October 2012 Open Thread

More thread.

More like this

Non-idiots, on the other hand, might gain from looking here.

Who said the SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE was warming.

Of course, you're so insane you cannot escape your private little world in any shape or form.

Kraken,

The linking of one graphic from a host of others and out of the context of the background data demonstrates your lack of rigour in any discussion here, and that is to put it mildly.

Now ask yourself the meaning of that large white area that bounds Antarctica. Come on think for yourself now.

Climate Progress has just (17:05 BST) been reported to me as 'An Attack Page'.

I got the same thing, Lionel - from the diagnostics, I would guess its due to a hot link in the comments, since the Google "safe browsing" page reports:
Of the 3222 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 0 page(s) resulted in malicious software....
Over the past 90 days, thinkprogress.org did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites....
No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days....In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.

Maybe they are just referring to Joe's combative style ;-)

You forget that Spots here is misrepresenting my response to his last idiotic statement on another thread about the antarctic ice extent growing when he asserted the AGW answer was "The north pole is warming up, causing more snown in the antarctic", my response was "The southern hemisphere is warming.".

Of course, no grist for this idiots mill in that, so they have to pretend another response was made in the fine traditions of rafia work of deniers through the decades.

From the Tamino post I linked to above [with modifications]:

[Insert Denier's name here] is typical of the vast majority of fake skeptics about climate science. [S/]He really, really isn’t qualified to discuss the subject. But not only does [s/]he do so, [s/]he tries hard to influence public policy about it. This is why governments worldwide have been so effectively paralyzed — because there are so many voices, speaking so loud, whose influence (on both politicians and the general public) is way out of proportion to their qualifications even to understand, let alone advise, on the subject. [Insert Denier's name here] is hardly unique in this respect, [s/]he’s actually typical. The loudest voices seem to be those of the most ignorant.

[Emphasis in original]

In this case Tamino's referring to one of those truly remarkable people that lobbied the North Carolina state legislature to structurally disregard AGW-induced sea-level rise.

But the rule holds true - this is a description of type - exemplifying the combination of arrogance and insouciance that sees talkback-radio level lumpen'intellectuals' attempting to boorishly lord it over the merely qualified, trained, and competent.

IMO it's made worse in the science fields not because scientists are geeks/aspies/social misfits or whatever, but because you have to have a passion for accuracy to be a good science and this means you have to be accurate about your possible problems, errors and caveats too.

Whereas the nonscientist or the ex-scientist (see Spencer) gains hugely: they feel no such compunction.

So the scientist voice is saying "X is likely happening, though we don't understand Y" and the nonscientist is saying "Z IS HAPPENING!!!!".

Well, seeing as "compromise" is a necessity in the mind of the politician, and since the X position is already admitted less likely, lets move a long way to saying Z is happening.

Was anyone still under the impression that a floon like Willie milli-Watts wasn't bought and paid for by Bast's anti-science mob?

Of course when the Krakens of the world try to rubbish the scientific data they should consider going out on the ice like Dr. Mauri Pelto on Easton Glacier nr. Mt Baker in the Cascades – a Climate Crocks post and take Watts, Montford, Monckton, Bast, Bastardi, old uncle Tom Cobbly an' all (that latter BTW shorthand for the short list of high profile one-time scientists turned advocacy shills) with them. Think of the fun they would have howling at the moon that global warming is a hoax. Inhofe & co. should be dropped in by parachute - after all they could find a ready made igloo – in a crevasse.

Pay attention to this bit, transcript as close as I could make out:

This is just one measurement. Obviously the last two day we've marched around these glaciers, arggh, we're going to cover about ten miles to get those two hundred measurements. Do that for thirty years on ten different glaciers and you get an idea of what it takes you to – just one little – you look at those graphs and you see a data series, a time series, even for an individual glacier or a series of glaciers in one range it gives you an idea of the kinda effort you need to put in...

That is what it is about, collecting the data for analysis to provide the information that informs us that global warming is for real. Anybody now continuing to obfuscate this basic fact should be sent for correction training to find out how science really works.

Hey Watts & co., guess what, it isn't sitting in a nice office somewhere comfortable confabulating over weather station photographs. You are a despicable deceiving toe-rag to be trying to deflect from the physical and mental effort of real scientists working in hostile and dangerous places. And yes I remember an acquittance of mine who disappeared, never to be seen again, into a crevasse on Greenland.

I enjoyed this comment on Spencer's latest UAH temperature post:

Dear specialist of high order polynomial fits,
do you think we could see an Arctic sea ice increase with a 22th order polynomial fit ?
(My question is for entertainment purposes only).

Ah, lulz.

I seem to recall that the polynomial recently changed from third order to fourth order. No explanation was given; maybe the third order poly wasn't "entertaining" enough? Naturally, I am assuming a strong correlation between entertainment and a negative gradient towards the right-hand end of the fit.

A third order plot starting from an increasing trend always ends up with an increasing trend at long times. A fourth order plot starting from an increasing trend always ends up decreasing at some later time. Evidently someone who passed intermediate algebra pointed this out to Dr. Roy.

By Eli Rabett (not verified) on 04 Oct 2012 #permalink

'course what you could do is use the same polynomial as Roy and start from a decreasing line (say somewhere around 1940).

This was posted on ABC Science online and SMH - and probably others - Alister Doyle, Routers

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/03/us-climate-romans-idUSBRE8921…

"The findings by Sapart's team questioned the view by a U.N. panel of climate scientists that man-made climate change started with the surge in use of fossil fuels during the Industrial Revolution."

I cannot find where or how Alister Doyle could make this claim - and it be repeated without question

I looked at the orignal paper
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v490/n7418/full/nature11461.html
(I'm hopeful that even without a sub that one can see the abscract and images - if not good summaries with images and not the extra bits one doesn't find in the paper at
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121003132322.htm
http://www.livescience.com/23678-methane-emissions-roman-times.html
(bigger img at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v490/n7418/images/nature11461-f3.2… )

so the 200ppb CH4 fluctuation from 100BCE to 1750, lets mutiply by 100 to get CO2 equiv (I'm exaggerating to make a point and because it's easy :) ) - 20ppm CO2e excursions

for this to affect temperature (and no claim was made in the Nature paper), one would have to assume an extremely high valued climate sensitivity (that the paper does not make) -- a point lost on deniers

so I'm stumped at the claim that it knocks on the head the "view by a U.N. panel of climate scientists" re climate change -- and why Doyle wouldn't think that if IPCC was proved wrong there would be a little more said about it from every scientific body and climate scientist - or is Doyle a subscriber to the global and total scientific conspiracy?

By Dave McRae (not verified) on 04 Oct 2012 #permalink

I understand the fun thing for polynomial fits is to push them backward in time to the 19th century.

Talk about giving them fits!

By Jeffrey Davis (not verified) on 04 Oct 2012 #permalink

Dave McRae,

As that study by Celia Sapart (I cannot connect to that Nature link at all at the moment - Nature experiencing technical difficulties) is about methane production by Roman Empire and Han Dynasty populations and thus is to demonstrate that there is a long history of human contributions to GHGs and thus warming influence. Therefore this statement by Doyle is scurrilous spin by not indicating that scientists concerned were not committing a sin of omission :

The findings by Sapart's team questioned the view by a U.N. panel of climate scientists that man-made climate change started with the surge in use of fossil fuels during the Industrial Revolution.

Here is a more nuanced description from the LA Times Study reveals ancient greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course a greater surge of GHGs began with the Industrial Revolution but it would seem that Doyle prefers a bit of UN Scientist bashing and I doubt he has read any of the IPCC reports in full and so is taking a punt. I wonder if Doyle can be a bit more specific on which UN Climate Scientist panel was supposed to have come to the said conclusion. It seems like Doyle is doing a Plimer - playing fast and loose with quotes etc.

Maybe Doyle is trying to step into Andrew Bolt's shoes.

Did I see a message a while back from Bernard J about a "gertboard"?

Thanks Lionel A

Sapart's team's Nature paper is a wonderful read, top paper. I do like the history of smelting, energy consumption, warfare and civs and that paper puts some facts to that.

But it has nothing to say on "questioning IPCC" that Mr Doyle asserts

Looking at Doyle's twitter feed, he doesn't seem a denier. He may well have no idea of what he is writing about. Or maybe, he's thinking of doing a Plimer and getting in on the denier output because it's a heck of alot easier to make stuff up. Much easier than reading, understanding and writing accurately on science - I do grant that that is a difficult task to continuously do and I admire those that can do it.

I posted a question at Mr Doyle's blog, a nicer, more respectful toned question of my earlier post. But it has failed to escape moderation - yet others who are ignorant of science seem to have no worries posting rot (then again, I may be too harsh - I sub to Nature, and read ScienceDaily for heads up that references sources, rather than made up general consumption gear that do not reference sources but misrepresents them - this is another topic but why can tabloid Sports assume a high level of domain knowledge of their readers, but tabloid science not only assumes it's readers are stupid but makes no attempt to lift up that knowledge)

By Dave McRae (not verified) on 04 Oct 2012 #permalink

Thanks MikeH for that link.

To be fair to Sapart, and hopefully the Nature paper will be back soon, that paper does not mention anything to do with early anthropocene - but rather it's a meticulous study of ice core methane isotopes over 2000 years. Awesome for history buffs.

It was Doyle's attempt to make it, I guess, more "meaningful" to today, more "topical" by adding stuff that wasn't there.

And "skeptics" not being skeptics - you would think that if IPCC was overturned by a published paper that every scientific organisation would be doing press conferences, every climatologist from universities across the globe would be plagued by reporters after their views on the paper that overturned the IPCC .. but sadly for Doyle and his readers this is not what is happening but they don't seem to notice .. I am beginning to worry that they really are that stupid?

By Dave McRae (not verified) on 04 Oct 2012 #permalink

Yes, stupid they are.

By Vince Whirlwind (not verified) on 04 Oct 2012 #permalink

I think that anybody who has read Jared Diamond's 'Guns, Germs, & Steel' in particular, but also 'The Third Chimpanzee' and 'Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and also explored other aspects of the Earth's biological and geological history will be aware that humans by hunting and then forest cutting for home, hearth and industry could have an increasing impact on the environment, an impact out of proportion to the numbers of humans. Economists might think of it as leverage - but something has to give and in the literal sense too.

It is clear that wherever humans migrated then so large herds of herbivores, and also their predators, dwindled with a huge impact on the vegetation that then flourished or declined. In Britain, and probably elsewhere, cattle are being re-introduced to increase the diversity of species of plants and insects, including almost extinct species of butterfly. It is far more than flatulence that requires consideration here no matter what Dana Rohrabacher might think.

I have often had thrown at me the argument that humans are too puny to destroy the Earth's life support system but there the ignorance of present understanding of how the Earth's atmosphere that we know now developed in the first instance - after all cyanobacterial are too small to bother about aren't they?

SkepticalScience also have a section on what will happen.

Basically, at the lower end of sensitivity, we're stuck with the given CO2 levels and temperature levels for a few hundred years now.

"I wonder if Dr Spencer will still use his “fun” polynomial if the trend starts to be up? Who bets that it disappears?"

It's still there, and it drops now, because they adjusted the last few months of data because they say there was "spurious warming" in the signal.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Sep_201…
Last month was dropped about .2C.

By Robert Murphy (not verified) on 05 Oct 2012 #permalink

Geophys Michael Asten has attempted a sensitivity estimate pitched low ,to the delight of the luvvies at WUWT. Seems to depend on some contentions about the lie of the land during the Eocene-Oligocene boundary.

So, according to Pat Michaels increased CO2 levels are good for crops?

Of course we have for long anticipated the downside and here it is brought to us by increased warming The Impact of the 2012 U.S. Drought: Pick Your Poison.

Will Australia be immune to such effects? Probably not.

If that's true, how come with all this extra CO2 corn yields in the USA are crashing?

The permafrost findings are indeed an "oh shit" moment.

Even just including this one part of one feedback--CO2 from top 3.5 meters of terrestrial permafrost, and with the standard climate sensitivity of 3 degrees C per doubling--we get no reduction in atmospheric CO2 levels for centuries, at least, even if we stop all further CO2 emissions essentially immediately.

But in fact there are lots of other feedbacks that are kicking in now or soon will be: methane from terrestrial permafrost, methane and CO2 from deeper than 3.5 meters, seabed permafrost, sea bed methane hydrates, other soils...

What this means is that we are now inside of runaway global warming. This is bad news indeed.

By john harkness (not verified) on 06 Oct 2012 #permalink

Where are you, Tim L? I miss your posts.

By clarencegirl (not verified) on 06 Oct 2012 #permalink

Anatomy of the Lewandowsky Scam Sep 8, 2012 – 6:06 PM;
The Third ‘Skeptic’ Sep 10, 2012 – 9:20 AM; Lewandowsky Censors Discussion of Fake Data Sep 10, 2012 – 4:04 PM; Lewandowsky: study “Useless” unless authors demonstrate “data integrity” Sep 12, 2012 – 10:22 AM; Lewandowsky’s Unreported Results Sep 12, 2012 – 11:24 PM; Lewandowsky’s Fake Results Sep 13, 2012 – 9:46 AM; The SkS “Link” to the Lewandowsky Survey Sep 14, 2012 – 11:19 AM; The Lewandowsky Census Sep 14, 2012 – 4:37 PM; Lewandowsky’s Cleansing Program Sep 15, 2012 – 1:05 PM; Trying (Unsuccessfully) to Replicate Lewandowsky Sep 16, 2012 – 2:20 PM; Lewandowsky’s Fake Correlation Sep 18, 2012 – 8:29 PM; Conspiracy-Theorist Lewandowsky Tries to Manufacture Doubt Sep 20, 2012 – 11:58 PM; More Deception in the Lewandowsky Data Sep 23, 2012 – 11:09 AM; Kahneman Scathes Social Psychologists Oct 5, 2012 – 3:10 PM
... from a selection of the posts over the past month over at CA in which The Auditor seeks to firmly establish that Steve 'red noise' McIntyre is in no possible meaning of the term an obsessed nutter and conspiracy theorist.
Some, of course, may find the point well proven by now.

What this means is that we are now inside of runaway global warming.

From my reading of it - which may or may not be accurate - we're not sure of that at this point.

On the other hand that doesn't bring much comfort: we're not sure that we're not in a self-sustaining warming system either.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 06 Oct 2012 #permalink

I'm sure David Duff will rise from the mire when he reads this from Nature Geoscience via the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19848112

Essentially, latent warming of the Atlantic is directly responsible for increased summer precipitation in much of Europe, esp. Britain, northwestern France and Benelux.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 08 Oct 2012 #permalink

Nothing new at Deltoid. The great climate scare geezer (with his arm candy) rambles on. :-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 08 Oct 2012 #permalink

So the 2cent rise is due to what?

Over here in blighty the price hike has been high, but 90% of the rise is due to the price of gas going up on the international market.

