Ian Plimer's performance in his debate with Monbiot has to be seen to be believed. Rather than admit to making any error at all, Plimer ducks, weaves, obfuscates, recites his favourite catch phrase, tries to change the subject and fabricates some more. When confronted with the fact that the USGS says (backed with scientific papers) that human activities emit 130 times as much CO2 as volcanoes, Plimer claims that the USGS doesn't count underwater volcanoes. When told that the USGS specifically said that they do count undersea volcanoes, Plimer invented a story about how the nature of the rocks under the ocean proves that there must be unobserved emissions. Needless to say, this is not acceptable conduct for a scientist.
The University of Adelaide's code of practice on research misconduct states:
Misrepresentation : A researcher or reviewer shall not with intent to deceive, or in reckless disregard for the truth:
(a) state or present a material or significant falsehood;
(b) omit a fact so that what is stated or presented as a whole states or presents a material or significant falsehood.
Elsewhere, James Randerson interviewed Plimer and
found him to be one of the most difficult and evasive interviewees I have spoken to in my career, frequently veering off on tangents rather than answering the question I had put.
Randerson has an another example of Plimer refusing to admit to even the most blatant error:
Elsewhere in the book, Plimer appears to have conflated a US temperature record and the global average temperature. On page 99 he writes "Nasa now states that [...] the warmest year was 1934." The Nasa dataset he is referring to covers the US only but he seems to be referring to the world average.
Again, Plimer does not appear to accept that the world is warming. But in fact, the hottest year on record is 1998 and eight of the 10 hottest years ever recorded have occurred this century.
When I put the mistake to him he responded: "The 1930s in North America and probably the rest of the world were a hot period of time." But what about increased global average temperature since then? "That has been disputed by many of my colleagues who I have a great regard for because they've been the people involved in putting measurements together ... I do dispute that as do many other people who are far more qualified in atmospheric sciences than I."
Bob Burton tracks down the story of how the AAP reported Plimer's speech before it happened. As you might have guessed, the journalist did a cut and paste from a press release put out by a PR firm.
On Saturday the Sydney Morning Herald printed a report from Copenhagen by Ian Plimer on a news page. My letter to them:
Please cancel my subscription to the SMH.
The SMH simply does not care about the accuracy of what it publishes. You obviously did not bother to check whether there was any basis to Ian Plimer's dishonest smears of climate scientist, allowing him to falsely accuse them of fraud and "mafia-type thuggery".
I don't know why you think your business model should involve deceiving your readers, but I'm not buying it or your paper any more.
- Log in to post comments
What does it take to get the university to take action? Is there a complaints process?
I refer the honourable gentleman to a reply I gave earlier.
Over to you UoA.
"Needless to say, this is not acceptable conduct for a scientist."
It's acceptable and admirable for a sleazy lawyer, though, which is what global warming deniers remind me of.
Does Plimer have tenure? If he does, it is going to be hell to get him dismissed. However, there seems to be enough evidence of misconduct that an investigation is warranted.
Really Oz, don't drop the ball on this one, please.
The reputable scientists really need to move on this and demand an investigation into his conduct.
I would assume he has tenure but could be censured or otherwise disciplined under the policy ... but I'm just guessing.
It was inevitable that Plimer would ultimately reveal his intellectual and scientific bankruptcy. Just as Monckton is doing in Copenhagen as we speak.
But they've proven to be useful tools for the denialists. :-(
If you notice, this fringe is getting more and more twitchy. The world is effectively ignoring them and they must go to a more crazy place each time to get attention.
Can you imagine in a month or so when the CRUhack Swift Boat campaign fades and nothing got delayed how crazy they'll be?
In the spring 2010 when ACES gets passed in the U.S. (if only to avoid EPA restrictions) how bonkers they'll be? It'll get much worse wrt cuckoo behavior before they all die and go the f--- away and the other fringe crazies who need their crazy fix look to something else to crazy about.
Best,
D
Just finished streaming the Lateline interview here in London. Wonderful! I don't think Plimer got pinned down like that in any interview during his recent UK visit.
For non Aust people here you have to go to: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/ to view it. Its worth it and I've sent a congratulatory note to ABC NewsCAf to encourage them.
Plimer tried it on with the CRU hack but didn't get away with that.
It was very odd to see Plimer not being familar with what he wrote and how he came apart when Jones showed himself to be more familar with the book than its author.
At the start of the interview Monbiot repeated his point about how denialism is rising - this is such an important thing it has to be restated until we get out into the community showing the same energy and tenacity as the deniers
I hope the interview goes viral across the world. Perhaps all the deltoid contributors can start posting it on denier sites but if you do don't label it as a Plimer slap down otherwise it wil get deleted very quickly.
What is it with this fascination of getting various deniers sued, reprimanded or fired?
Just keep pointing out their obvious errors, dodges and misrepresentations. Any formal sanction or lawsuit is not only unlikely, but will only feed the ridiculous Galileo complex of the other side.
Yes, let us all write to the U of A and ask them to start proceedings against Plimer on academic misconduct.
His performance on Lateline where he didn't even pretend to defend the claims he made in his book surely warrants it.
Astounding performance by Plimer. He knows he's lying. He absolutely does. No doubt.
Great work by Monbiot - bar the continued questioning of CRU scientists credibility and his Chicken Little panicking over a couple of polls.
Also, good work by Tony Jones - he'd done his homework. Good man.
To continue the theme: how blatantly does Plimer need to lie before his university take notice and act? What's the point of scientific credentials if you just wander around saying any old shit that suits your agenda? Tenure only means the right not to be terminated without just cause - if Plimer's book and subsequent performance isn't just cause, what is?
I had Plimer as my geology professor at Newcastle in the 80's, and I am disgusted to say that I admired him then. His performance last was disgusting - no wonder he never wanted to debate Monbiot.
So, Oz folks:
a) One can decry him day-in, day-out in blogs.
b) But, he has a position at a university. I assume he's tenured.
c) But, has the university said anything officially?
d) Suppose some reasonable number of U of Adelaide grad signed a simple letter to the head of the U saying something like "We're sorry to see the U has gone downhill. It now best-known to the world via the activities of Plimer (attached examples), and we will make sure our children do not attend."
Carrot Eater, I agree with you regarding columnists on op ed pages, etc. The standards of journalism don't apply there, and even for those newspapers which claim to do basic fact checking on op eds, it's no secret that the bar's far lower than for reported news.
Regarding Plimer, though, universities have policies regarding academic standards for a reason, primarily to protect the reputation of academic institutions and the university itself. It is entirely appropriate to ask the university to uphold such policy, just as it's entirely appropriate to insist that they uphold policies regarding sexual and racial discrimination, student conduct (punishment for cheating, etc), and the like.
Misrepresentation : A researcher or reviewer shall not with intent to deceive, or in reckless disregard for the truth:
(a) state or present a material or significant falsehood.
Does intentional exaggeration count as stating a significant falsehood with intent to deceive?
Just asking.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article695…
Can anybody find an appropriate email address for Plimer's superiors? The U of A website is a complete maze. If any faculty member at my institution ever conducted themselves in such a manner I would certainly press for an inquiry. It's one thing to be a skeptic, it's a completely different matter to lie and to fabricate.
Here's the office of the Vice-Chancellor & President:
vice-chancellor@adelaide.edu.au
The former Vice President is not a researcher subject to academic conduct rules. Yes, he made a dumb mistake there. But, note how all the mainstream climate researchers were quick to correct him "Most climate scientists agree that a 20 to 30-year timescale is more likely for the near-disappearance of sea ice." and even the outlying one that Gore thought he was quoting also corrected him "I was very explicit that we were talking about near-ice-free conditions and not completely ice-free conditions in the northern ocean" [in 5-7 years].
So, one should conclude that as usual, actual reputable scientists have a stronger fealty to truth than anything else (even the one politician who has done the most to publicize the problem those scientists have uncovered).
I didn't expect two more posts so quickly. My #18 is a response to Betula's #15.
And, of course, Gore's sin was to claim that the researcher said the arctic might be ice free in summer within six or so years, when the researcher said it was possible the arctic might "only" be 80% ice free in that time frame.
Simple enough mistake, and as pointed out, quickly corrected by a variety of scientists, including the original author Gore mistakenly misquoted.
I don't suppose Betula has ever made a factually incorrect statement in any of his posts ...
Extraordinary that Plimer begins his contribution to the debate with a big anti-government rant when he's a Professor at a publicly-funded university. He is, in the rhetoric of his own wingnut logic, a "tax-eater".
I presume he'll resign his post so as to avoid being a complete hypocrite.
Someone pointed out how unfamiliar Plimer seemed with his own book, repeatedly offering that he would have 'to look it up later' when pressed on specific points.
There have been simliar books in the past on different subjects - weighty tomes with extensive reference lists, but that were essentailly frauds. These kind of books tend to be group efforts, even when they are attributed to a single author. Even if Plimer had written the majority of his book, I'd expect that he'd have been fed a lot of the references and quotes and happily incorporated them without checking.
Ahahahaha! Great video. My only disappointment was, after plimer's second "I'll have to check my notes..." the interviewer didn't challenge him: "Prof. Plimer. Have you actually read the book?" it's plausible that he is just fronting the book for industry PR.
OTOH, I don't accept the criticism of Monbiot here. His disappointment at the behaviour of some climate scientists is reasonable. It needs to be made clear that that doesn't invalidate the science, and it needs to be made equally clear that only one side here deals in dishonesty. Being open about the contents of the stolen emails distinguishes us from the liars and thieves on the other side.
Re #16 AGB
Some relevant email addresses:
chancellor@adelaide.edu.au, vice-chancellor@adelaide.edu.au, dvcr@adelaide.edu.au, dvca@adelaide.edu.au, faculty.sciences@adelaide.edu.au, head.ees@adelaide.edu.au
Don't expect any action though, or even an acknowledgment of your email. It is much better from the University's point of view to stay quiet and wait for the storm to blow over.
The problem is that he's taken the denialist spin at face value. There are things to be disappointed about (the request by jones to delete e-mails, for instance) but most of the other stuff being claimed is just bogus when context or a reasonable comprehension of the englis language ("trick") is taken into account.
That's why I, at least, find disappointing in Monbiot's reportage on the e-mails.
This all sounds like desperation. I am english and am ashamed that my fellow countrymen are involved in this disgusting fraud.
You don't seem to have noticed but the majority of people CAN read a graph and can see the manipulations involved. Phil Jones did not stand down of his own accord, the game is up.
Seeing your religion failing is hard but life goes on.
I found it somewhat mind-boggling that Plimer would attack Monbiot for not having a science background (I guess a M.A. in Zoology at Oxford doesn't count as a background in science?). And he then proceeds to ask a series of questions (about science which Monbiot does not lay claim to) to which he presumably wants a scientific answer, and mocks him for not answering. This is in response to being asked questions about Plimer's own "science", to which he provides no answers.
Added to that, how can an Australian word a series of questions beginning with "Please explain...", and expect not to be laughed at?
I think "selection" is a very moralistic word.
HAHAHAHHA
Plimer showed himself to be a pompous untrustworthy twit. His whole performance relied on bluff and playing for time. That wonât make a difference to the Andrew Bolts of this world but it might to the poorly informed wavering and unsure punter.
The most mind blowing part of that debate was surely when they were discussing Plimer's claim that the globe has cooled since 1998.
*And it was Plimer!!!* who attempted to criticise Monbiot for focussing on a small 5 or 10 year period and ignoring the temperature record on longer time scales.
W. T. F.
The video of the interview is available for only a few days to download [from this site.](http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/vodcast.htm)
At last! The vicious hob-nailed boot of censorship descends on the unwitting Sidney Morning Herald! We freedom-lovers knew this day would come.
Plimer is copying the [Wrecking Crew](http://tcfrank.com/books/the-wrecking-crew/) tactics, which were used by those who were the force behind the Bush ascendency.
Its a win-win tactic, they get to trash science/government by being really bad at it, which proves their point, that public science/government is not to be trusted.
It's a trifling matter in the scheme of things, but also rather telling: how does a so-called academic continue to mispronounce the name of a debate opponent? He was either showing his ignorance, or deliberately mispronouncing Monbiot's name. To use his own oft-repeated words, it was "the height of rudeness."
(Slightly) OT:
I would pay to watch a catfight between Monckton and Plimer. Who's with me?
I include below a sample letter which those so moved may wish to forward to the appropriate officers of the University of Adelaide in support of action to hold an inquiry into the professional conduct of Ian Plimer. I think that however each of us regards Mr Plimer, or what we may think should happen in response, it is important to get proceedings started by fitting our claims into a form which the University will find hard to ignore. I intend to send this letter also to Julia Gillard, in her capacity as Minister for Education.
As many of you will be aware, Professor Ian Plimer has recently been the subject of some controversy. This derives not merely from his outspoken views on the political context within which proposals to stabilise and lower atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases takes place, to which, Professor Plimer, is surely entitled.
It concerns claims of fact made in his most recent publication, Heaven & Earth. You will be aware, I feel sure, of the reviews by reputable scientists such as Ian Enting of this non-peer-reviewed book and the rather serious misrepresentation they have found. They found for example that in a number of cases, claims made were not sourced to actual data, and in one case where it was, the citation was radically at odds with the claim for which the source was adduced.
You may be aware that last night, on the now internationally televised Lateline, some of these and other matters were in part canvassed again in the course of an exchange between George Monbiot and Professor Plimer moderated by Tony Jones. Most disappointingly, Professor Plimer offered neither a defence of his right to make such claims, nor a correction, but rather, sought to obfuscate by introducing other issues aimed at covering up his fraud.
You will recall, doubtless, the investigation some years ago into a work by Bjorn Lomborg by the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty in which the case was made out that the book titled The Skeptical Environmentalist was characterised by the DCSD as follows:
Objectively speaking, the publication of the work under consideration is deemed to fall within the concept of scientific dishonesty. ... In view of the subjective requirements made in terms of intent or gross negligence, however, Bjørn Lomborg's publication cannot fall within the bounds of this characterization. Conversely, the publication is deemed clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice.
The DCSD went on to list the areas that were problematic for an ostensibly scientific work in that book:
1. Fabrication of data;
2. Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation);
3. Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods;
4. Distorted interpretation of conclusions;
...
6. Deliberate misinterpretation of others' results
There is a perception amongst those qualified to know that Plimer's work fails in each of these respects and the association of Professor Plimer and these ostensibly spurious and specious claims has the potential to damage seriously the academic reputation of the University of Adelaide, particularly as the nature of the controversy to which Professor Plimer is a party, will, perforce, provoke detailed scrutiny of the ostensibly scientific claims he makes.
Your institution asserts inter alia that its policy restrains a researcher or reviewer with intent to deceive, or in reckless disregard for the truth:
(a) stat[ing] or present[ing] a material or significant falsehood;
(b) omit[ing] a fact so that what is stated or presented as a whole states or presents a material or significant falsehood.
I believe it is incumbent upon your institution to commence proceedings to clarify the issues of scientific integrity attaching to Professor Plimer and his work, so as to better position the University of Adelaide to protect the academic interests of other staff and students there.
The tactic of continually holding up the book (as if he was desperately trying to flog a few more copies before it headed into the remainder bin) just looked silly.
The tactic of saying he needed to refer to the book and the references was meant to make him look scholarly. It just made him look ill-prepared and evasive.
The tactic of trying to wedge Jones and Monbiot as co-conspirators against him in the debate made him look paranoid (but will no doubt be used by Bolt et al to explain his poor performance)
But the kicker was the refusal to answer any of the questions. This exposed him for what he is- a sad old party hack, not keeping up with the science and denying reality just for the sake of his pride and political affilaitions.
Plimer will be sixty four in a few months time (he is from 12/2/46). So ere long the University will get rid of him in a natural way.
Both Monbiot and Tim Jones did a very good job in pressing him on his lies. Monbiot was wise not to get involved in a discussion of the CRU hack, even though he might now have some reswervations about his earlier opinion.
Plimer was even more pathetic than during his earlier performances. Since both Jones and Monbiot are now wise to his ways they kept avoiding his red herrings and pinned him down well and proper.
Not good enough IMO. He needs to be stripped of his academic credentials and publicly shamed.
"Not good enough IMO. He needs to be stripped of his academic credentials and publicly shamed."
/disagree
nutters thrive on publicity - whether good or bad. If you try and agitate for the University to dump him, it would be straightforward for the skeptics to cry pressuring and censorship of alternative views, mention the CRU emails in the same breath, and then sit back and enjoy the notoriety/increased readership for Plimer.
I think he should have his academic credentials stripped, but lets be pragmatic, and just treat this old boy like an embarrassing uncle until he fades away.
