM

tea-leaf-reading shamanistic pseudoscientific charlatans bad

Fuck you.

This is what I meant when contrasting science with what you believe in.

Fuck you.

Posted by: truth machine | June 4, 2010 1:39 PM

TM,

I beg to differ. It is only through the rigorous application of formal axiomatic numeric systems in conjunction with documented and mensurable observations that we can understand the world objectively, i.e., scientifically.

Brent,

See if you can absorb the irony.

Please don't just let it roll off like water from a duck's back.

Posted by: luminous beauty | June 4, 2010 2:23 PM

LB, you should read this and stop BSing about Gödel. His theorems pertain to proof, not "understanding", which is not a formalizable property. The Incompleteness Theorem shows that there are incredibly esoteric and meaningless formal true propositions in certain formal axiomatic systems that cannot be proven within that specific formal axiomatic system. This says nothing about our understanding -- notably, we understand that the true statements are true, even if we can't prove them -- except that we can prove them, in a stronger FAS.

There is clearly a limit to our knowledge of the universe because the number of states of the medium in which we record our knowledge of the universe is far smaller than the number of states of the universe itself, but that has nothing to do with Gödel. Attempting to apply Gödel as you have is ignorant handwaving much like what we see from Brent.

Posted by: truth machine | June 4, 2010 4:29 PM

Corblimey, the noxious Truthmachine doing a stand-up routine with the impenetrable Luminous Beauty.

Okay, I get one of the links in #325: "Einstein's ideas were resisted by a bunch of benighted boneheads, but he was right." Ergo, those who doubt the Gore Hypothesis are wrong. By this logic, every half-arsed scare story is in the fine tradition of Einstein. Yawn.

The other link - written by some anally-retentive sociologist, yeah? - or is it a spoof? - is utterly incomprehensible. The abstract is full of long words.

Hey... you two used the words 'pertain' and 'axiomatic'..... oh, I get it.... this is humour! Respect!

Posted by: Brent | June 4, 2010 4:52 PM

Corblimey, the noxious Truthmachine doing a stand-up routine with the impenetrable Luminous Beauty.

Fuck you.

Posted by: truth machine | June 4, 2010 4:55 PM

The other link - written by some anally-retentive sociologist, yeah? - or is it a spoof? - is utterly incomprehensible. The abstract is full of long words.

Pardon me for underestimating your level of stupid.

Posted by: luminous beauty | June 4, 2010 5:48 PM

TM,

No, you don't.

Posted by: luminous beauty | June 4, 2010 6:24 PM

Brent has previously described the AGW theory as "watertight", "logical" and "yet to be disproven".

As it happens astrology isn't any of those things.

Thanks for playing.

Posted by: John | June 4, 2010 9:57 PM

• Speaking of astrology, look what's making waves at Watts.

Posted by: John | June 4, 2010 10:43 PM

Syntax error. Try again.

...if you think of our newly-developed unit of time - the Lotharsseon...

Shorter Brent: I'm a [lying goldfish(http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/05/brent_thread.php#comment-2540838)...

...when Popper writes "sufficiently vague", and if you think of IPCC Scenarios A1, B2 etc...

Shorter Brent continued: ...who will never stop lying.

(Finding the numerous previous rebuttals of his unsubstantiated assertion that climate science is unfalsifiable is left as a trivial exercise for the reader.)

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 4, 2010 11:33 PM

John: Are you stalking me?

Lotharsson: Your protestations that however many decades are needed to falsify the AGW theory it may require more time reminds me of this classic from Phil Jones of UEA: "Why should I make my data available to you when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"

Just possibly Jones was being ironic there. If however he was playing a straight bat, in a few short words he reveals why his discipline is not fit to be considered science.

Guy called Tagei over on the Guardian says: "Imagine that REAL scientists had written as climate "scientists" write:

Boyle: the pressure, volume and temperature of a gas "may be" related. Newton: Every action "suggests" an equal and opposite reaction may occur. Archimedes: Eureka! I "may have" found something! This article strongly suggests to me that when the carnivals and side-shows were closed down, all of their fortune-tellers and snake-oil salesmen found new careers as "climate-scientists".

They're coming to take you away, ha-ha.

Truthmachine: Please stop swearing. Pithy's good; sarcy's good; bar-room insults are good. But effing and blinding brings the tone down: the verbal equivalent of knocking the chessboard over.

Posted by: Brent | June 5, 2010 12:27 AM

Brent, I think Lotharsson deserves a retraction from you.

Lotharsson clearly made a reasoned scientific explanation. Your counter was not to address his logic but to misrepresent it. Anyone can read how you misrepresent it, so why persist with it?

AGW is confirmed with multiple lines on evidence. If it didn't have so many lines of confirmation it wouldn't be so sound. But it does, so it is.

Posted by: jakerman | June 5, 2010 1:34 AM

Loomy @ 318

'and other manifold risks of climate change can be mitigated by an accelerated transition to sustainable energy. Also. I'm not holding my breath, though.'

I'm way ahead of you Loomy, what are you doin ? http://www.tinyurl.com.au/39z

Posted by: sunspot | June 5, 2010 2:10 AM

scorchmark,

Why would anyone believe you? You are claiming actions the motivations for which you deny any provenance. You've been caught promulgating falsehoods repetitively.

Even if true, your or anybody's individual actions are not going to make spit difference on a global scale. Especially when you are publicly advocating they are unnecessary.

All anyone can truthfully say about you is you are irrational.

Posted by: luminous beauty | June 5, 2010 11:06 AM

Loomy, is it really that hard for you to accept the fact that I do and have cared for the environment for many years ?

????

What the???

Spotty, I see you are from the school of strawman slaying, as well has propaganda.

Mission accomplished on both counts!

I don't care what anyone thinks.

Mmmm.

Posted by: jakerman | June 6, 2010 4:55 AM

Sorry Loomy the only crime I have committed here is that I believe nature is more powerful than man

What a dumb, vacuous remark. Of course in combination natural systems involving biotic and abiotic processes are overwherlmingly a more dominant terrestrial force than Homo sapiens. But that does not mean that our species cannot have a profound influence on the biopshere. Humans co-opt 40% of net primary production and 50% of net freshwater flows. We are driving the biggest mass extinction event in 65 million years. We are degrading soil fertility, draining groundwaters, felling forests, and altering the planet's biogeochemistry. And of course there are consequences.

The main point is that no other species utilizes more from nature, and thus depends more on nature than our species does. Given the fact that a range of vital services emerge from ecosystems over variable scales of space and time, the concern is that human-induced changes will continue to reduce the capacity of nature to support man. This is already the case, and yet we are still headed in the wrong direction.

Of course nature will recover from injuries humans inflict upon it. There is fossil-age evidence that previous mass-extinction events were followed by 5-10 million year gaps during which time different terrestrial groups competed for domination of the land (and sea). Humans may not only be the biggest current driver of global change, but the most notable victim. But the planet will rebound from human assaults once we are gone from the scene.

So, spotty, your point is not 'criminal' but just plain stupid.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | June 6, 2010 7:45 AM

Spotty,

Given that most people here think you are a complete idiot, your snarky ripostes do not at all bother me. I at least write as a scientist whereas you write as some babbling, bungling fool. You apparently have little in the way of expertise in climate science or any other fields of science yet you write as you have some kind of a monopoly of wisdom and understand aspects of climate science that have somehow eluded people who have spent many years of their lives in studying this field of endeavor. I never claimed to be a climte scientist but I do understand how science works, speaking from the inside, and I can assure you spotty that views like yours lie miles outside of the mainstream.

Besides, as it turns out, I was expliticly referring to your last post, one in a long line of semi-literate ramblings. How the hell do you know what most people are willing to do to combat climate change? The problem is that those in power and those who have wealth and its attendant power at theiur disposal are not prone to want to deal with environmental problems. The scientific community has raised the alrm for years, during which time those with powerful vested intersts have done everything in their power to ensuree that nothing is done about climate change - or many other pressing environmental problems for that matter.

The thrust of this is that nobody here gives much of a damn what you think, spotty, except maybe a few outliers like Brent. The only credit I give you is that you persist in making an idiot of yourself here by wading into the hornet's nest. My advice: stick with the ant-science non-peer-reviwed crowd at Nova, WUWT, CA and C02 (anti)science et al. They apparently love schmucks like you.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | June 6, 2010 9:06 AM

Since I suspect that few of them understand evolution (or any other scientic theory), I do NOT expect a reply that actually references "science".

Goodness.

Posted by: John | June 6, 2010 11:09 AM

I doubt that any one of them understands that the EVOLUTION of photosynthesis proves that current concentrations of CO2 are too low.

Another Internet Galileo steps up to the plate.

Posted by: luminous beauty | June 6, 2010 11:14 AM

John,

You performed as I expected. LOL!

Luminous Beauty & chek,

Ditto...

Brent,

I wonder if your little AGW lemming friends can even SPELL "photosynthesis"?...

Posted by: Tagei | June 6, 2010 1:41 PM

Tagei, I'm afraid I don't get your point about the evolution of photys... foto.... Is there reason to believe that pre-industrial CO2 was not at the 280PPM level so often stated? How can we find out more on this subject?

My little AGW lemming friends are an interesting bunch. Their postings reveal what makes them tick; they're harder to make out than fundamentalists in other domains. Despite all the bickering, I think that the two camps are gradually educating each other. If we can at least agree on the key questions it'll be a step forward.

I proposed the two key battlegrounds in #186. It's unclear whether the warmists agree, but they haven't so far squealed "irrelevant".

Lotharsson: In #344 you wrote "If anything it's the opposite - I describe how to robustly falsify AGW, which is hardly the avoidant behaviour you ascribe to me." No disrespect, but would you have another shot at it: state under what conditions you think that warmists would have to declare AGW a dead duck? We had a shot at it back on the Empirical thread (#345).

Posted by: Brent | June 6, 2010 3:26 PM

@Tagei: People here know where the carbon in fossil fuels comes from. People here also know about changing levels of CO₂ and O₂ throughout the Earth's history. Here's a question for you: What was the human population in Carboniferous era?

Posted by: tresmal | June 6, 2010 5:08 PM

BTW Tagei, are you sure you didn't mean C3 and C4 photosynthesis?

Posted by: tresmal | June 6, 2010 6:14 PM

It looks like you have attracted a swarm of over-schooled, under-educated bully-wannabes. ...