I note the reporter didn't bother attributing what caused the rise and prove it.

How does he know the carbon tarriff caused the rise? Electricity prices have risen before without the carbon tarriff, so how do they know it is the cause this time? It's just a natural change.

On Rowan Sutton and what appears to be a rather blinkered study outlook [1] I noted this supposed quote by narrow thinking lack of ability to provide context Shukman::

Professor Sutton said that "clearly there is a link between Atlantic warming and Arctic sea ice though the details are not well understood."

Of course there is a link, they are both linked to a warming globe which in turn is being driven by increases in atmospheric GHGs because of human activity.

Shukman clearly didn't get this memo, just one of many which could be produced, Otto and Donat Weigh in on Human Contributions to Extreme Heat.

Sheeesh! And to think that it was only yesterday that I emailed the BBC registering my increasing disappointment (a polite way of saying anger) at the lack of any attempts by politicians to put economy, growth and GDP in the context of climate change, unstable weather patterns, rising sea levels and the general destruction of ecosystems.

I would like to ask the Prime Minister 'the slick Cameron' why he and his buddy 'the smirk' Osborne have no clue as to how many economists it takes to wreck the Earth's life support system.

Also why is the media avoiding this Elephant in the room?

Yes I know the answer to that, report anything not politically acceptable and you are out of the door. Cowards.

Are the stories about power vulnerabilities by 2015 being put about to prepare us for coal fired power stations to be resurrected and new such built. Maybe Gina 'no heart' Rinehart's long reach means that we will be importing this crap from Australia before long so as to also provide the gas for our gas-fired power stations. That was a bad move if ever there was one and as for burning chopped up trees are these people insane for that is as bad as pushing the use of bio-fuels based on maize or other land crops.

That last is really going to play out well in the US isn't it now. They will have cheap petrol (which is not gas you lummocks) for their tanks but 'no food on their families' (to paraphrase a lummock in chief).

[1] Yes I appreciate that scientists have had to focus their findings to the data collected but in this day and age more context should be provided to prevent such studies being used in isolation by 'the usual suspect in these crimes against humanity'.

Electricity prices have risen before without the carbon tarriff, so how do they know it is the cause this time? It’s just a natural change.

Touché - but cue denialists arguing the opposite ;-)

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 08 Oct 2012 #permalink

Thought you'd like it.

Indeed that Stoat article is interesting John. Slowly but surely these emperors are losing their clothes. Must be the warmer temperatures dropping the fig leaves, one by one but now there is a strengthening breeze blowing through such foliage.

Lotharson wrote:

"'What this means is that we are now inside of runaway global warming.'

From my reading of it – which may or may not be accurate – we’re not sure of that at this point. "

I would be very interested to know how one does _not_ come to the conclusion that we are now in runaway gw from connecting the results of this study (especially their graph at figure 3) with known other carbon feedbacks.

I really would love for someone to convince me that there is some other conclusion that could be drawn from this study. It would help me sleep better.

By john harkness (not verified) on 09 Oct 2012 #permalink

blockquote>I really would love for someone to convince me that there is some other conclusion that could be drawn from this study. It would help me sleep better.

Apart from that SkepticalScience article, IIRC the graphs in the paper show outcomes for different scenarios and a number of them do not have significant self-sustaining CO2 increases. (But some certainly do...)

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 09 Oct 2012 #permalink

Gack. Blockquote fail.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 09 Oct 2012 #permalink

No, for that to happen there has to be enough methane to wipe out the HO in the atmosphere. That signals runaway

By Eli Rabett (not verified) on 10 Oct 2012 #permalink

John is talking of "runaway" in the same way as a runaway car you left without the handbrake on on a slope.

Going too fast for you to actually stop moving until possibly too late (to keep it out of traffic).

Not runaway as in Venus.

The large minority of expected sensitvities to climate change for the methane stores have a cut to zero carbon resulting in a continuing (though improved over BAU) increase in atmospheric CO2.

Given the models have been underestimating the change so far, that large minority may become a small majority.

Possible.

Further on Lewandowsky.

One might well anticipate further ironically confirmatory hi-jinks in the comment thread if previous posts are anything to go by!

Thanks, Wow.

Can you point me to some links to any models within this 'large minority'?

By john harkness (not verified) on 11 Oct 2012 #permalink

And so it continues, the deluges on Britain Fife floods: Storm's house is swept away by flood this soon after flash flooding in Clovelly, North Devon and not forgetting the flats marooned on their piles in Newburn nr' Newcastle - see link at end of video linked above - I hope it plays for you down under.

Lionel, the video played with no problem.

I'm amazed at the amount of flood damage that you've had over there. In Australia we perceive Old Blighty as wet, but not as being wet on that scale.

Given the amount of extraordinary flooding that has occurred around the planet in the last few years it certainly seems from a non-statistical and purely perception-based perspective that climate is achanging. I wonder how long before there's a paper confirming or refuting this apparent phenomenon?

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 12 Oct 2012 #permalink

Bernard, one (extremely daft) change is that people are paving up their gardens.

I've had people coming round trying to ask me if I wanted my front garden set as a hardpad to park a car on. Not known for its water retention properties.

Add to that the endemic crass stupidity of the government in building yet more flood defenses, despite the recent history of this on the Danube, where they have "discovered" that if you stop it flooding in one place, you make it worse in further downstream. Eastern Europe around there are dismantling flood defenses and working out how to make it flood little but often and plan for it.

But no, flood defenses mean government handouts to private companies to build, therefore this shitehole Tory government (and NuLabour would have been no damn different, with the liberals too damn spineless) goes and pays out for their dogma.

Olaus,

Ha!
;)

Don't you two have a room you can go to for your "self-appreciation", trollsters?

I don't get it.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 13 Oct 2012 #permalink

Chris, I think that the trolls are tacitly admitting that one can construct a wall of denial around the truth, but sooner or later it will start to crumble and collapse like so much rotten sea ice smothered under a blanket of "greenhouse' gas.

Of course a good denialist troll will rush to put the falling bricks back up in another part of the wall, and hope that no-one noticed the laws of thermodynamcis peeking through from the other side, but the only people they're fooling are themselves.

The trouble is that the wall in question, like many other walls in history, will be responsible for holding up progress and thus causing the loss of many many lives, even when the wall itself is nothing more than illusion - or delusion...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 13 Oct 2012 #permalink

I’ve had people coming round trying to ask me if I wanted my front garden set as a hardpad to park a car on. Not known for its water retention properties.

Yep, that is why I groan when I see neighbours garden their whole front gardens for vehicles, there are many David Duffs out their i.e. clueless. Talking of Duff didn't he mention being somewhere in Devon, not Clovelly surely.

As an alternative to paving the stuff that used to be laid down on grass airfield areas to harden up for heavier aircraft could be useful. This 'Summerfield Tracking' as it was called consisted of sheets of slotted metal which could be linked together for a more even surface. The slots allowed water to drain through. Much used during WW2.

When the IRA were 'kicking up' in the 1970s this stuff was brought into use again so that we could park our cars way over on the airfield away from buildings - dashed nuisance that was.

@GSW

:-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 13 Oct 2012 #permalink

I still don't get it. Is it something to do with the ice-age that's starting next year?

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 13 Oct 2012 #permalink

LoL,

Talk about desperation !!

Every time it rains somewhere you whacker's start flapping your wings about gwowbull worming, hahaha,

I didn't see any flood water in the UK going over the top of a bridge !!!!
The water was going under all the bridges, so how could those floods be worse than what those bridge's were designed and built for ?

Here is some news that you all already know about but won't admit to.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-s…

... which goes to prove deniers will believe anything. Any old unattributed graph and mangled quote from David 'liar' Rose is fine.

But riddle me this Karenmoron, if warming stopped 16 years ago, why is there record arctic melt in 2012? Or is joined up thinking not in your repertoire?

au contraire wet check, why is there record Antarctic ice in 2012 ?

Or is your dis-joined thinking some kind of mental dysfunction or simply a sign of retardation ?

chek,

The Met' Office have produced a response to that dreadful Rose article here: Met Office in the Media: 14 October 2012 but I am sure there will be others pitching in soon.

Note how coy he is about the sources for his judgements and where the hell did that graph come from?

And I guess that he has been urged to create this piece of puffery by agents of the 'Slick' Cameron and 'Smirk' Osborne given this section:

The new figures were released as the Government made clear that it would ‘bend’ its own carbon-dioxide rules and build new power stations to try to combat the threat of blackouts.

At last week’s Conservative Party Conference, the new Energy Minister, John Hayes, promised that ‘the high-flown theories of bourgeois Left-wing academics will not override the interests of ordinary people who need fuel for heat, light and transport – energy policies, you might say, for the many, not the few’ – a pledge that has triggered fury from green activists, who fear reductions in the huge subsidies given to wind-turbine firms.

Which is a trend that I have suspected and alluded to earlier.

Or is your dis-joined thinking some kind of mental dysfunction or simply a sign of retardation ?

One should not parrot the form when one does not understand the function - or the semantics - and especially when one is re-asking a previously answered "gotcha" question that "gets" the asker by demonstrating they don't know what they're talking about.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 14 Oct 2012 #permalink

Oh dear, David Rose in another hit piece. Cherry picking August 1997 as start point (extreme El Nino) and August 2012 as end point (thus including two times a La Nina year). Scientists should be shocked at this type of unscientific behavior, and indeed, real scientists are. No surprise Curry isn't...

Oh, and the Met Office has reacted, too:
http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-1…

Meanwhile some of the commenters on that post by PZ discuss the value of the benefits of the ecosystem (e.g. this one, which provides some very useful financial context.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 14 Oct 2012 #permalink

The water was going under all the bridges

and the houses. Haar, haar.

By Chris O'Neill (not verified) on 14 Oct 2012 #permalink

As expected, the Karenmoron can only respond "Look over there (Antarctica) - a squirrel!"

The seasonal behaviour of Antarctic sea ice (which almost completely disappears in summer) so beloved by those spoonfed the talking points which they don't understand anyway by Denier HQ is undermined by the ongoing loss of Antarctic ice mass.

But although that strategy's worse than having nothing at all and keeping quiet just as they have been for the past two monthsl, it allows the karenmorons to now flap their gums and punch their keyboards as though they had an answer to explain away the unprecedented Arctic loss after "16 years of no warming."

Being a denier truly is having no shame in being idiotic.

.

wet check try to assimilate the text in the link that you supplied http://www.yumanewsnow.com/index.php/news/latest/1384-nasa-s-operation-…

"IF" you can do that you understand that there is NO evidence of the Antarctic ice mass melting, if you open the fingers that are across your just a little further will also find that Antarctica this year has the largest sea ice extent ON RECORD dunce. LoL

By the way nitwit have you read the first post in this thread ?

"resumes-flights-over-antarctica"

flights.

What do you think this means? That planes can't fly unless there's something solid under them?

" is NO evidence of the Antarctic ice mass melting,"

Apart from the disappearance of millions of tons over the antarctic as measured by gravitometers.

You know, that evidence.

Apart from the evidence of disappearing ice, there's no evidence of disapprearing ice.

Lotharsson at 11:15 am 14 October.

It's small change isn't it? And still our governments lack the wherewithal to maintain basic bilogical functionality.

Of course, if they wait 50 years the discount rate on any action will make it so much cheaper do act in the future...

...not.

If only there was a mechanism to ensure that the stupid and the greedy suffered first, rather than the poor and the innocent.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 14 Oct 2012 #permalink

Speaking of stupid, how many timesin the last few threads has USKMS had explained to him the inherent property of noise superimposed on a signal leading to a minimum interval of time required to identify the latter from the former, and how many times has it been pointed out that the Antarctic is centred over a continental land mass whilst the Arctic is open ocean?

I wonder if his significantly below-average IQ is a reflection of brain damage?

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 14 Oct 2012 #permalink

...how many timesin the last few threads has USKMS had explained to him the inherent property of noise superimposed on a signal leading to a minimum interval of time required to identify the latter from the former,...

I just think of it as a form of interpretive dance for the Blog Age. You know, where the USKMS contributions represent, nay embody, a process that:

(a) overlays a clear signal, and
(b) (over sufficient time) can be demonstrated to be entirely noise

I can only give it 5/10 though - USKMS really hasn't captured essential attributes of the situation because "over sufficient time" for this performance turns out to be "almost immediately", or worse.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 14 Oct 2012 #permalink

“IF” you can do that you understand that there is NO evidence of the Antarctic ice mass melting,..

Dumber & dimmer does not know the difference between sea ice and continental ice mass. Must have skipped comprehension classes in English.

Dumber & dimmer, what do you think happens to continental ice when ice shelves crack off and disperse in the Southern Ocean?

Another thing and with respect to sea level rise, what effect do you think this will have on watercourses that flow out to the coasts? What impacts will this have on communities on the coast , including communities of tide range organisms, and those further inland?

"If only there was a mechanism to ensure that the stupid and the greedy suffered first, rather than the poor and the innocent."

There isn't.

The only version is to hang the law and ignore this "Oh, they're entitled to their free speech" BS.

They're abusing it.

That David Rose creative writing effort also appears here:

http://www.sott.net/article/252368-Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-…

and I have been looking for that Ben Weller - source of the graphic and have turned up the one herein who used to work for Hoosier Energy as Communication Assistant:

http://www.hepn.com/assets%5Cfiles%5Cenergylines%5CJuly%202010.pdf

What was that graphic based on?

I note that WUWT are touting this piece of BS too. I noticed that on Googeling 'Ben Weller Global temperature changes' as I don't wish to step in shit.

Of course Rose has a recorded track record recorded here at Deltoid Rosegate: Rose hides the incline reporting on another abysmal piece in the Mail Scientist who said climate change sceptics had been proved wrong accused of hiding truth by colleague.

Where Judith Curry is the one hurling accusations of scientific abuse. Why do I think of that children's TV programme 'The Magic Roundabout' whenever I see that picture of Curry?

Rose's article is useful in exposing 1 thing. He approvingly quotes Tory Energy Minister, John Hayes:

"the high-flown theories of bourgeois Left-wing academics will not override the interests of ordinary people who need fuel for heat, light and transport"

Assuming Rose hasn't fabricated or misrepresented the quote it reveals an alarming and deep prejudice against science and learning from a member of the UK government.

By lord_sidcup (not verified) on 14 Oct 2012 #permalink

"fuel for heat, light and transport”

But the point is we DON'T need the CO2.

It's human-poison.

But this dickhead is fighting tooth and nail to continue to poison mankind by conflating energy with CO2.

“the high-flown theories of bourgeois Left-wing academics will not override the interests of ordinary people who need fuel for heat, light and transport”

Expect the same in Australia when the Coalition wins the federal election next year.

The only caveat will be if Malcolm Turnbull performs a return-Brutus on Abbott - then a goodly proportion of his party will find the courage to accept the science again, although it will all be too little too late.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 14 Oct 2012 #permalink

"But this dickhead is fighting tooth and nail to continue to poison mankind by conflating energy with CO2".