I couldn't beleive my eyes or ears when I heard Ian Plimer raise his voice and tell George Monbiot he was from "ill breeding" TWICE !! on Lateline ABC 15/12/2009
It was almost Nazi - National Front - Ultra Monarchist like, the comments he made, which came out while he was being questioned by Monbiot and later Tony Jones about the emmisions he stated in his book that volcanoes released, which differed to many other notable sources that they quoted.
The biggest Volcano on Lateline last night was Ian Pilmer himself..;)
You say that like it's a bad thing. We could finally have a serious public debate on just why peer-review is important, and the difference between censorsing of opinion and requiring scientific rigour. We could revisit why those emails from CRu are not the smopking gun the filth merchant fraudsters say they are.
Maybe I should have stayed up and watched it after all. Two minutes in, I found Plimer's smugness so unbearable I just turned it off.
I almost switched off after Monbiot started apologising for "climategate". He has declined a good deal in my estimation as a result of his conession. Then again, his position on biofuels some while back was also ill-considered.
The sceptics love Plimer because heâs a professor. The fact that heâs not a climate scientist doesnât make much difference.
Also, as well as his professorship at the University of Adelaide he is Professor Emeritus, at the School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne.
I, too, was shocked to hear Professor Plimer's asides that "Mr Monbiot is showing ill-breeding" and "For God's sake get some manners young man".
A more rounded picure of this man is slowly emerging.
We saw the arrogant contempt he showed for a colleague who disagreed with him - Charlie Veron - on ABC Breakfast back in April when his book was launched.
We have seen his venomous side - comparing Al Gore with "slime".
We have seen the hypocrisy of his claims that other scientists are being unnecessarily alarmist, yet in his recent Adelaide speech he warned that "the Australian economy risked total collapse" and "Australia will go broke and will become the laughing stock of the world" and "Australia faces the very real risk of losing everything our forefathers busted their guts for over the past 200 years", not to mention his astounding claim against his critics, that "I have not heard one of them base their opinion on science or intellect".
To this we add his latest toffee-nosed class snobbery against Monbiot and his apparent belief that people without a science degree are disqualified from asking him scientific questions.
Plimer will need telescopic sights mounted on the end of his nose if he looks down any further on non-scientists, journalists and ill-bred uppity young people who dare challenge his scientific authority.
something that's always bothered me:
not to encourage jingoism or rabid nationalism, but do the right-wing anti-environmentalists (and the war-mongers) in Australia and Canada not notice how often they're deferring and even kowtowing to the US government and/or big corporations that are considered, and proclaim themselves, American, as in United States of?
The Americans hate the French, who don't concede anything by way of tribute to them, but pat the heads of the (right sort of) Canadians and Aussies, and you'd think right-wingers would be more chauvinistic or something about that. ah well.
Perhaps these Pagliacci like Plimer and Monckton are confusing the peerage with peer review, and since the former is broken and not conversant with science, they think the latter is as well.
If Ian Plimer gets any more classist we should start calling him Ian Climber.
I'm increasingly convinced that Plimer's free market 'ideology'is based around the good old free enterprise staple of parting suckers from their money. Maybe, in his previous experience with Creationists, he found there was something of value to be learned from them after all; ie the willingness of people to pay to read and be told what they want to hear.
Plimer may believe that adaptation is better than mitigation or that the prosperity built on the back of fossil fuels can't be maintained by other means. He may even believe that the chances of reducing global emissions is next to zero and that nothing anyone, including himself, says will make a scrap of difference (and so feel no guilt). But I don't think he believes his own arguments.
I think Plimer knows his sciency sounding arguments are bereft of scientific content; they were never intended for scientists. But most of all I think he knows that even if his arguments have no scientific value, people will still pay lots of money for them.
More lucrative, I suspect than being a professor. His own personal adaptation program?
I visited deltoid quite early this morning and noted thereâd already been much comment on Plimerâs ABC TV performance last night. I hope I may be permitted to share, in the form of a reproduced email exchange, my own experience in trying to pin down the elusive Professor Plimer on the topic of âsubmarine volcanoesâ.
In July 2007, following on the heels of the ABCâs screening of TGGWS, and of Plimerâs column in The Melbourne Age, where he tried to criticise the BAMOS critique of TGGWS, I emailed the following query to Plimer. (I think my tone was respectful throughout.)
Dear Professor Plimer,
I was interested to read your comments, in last Thursday's Melbourne 'Age', on the ABC's screening of "The Great Global Warming Swindle". I am interested to know a little more about a couple of things. What is the "well-documented scientific fraud" in the film "An Inconvenient Truth"? And who are the "three scientists with a more rational view to the doomsday hype" you mentioned, who were "uninvited"?
No immediate reply. I then sent the following.
Dear Professor Plimer,
I was interested to read your comments, in last Thursday's Melbourne 'Age', on the ABC's screening of "The Great Global Warming Swindle".
I have another question, to follow my earlier questions, which relates to your comment that the BAMOS critique "....contains schoolboy howlers and a lack of logic intertwined with politics". I would like to know specifically what "schoolboy howlers" can be found there, and where the "lack of logic" and "politics" are [sic] contained.
Yours sincerely, etc.
This received an immediate reply. Plimer did not address me by name or title. I thought this rather, well, ill-mannered.
âThe best is their attempt to explain away volcanoes, how can they ignore 85% of the world's volcanoes?â
Sensing I might be âonto somethingâ, as they say, I decided to do a little digging of my own on the internet and ask some more.
Dear Professor Plimer,
do you mean that in the section of the BAMOS article where it discusses the "ASSERTION: [that] Volcanoes produce far more carbon dioxide than human activities, so anthropogenic greenhouse gases cannot be having a significant effect on global average temperature", the estimate of CO2 from volcanoes does not include 85% of the world's volcanoes? If so, what is the tonnage of CO2 emitted by this "missing" 85%? Do you have a source for that data? OR do you mean that the 300 million tonnes per annum cited by Morner/Etiope represents only 15% of the total? The total would then be (300 x 10^6) x (100/15) = 2000 million tonnes, which is still only about 7% of the "anthropogenic" emissions.
(Incidentally, 300 million is only about 1% of 27 billion, not 2% as the BAMOS authors write. Or have I missed something?)
(signed)
This received the following, almost immediate, response. (Again, no form of address was used by the professor.)
Most volcanoes are submarine, they are mafic, they release CO2, they never enter any equation
I followed up immediately as follows.
Dear Professor Plimer,
the issue is the amount of CO2 getting into the atmosphere from volcanoes.
I am not a geologist- I only did Geology 101 at varsity- but I am quite capable of following some scientific papers- indeed, I have written a few of them myself. I encourage you to share with me any references you have to the total amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere (or the seas, for that matter) from volcanoes. I can find no data on the internet that substantially alters the conclusion drawn by the BAMOS team of authors. Indeed, at a USGS site, http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html,
I find the following statement:
Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities.
Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1991). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 27 billion tonnes per year (30 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 2006) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2, through 2003.]. Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 3.3 million tonnes/year)! (Gerlach et. al., 2002)
Do you have anything that refutes this conclusion (that CO2 emissions from volcanoes are a very small fraction of the anthropogenic emissions)?
If not, can we please move the discussion forward?
Sincerely,
NO RESPONSE.
A small correction: there should have been a line separator of some kind to separate the USGS statement quoted in my mail to Plimer from my own, final questions to him (beginning "Do you have anything that refutes.....?").
My apologies for any confusion.
P. Lewis is correct and I have nothing further to add.
Ummm, I find the charge about alleged 'academic misconduct' by Plimer hard to sustain. Plimer is publishing junk science in unreviewed books:- from a purely academic perspective, so what?
It's not like he falsified findings in the Journal Nature, or has monstered PhD candidates into publishing nonsense.
He's a fool and a liar, but he's a fool and liar in an area unconnected with his professorial duties. The only thing brought into disrepute by his actions is himself, and anybody dull-witted enough to be bamboozled by his excresences.
Besides, if we instituted misconduct proceedings against every Professor who held eccentric and unfounded views in areas unconnected with their academic purview, who would be left?
I'd say the UoA will take no action, rightly in my view.
Owl wrote: "You don't seem to have noticed but the majority of people CAN read a graph and can see the manipulations involved."
You mean the way your ilk could read the manipulated graph in the great film swindle and not see the missing 30 years showing no correlation between the sun and temperature?
The easiest way to fool yourself is to eyeball a straight line trend in a graph.
Jim Eager makes a good point. I'd be much more interested in what we might learn from FoI requests for e-mail exchanges between Plimer and certain people, or between Carter and Senator Steve Fielding etc. Anybody done this? All Australian universities are subject to FoI.
Oh, for pity's sake:
Bernard asks:
>Please show a graph - the best one that you can find - that illustrates any inappropriate "manipulation" by those climate scientists of whom you are apparently so ashamed.
Will [this one](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_plimer_lies_about_source_o…) do Bernard?
You miss the point Mercurious.
Plimer is running shotgun for those who wish to trade humanity's future for the right to use the atmosphere as an industrial tip. He is lying, verballing scientists and slandering the entire scientific community in the service of this agnotology, and he's doing it with public funds. Large sections of the public would be loathe to say the things he is saying, but if the meme that there is dissent among scientists can be sustained, there is an opportunity to be in the company of ostensibly well-informed people.That he is a minerals gerologist rather than someone equipped to comment on atmospheric science is not something many people will pay attention to. In the "debate" on Lateline last night he repeatedly cited his own authority as a scientist agains the mere journalist Monbiot. We ought to take this standard and shove it metaphorically into each of his orifices until everyone can see how ill-fitting it is.
If he had eccentric views on alien visitation and Stonehenge, one could laugh, but this matter is deadly serious.
dhogaza: So you've found some academic codes of conduct. Can you think of similar case to this where those were used like that?
I say again, don't feed that stupid Galileo complex. Embarrassing him by exposing him is more than good enough.
I'd imagine that the Uni already knows it has a clown on its hands, unless dept chair and deans actually agree with him.
Maybe you're all being a big hard on Plimer. After all, he spends lots of time in the outback speaking with average people.
Poor old Tim...want to shoot the SMHessenger now do we? Poor old Ban Farlow#36 is behaving like a snotty-nosed brat...has got the shtz, pulled up stumps, grabbed his bat and run home bawling 'cause Plimer won't play with him! Poor old Acher#41 cites fascism in defence of that Serial Pest Mondiot for her incessant interrupts while Plimer was speaking! Apart from that...I thought the Lateline Debate went well...and I even detected a "slight-warming' of Tony Jones towards Plimer...compared with their previous Lateline interview.
Mr Soffermann,
Amidst the welter of playground level abuse, I note that like your pro-bono client, Plimer, you fail to make a substantive point.
What is it about you lot that obstructs you from proposing anything resembling a coherent idea?
[Janet Akerman](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
Do you know how long the Plimer interview is actually going to be available? I thought that these days the ABC left video material up for months, if not years.
Perhaps this is one for the Youtube lexicon - copyright considered, of course...
I wish you Aussies had exported Tony Jones to the world rather than Murdoch.
A helpful tip when debating about the "lack of warming." It doesn't matter which analysis of temperature you use, Satellite LT, Satellite SST, Ship/Buoy SST, Radiosonde, or thermometer, every single one of them from every team shows that the last decade was warmer than the previouis. Plimer can keep looking for adjustments that tell his story, but he won't find them.
I also wish that people would refrain from using the word "unequivocal." Although probable, it is not "unequivocal" that the last ten years is warmer than anything in medieval times, and certainly not for the last 4000 years.
Phillip "of that Serial Pest Mondiot for her incessant interrupts while Plimer was speaking"
"Her incessant interruptions"??? His name is George Monbiot. It would have helped if Pfilmer had not continually refused to answer the questions and had not kept going off on tangents.
Actually, Tony Jones was obviously getting quite pissed off with Plimer. Did you actually watch it? And if so, what kind of rosy coloured glasses were you wearing at the time? Or maybe there were some chemicals involved?
Funny how you are your ilk throw your toys when some cherry picked emails from CRU are distorted and spun and then go around screaming "fraud, fraud!", yet you are completely oblivious to the fraud and lies of Pflimer and his cohorts. Wake up!
If I had a dollar for the number of times a "skeptic" has quoted Plimer or Monckton or Lindzen when I have been talking with them about AGW with then I'd be wealthy. Do not underestimate the clout that these morons have with the public!! Plimer needs to be given his marching orders for misconduct, not for his views on AGW. So what if it plays into their martyr complex angle, the point is is that he will no longer be able to pompously claim to be a credible scientist who works at U of A. Profs. are not beyond reproach, especially when their lies threaten lives.
On a side not, stumbled on an interview on a USA network with Schmidt and Christy on YouTube. Christy was disappointing. He was claiming that CRU fudged the SAT data when making reference to "hide the decline". He should know better than that. It is odd, it is as if Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, Plimer etc. are all reading from the same script in terms of their arguments and reasoning.
I find it amusing that Plimer is following almost exactly the same modus operandi as he did in the court case against Roberts/Ark Search (see here: http://creation.com/plimer-court-case-our-press-release). Just read the phony claims part of the release. If nothing else, he is at least predictable.
As for the debate, I must say that the media coverage has been rather disappointing. Looks like they know that there is no way they (as in the Oz, Telecrap etc) can spin this into anything positive, so it's best to remain silent. Realistically, a debate between a mining geologist and a journalist on a subject that neither is an expert in - who cares? Why is the ABC giving Plimer more media coverage to spruik his ignorance (wilful or otherwise)? I'd much rather they give media time to someone like Plimer's colleague at the University of Adelaide, Dr Barry Brook or the University of Queensland's Dr Ove Hoegh-Guldberg.
[Janet](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
Ah, I was thinking about that graph last night!
I am more certain that ever that it is a pliagarism from the GGWS, especially as it [exhibits the hallmarks of vectorisation](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_plimer_lies_about_source_o…). I doubt that Plimer could provide the original data in a month of Sundays, and together with the obvious manipulation of the curve, it makes a mockery of any criticism that he, or anyone else for that matter, directs at the CRU team with respect to the stolen data.
He is a hypocrite as well as a fraud and a liar.
Climate change denial....lol. It is AGW denial, and it's a lot like homeopathy denial.
[Carrot eater](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
I have to agree with some of the others here with respect to investigating whether Plimer has breached academic codes of conduct.
It might be permissible for a journalist or a TV station to release 'non-truth' as news, but it is not permissible for a scientist to release 'non-truth' as science.
If Plimer identifies himself as 'Professor', or 'Dr', or if he permits another to so identify him, he is automatically using his academic bona fides to support anything that he says, whether it is within his field of understanding or not. In all such instances he is bound by the codes of conduct appropriate to the institutions that grant his titles, and by the codes of any professional intitute to which he belongs.
Plimer and his Denialati colleagues are collectively extremely vociferous about demanding that Phil Jones be recognised, censured, suspended, decloaked, jailed, or even murdered for an alleged action that has no obvious evidential support, and yet Plimer is clearly and provably guilty of exactly the same malfeasance that he accuses others of - in Plimer's own words, he accuses them of "the biggest scientific fraud in history".
If it's fine for them to request action for misconduct (and it should be if any can be shown to exist), then it should apply to Plimer as well.
Besides, people are called to account for their misconduct every day in many different spheres of society. If Plimer has a case to answer, he should answer it just as anyone else should be required to do.
I agree with mercurious and carrot eater. If Australian Universities are anything like those in the United States, Plimer pretty much can say and write anything he wants, no matter how foolish or mendacious, without worrying about academic sanctions, as long as he keeps it outside of the scholarly literature. That's why Arthur Butz (Holocaust denier, Northwestern University) and Peter Duesberg (HIV denier, U.C. Berkeley), for example, have retained their academic positions. Better to work at ensuring that their "work" is recognized as irrelevant (as Duesberg and the other HIV denialists have been effectively marginalized within the biomedical community.)
First. Monbiot concedes that science is not settled by engaging Plimer. Secondly, Plimer's opening argument makes perfect sense. Its all about power, taxes and more money & nothing about the environment. Science was raped (CRU etc) to create a global taxing machine. The rest of the debate is a no brainer; a journalist and geologist arguing over climate. The climate must be allowed to reach extremes as it has done for centuries or we're in serious trouble. Finally, there is a groundswell of opinion against AGW in the US and Australia and today the Opposition is daring PM Rudd to bring on an election, buoyed by population getting wise on dodgy science and partying world leaders trying to impoverize ordinary folk for Al Gore's religion of global warming. Monbiot is on shaky ground.