Leading with insults combined with fallacies - and with spelling mistakes whilst speculating that others may not be able to spell certain words correctly - is not generally considered a good approach to demonstrating credibility, but kudos for ploughing ahead with it anyway and hoping it works ;-)

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 6, 2010 10:48 PM

Guy called Tagei over on the Guardian says: "Imagine that REAL scientists had written as climate "scientists" write

Fuck both of you.

Posted by: truth machine | June 7, 2010 3:16 PM

I doubt that any one of them understands that the EVOLUTION of photosynthesis proves that current concentrations of CO2 are too low.

Ah yes, evolution wants them to be higher and isn't done raising them.

Scientifically illiterate cretin.

Posted by: truth machine | June 7, 2010 3:24 PM

While we're waiting for Tagei's return and explanation (a period probably to be measured in Oatesian timescales) I find myself wondering about Brent and his coterie of self-assured morons.

Every now and then I slip over to the contrarian blogs and am amazed to find there's a definite anticipation as they await what is surely, this time, the final nail in the AGW coffin.

And they wait, and they wait and they wait, grandly imagining themselves the smartest, science-renaming guys in the room as they wait, and wait and wait.

And they're still waiting, aren't you Brent?

Posted by: chek | June 7, 2010 5:33 PM

If you're short on your supply of stupid, you can just google "Tagei", who seems to have an "over-supply". If that isn't enough you, see this comment on the same page -- who knew that you can apply a "law" of economics to physics?

Posted by: truth machine | June 7, 2010 8:59 PM

More from Tagei, where he demonstrates that he is completely clueless about the nature of science and its vocabulary.

Posted by: truth machine | June 7, 2010 9:18 PM

Can you guess what atmosphreric condition would encourage the success of plants whose genes allow them to sequester the CO2 they create each night?

A dry one.

And for his next trick, tagei is going to visit a maths blog and ask if anyone has figured out how to find the sign [sic] of a 60 degree angle without using a calculator!

Posted by: Richard Simons | June 7, 2010 10:19 PM

YOU, unlike the other AGW lemmings here, (chek, John, Lotharsson, "truth machine", lee) actually had enough curiousity to look up my reference.

Did you read enough to learn the difference between C3 and C4 photosynthesis?

Can you guess what atmosphreric condition would encourage the success of plants whose genes allow them to sequester the CO2 they create each night?

Posted by: tresmal | June 7, 2010 10:37 PM

I for one am open minded enough to be waiting breathlessly for Tagei to return and illuminate us all regarding the details of "the evolutionary change from P3 photosynthesis to P4 photosynthesis," and how it proves that current CO2 levels are too low.

He has returned, and disappoints.

Ironically, that was to be expected.

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 7, 2010 11:52 PM

BTW tagei, you really undermined your bluster when you can't even remeber you are supposed to be parroting C3 and C4 instead of P3 and P4.

As I thought, you don't know about the evolutionary change from P3 photosynthesis to P4 photosynthesis.

With P and C being more than half the keyboard appart?

It really sat quite ironically with your comment:

Lemmings never learn.

Posted by: jakerman | June 8, 2010 12:03 AM

Maybe P3 and P4 stand for phosphate instead of carbon, and are new, secret GENETIC mutations, created in a major pan-scientific conspiracy to undermine life on earth (Al Gore!!!) and they refer to the new secret DNA code composed of 4-base, instead of 3-base codons!!!

Tagei, please, please illuminate us in this regard. Rise above the average Google Galileo!

Posted by: MFS | June 8, 2010 1:23 AM

That was a good piece by Lotharsson! The Becket play ‘Waiting for Godot’ does indeed shed light on the mentality of people who wait endlessly for an expected outcome – and that includes myself as I wait for an antidote to Gore.

And Chek’s crack about “Oatesian timescales” was good as well!

If I may, I’ll summarise the position as I see it. Some of the practitioners of climatology – but by no means all – claim that manmade CO2 has been warming the Earth non-trivially beyond some undefinable would-otherwise-have-been level, and will continue to do so at a faster rate. The claim is that CO2 is a bigger ‘driver’ than other drivers, such as solar and volcanic variation. The possibilty that this chaotic megavariable system is subject to the observed scale of variation even without such drivers is a rarely discussed but feasible.

The evidence for significant AGW actually happening is based on historical data: temperature, icecap, sea-level and biological indicators. As in so many areas of human endeavour, a single dataset is subject to multiple interpretations, hence our difficulty in collectively resolving this great issue. Hard sciences are built by their useful predictions coming true, and their duff conjectures being falsified.

As a sceptic, I challenge any AGW proponent to state clearly what evidence (if any) you would need in order to abandon your current position.

Posted by: Brent | June 8, 2010 7:06 AM

Thanks, Dave, but I don't think you quite get the idea.

If you'd said, "I, Dave R, will cease believing in the Global Warming theory if (a) (b) and/or (c) happens" we might get somewhere. Now, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but (a) might be: "The capacity of Greenland's sheep slaghterhouse at Narsaq fails to double to 40,000 pa within the next 3 decades" and (b) might be "You still cannot walk around Mount Erebus without treading on snow by 2030" and (c) might be "The Maldives government stops holding meetings in scuba gear".

At the moment, Dave, it seems that your belief in global warming is unshakeable. Which is your right, and I shouldn't denigrate your faith. But I'm asking for volunteers prepared to cite falsifiability criteria.

Any takers?

Posted by: Brent | June 8, 2010 10:32 AM

The only one demonstrating "unshakeable" faith her is you Brent. You have admitted that the AGW theory is yet to have been disproven.

The onus is on you to disprove it (score so far, Brent: 0, Deltiod: 11,034), not to come up with facetious little tests designed to trap people.

Posted by: John | June 8, 2010 11:47 AM

Brent,

If this simple experiment could be shown to be flawed, AGW would be falsified.

Good luck.

Posted by: luminous beauty | June 8, 2010 11:53 AM

I challenge any AGW proponent to state clearly what evidence (if any) you would need in order to abandon your current position.

Back around the goldfish bowl. (And that was far from the first time.)

I suspect what you actually mean is "what future new evidence would convince you" (although you are fond of waiting around to see how the climate responds over several decades, and climate scientists are rather keener to get results and insight sooner), because there are dozens of different ways that AGW could be falsified - most of which have been tried and comprehensively failed already.

For example, you could start with (say) something like "The Discovery of Global Warming" and falsify any single step or result that is necessary to AGW. Or you could read this article's section entitled "Does "Global Warming Theory" pass Judge Jones’ science test?" for still more ideas:

There are indeed a great many aspects of the Theory of Global Warming that are falsifiable without waiting for the next century’s climate to come upon us. There are, to start, all the laboratory tests of basic physics, such as the infrared absorption properties of CO2 and water vapor. There are also field tests of the predictions of these basic physical theories, as is done when one measure water vapor and temperature in the atmosphere, and compares the predictions of radiative transfer theory with observed infrared radiation measured at the top of the atmosphere by satellite, or at the surface by radiation sensors. One can check the evaporation formulae used in climate models against the measured evaporation at buoys in the ocean, or the predictions of cloud models against observed cloud reflectivity. Going up the scale in complexity, one can compare the predictions of the theory against observations of recent climates, and of climates of the more distant past. General circulation models encapsulate the assumptions of the theory, and provide the tool necessary for testing hypotheses in such a complex system.

But fundamentally it comes down to what I said right back at the beginning that you really did not [want to? or could not?] understand.

To falsify AGW, you:

1) Come up with a better explanation for known observations (that is consistent with known science - such as physics). Given climate system complexity this might be encapsulated in "a model" - or it might be a whole bunch of smaller explanations and a whole lot of work showing that together and in many and various ways they form a better explanation for what we see.

2) In that explanation you demonstrate that anthropogenic influences provide a relatively insignificant contribution to warming.

As I said...back around the goldfish bowl...and around...and around...and around...and around...

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 8, 2010 12:01 PM

Dave (394): Message received. Too shy to phrase your own falsifiability criteria, you refer to the Tamino site. Cat got your tongue?

John (395): "The onus is on you to disprove it," you say. Oh yeah? I presume you give the same answer when you're claiming to have seen the Loch Ness Monster. As for "facetious little tests", scientific falsifiability is not facetious. Like an elite club, they won't allow any-old-body in. Your slippery attitude speaks volumes: if AGW is hogwash, you'd rather be the last to find out. Keep the faith, John.

Lotharsson (396): Have a look at the bar chart on IPCC WG1 Ch2 p136. It shows seven man-made sources of warming and under "natural processes" a single one. It's tiny. This bar chart says that the sun has a trifling effect on Earth's temperature changes compared to (grrr) big bad carbon and its (hisss!) wicked cousins. I take it you'd rather skirt round the falsifiabilty issue. Your faith says the science is settled, so who needs doubts, eh? I envy you your certainty. If we sign you up for this statement, is this fair: "Lotharsson's view is that under no circumstances can the AGW theory be refuted"?

Luminous Beauty (397): You link to a piece on radiative physics and present that, wrapped in a big pink bow, as your offer. Waal, shucks, pardner. Can I pick the second law of thermodynamics? If you can disprove that, then my team wins, yay! Message received: no set of observations would shake your faith. (If this is unfair, stete you falsifiability criteria clearly and unambiguously.)

Posted by: Brent | June 8, 2010 2:26 PM

Message received: no set of observations would shake your faith. (If this is unfair, stete you falsifiability criteria clearly and unambiguously.)

Your assignation of faith is unjustified. The facts are simply that AGW has passed all tests of falsification that have been devised, and all alternative explanations, including solar, have failed such tests.

It may be just a failure of imagination, but it isn't for a lack of trying. Perhaps with your greater imaginative powers (read: pathological fantasia), you can come up with some knowable unknown that everyone has missed, but don't expect anyone here to do your thinking (read: irrational conjecture) for you.

Posted by: luminous beauty | June 8, 2010 3:00 PM

John (398): Great idea about the bet. If I can get good odds I'll place a few hundred against your cherished temperature rise. Chances of a 0.75C annual mean GISS anomaly in the next decade are pretty small. Have to factor in the immobilisation of my stake for a decade, but at 2:1 I'm in. Do the bookies quote odds on this fairy tale?

Posted by: Brent | June 8, 2010 3:30 PM

Brent,

It is so precious that you have lured someone into moving the goalposts.

We already have 30 years of warming above what can be explained by natural variation which you are unable to explain.

You owe us all a couple of hundred brentbucks. All you can hope for now is doubling down on your losses.

Posted by: luminous beauty | June 8, 2010 5:47 PM

Brent @ 408. So, its an evidence-free belief? Sounds like faith to me, Brent.