Quite so, with the addendum that it is exactly what the fossil fuel magnates (and only the fossil fuel magnates and their brainless 2-cents-a-pop-fuckpuppets) would have us believe

"ordinary people who need fuel for heat, light and transport"

"Ordinary people" don't give a hoot about the fuel so long as the heat and light switches work and the trains roll in the right direction. We need lighting, heating and transport of various kinds at various times.

We don't need dirty versions of those things - which is why we no longer have cinders flying into our eyes from open windows on steam trains and our ceilings aren't marked by smoke from candles and oil lamps. In fact, most people want 'clean' power. Until now they've got it by putting power stations where they're out of sight, out of mind.

Having power generation that is, in fact, clean is a huge improvement and we should have done it decades ago.

Further evidence demolishing Karen's kindergarten-level analysis:

http://www.countercurrents.org/cc111012B.htm

This has been known for some time. But the deniers, who are incapable of non-linear thought, stick to the same tired, old refrain.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 15 Oct 2012 #permalink

Karenmackspot believes the government are surpressing perpetual motion so it's no surprise he'd swallow a David Rose article.

Is anyone surprised to find David Rose also misrepresented Judith Curry?

I have no idea where the ‘deeply flawed’ came from, I did not use these words in any context that Rose should be quoted (perhaps I used them somewhere on my blog?)

By lord_sidcup (not verified) on 15 Oct 2012 #permalink

Point is people, how can we call out people like Rose so that he becomes too ashamed to repeat?

Yes I appreciate that maladapted creatures (not evolved beyond stone age cognitive processes) like Rose have no sense of shame or a conscience. The comments thread at the base of that article is depressing reading and notable by all the sensible and informed comments being voted down to the bottom by the ignoratti. These ignoratti need a kick up the fundament too.

Never in the field of human history will so many be afflicted because of the lumpish actions of so few. The few being those bankrolling this type of propaganda.

Denial isn't just for the science. It's of everyone who criticises them.

Look to the fundie mantra of how anything and everything is "proof" of their persecution. This not only allows them to ignore the criticism but also allows them to "prove" to themselves they must be on to something.

Patrick 'CO2 is good for plants' Michaels has produced more misleading smoke screens to divert the attentions of, mainly, US politicians from the realities of climate change as is currently being pointed out at Rabett Run and Climate Denial Crock of the Week blogs.

Michaels' ally Chip Knappenberger seems incensed that people at Skeptical Science should cast due doubt on the motives of these prime examples of devious denialists.

Knappenbegers' attempts at excuses can be found here and more especially here .

What thin skins these creatures have who seem so eager to sling insults at others. And yes Knappenberger and Michaels, distorting the work of other scientists is insulting in the extreme and you deserve every condemnation heaped upon you.

Chip and Pat you are also insulting assaulting the world and all other organisms that inhabit it.

Maybe Pat is distancing himself from his "CO2 is plant food" with all these plants dying in the USA despite an abundance of this "food".

Point is people, how can we call out people like Rose so that he becomes too ashamed to repeat?

I have little faith in the process but Leo Hickman has tweeted that 3 complaints have been submitted to the UK Press Complaints Commission. Given that the article only appeared 2 days ago there will likely be more. The usual get-out-of-jail-free card when climate change denial is published in the UK press is that it is an opinion piece. I can't see anything - at least in the web version - to indicate it is an opinion piece and (amazingly) it was published under science.

Most likely outcome is the Fail will publish a small clarification which the PCC will deem as sufficient remedial action.

By lord_sidcup (not verified) on 16 Oct 2012 #permalink

Despite Top Gear, in defence of their hack-job on the Tesla electric car ('cos they're all a bunch of old aged boys), maintained they were known to be an entertainment not factual review programme.

Despite STILL being listed under "Factual" in the BBC iPlayer app...

Tim,

Thought you & the gang might appreciate what Tom Harris is up to these days.

"It is misleading for IANVS to write concerning my article on the serious flaws in the climate science poll last week, “And that from the Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), another climate change denier PR org… etc."

http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2012/10/linkpost-10-16-12/comment-page-1/#…

I think a paraphrase of the first comment in "Jonas thread" is in order:

"Deltoid, the place were climate scare trolls are dead".

Only handful staggering zombies left (not right?) in this dungeon of conspiracies and hatred. :-)

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/09/12/jonas-thread/comment-page-1/…

Can't be fun being so completely out of fashion. ;-) Why not give the blogg a more suitable name? Desertoid perhaps? Could it be that people now understand that there isn't a well funded right wing conspiracy working against climate science and that there is no one that wants to destroy mother earth?

Take care!

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 17 Oct 2012 #permalink

Please, Olaus, don't slam the door on your way out.

in this dungeon of conspiracies

Looks like they just can't help confirming Lewandowsky's paper with every dribble.

"but I suppose the 2 aren’t mutually exclusive."

Well, the insistence on using smilies is definitely a part of the tactic of passive aggressive and nothing to do with narcissism.

It may be that the passive aggressive is more likely to be narcissistic, since they do not want any strong proof for or against their words since that would crack their self-image, hence it is better to be a passive aggressive and let fake victimhood allow you to wave away criticism with "Oh, you're being a bully, so you MUST be wrong on this!".

If it wasn't for Science, I could fly like a blue heron!

Yep, the haterism sure is unsustainable...

Thanks Kevin - I'll spread that one around!

The Loon Pond is a lovely blog that covers the crazy in the press so I don't have to :)

She picks up Murdoch's Oz for the re-running that favourite denier, "but I'm not longer a denier but please continue subsidising fossil fuels because I'm so smart", Lomborg

http://loonpond.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/and-so-to-brief-tour-of-deniali…

I would not recommend following Loon Pond's link to the Lomborg piece like I did :). Summary: after alot of words on GM foods means that the Climate Vulnerability Monitor 2012 report is thus flawed and thus investing in a clean energy future will mean poor people die by burning dung.

By Dave McRae (not verified) on 17 Oct 2012 #permalink

Well, it seems after the first three months of operation that those opposed to pricing carbon will be choking on humble pie. There has been a notable drop in carbon emissions in Australia with the introduction of the price:

http://www.smh.com.au/data-point/carbon-tax-contributes-to-emissions-dr…

Interestingly, it's apparent that consumers started their reduction in power use just prior to the price engaging, showing that people are indeed motivated by the true cost of goods and services when those costs are actually passed on, and more interestingly the economy hasn't yet collapsed from the price. In my own circle, my friends' and relatives' bills haven't increased at a rate any greater than in previous periods, and they've had the offset to sweeten the fact that most are actually quite energy efficient.

What's worrying some of them though is that further costs of infrastructure repair seem to be looming. They're as nervous as Barney Stinson on Slapsgiving...

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 17 Oct 2012 #permalink

those opposed to pricing carbon will be choking on humble pie

Lots of egg destined for so many sneering faces...

Sadly, the oblivious morons that hang around here are a reliable guide that such mentalities are incapable of comprehending - let alone acknowledging - error. They' ll merely double-down on bullshit.

The ever-increasing tension between the epistemic-bubble of the gloating idiots' wrongheaded 'reality' and actual reality significantly diminishes any appeal they may still have to those who want to engage with the world as it really is, however.

No, more denialist groupwanking, Olap.

Olaus, you're the little fat sneering kid in the class that just won't shut up and thinks his farts are hilarious. You keep claiming you're going away - no-one would miss you if you did, so do it.

Ah, poor old Alan - now the 'cyber-bullies' have made him have to take facts into account, thus changing the habits of a lifetime. What an outrageous blow to Free Speech™, or, remembering his starring role in Cash-For-Comment, Fee Speech.

No doubt the narcissistic little thug will manage to feel genuinely sorry for himself; the rest of us may well see it as too-little, too-late.

I have just submitted this emailed letter to the editor :

*****

Dear editors (& hopefully readership)

In his Thursday ‘Advertiser’ column (Page 24, “Pause for warming effect” inset box 2012 October 18th) Andrew Bolt claimed that new data show a lack of warming over the past 16 years. Mr Bolt is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts – empirical observed evidence collected by NASA NOAA and the CSIRO among others flatly contradicts this false claim. For example, search the NASA website and anyone can find reference to the fact that 2010 was the hottest year on record tying with 2005 and last year was globally the hottest recorded La Nina cycle year. This year as many know but Mr Bolt apparently missed saw the lowest Arctic sea ice extent on record, another key indicator of the reality of our current artificially induced planetary overheating. Bolt’s piece was factually inaccurate and highly misleading and 98%. of qualified climatologists, individuals who have spent decades studying and working on understanding the facts and processes and nature of Earth’s climate are agreed that Global Overheating is real and a serious concern. I strongly believe it is overdue that we listened to those climatologists who actually know what they’re talking about on this topic not ideologically blinkered polemicists and request the Advertiser please consider this in future and ideally both issues a correction and runs a counter-piece by a reputable climatologist preferably in Mr Bolt’s place.

Best regards :

(My details - ed.)

*****

In response to Andrew Bolt's extraordinarily wrong claim in a recent column and thought folks here may like to know / respond similarly / provide feedback?

Dear Bill, thanks for sharing your insights about fat kids. It can't be easy knowing all the signs of evil like you Deltoids do.

Anything on Gergis? ;-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 18 Oct 2012 #permalink

On Gergis: resubmitted, and if my sources are right, with little change in the results.

Expect major outcry in pseudoskeptic blogosphere.

Yes, I notice Olaus consistently comes back here with his witless wisdom and links to right wing anti-environmental blogs in tow. He clearly reads everything said on Deltoid, and, like the other clowns who deny AGW, seems to think that his vacuous quips actually resonate on an intellectual level with some readers here.

Mesage for Olaus: They don't. Well, with a caveat: they do but only with those (like you) whose political biases trump scientific facts. You clearly don't read the primary literature, a point I have made a million timers, but instead saunter your way through the contrarian blogs because these bolster your own retarded beliefs. You claim - whilst refusing to read any of the evidence provided and there is a helluva lot of it out there - that polluting industries and those with vested interests in denial invest huge sums of money to influence public policy on the issue of climate change. This is what raises a red flag for me - I have recommended numerous books and other sources of information but you clearly refuse to read them. And on this platform of ignorance you then deride comments about a well-funded industry of denial. Next thing you'll tell me is that there's no proof that dozens of corporations fund political candidates to the tunes of billions of dollars in the United States. Of course, they do, but so long as you keep a paper bag over your head, you can forever claim that its a lie.

Get a life, dopey. If you aren't willing to read anything a scintilla of a millimeter outside of the box you've constructed for yourself, then don't expect people to try and engage with you in some form of meaningful discussion.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

Marco, I'm sure we all can appriciate if its resubmitted.

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

Correction: Olaus refuses to believe that industries invest...... and so on!

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

Thanks for the Jo Nova link Olaus. Made me laugh :)

Yeah the "This is what 95% certainty looks like in climate science", well, exactly. Thought about a discussion we had on another thread about that very point, where is he these days by the way? ;)

As for "yourself [jeff] not letting your conspiracies and intolerant personality take the better of you?" Your asking him to stop being jeff!. Too far gone I think to consider a personality transplant at this late stage.

Also, for those of you who follow NH sea ice extent, and attach great significance to records etc, seems to be bouncing back quite nicely after the summer low!

http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/

Some observers claim it's the fastest refreeze since records began! wow!

Loaus,

No, I don't 'make up facts' - I do what any person should do when challenged: look for the evidence themself. You belittle statements referring to the anti-environmental slush fund on the basis of your own inherent biases, and then, in tried and trusted contrarian fashion, when this is exposed go after the messenger. There's piles of evidence that climate change - along with a suite of other other environmental threats - are part of an emormolusly well funded industryof denial. Sharon Beder, Andy Rowell, Dave Helvarg, Sheldon Rampton and many others have done the maths. You refuse to read them. That's your problem. You don't want to read them and the other relevant literature because it will shatter your world view. Next thing you'll say is that the tobacco industry didn't invest millions to downplay the effects of smoking on human health. Why? Because you didn't read anything about it. Therefore it didn't happen. Great strategy that, eh?

I take your bemused smears with a piunch of salt, on the simple basis that (and this is what you really hate) I am a respected scientist and am, certainly wsell known in my field of endeavor. Dorks like you also routinely ridiclue Paul Ehlrich, Michael Mann, Ed Wilson, Peter Raven, Tom Lovejoy, anf other scientists who have made an impact.

Its funny how clowns like you and GSW claim that Deltoid is dead but appear to hover around here like vultures and check the threads almost constantly. Do you guys actually have lives? Or are you sad deniers stuck in your own timke warps?

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

Jeff,

Can't speak for Olaus, but I come back here every now and then for entertainment purposes- You guys defending the indefensible, and seeing "Portents of Doom" in every new piece of "trivia de jour". Best of all, it's free! sort of a Conspiracy theory, Comedy Channel combo!

Best Wishes Jeff!
;)

Lousey,

Until you read something apart from WUWT and Joanne Nova (is this it?!), then why discuss anything with you? Same goes for your sidekicks.

John Mashey was correct when he said that deniers hate scientists. They really do. Especially those with some pedigree. The knives come out when scientists stand up to those who have no scientific background at all. The venal hatred. The deniers are left with snarky remarks suggesting that the scientists are 'too far gone' (GSW) and hence ignored. This coming from a person who made a number of profoundly error ridden comments about the status of amphibians and polar bear demographics, topics of which he clearly knows nothing. I countered this nonsense, and out come the knives. Why?

Humiliation. GSW, who has no background in the life sciences, expects his comments to be taken literally. No exceptions. I did this, and it must have hurt. No attempt was made to counter my arguments because he couldn't. So what was left? AHA! Smears. Ridicule.

You deniers are so predictable. I've been encountering you since my postdoctoal days back in Wisconsin in the 1990s, and nothing has changed. On one website back then some contrarian clown claimed the world could easily sustain a population of one trillion people. When I countered this with arguments that it was absurd, out came the knives. The smears. The insults. Another person suggested that humans had evolved beyond any dependence on biodiversity. Again I responded with science - and again out came the smears and insults.

GSW, Olaus and Co. are par for the course. Its boring really, because its so easy to humiliate their lack of knowledge, so they have to resort to poems and other forms of attack to soothe their souls.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

Dear Jeff, you invent facts. You just did. Again. As usual. For starters, where did you get the idea that I don't care about the environment? Or that I don't think that climate changes?