Mr Barlow,
Firstly...let's not talk about 'Climate Change' because that is a constant and random variable that has existed since time began. Now let's talk about the much-hyped 'Global Warming'. South Australia, during the first 2 weeks of December just passed, recorded the LOWEST December 'first-fortnight' temperatures ever measured (over 150yrs). Would you prefer they were the HOTTEST just so you and your friends could slap each other on the back and call yourselves 'futurologists'?
1998 may well have been a 'warm' year...but it taken 10 years for me to find that out! Some scientists say the last 10 years have cooled,plateaued or warmed...take your pick!... they are all scientists' 'opinions'. What I would like to know is...how many 'scientists' opinions' have been 'East-Anglianised'?
I think Plimer is doing us all a huge favour - by collecting all the Denialist nonsense in one book, he allows all of Denialism to be debunked in one shot, rather than having to run around debunking the various kooks individually.
This is why I initially thought Plimer was deliberately setting-up the Denialists.
Bernard J: I'm afraid I agree with Robert P. So long as Plimer is not knowingly putting fraudulent data in the academic literature, I don't think there's much precedent here for official academic sanction. If there is, find me some precedent.
Tenured profs can and do go around saying strange things in public.
That said, remember that there are unofficial ways of making life uncomfortable at the uni.
Phil, what you seem to have missed is the fact that the term "climate change" was coined and disseminated by your denialist ilk as a PR-exercise designed to water-down concern over Global Warming.
Haha.
Secondly, your statement that "some Scientists say the last 10 years have colled, plateaued, warmed..." is false. Scientists know that in any 10-year period the noise in climate measurements will exceed any trend, so they know that such statements would be ignorant or mendacious.
What scientists *can* say is this: "The last decade has been the warmest decade on record."
Thirdly, even the most cursory glance at the BoM's website shows there has been no exceptional coldness in Adelaide so far this month:
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/cvg/av
Perhaps you can reference your claims about the weather in Adelaide?
For bonus points, you could explain to us the difference between weather and climate?
Regarding the Lateline Plimer/Mombiot interview, 15 December 2008 when two journalists (Jones and Mombiot) rudely bullied the guest Professor, I can only say that the constant ungracious interruptions by Mombiot, and the pathetically smug non-intervention by Jones, pushed me absolutely away from the man-made climate change position.
When debaters use verbal stand-over tactics to force their point, I immediately smell a rat.
And yes, Prof. Plimer, for Mombiot to continually interrupt when someone else is taking their turn to speak, is indeed the height of ignorance.
Tony Jones and George Mombiot did themselves a disservice by demonstrating that ignorance may not be restricted to their lack of manners, it may also be reflective of their highly questionable opinions.
And please, quit disparaging those who have alternative opinions.
The right to free speech has not yet been taken away. Almost, perhaps, but not quite.
Plimer is a dangerously demagogic deluder, but I don't think it would be appropriate for his university to take any action against him.
Just as any principled defence of freedom of speech will involve defence of material we find repulsive, so any principled defence of academic freedom will involve defending some scoundrels.
Well, sure, like Michael Behe's department prominently displaying a statement that says, in essence, he's and idiot.
Yet Behe doesn't lie about basic stuff (more CO2 from volcanos vs. burning fossil fuels). His sins are those of a weak, refutable analysis that he claims is Gospel (quite literally). But at least he's tried to put together a reasonable scientific case. He's more like Lindzen than ... I started to say "Watts" but even Watts seems less lying than Plimer (I give Watts a little more slack because he only has a high-school education).
Plimer's sins are far more basic, and far more egregious ... he's doing the equivalent of arguing that the earth is flat and tries to cash in on his position as a tenured professor to do so.
Do any mac users here know of a webkit equivalent of Firefox's killfile thingy? If I read about "Al Gore's religion of global warming" (71) one more time, I'm gonna get in trouble with law or something. Screaming's not enough...
That's tremendous, Aussiejoe, you're making your decisions about the science on the basis of the perceived "ungracious" manners of participants in a TV debate, none of whom (and I inlude Plimer here) are climate scientists.
God help us.
But what Plimer said about the latest cooling is correct.
"TONY JONES: I mean, what sceptics like Andrew Bolt would argue is that it's happening because there are people out there who don't believe these scientists, now they appear to have proof, there's a dissension among the scientists, and they are not letting the public know that there's dissension between themselves about the arguments about what is happening. Take one, because one of these published emails, it goes to one of the hottest sceptic arguments, that since 1998, and I say hot, you know, advisedly, because 1998 the hottest year, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased after that, but the temperature did not keep going up. So the argument of the sceptics is therefore the theory of global warming is not working like it should.
TIM FLANNERY: Well, the thing is we deal with an incomplete understanding of the way the earth's system works, we know enough to say as the IPCC said that greenhouse gases cause warming. They are 90 per cent sure, 90 per cent plus sure that it's caused by humans, we can go that far. In the last few years, were there hasn't been a continuation of that warming trend, we don't understand all of the factors that create earth's climate, so there are some things we don't understand, that's what the scientists were email about, you know, we don't understand the way the whole system works, and we have to find out.
TONY JONES: The published email that made the front pages of papers was from a respected US climatologist, called Kevin Trenberth saying we can't account for the lack of warming, it's a travesty that we can't. He appears worried that science is not doing the right thing or the climate is not doing what he expected it to do.
TIM FLANNERY: No, it's not. These people work with models, computer modelling, when the computer modelling and the real world data disagrees you have a problem, that's when science gets engaged. What Kevin Trenberth, one of the most respected climate scientist in the world, is saying is, "We have to get on our horses and find out what we don't know about the system, we have to understand why the cooling is occurring, because the current modelling doesn't reflect it". And that's the way science progresses, we can't pretend to have perfect knowledge, we don't. We have to go forward and formulate policy on the basis of what we know now.
TONY JONES: Is it right that cooling occurring? I mean 1998 was the hottest year, there's many other hottest years since recorded history in that 10 year period. Are they right to say it's cooling or not?
TIM FLANNERY: We had a huge cooling event in Sydney between yesterday and today. Time scales are important. If you take too short a time scale you won't get a climate signal, you get a regional weather signal or whatever else. The scales that the climate scientists use to look at the overall trend is century long, and on that trend we are still warming, sure for the last few years we have gone through a slight cooling trend, we saw it in the 1940s the same sort of thing, but that does not negate the overall warming trend."
gaz @ 80 said:
'Aussie Joe' is a longstanding troll who spammed Barry Brook's blog for a while with his own brand of specious filth merchant nonsense, until Brook kicked him off. Even then he went back for seconds under another nym. Now he's doing concern trolling here.
Hmmmm
And we have the free speech right to disparage those who make up their own "facts". If they want to lie that's their right, but they shouldn't get upset when we use our right to demonstrate that they are liars.
Incidentally, alternative opinions are quite different from alternative "facts". If an alternative opinion is supported by made-up facts (and contradicted by real facts) then what use is that alternative opinion in the first place, and why is it polluting the discussion? Willful ignorance is to be mocked severely.
Oops. thanks Fran. Your post came in while I was composing. Sorry for troll-feeding. Will ignore it then.
Hmmmm...people willing to get into trouble with law or something if Al Gore's religion of Global Warming is brought up...As a free citizen of the world, I will not allow myself to be intimidated by Al Gore's religion, nor his followers. That's my inalienable right. Its my planet too!
Plimer looks and sounds like he has incipient Alzheimers or senile dementia, that was a woeful advertisement for Adelaide Uni that went to air last night!
Danny Yee above said:
Rubbish. Nobody denies Plimer's right to utter any nonsense he likes. What he cannot do is buttress his nonsense with the claim to authentic scientific enquiry backed by an accredited publicly funded university because that prejudices the standing of the institution and thus all who are accredited by it. There is no question of academic freedom here. The question is one of professional academic standards and personal integrity. He ought not to be allowed to connect the university with demonstrably false claims, including by implication claims agains his academic colleagues at Adelaide, such as Professor Brook.
If you want to lie or say crazy stuff you can't generally say it in public on your employer's dime, or in their name.
If Plimer were being hauled off to jail for writing an eccentric tract, you'd have a point, and even I would defend him, but it this is not a free speech issue.
Self evidently, if anyone who is a scientist can say anything at all using their credentials without being accountable then the whole concept of scientific credibility is rendered worthless. That loss is far more an injury to the public than the frustration for some crank.
Fran, I would have thought Adelaide University was quite capable of defending its reputation without resorting to direct action against Plimer which might create a bad precedent (how do you word a policy on this so it can't be used to silence dissent?).
They could get a pile of academics to issue a statement disagreeing with Plimer's nonsense, or to make a positive statement on climate change. That would seem more effective, in undoing the harm done by Plimer, than going after him personally (and no doubt turning him into some kind of martyr).
They could probably insist that he not claim his institutional affiliation when talking outside his area of expertise.
Sorry, Fran. You have pilloried the wrong Aussiejoe. I have never taken the trouble of making a post before. Mostly I felt embarrased for the over-ruling style of the two journalists mentioned. Anyway, I won't be back - don't enjoy angry, aggressive environments.
The rudeness does nothing for the debates going on here.
It's perfectly simply Danny. My partner teaches and supervises research at UWS.
If someone is guilty of academic fraud or serious misconduct, they get sanctioned. You can't plagiarise and appeal to free speech. Neither can you misattribute words or data or make stuff up citing your right to free speech. If you have an opinion, you have to say that's what it is not present that it is science, unless you can show that it is indeed well-attested.
We don't need to invent new forms of words to deal with this as it is already contemplated in the policies of Adelaide University.
GFW & Dhogaza;
How can anyone doubt Gore's expectation of a meltdown in five years when we have it on equally good authority that arctic ice is assaulted from below by temperatures of "several million degrees inside the Earth. " and that due to CO2 , The surface of venus is hotter than the boiling point of lead."
Does Al 's tutorial hot line connect to Prof. Plimer's office?
dhogaza: Behe had come to my mind as well, in terms of the 'uncomfortable' thing. Even that is pretty much unprecedented; I can't think of another example where the department made such a public disclaimer, disavowing any support for a faculty member's positions. So I suppose if his (Plimer's) colleagues disagreed with him, they could take that step. I'm not sure what sort of relationship Lindzen has with his colleagues at MIT. But yes, Behe is not the a tenth the blatant scumball that Plimer is, though I think he can be slow to concede a point, unless he's in court.
Still, I think that so long as he's not doing something strange with a kangaroo, and so long as he's not doing dirty things in the academic literature, I rather doubt an official sanction of the sort some are looking for.
With both free speech and academic freedom, you get both cranks and geniuses. That's just life. I don't approve of trying to improve matters by trying to shut the cranks up.
Good grief, Russell. Two instances of Al Gore fumbling a fact while talking (geothermal temps and the melting/boiling lead). In either case, did he continue repeating that mistake, after being told it was clearly wrong, in an attempt to mislead?
No.
Completely not comparable to Plimer's stupidity about volcanoes.
@ 66
I find it amusing that Plimer is following almost exactly the same modus operandi as he did in the court case against Roberts/Ark Search
While I had sympathy for Plimer's view in that case, I also started losing respect for Plimer during the case. It was clear he had seriously obsessive tendencies and was infatuated with his own opinion and self importance.
@ 72
South Australia, during the first 2 weeks of December just passed, recorded the LOWEST December 'first-fortnight' temperatures ever measured (over 150yrs).
Ooh, can I play this game too? Darwin just had its hottest recorded October, and the hottest recorded minimum night time temperature.
I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but I saw the volcano emission bit.
Plimer seems to have a quibble, although he faffed around and didn't elaborate, with how they counted the underwater side of the carbon emissions.
Does anyone have any more on that point? What's he (not) saying there and how is he wrong?
(if it's reasonably well known talking point you can just link me or whatever. Cheers)
j.kross
impoverize. I love it.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Can we continue to disparage those who have stupid opinions? Oh, wait. Was that comment directed at Plimer? Because he's pretty constantly disparaging people with alternative opinions. Seems to be his thing.
Muzz:
Just read Tim Lambert's introduction at the beginning of this thread. I would have thought that's a good idea since you're posting to it.
Aussiejoe is priceless:
"I can only say that the constant ungracious interruptions by Mombiot, and the pathetically smug non-intervention by Jones, pushed me absolutely away from the man-made climate change position."
So, let me get this straight: you base your scientific knowledge on how courteously it is presented?
Very well. The f#$%ing Earth is f@#%ing round, numbnuts! A free-falling sonofabitch object accelerates at 9.8 m/sec^2, now STFU you piece of %#$@^
I guess Aussiejoe now believes the earth is flat and gravity is a fraud, since I put it so rudely.
"Anyway, I won't be back - don't enjoy angry, aggressive environments."
Can the mod please hold Aussiejoe to his promise?
#86 Sicnarf...
Yours are the sort of comments made by a demented fool. All you do is debase the debate!
Aussiejoe,
What is wrong with journalists trying to get a scientist to answer a simple questions pertaining directly to his own published writings?
Plimer just squirmed and desperately changed the subject the whole way through that interview. And when that obviously wasn't working he resorted to lame insults. The man clearly has not the slightest shred of credibility and in that interview his dishonesty was as plain as the nose on his face.
Anyone who can watch that interview and claim otherwise is deluded or equally dishonest.
John:
If he's telling average people that volcanoes generate more CO2 than human activity then we're not being hard enough.
#75 Whirlywind... weather has a 'we' and an 'at' and a 'her'...climate has an 'ate' and a 'mate' in it...all jolly phonics. You spell it with a 'b'...'climbate'!
I wonder where the trolls on this thread have come from? It needs some troll disinfection.
It's just fun to compare sofferman at 100 with same at 103. Mebbe he's just mimicking Plimer's sense of "breeding."
[Carrot eater](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
The issue is not about silencing Plimer, it's about not allowing him to attach the credibility of his professorship (and his implicit accompanying scientific bona fides) in (mining/coal?) geology to non-scientific claims in a discipline in which he is not only not experienced, but in which he distorts, misrepresents, and lies about the accepted understanding of the real experts.
I think that [Fran](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) has it pretty well framed.
I too would defend Plimer's right to speak his mind as an ordinary citizen, just as I have always said that I would defend a smoker's right to smoke, with my life. However, in my own home and in public, a smoker's right to smoke ends where my lungs start, and similarly in the public domain an idiot's right to blather crap ends where science starts.
Don't discount the enormous damage that Plimer, and those like him, have done in muddying the public's understanding of the state of climat science. The fact of the matter is that they do not appreciate the 'tricks' that the 'scientific' Denialists use, and they are happy to accept a title of "Professor" as sole evidence of credibility, without seriously critiqueing the scientific validity of the Denialist agenda.
UoA has a mechanism to address the type of discredit to the institution that Plimer is bringing upon it. Why should it not enact that mechanism, especially when Plimer is bringing such conspicuous discredit upon the University, in an international arena and in an area so profoundly important to the well-being of humanity and the rest of life on earth in the future?
[Pough](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
Inconceivable!
Danny Yee:
What does it take for action to be taken against Plimer? Karoly only has to say "there is no credible peer-reviewed research that overturns the theory of human-induced climate change" and he receives a formal complaint of academic misconduct.
Re: #106, Bernard J:
Come on Bernard, the UoA Academic Code of Conduct is just for show, it isn't meant to be taken seriously! The University has made this very clear by its lack of action against Plimer despite numerous blatant transgressions.
There is a good legal argument that Plimer would be quite justified in assuming that UoA approved of his actions. For UoA to take action against Plimer at this late stage could be argued as entrapment.
In fact, to clarify its position, it would help if the University of Adelaide simply issued an updated Code of Conduct, e.g.,
An academic at the University of Adelaide may
--- ignore normal standards of integrity
--- misquote scientific papers
--- commit scientific fraud
--- accuse other scientists of fraud, with no evidence, or with fabricated evidence
My name is Jo E... I am a 50 year old grandmother with a vested interest in the issue being discussed. It was the overbearing rudeness of the Lateline journos that caused my doubts about their general intelligence.
You see, the foul logic by Mercurious (no. 99) in the form of uncalled for personal abuse, absolutely confirms that the level of intelligence being applied by one side of the debate indeed debases it. When you have a strong point of view, argue it well. Try not to embarrass yourself.
Referring to a mature woman as an internet troll (a male wrote that? Perhaps one of very, very short stature?) I have broad shoulders, it was not too worrisome, more so unnecessarily aggressive.
As a retired academic, I don't see how the general tenor of personal abuse actually contributes anything at all beneficial to the subject matter.
If the rough-talking posters are indeed males, then no wonder our institutions are failing.
The silence is deafening in the "sceptic" echo chamber. Even they know this one went bad.
Chris O'Neill @ 108
Wow. They are really diving headfirst into the sewer of vicious hypocrisy.