Posted by: Lee | June 8, 2010 6:10 PM

Brent again reverts to attacking strawman caricature when under pressure.

Brent, how will you advance your debate by using this consistent disingenuous retreat so often when threatened?

Posted by: jakerman | June 8, 2010 6:47 PM

Brent,

Local blossom times of fruit trees (assessment of which is part of my job) are 1 - 4 weeks earlier than they were twenty years ago. None are warmed by jumbo-jet exhaust. In fact, it has been largely unnecessary to crank up the wind machines that replaced the old-fashioned smudge-pots that were protection against spring frost, even in this spring much cooler than recent years.

I also spend as much time in the mountains as I can. I can see for myself the snow pack receding more quickly than when I was a young climber and back-packer.

So, yes, I do get out and about.

Posted by: luminous beauty | June 8, 2010 7:25 PM

I think Brent slots in here somewhere between 7 and 11 o'clock...(HT Crikey)

Posted by: Andrew | June 8, 2010 7:48 PM

Brent,

I wonder how long until you repeat the same question again. I mean, since I have answered it myself before. You are starting to sound a little like a broken record.

Posted by: MFS | June 8, 2010 8:34 PM

I take it you'd rather skirt round the falsifiabilty issue.

Shorter Brent in 3 parts:

Brent: never mind the existing massive failure to falsify, specify your falsifiability criteria or I win

Me: Here's one from someone else that's fairly decent with some caveats - and that you can already apply using existing data; here's another dozen or so from others that are good and a method you can use to generalise to many more, and here's a meta-criteria into which you can fit any number of criteria if you so desire.

Brent: So you're still pretending it's not falsifiable then?

And yes, it really is shorter Brent because there have been pages and pages of text on this topic already.

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 8, 2010 9:10 PM

At last we have an "O-minus-E" set in the future. Hooray!

You asked for falsification criteria and then treat them as confirmation criteria.

Fuck you. You and Tagei are dumber than dirt and have zero intellectual integrity. You are fine examples of Hannah Arendt's "the banality of evil".

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Posted by: truth machine | June 8, 2010 9:39 PM

So scorchmark is a Holocaust denier as well. what a piece of work.

Posted by: truth machine | June 9, 2010 6:31 AM

Here is some illuminating reading about Paul Rassinier, the author of scorchmark's link. Of course, none of this is relevant to what I wrote in #421.

Posted by: truth machine | June 9, 2010 7:07 AM

Brent: I should clarify things. Although I said that "A period of 20 years or more that is cooler than the previous 20 years, in the absence of major eruptions or similar causes of cooling" would make me reassess my attitude to global climate change, I think the chances of that happening are vanishingly small unless one of the other conditions I mentioned (the absorption spectrum for CO₂ is wrong, the measurements of atmospheric CO₂ are wrong or that the increased CO₂ is not anthropogenic) is met. I would rate these about as likely as finding that bees fly by antigravity rather than using their wings.

Posted by: Richard Simons | June 9, 2010 10:51 AM

Richard (427): Point taken. I said that I wouldn't bicker, and I won't. I have made a diary date for June 2030. Whoever is proved wrong must carry out an embarrassing forfeit, preferably on a theme of beer.

Jeff (424): No time to read your long posting. I've started that ecology book you recommended. Dawkins and Attenborough and the geneticist Steve Jones manage to write for the public without dumbing down too much; I hope that this Professor Levin has that ability.

My wife just gave me a funny look when I approached a beech tree saying, "Hey, gorgeous! I know what you need... a big old hug."

Posted by: Brent | June 9, 2010 11:30 AM

Truth Machine,

On p.188 of his book 'Fragile Dominion' Prof. Levin writes: "...cellular slime molds introduce a different sort of problem."

He doesn't mention you by name, but you may have grounds for a libel suit there...

Posted by: Brent | June 9, 2010 7:05 PM

Once again you've got nothing. You asked for falsification criteria -- after having been repeatedly given them, about which you lied -- and then you were given them, and lied about how many people gave them. And those criteria put the lie to your claim that AGW isn't falsifiable. You pose challenges, they are met, but you do not concede your errors. That makes you slime.

Posted by: truth machine | June 9, 2010 7:50 PM

I've noticed the warmers are detuning the alarmist rhetoric, ...

Yes, Flannery seems at times to go outside his expertise and make pronouncements that are either questionable, or easy for people to misinterpret. But he's hardly speaking as the voice of climate science consensus - that's what the IPCC is for. And if you disregard everything he ever said, there's plenty of well-grounded cause for concern from the body of scientists.

I've also noticed that Andrew Bolt:

a) sets up numerous strawmen by removing the qualifiers from the quotes he cites, and

b) fallaciously ridicules concerns about plausible future outcomes that don't eventuate

Sunspot seems not to notice these little tricks - or sees them as validation of his worldview.

And if I'm not mistaken, Bolt makes at least one solid factual error in that transcript which undermines his (ahem) credibility in going after others for probabilistic predictions that turned out differently. See if you're "skeptical" enough to find it.

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 11, 2010 4:38 AM

SO it's back to the temp data, the temp data stinks !

'The following figure compares the above two graphs, showing how an increase in temperature trend was achieved simply by changing the method of adjusting the data. Some of the major changes are highlighted in this figure – the decreases in the 1930s and the increases in the 1980s and 1990s.'

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/aso

eh ! you warmers stop leaving brents heater on when you leave

Posted by: sunspot | June 11, 2010 8:00 AM

However, it is equally clear that after reaching a fixed threshold of so-called Greenhouse gas density, which is much lower than that currently found in the atmosphere,...

...ah, the return of false "physics" from sunspot (complete with a reference to Miskolczi). Who would have predicted that?

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 11, 2010 9:25 AM

akerz, hahaha, thats not a good look. http://www.tinyurl.com.au/ava

Posted by: sunspot | June 12, 2010 1:29 AM

slothy you would be thinking of this reference -

'Or to ask him to explain his concession last year that, despite his great scares of rising heat, "there hasn't been a continuation of that warming trend" and "the computer modelling and the real world data disagrees".'

that might have been taken from here ?

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/avn

if thats not it, spit it out coz i'm not a friggen mindreader !

ESP, thats a warmers thingo, eg. your little "shorter" posts and Nostradamic apocalyptic visions of the future, all wrong I might add.

Posted by: sunspot | June 12, 2010 3:52 AM

Sunspot (443): In the interview you linked to, the journalist asks: "What do you say to people like Senator Nick Minchin, who believes that what's going on here is something going on here is fraudulent; that environmentalists have braced a new religion, with the collapse of communism, now they've taken on environmentalism with a religious fervour that goes beyond science."

Ay, there's the rub.

Posted by: Brent | June 12, 2010 6:21 AM

sunspot:

An Inconvenient truth, the snow season is on time in Austrailia. No sign of warming here, when does global warming start ?

Stupid moron. No one said it would stop snowing. It snows in Queensland for Chrissake.

Posted by: Chris O'Neill | June 12, 2010 8:25 PM

Remember when Sunspot was posting satirical articles he didn't realise were fake?

I do.

Posted by: John | June 12, 2010 10:07 PM

A reminder - Data Whitewash ????

'SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.'

'It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.' http://www.tinyurl.com.au/axw

Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.

and............

'Or so it seems. Apparently, they (the temp data) were either lost or purged from some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren’t talking much. And what little they are saying makes no sense.' http://www.tinyurl.com.au/axx

remind me, who are the denier's and what really are the average temperatures ?

Posted by: sunspot | June 13, 2010 3:53 AM

only a bit about spencer's data slothy, I did see that you wrote somewhere recently that you were having troubles with your memory, if that was a 'a thorough airing' then the science must not be settled. http://www.tinyurl.com.au/6pm

Posted by: sunspot | June 13, 2010 5:56 AM

Hey, given that the Viner Declaration (children not knowing what snow is) hasn't yet happened, would any warmist venture a guess on:

(a) In which decade will the last snow fall on London and

(b) In which decade will the London Underground be flooded by rising sea levels?

Another thing: in my lad's chemistry homework he has learned that the solubility of CO2 in water decreases with rising temperature. Well, warmists like to shriek: "Arrhenius proved the greenhouse effect, so to deny Thermageddon is to deny the laws of physics". Can sceptics say, "To deny that the rise of CO2 PPM is caused by temperature rises is to deny the laws of chemistry"?

Posted by: Brent | June 13, 2010 3:25 PM

Brent:

venture a guess on [...] In which decade

First you can tell us when the IPCC predicts those things will happen.

Posted by: Dave R | June 13, 2010 5:09 PM

Hey Sunspot, what do you think about this?

Posted by: John | June 13, 2010 11:40 PM

...venture a guess on [...] In which decade...

No, because:

a) it ought to be obvious that that's a piss-poor way to assess a trend - on a par with looking at the number of years between successive peaks. In a noisy system it's the metric that probably has the most variability as a result of, and is least indicative of, a trend.

b) it's a regional prediction, not global. (Goldfish, goldfish, goldfish...)

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 14, 2010 12:07 AM

I have to love sunspots 'non-science'- pasting up articles gleaned from a few newspapers in January, versus GISTemp and NASAs data in his desperate effort to prove that the monthly mean temperature was not well above average over the entire globe [emphasis mine].

Talk about desperate. All spotty has left to cry is that 'it is all avast conspiracy'! He 'proves' this with a few newspaper clippings. Who is listening to you, sad little spot? See spot run!

As it turns out, January comes in at #2 in terms of warmth, with February at #2 and March, April and May all at #1. 2010 is shaping up to be the warmest in recorded history. Expect spottie to keep up with his barrage of anti-scientific pleading.Spottie: please go away. You are an island here. The only reason we read your links is because they provide comic relief.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | June 14, 2010 7:19 AM

Stew backed away from this

I tried to find the surface data for the whole month of January for China, but could only find data readily available for the last couple of months.

I was hoping to find more than just anecdotal evidence, which is all Sunspot has of course. There were cold weather events, sure, but would the media then cover two weeks of mild, unexceptional weather that pushes the average temp back above average? This is why you shouldn't rely on media reports of certain weather events to give you an idea of what the whole month was like...

Posted by: Stu | June 14, 2010 8:07 AM

...pasting up articles gleaned from a few newspapers in January, versus GISTemp and NASAs data in his desperate effort to prove that the monthly mean temperature was not well above average over the entire globe...

Seems exactly like Monckton's methodology for proving that the MWP was globally warmer than today - point out a few papers that say that certain regions were at certain times, without bothering to reconstruct global temperatures over the centuries in question (never mind properly accounting for the uncertainty ranges).