And Deltoids only spring to life when we throw some bones in your direction. ;-)

@ GSW :-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

"I come back here every now and then for entertainment purposes"

Good for you. I do the same for the sites you tend to find succor in - comedy sites like Nova's, WUWT, Bishop's Hill etc. where there isn't a statured scientist in sight. Just a lot of politically camouflaged mumbo-jumbo. Its been a terrible year for climate change deniers, what with the record-extending heat wave across the US and the shocking minimum in Arctic ice cover. I understand how you right wing free market absolutists need all of the comfort you can get as humans continue to push our planetary life support systems towards the brink.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

Lousey boy,

Don't put words in my mouth. Your non-sequiters aren't funny except to you and a few hangers on. You know exactly what I mean. If you care about the environment, then your version isclearly 'slacktivist'. Look it up. Perhaps too much for your muddled Swedish brain.

The only bones you throw in our direction are insults. Glad you like my 'arm-candy' though. Ity goes with playing death metal. I need to blast away on my BC Rich after a day being exposed to your kinds of insidious logic.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

Does Tony Abbott still prefer to go on a radio show run by a liar than he does to go on the ABC?

By Vince Whirlwind (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

"Some observers claim it’s the fastest refreeze since records began"

And there you have it, laid out in plain site. For all the voluminous text avalanches of blog piffle from the aggregated ranks of the WattsNovaMontford axis, you get an 'understanding' of the issue with all the depth of the gold plating on a fairground bauble.

Deniers don't actually need to be 'attacked', they're more than capable of proclaiming their own depths of stupid without any assistance.

Also, for those of you who follow NH sea ice extent, and attach great significance to records etc, seems to be bouncing back quite nicely after the summer low!

What, no record?

Even so, the "bounceback" doesn't change the dire prognosis.

But you knew that.

Or should have - in which case, as chek says:

Deniers ... [are] more than capable of proclaiming their own depths of stupid without any assistance.

For someone who claims (IIRC) to teach physics you seem remarkably ignorant of the import of volume and trend and mechanism, focusing instead on cherry-picked area metrics.

It's also interesting that you and your fellow travellers have all declined to take up any of Bernard J's bets.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

Some observers claim it’s the fastest refreeze since records began.

"[S]ome observers" were preempted about two months ago by scientific commentators with a genuine understanding of physics, and who pointed out the nature of seasonal re-icing from a record low baseline with the current combination of climatic forcings.

For your future reference, future record low summer Arctic ice parameters are likely to be followed by more record or near-record re-icings. Even a pithed toad could understand why, so it will be entertaining to see whether you can explain it to the thread.

The stage is yours. Show us what you know.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

Why does winter always come as such a shock to deniers?

The person who did the calculations for the "fastest refreeze since records began" doesn't know how to calculate percent increase. They say that an increase of 2.62409 million km^2 over an initial value of 3.36855 million km^2 at the minimum amounts to a 43.8% increase. Read that again. The actual increase is about 78% over the minimum, not 43.8%. They can't even do 5th grade maths.

And of course, the percent increase (from the minimum) of sea ice extent at day 31 from the minimum is a trivial number. If the ice had melted completely, any recovery would be infinite! See? No problems with Arctic sea ice! No need to look at long term trends or maybe the volume...
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ic…

The deniers are getting desperate.

By Robert Murphy (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

"The deniers are getting desperate"

That's an understatement.... the so-called recovery doesn't take into account how thick the new (or old) ice is, or that the biggest concern was that the oldest ice has been lost at remarkably rapid rates.

But we have to accept the fact that climate change deniers are a metaphor for the ice loss in the Arctic: they will deny, deny, deny and then deny some more as their arguments melt all around them. The only time they will acknowledge that they've been wrong all along is at the very last minute, as the water goes over their heads (cue Robert DeNiro as Max Cady in the remake of Cape Fear). Its stunning how they have distorted, spun, weaved, twisted, and dodged the science in their desperate attempts to downplay the quite stunning and frightening rate of summer ice loss in the Arctic. The time scale we are talking about for this event is completely and utterly shocking. Yet the deniers pontificate as if its nothing exceptional.This lot of sordid idiots would have probably though that the impact of the asteroid that brought about the demise of the dinosaurs was nothing exceptional. I'm sure most of them don't consider the loss of 50% of the world's tropical wet forestsin the past 100 years to be that serious either. Anything to downplay the human footprint.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

Short memories these deniers have.

Not only does winter become an eternal suprise to them every year, but they also forget that they harp on about how the peer reviewed papers are no good for finding "the truth" about AGW because anything "supporting the cause" is accepted, as evidenced by them crowing about a retraction of a paper that agrees that AGW is real and a problem.

This, of course, is no evidence that their claim about peer review is wrong.

Some people assign zero credibility to the peer-reviewed literature, and 100% credibility to other things, then pile more on top of unsupported claims. For example, see <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/10/17/1943/&quot;?We have to get rid of the MWP for the propagation and enhancement of David Deming's claim from my favorite dog astrology journal, which found its way into Andrew Montford's book.

People may also peruse Brian Sussman's interview with Deming, revealing Sussman's expertise in explaining that boreholes are holes in trees for tree-ring studies.

By John Mashey (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

That 'borehole' stuff is priceless! The contrarian cretins that frequent this blog despite constantly claiming its irrelevance have no idea what the joke is, though...

'An Overpeck' could well become an official unit of tendentious recollection, Your Honour - though this would surely be more justly assigned as 'A Deming'?

Part way through this article we find:

The publication of the virtually unchanged domestic economic forecasts will further pressure Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who has already been asked to explain why his predictions of ''almost unimaginable'' inflation and job losses resulting from the carbon tax have not materialised.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 19 Oct 2012 #permalink

Potholers clip is priceless. Brilliant stuff; his narrative is devastating to the Dunning-Kruger acolytes out there, several of whom unfortunately dispense their ignorance here.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 20 Oct 2012 #permalink

John Mashey,

I have been looking into William Ruddiman's work starting with 'Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum'. I do wish sources were cited more comprehensibly, the bibliography is thin and the Index leaves much to be desired - but that latter is a common feature of books from the Princeton UP as titles by David Archer, Wallace Broecker and Richard Alley are similarly short. All still worth reading though.

So having had a search around I am finding bits from or associated with Ruddiman including his 2001 paper, with Thomson, and the 2003 and 2005 follow ups. I am now trying to track down the papers that, at first, seemed to undermine his thesis.

I have come across articles at RealClimate and also this comment of yours at Skeptical Science, but not under its original article sadly:

JohnMashey@10,

I'm not interested in MWP hypothesis by Ruddiman. I'm interested in another one Ruddiman's famous for: Tibet and Himalayan uplift speeding up igneous rock weathering and creating the late Cenozoic cooling.

Did you find anything to assist you here?

Now I am still progressing through 'Golden Holocaust', and wonder if you are at all interested in the POV of a once long term smoker, one time RN with Duty Frees, who chose to smoke unfiltered by choice - now I know my instincts were spot on except for the not quitting bit until almost too late.

As an aside Proctor makes an excellent point about the role of those, such as statisticians and academics who suffer little professional damage from colleagues and almas and how this should change. This may bear quoting at some time in some post somewhere for it has a direct bearing on how the climate change perception is being twisted by some in public forums who should know and behave better.

Email me on the tobacco bit if you prefer.

The BBC's Roger Harrabin reports

"We used to say we had a traditional flood season in winter - now often it's in summer. This is an integrated problem - there's no one thing that's going to solve it. The situation is changing all the time."

But scientists present from the Met Office and CEH said not much could be read into the weird weather. Terry Marsh from CEH said: "Rainfall charts show no compelling long-term trend - the annual precipitation table shows lots of variability."

Sarah Jackson from the Met Office confirmed that it did not discern any pattern that suggested Man-made climate change was at play in UK rainfall - although if temperatures rise as projected in future, that would lead to warmer air being able to carry more moisture to fall as rain.

She said that this year's conditions were partly caused by a move to a negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation which would be likely to lead to more frequent cold, drier winters - like the 1960s - and also wetter summers for 10-20 years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19995084

Is this correct?

By Geoff Beacon (not verified) on 20 Oct 2012 #permalink

Geoff, the big problem here is that it's a variation in weather.

We can wait for 30ish years and see if it's a climate rather than transient weather signal.

We could then wait a few more years to see if that climate persists.

Or we could look at rainfall events around the whole globe over the last 10-15 years and see if there's a detectable change in precipitation patterns now. Even then, we couldn't be certain that any change thus detected would certainly persist along that trajectory.

But sensible people would look at rising sea levels and say regardless of whether it persists at this rate or precipitation becomes more or less variable, we'd need to find ways our rivers and stormwater systems could be adjusted to ameliorate the impact on infrastructure.

Alternatively, consider this scenario.

You're feeling a little unwell. Your stools are sloppy and you're going to the toilet more often than usual today. Next day too. And the third day.

But this is entirely possible given the varied and unusual diet of humans.

But do you wait until you see more extreme symptoms (blood in the water, coughing, dehydration and an inability to eat) before going to the doctor, or do you go early on?

And if the doctor says "This could be dysentry" do you deny it all and proclaim that you are clean and run a clean home and CANNOT EVER catch dysentry, point to the symptoms that haven't turned up yet (e.g. "Death") and say this PROVES it isn't dysentry and that you don't need this expensive medical treatment for a disease "produced" by something you can't see and makes up a miniscule fraction of your body weight?

The problem is selfish people don't see it happening to them, therefore they refuse to act because it will cost them (money, prestige, comfort or even pride), but boy will they scream loud when they get hit, demanding OTHERS pay for their disaster.

New Orleans claimed disaster. Ask Pakistan about floods. That was barely a damp floor. But still claimed a "DISASTER!".

Wow, when are you going to follow your own advice? Sure you have suffered enough? Time for change?

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 21 Oct 2012 #permalink

Geoff,

Harrabin does not have a particularly good record of portraying an accurate picture from his interviews with climate scientists as demonstrated by this exchange:

Q&A: Professor Phil Jones in which we find this:

B [Harrabin] - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

[Jones] Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

Of course the denialosphere by not understanding the significance of a '95% significance level' twisted this, and is still doing so as seen with the latest David Rose nonsense, to make the ignoratti believe that there had therefore been no warming over the previous 15 years. This is bad enough but totally ignores the heat capacity of other elements of the climate system especially the oceans. Latent heat not being within the conceptual framework of most.

When it comes to other not well appreciated factors where humans could have induced the MCO (Medieval Climate Optimum) and the LIA (Little Ice Age), both of which have varied periods attributed to them depending on study and location covered, then take up William Ruddiman as pointed to in my October 20, 2012 post above.

As somebody as interested in history as science I had long pondered the probable impact of human activities as agriculture and the making of bronze and then iron spread, all activities requiring the cutting of much timber, along with a steadily rising population. That there was a great plague during medieval times did not escape me and I consider that Ruddiman has some strong points by pointing out that the decimation of large communities would have allowed a grow back of forest with the resultant draw down of CO2 causing temperatures to fall.

The difference between then and now is of course that large populations and the gigantic size of crop-lands, livestock holdings and industry to support our ever increasing, and mostly unnecessary, consumption will have more widespread effects as we are now seeing.

The difficulty with climate studies and global warming is that meteorology is only one facet of the bigger picture and many specialists have too narrow a focus.

William Ruddiman in the book cited above makes the excellent point that scientists should 'give themselves time to think' and to thoughtfully study more recent papers from scientific disciplines other that in which the scientist is directly involved in. It is well know that such cross-disciplinary thinking often allows a new perspective which leads to an advance in the fund of human knowledge.

Giving yourself time to think is brought out early in this video by Jerry Mitrovica, Harvard University quoting Nicholas Shackleton.

Although some have said that the timber felled for agricultural purposes, heating and cooking outweighs that used for construction, including ships, by about ten to one I do wonder about the veracity of that the ships factor given my study of maritime history and the shear scale of tree felling not just of the deciduous hardwoods for structural timbers but of the spruce and pines for masts and for making tar.

The associated consumption of timber for charcoal production in the casting of iron cannon, and then the forging of structural components to eke out the ever shrinking supply of hardwoods is another factor.

What on earth is going on in that soup you have in your cranium, Olap?

1) If I did follow my own advice, as has become apparent many times before, you will do nothing about it. It won't change you at all, so why the hell should I do what you demand?

2) What on earth are you whining about? Are you still pissed off that there's a nigger in the whitehouse, rather than in your outhouse picking your cotton while you laze about?

And note: to do what you demand I'd first have to have some nutbar raving to englush dictionary to work out what the hell it is you're demanding.

Ah, we can always rely on Olap to find the latest in complete arse-bollocks.

David Rose stirs with some more at the Mail:

The REALLY inconvenient truths about global warming. Last week we explosively revealed a 16-year 'pause' in rising temperatures - triggering a bitter debate. You decide what the real facts are...

Don't look there for any facts.

Why the Mail use an ITN Production of a NASA originated video of warming since 1884 when one could just look directly at the NASA version?

Oh I did compare them, and just like Pat Michaels recent effort the ITN-Mail have erased the Arctic and the Antarctic too.

See the NASA version here NASA Finds 2011 Ninth Warmest Year on Record.

Does Rose and the Mail think that 2012 will show a cooling?

Another point of deception is that the name of the originator of that cartoon graphic, which Rose describes as a graph, in the first such article 'Ben Weller' has vanished in this new reproduction.

It seems that Rose would not acknowledge real facts if he fell over them.

'...a 16-year 'pause' in rising temperatures...' Rose and the Mail do not make it so not matter how hard they try to miss quote others and distort the graphics.

UP U OP.

Oops:

Oh I did compare them, and just like Pat Michaels recent effort the ITN-Mail have erased the Arctic and the Antarctic too.

[Preview please people]

Lionel:
Ruddiman:
1) Much research by a bunch of people has happened since 2005.
See special issue of The Holocene from Aug 2011.

2) PPP was a popular-audience book, hence light on refs.
His next one on this is a heavily-ref'd textbook, and I do believe the whole process is a classic example of real science in action.

By John Mashey (not verified) on 21 Oct 2012 #permalink

Yup, prroven innaccurate reporting by proven suspect reporters in unrespected tabloid newspapers. That's what deniers are now reduced to 'citing'.
Congrats on scoring another own goal, Olap.

Lionel A above re Phil Jones.

I made a comment about Jones over on Skeptical Science which is relevant to your own comment.

And I'm getting thoroughly sick and tired of reminding Idiot Servants of Denialism about the issue of signal versus noise, but it's probably worth pointing these Criminals Against Humanity and Biology to the response by Tamino and especially to Ron Broberg's post at the Whiteboard which is posted in the comments at Tamino's.

Sadly, as I observe frequently these days, one can lead a horse to water but one can not make it drink.

On the matter of deforestation I was recently researching carbon fuels derived from wood, and found that the extent of deforestation for tar, charcoal and wood gas production is much under-recognised. In fact Finland's entire forest cover appears to be less than 300 years old, reflecting the stupendous deforestation resulting from tar manufacture prior to modern coal and oil use. Similar scales of deforestation occurred across Europe, although perhaps not to the efficiency of removal as occurred in Finland.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 21 Oct 2012 #permalink

So you're against Genetically Modified Organisms and Adapton to Climate Change now, Olap?