[Bernard](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…),
Its my assumption that vodcast would be avalible in the downlaod format for only a brief period. Unless I'm mistaken, in the past they disapear after a week or so. But you may be able to stream them longer.
But for certian this inteveiw was 'a keeper'. One for the pool room.
So AussieJoe, retired academic, there'll be no apology from you for an admission that you make up your mind on matters of grave importance to the future of your grandchildren according to how sweetly to your ears sound a stranger's words?
You ought to be ashamed of yourself for that and for taking us for fools.
Also: if you don't recognise in Plimer's performance throughout that interview a liar, fraud and charlatan slandering honest scientists in a field where he has no professional standing himself - no published papers in climate science being the very least of his sins - then I'll go further and say you never had any business teaching anything to students yourself. Call me rude but please do go away.
That interview was certainly telling of Plimer. He didn't answer questions, attempted to redirect uncomfortable questions off to tangents, rambled off and pussyfooted around, and outright spouted falsehoods repeatedly when he was caught out.
Whatever little was left of Plimer's credibility - Plimer just destroyed it.
As a sceptic, I agree that Plimer came off badly, and over at my place I made clear my admiration for Monbiot, as a convinced 'warmer', putting the boot into the corruption at CRU. However, what seemed clear from that exchange was what I have thought for some time, that the heart of the problem lies in the quality of the raw data and then the adjustments made to them.
I think Anthony Watts blew away any faith a reasonable man might have in the quality of land-based data, and the CRU imbroglio has utterly destroyed anyone's faith in the subsequent 'adjustments'. Equally, a reasonable man has to be cautious on satellite data because the satellites themselves have different orbits and moreover the orbits are changing, to say nothing of the fact that they measure temperatures in the atmosphere not at ground level, which leads, quite properly, to yet more adjustments having to be made.
Surely everyone can agree that global temperatures have waxed and wained over time, indeed, it is a good thing that they have because stasis would have been a real disaster. Picking out exactly and precisely how much of recent warming is due to Man is, I suggest, an impossibility at this particular moment. If the 'warmers' are right, the change will be gradual and Man can make adjustments as and when the effects are felt. Shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre is usually considered dangerous - and rather bad form!
Well said Aussiejoe#110. Some of the commentators on this site are rude and arrogant. Many will attack and name call anyone who dissents from climate alarmism.
PeterD#50..."Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1991)." but almost 90% of current active volcanoes are on ocean floor and many of these are below 4km water depth and never been observed or sampled. Anyone considered that the CO2 released from these is mostly absorbed by the cold deep water to be released over time as the water rises and warms?
Petrologists are able to show that CO2 is a major gas released from these cooling magmas by studying composition of the volcanic rocks dredged from the sea floor volcanoes or by comparison with older rocks which have formed in similar settings and are more easily sampled.
I notice Plimer uses every opportunity to hold up and advertise his book. It is a shame he wasnât challenged on his evidence for the Roman and Medieval periods being warmer than now. Iâve never been convinced that evidence of farming on Greenland or evidence of Roman and Medieval viniculture in Britain proves that it was warmer in Roman or Medieval times than it is now (either locally or globally). Particularly as the evidence of past viniculture in Britain is ALWAYS massively exaggerated by denialists.
Listening to Plimer is so much like reading the like reading the very worst amateur blog scientist. It is really hard to believe that he holds an academic post within a university.
Aussiejoe:
There was only one Lateline journo and that was Tony Jones. I didn't find him rude at all.
I presume you are referring to Monbiot. I have a question for you. If someone continually lies to your face, how polite are you to them?
Just watched the debate: Oh my God. Plimer is truly unbelievable.
Aussiejoe:
Whatever else you might say about Kevin Rudd, do his examples of personal abuse that have been publicized show that he has a low level of intelligence? The opposition accuses him of a lot of things but low intelligence is not one that I can recall.
Muzz @95,
Here are some links to get the detail of which Plimer is in denial:
Like lord_sidcup @118 I am a bit bemused by the "grapes being grown in England during Roman times" meme and its relevance to AGW. On a site dedicated to English Wine I found this:
Lank@117: The issue at hand is Plimer, and his continual evasions of direct questions posed to him by me, by George Monbiot, and (it appears) by many others, about the basis for his claim that submarine volcano emissions of CO2 outweigh those by humans. You appear not to have understood the USGS statement. Let me try again. According to the USGS, their "...estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts." You are simply repeating Plimer's claim, without advancing the discussion one iota. You give no evidence for the amounts of CO2 involved. The submarine emissions are explicitly taken into account in the USGS estimate and can be seen to be very much smaller than the human emissions. If you have some evidence to the contrary, I suggest you write it up and submit to a reputable journal.
Lank#117: Is it the rudeness and arrogance of people here that intimidates you from ever saying anything of note, ever?
A process that, presumably, must have started in earnest at right around the time humans began large-scale industrialisation...
You really will believe anything, won't you.
#118...."Iâve never been convinced that evidence of farming on Greenland or evidence of Roman and Medieval viniculture in Britain proves that it was warmer in Roman or Medieval times than it is now"...... well thats it then, the science is settled.
Why would these facts suggest it was colder at those times? Of course there are volumes of other examples to show clearly warmer times ...such as ice core data.
Lank:
blah, blah, blah. Just let us know when you've published all your research in a scientific journal Mr pretend scientist. Then we will know that we aren't certainly wasting our time reading you assertions.
Ahaha. As if Lank is capable of considering anything. If Lank wants to consider something, he could consider what an amazing coincidence it is that all these volcanoes decided to start generating vastly more CO2 in the last 200 years, coinciding exactly in time with human emissions.
Lank@117, again: "...rude and arrogant"? You mean as rude as Plimer, who (it has been claimed) gate-crashed creationist gatherings and tried to shout down the gathered faithful? Or arrogant, like Plimer, who refuses to answer straight questions, while touting his own omniscience?
"Many will attack and name call anyone who dissents from climate alarmism." Attack, as in issue death threats, as has been alleged has happened to certain prominent "AGW-consensus" scientists?
Come on, Lank. Don't be so sensitive, old chap.
I'm calling for nominations on the best defence of Plimer so far.
* We've had Aussie Joe, that Plimer wins cos he's not rude (forget the bad breeding quips)
* We've had this from William Wallace: *Climate change denial....lol. It is AGW denial, and it's a lot like homeopathy denial*
* Weâve had Betual with Al Gore made a mistake
* We had Owl, lamenting that he/she is English and ashamed ;
* Phil Sofferman, claiming record cold temperatures ( in Plimerâs home state), but then disappearing when asked for a reference;
* Then we get the full spectrum bingo from j.kross, claiming:
>1) First. Monbiot concedes that science is not settled by engaging Plimer.
>2)*Its all about taxes and more money & nothing about the environment.*
>3)*Science was raped (CRU etc) to create a global taxing machine.*
>4)*The rest of the debate is a no brainer; a journalist and geologist arguing over climate.*
>5)*The climate must be allowed to reach extremes as it has done for centuries or we're in serious trouble.*
>6)the population is getting wise on *dodgy science and partying world leaders trying to impoverize ordinary folk for Al Gore's religion of global warming*
* And David Duff arguing that:
>1) *Anthony Watts blew away any faith a reasonable man might have in the quality of land-based data*
>2)* the CRU imbroglio has utterly destroyed anyone's faith in the subsequent 'adjustments'.*
>3) *a reasonable man has to be cautious on satellite data [â¦with] yet more adjustments having to be made.*
>4) *Surely everyone can agree that global temperatures have waxed and wained over time,*
>5) *Picking out exactly and precisely how much of recent warming is due to Man is, I suggest, an impossibility at this particular moment.*
>6) *If the 'warmers' are right, the change will be gradual and Man can make adjustments as and when the effects are felt. Shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre is usually considered dangerous - and rather bad form!*
Any other nominees?
Lank #127 â...there are volumes of other examples to show clearly warmer times ...such as ice core data.â
I would be willing to pay attention to evidence from ice cores. The point is that in the video clip Plimer does not cite that kind of evidence, he cites the usual anecdotal evidence of farming on Greenland and vineyards in Britain in Roman and Medieval times. This is the kind of flimsy evidence that has been around on the Internet for years - long before Plimer even published his book. It is not good evidence and not the kind of evidence a supposed scientist should rely on.
Peterd#125 "the USGS...estimate" ...they do not measure but essentially guess. They have no way of accurately measuring the CO2 from these volcanoes. The bulk of sea floor active volcanoes have NEVER BEEN OBSERVED so how can you, USGS or anyone put an accurate figure on these emissions. Submarine emissions have occurred for billions of years. Totalled over the last few tens of thousands of years these are far more than total human emissions. You have a problem with time scale since the CO2 from seafloor volcanism can accumulate in seawater over many years and may not be added to atmosphere for many hundreds/thousands of years after they were released during volcanic activity.
j.kross, writing apparently with a straight face, says in defense of inaction on climate change that, "Its my planet too!"
Judging by the vacuous responses that j.kross made earlier, what is he or she really means is that "It's my planet *to plunder and pillage* too!" (Empahsis mine).
To j.kross: spare us the ignorant pedantics by arguing that the scientific evidence behind AGW is some conspiracy aimed at creating a global government that wishes to suppress individual freedoms and increase taxes. This is grade-school level thought. The fact is that human beings are pushing complex adaptive systems towards a point beyond which they will be unable to sustain us (and much of the planet's other biota).
Take it from me, pal: if we continue on the current path you won't have to worry about limitations being imposed on your "freedoms" by government; natural systems will do that all by themselves. And they will not be forgiving. In fact, conditions for all of us will be worse than you ever imagined.
J. Akerman appears to be suffering with A(D)DD (Attention (to Details) Deficit Disorder! I was not defending Plimer, just the opposite, I wrote, "I agree that Plimer came off badly".
j.akerman @ #130.
Great post. You about cover all of the scientific layperson denialists who have entered (or shall I more appropriately say contaminated) this thread with their wilful ignorance. Some (Lank, Wallace, Betula) are old hands at this sort of thing; others (j.kross, Owl), from my perspective are new arrivals. But they are all, in my opinion, like moist of the contrarians who write on Deltoid intellectual lightweights. The only reason I find some of them amusing is that their arguments are often so absurd that they are funny.
What is becoming clear is that the thread to which the denial community clings is getting shorter and shorter by the day. It does not help their veritably vacuous cause that they have to wheel out the same, tired, cliche ridden discredited nonsense of old: that it is cooling since 2000 (it is not), that the general scientific community was concerned about global cooling in the 1970s (not true), that the current warming is due to the sun (wrong) and many others.
Every thread discussing climate change on Deltoid is populated by at least a few of these comedians; I suppose the threads will become duller as their ranks continue to decline.
Is that really you Mr Harvey? Haven't heard from you since that lecture you gave on spoof.
Plimer was embarrassing, as we thought he would be. He has published a book with many flaws and should be confronted, as Tim has done successfully here.
Abbott says bring on a referendum election on climate change, he thinks he can win. Clever advertising will destroy the AGW theory and this is how they will go about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFbUVBYIPlI
[Lank](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
Consider:
Your repetition of Plimer's nonsense fails Ockham's razor on multiple counts.
Oh, and you have [overdue homework](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/firedoglake_book_salon_on_jame…).
no warming since 1998,
where are you mugs gunna hide when your global climate does not support your
lunatic ideas ?
After reading [Duff's appeal](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…), I have decided to re title [my request](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) as **"the best defense of Plimer and those who would throw Plimer under the bus yet continue to ignore the overwhelming weight of evidence and ignore the [misrepresentations of Watts](http://climateprogress.org/2009/07/29/the-video-that-anthony-watts-does…)"**
Tree mugger @137, your late submission is noted, and is upto par.
Thanks jackerman @123. That covers the basics. But Plimer seemed a hair's breadth from saying something like "USGS don't know how to measure CO2 from ocean vents & eruptions in the first place" and throwing out their whole methodology for that aspect.
It's bound to come up in a debate sooner or later (He's a Geologist OMG!) and Lank seems to be taking that up a few posts back.
What does Plimer think he's got on them, technically speaking, in disputing that point?
Tree mugger @ # 137 says, "no warming since 1998, where are you mugs gunna hide when your global climate does not support your lunatic ideas?"
Yup. Just as I said a few posts before that. More support for my hypothesis. The denialists are clinging to their discredited notions. And Tree mugger is the latest utter layman to enter here in order to do so...
Gordo: Yes, I am back. I was never away, actually, except for 3 weeks in Japan (and a 2 month sabbatical there before that). It is just that I have a lot of papers to review and others to write, plus a PhD thesis to read over.
Ugh. The Plimer interview was atrocious. I find the psychology of such behaviour utterly mystifying. I mean really: what on earth is wrong with the guy?
Not that it particularly matters, but re. the claim
Well the last couple of days have been pretty hot! Data for Adelaide Kent Town show that the mean maximum for December to date is 25.4C, as compared to a long-term average of 26.9.
Also, the November mean maximum temperature for 2009 was 31.1, 6 degrees above the average of 24.9. At that link you can see a summary of November weather in SA, including the first recorded November heatwave and a whole slew of highest ever temperatures.
And Barry Brook: Two years, three record heatwaves in South Australia has some nice context and explanation regarding SA and Australian weather events.
Plimer immediately gives the game away by immediately talking about taxes at the start instead of any science.
He is ugly and fat as well.
Abbott has not a snowball's chance in deep Catholic hell of winning an election, unless Rudd and half the Labor party are caught in flagrante delicto at a ritual Satanic baby sacrifice orgy.
el Gordo,
I looked at the comedy video you linked to on you tube. More contrarian gibberish; note that it is probably not peer-reviewed (at least as far as I can tell). Hardly new. I am sure that you could wheel out videos arguing that the Earth is flat, that people actually can walk on water and that the moon is made out of green cheese.
Again, I suggest that you look for your credible scientific information in rigidly peer-reviewed journals, and shy away from the contrarian sites. You have had a disturbing tendency to do this ever since I first encountered you on Deltoid, probably because it is easy to access web sites and harder to slice through articles published in scientific journals. But ease of accessibility does not make the information you endlessly cite here remotely correct.
David Duff#116... As much as I agreed with most of your lucid post...I don't think Plimer 'came off badly' at all! He was surrounded by 'the enemy' and yet, single-handedly, fought off the 'Invaders of Truth' by implementing sharp evasive manoevres and snuck up behind them... while their heads were buried in... 'The Sands of 1998'. If Mondiot listened carefully...he would find the answer to his question in all of Plimer's answers!
Muzz @140,
Plimer is a hairs breadth away from [saying anything](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/global_warming/plimer/). If he had something to back up his assertions he should have said it last night or cited supporting evidence in his book.
Instead, in the opportunity given him last night he chose to to repeat discredited claims such as USGS don't count emissions from under-sea volcanos.
Did you read [Bernard's reply](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) to Lank?
I see another David Bellamy in the making.
Mr. Akerman, I suggest a little snooze, you'll feel better when you wake up and you'll be able to understand simple statements, and better still, you will be able to write them, too!
Let me repeat, I am not defending Plimer, nor am I suggesting he be thrown under a bus, so alas, I am not eligible for your, no doubt, eagerly sought-after prize. I assume that your phrase "overwhelming weight of evidence is intended as irony - such a difficult thing to pull off in writing, don't you think? As for Mr. Watts, I will allow you a slight confusion because in an effort not to be too long-winded I failed to make clear that is the hundreds of photographs of US weather stations that convinced me never to bet the deeds of the house on their accuracy, not Mr. Watts's words on the subject.
By the way, what an ill-humoured lot you are, glad I'm not spending Christmas with any of you!
Plimer: "For gods sake, get some manners young man"!
Classic, what a twit.
Apparently it's the photos of stations that count for David Duff? Funny I thought the [analysis of reliablity](http://www.skepticalscience.com/Is-the-US-Surface-Temperature-Record-Re…) of those stations would have been important?
David Duff,
I just checked your blog site and its clear that you wear your contrarian heart on your sleeve. Your blogroll is a potpourri of libertarian/right wing and denialist sites.
JAkerman has you described to a tee. Your arguments, if one may call them that, are vacuous. Suggesting that the current rate of warming is gradual "if the warmers are right" lacks any empirical base. How do you define gradual? And what about the effects on our global ecological life-support systems? Or is that irrelevant in your view? What do you understand about the relationship between biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and human welfare? What do you know about spatial and temporal scales and global change? All of this is highly relevant to the current debate.
David Duff, how do these studies stack up against your percptions of photos of temperature stations?
Ohio.
Alternatively David, If its the picture that counts for you, how about these:
Or some graphics from here:
Lank @131:
So where's Plimer getting his data from?