Not one for in-depth reading I see.

I find that's quite common with sunspot. His links refute the very reason he quoted them more often than one might expect.

But hey, at least he gets the attention he craves this way ;-)

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 14, 2010 8:34 AM

Spotty says, "slapping himself on the back all the time, telling everybody how smart he is".

We spotty, turns out the it appears that all of us here are a helluva lot smarter than you are. But its not flattery; given the gumbified level of your posts its pretty easy, I'd say.

You are just one big, but intellectually simple, hypocrite. You get all huffy when you claim that posters on Deltoid are mistaking weather related events for climate, then what do you do? Yup. Mistake weather-related events for climate. At least when it suits your purpose. You clearly hardly read any original peer-reviewed studies, but appear to spend an unhealthy amount of your time pasting crap on Deltoid from contrarian sites or news clips from online media sources. Spotty picks a few clippings from individual dates and draws a pattern. However, I see few from Canada, Australia the vast ocean expanses or other parts of the southern hemisphere. Nope, spotty thinks he can prove his point by pasting a few studies from a few places to support his alleged NASA conspiracy gag.

Chek nailed it in his last post when he described the acumen (or lack thereof) of spotties posts. They actually deserve the [killfile] treatment. I think its time to eliminate my detection of them.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | June 14, 2010 9:21 AM

Sigh.

Canadian winter 2010: "Canada Has Warmest and Driest Winter on Record; Some Areas in Arctic and Northern Quebec 6 °C Above Normal".

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/03/canwinter-20100320.html

Canada is the second largest country on Earth.

Spotty will now correctly argue that this is an El-Nino weather related event, and that it has nix to do with climate warming. While doing this he will conveniently ignore all of his innane posts claiming how cold the weather - over a few days - had been at a few specific locations in Europe and Asia. Pure and utter hypocrisy.

Spotty: have you no shame? Or are you just completely addled?

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | June 14, 2010 10:05 AM

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-basks-in-longest-winter-heat-wave-in-almost-40-years-1.265995

"The heat wave that has hit the entire country will reach its peak Monday, with temperatures up to 30 degrees Celsius expected in some areas.

Although this falls short of a record high for the season, meteorologists say this has been the longest warm period in February in 38 years."

Posted by: Robert Murphy | June 14, 2010 10:45 AM

Not knowing that much about Israel, I just checked where in Israel Sunspot's link was talking about and lo and behold, it's Safed, which is the highest city in the country (2790 feet) and the coldest. Talk about cherry picking!

Denialists really have no shame.

Posted by: Robert Murphy | June 14, 2010 11:12 AM

In our previous episode, Brent tried to paint AGW as an unfalsifiable pseudo-science, repeatedly lied about whether people had provided falsification criteria, but eventually accepted that some had been offered -- while ignoring the fact that this undid his thesis, instead treating it as yet another reason to wait for 20 years.

In the latest episode, Brent suggests that, if the solubility of CO2 decreases with temperature, that implies that CO2 does not cause warming and that, if one thinks that CO2 causes warming, one must deny that the solubility of CO2 decreases with temperature, and that this sort of reasoning, and attribution of a belief without any evidence that anyone holds it, is the mark of a "sceptic".

In a future episode, Brent will justify this argument on the basis that positive feedback systems are undesirable and therefore do not occur.

Posted by: truth machine | June 14, 2010 1:55 PM

I'm a little bit cold here right now. Going by Sunspot and Brent's logic, warming disproven! Phew! Not a moment too soon.

Posted by: John | June 14, 2010 10:40 PM

Sunspot said:"Let’s take a closer look at this amazing statement to see what it actually says: For detecting climate change, the concern is not the absolute temperature Are they truly saying the accuracy of the temperature readings don’t matter? Yes, they are! But why?"

No spotty that's not what they're saying. Maybe if you looked at the source you'd see what they say, but of course that doesn't mean you'd actually understand it, or want to understand it.

Posted by: chek | June 15, 2010 7:16 AM

oy, holzern head,

you should know by now that the peeing on process is often skewed, your the one looking for fame and funding, not me.

By the way, I'm so impressed by your ecobabble that I've printed out some and put it on the nail in the dunny.

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/b8e

Posted by: sunspot | June 15, 2010 8:41 AM

From our Whale Excrement correspondant in the UK's Independant:

"Australian researchers have found that the iron-rich faeces of sperm whales.... remove 400,000 tonnes of carbon each year.[ ] Trish Lavery, the lead researcher, based at [Adelaide University's] School of Biological Sciences estimates that each ... sperm whale releases about 50 tonnes of iron into the sea annually. Previously the enormous mammals were regarded as climate criminals because they breathe out carbon dioxide."

Whew! That was a close one. Before establishing their green credentials these critters were targets for a cull. Bernie boy would've been in the prow of the boats, firing harpoons from a steam cannon, the wind in his hair, the madness of the hunt in his eyes, yelling, "It's for your own good, whales! You have to learn: climate criminality will not be tolerated!"

Posted by: Brent | June 17, 2010 6:20 PM

Brent,

Steve Nicholls of the Australian Antarctic Division has been saying it for years. It's just that the papers have caught on yesterday.

Besides, the whales are recycling existing iron, they don't manufacture it out of thin air.

Posted by: MFS | June 17, 2010 6:44 PM

Hi, fellers! When I read those stupid words in the newspaper ('climate criminal') of course I marked it down as nutter-fringe-speak. It reminded me of an old friend, a guy with 'issues', telling me that he felt a twinge of guilt every time he inhaled. I was tempted to burst into an old 1970s song: "Martin, you are a child of the universe/no less than the trees and the stars/you have a right to be here".

This episode is one more brush stroke in the giant tableau I am painting: the guilt complex of prosperous modern man driving this latest end-of-days panic, supported by poorly thought out fuzzy science. Poor old Martin was not alone.

And, MFS, the alchemy aspect amused me too. It's bleedin' obvious that the digestive processes of these whales cannot have a profound affect on the oceans' iron content. Fuzzy science needs to be slapped down by real science. Fuzzy science (with climatography the most delinquent) is damaging the reputation of science. You're a professional scientist, I think you said. Come on over to our side. AGW sceptics demand scientific rigour; far from our caricature of mindless denial, we seek to draw a clear line between repeatable predictable falsifible science (normally referred to more economically as 'science') and numerological mumbo jumbo.

Were it as innocuous as phrenology or acupuncture I wouldn't care. But the climatographers have gained such influence with the politicians that we're pissing away billions on useless windmills.

MFS, it's Lysenkoism. It's time to abandon it.

Posted by: Brent | June 18, 2010 4:24 AM

Brent said "AGW sceptics demand scientific rigour"

Er... no they don't Brent. They "demand" a satisfactory political outcome. How else do you explain the carefully controlled diet of utter shoite you've absorbed? Surely you're not naive enough to think that's happened by accident.

Posted by: chek | June 18, 2010 5:10 AM

"One insufficiently addressed question is why scientists would allow themselves to be recruited to essentially political objectives. Another is why they seem so resolutely committed to increasingly shaky theories, and lash out at critics. Surveys have shown that natural scientists tend to be left-liberal in their leanings. Many perhaps believe that a world with more top-down economic control and greater transfers to poor nations is desirable whatever the realities of climate science, and that given the possibility (however remote) of man-made climate catastrophe, that it is appropriate to adopt the "precautionary principle."

Such a mindset can be buttressed by the way science is done. In his classic book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn noted that scientific groups adopted, and committed to, "paradigms," which then became fundamentally unquestionable. That stance was hardened further when moral values, such as being "socially useful," were involved.

The IPCC came with its moralistic paradigms pre-installed.

Kuhn noted that "professionalization" of any paradigm leads to "an immense restriction of the scientist's vision and to a considerable resistance to paradigm change." He even suggested that a scientist, as a captive to a paradigm, is " like the typical character of Orwell's 1984, the victim of a history rewritten by the powers that be."

Kuhn also suggested why catastrophic man-made climate change theory--even if it is found to have been greatly exaggerated, or even falsified -- will take a good deal of killing. "The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm," he wrote, "is a conversion experience that cannot be forced." The problem is that there is no other clear and simple climate theory to which to be "converted" at the moment."

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/bk3

Posted by: sunspot | June 18, 2010 6:04 AM

Arctic ice appears SLIGHTLY below average, but look at that bumper crop down south !

View NSIDC Data on Virtual Globes: Google Earth

The National Snow and Ice Data Center offers some of our data in the form of images. We have created Google Earth™ files that enable you to overlay the following data-based images on a virtual globe. Our goal is to help people better understand the cryosphere—where the world is frozen—by making our data more visible and interactive.

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/bk6

Posted by: sunspot | June 18, 2010 6:26 AM

Brent have read this ?

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/bk8

this will get a few heads spinin, hahaha

Posted by: sunspot | June 18, 2010 6:57 AM

Brent,

Not on a global scale. However, large whales such as humpbacks regularly migrate between their winter grounds in tropical waters, and the Southern Ocean during summer. Most of the Southern Ocean is a high-nutrient, low-chlorophyll area, meaning that while there is excess nitrate and phosphate, something keeps productivity down. This something is iron in the polar front zone (PFZ) and south of it, and a combination of iron and silicic acid in the subantarctic zone (SAZ).

Large whales are excellent at redistributing iron where it is needed for phytoplankton to bloom (in this case from tropical coastal waters to the southern ocean). What Dr Nicol and other researchers are finding in the last couple of years is that the actual amounts involved are significant. Among other factors, the SAZ and the PFZ are major carbon sinks, and dissolve a large proportion of the CO2 we emit (because subtropical water circulating from north to south, and getting colder in the process, increases its capacity to dissolve CO2. In addition, the southern ocean has an extremely deep mixed layer, cold water, and is a very turbulent and windy environment).

The research seems to be showing that when you combine the high concentration of CO2 in the water and its high nutrient status, and you bring in the missing nutrient, iron, in the form of whale poo (which can partly have travelled from well outside this zone during the migration), it stimulates vigorous production, which results in vertical export of particulate organic carbon to the deep ocean.

In addition to this it seems that much of the available iron in the southern ocean is semi-permanently sequestered as biomass. At the time before the ecosystem was severely disturbed by whaling and sealing (in the 19th century) and overfishing (in the 20th to the present), the biomass of large vertebrates in the southern ocean was orders of magnitude above what it is now. This resulted in far more iron cycling through the system, and far higher productivity. So more whales and fish ultimately seems to mean more iron and so on in a form of positive feedback.