Just a few weeks ago you were all over this idea. Now, apparently, you're against it.

Poor old Putri. Always late with the news. Clive Hamilton excoriated the Liao paper back in April.

Well, it's from a philosophy department, Mike, but the deniers think it is a genuine plan by biologists. Despite that, I'd like to know why the deniers are against GMOs now.

Notice again how Olaus illustrates his sources for science: generally 100% from denial blogs or right wing media sources. His latest is from a site that should be called the 'nobrainszone'. Another contrarian blog run by another scientifically illiterate pundit with a libertatrian axe to grind.

Methinks Olaus spends too much of his time searching through the internet from climate change denial blogs, then proundly cutting-and-pasting their gibberish here.

Olaus: ever hear of the primary literature? Ever read any of the primary literature? Ever visit the Web of Science search engine and login there? Or are we consigned to your witless non-wisdom gleaned from scientifically illiterate blogs? I recall your fawning admiration of Jonas being partly based on the idea that he allegedly discussed the science. Really? How would you know if you don't read any of the primary literature? Primary in your view must mean WUTW, Bishop's Hill, Notrickszone, CA, Junk Science, Climate Depot Joanne Nova and other contrarian sites run by politically distorted scribes.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 22 Oct 2012 #permalink

Petri recycles old non-news. Yawn.

Meanwhile, Monckton's PR man is upset that The Gilbralter Chronicle won't publish his libellous letter:

http://www.chronicle.gi/headlines_details.php?id=26412

"You seem to have a very colonial attitude towards Gibraltarians.

Australians also, presumably.

By lord_sidcup (not verified) on 22 Oct 2012 #permalink

@Olaus Petri - October 17, 2012 :

"I think a paraphrase of the first comment in “Jonas thread” is in order: “Deltoid, the place were climate scare trolls are dead”. Only handful staggering zombies left (not right?) in this dungeon of conspiracies and hatred. - Olaus Petri

Projection much?

When it comes to conspiracy theories and hatred anyhow.

Climate change "scare" trolls & zombies? Really? (shakes head ruefully.) Sad.

"Can’t be fun being so completely out of fashion. Why not give the blogg a more suitable name? Desertoid perhaps?" - Olaus Petri

Meh, I like the name just as it is and check it fairly regularly tho' generally lurking or seeing if Tim Lambert has posted something new and interesting. Time is, sadly, often a problematic factor for my participation here.

"Could it be that people now understand that there isn’t a well funded right wing conspiracy working against climate science." - Olaus Petri

Really? Guess you never heard of the Koch brothers, the Murdoch media or the Heartland Institute then?

"..and that there is no one that wants to destroy mother earth? Take care!" - Olaus Petri

You don't have to believe in some hippy "Mother Earth" so much as just understand the reality and the implications it has for the future - not just for children and later generations but even for how things will develop over our own lifetimes.

Planet Earth will survive for aeons to come. Us humans and the creatures and plants around us, well, we might all be in for a very bad time and a situation that keeps getting worse not better.

@ lord_sidcup
I see that Lord Wacko is as batty as ever.

"Lord Monckton also denounced attempts to silence and discredit him pointing to “a lavishly funded campaign in this respect that cost at least a quarter of a million dollars.”

After obtaining up to two and a half million hits with a You Tube video of one of his most forceful denouncements of the more ‘sinister’ agenda of the environmental lobby, Lord Monckton said two dozen pages of gibberish under the tag – Monckton video – had been uploaded with search engines having been paid huge sums of money to advance them to the top of the rankings in order to bury his message."
http://www.chronicle.gi/headlines_details.php?id=26413

Thanks Bernard J. That info on tar or rather pitch tar and charcoal harvesting is most interesting. After all it was for sources such as those from Finland that the Royal Navy assaulted Copenhagen (the irony) to ensure the supply of essential naval materials (masts and rigging) when Napoleon Bonaparte instituted the Continental System of trade embargo aimed at Britain. There was also a 'scuffle' around Riga.

As I may have mentioned, I am very into maritime history, being ex RN - FAA) and have sources describing the naval policy and shipbuilding from Elizabethan times. There is some revealing narrative in some of these that cover the 17th Century (1600s for the OPs of the world) on the effect of temperature swings during that period which some sources include in the LIA.

The work of William Ruddiman adds perspective on this issue too, especially as this period contains the very dry and hot period leading up to the Great Fire of London and the plague that preceded it. Was that just an indication of the increased fluctuations of a system under stress.

Now engineers should know a thing or too about such phenomenon too - ever tuned a carburettor and engine timing?

I did spot your post at SkS and spotted the Tamino post on Rose late last night, I thought that he had not bothered to enter the fray on this one but his input is, as ever, most enlightening. So, I'll toddle over there now and catch up.

Potholer also has contributed one of his brilliant debunks.

BTW Dana at SkS is promising another follow up on the David Rose BS repeat later this week.

Here is an article about another interesting line of research:

Sweeping 'Grand Canyon' Discovered Beneath Antarctic Ice.

Now, as indicated in the article, this feature could be the route for rapid glacier movement and also inlet of warmer oceanic waters which would both speed up considerably the loss of Antarctic ice mass. Tamino had one Oh Shit moment recently, could this be another?

You can explore the contours of the planet, and much more, using this tool: GeoMapApp but it looks like some updating will be required before long.

Glad that you fancied the world saving ideas. :-)

A bone to feast on...

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 22 Oct 2012 #permalink

For those who would like to follow other Monckton Gibraltar manoeuvres raised by lord_sidcup and Mike H see here:

Search results on Monckton at Gib' Chronicle.

Monckton throws gauntlet at Gore, ‘debate or get out of Gib’ says environmental sceptic

Sheeesh!

Or what, suffer a Monckton Gish Gallop. Monckton is on such a high horse he has lost any perspective, probably the Rocking Horse effect.

Well, I'm not surprised that 'Chek' was 'disappeared' for describing the 'Her Majesty's Met Office' as 'second-rate shit', or words to that effect, but all I did was quote them and I got the blue-pencil treatment, too! I am not amused!

By David Duff (not verified) on 22 Oct 2012 #permalink

No, dai, YOU Are the second rate shit.

Then again, your delusion is deep, isn't it.

Neither can El Duffer keep track of which thread he's previously commented on. What a case, inept AND stupid.
I expect he can't reference his "quotes" as requested there either, hence the simultaneous self-assumed victimisation and bravado here.

I'm quite disturbed by the idea of Duffo's 'historical talks'.
If he (and there's no reason to think otherwise) has the same disdain for primary sources in preparing them as he displays for climate science, who the hell informs his little soirées and their inevitable departures from reality?
Stormfront, Kellog's Cornflakes and David Icke?
Actually, I woudn't be that surprised.

Ah, Chek, there you are, how nice to see you again. I meant to ask if you had seen any sun spots recently, only they're in short supply and we need all we can get otherwise we're going to freeze our wotsits off for the next 30 years. See, that 16 year levelling off might well be the precursor to something serious - and cold!

Remember - the new 'warming' is, er, freezing!

By David Duff (not verified) on 22 Oct 2012 #permalink

Dufferboy, the reason you make your nonsensical projections of the future is because you can't explain the past (including this year's record arctic melt which you - of course -idiotically ascribe to 'flatlining temperatures'). The past remember, includes up to 30 second ago. Which doesn't auger well for your understanding of history, given your weakness and preference for highly suspect sources.

Duff can't explain the past because he's not been told by Watts et al what to think of it yet.

For example, Watts doesn't do error bars. Hence Duffer doesn't have error bars.

On the contrary, Eli found him there on the floor. Picked the poor fellow up and sent him home to the Misses. She was cross.

By Eli Rabett (not verified) on 22 Oct 2012 #permalink

Here's one for the computer literate on Deltoid....

I'm trying to define in html an uppercase V with a dot over it. Does anyone know if there's a predefined entity that provides this symbol this, or if there's another way of obtaining it?

Don't forget to watch out for this one:

GreedyLyingBastards, World Premier 18-28 October 2012; Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, San Francisco, and Stanford University.

Here is a news bite for the climate change cult economist's.

Today the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its first inflation data after the introduction of the carbon tax.

The ABS found that over the past three months:

Gas prices rose by 14.2 per cent.

Electricity prices rose by 15.3 per cent – the biggest increase on record.

Geeeeez, whoooda thunk !!!!

"Gas prices rose by 14.2 per cent.

Electricity prices rose by 15.3 per cent "

Yet despite all this, no disaster in the Australian Economy.

I guess you didn't think THAT would happen, did you spots?

Yet despite all this, no disaster in the Australian Economy.

And no claim nor evidence is presented regarding how much the carbon price was responsible for the price rise - nor any evidence or analysis of changes in power usage and emissions levels, let alone any understanding of what the carbon price is supposed to do to gas and electricity prices.

But whodathunkallthat, given that it's Karen posting at Deltoid...

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 24 Oct 2012 #permalink

Monckton seems to be generating a lot of headlines - in Gibraltar:

http://www.chronicle.gi/index.php

Lord Monckton the renowned British politician, environmental sceptic and climate science expert – the IPCC selected him in that capacity for its assessment report for 2013

Look kow many inaccuracies have been packed into just 25 words. Its almost as though Monckton wrote that himself.

Nice to see they give Barry Bickmore space to have his say:

http://www.chronicle.gi/headlines_details.php?id=26453

Barry Bickmore, Associate Professor of Geological Sciences at Brigham Young University has issued a challenge to Lord Monckton over his remarks in Gibraltar. On his Blog Professor Bickmore states in a letter to Lord Monckton “I noticed a number of articles in The Gibraltar Chronicle about your most recent attempts to engage Al Gore in a debate about climate change, and I agree that you deserve an answer, although not necessarily from Gore.

In response, I would like to renew my challenge to debate you about climate change in an online, written format, in which we have time to check our opponent’s sources. I was never given a satisfactory answer as to why you declined the first time, but I am always willing to give you another chance.”

“Should you accept the challenge, I would be happy to host the debate on my blog, Climate Asylum (http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/ ), or on another site that we could mutually agree upon,” he says.

“I will certainly understand if you consider me too unimportant a figure to debate. After all, I’m sure that’s what Al Gore thinks of you. But before you decide, consider how you stated your challenge to Al Gore back in 2009. ‘I want you to face me in a debate about global warming, and if you don’t dare, I want you to remain silent about that subject forever, from now on’,” says Professor Bickmore.

By lord_sidcup (not verified) on 24 Oct 2012 #permalink

Go Barry!

And didn't brave Sir Monckton run away from a previous debate with Peter Hadfield (potholer54) too? Perhaps the Gib Chronicle should be made aware of Sir Monckton's previous brave retreats.

And didn’t brave Sir Monckton run away from a previous debate with Peter Hadfield (potholer54) too?

Aided and abetted by the gallant Anthony Watts, IIRC...

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 24 Oct 2012 #permalink

Bernard J, from your October 22, 2012:

On the matter of deforestation I was recently researching carbon fuels derived from wood, and found that the extent of deforestation for tar, charcoal and wood gas production is much under-recognised.

Interesting and I wonder if you have heard of the ancient forest that spans the Polish-Belarus border the Białowieża Forest.

I have just picked up on this from a book by Alan Weisman The World Without Us where is described a world that could have been Tolkien's Fangorn Wood, home of the Ents.

I recall the magic of revered old trees in my Cotswold stomping ground and getting into the branches, during my teens, of the Tortworth Chestnut. A recent visit saddened me to see it falling into decay and fenced off. The nearby Forest of Dean was a magical place with old Roman era iron and coal minings and many erratics such as those extending from the Buckstone just north of Staunton and the trail we took to take in the Near Hearkening Rock, the Far Hearkening Rock and the Suck Stone then on to the Nelsonic memorial The Kymin (in recognition of Nelson's services to woodland and of course England) and the Seven Sisters Rocks in the Valley of the Wye.

Those who may wonder where they have heard of a Lithuanian named Jagiello before may be familiar with Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels (Master and Commander etc) where in 'The Surgeon's Mate' a Lithuanian cavalry officer by that name is introduced.

Browsing ahead, as I oft do with newly picked up books I was saddened to read that the amount of plastic rubbish that is accumulating in the world and in particular causing havoc to wild life, and by extension us, has a very sinister and totally unnecessary element where plastic granules are used in cosmetics such as exfoliants. Such materials are just right in size to end up in foraminifera and other micro-organisms before working their way up, concentrating as the go, through the food chain. Is this one of the factors behind the strange beaching of many whale species which includes dolphins.

Ladies, we humans are supposed to have body hair and TBH I find a hairless female body rather unattractive except for those poor souls who suffer from alopecia who have no choice.

Also plastic granules have taken over from silicon based for surface treatments of materials, mostly metals.

I suspect that the skin fillers used by cosmetic products also contain such materials. This reminds me of the days of rusting car bodies and Plastic Padding with the fine dust created whilst finishing. Oh forgive me world for I knew not what I did.

Weisman writes about many other ways in which we are despoiling the planet and doing our best to exterminate most life.

I was aware previously of the accumulation of plastics rubbish in the environment and in the ocean with both the North Pacific Gyre and North Atlantic Gyre collecting garbage patches. The North Pacific Gyre gets a mention in my non-US edition of Oceanography (ISE): An Invitation to Marine Science by Tom Garrison.

Those who display little understanding of how the Earth's systems work would be well advised to find a copy of this very comprehensive and easy to understand work, or similar.

I recently came across some academic naysayers on the topic of these garbage patches but cannot turn them up right now. I'll try again later. They will probably turn out to be close 'cousins' of the likes of Pat Michaels & Co.

Lionel.

Your references to the Białowieża Forest and your own corner of the world speak viscerally to the forest-dweller within.

Although I grew up Down Under I was born and spent a few years as a young lad in the northern part of the Netherlands. The forests there aren't primal by any stretch of the imagination, but I was fortunate enough to live in an area where it seemed so to a very small boy, and I live in a dichotomous state where Australian sclerophyll vies with Fanghorn for my sylvan sympathies. If the day ever comes where I can take a sea voyage back to the Old Country one of my first destinations will be the forests - and the stone monuments of the region.

On the matter of plastics, one of the underappreciated problems is that as it erodes into ever finer particles and sooner or later to real nanoparticle size, it becomes very efficiently adsorbent. Plastics gather up all manner of other human-manufactured chemical nasties and introduce them into the food web, in which humans sit at the centre. Just another legacy for which future gnerations will not thank us.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 24 Oct 2012 #permalink

Sigh. There's putrid again citing more crap from a denier blog. Seems the guy cannot read the primary ltierature: only blogs that distort published work. McIntyre has too much tiome on his hands; well, at least when it comes to blogging. When it comes to doing what real scientists do (collecting his own data, analysing it, and submitting it to a reputable scientific journal) he hasn't got any time. But then this is hardly news. Watts, Nova, Mountford, Moncton, Morano, Milloy and the rest of the deniers don't do primary research either. They are consigned the the blogosphere. Somehow putrid seems to think that blog science is all there is, or else that is all that matters.