In addition to Jeff taking David Duff to task on the baseless claim that:
>If the 'warmers' are right, the change will be gradual and Man can make adjustments as and when the effects are felt. Shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre is usually considered dangerous - and rather bad form!
David's claim above shows he has not looked seriously at the question. Here are some important questions for you David, to competent to make such a claim you should also be competent to answer the following, if âthe warmersâ are right:
1)How long will it take to halt further warming?
2)How much more warming is locking in due to radiative imbalance?
3)What areas will be most affected by the predicted warming this century?
4)How will various regions be affected?
5)What regions already receive disproportionately low access to food, and how will these vulnerable areas be affected by warming?
6)What is the immigration policies for Canada and Russia? What would the response of governments be to 500 million climate refugees?
7)And here is one [Iâve googled for you](http://tinyurl.com/ycmjc97). Have a browse.
tree mugger:
This meme, where it is based on HadCrut3 anomalies, is most likely about to go into the rubbish dump of history when the HadCrut3 anomaly for November is released. The anomaly only needs to be greater than the average since 1998 for the trend since 1998 to go positive. Considering that the GISS anomaly for November is 0.15°C higher than its average since 1998 and UAH's November is a record high for November, it would appear likely that HadCrut3's November anomaly will also be above the average since 1998.
Oh, the irony. You should ask yourself the same question, in particular, where are you going to hide when HadCrut3's estimate of global average temperature anomaly shows that it has been warming since 1998?
BTW, if GISS's December anomaly comes in at more than 0.65°C then 2009 will be the second warmest calendar year on record. The cool spell of late 2007/2008/early 2009 will be well and truly over.
Danniel#142
Check out the stats for South Australia...not just URBAN Kent Town...and while you're at it... ask us all about the LOWEST MAXIMA around the Eucla(WA) region over the last couple of months?
Janet Ackerman @147 Yes thanks, I did read that. Might take a while to sink in.
It seems so about Plimer's record. I had thought maybe he elaborated in his book (and there might be good refutations around). If he can't even do that, his gallop from "They don't include undersea volcanoes" "Yes they do" "Well they don't include all of them." "Yes they do, by looking at the ocean" "Well they're doing it wrong then" is fairly pathetic.
David Duff:
So WTF are you writing here, apart from being a troll?
OK, you're a duffer. That's pretty funny.
@lord-sidcup, zoot (#118 and 123):
Interestingly, the evidence of the rise and fall of vineyards in England from Roman to Mediaeval times can be pretty much entirely explained by economics, politics and pandemics.
Our Roman and Norman overlords came from wine-drinking cultures; and during the Roman occupation and for some time after the Norman invasion, importing wine cheaply in any quantity was impractical. Hence (despite Tacitus's (?) comment that Britain was too cold and damp to grow decent olives or grapes) in Roman times grapes were grown and wine made; prior to the invasion they had been imported.
Following the Norman invasion wine production again ramped up - but it fell away in the 13th century because Eleanor brought Aquitaine with her when she married Henry II - and Aquitaine includes Bordeaux, hence claret being the favourite wine of the British aristocracy for centuries.
During succeeding centuries, of course, we had the Black Death and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, both of which affected winemaking.
For giggles, though, ask a denialist what evidence there is of vineyards in England during, say, the 17th century. Pepys wrote of visiting one at Greenwich in May 1665; and Trandescant planted a vineyard on Salisbury's estate in Hertfordshire, north of London, in that same century.
Pilmer appears to like many scientists.
Arrogant, condescending and unable to admit mistakes or apologize when confronted with his own lies. He also has the tendency to shrug off the statements of those who are not scientists, therefore not as smart as he...
Sound familiar? Ahem.
Let's gather around and have a debate with Al Gore about the errors, exaggerations, fabrications and perhaps downright lies of "An Inconvenient Truth."
Oh wait, we can't. He won't allow debate, especially regarding his movie.
Pilmer's mistake was not following Gore's example by surrounding himself with kiss asses, while being shielded from any tough questions or debate.
Why didn't Pilmer just say the "debate is over" from the beginning? That way Monboit would look like a jackass and Pilmer like Al Gore...
phillip soffermann:
More like, fought off the 'Invaders of Truth' by telling bald-faced lies.
Sure. If you say so.
@Betula #163:
Is that so? Any, like, evidence or citation for that claim?
Now - how's about you produce a "downright lie" from AIT?
Betula:
This is Betula's version of the "my advocate is indefensible therefore your advocate is indefensible" argument.
BTW, I wonder how many people watch the video and not notice what Plimer's name is.
Bernard J.:
I think it's worth emphasizing this for Lank's benefit. Where Lank, pray tell, did the missing oxygen go? By an amazing coincidence, it just happens to equal accurately enough the amount of oxygen needed to burn the consumed fossil fuels and cleared forests. Talking with Lank is starting to feel like talking with Tim Curtin.
the Hadcrut3 [trend since 1998](http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcr…) already is positive.
the video is a real pain to watch. it is very difficult to corner a person, who will simply avoid the most direct question, and is willing to lie into the face of people.
i think the only way to do it, is by bringing posters with exact quotes along. and the faked graphs.
words alone don t seem to be able to penetrate so much dishonesty.
I think it's worth pointing out Plimer's worst or second worst lie highlighted in his "debate" with Monbiot where Monbiot asks Plimer about his corrupted quotation of a statement in one of Charles Keller's recent papers. Monbiot says Keller's paper says:
"The recent data from satellites and radiosondes blows away the contention that there has been no further warming."
and Monbiot points out that Plimer corrupted this to:
"The recent data from satellites and radiosondes shows that there has been no further warming."
When asked why he made this corruption, Plimer goes off on a tangent and starts talking about the difficulties in measuring temperatures using satellites.
This is Plimer's standard procedure. When asked about one of his lies or misinformation, he ignores the question and starts talking about a peripheral issue.
Janet, first apologies for changing your sex but fear not I have changed it right back again, and second, thank God for someone here prepared to converse as opposed to those Elizabeth Bott impersonaters who simply "thcream and thcream 'till I'm thick"!
As to your, er, fascinating questions my answer to all of them, except #7, is that I have no idea and I care even less. I cannot address #7 because I simply can't be arsed to go and look at it. However, in the spirit of mutual, er, well,perhaps not admiration but shall we say, tolerance, let me pose what I consider to be the truly important questions:
1: How reliable is the raw data for the last 200 years in coming to a conclusion concerning that mysterious entity known as the average global temperature?
2: How trustworthy are the people who have subjected this raw data to various, er, alterations (I choose a neutral word with care).
3: How reliable are the various proxies chosen by experts in this or that speciality who claim that this provides an historic record?
4: And likewise how reliable are their conclusions when based on data which has subsequently been altered?
5: How much is understood of the sun's influence on the globe, not just in astronomical terms but in terms of physics and chemistry?
6: From the evidence of this thread, why are so many 'warmers' obviously very deeply unpleasant people?
No, no, I think you can ignore that last one, just me teasing, but honestly, I can almost see the flecks of foam round their lips from here!
That's interesting, the one I regress on is http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/monthly
David Duff:
If you can take a break from your "pleasant" trolling, not to mention hypocrisy, perhaps you can explain how pleasant your experiences are of being lied to?
1: How reliable is the raw data for the last 200 years in coming to a conclusion concerning that mysterious entity known as the average global temperature?
the raw data is close to useless for such a purpose. could someone please give the raw ingredients for the 4 courses menu to Duffy, and ask him how the menu will taste?
2: How trustworthy are the people who have subjected this raw data to various, er, alterations (I choose a neutral word with care).
we are talking about A LOT of people here. they are mostly scientist. they are as trustworthy as the person who build your house, constructed your car or the computer you are now working on.
Robin @ 165...
Perhaps you could provide me with the Gore AIT debate transcript to help me along.
While I'm waiting..
1. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116909379096479919.html?mod=opinion_mai…
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOvCCTEfypk
Chris,
Thanks for the Plimer correction, but you failed to mention I misspelled Monbiot's name.
Slacker.
Since Plimer is mentioned at least once, I guess it's ok to place this link here:
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/146138
I'm at a loss of words for so much stupidity.
David Duff, let me answer only question 6: it's easy to be pleasant and suave when you don't give a damn. Many sociopaths are socially very pleasant, and they always seem to get the females. Who then end up chopped into pieces in plastic bags on garbage dumps, or buried in cement... But I digress.
It is extremely rude to interrupt.'
'You want to bully people....'
'For God sake get some manners young man'.
Plimer, for goodness sake answer the questions!
What a devious, boorish character Plimer is.
I now wonder if he actually wrote his book as he does not appear to be that familiar with its contents.
"6: From the evidence of this thread, why are so many 'warmers' obviously very deeply unpleasant people?"
eg: Mr. Vermeer, above. I mean, what a truly repellent little comment.
Mr. O'Neil asks, "perhaps you can explain how pleasant your experiences are of being lied to? Oh, I get over it, and watching them wriggle during the forthcoming academic enquiries as their reputations swirl down the toilet will be such fun.
And the other thing that keeps me cheerful is the occasional chink of honesty that shines through the fanaticism in 'The Church of Scienceology', for example, 'sod's' comment above in which, quite rightly in my view, he tells us that adjusted data is a concoction similar to turning raw ingredients into a dinner! Couldn't have put it better myself, 'Sod', we all know the hugely variable outcome of that exercise - do you mind if I use that metaphor elsewhere? (Incidentally, 'SoD' is the acronym I use for 'Son of Duff', no relation are you? Take that as a 'no', shall I?)
'Sod' continues, "they are as trustworthy as the person who build your house, constructed your car or the computer". Happily, they have been building houses for millenia so they mostly get it right butnot always! Alas, as for cars, every few months, it seeems, I hear of yet another range being withdrawn because of some major fault - and they've been making those for over a hundred years. As for computers, well, to be kind perhaps you would like some time to come up with a rather better example of Man's infinite skill and wisdom!
@ 66
Exactly. If there is no data (or at least insufficient data) on undersea volcanogenic CO2, then how can Plimer make any reliable claims about it at all?
ask us all about the LOWEST MAXIMA around the Eucla(WA) region over the last couple of months?
phillip soffermann @ 159
As I said @ 94, and which you conveniently ignored:
Ooh, can I play this game too? Darwin just had its hottest recorded October, and the hottest recorded minimum night time temperature.
You have no shame at all, do you? Any blatant cherry picking lie will do, as long as it serves your ideology.
Duff said:
>1: How reliable is the raw data for the last 200 years in coming to a conclusion concerning that mysterious entity known as the average global temperature? etc.
I think the question should be is how reliable is the conclusion and data of any alternative explanation?
Given that there is no reliable alternative explanation for all the climate change observations around the world (because no 'denier' is interested in proposing a scientific explanation that stands the smallest scrutiny), then one can not risk taking no action.
Whenever I need to ascertain the efficacy of a theory I first sample the pleasantness of the participants in blog discussions. Everyone knows that communists are unpleasant people, and that incompetent scientists are communists, so simply by discerning which of the two sides of every debate is unpleasant I am able to say conclusively which scientists are incompetent. Let me just say am I glad I am not not sacrificing any ruminants this solstice with you warmers!
I've never actually seen GIsh gallop on video, but I can't imagine he's any better at it than Plimer. That was a trademark exhibition ...
mb#181
How dare you! None of us warmers would ever think of sacrifising one of mother earth's creatures. That and taxes is what communism is all about!
MB (#181): Yep, evangelical Christians are very nice people (they must be as Christianity is all about peace and love, right?), therefore intelligent design must be correct. If only Darwin had known! I must get on the phone to Richard Dawkins.
On the other hand, Monckton was caught on video calling a group of young people, including one who is Jewish, the Hitler Youth (on two different occasions). This about as unpleasant as one can get without actually breaking the law, so...
nemesis #184, you miss the point. Monckton may indeed call fresh-faced Jewish enviroMENTALists "Hitler Youth", but at least he does it politely. And in that trustworthy, irresistible aristocratic twang which just radiates warmth and truth...
That was surely meant as a playful compliment. The current Pope was a member of The Hitler Youth, and according to you Christianity is about peace and love, so they must necessarily have been upstanding youngsters in their day, if a bit spirited. You wouldn't call a man working on a cure for HIV unpleasant, would you?
mb
Keep up the positive thinking, but I'm afraid your words will fall on deaf ears around here.
Whoever impersonated el gordo won. If I had been sipping tea when I read that I might have died. This sport is dangerous.
Yeah, I really wish I'd thought of that.
Gosh, you know that it has only just occurred to me that coming from Monckton's political perspective, calling someone a member of the Hitler Youth may actually be a real mark of respect. My whole world has just been turned upside-down! I need to have a lie down now.
Slightly off topic, something Barnaby said about the US defaulting. If that comes to fruition it would turn all our world's upside down and this is the problem.
http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html
I thought that the moderator did a moderately good job in keeping the debate focused in the face of Plimer's attempt to filibuster, but he could probably have done better in terms of pointing out the Plimer had evaded every one of Monbiot's questions about Plimer's own sources, even though those questions that were provided to him well in advance.
Betula:
Hmm. I wonder who said:
You're right. There's no correction of Plimer's name there.
171 Chris,
I use WoodForTrees. See [plot](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend/plot/wti/from:…). The trend looks level but you can see the value in the [data](http://woodfortrees.org/data/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend/plot/wti/from:…)
We can show the [trend alone](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend) but of course it's auto scaled- see the x-axis range.
So, It's _just_ positive.
> ... Keller's paper says:
> "The recent data from satellites and
> radiosondes blows away the contention that
> there has been no further warming."
>
>and Monbiot points out that Plimer
> corrupted this to:
>
> "The recent data from satellites and
> radiosondes shows that there has been no
> further warming."
>
> When asked why he made this corruption,
> Plimer goes off on a tangent ....
Anyone familiar with clinical confabulation, where you may hear imaginativegap-filling in superficially fluent conversation, but with a different answer made up each time?
el gordo:
Thanks for providing the demonstration. The irony is a nice touch too.
186 188 mb,
If you don't already post at Denial Depot, please do so. :)
I wonder if there is a correlation between bad spelling and and impertinence.
@Betula #175:
[Phillip Sofferman](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
Cut the crap and check out the [maximum anomaly stats](http://i49.tinypic.com/2lvd3ch.gif) for all of Australia - not just your cherry-picked areas. And whilst you're at it... ask us all about the [minimum anomalies](http://i46.tinypic.com/20k8vbq.gif) around the country over last month.
JennieL#142~BJ# 200...Check out the BOM stats for EYRE (WA). On 9 Dec 2009 (8 days ago) the MIN TEMP was 0.2C. Three more days so far this month had MIN TEMPS there ranging from 1C to 1.7C !!! Too cold to pick cherries...welcome to the Great Australian Sceptics Summer!
#132 Oh, and the Pope has shocked the faithful at Babelhagen declaring that the arctic would be free of ice in 5 years. That is an astronomical call and he is infallible. Truly earthshattering and no one here has heard it?
Does anyone know Al Gore's take on quantum chromodynamics? I need to know what to think about the Standard Model. The name suggest an appealing theory--not as much as say an Objective Model, but it is close. I was intrigued when I kept hearing eggheads talk about there being flavors of particles, but alarmed when I discovered that none of them were cookie dough. I was even more disturbed when the "scientists" began referring to their special unitary group, which sounded a bit too collectivist for science. Was any of this mentioned in Al Gore's movie? I admit I never watched it, because it had "inconvenient" in the title, and why would I watch a movie that tells me that it is inconvenient? That's just a waste of time!
#201: Good god, man, give it up already.
Well, actually if like Lank @ 131,you were silly enough to say
SOFFERMAN: You made a claim, I asked for a reference, you haven't provided one.
GRAPES GROWN IN ENGLAND:
http://www.english-wine.com/content.html
"There are nearly 400 commercial vineyards in England and Wales covering approximately 2000 acres of land in total. Nearly all are in the southern half of England and Wales. Most English and Welsh vineyards are small (less than 5 acres), many very small (less than 1 acre). Only a small number exceed 25 acres and just a handful 50 acres. The largest (Denbies, Dorking, Surrey) has around 200 acres of vines under cultivation."
So much for the "ANGLO-ROMAN VINEYARDS" proof of global cooling (or whatever their "logic" is).
206 Vince,
But the Chinese shipped grapes from Greenland through the North West Passage to the Orient during the MWP. I read it at Denial Depot so I know it's true!
It makes me laugh when people who point out that what Plimer says on a free-to-air broadcast is wrong get accused of attempting to silence dissent! I expect any comments he cared to make here would get through in full - I'd love to see what he has to say for himself - but he has to know his scientific arguments are scientifically indefensible and a good many people here will make the effort to check facts and sources and he'd be forced to try and defend his nonsense.