At least that's what I gathered from watching Steve Nicol's seminars. There is more on the whale poo - iron story here.

Now the difference between science and alchemy is not really something I think anyone here but you needs explaining to them, so I'll stay out of it. As to your suggestion that I join your camp, no thanks. I have seen nothing but lies and misrepresentations being used to drive a self-interest agenda coming from your side. Since I am involved with many of the researchers actually doing this stuff on a day to day basis and actually understand it, and see how many of the conclusions of climate science are arrived at, I think I'll stay with what I know, rather than start parroting memes I know nothing about as most of you lot seem to do.

Posted by: MFS | June 18, 2010 7:24 AM

MFS said :Where is this 'Appendix B' he refers to in the original source, which supposedly has references to actual peer-reviewed scientific papers demonstrating this?

MFS, like sunspotdupe, you're just meant to accept that there are a plethora of peer reviewed papers purportedly establishing the proposition. Please don't spoil the mood by actually asking to see them.

Just as with the definition of 'consensus', sunspotdupe swallows any old dick of a supplied definition, without checking it for himself.

To see things sunspotdupes way, you just have to be totally unsceptical and accept thinktank-groupthink, when it will all become clear.

Posted by: chek | June 18, 2010 7:46 AM

I chuckle whenever sunspot feels the need to call someone names. It's a primary school level "debating" trick, typically resorted to when one is losing the argument.

Cue more name-calling in 3....2....

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 18, 2010 8:02 AM

Spotty,

If you knew anything about science, you'd realize that scientists rarely agree on anything, meaning that our profession does not, nor never has, operated by "consensus".

But public policy must be based on it. Otherwise, if the scientific community had to acknowledge the opinions of every outlier as well as those on the academic fringe (those who constitute the vast majority in the denial community) then policy would forever be impotent, frozen in disarray.

Whether you like it or not, we have accrued enough empirical evidence by now to support the AGW hypothesis and to refute the sceptics. There are plenty of uncertainties, just as there are in fields where there is even broader support amongst scientists. These uncertainties are generally based on the outcome of AGW and not the process itself. As I have said before, this is where the sceptics have been most dishonest: in taking the uncertainties over the outcomes of climate change and applying that to the process itself.

Furthermore, check out the opinions of some of the notable denialists with respect to other environmental problems, and you will see an ugly pattern emerges that is consistent with AGW. Check out the likes of Morano, the WUWT team, those at the SEPP, Milloy, et al., and you will find that they are in probably in agreement on a suite of contemporary environmental issues: that agreement is that the problems are either overblown or are non-existant. And they all have in common another important facet that is policy related. I am certain that you would find that they agree that a good policy is that nothing is done to ameliorate the apparent 'threat' in any of these areas. Why is that? IMO it is because they all share a political ideology that is based on unregulated capitalism and a neoliberal economic order aimed at maximizing short-term profit. If you don't realize this then you should rename yourself 'sunhole' to describe the large gaping chasm that is in the middle of your head.

As for Kuhn, he was a great scientist but his book was written back in 1962. He also had many in the scientific community who venhemently disagreed with some of his ideas. Moreover, since he died (in 1996) the evidence in support of AGW has grown by many factors.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | June 18, 2010 8:41 AM

Brent says: Christie [sic] is just the kind of clear-minded undogmatic scientist who should be running the show at IPCC

More information on Christy's "clear-mindedness" and "lack of dogmatism":

Christy was a contributing writer to "Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths," published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2002 and which is partly funded by Exxon-Mobil. He spoke at a June 1998 briefing for congressional staff and media, which was sponsored by the Cooler Heads Coalition.

Let me see now. How 'undogmatic' is the position of one of the most right wing think tanks in the United States, the CEI, which receives huge amounts of funding from several polluting industries? Or the now defunct Cooler Heads Coalition, also once linked with the CEI? The book I refer to is typical contrarian rubbish authored by the usual suspects.

At a 2003 "CATO-Institute sponsored conference, Global Warming: The State of the Debate" Christy apparently said: "I don't see danger. I see, in some cases, adaptation, and in others something like restrained glee, at the thought of longer growing seasons, warmer winters, and a more fertile atmosphere."

What utter tosh. I do not know where to begin dismantling this appalling remark.

So much for Brent's 'opinions'. But, then again, most of us here realized that they were worthless quite a while back.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | June 18, 2010 9:35 AM

Jeff Harvie @507:

Thanks for the correction.

Posted by: Brent | June 18, 2010 9:54 AM

Another interesting story in yesterday's paper. There's a shortage of Goldcrests in Britain because of the cold winter. Jeff will doubtless explain the inevitable knock-on effect in the ecosystem: goldcrest predators going hungry and a plague of worms ("No!!!" shrieks Jeff, "they eat spiders, you dummy!" All right then, a plague of uneaten spiders, then.)

My early impressions of Levin's book 'Fragile Dominion' are that the field is very descriptive, however this may be because the book is aimed at the public; I recall Stephen Hawking's publisher warning him that "with every extra equation, book sales will halve", hence his maths-light 'Brief History of Time'.

Jeff has two ologies: he's an ecologist and also an apologist for fuzzy science. I hear it said, with great firmness, that "science is numbers"; I wonder if ecology would be better off downgraded to ecography.

Posted by: Brent | June 18, 2010 2:17 PM

This is what psychologists call reflection:

The more they are proven wrong, the deeper into denial they go.

The more Brent gets proven wrong, the more he keeps blindly thrashing. John Christie? That's the best you got?

I mean really.

Posted by: John | June 18, 2010 10:18 PM

Translated from Dutch for the sheep.

We'll have to see whether the sun is on the results of their modeling will conform. Anyway, the results of CO2-driven climate models and the solar models seem increasingly to diverge. This means that the scientific 'consensus', which the supporters of human greenhouse hypothesis would be no more than a mirage is. http://www.tinyurl.com.au/bmf

.

JournalofCosmology.com, June, 2010 The Forthcoming Grand Minimum of Solar Activity

S. Duhau, Ph.D.1, and C. de Jager, Ph.D.2, 1Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1428, Bs. As. Argentina. 2Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research; P.O. Box 59, 1790 AB Den Burg, The Netherlands. Abstract

We summarize recent findings about periodicities in the solar tachocline and their physical interpretation. These lead us to conclude that solar variability is presently entering into a long Grand Minimum, this being an episode of very low solar activity, not shorter than a century. A consequence is an improvement of our earlier forecast of the strength at maximum of the present Schwabe cycle (#24). The maximum will be late (2013.5), with a sunspot number as low as 55.

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/bmh

Posted by: sunspot | June 19, 2010 5:53 AM

Sunspot: You quote those astrophysicists: "not shorter than a century" and " The maximum will be late (2013.5), with a sunspot number as low as 55".

We have a tabloid newspaper in England, The Sun, which claimed after an election "It was The Sun wot won it". I think we both believe that the sun is the major driver of climate, although explaining the precise mechanism lies in the future. Duhau & co are sticking their necks out here. In accordance with Popper's falsifiability they stand to lose credibility if they're wrong.

They could've covered their arses if Lotharsson had been on the team. He'd have redrafted it: "The maximum may be late - 2013.5 +/- a century or so provided nothing unexpected comes along".

Remember what Tagei wrote about sloppy science back in #343, parodying vague statements? (Boyle: the pressure, volume and temperature of a gas "may be" related.) I would say that there's nothing wrong with floating an idea - with conjecture - but such statements have a limited 'shelf life'.... you're floating the idea for a limited period, after which you'll either put up or shut up. These AGW snake-oil salesmen don't have the integrity to add, "And if it DOESN'T happen, we'll issue a public apology and wear sackcloth and ashes." Slippery sloppy snake oil salesmen, with Gore the supreme slimeball.

Posted by: Brent | June 19, 2010 7:03 AM

brent, this bloke just showed the world the energy potential of water. http://www.tinyurl.com.au/bmr something about that reminded me about an old neighbor of yours, Mountbatten I think, anyway I spoze this bloke believed in stan mayer and probably aGw, was he doing something for the world ? None in here believe the fairytale enough to do anything about it.

Posted by: sunspot | June 19, 2010 7:33 AM

They could've covered their arses if Lotharsson had been on the team.

Still can't resist smearing me with false implications of what I said? That's the mark of a desperate goldfish...

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 19, 2010 8:50 AM

I think we both believe that the sun is the major driver of climate, although explaining the precise mechanism lies in the future.

So what you have is a belief which you freely admit isn't backed by any evidence.

What we have is a theory backed by a mountain of evidence, none of which you've been able to disprove.

As you said:

The more they are proven wrong, the deeper into denial they go.

Posted by: John | June 19, 2010 1:01 PM

If we do get a Maunder II, and if it does cause a couple of degrees of cooling, we may be approaching an end to our Great Debate.

LOL! Epic Fail, Brent.

How exactly would a Maunder Minimum with a couple of degrees of cooling disprove the anthropogenic warming effect - especially given that it's been very warm even while the sun has recently been rather quiet? And what happens after a Maunder Minimum if anthropogenic warming factors remain at the same or higher levels compared to today?

This has been my point since the very first time you started posting. You're unable to separate observations of warming (or otherwise) from causal attribution - or maybe it's just that you're unable to comprehend two or more different forces acting at the same time.

In other words you presume (in your proposed "test") that any observed future cooling means that humans have not also caused warming that would not otherwise take place - even if some other factor has caused significant cooling that would not otherwise have taken place.

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 20, 2010 4:04 AM

The 58th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sitges, Spain 3 - 6 June 2010. The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, GLOBAL COOLING, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations. Approximately 130 participants will attend of whom about two-thirds come from Europe and the balance from North America. About one-third is from government and politics, and two-thirds are from finance, industry, labor, education, and communications. The meeting is private in order to encourage frank and open discussion. http://www.tinyurl.com.au/bpe

Posted by: sunspot | June 20, 2010 6:34 AM

Brent:

If we do get a Maunder II, and if it does cause a couple of degrees of cooling

It would not.

Posted by: Dave R | June 20, 2010 7:51 AM

Spotty (or should I say snotty),

Please inform me as to what inherent wisdom you possess to be able to make such a conclusive remark in post #530. Given your lack of any relevant qualifications, methinks (as usual) that you are speaking out of your rear oriface.

Lastly, you never explained why you think that the majority of scientists cannot be trusted on the issue of climate whereas anything coming from the corporate establishment must be trustworthy. Again, you are super-selective; this clearly must reflect your rather simple idealogical world view.