He's wrong, but he's lazy and he's not an academic. He needs deniers to simplify complex science for him to the most basal level. And one that reflects his own political beliefs. Hence why just about every link he has ever pasted up here comes from one of the denier sites I have described.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 24 Oct 2012 #permalink

"Plastics gather up all manner of other human-manufactured chemical nasties and introduce them into the food web, in which humans sit at the centre"

We may have to, for the sake of our health, become vegetarian in the future.

"IPCC check-kites Gergis?" The penny stock miner is digging his own hole again.

Here is a news bite for the climate change cult economist’s.

Somewhat cherry-picked, methinks (and whodathunkit?!). This article has some info about carbon taxes and energy price rises:

Sydney households were whacked with a horrific 17.9 per cent increase in the price of electricity in the latest September quarter. As bad as it is, it's not that much worse than the 15.1 per cent served the previous September quarter, and it's much less than the 21.7 per cent served up in the September quarter before that.

Melbourne households have endured a 13.6 per cent increase in electricity prices - well short of previous September quarter jumps of 19 and 21 per cent. Canberra families got 19 per cent this year - not too different from a previous 18.1 per cent.

Nationwide electricity and gas price rises have added 0.25 and 0.33 points to the consumer price index in the past two September quarters. The latest increase of 0.44 points isn't that much bigger. It's 0.11 points bigger than last year's increase and 0.19 points bigger than the one before that. The difference is a long way short of the 0.70 impact from the carbon tax forecast in the lead up to its introduction.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 24 Oct 2012 #permalink

Excellent. It's about time the liars and slanderers were compelled to explain themselves under oath.

I'd also hazard a guess the discovery phase will also allow Dr. Mann to peek under some rocks that some may wish hadn't been exposed to the light of day.

Heh. I see the delusional Watts and Horner are whistling in the dark and braying that discovery is going to help their side.
Morons never learn.

...and braying that discovery is going to help their side.

Looks like the same cognitive issue that allows them to claim that uncertainty in climate science means things will be better than (say) the median expectation, never worse.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 24 Oct 2012 #permalink

If the head of the IPCC made a report stating that the Heartland Institute were a Kiddie Porn hub, would the HI just accept the truth of that statement or would they sue for defamation (just like Lord Monkfish does ALL THE FRIGGING TIME, welll he **threatens** to sue, never does)? And if they sued, would they open up all their storage to the world so that we could find out if the allegations are true?

If these clowns don't have enough info to make their statement at the moment they MADE the statement, they can't as for discovery of Mann's letters to prove their case: they have admitted they HAVE NO CASE.

Ergo, defamation case proven.

More cognitive dissonance from Petri. Yawn.

By lord_sidcup (not verified) on 25 Oct 2012 #permalink

The court case is interesting. It reveals the deniers to be so intellectually barren that all they are really interested in is picking through private emails that they believe support their conspiracy theories.

Surely if Mann were so guilty of what they claim, they wouldn't need to do that. But deniers aren't interested in science, just attacking scientists for political purposes.

The case may not even make it to trial. I suspect the National Review may just offer him wads of money and retract the claims. Their only other option is to go to trial, lose, and then deniers can add the US legal system to their nutty little whitewash conspiracy.

Spot on, Wow.
But of course they're still pandering to their own delusion that somehow 'secret' papers will be found proving that Chairman Gore and his Politburo of Libruls are behind the whole scam in pusuit of Weld Gummint.
Clowns indeed.

And didn’t brave Sir Monckton run away from a previous debate with Peter Hadfield (potholer54) too? Perhaps the Gib Chronicle should be made aware of Sir Monckton’s previous brave retreats.

Christopher Monckton is too much of a coward to debate in a forum that relies on facts and evidence, and not his impressive speaking ability. A forum where his interlocutors demand inconvenient things like "sources".

"and not his impressive speaking ability"

Not really.

He has an impressive lack of shame and an impressively impervious ego.

But that only makes it easy for him to say what's necessary rather than true and for those who WISH to believe him, there's no need for any speaking ability.

He has no special ability there.

But that only makes it easy for him to say what’s necessary rather than true and for those who WISH to believe him, there’s no need for any speaking ability.

And that explains why he's so at home with the Republican Party in the US who have been almost completely taken over by the rabid "Tea Party" folks who are largely untethered from reality.

By Lotharsson (not verified) on 25 Oct 2012 #permalink

Climate Code Red (Dave Spratt) has a summary of a recent James Hansen debunking of Patrick Michaels. Click through to read Hansen's excellent presentation.

What do you think of this liar, Olap?

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/Letter_…

Right there, it says:

His contribution to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 – the correction of a table
inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the
Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise – earned him the status of Nobel Peace
Laureate. His Nobel prize pin, made of gold recovered from a physics experiment, was presented
to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York, USA.

So now that you have been shown the evidence, will you act with even a scintilla of integrity and admit your error, or will you continue to act as the complete lying asshole that we know all deniers are?

Now lets see if Watts is a lying sack of crap:

Nobel Committee: The organization won it. It’s not a personal prize to people belonging to an organization.

Complaint: As a result of this research, Dr Mann and his colleagues were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Dr Mann and his colleages ARE an organisation.

Dear Wow, was your emotions a rebuttal of this conclusion, or did I miss anything?:

"I contacted the The Norwegian Nobel Institute to find out if Mann was indeed a Nobel Laureate, winner, etc... My questions were:

1. Was Prof Michael Mann 'awarded' a Nobel Prize of any sort at any time? Is he a Nobel Laureate as implied elsewhere in his legal brief?

2. Did he receive a certificate "for contributing to" the IPCC Nobel Peace Prize? Is the photo of the certificate authentic? [see photo]

3. Is there a difference between stating you "were awarded" the Nobel Peace Prize as indicated by Mann in his legal brief and "contributing to" as shown in the attached photo of the certificate?

Geir Lundestad, Director, Professor, of The Norwegian Nobel Institute emailed me back with the following:

1) Michael Mann has never been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
2) He did not receive any personal certificate. He has taken the diploma awarded in 2007 to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (and to Al Gore) and made his own text underneath this authentic-looking diploma.
3) The text underneath the diploma is entirely his own. We issued only the diploma to the IPCC as such. No individuals on the IPCC side received anything in 2007.

Lundestad goes on to say that, "Unfortunately we often experience that members of organizations that have indeed been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize issue various forms of personal diplomas to indicate that they personally have received the Nobel Peace Prize. They have not.".

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 27 Oct 2012 #permalink

Geir Lundestad, Director, Professor, of The Norwegian Nobel Institute emailed me back with the following:

1) Michael Mann has never been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
2) He did not receive any personal certificate. He has taken the diploma awarded in 2007 to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (and to Al Gore) and made his own text underneath this authentic-looking diploma.
3) The text underneath the diploma is entirely his own. We issued only the diploma to the IPCC as such. No individuals on the IPCC side received anything in 2007.

Lundestad goes on to say that, "Unfortunately we often experience that members of organizations that have indeed been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize issue various forms of personal diplomas to indicate that they personally have received the Nobel Peace Prize. They have not."

hahaha, wotta jerk !!!

lol......prints his own certificate....LOL LOL LOL

1) Michael Mann has never said he was personally awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
2) He has not said he was awarded any personal certificate.
3) He has never claimed he recieved a gold pin as mark of the NPP personally from the president of the Nobel Committee.

But deniers will go "SQUIRRELS!!!" rather than admit they've got bugger all and a far worse set of liars among them.

Olap and Spots:

1) Was Monckton ever a member of the House of Lords?
2) Has Monckton ever found a cure for AIDS?
3) Was Monckton ever given a Nobel Peace Prize?
4) Was Monckton ever Mrs Thatcher's Science adviser?

Points 2+3 are clearly false, so Geir Lundestad should be ashamed if he indeed claimed Mann himself made the certificate.

Of course, since Olap and Spots like that lie, no matter who said it, they won't decry it.

Just look at their refusal to decry lord monckfish.

Oh these 'ignoratti', Karen-Spots-GSW-OP-Duff/Roddy etc, etc, are so tedious.

Marco, I'm sure it doesn't have to be Mann who did the addendum. Lots of spin on this one.

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 27 Oct 2012 #permalink

Still avoiding, Olap?
1) Was Monckton ever a member of the House of Lords?
2) Has Monckton ever found a cure for AIDS?
3) Was Monckton ever given a Nobel Peace Prize?
4) Was Monckton ever Mrs Thatcher’s Science adviser?

Hey, Olap agrees that this latest WTFUWT is just spin!

"Is he a Nobel Laureate as implied elsewhere in his legal brief?"

No, since that isn't implied in his brief.

"stating you “were awarded” the Nobel Peace Prize as indicated by Mann in his legal brief"

Never happened in his brief.

The Rabett has the skinny on "Mann and the the Nobel Prize" affair which is causing the idiots of the internet to wet their collective pants.

Marc Morano has the denier mobile in reverse gear and is bravely running away. Idiots Karen and Olaus, apparently expendable denier cannon fodder are yet to told of the full scale retreat.

MikeH,

You just beat me to that KO punch for OP&Co.

Read, learn and inwardly digest you Morano Morons that comprise the ignoratti.

I'm not sure, but I have a feeling you guys are upset about something. ;-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 27 Oct 2012 #permalink

Don't worry, Mann isn't the only one. Trenberth has a similar view on things:

"AWARDS:
New Zealand Research Fellowship1968-1972
NSF research grants1978-1988
NOAA research grants1986-
NASA research grants1989-
Fellow American Meteorological Society1985-
Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science1994-
Honorary Fellow Royal Society of New Zealand1995-
NCAR Best Publication Award Nominee1988, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1994
NCAR Outstanding Education Performance Award Nominee1996
Keuhnast annual lecture, Univ. Minnesota15 Oct. 1998
American Meteorological Society Editors Award (J. Climate)1989
Jule G. Charney award, American Meteorological Society2000
Highly Cited Researcher (top 25 Geosciences), ISI.May 2002
NCAR Distinguished Achievement AwardDec 2003
Symons Lecture, Royal Meteorological Society, London21 May 2004
Fellow American Geophysical UnionDec 2006
American Geophysical Union Editor's citation for excellence in reviewingMay 2007
Massachusetts Marine Educators award of Certificate of AppreciationMay 2007
Nobel Laureate (shared) for Nobel Peace Prize 2007 (as part of IPCC)Oct 2007
Yoshi Ogura Lecture, Univ. Illinois at Champaign-Urbana30 Apr 2008
Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Green Professionals15 Oct 2008"

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth-cv.html

Mind you fellas, I don't think this is a biggie. You do though. ;-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 27 Oct 2012 #permalink

Olaus,

You've been following the

"Breaking: Mann has filed suit against NRO (now the laughing begins)"
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/23/breaking-mann-has-filed-suit-agai…

thread on WUWT as well. Not only does MM go around touting around his own special brand of self importance, he even managed to insert this Hubris into the statement of complaint! "As a result of this research, Dr. Mann and his colleagues were awarded the Nobel Peace prize."

Def. Hubris means extreme pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities.

Indeed.

;)

Apologies Olaus,

Know you've made the point already. I just pleases me to dwell on it a little longer.
;)

"Mind you fellas, I don’t think this is a biggie. You do though

No, it was you that made all the running on this. And like Morano, now the running away.

"Dr. Mann and his colleagues "

That would be the IPCC, which gave Dr. Mann (and his other lead author colleagues) a certificate in recognition of their contribution to the Nobel awarded to the organisation. Hence why Dr. Mann stated the award was shared.

Mind you, even simple cognition has never been a denier attribute. Witness Olap's chagrin at Dr. Trenberth's long, long list of professional recognition over the years. I doubt if all the deniers clubbed together and threw theirs into a hat it would be even a tenth as long.

I just pleases me (sic)

Never was a truer word spoken.

Wow and cheek, I really don't see what I'm running away from? Trenberth's CV?

I'm sure its an honest mistake. Like I said, its not a biggie to me. If the Mann was half the Jeff in terms of self idolatry, I might have found it more troublesome. ;-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 27 Oct 2012 #permalink

" I really don’t see what I’m running away from?"

Your hysteria over a manufactoured cotroversy.

And I guess that you are afraid of someone with a CV because

a) It's latin
b) you haven't got one :-P

Hey, what about that Monckfish mate of Watts?

His insistence on

a) being a member of the House of Lords
b) inventing the cure for aids
c) being Mrs Thatcher's science adviser

is all a much higher class of self-idolatory that remains yet unexplored in your tiresome search for some relevance in your life :-)

Looking to shame the visiting trolls into displaying some consistency, Wow?
Consistency isn't a talking point they've been issued with, so they just don't know what to think.

Chek,

"That would be the IPCC"

Not in Mikey's world it's not. To quote the entire paragraph from Mann's complaint in full.

"2. Dr. Mann is a climate scientist whose research has focused on global warming. Along with other researchers, he was one of the first to document the steady rise in the steep increase in measured temperatures since the 1950s, As a result of this research, Dr. Mann and his colleagues were awarded the Nobel Peace prize.”

"Mann and his colleagues" (that'll be the et al). Mann et al, Nobel prize winners for inventing the hockey stick, at least in mikey's world thats how it looks. He is a kidder isn't he?

Anyway chek, remember you lot are the "baddies" in all this with your enviro skull caps of doom!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU

"Mann and his colleagues” (that’ll be the et al). Mann et al

See what you did there? Or did you think we're as stupid as you?

Mann has written on his facebook page:
Rumour has it someone wrote this:

“Its sort of funny how the rabble don’t seem too interested in the fact that many other IPCC co-authors (e.g. University of Montana scientists Steve Running) have found the IPCC’s official commendation to lead authors (“contributing to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize”) translated to having been co-awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize”

But like said, its not a big thing. Agreed Wow and Cheek? ;-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 27 Oct 2012 #permalink

Sorry for my adding came inbetween. Remeber, it can false! ;-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 27 Oct 2012 #permalink

Wow, you nailed it with this statement:

And I guess that you are afraid of someone with a CV because

a) It’s latin
b) you haven’t got one

Neither GSW or Olaus have any kind of pedigree in science. Their CVs, were they to tell us what they are, would be a joke. Its the politics of envy at work here, BIG time. Olaus just parrots anything his hero Jonas, said, hence the by now well worn out accusation of me exhibiting some kind of 'self-idolatry'. Olaus only cottoned onto this remark when Jonas said it. Olaus is a grade-A schmuck who is hardly original.

A colleague was correct when he said how much the deniers, withy their grade-school level science educations, loathe real bonafide professional scientists. Their disdain and contempt oozes from every blog where they parade their rank stupidity. The problem with blogs is that the deniers think they are making a big splash into the scientific arena. Who in the field of climate science or ANY science has ever heard of GSW or Olaus or Jonas or Karen and their acolytes? But on blogs they huff and puff and smear scientists with some misguided impression that the world is listening to them and more importantly taking their piffle seriously.