The man's arguments are so bad they deserve ridicule - as do some of the arguments in his defence. Volcanic CO2? So why is ocean CO2 content rising from the top down? The arguments are so bad even he couldn't truly believe them. He's a fraud.
Betula writes:
>*Pilmer appears to like many scientists. Arrogant, condescending and unable to admit mistakes or apologize when confronted with his own lies. He also has the tendency to shrug off the statements of those who are not scientists, therefore not as smart as he... Sound familiar? Ahem.*
Just as [I said](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…)
>Plimer is copying the [Wrecking Crew](http://tcfrank.com/books/the-wrecking-crew/) tactics, which were used by those who were the force behind the Bush ascendency.
>Its a win-win tactic, they get to trash science/government by being really bad at it, which proves their point, that public science/government is not to be trusted.
Certain Ideologues fall for that trick in a big way.
Whirly#206...see my post@#201...then go to BOM(Australia) and check out say CEDUNA,SA~MIN TEMPS December 1-14,2009 and associated local climate data. JennieL should investigate all this too. Have a 'Cool' Christmas Chappies!
David Duff shows his colours, Duff casually asserts that:
>*If the 'warmers' are right, the change will be gradual and Man can make adjustments as and when the effects are felt. Shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre is usually considered dangerous - and rather bad form!*
This prompted my response:
>David's claim above shows he has not looked seriously at the question. Here are some important questions for you David, to competent to make such a claim you should also be competent to answer the following, if âthe warmersâ are right:
>1) How long will it take to halt further warming?
>2) How much more warming is locking in due to radiative imbalance?
>3) What areas will be most affected by the predicted warming this century?
>4) How will various regions be affected?
>5) What regions already receive disproportionately low access to food, and how will these vulnerable areas be affected by warming?
>6) What is the immigration policies for Canada and Russia? What would the response of governments be to 500 million climate refugees?
>7) And here is one [Iâve googled for you]( http://tinyurl.com/ycmjc97). Have a browse.
While Duffâs earlier response demonstrated unfounded assumptions, his subsequent reply showed a callas disregard for evidence and inquiry, Duff writes:
>*As to your, er, fascinating questions my answer to all of them, except #7, is that I have no idea and I care even less. I cannot address #7 because I simply can't be arsed to go and look at it.*
Well it happens that people who can be âarsedâ have looked at these questions, and you can find a [summary assessment here]( http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/publications/AR4/index.html).
Then to cover his lack of supporting evidence Duff gives a Plimeresque reply with his own set of questions, on which Martin Vermeer, [nails Duff appropriately]( http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…)
No one seems to have mentioned that Plimer has directorships in a number of mining companies. It appears that he makes far more money from these than from his university pay, or the book.
Representations to the boards of these companies pointing out the ethical standards of their fellow director might be effective.
SOFFERMAN: You made a claim. You have failed to provide a reference. Are you trying to plimer me?
The graph of the mean maximum temperature at Ceduna.
Add the filter for 2009 and it doesn't show any cooling for December:
http://reg.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/cvg/av?p_stn_num=018012&p_prim_eleme…
Here is Ceduna mean minimum temperature for 2009. Add the 1971-2000 average and I can't see that it supports your assertion:
http://reg.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/cvg/av?p_stn_num=018012&p_prim_eleme…
So, where is your reference on which you base your assertion about recent weather in SA?
I found this:
http://reg.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/extremes/timeseries.cgi?gr…
"Average number of very hot days". It shows a linear trend increase of 40% between 1957-2008.
Changing the filters, the "Hot days" trend shows a 60% increase over 51 years.
"Very Hot nights": 47% increase.
"Hot nights": 28% increase.
"Cold Days": 22% decrease.
"Very Cold Days": 53% decrease
"Average Warm Spell Duration" has increased by 170%
So, SOFFERMAN, please show cause why I should refrain from calling you a cretin.
Now I live in Adelaide.
Could Mr Sofferman tell us about November here? Unprecedented (for November) 10 day long heatwave and the hottest November on record by 3.5deg C! And there's no global warming because the first week of December was cool? (It was 40.9 yesterday).
Give me a break!
Betula @163, who wrote âPilmer appears to like many scientistsâ and âMonboit would look like a jackass and Pilmer like Al Goreâ reminds me of a story a now-retired colleague recently told me. In his street, they held a party and he met neighbours, one of whom (an accountant, apparently) told him he was reading the new book by âPilmerâ.
I donât know why, but I find the idea of dyslexic people getting their ideas on climate from a book by âPilmerâ to be hilarious. And sad.
Lank (@various): yes, the UGSG estimate may be inaccurate. BUT, the estimate would have to be a couple of orders of magnitude too low to affect the conclusion. The reasons it is unlikely to be so much in error have been nicely summarized by Bernard, Chris OâNeill, and Eli Rabett.
Whirly... 2 days the mainstream media in SA reported that the first 2 weeks of this December were the coolest on record (BOM Stats)...no mention of fancy filters or prime element indexes. Suggest you take your query to the SA Ombudsman.
PJA @215,
That is clearly a trend of cooling.
Beware the coming ice-age.
SOFFERMAN: Still no reference to support your weather-related assertions.
I have wasted another period of time searching the archives of the Adelaide Advertiser.
I found no reference to support your assertion.
I found:
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26490264-2682,00.html - bookies taking bets on whether it will exceed 40degC today
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26485838-2682,00.html - rainfall record shows evidence of climate change.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26488023-911,00.html - Climate Ninjas scale Opera House.
SOFFERMAN - please show cause why I should refrain from calling you a vacuous, evasive, lying cretin.
The interesting thing about the weather lately is the turbulence in the mid-latitudes. Which is probably what you would expect as a cool trend develops.
mb has to practice his art somewhere, what harm in a bit of light relief?
El GORDO: "turbulence in the mid-latitudes...probably what you would expect as a cool trend develops."
Reference/data to support both supposed observation and hypothesis?
TO ALL HOTHEADS NOW... yes,we did have a heatwave in November... caused by 2 large HP Systems blocking the movement of air over much of the southern half of Australia. As it does, the SUN beamed down on the 'sunburnt country' across the sweeping plains ... of drought and flooding rains... and in the ragged mountain ranges (Flinders Ranges)...and a few days climbed over 40C. The affected air was cloudless, free of pollution and contained infinitesimal levels of CO2. The heat was created by a process known, to some people, as SOLAR RADIATION EXCITING MOLECULES OF MATTER on the ground and in the air. The ground temperature was way hotter than the air...so guess where that heat dissipated to? Now, the recent cool-spell was caused by a speedy flow of frigid air from Antarctica...not a sudden drop in CO2 levels!
The mile-high Mount Baw Baw in Australia saw a dusting of snow in December (summer)!!!!!
Record early snow in San Antonio and Texas?
LONDON â Snow fell in London and much of the southeast on Wednesday, pushing bookmakers to slash the odds on a white Christmas as forecasters warned of
Early season snow spells holiday weekend relief for Tahoe ski resorts
Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds
The warmer's seem to deny !!!!!!
@223
You're confusing weather and climate. Your ignorance is showing.
SOFFERMAN: Still no reference from you.
"Now, the recent cool-spell was caused by a speedy flow of frigid air from Antarctica...not a sudden drop in CO2 levels!"
I must have missed the scientific paper which claimed recent weather was caused by a sudden drop in CO2 levels. Well done for debunking it, but can you provide a reference to it please?
Shorter Sofferman (#223) and tree mugger (#224): there's weather out there, so that proves you all wrong.
Pathetic! They make Plimer (and Curtin actually) look positively rational!
New measurements from a NASA satellite show a dramatic cooling in the upper atmosphere that correlates with the declining phase of the current solar cycle. For the first time, researchers can show a timely link between the Sun and the climate of Earth's thermosphere, the region above 100 km, an essential step in making accurate predictions of climate change in the high atmosphere.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasa-shows-quiet-sun-means-cool…
Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.
The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory.
http://en.rian.ru/papers/20091216/157260660.html
Meanwhile in troposphere-relevant climate news today:
Hmmmm...who to trust, ScienceDaily or Pravda? I wonder....
Unless, of course, there's actually a fire ...
And yet, as they point out, the troposphere is still warming ...
There's a reason for this, and it's not the one you want to hear. Though apparently you're not bright enough to understand, they're saying that their satellite observations further substantiate the basic physics underlying our current understanding of climate.
Own goal. Don't let it hit you in the nuts.
The fact that Russia is banking much of her economic future on expanded exports of oil and natural gas couldn't have any effect on Pravda's reporting, could it?
I can't imagine that enlightened, objective, ruler of Russia - Putin - to allow himself to be corrupted by all that money, can you?
We know more about science that scientists do! Just like Sarah Palin! Just like Anthony Watts.
dhogaza your a carbon trader !
how many CO2 gobbling trees have you planted ? Me, 10000, you zero !
have you worked in the blistering sun, the snow and the rain ?
how much time have you spent under the night sky ? Not much eh ! spending too much time on your pc protecting your carbon investments
Phillip Sofferman and 'tree mugger'.
You guys really do not understand what a big pile of shit it is that you are attempting to push up a hill - and with a teeny weeny little stick...
Consider the trends in:
for Australia since 1970.
Look at all the red cirlces, and look at all the blue circles. What does the relative proportion of red to blue tell you? Hmmm? Well?
It's interesting to consider that where there are increases in 'frost nights', this is usually related to the fact that there is less night cloud cover than previously, which permits greater radiation of stored ground heat to space after sunset.
I grew impatient with pasting links, so I'll leave it to you idiots to figure out the mind-bogglingly complex process for bringing up the various precipitation maps. Once you crack this nut, you might like to consider the implications for Australia's agriculture, horticulture, potable water supplies, and ecosystem functions.
If you have a dispute with the clear warming, drying trends in Australia, please be very explicit in exactly what it is that you are saying, because the bloody evidence would say otherwise.
In the words of the two Arizona State University Office of Climatology researchers, the adjustments that were being made to the raw USHCN temperature data were "producing a statistically significant, but spurious, warming trend" that "approximates the widely-publicized 0.50°C increase in global temperatures over the past century." It would thus appear that in this particular case of "data-doctoring," the cure was much worse than the disease. And it likely still is! In fact, it would appear that the cure may actually be the disease.
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V12/N50/C1.php
CARBON DIOXIDE AND SOLAR FLARE EFFECTS
In addition to the above findings, these Swiss scientists have also determined that the sun's solar flare activity has been greater in the last 60 years than in the previous 1,000 years.
Despite the controlled media's claims to the contrary, carbon dioxide emissions do not cause global warming.
Such warming effects are instead due to increased solar activity which in turn causes an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
http://www.truth-it.net/solar_flare_effects.html
WHERE'S ALL THE CARBON TRADERS ????
#241 cites a seven year old pile of ordure dropped by buffoons. #241 has no relevance to Tim's post on Ian Plimer the climatically delusional fraudster.
tree mugger you're a Plimer wannabe as desperate as the great man himself to duck the Plimer matters of proven dishonesty and ineptitude, to get back to just making shit up and passing it off to Fox newsers. Carry right on it's amusing me.
Um..... Bernie, that's only a piddly little time frame, how old are you ?
38 yrs data might seem like, ancient, but in the scheme of things it is insignificant, drought comes and goes as does the sunspot cycle.
NO not your bicycle !!!!!!
tree mugger:
If you're going to cite discredited research by Friis-Christensen and Lassen (1991) then I'll cite why it is discredited, e.g.:
The Lure of Solar Forcing:
"Sometimes even papers in highly respected journals fall into the same trap. Friis-Christensen and Lassen (Science, 1991) was a notorious paper that purported to link solar-cycle length (i.e. the time between sucessive sunspot maxima or minima) to surface temperatures that is still quoted widely. As discussed at length by Peter Laut and colleagues, the excellent correlation between solar cycle length and hemispheric mean temperature only appeared when the method of smoothing changed as one went along. The only reason for doing that is that it shows the relationship (that they âknewâ must be there) more clearly. And, unsurprisingly, with another cycle of data, the RELATIONSHIP FAILED TO HOLD UP.
By the way, you haven't yet told us where you are going to hide when HadCrut3's estimate of global average temperature anomaly shows that it has been warming since 1998.
So far you've been nothing but a credulous troll propagating intellectual diarrhea that has nothing to do with Plimer's fraud and lies. Unless you want to say something in this thread about Plimer's actions then get lost.
Bernard & Whirly...check out the BOM stats for ELLISTON S.A. (Dec. 1-14, 2009). NB 9Dec!(Record coldest December day EVER!)
chris, that was a crack up how gore made a fool of himself at Copenhagen,
and do you remember the one about the polar bears, hahaha, like they've never eaten cubs before ! and what about the hockey stick, hahahaha some people will believe anything.
eh chris, are you a carbon trader ?
I think its worthwhile pointing out that the Institute of Economic Analysis referred to by tree mugger is an economic thinktank founded and presided over by Andrei Illarionov, a libertarian economist and well known climate change denier. He is also a senior fellow of the Cato Institute, another rightwing thinktank with close links to oil companies. You can checkout his views on his [climate change blog](http://www.aillarionov.livejournal.com). I fail to see any reason to view the IEA as a credible authority on climate change.
I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a decade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent coauthors I have consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent. The surface temperature data is a contaminated mess with a significant warm bias, and as I have detailed elsewhere the IPCC fabricated evidence in its 2007 report to cover up the problem. Climate models are in gross disagreement with observations, and the discrepancy is growing with each passing year. The often-hyped claim that the modern climate has departed from natural variability depended on flawed statistical methods and low-quality data. The IPCC review process, of which I was a member last time, is nothing at all like what the public has been told: Conflicts of interest are endemic, critical evidence is systematically ignored and there are no effective checks and balances against bias or distortion.
http://www.financialpost.com/story-printer.html?id=2056988
'[Tree mugger](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…)'.
Are you saying that 40 years (1970-2009 = 40 years) of national weather data is not sufficient to indicate that there has been a warming trend? What is the bloody point then of [this post](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…), or [this one](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…), or [this one](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…)?
Do you even know what point it is that you are attempting to make?
[Phillip Sofferman](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
You really are having trouble seeing the wood for the trees, aren't you?
Do you even know what point it is that you are attempting to make?
Prove it.
Prove it.
Prove it.
Prove it.
Prove it.
Prove it.
Prove it.
Prove it.
Tree mugger - "I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a decade."
Good on you mate so you of course can provide a link to all the peer reviewed papers you have written describing all the problems.
BTW have you done any original research? Built a computer climate model? Done anything actually useful?
Meanwhile, The Australian has weighed in with [an editorial mentioning the Plimer/Monbiot encounter](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/the-parallel-universe-with…) this morning:
I wrote a letter to the editor: "Please, select any argument from Plimer's book. I can guarantee that real climate scientists will demolish it convincingly and lucidly, unlike the ducking and weaving that viewers saw on Lateline."
Perhaps I should have just said: The Stupid, It Burns.
After writing my earlier comment above I couldn't resist sending another letter to The Australian:
phillip soffermann:
Soffermann is a stage 1 denialist, i.e. he tries to imply that there might not be global warming, contrary to the data, let alone human causation. As such he is not capable of rational consideration.
tree mugger:
No, but you're a f...wit. You have not said one thing about Plimer's lies and fraud. I can only conclude that you have no problem with Plimer's lies and fraud and thus don't care about lying to us. We know for a fact you've put up some bullshit and we don't know if you've done anything other than spray this thread with lies.
Tree Mugger #247:
This one by Tree Mugger had me on the floor:
"In collaboration with a lot of excellent coauthors I have consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent."
As Bernard said, prove it, show us your esteemed credentials. Given the comic-level book gibberish you spew out here in large quantities, this is all a load of hot air (excuse the pun).
By "Collaboration" I assume that you have a lengthy publication list in peer-reviewed journals. So, tell us all here what these studies show and where they are published.
You know what? I bet you can't. That is because I have a feeling that you have not published a darned thing in your entire life. Certainly no scientific papers. But, heck, prove me wrong.
Jane, I really feel we're beginning to get along, don't you? So it's a pity, really, that I must introduce an element of friction into what looks like a blooming friendship! Now, I do realise that logic is not high on the list of skills aquired by those of the feminine persuasion - which is just as well because I can't think of a single logical reason why women would marry men, but I digress - which is made all too clear by your list of questions to me. You see, all of them pre-suppose that global warming is a given. But it is not, despite the fervor from the congregation of 'The Church of Scienceology', so many of whom, with delicious irony, fail to understand science.