PS. Given the kinds of stuff that you write in your posts here, I think it is you who is 'bashing the keyboard to smithereens' and not me. I see layman like you and people like you as a minor distraction, that is all.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | June 20, 2010 8:06 AM

Only passin' on the news Pinicchio, as usual your lack of savvy is evident.

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/bpo

I see the penny hasn't dropped with slothy, still can't work out the ocean stores solar energy and then gradually releases it later, blind in one eye and the other one shut.

It's the sun, stupid.

Posted by: sunspot | June 20, 2010 8:48 AM

evidence here

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/bpp

I can hear the cog's in the CO2 models starting to spit their teeth off.

Posted by: sunspot | June 20, 2010 8:56 AM

sunspot:

evidence here

That's evidence that the ENSO cycle is one cause of the noise in the temperature data and not a cause of the long term trend, as everyone paying attention already knows.

Posted by: Dave R | June 20, 2010 9:22 AM

...still can't work out the ocean stores solar energy and then gradually releases it later...

Of course it does - and it's a stupid evidence-free claim that I think otherwise! (Given that you tout many other things that actually go against the evidence, I guess I should not be surprised.)

Ocean energy storage is one of many reasons why there are long timelags in the climate system. And that's one of several reasons why 20-30 year global averages are necessary rather than looking at regional or short term effects. (Short term climate effects include La Nina and El Nino - which means that it's eminently stupid to report on Spencer's report on SST due to La Nina and then claim "it's the sun, stupid". And it's especially stupid when even Spencer doesn't claim "it's the sun" but "it's probably clouds".)

And ocean energy storage is also one reason why air surface temperature changes don't necessarily track energy fluxes across the top of atmosphere directly - a point frequently and fallaciously taken by denialists to mean that anthropogenic influences can't be causing warming. I bet I could find an instance or three of you relying on this claim if I needed to.

And obviously ocean energy storage is one reason why air surface temperatures don't necessarily rise in concert with CO2 concentrations - a point that escapes the average denialist who first claims "it isn't warming, it's cooling" and then claims "it's not warming enough for CO2 to have any significant effect". If I could be bothered I could probably find multiple instances of you implying or stating one or the other.

And processes on climate timescales are why (say) Roy Spencer's "analyses" that purport to show a low climate sensitivity are often bogus - they appear constructed to specifically eliminate the effects of the time lag. I bet I could find you touting Spencer's climate sensitivity analysis as well.

So, given that you touted models on the empirical evidence thread a while back and now you're acknowledging that energy balance drives climate across climate timescales thereby debunking several denialist arguments in one hit, is there hope for you yet? ;-)

Or is it just that you didn't realise that the point you so gleefully posted because you thought it rebutted climate science actually supports it and destroys several of your own?

Unfortunately my money's on the latter.

Posted by: Lotharsson | June 20, 2010 10:25 PM

burnie @ 538 u thunk i'm bad at speilin, you shoodar seed jeff harvie's befour he lernded how ta yooz a spiel cheka, turd grade stuff.

Posted by: sunspot | June 21, 2010 8:47 AM

Pinicchio, what's my grammar got to do with it ? She's dead. So is the CO2 fable.

Posted by: sunspot | June 21, 2010 9:05 AM

Good grief, you folks are still responding to these morons? Brent, the far more intelligent of the two, thinks that, if the water stops boiling for a moment when you throw in the pasta, that proves that the stove is off, and he still hasn't realized that winter is not a global phenomenon. These guys are unreachable, and there have been no lurkers for months. Give it up already.

Posted by: truth machine, OM | June 22, 2010 5:55 AM

C'mon on Lenny. Keep patting that dog harder, maybe it will come back to life.

Posted by: John | June 22, 2010 10:37 PM

Having said what I just did, I have to agree with TM and indeed with my own comment weeks ago.

There's no hope for enlightenment in this troll's cave.

Posted by: Bernard J. | June 23, 2010 12:38 AM

I have an acquaintance who brushes off the extinction problem with a flippant reference to past extinctions.

I asked him if he was aware how fast the current extinction rate is compared to the previous 'background' extinction rate. He was not aware, nor did he show any interest in finding out.

Apparently he believes that if extinctions are a 'regular' event then one need not care what the current rate of extinction is in comparison to the "regular" rate.

So a question for Brent, before you look up the 'regular' (background) extinction rate, ask yourself what percentage rise over this rate would be warning signal for you? 10%, 20%, more? And what size rise over this rate would be alarming to you? 50%, 100%, 500% rise in the rate of extinctions?

Then once you nominate your thresholds, do the research and tell us what you find the current rate of extinctions to be compared to the background fossil record rate.

Posted by: jakerman | June 23, 2010 4:05 AM

Truth Machine @ #552.

Agreed. Brent claims he's reading Levin's book, "Fragile Dominion", where the main message is not just how much biodiversity we are losing compared with past extinction events, but how this will (1) affect the functioning of ecosystems across the biosphere, and (2) the delivery of vital ecosystem services that sustain human civilization. Of course natural systems are robust and have in-built redundancy, but this is no guarantee that the human assault will not result in a massive descrease in the free delivery of a range of services that have few, if any, technological substitutes. This is the core message of Levin's book, along with the fact that our understanding of what he refers to as 'complex adaptive systems' is still very poor. I gave Brent more credit than I should have. His rejoinder shows that not one iota of the book's message has sunk into his head.

Past extinction events did not occur when a single species dominated the planet as Homo sapiens does today. No species extracts more from - or depends more on - natural systems than does our species. We redirect 50% of freshwater flows and utilize 40% or more of net primary production. Consequently, when things begin to break down, perhaps systemically, then we could be the biggest losers. The pied flycatcher study just goes to show how interconnected different processes are in nature. Species interact, and thus the biggest extinction of all could be that of vital interactions that reinforce the strength of food chains and the communities in which they are embedded. Moreover, given that there are not nearly enough ecologists to study the billions of interactions that occur just within individual ecosystems, it is likely that the pied flycatcher-winter moth-oak/climate change study represents the tip of a vast network of worrying changes brought about by recent warming.

Brent, if you are the smart guy you try and make out to be here, then it is quite unwise of you to downplay - even ridicule - individual examples looking at vertical trophic interactions even consisting of just a few species. If you were to look in the pages of any number of peer-reviewed ecological journals over the past 10 years, you would see that there are many worrying signs coming out of natural systems in response to rapid warming, and that, were more species and systems to be studied, we might see that a bleak pattern is emerging.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | June 23, 2010 8:42 AM

Shortly after the third of three major snowstorms brought record-setting snowfall to the U.S. mid-Atlantic region, NOAA’s Climate Scene Investigators (CSI) assembled to analyze why the snowstorms happened. The CSI is a team of “attribution” experts in NOAA whose job is to determine the causes for climate conditions. By distinguishing natural variability from human-induced climate change, they aim to improve decision-making and inform adaptation strategies. The CSI team was formed in 2007, following chaotic media coverage of the record U.S. warmth in 2006 (see CSI: NOAA Climate Scene Investigators). Here they have been called to the scene again, but now to explain cold, snowy conditions, and to reconcile those with a warming planet. After a series of record-setting snowstorms hit the mid-Atlantic region this winter, some people asked NOAA if humans could somehow be to blame. Specifically, they wanted to know if human-induced global warming could have caused the snowstorms due to the fact that a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor. The CSI Team’s analysis indicates that’s not likely. They found no evidence — no human “fingerprints” — to implicate our involvement in the snowstorms. If global warming was the culprit, the team would have expected to find...................

more here http://www.tinyurl.com.au/c69

Posted by: sunspot | June 26, 2010 9:25 AM

Sunspot, I caught the same article from Klimaskeptic.cz, and asked if there was a mis-translation. A one-third increase in TSI cannot be right: that's several hundred Watts. I suspect it's the variation in TSI (between roughly 1365 and 1367 M/m2) that's being revised.

I'm not posting much of late. I'm gradually getting through an ecology book in order to have a more informed stance on whether any climate change is likely to be taken in its stride by nature (robust) or whether nature is like an intricate clockwork watch liable to seize up when jabbed at with a Big Bertha screwdriver (fragile).

Although the book is aimed at the public, I have to re-read many passages before getting it, e.g., "... a picture has begun to emerge of how ecosystem functioning depends on the details of biotic structure." This is not gibberish; with enough prior knowledge, or enough reflection, it all makes sense.

I watch the Buddleia in the garden attracting four species of bee and little flies and beetles, and also a damsel fly. This helps illustrate the book's discussion of "structure", and I can imagine other - less fortunate - plants with just a single creepy-crawly serving it. It would be more "fragile", more susceptible to... er... CCCCC. (This is my new acronym. It stands for creepy-crawly-cidal climate change. Can't see it catching on!)

The likes of Jeff Harvey, with his superior knowledge of Pied Flycatchers, claims that even a few lousy tenths of a degree change can be dangerous. If he's right, and if the thermometers aren't dodgy, I need to join his side. If, on the other hand, he is misrepresenting nature - in particular by his claims that temperature changes are excising great strips of the biota, when in fact nature copes very well with variation, and has had billions of years of practice - then he deserves to be dismissed as a scaremonger.

Oh, and as for Pied Flycatchers, I wonder if they do a little moonlighting. Might they instead be called Pied Fly-or-sometimes-wasp-Catchers? I'm a Fat Beerdrinker, but when the cupboard's bare I've been known to give the wife's sherry a bashing. Professor Levin might give this a title such as DABB: Drought-Adaptive Boozeraiding Behaviour.

Posted by: Brent | June 26, 2010 7:10 PM

TSI,

Notice that the deviations (red spots) have been higher than the standard deviation (violet horizontal band) since 1916 AD.

What percentage higher ?

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/c84

Wasn't it 1916 when aGw started ?

Posted by: sunspot | June 27, 2010 9:12 AM

I'm gradually getting through an ecology book in order to have a more informed stance on whether any climate change is likely to be taken in its stride by nature (robust) or whether nature is like an intricate clockwork watch liable to seize up when jabbed at with a Big Bertha screwdriver (fragile).

When you start with the sort of stupidity that poses such false dichotomies, you're bound to end up just as stupid, no matter what you read.

Posted by: truth machine | June 27, 2010 4:31 PM

Chek, as we so often say, correlation is not causality.

The promising correlation between sunspot cycles and temperature is just an indicator that calls for deeper understanding. Of course sunspots don't cause rises and falls in yearly temperature but may well have a common cause, yet to be understood.

This isn't dumb. Arguing that changes in atmospheric CO2, which shows a steady rise, causes decade-by-decade oscillations is dumb. The idea that the sun may be the main driver of earth's temperature, or rather its oscillation, makes good sense.