Olaus, I know your heart beat increases every time I mention Jonas, but can't you even think for yourself for once? As I said, you simply parrot the inane remarks of other deniers here.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 27 Oct 2012 #permalink

Agreed, Olap, like everything you've "brought to our attention" today, there's fuck all in it.

Well done for keeping up the zero-content of your posts, Olap :-D

Hey, Git, what about "Lord" Monkfish?

What do you say about his assinine claims?

a) being a member of the House of Lords
b) inventing the cure for aids
c) being Mrs Thatcher’s science adviser

Seeing as how you deniers are so hot on all this false flag waving.

Or is that only for the fake outrage, not the real thing, huh :-)

Hello Jeff! :-) Glad you could join us.

Keeping in mind all the evil righ wing Elders you have found and slaughtered in your head Jeff, me think you deserve a post modern award too. ;-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 27 Oct 2012 #permalink

Fake screptics, fake outrage, fake intellects and fake language. Post modern award(?) via a brainless post modern clown here, but way less funny.

What's the problem, Olap? Can't operate a printer :-)

Get a grown up to help :D

Wow, please let go of Jeff's leg! Chek might get angry with you.

Post modern awards seems rather spot on don't you think. ;-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 27 Oct 2012 #permalink

Oh you are such a wag. Oh, no, wanker, sorry, the spellchecker on the browser redid it, Olap :-)

Good doggie. Beg for your master! :-D

Why is it you can't take some harmless news from a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate of 2012? ;-)

All this anger, hate and frustration...

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 27 Oct 2012 #permalink

'sup Olap dog?

Sniffed Watts' crotch today? :-P

Hey, Olap, why all the frustration? You don't seem to be handling the acceptance of your assertion that you've said nothing important!!! :-D

"All this anger, hate and frustration"
And lying. Don't forget Great Stupid Wanker's addition (exposed above) to the little trilogy you're engaging in.

Fellas, I come in Peace. ;-)

No need to use profanities. That's Jeff Bonaparte's department.
.

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 27 Oct 2012 #permalink

Ah, the little Shitzu is back!

With yet more empty words :-)

Hey, if you came in peace why did you make all those accusations? ;-(

Maybe you need to buy a dictionary! :-D

No respect whatsoever for a Nobel Price Laureate.

:-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 27 Oct 2012 #permalink

Yes, we know you don't have respect for people who are clearly better than you :-D

However, they do not feel the lack of your approbation, so rest easy, Olap dog ;-)

GSW repeated from his [fill in the blank with whatever suits]:

“2. Dr. Mann is a climate scientist whose research has focused on global warming. Along with other researchers, he was one of the first to document the steady rise in the steep increase in measured temperatures since the 1950s, As a result of this research, Dr. Mann and his colleagues were awarded the Nobel Peace prize.”

Now go do some research into the history of climate change research and discover why that baloney is just that BALONEY! It was obviously created by somebody either totally ignorant or deliberately using ambiguous language.

What a joke you ignoratti are!

I repeated it from [...Mann's statement of complaint...]

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/michael-mann-complaint.pdf

Although there where some words missing from the earlier transcript. So,as an errata with the corrected paragraph in full,

“2. Dr. Mann is a climate scientist whose research has focused on global warming. Along with other researchers, he was one of the first to document the steady rise *in surface temperature during the 20th century and* the steep increase in measured temperatures since the 1950s, As a result of this research, Dr. Mann and his colleagues were awarded the Nobel Peace prize.”

" It was obviously created by somebody either totally ignorant or deliberately using ambiguous language."

That would be Mann's legal team. Mann must of OK'd it though? As you say, its BALONEY.
;)

GSW, If we didn't know better, one could get the impression that sir Cheek and Wow are angry, hateful and intolerant men. ;-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 28 Oct 2012 #permalink

GSW: "Although there where some words missing"

But then that's how you people operate, always have operated and always will.

Oalus,

Indeed, amongst their other failings. Do you think they have realised that they are the "Baddies" in this yet? Defending the indefensible and pleasuring themselves with each new tale of impending doom (No matter how dubious or overblown it may be).

Again,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
;)

Yeh, GSW, there are baddies alright: those who f**** science to promote short-term political agendas. Those who don't seem to give a damn that they are pushing our life-support systems towards a precipice, and that the consequences for humanity will be dire. Those are the real bad guys. The ones you in your profound ignorance support.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 28 Oct 2012 #permalink

Why weren't the deniers more skeptical of Monckton's claims to be a member or parliament and Nobel Prize winner? Where was their skepticism then?

A humiliating backdown from Monaro. The deniers' entire case is built on lying and denying reality. It's all they know how to do.

Olaus, two points: first of all, why oh why cannot your comment on the primary literature? Too much for your simple brain? You and GSW appear to spend a lot of your time in anti-environmental blogs. Get a life, guys....

Second point: you really appear to hate the fact that I am a bonafide scientist (and one of the large majority) who agree that the evidence that humans are forcing climate is beyond dispute. Hence your loathing of scientists. Moreover, when this salient little factoid is thrown at you, you are left with nothing more than feeble attempts at smears. I recall Jonas or one of his slavish admirers (you in all probability) vehemently attacking me and claiming that I am not a scientist. So I simply reply showing that I am in fact, a qualified scientist, and the response is immediate: "Look! He's waving his CV in our faces! He is full of self-idolatry!".

If this is the best you can do to smear me, then it shows how desperate you are. I have repeatedly asked you to support your wafer-thin arguments with the primary literature, and you consistently avoid the question, instead producing grade-school level poetry and quips that you think are witty. GSW at least tried (feebly I will admit) to discuss science, although it was clear that his views were also not gleaned from the primary literature but from blogs (his 'opinions' on the pandemic amphibian decline and on polar bear demographics were proof-positive of that. Not a peer-reviewed study in sight. When I debunked his nonsense with studies by experts in the field, out came the knives and the vacuous smears and quips).

You deniers are lucky in one thing though: on the internet you really aren't accountable for all of the gibberish that you write. You are anonymous and posts are quickly forgotten. In the scientific arena, mud sticks. If you clowns were to go to a conference and to present a lecture on any field based on the state of your knowledge (or lack thereof) you'd be laughed out of the venue or else publicly humiliated. If you wrote an article and submitted it to a peer-reviewed journal (now that's a scary thought!) then your ignorance would also be exposed, though to a smaller audience, because the study would inevitably be bounced after review from 2-3 experts and they alone would know the content of your drivel. But on blogs you can hide your stupidity behind anonymity and, again, blog posts are quickly forgotten. This is why your hero, Jonas (if anyone clings to another's leg doggy fashion, it was you on HIS leg), consistently (and predictably) refused to answer my challenges with respect to him writing a manuscript or, better still, submitting a request to speak at a conference or workshop. He knew damn well that, in the tiny chance were he to be allocated a slot, then his cover would be blown and the numerous flaws in his 'wisdom' would be exposed to a large audience. End of story, Olaus.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 28 Oct 2012 #permalink

"Why weren’t the deniers more skeptical of Monckton’s claims to be a member or parliament and Nobel Prize winner?"

Monckfish told them lies they wanted to hear.

Whereas Mann is telling them the truth they don't want to know about.

Simple, really.

Just like the deniers.

GWS.

That would be Mann’s legal team. Mann must of OK’d it though? As you say, its BALONEY.

Sans vapid smiley use.

By omitting a salient phrase you created a statement which changed the sense of the original - what you did was BALONEY

What you, and others, are working this into is also BALONEY.

What's up, running out of SPAM?

Jeff, thanks for all the attention. I must be a very important person in your life, perhaps only second to yourself. ;-)

And thanks for mentioning your CV. I had almost forgotten all about it.

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 28 Oct 2012 #permalink

Hey, we're only here to help you, Olap :-) Why all the hate and tantrums :-)

Shock! Horror! Our pontificating self-righteous moron is back! Claiming, amongst other things that I am not capable of reading, let alone interpreting the primary scientific literature! This is a real howler, coming from a guy that's not a scientist and has never published a single scientific paper in his miserable life! ....or who has never attended a scientific conference! And he's telling everybody here that he knows what he is talking about, that he's up on the science, and that thousands of climate scientists with many more thousands of papers are wrong!

So again, I reply that I read scientific papers every day as part of my research AS REAL , BONAFIDE SCIENTIST...otherwise I would never be able to publish in the peer-reviewed literature. Let me rub it tin, Jonas: I have 15 peer-reviewed papers this year. Just got one accepted in PLoS Biology (Impact Factor 12). Another in Annual review of Entomology (Impact Factor 12 as well). I now have 125 papers published in peer-reviewed journals on the Web of Science. What's you tally again? Let's see...ummm....

000000000000000000.000000000000000000000

Correct? So that makes you able to interpret the 'primary literature' does it? So now who's making things up?

Case closed. Expect the usual smears about me waving my CV but I don't give a damn. At least I have a CV to waive. Jonas, Olaus, GSW and their hoard don't. That's what really pisses them off.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 28 Oct 2012 #permalink

Argh! Dropped a htm char.

This 'ignorattitcollective' remind me of this article containing a picture which is a dead ringer for who could be the icon for their cause clue; YDQYGRKNNEW, hint four off, and there are a number of jokes around which could well apply to these ignoratti too.

Yes Jeff, you have a CV in counting bugs, but what's got to do with real climate science? You can't even come up with relevent refs, when asked to. WUWT?

Inventing stuff is your forte though, but that's not something that is typical for biologists, but for unscientific activists. ;-)

And dear, dear Jeff, I know you are a master of projections, but even you must confess that the angry one is YOU, and your minions, not me, Jonas or GSW.

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 28 Oct 2012 #permalink

Olapdog, one doesn't need a psychologist to recognise that the person forever mentioning a subject is the one obsessed by it.

Hence your laughable projection which - by definition - you project onto others.We could count up how many times you mention "anger", "hate"and the like, but frankly you're a boring, emoting twat and not even worth the miniscule effort involved.

Re Jeff Harvey.

I have 15 peer-reviewed papers this year. Just got one accepted in PLoS Biology (Impact Factor 12). Another in Annual review of Entomology (Impact Factor 12 as well). I now have 125 papers published in peer-reviewed journals on the Web of Science.

Now OP and the other ignoratti,

that prompted me to find out more, and it is comparatively easy to find out at least some of what has comprised Jeff's life times work, for although I do not have any peer reviewed papers to my name I could understand much of what they contain and am willing to study further where my understanding is lacking. My motivation comes from a long standing urge, since consciously about six years old, to find out what makes things tick, all things. This has stood me well over time where I have had to engage in scientific aspects of engineering however this should not hide my long standing interest in what is now the wide compass of Earth Systems Science.

Not currently being within academia access to papers is oft-times difficult but enough material can be found and studied so that a robust construct of reality can be achieved.

I am currently studying the works of William Ruddiman which involves consulting many other sources I have here from Dawkins through E O Wilson (yes I know where these two disagree) to Feynman, amongst others, but also taking in histories of early cultures. Such is the nature of climate science, signals are coming from all quarters of life and from the environment in which it exists.

Are you people aware of just how complex and still little understood most of the web of life is. It seems that you have just no idea of how we have decimated this web of life and rearranged the waters, rocks and soil on which, and under which, it lives. Decimated like no other evolved organism.

I shudder to think how many unknown species, of unrealised importance, have been driven to extinction by our activities. There is without doubt another mass extinction under-way caused by US and which is one of the reasons why we are now considered to be in the Anthropocene Epoch. I write Epoch advisedly for our gross effects may be so severe as to warrant a more major division of geological time (Period, Era or even Eon) for the Earth will be a very different place when we are done, that is done what we are doing and done - gone extinct. But of course there will be no one around to worry about what type of geological time division should be considered.

It seems to me that you are so ignorant that you cannot appreciate how ignorant you are and that is what needs to be addressed before anybody here is going to take you seriously.

OP

Yes Jeff, you have a CV in counting bugs, but what’s got to do with real climate science?

What's up OP, you don't have the education and intelligence to go find out how such work can inform on climate science, is that it?

Here, I'll give you a starter:

consider what the changing behaviour, and also of their susceptibility to pathogens, of small creatures can tell us about increased, or decreased, warming and precipitation.

Pathogens BTW are not Afghan fighters from the hills.

Up to you to study OP, if you can.

Whilst the ignoratti continue with their bilge the bilges of New York are under threat.

Sandy can be followed from Jeff Master's informative site.

Something, with slight edits, that I posted at CP this week:

I wonder how many New Yorkers realise just how vulnerable their real estate is. Those faint of heart should not read Chapter 3 'The City Without Us' of Alan Weisman's 'The World Without Us', which title does the book a disservice for it hides the fact that this book contains many lines of argument across large time, geographic and human developmental compasses.

Chapter 3 describes how vulnerable to flooding Manhatten is by virtue of its geology and man altered geography where many pre-civic streams are now buried underground along similar routes to those used for service tunnels and subways.

The ever encroaching water table is only kept at bay by teams of engineers ensuring that underground waterways get cleared of rubbish such as plastic bags (plastic's rubbish being a recurrent them later in the book) and all manner of other things carelessly disposed of by New York's denizens.

Other engineering teams ensure that the collection of 753 pumps keep pace with the influx of water from flooding underground streams, heavy overhead rainfall and storm surges alike. New Yorkers should hope that any back-up generators there are then are more robust than those at the Fukushima, and other, nuclear plant in the likely event of power failure. The fact that much refuse washed into sewers and drains by a heavy deluge can block water courses and throttle pumps, even though fitted with filters (which can get blocked) are another cause for concern.

Those who has been to sea as crew of a warship know only too well how important it is to keep loose articles to a minimum less the hull be breached and auxiliary pumping necessary, a task which can involve divers braving all manner of hazards to unblock filters if clogged.

One person who has spent many years mapping Manhattan's soft under-belly is Eric W. Sanderson, cited in Weisman's book.

Oh how vulnerable, what we think of as, civilisation is. And the rough ride is only beginning.

You know what, Oh Lap dog's master, we haven't forgotten your running away from the denialosphere's abortive groupwank over some of Mann's credentials and the Nobel prize,

Olaus: "And thanks for mentioning your CV. I had almost forgotten all about it."

Too Many words?

Jonas you're back!
;)

Back to your own thread Jonarse. The comparison to a stuck record may be lost on your young acolytes, but is still very apt.

chek,

Come off it chek, he's only telling it how it is, the truth, it's not his fault you can't handle it. (The Baddies never can) another clue for you.
;)

How what is?

How a piece of fiction is?

That's because you intrude where you have been told not to enter.

Why do you disregard private property? Are you some sort of communist?

"he’s only telling it how it is, the truth, it’s not his fault you can’t handle it".