The fundamental, absolute basis, the bedrock, of science is measurement which is why mathematics is so crucial. My advice to anyone interested in this particular climate branch of science is to just concentrate on the measurements, both the means used to obtain them, and the means used to adjust them. Everything else can be set aside until that has been absolutely and conclusively proven to be open and above board. I have no desire to rehearse the arguments about whether or not the leading scientists in this controversy (on both sides) have behaved properly but at the very least, and from their own keyboards, it is self-evident that they have not been, shall we say, completely scrupulous. And again, I would suggest, echoing the words of people with greater knowledge than me, that the means available to obtain raw data for measurement are, putting it mildly, not clear cut and utterly dependable.
I began taking an interest in this field about 4 or 5 years ago with absolutely no pre-conceived ideas and certainly no expertise. The only fact I knew was that the temperature of earth has always varied - thank God, otherwise we wouldn't be here! I have read both sides of the argument and I can only tell you in absolute honesty that you, the 'warmers', have failed to make a convincing case. This, in and of itself, does not disprove global warming, it remains like a verdict in a criminal case in the Scottish courts "unproven".
Finally, I am always amused that so many 'warmers' apply the word 'sceptic' as an insult. It is, of course, not only a great compliment when applied to any scientist in any field, but an absolute necessity as a quality, otherwise how would science progress without scientific sceptics?
David Duff writes:
>*I am always amused that so many 'warmers' apply the word 'sceptic' as an insult.*
David more rubbish, you can't even get your terms correct. Those who base thier position on the overwhelming weight of evidence do not use sceptic as an insult. Skepticism is refreshingly rare from denialist. E.g skepticsism is entirely lacking from your [recent contributionthis](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
Duff then drops this one:
>*I have read both sides of the argument and I can only tell you in absolute honesty that you, the 'warmers', have failed to make a convincing case.*
David Duff, you've got a short memeory, you've just demonstrated to us that you haven't looked at the evidence and. And you also told us You can't even be "arsed" to look at the evidence. Your claims are disingenuous.
[Jeff](Ihttp://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…), I agree, and also with Edner and Bernard,
Tree mugger busted my BS detector with [that load](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
Sorry, the peer review process of the IPCC is definitely compromised.
Those of you who have been fooled by the IPCC's attempt to spread fear and doom to the population of the world need to come to term's with the fact that because of your one-eyed gullibilities
you have only been able to see what fit's your own belief's, to scared to admit how moronically stupid you people are for being suckered into the second biggest scam in the world's history.
I've given you some other side's of the story, and now i'm going out to PEER off the verandah
tree mugger, yeah we get that your asserting [this stuff](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…). We are now asking your to back it up. You've been called on it at least three times now!
Show us the evidence.
David Duff:
David Duff is a stage 1 denialist, i.e. he denies global warming exists let alone human causation. As such, he is beyond reason. Consistent with not caring about Plimer's lies.
First, Tree Mugger:
You are cannily like Plimer. Please answer the qwuestions posed to you by Bernard and myself. You make a series of claims but do not back them up. What are you scientific qualifications?
To David Duff: writing as a senior scientist, scepticism is a natural aspect of our profession. Scientists rarely agree on anything, but the more important point is that public policy must be based on consensus. And there are few areas of empirical research today that exhibit such broad support amongst the scientific community as human-induced climate change. No, I am more than happy to refer to many - perhaps most - of those who attack the broad consensus on climate change as "denialists". This is because many of them are distorting science to promote a pre-determined world view and political (e.g. deregulatory) agenda. In other words, science is only being (ab)used as a tool to achieve this goal. Science is not on you side, pal, and has not been since the beginning. The fact that many in the denial camp have repeatedly switched their approach as more data have come in is a case in point. First of all global warming was a doomsday myth, then it was happening but was due to the sun or part of natural cycles, then it was good for us, then it stopped warming in 1998, then we will adapt anyway, then the rate of rise is not significant, then it was warmer in the MWP *et al ad nauseum*. For the denialists, the goal posts can endlessly be moved around because the agenda has remained the same from the beginning. DO NOTHING.
tree mugger:
Classic ignoramus.
[massive off-topic cut and paste trimmed. tree mugger is now on moderation. Tim]
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=2009120…
Congratulations [David Duff](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
You now have absolutely all preconceived Denialist ideas, and still, most certainly, no expertise.
You must be so proud.
Tree Muggger,
Re post # 265 Let us know when Warrick Hughes has found something.
Re post #266:
*Myth one Average global temperature (AGT) has increased over the last few years.*
Well Bob Carter will be sad to learn that [that aint a myth](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1970/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:…)
Lets deal with Myth 2 and 3 together
*Myth 2 During the late 20th Century, AGT increased at a dangerously fast rate and reached an unprecedented magnitude.*
*Myth 3 AGT was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times, has sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years (the Mann, Bradley & Hughes "hockey stick" curve and its computer extrapolation).*
*Facts 3 The Mann et al. curve has been exposed as a statistical contrivance. There is no convincing evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20th century changes in AGT were unusual, nor that dangerous human warming is underway.*
Bob Carter got that wrong. From [Moberg's temperature reconstructions]( http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/moberg2005/moberg2005.html) for the last 2000 years, the mean anomaly is -0.35 K with StDev of 0.22 K (relative to 1961-90 average).
Plotting Moberg's mean with +/- 3StDev gives [this control chart]( http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/s…).
We are already above the +3 sigma range.
Janet, calm down, dear, it's really not the end of the world. Please re-read your questions to me and then tell me if I am wrong to describe them as being based on the belief that global warming is a given.
Incidentally, if anyone here is interested (anyone . . ?) in reading an example of exemplary science in which measurement is tested to see if it leads to the conclusions posited by the measurers, I urge you all to go to Lucia's blackboard:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/gisstemp-for-november-0-68-c/
and also read the comments thread which is a civilised, rigorous and good-humoured discussion on the subject.
However, there is much humour to be derived from this threa here. For example, Mr. Harvey, above, who is, he tells us "a senior scientist" and offers these contradictory thoughts:
"scepticism is a natural aspect of our profession. Scientists rarely agree on anything" Excellent, excellent!
"public policy must be based on consensus. And there are few areas of empirical research today that exhibit such broad support amongst the scientific community as human-induced climate chang" Eh?! You mean the truth of a scientific proposition depends on a show of hands? So, in the 19th c. belief in phlogiston was the correct scientific stance. So where does the scepticism you praised above come in?
Sorry, Janet, apparently lack of logic is not confined to women - but you knew that anyway, didn't you?
Finally Mr. Harvey goes into rant mode and what gave me a nice chuckle was that virtually everything he accuses the sceptics of, they accuse him of it, too. So that really takes the debate onwards and upwards, doesn't it?!
Tim
Ian Plimer's performance in his debate with Monbiot has to be seen to be believed.
You are a liar
In many places it takes four years to acquire a minimum survey of a scientific field to begin an intensive study in one specialty over the years to come. However with alternative methods of learning it takes an initial five years, but when you have completed the program you would receive absolutely no benefit from additional study. You pay a little more upfront, sure, but the rewards last a lifetime.
Tree Mugger, Unfortunately it is quicker to spout BS than debunk it. So do me a favour, can you provide citations to back each of Carters claims in your Gish Gallop cut and paste above. I reckon most of it is bogus. Show me how much is supportable with the weight of current evidence.
Myth 1.
Vomitting long lists of Denialist crap will so overwhelm the evidence supporting real climate science, that those who actually understand what it is about which they speak, will give up and run away.
Facts 1 and 2.
Tree molester is so wrong that he is not even wrong, and there is no bottom to his Stupid.
It is with extreme regret that I do not have the time just now to rub your nose in the sticking piles of poop that you shat out during [your rant](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…), but I know that others here will take up cudgels and beat the rest of the crap out of you.
If there are any piles not attended to, I'll help scrape the floor of your excrement tomorrow.
Oh, and as with so many other uneducated, uninformed denialati here, you [have homework](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…). [Lots of it](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…). Perhaps you could even do [the homework](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/firedoglake_book_salon_on_jame…) that Dave Andrews, Wee Willie Wallace, Betula, el gordo, and other denialists are too afraid to touch.
Tree Mugger,
Still have not answered my question. So that means I am right - you have no scientific acumen. Many thanks for confirming it.
This "Fact" you produced is further proof: *Within error bounds, AGT has not increased since 1995 and has declined since 2002, despite an increase in atmospheric CO2 of 8% since 1995*.
Two points to dismiss this kindergarten level science. First, climate systems across the biosphere are largely deterministic. Stochastic processes occur at small scales, but as these are aggregated they exhibit more and more deterministic properties. This means that changes in deterministic systems are often only detectable over many years; 30 years or more in global climate regimes. Cherry picking any year over the past 10-20 to make a point is therefore meaningless. Second, like other deterministic systems, there is a pronounced lag between a variable and its effects on processes that emerge over large scales. As a scientist, I cringe when I see utter laypeople like Tree Mugger try to infer that an 8% increase in atmsopheric C02 levels must be accompanied by a statistically significant rise in global temperatures over the same period as evidence for his wafer-thin hypothesis. Lags are characteristic of deterministic systems. The extinction debt is one such lag whereby the loss of habitat or ecosystem area "x" may take many years, perhaps as long as 400, to manifest itself on the population demographics of species "y".
Those who wheel out the scientifically vacuous arguments of Tree Mugger and his ilk brazenly expose their ignorance for all to see. But this is typical of the denial community, whose rank and file are often not scientists and have no basic grounding in the fields they routinely distort. They are driven by their political views into fields well beyond their competence, and these may be any that involve public policy where private profit is involved.
Tree mugger has spammed this thread with every foolish distraction it could think of, acting just like Plimer himself.
[Louis Hissink](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
It's all well and good to accuse Tim Lambert of being a liar (and for the simple 'crime' of saying that Plimer's interview has to be seen to be believed!), but perhaps you could actually explain why you believe him to be so.
Or are you too afraid to atually present any substance in case you're refuted to within an inch of your life?
David Duff, you might like to pretent you didn't say it but my response included addressing this baseless and fallacious claim you made:
>*If the 'warmers' are right, the change will be gradual and Man can make adjustments as and when the effects are felt. Shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre is usually considered dangerous - and rather bad form!*
BTW David, how is Watts going with disproving the temperature measures. Are those photos still dominating your thinking?
Tree botherer.
After you've pulled all of the splinters from your old fella you might consider looking up Dr Jeff Harvey's bona fides and publication record.
He is a very well-respected scientist in his field, and I would bet a hundred bucks that he has more scientific training, experience, and/or publications than yourself.
Stump up your confirmable bona fides in the next 24 hours so that we might determine whether or not this is so.
Jeff in case you were in any doubt about David Duff's intentions with his none to subtle baiting, here is a quote that he promotes as his banner mission statement:
>âThat one can convince oneâs opponents with printed reasons, I have not believed since the year 1764. It is not for that purpose that I have taken up my pen, but rather merely to annoy them, and to give strength and courage to those on our side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us.â
I'm picturing how unpleasant he must be.
Janet, I'm hurt! Where have I been unpleasant, especially to you, to whom I thought I had practiced my undeniable charm?
And why would the words of G. C. Lichtenberg, the first man to hold a chair in experimental physics in Germany, make him, or me, "unpleasant"? Incidentally, Lichtenberg was a member of the Royal Society, a pal of Goethe and Kant and even the mathematician Gauss attended his lectures. He made some hefty discoveries in the field of electrics and pre-supposed the modern notion of fractals. True, he had a fancy for lower class women, but hey, we all have our weaknesses, do we not - oh, well, excepting Mr. Harvey, of course. Here are some more of his words which I admire:
"The more experience and experiments are accumulated during the exploration of nature, the more faltering its theories become. It is always good though not to abandon them instantly. For every hypothesis which used to be good at least serves the purpose of duly summarizing and keeping all phenomena until its own time. One should lay down the conflicting experience separately, until it has accumulated sufficiently to justify the efforts necessary to edifice a new theory. (Lichtenberg: waste book JII/1602) So hang on in there even as your theories falter!
Wise words but what do you think, Janet?
David Duff,
Basically, you are saying we ought to shut down experimentation, if your last comment is anything to go by. The quote you cite may be relevant for those seeking to make generalizations from mechanistic studies of stochastic processes. But mechanistic studies do help us to understand the machinery of nature in quite diverse ways. More importantly, the quote is largely irrelevant to those wishing to extrapolate generalizations from deterministic systems. In this case, systems function based on the sum of their parts and it is much easier to predict how the systems will repsond to perterbations or changes, provided we have some understanding of what the various components of the system are contributing to it. Certainly modeling can play a major role in this.
So let us be polite. That is what you claim to want, although your posts are laced with sarcastic barbs. Perhaps this is because your web page links to web logs that include several whose discourse is anything BUT polite. Shrill, more like. This should not be lost on you. A bit of hypocrisy, perhaps? However, being 'polite', I will say that your posts are essentially simplistic and lack scientific underpinning. Good enough for you?
Louis,
"Ian Plimer's performance in his debate with Monbiot has to be seen to be believed.
You are a liar"
Wonderful Stuff! A real Girma breakout moment.
Louis, please, please post details of why you say Tim is lying about the Plimer interview. I watched the interview and saw a man demolish himself. But perhaps, instead, my comprehension of the english language, the meaning od words and phrases and how information is handled is faulty, in which case you can only help me by saying why you think Tim is lying.
Or alternatively,could we all be mistaken here and there is another interview with Plimer that you can link to for us?
Louis if you are unbale to answer us then perhaps Janama can answer on your behalf.
David Duff:
You're a jerk. You can't even keep your trolling to an open thread.
Jeff Harvey, taking your points in reverse order, you will notice that Michael Tobis is on my links and there was a time when RealClimate, Punk Science and even, 'Shlock-Horror', this site were up there, too. Alas, the latter three went in for censorship and I'll be damned if I'll list any site on any subject that is owned by people too cowardly to hear an opposing argument. I should add that no-one is more surprised than me that I have now been re-admitted to the hallowed halls of Deltoid without my comments being scrambled. If that is the new policy here then I welcome it and for what it's worth (not much) Deltoid can look forward to being re-listed at Duff & Nonsense ('a poor thing, sir, but mine own').
"those wishing to extrapolate generalizations from deterministic systems". Ah, but that's the point, climate is not deterministic beyond the trivial, such as, if you heat something it expands, etc. There are, it seems to me, far too many unknowns in climate science, and most important of all, no one knows all of the facts which go towards defining the opening condition. Without resorting to tired old cliches about butterfly wings in Brazil, tiny variations will lead to large variations.
There is a further difficulty because climate science, according to you and others, is closely concerned with human activities. Almost all 'extrapolated generalisations', from Malthus onwards, concerning future human behaviour go wrong because they do not, and cannot, factor in future human behaviour - because it is unknown and unknowable. When I was born Neville Chamberlain was prime minister, could anyone then have foreseen the world we live in today?
You go on to say "it is much easier to predict how the systems will respond to perterbations or changes, provided we have some understanding of what the various components of the system are contributing to it, and my response to that is that from the outside looking in the scientific fraternity appear to have huge gaps in their knowledge concerning the behaviour and interconnections beteeen "the various components - and the honest ones admit it.
Finally you touch upon the fraught topic of modelling. To paraphrase an old saying about governing, 'to model is to choose'! You, the scientist, must choose constantly. You have raw but complex and messy data, you must 'choose' how to adjust it, then you have to 'choose' which data goes in and which stays out, then you have to 'choose' which elements are likely to effect your data in the future and 'choose' the level of interference that probable - and so on and on. I hasten to add that I find nothing wrong in any of that, just the opposite, provided the end result is offered in a spirit of humility and the conclusions described as tentative. That really does not describe the offerings from you 'warmers' which are handed to us as a 'diktat' to which no opposition must be permitted.
Alas, Jeff, I remain unconvinced.
David Duff,
You remain unconvinced in my opinion because it suits your pre-disposed political and philosophical views. I would expect nothing else from you having given a cursory look over your blog site. The fact that you link with denialist web sites like "Junk Science" and people like Ann Coulter is proof of that. If not, show me otherwise. Some of your other comments on this thread illustrate that you believe in cornucopia and that whatever assaults humans inflict across the biosphere, no worries, humans have evolved far enough to be beyond limits imposed by natural systems.
Of course this is folly and scientifically vacuous, given human dependence on a range of services emerging from nature that are at threat as the human enterprise continues to expand. Your inability to understand the difference between determinism, stochasicity, and scale is also a clear sign that your posts here are an exercise in futility. To suggest that climate systems "are not deterministic beyond the trivial" is wrong, wrong and more wrong. Your only refuge for such a statement is that humans have actually the capacity to force climate out of short-term equilibrium, but this requires a major forcing, clear evidence that humans are a global force.