Posted by: Brent | June 28, 2010 3:34 AM

Pinocchio,

Global Warming is Not Global, http://www.tinyurl.com.au/cau

Arctic Animal Populations. http://www.tinyurl.com.au/cat

You know that if a universal tax is forced upon us, then there wont be any funding to address the real causes of environmental problems. You in particular will be on the outer for not recognizing that the perceived GW is not the major cause in harming biodiversity. I think you maybe a shill.

Posted by: sunspot | June 28, 2010 5:59 AM

Blotspot is (as usual) full of it. The scientific community does not just measure the demographics of species populations instantaneously but with time. Some species and populations - like many tropical migrant songbirds - are being negatively affected by rapid warming due to a dramatic phenological changes in vital interactions with species in other trophic levels on which they depend for reproduction and survival. Other species that occur in less tightly linked trophic interrelationships - habitat and dietary generalists for example - many benefit for the short term as conditions become warmer because they open up possibilities for a decrease in metabolic expenditure for access to food and for reproduction. In other words, conditions can transiently improve and mask an underlying negative trend that will occur when conditions pass some threshold. What is happening in Arctic ecosystems is just that - conditions are becoming temporarily more benign but, as the warming continues, and more ice is lost, with a longer growing season (on poor, acid soils), then conditions will switch rapidly to a new and potentailly very harmful state. Polar Bears constitute one example of this phenomenon. No doubt the bears will benefit from a reduction in pack ice to a certain point, but once that is passed then their populations will plummet.

I wouldn't expect some one with a high school dropout-level education like Sunspot to understand term like the 'extinction debt' but he ought to stay out of areas of science - such as population biology - where I s* all over him. The truth is that his understanding of ecology, along with the doipes whose misinformation he peddles here, is akin to the analogy of the person who wants to travel as fast as they can and jumps off the top of a 100 story building. As they fall their mass picks up speed, so that by the time they have fallen 90 floors they are travelling faster than at any time since they jumped from the building. Then suddenly - S-P-L-A-T!!!!! They careen into the pavement and that is it. Similarly, any population rises in Arctic biota are certain to be temporary, until conditions pass a critical threshold. Then they will plummet. Ecology is the most non-linear of the sciences in cause-and-effect relationships because one minor change in a seemingly innocuous variable can rebound on the system, but not necessarily at once. Some songbird declines in the eastern United States are almost certainly attributable to changes in habitat and the los of top-level predators that occurred many years, and in some cases even centuries, ago.

So will rapid warming harm biodiversity? Most certainly. I say this as a scientists with years of experience in my field of research. Blotspot has none. He is an idealogically driven libertarian.

Some advice blotspot: stick to areas - perhaps like making cardboard boxes or the like - where you are probably skilled.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | June 28, 2010 6:37 AM

Brent said: "The idea that the sun may be the main driver of earth's temperature, or rather its oscillation, makes good sense".

Of course the sun is the main driver - that's where (almost) all the thermal energy on Earth comes from.

As for accounting for the current excess warming anomaly no Brent and sunsplat, it doesn't make any scientific sense whatsoever

It's just another constituent of that pile of pigshit you keep pushing.

Posted by: chek | June 28, 2010 7:02 AM

"The fact is we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't".

Most likely, the reason the Trenberth/IPCC Earth energy budget can't account for the lack of warming is because warming from greenhouse gas back radiation doesn't exist.

Claes Johnson, professor of applied mathematics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, has a blog for those interested in the mathematics & physics of the atmosphere, and has a new post today which also finds the conventional greenhouse gas theory of back radiation or re radiation causing global warming to be fictitious.

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/cbo

Posted by: sunspot | June 28, 2010 9:23 AM

The Earth’s weather and climate regime is determined by the total solar irradiance (TSI) and its interactions with the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and landmasses. Evidence from both 29 years of direct satellite monitoring and historical proxy data leaves no doubt that solar luminosity in general, and TSI in particular, are intrinsically variable phenomena. Subtle variations of TSI resulting from periodic changes in the Earth's orbit (Milankovich cycles: ~20, 40 and 100 Kyrs) cause climate change ranging from major ice ages to the present inter-glacial, clearly demonstrating the dominance of TSI in climate change on long timescales. TSI monitoring, cosmogenic isotope analyses and correlative climate data indicate that variations of the TSI have been a significant climate forcing during the current inter-glacial period (the last ~ 10 Kyrs.). Phenomenological analyses of TSI monitoring results during the past (nearly) three decades, TSI proxies during the past 400 years and the records of surface temperature show that TSI variation has been the dominant forcing for climate change during the industrial era. The periodic character of the TSI record indicates that solar forcing of climate change will likely be the dominant variable contributor to climate change in the future.

A contiguous TSI database of satellite observations extends from late 1978 to the present, covering more than two sunspot cycles. It's comprised of the observations of seven independent experiments: Nimbus7/ERB1, SMM/ACRIM12, ERBS/ERBE3, UARS/ACRIM24, SOHO/VIRGO5, ACRIMSAT/ACRIM36 and SORCE/TIM7. A composite database combining these results using overlapping, in-flight comparisons has begun to provide new insights into both solar physics and climate change.

this site has good data and info, http://www.acrim.com/

hahaha, CO2 !

Posted by: sunspot | June 29, 2010 8:32 AM

Wowyouradill,

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/dwm

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/dwo

Posted by: sunspot | July 20, 2010 4:55 AM

Brent recently popped up doing his usual trick that global warming was a fraud because "it's an uptick of a few lousy tenths of a degree on a dodgy thermometre". Putting aside Brent's repeated use of Orwellian language for a moment, I can't help but wonder why, when Brent has admitted the temperature record is accurate, does he lie to himself?

Posted by: John | July 31, 2010 10:44 AM

Brent, why do you hate science?

Posted by: John | August 26, 2010 8:42 AM

"at least suggest to me a more appropriate outlet for my ideas."

Here's a suggestion, Bent, use this thread as an outlet for your "ideas".

Posted by: Wow | August 29, 2010 2:21 PM

"It seems perverse to occupy a chatroom with my name on it!"

No, it's perverse to IGNORE a thread named for you.

Then again, you're a pervert, so what should we expect, hmm?

Posted by: Wow | August 29, 2010 3:06 PM

Someone needs to say this:

Sarcasm is no substitute for evidence-backed logic. You have plenty of the former, Brent, and a good fighting spirit, but are woefully lacking in the latter.

Posted by: MFS | August 30, 2010 7:39 PM

Arguably, the positions of the two sides are so entrenched that it is pointless to attempt gentlemanly debate.

So does "gentlemanly debate" include arriving here under false pretences?

Nobodies position here is "entrenched". It is based on the best possible science available which, surprise!, is not being done on the skeptic blogs. Of course, you don't really have a scientific agenda. You have a political one.

Drop the persecuted act. You have routinely changed positions, made "concessions" you really don't believe and have frequently lied to us, all in some weird act to make us admit we've been hoaxing to you.

Our position on global warming has stayed constant. Yours has veered wildly based on whatever Watts has posted that day.

For all your guff about climate sensitivity you've already admitted you know nothing about it, so I don't know why you continue to champion as the global warming dealbreaker.

Prove to us the climate has a low sensitivity or shut up.

Posted by: John | August 31, 2010 12:17 AM

Hi, John,

(i)IPCC 4th report, section WG1, chapter 2, page 203:

Level of scientific understanding of cloud albedo effect and solar irradiance is -quote- low - unquote-.

(ii) Correlation between the flow rates of the Parana River and sunspot number over the last century. Ditto for water level in Lake Victoria. An interesting summary of research into the sun's effect on climate here: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GWPart6SolarEvidence.htm I'd be interested to hear your views on that site.

You know, it's your side that claims that the science is settled. My side says that the risk of catastrophic global warming is insufficient to change the culture. I look forward to the day when we can demonstrate precisely the flaw in the AGW theory; meanwhile, the onus is on your side to prove that the sun has only a trivial effect on climate variation. The "low" level of scientific understanding in your sacred IPCC text ought to make a little light wink in your head: a man of integrity would concede that this "low" level of understanding has the potential to drive a coach and horses through your pet theory.

(iii) Patchauri is colouring his hair.

Question: If future advances in understanding demonstrate that solar forcing exceeds CO2 forcing by over 4:1, will you concede that the game is up, and abandon your position that carbon dioxide is jeapordising the earth's future?

Posted by: Brent | September 1, 2010 7:10 AM

Change what culture? I can assure you that having a solar hot water supply for the last 20 years hasn't changed anything in this household apart from the power bills.

As for the culture of business, innovation, making money, where's the problem? Any competent business can make money out of new, or changed, (or retro) technology if there's a market for it. How much money is there just waiting for businesses to go for it if households, landlords, businesses or governments decide that fitting insulation, double glazing and all the other power saving things would be a good idea? The last report I read said >600,000 jobs in USA alone for about ten years. Now that's what I call a business opportunity, for both skilled and unskilled workers.

A question for you. If it's not CO2 jeopardising our climate and our future - what is it? Sydney's just had its 21st straight winter with temperature above the long term average. If it's not CO2, what is it? And what should we do about that?

Posted by: adelady | September 1, 2010 7:34 AM

Adelady, I built my first solar panel in 1984 on the roof of my house in Marseille. It worked great. Last year I did some maths on a business idea: to install PV systems (elecricity generating solar panels) in England.

Even with subsidies, the RORI (rate of return on investment) for a person signing up for it was lower than interest rates. In other words, my customers would benefit from leaving their money in the bank, rather than "on the roof". In other words, I would've been conning people, and so I dropped it.

I have no doubt that subsidies will skew the economics of this and other green industries. This subtle and pernicious pracitice has the effect of hobbling genuine wealth creation in western economies. At the moment it's a vote-winner, but I continue to hope that the IPCC agenda will be shortly exposed, and governments will cease throwing taxpayers' money at counterproductive green measures.

The most flagrant abuse of subsidy is in Spain: a country lauded for its green policies. Their solar panels feed into the system at night. AT NIGHT. (This is clearly criminal behaviour.) Coincidentally, Spain's government's finances are in deep deficit. Irony and banter aside, do you see my point - even if I'm wrong, and that carbon is as dangerous as some say. Do you at least see where I am coming from: that if (yes, that IS an 'if') the West is mistaken about the need to combat carbon, the damage to our economies is as unwarranted as an anti-UFO defence corps!