No he's repeating ad nauseam what he believes and what you like to hear, which is tedious and oh-so-predictable and a disruption for the other visitors to this blog, which is why he was confined to his own thread in the first place.

Of course he's free to do so to his little libertarian heart's content. But not here.

The gnomes (Cheek and Wow) that never hate try to retaliate with foul language (from the back of their fetus positions)! What a surprise! :-)

All these Elders of something to fight down Deltoid-style.
;-)

By Olaus Petri (not verified) on 28 Oct 2012 #permalink

Jesus Christ Olap, you just don't get it do you?

Jonarse has nothing new to say. Nothing. Just as you couldn't objectively 'prove' your existence to him, so nobody will ever impress on him the consilience of multiple lines of evidence for AGW.

He's his own one-riff tribute band, endlessly knocking out his one riff year after year and you swedish suckers keep buying the tickets and the tea shirts and fellating him when required.
But not here. Enough is enough.

So you don't know what your Lord and MASSter was talking about either, Olap?

Well, he did sort of throw a slew of different made up things out there, I guess you're not allowed to question Him, are you :-)

No, Jonarse defended himself against accusations never made, supported things that made no sense and just keeps hanging round ignoring PRIVATE PROPERTY like the true criminal he is.

Luckily this blog DOES allow immediate binning of people for abusing the hosts' hoslitality.

Totally average knowing you, Jonarse :-D

"Scienceblogs is not the host’s ‘private property’. "

This blog is, though, Jonarse.

I guess private property of others are nothing to you, are they, huh :-)

If your trespass on others property is, in your opinion, For The Greater Good (tm), then you will just barge right in, won't you, just like Stalin's Secret Police, insisting on barging in to private homes to "protect the state" :-D

chek, chek, don't be like that, think of it as a kind of therapy. You can't hide away in your own little world for ever, you'll end up like Jeff Bonaparte. Substituting things you "imagine" in preference to the world as it actually is.

I know you're not the brightest of specimens, but that really doesn't matter(for you anyway), as long as you can face up to reality. We'll take it a day at a time OK? We'll all help you thru.
;)

PS. "He’s his own one-riff tribute band, endlessly knocking out his one riff year after year and you swedish suckers keep buying the tickets"

At a guess, I'd say you may be getting Jonas muddled up with "Bjorn Again" the Abba tribute band from Australia?

"sorry to interupt (sic) your latest hate and intolerance"

Still being driven by those emoting fixations, eh Olap? Perhaps you'll grow out of them. And no, I don't follow your trash blogs with their everday-a-new-sensation agenda.

Olaus,

Thanks for the link Olaus. There's an update to the Mann/NRO story as well, as a result the updated work. I particularly laughed at the "Popcorn futures* continue their unprecedented climb" graph.
')

"Thanks for the link "

Translation: Now we can all go groupjerk off imagining that one location in Sweden equals global, until reality breaks in yet again just like with every other new sensation Watts serves up to his undiscriminating' news' consumers..

Yet more bollocks from the drive-by's?

Maybe this one will go a little longer before they find themselves looking at jail time if they persue it than the last pathetic attempt at "NobelGate!"... :-P

I seriously doubt that you read, have read or even are capable of reading any ‘primary literature’ dealing with real (quantitative) science (not armwaiving references to the words of others) dealing with any of the core questions. And when asked about any of those you never were able to resond intelligibly. Most likely, you didn’t even understand what was discussed....

You are (completely, it seems) unable to read real science, to check facts and evaluate claims and what the purport to be based on.

Curious.

Way back in the beginning I asked you> to tell us which exactly papers you had read in order to arrive at your claim that scientists had not determined the confidence intervals for attribution of human contribution to global warming.

Nothing was ever given by way of response.

And without that response, you cannot demonstrate how it is that you reach the 'understanding' that you promote.

I suggest that the reason for this is that you either:

1) have not read the background material

2) that you have but that you don't want to list it because doing so will make you vulnerable to correction from the papers within the literature that you did read, or

3) you don't understand what is contained within the primary literature.

To prove me wrong you only have to supply the list of papers you read in order to make your claim that the attribution was "made up".

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 28 Oct 2012 #permalink

Thanks for the support, Lionel, Check, Wow et al. Much appreciated. Its just a shame that the detritus that frequents denier blogs can't stay there. For some reason they think that they can make some kind of inroad onto a serous science site like Deltoid.

The real point is this: Deltoid is the only weblog I respond to these days. I have not time for WUWT, Bishop's Hill CA or Climate Depot - these denier blogs can't help but wear their contempt for science on their sleeves. The fact that they defend the wretched activities of the Heritage Foundation, and seem content to smear scientists (whilst giving platforms to Monckton and his ilk) should be proof positive of their intentions. I just wish the idiots brigade would stay locked into their own denial worlds. But for some strange reason they bring their brand of insidious ignorance beyond their own borders and over to here. They aren't particularly smart or witty, even though they think they are.

Friends and colleagues think I am unwise at best and stupid at worst to engage a bunch of academic non-entities like Jonas, GSW and Olaus on Deltoid. They certainly have a point. By engaging them, we are actually giving the impression that what they say matters. It does not, in any way, shape or form. That Jonas can airbrush out joint statements of every National Academy of Science on Earth with the most pithy of explanations - that their positions may not have been reached democratically - should tell us all how wafer-thin and desperate the position of the climate change denial community is. And the fact remains that, whatever Jonas, Olaus, GSW, Karen et al. try to suggest, none of them have ever made an impact in any scientific endeavor. They are beyond the academic fringe. Bottom feeders in the anoxic zone. But they - or at least Jonas - try to give the impression of being some kind of scientific and intellectual heavyweight, on the basis of zero credentials. Frankly, he can 'laugh' at me all he likes. As a complete non-entity, his laughter occurs in a vacuum. I'd tend to take notice if he was a tenured Professor somewhere and in my field of research, but he's a nobody in no man's land. I suppose that the best offense he's got is to keep shouting at me about making up facts and to make disparaging remarks about my CV, but that's all he's got. Nobody in the world of science who matters has ever heard of the guy. He's restricted to his own little fan club on a few web sites. Some pedigree.

I do not recall Jonas or indeed any of the deniers actually discussing any of the many peer-reviewed studies that they have been presented with here. Bernard submitted a long list of them about a year ago, and I and others have variously pasted others up here. Jonas, in classical Jonas style, usually waves them away with his hand as being insignificant, or makes up some other excuse to downplay them.

One final point though: it is fun speaking as an insider in the world of science watch rank outsiders pounding the walls with their fists in an attempt to suggest that education and qualifications don't matter. See how esteemed scientists like Mann, Trenberth, Jones, Hansen and others are routinely attacked by people here with no letters after their names. It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 28 Oct 2012 #permalink

My son is currently bunkered down in Philadelphia so I am following Hurricane Sandy with more than usual interest.

It seems that nature has a sense of humour - as the Rabbett has noted

For those who do not know, the South Shore of Long Island is a long strip of low barrier islands. The most valuable land is closest to the shore and the lowest and most subject to flooding, including, of course, the Hamptons. As Eli often points out, a flood tide hitting that area would cause so much monetary damage that it would pay for just about any action the US takes to limit climate change.

Now all we need is rich people who are rational.

Nah, like the Lloyds Names, they'd just demand a huge payout to pay for the "disaster".

Anyway, since high tides have occurred before, they have to PROVE that this one was caused by the storm and that without the storm, there would have been no higher than normal tide!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

And have they checked out whether subsidence is the cause of any problem? After all, if the ground sinks under your house, your house WILL be highly affected by flooding, so maybe the entire problem is merely a problem of subsidence.

Or are these people pretending that subsidence doesn't happen?

Are the rich rational - well yes in their own perverse way. Just have pity on the rest of us.

Hat tip to Andy Revkin who has made a career of straddling a barbed wire fence.

MikeH

Some perverse quotes from Revkin:

Here’s a thought from Patrick J. Michaels, the climatologist best known for his work for the libertarian Cato Institute...

If Patrick J Michaels was ever a climate scientist, which I doubt, he is no longer for he is now engaged in advocacy and not science, and has been since the attacks, at least on Ben Santer in the 1990s. Revkin is trying very hard not to see that.

But there remains far too much natural variability in the frequency and potency of rare and powerful storms — on time scales from decades to centuries – to go beyond pointing to this event being consistent with what’s projected on a human-heated planet.

Not this tired old fudge and obfuscation. The distorted jet stream and warmer East Coast waters are just what's expected in an overheating planet.

The climate system is unstable and systems in this state flip around much. And Bill Ruddiman's work sheds light on how humans pre-IR altered climate, so such instability can have a long history on top of any natural variability of which all those connected with Earth orbit are at the cooler end.

Are the deniers now denying that AGW could have an effect on hurricanes?

Why the 100% certainty all-of-a-sudden?

Not very scientific (then again, despite crowing about the lack of error bars on the GISS temperature graps (they are there but in green), they never put error bars on their work).

Andy Revkin seems hellbent on demonstrating that he consciously wants to be a prat.

As a corollary to the butterfly effect it's quite plausible to conclude that this confluence of storms is very much a result of human interference with the climate. Such a conclusion is much easier when one is considering qualitative anomalies as well as or instead of quantitative anomalies.

On the matter of the government response to the storm I suspect that there will be a few noises made about human-caused climate change, but no substantive action. The reason - it's the mug public that will pay for the damage through government funds and insurance, so no signal will reach the rich, who have disproportionate influence on policy. Together with the current level of denialism that's still being maintained, and the appeal to the myth of the American Dream, the cannon fodder will be content to maintain the status quo.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 29 Oct 2012 #permalink

'I can comment on is this prediction by Dr. Hansen:[who said] “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water.” As you can clearly see in the Google Earth images, the West Side Highway remains dry and open. Sea level (at which the Hudson River at that point becomes) is not encroaching on the highway' Anthony Watts

West Side Highway flooded 29 Oct 2012

Yes, this will be (yet another) challenging period for the passionate adherents of the type 2 error; but I'm sure they can rely on their invincible ignorance to sustain them through troubled times...

Speaking of the invincibly ignorant: so, Mitt, still sneering about 'saving people from rising seas'?

Well we know Watts is a jerk and clearly has little idea of how vulnerable to flooding Manhattan is. See my October 28, 2012 post here, and also mark this from Climate Denial Crock of the Week. Watch the Con Edison plant go out, and many of the surrounding lights. Then watch the 'Bill Maher Warns Voters: If you Elect Romney...' clip it may make you feel a little better. Not much because Romney winning is just too frightening a thought. We'll see the likes of Watts, Bastardi and co. lionised and feted as heroes and true visionaries.

I wonder how Rykers is getting on, or will get on. Perhaps Watts should take a 'field trip' or 'long vacation' there to report back.

I see that Climate Crocks has a resident twit whom Greenfyer has well marked.

I note that at Climate Progress is news that James inhofe has been awarded the 'Rubber Dodo' award. I include my comment below:

As the Latin Didus ineptus is now vacant perhaps it could be applied to those such as Inhofe, Sensenbrenner, Rohrabacher &co. who have misapplied so much hard sought knowledge about this life support system called planet Earth.

And I hope that the ‘Rubber Dodo’ is made of a hard rubber (or better still something that really does biodegrade) so that when he is, and other recipients are, beaten over the head with it it actually hurts, just a bit.

Perhaps they could be made to wear it using one of those criminal restraint electronic tags.

Well ,the west side highway is now under about a meter of water (as Hansen predicted)....a bit earlier than predicted as well.

"And I hope that the ‘Rubber Dodo’ is made of a hard rubber "

For all the good it will do, he might as well shove it...

Anthony Watts, being the coward that he unfailingly and unstintingly is, has a tried and trusted method of getting others to speak that which he'd rather not say himself because the record would be held against his overfed, smug, Republican butt at some notional point in the future.

In this case he gets hapless anonymous dupe, the gentleman massuer (yes really, with all the climate science expertise that such entails) Willis Eschenbach to deny that there ever was a hurricane Sandy that hit New York and its environs in October 2012.

The WUWT by Willis The Dupe tells us that: Sandy comprised "winds over 50 knots, and that’s a long ways from the 72 knots that marks a hurricane.".
On the other hand, when you're a State Governor and actually responsible for protecting peoples lives: As released by the Office of the Governor GOVERNOR CUOMO ANNOUNCES RFK BRIDGE TO CLOSE NOW AS A RESULT OF 100 MPH WIND GUSTS Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced at 7:30PM this evening the closing of the RFK Bridge as a result of 100 MPH wind gusts.
things are taken a ;ittle bit more seriously than in la-la-denierland and the eminently disregardable opinions of the fat-bottomed Watts' and his trusty male massuese.

"I didn't shoot you with a rifle, I shot you with a handgun!".

I guess the deniers will deny there's any catastrophe, then, like they did for all those other weather events Totally Not Proven Due To AGW (tm)...

So, are still going to go with climate change not being real, fellow republicans?

Meghan McCain, daughter of the former GOP Presidential candidate, tweets.

We'll see. Having been the party of The Stupid - and not just on climate - for at least the duration of the 21st Century, returning to reality would be quite a wrench, and would involve shedding the toxic influence of the Tea Baggers and outright fruitcakes like Inhofe. Frankly I think that in that struggle The Stupid is more likely to prevail...

I notice the Acolytes of Stupid are rather subdued - what's the matter, boys, finally realised just how much damage a fatal mix of ignorance, hubris and Type 2 errors can cause?

The future will be worse, you know, and all the while you'll be able to know that in a very real sense you caused it...

Speaking of cowards, Delingpole has pulled out of the Corby by-election where he was standing as an 'anti-wind' candidate. He claims victory in his joust with the wind turbines based on an unauthorised announcement by a junior government minister, but the real reason for his wthdrawal is that a poll of 1500 Corby voters only found 2 who were planning to vote for him.

By lord_sidcup (not verified) on 31 Oct 2012 #permalink

Delingpole ranks with Monckton when it comes to popularity in elections, then.

Just attempting to close a tag.

Testing - tag closed?

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 31 Oct 2012 #permalink

Ah, sorry folks, that might have been me.

Yeah, I tried a 'close italics' earlier, too!

Anyway; SKS on AGW and Hurricane Sandy.

We're still on an extraordinarily long dolt-free run. Could it be the weather? ;-)

Haven't we been plagued by 'Dale' before here? He's the kind of character I find so irritating I got myself a comments policy speeding ticket at SkS, but I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking what I said about him and his ilk...

Dale?

The guy's a Codling sycophant with a long history of concern trolling elsewhere, but with absolutely no sincerity or intent to accept science.

I and several others at SkS challenged him a few weeks ago, whilst others seemed to sympathise with Dale, thinking that he had been misread, but a troll can't keep his true colours hidden for too long. He petrifies in the bright light of fact - he's done so here in the past, and he's freezing now on SkS - so he'll retreat to Codling's soon and declare his 'victory'.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 01 Nov 2012 #permalink