The UK government will pay 30p/kWh for electricity a citizen produces from solar/wind - the so-called 'feed-in tarif'. There are people here powering fans at 10p/kWh (purchase price) to drive them. Of course there are efficiency losses, but a bit of crafty rewiring cuts out the need for whirling blades! Who pays? The neighbours pay! And the manufacturers pay more for expensive juice whilst they compete with foreign competitors with no such cost-premium.

This is the price we are paying for our non-apocalypse.

Posted by: Brent | September 1, 2010 8:09 AM

Brent, your ignoring the advice target to your level.

Posted by: jakerman | September 1, 2010 8:36 AM

My side says that the risk of catastrophic global warming is insufficient to change the culture.

No, your "side" says it's a hoax, as yourself have enthusiastically described it so many times in the past. Never here of course, you leave your real views on other websites. Part of the reason you're considered so trustworthy.

The onus is on you to prove that the climate has a low sensitivity, as all the evidence points the other way.

Evidence given = none. Why can't you do this Brent? Why are all your beliefs based on no evidence and "if" hypotheticals? Is it because you have no evidence Brent? Why do you hate science Brent?

Question: If future advances in understanding demonstrate that solar forcing exceeds CO2 forcing by over 4:1, will you concede that the game is up, and abandon your position that carbon dioxide is jeapordising the earth's future?

Why are you dealing in science fiction now? You have no evidence besides your personal belief to back up your claims. This is not science. I am not going to deal with hypothetical "ifs". I am going to deal with the known.

It's amazing to think the hours you've spent battling science and trying to force it to fit your ideology and yet it still stands. I suspect your return here isn't so much driven by a love of science as much as it's driven by bitter feelings and an intellectual inferiority complex.

Come clean Brent. What are your political views? Judging by your attack on the Spanish government I'd say right-wing. Do you still believe AGW is still a "hoax"? Does it still fill you with "fury"? Are you angry, Brent? Angry at a leftist society that's keeping you down and trying to take away your comfortable life?

You've had every position on global warming it's possible to have (except that it's happening), and then you sook like a five year old because you get called a troll.

Seriously, HTFU.

Posted by: John | September 1, 2010 8:45 AM

Jakerman, if your contribution to a debate on serious energy security issues, financial viability of alternative energy, international competitiveness of nations embracing the emissions reduction targets, the relative impact of CO2 and the sun on global temperatures...

...is a picture of a cat on a toilet, then this suggests you are a gratuitous spoiler rather than a participant in mature debate. Pray tell, what do you do for a living, and what sacrifices have you personally made to mitigate the coming thermageddon?

Posted by: Brent | September 1, 2010 8:49 AM

This is Brent's idea of "mature debate":

That fecking Lambert got his way, and has put me in solitary. Maybe he's right; maybe being abused and insulted by the Deltoid Rude Boys was a Stockholm Syndrome thing; maybe we will be growing pineapples in Shropshire soon; maybe Al Gore was right about the Tipping Point; maybe all my friends like Salty Current and Dave R and Jeff Harvey are not the hypocrites I suspected and they have actually given up driving motor vehicles, given up air travel, given up eating imported food.

Hallelujah! I'm cured! I see it now, the error of my ways!

Posted by: John | September 1, 2010 8:53 AM

Or he's treating your galloping trotskies with the contempt they so clearly deserve.

PS why don't you try debating serious energy issues, financial viability of energy, international issues like security, emissions targets and the relative impact of CO2 and the sun on global temepratures?

Shortlist for you:

Peak Oil and reduced supplies in the free market makes nonrenewables an untenable short term solution.

Nuclear power is financially dead. Nobody is willing to implement it without government bailouts, despite 50 years of government handouts getting it "commercially viable".

When China eats your lunch because they're building the renewable power stations you need to feed your energy habit, you'll be uncompetitive.

Governments are unwilling to undergo short term change for long term gain, though not to the extent that publicly traded companies do, where governments are concerned with ~years whilst corporations concerned with the next quarters' report.

And CO2 has AT LEAST twice the impact on current temperatures than solar changes have increased the global equilibrium. More recently, since the sun's output has dropped, yet we are still getting record temperatures, the sun's effect is more than neutered.

Will you discuss or will you put your fingers in your ears and go "NANANANA I CAN'T HEAR!"?

Posted by: Wow | September 1, 2010 8:56 AM

I hate to sound like a nagging mum going on about the towels on the bathroom floor, but ......

If you're so opposed to government subsidies on power, how come I never see you complaining about the $US500 billion handed over to fossil fuel companies every year.

And I notice you've not yet said anything about Sydney's 21 year run of warmer than average winters. Just nagging.

Posted by: adelady | September 1, 2010 9:32 AM

Wow, "energy is energy" you say. Of course, the point is about usefully-exploitable energy at an affordable price. "Nuclear power financially dead", you say. Well, France made a very wise decision to go heavily nuclear back in the sixties, and I believe that the next generation of PWR will be very efficient and safe.

[There was an interesting article in The Economist about energy companies increasingly heading towards gas. There is so much of the stuff that their projects are governed by infrastructure costs, not reserves. And (as BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster shows) the dangers of the liquid stuff are adding to this major strategic move.]

From your statement about electric lighting adding to worker exploitation I think I see your mindset. I've tried to avoid discussion of political persuasion on this site because the laws of physics is of course on another plane. I was on the brink of joining Tony Blair's Labour party, and only his decision to take us to war stopped that. Today, I'm very pleased with the UK's new Con/Lib coalition apart from the nutjob in the Ministry of Silly Walks (the Climate Change blokie, Huhne). I'm a democrat and a capitalist.

Look, guys, I am not here to try to persuade you! It's like talking to a Jehovah: utterly fruitless. No, I am trying to understand what makes you all tick and I am trying to distil the debate down to some simple truths that even a bunch of watermelons must agree to.

But if we can't even agree that energy supplies have enriched our lives in dozens of areas then we may have 'hit the wall'.

Probably flogging a dead horse here but let me cite some examples: The combine harvester; international ait travel; the humble washing machine; driving to the shops; domestic water supplies; air conditioning in hot countries. If we don't agree that these are enequivocal blessings then maybe our political starting points are so far apart as to make further debate pointless.

On the off-chance that youse guys accept the above things as beneficial, then I can still dangle in front of you the nice idea that if (if...) AGW is a crock, then maybe we can go back to enjoying the fruits of progress and development. Well, guys, what's it to be, then? "Stone age good, technology bad?" Or a more reasoned "Energy good, but not at the price of destroying the ecosystem."

Posted by: Brent | September 1, 2010 10:11 AM

Brent writes:

I've tried to avoid discussion of political persuasion on this site because the laws of physics is of course on another plane.

Just another untruth in a long list from Brent:

Guy on WUWT says "their support for the rigid political line of AGW is making them look like Soviet Lysenko Lackies".

And

we're pissing away billions on useless windmills. MFS, it's Lysenkoism. It's time to abandon it.

Posted by: jakerman | September 1, 2010 10:28 AM

France's nuclear reactors didn't look such a good bargain when they were unable to power airconditioning in a hot summer -- because they were turned off!! The river levels were too low to allow a supply of cooling water. Nice work.

You might notice that New York has just had its hottest summer ever at the same time as the run of Sydney's above average winter temperatures celebrates its coming of age. 21 years!

Posted by: adelady | September 1, 2010 10:47 AM

John (597): You ask "Why do you hate science, Brent?"

If you'd seen YOUR pet dog run over by a guy in a white labcoat you wouldn't ask me that.

In the past, John, you've asked me why I can still doubt AGW given the radiative physics and the manmade contribution to atmospheric CO2. Well, it's a bit like this argument:

Iron is denser than wood - FACT. Ships have always been made from wood - FACT. Water is denser than wood - FACT. Iron is denser than water - FACT.

A ship made out of iron must sink. The above statements make it so.

Arrhenius proved that CO2 blah blah - FACT. Burning of fossil fuels increases atmospheric CO2 PPM - FACT. Al Gore is a man of wisdom and integrity - FACT. Temperatures have been rising since 1976 - no not THOSE ones, you goddam cherrypicker you - and provided we ignore the previous fall in temperatures even though the CO2 was still going up then - FACT. White polecaps have higher albedo than black ones - FACT.

The above sequence of facts leads us with unassailable logic to the conclusion that a tipping point will be reached, only we don't quite know when, and it's rude to ask that question, and we don't have ALL the answers but we do have enough to be certain and only denialists would doubt this logic like they deny holocausts and lung cancer.

Hands up all those who have put in for a ticket to Cancun!

Posted by: Brent | September 1, 2010 11:21 AM

Brent, I get the distinct impression that you come here armed with a head full of Christopher Bookerisms and expect that to carry you on a blog frequented by scientists and those interested in science. Well, it ain't gonna happen.

You show the same disdain as him for actually finding things out and citing reputable sources that can be verified, preferring instead to fit things into your 'yet another apocalypse' interior storyboard. Your "logical" thought trains as shown above are laughable, and your 'common sense' is really just a bunch of received assumptions that you're comfortable with. And you're happy with that.

I'm not sure what the answer is. You refuse to learn anything you don't already know (such as that is) and probably won't bother until such time as you want to understand what's going on when AGW begins to bite, yes even in bourgeois middle England. You don't yet see the signs, but nevertheless they're there for those who can see, and can also see where multiple trends are headed.

p.s. Was it the Stern Report you were on about last weekend?

Posted by: chek | September 1, 2010 12:41 PM

Brent,

"Iron is denser than wood - FACT. Ships have always been made from wood - FACT. Water is denser than wood - FACT. Iron is denser than water - FACT.

A ship made out of iron must sink. The above statements make it so."

Epic failure of logic. A ship is not made of solid iron, in terms of volume, mostly air.

Now follow your post by pointing out the failure of logic in the argument that CO2 causes global warming. And for chrissake TRY not to mention Al Gore. Who gives a s#!t about that politician? What's your obsession with that guy?

Posted by: MFS | September 1, 2010 10:14 PM

NSW shivered through its coldest winter in 12 years, while daytime temperatures in August hit their lowest since 1990.

NSW experienced average daytime temperatures of 15.9C, making it the coldest winter since 1998 and the 16th nippiest winter on record.

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/mq4

Posted by: sunspot | September 2, 2010 6:18 AM

NSW coldest for 12 years? That actually tells us something about longer term trends. It seems that what now counts as cold is not as cold as cold used to be.

Sydney's warmer winter record has come of age.

21 years straight above average winter temperatures.

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/season/nsw/sydney.shtml

Posted by: adelady | September 2, 2010 7:14 AM