To be honest, remarks like that is what in my view precludes you from being taken at all seriously.
phillip soffermann,
Read my last post to David Duff. It apparently applies to you, as well. If you think Tree Mugger's posts reflect intellectual discourse, then this tells me all I need to know about your understanding of complex adaptive systems. Some of THs posts were so appallingly shallow that it was difficult to know where to begin deconstrcuting them.
Moreover, I am sure that Orwell would turn over in his grave if he were to know that a contrarian of all people was using his own words and accusing others of doublespeak. Pure hypocrisy. Given the fact that the denialists have been shifting the AGW goalposts for years in support of a brazenly political (e.g. deregulatory, profit-driven) agenda, its a bit rich for you to wade in here with your pennie's worth of wisdom.
David Duff:
Alas, Jeff, I remain unconvinced.
Who cares. You're beyond reason. You don't even accept that climatic global warming is occurring.
phillip soffermann:
That's right. You are denying that climatic global warming even exists when you crap on about temperature records here and there.
What a hypocrite.
I, Phillip Soffermann,hereby declare that we human beings have very little or NO INFLUENCE on the record cold temperature winds emanating from Antarctica and sweeping across Southern Australia as we speak... signed Phillip Soffermann, Australia,18 Dec 2009
David Duff, you sound reasonable but it's a poor argument; Ocean heat content is rising, average sea level is rising, glaciers are retreating, summer arctic sea is diminishing, iceshelves are breaking up and not reforming, icesheets are thinning, phenological effects show clear evidence of warming but you want to argue that temperature measurements might be wrong and the warming they show could be spurious. And of course the various institutions that study climate are presumed to have made no effort to make sure the measurements they use have any veracity. This is just trying to cloud the issue with doubt when measurements of temperature are entirely consistent with real world changes. It really is warming and it's time we started seriously dealing with it.
David Duff,
>*And why would the words of G. C. Lichtenberg, the first man to hold a chair in experimental physics in Germany, make him, or me, "unpleasant"?*
David, why would you try spread your shameful behaviour to Mr Lichtenberg? Do you have any evidence that he was trolling, baiting, denying the existence and implications of the overwhelming weight of evidence?
Do you think your callous disregard for the impacts of global heating is not unpleasant? What about your own admission of can't be "arsed" to look at the evidence? What your efforts at time wasting here, your sexism?
You David have demonstrated your own very unpleasant approach. That you take Mr Lichtenberg's quote and practice it in this way is your own interpretation of its meaning. And it gives us further insight into you, that is what I was [commenting on](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
Phillip Soffermann,
Congratulations. Through the course of this thread you have demonstrated an aptitude for recognising weather events.
But, erm, what do individual weather events have to do with climate change? There is an actual scientific answer to this that isn't simply 'nothing', bonus points to anyone who gets it.
269 Louis Hissink,
You are a delusional moron. (I can't accuse you of being a liar as I doubt that you actually know reality from fantasy.)
Oh, Janet, is it over - and before we even got started? Now you'll never know what you missed! But before I go, do try and lighten up a little, all that intensity will give a girl lines, I mean, look at poor old Chris O'Neill, he started scowling the day McIntyre opned his blog and now it's etched in his face forever and children run and hide when he enters a room. Please don't let that happen to you.
Oh, and if you're in Copenhagen, do wrap up warm, it's arctic up there - heh, heh, heh!
292 DD,
It's December in Denmark.
Oh, and we are getting snow here in the eastern UK tonight. Whodathunk it? In the winter?
Damn. I don't have snowshoes. Or snowchains for the car.
DUFF: Please explain what the connection is between today's weather in Denmark, and Ian Plimer's exposed misrepresentations and lies?
Are you providing a diversion/distraction from the facts of the matter? Are you Plimering?
Perhaps *you* can explain why almost nothing in Plimer's book is actually factual?
David Duff, I stand corrected. I was wrong when I said Martin Vermeer's [appropriate smack-down](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) nailed you appropriately.
Martin's post was an approprate analysis, however while his discriptors of "pleasant and suave" apply to some, I was wrong to imply that they match your demeanor.
To addapt Martin's post to you David, I would use the words, contrived, glib and phony and tranparent.
And before you metophorically rub your crouch on me any further you should know that Janet Akerman is a blog name, a long standing joke name. However you have shown that gender is important to you in this "debate". Your rampent sexism has given me further empathy for that faced by the sisters.
David Duff you are prize creep!
At first I thought David Duff was channelling Ian Plimer, but then it hit me: he actually thinks he is Ian Plimer. Or maybe he is Plimer and he is using a pseudonym. Or perhaps Plimer thinks he actually is David Duff? No matter, they both got thrashed on Lateline. Takedown!
Tell us again about the iron core in the sun, David Duff (or is it Ian?), LOL.
285 again... The Jeff Harvey's of this world DENY THE RIGHT of anyone to hold an opinion...unless it is the opinion of Jeff Harvey!
Soffermann,
Opinions are like backsides. Everybody has one. To be honest, I could not care less what laypeople like you think about antyhing, least of all science, which is apparently well beyond your competence. The reason I venture into blogs like Tim's is to set the record straight, to counter the kinds of anti-scientific crap that you and a few other spew out relentlessly.
The fact that you defend the posts made by nincompoops like Tree Mugger tells me all I need to know about the "accuracy" of your opinions. So go ahead, pontificate all you want. But do not be surprised when I and many others pull the rug well out from under your feet.
@Phillip Soffermann:
Either show where and prove that Jeff Harvey denies you the right to hold an opinion, or apologise to all people on this blog for lying.
An *honest* person would meet my challenge, a Plimerian will come with attempts to diffuse. Which group do you belong to, Phillip: Honest people or Plimerians.
The Marco's of this world...DENY THE RIGHT of anyone to hold an opinion...unless it is the opinion of Marco!
The Jeff Harvey's of this world spew vitriol at their opponents...much like the huge submarine volcano I saw on the news tonight...then lambast them with potty ad hominem disparagements. And get this.Then they declare themselves the ONLY authorities in the world on their chosen 'belief-systems'..." and we will burn all your books...and you will repent for your sins...and you will seek penance...your children's children will burn in Pergatory."..glooomm...gloomm...gloom...oom...mm...m.......sounds familiar???
The Phillip Soffermans of this world deny the validity of any science that challenges their ideology; and this is not opinion, it is simple and demonstrated fact.
Sofferman: a challenge to you that you might like to address, as you seem reluctant to respond with any serious comment to your [previous homework](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…)... In one form or another [I have asked similar questions](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) of others, but perhaps if I simplify it you might be able to manage a credible answer - can you present to us in, one paragraph or less, what you consider best argument of Plimer's that indicates the non-validity of AGW?
If Plimer doesn't shake your tree, what is your best argument in general that refutes AGW?
It is a well known fact that Antarctica and the ocean surrounding it have warmed and were expected to warm very slowly because of the thermal inertia of the surrounding ocean. Thus it is no surprise that air that comes from Antarctica is virtually as cold as it ever was and that it still causes cold records occasionally.
However, just because cold records keep happening, that doesn't mean there is no average warming. The paper cited here shows that there are a lot more hot records than cold records in the US and that the ratio has increased as time goes by.
So ongoing cold records does not mean there is no global warming. To get some significance just from records you have to look at the ratio of hot to cold records.
BJ...indeed,I have done my homework...but I won't be doing yours for you. We live in an Interglacial Period...but neither of us will be around to see the next Ice Age arrive! Now...there's some common ground we can stand on...
David Duff:
Prove it duffer. Trivial if it's true.
What a pathetic creep.
David Duff:
Just incredible. Duff proves he's a hypocrite within the one sentence.
Soffermann,
You must have one hell of an imagination. Where did I say this: *Then they declare themselves the ONLY authorities in the world on their chosen 'belief-systems'*
If truth be told, I am only agreeing with the overwhelming majority of climate science researchers with respect to AGW. It is you who are out on a limb with your 'belief-systems', not me. Time you woke up to realities of science instead of manufacturing your own 'reality' based on your personal inherent political and philosophical biases.
As I said before, you can waffle on all you like, but until you can empirically challenge the science climate change you and your ilk will continue to be marginalized.
Bernard J.:
Bernard, you should lower you expectations with soffermann. He's a stage one denialist. You'd be optimistic enough to ask him what is his best argument that refutes global warming regardless of cause.
soffermann:
In case you haven't yet noticed, SMH is a chooser of messages and that's what Tim has been paying it to do. If it becomes incompetent at its job by choosing messages written by proven liars then people have the right to stop paying it. soffermann seems to think people should keep being paid when they become incompetent.
Yes, it went well in the sense that it showed, just from Plimer's contradiction of the Keller cite, that Plimer was a liar, that he knew he was a liar and that he makes no excuse for being a liar.
There are no competent scientists who say the last 10 years have cooled because it's just not true. You have been sucked in by Plimer or some other liar.
Phillip Soffermann, a true Plimerian. Evading the question, showing himself to be the liar he really is.
I thought the debate would have been better if they had offered to wait in silence while Plimer tracked down his reference in his book. It would have been illustrative to watch him, like watching a child search their backpack for the homework they never did.
Yes, I thought so too because Plimer said he only needed 10 seconds to do that but then waffled on for far longer.
If anyone thinks that code of practice on research misconduct matters, he is making a big mistake. Below, is a glaring example.
The Committee on Publication Ethics is currently promoting its guidelines on retractions. However, the actual judgements of the Committee differ drastically from their stated policies. In my case, the Committee blatantly falsified the very definition of plagiarism, excluding from it plagiarism of unpublished research. After some further exchange of letters, the Committee apologised and said: "We probably did make a mistake with our interpretation of the term âplagiarismâ...". But, moreover, reading my correspondence with the Committee will clearly show that the words in their policy: "The main purpose of retractions is to correct the literature and ensure its integrity..." are simply not applicable to their own actions: they made all, quite fraudulent, efforts to ensure that an obviously plagiarised paper is not retracted. Please, see my correspondence with the Committee at http://www.universitytorontofraud.com/committee.htm
You can look at my web site http://www.universitytorontofraud.com/ and see how university conducted a fraud that would seem completely impossible. And you will see that government supported this fraud, that the Editor-in-chief of the journal supported the fraud. What matters now in academia is political interference and apparently bribes. The codes do not matter.
Monbiot might have given Plimner a good smack, but we are still losing the battle, as Monbiot pointed out at the start of the interview.
The Daily Express (here in the UK), has both the bizarre '100 reasons why Global warming isn't true' http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/146138 and 'Russians say Met Office manipulated figures' in the same week. The Daily Mail had a story pulling in everything from the Siberian tree proxies, CRU, and every other denalist crud imaginable (my parents sent me a package with the paper as packaging - my wife was right, reading the Mail only makes me upset), and Fox is running 'Climategate' every night.
Even the BBC has got in on the act. Interviewers on the flagship 'Today' programme have asked various scientists (including David King) if climate change 'is real'? On the same day that King was asked this, the same interviewer asked if marine creatures threatened by ocean acidification could evolve to overcome this, over a time-scale of 50-60 years.
And in a discussion about the film, 'The Age of Stupid' http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pft7c/The_Environment_Debate/ , the three interviewees were Lindzen, Bob Watson (hardly a tree hugger), and Lomborg, who is apparently both an expert on climate change and (to the BBC) in the reasonable middle on what should be done about AGM. And greens are 'too radical' http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8308989.stm
If it wasn't for these comments, http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/yoursay/age_of_stupid.shtml, I would just write off my fellow citizens as basic morons.
We are losing. Big Time. Stupid is about to win. Of course having lazy journalists and a decent sense of PR to help you is an advantage, but if the BBC is screwing up, what is there left to do?
[Phillip Sofferman](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
Bull shit.
Show us one example, one example, where you have, [as I have repeated asked you to so do](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…), proffered your considered best piece of science that refutes global warming.
[Chris O'Neill](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) is right - you're recalcitrant in your denialism, although I'd describe you as a type 1 denialist, rather than a stage 1 denialist, because the latter implies that there might be some transition - and with your sort, there is never any hope of enlightenment, no matter the weight of scientific evidence.
Actually, MikeB, the question about whether
is not a daft question of itself.
Viruses (though there are reasons to exclude them from such rapid evolution debate) and bacteria can evolve very rapidly. And, more germane to this particular questioning, there are examples of rapid (decades) evolution among insect, plant, bird and mammal species. The peppered moth comes to mind, and recent findings about the UK blackcap's beak changes.
Regarding marine animals and ocean acidification, I note that Tunnicliffe et al. recently reported on a variety of mussel, Bathymodiolus brevior, that lives in the acid waters around volcanic hydrothermal vents. Of course, this is not an example of rapid evolution in the mussel on a decadal scale (not that I'm aware of anyway), and this may ultimately be an exercise that is doomed should a predator of the mussel emerge in that hostile environment, a scenario that would certainly be all too familiar for similarly affected species in a more benign marine environment.
But, of course, to expect more than one or two species (speaking figuratively) out of all affected species to be able to evolve on a scale of decades is almost certainly wishful thinking.
The best course is to prevent rapid ocean acidification.
>*We are losing. Big Time. Stupid is about to win. Of course having lazy journalists and a decent sense of PR to help you is an advantage, but if the BBC is screwing up, what is there left to do?*
What is there left to do? Something different.
But what are you/we prepared to put on the table? Are we prepared to up the anti? Or are we bound by mortgages? How much will any of us to put on the line? A lot of us are pretty soft, in pretty cooshy positions. We in among the richest most powerful positions relative to the world. Yet we don't know what to do. Contrast that with those in South America, far poorer than us, yet they know what to do.
We are losing because we are sitting back ant letting politicians and lobbyist do all the work.
We are losing because the public still see the debate through the corporate media, leading to drip feed people like Tom and the Drudge swarm believing that those with most concentrated power are pushing the AGW agenda, rather than an unusually broad alliance of scientist, community sector and global democracy interest, battling against those with most concentrated power, and those who have swallowed the alternative narrative sold them.
People in South Africa knew what to do. And they did it despite facing far greater risks than us. No one is pointing a gun at us yet. So what are we prepared to do?
As long as we keep doing just the same thing, we lose.
What did Gandhi need at his back? Who had Dr King's back? What was giving strength to Mandela?
I reckon that [threeMugger](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) is a sockpuppet of [alin](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) - they both have the same uneducated quirks of vocabulary and grammar...
It is indeed sad when ideologues have conversations with themselves in a effort to seem both informed, and numerous, when they are in fact neither.
5. exclamation marks preceeded by a space
freepluger AKA treepluger/Mugger and alin,
I've answered your question earlier. Weather is [short term](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1970/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:…).
Climate change is the [longer term shift](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/plot/hadcrut3gl/mean:360/plot/h…).
I could go into details about how GHG forcing produces small changes over short periods compared to larger cycles, but that over longer periods GHG is the turtle that passes the hair, as cycles are not trends.
But you are an obvious troll so I wont bother.
322Jaker... that'd be 'hare' not 'hair'. 321Freeplugger...Here's a suggested slogan for a white T-shirt... '25 BELOW IN HOKKAIDO! DECEMBER RECORD!' ...and another one... 'EYRE IS COOL!0.2! DECEMBER RECORD! Isn't that amazing! They're almost POLES APART and they BOTH hit December LOW TEMP records! That reminds me, I must make the pilgrimage and see the famous Sapporo Ice Festival before a few metres of lush powder snow makes it inaccessible...except by skis. 314BernardJ... I thought I made this clear weeks ago...I am NOT a GLOBAL WARMING DENIER... and I am NOT a CLIMATE CHANGE DENIER. These are both NATURAL PROCESSES. I refuse to be scared witless by some bum sitting all day at a computer developing dodgy predictive climate models when he can't even reliably predict cooling or warming events anytime in the future...except, perhaps, tomorrow!
[Phillip Sofferman](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
If context is so beyond you that you need it spelled out in order to comprehend the thrust of a question, place a-n-t-h-r-o-p-o-ge-n-i-c in front of [global warming](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) and try again.
BJ...get your question straight...you asked me about GW, not AGW. Yes! Let's get rid of all the pollution and crap out of the AIR,GROUND and WATERWAYS/OCEANS that us silly humans put there...but don't flagellate yourself over it. Calm down and lead the way with decisive and praiseworthy action that sets an example for others to follow. I notice you spend your time fearing the future, so much, that you ignore the current circumstances surrounding recent GLOBAL~COOLING WEATHER EVENTS!!!
Tree Mugger aka peer Shrugger,
If you could substitute your assertions for evidence then you would have case.
But alas you are an empty tool, one that happens to be assisting the those with most concentrated wealth and power.
292 DD,
Wow, that is some feeble kind of ad hominem you got there!
Shame it's not even funny.
309 Marco,
I think many here have got Sufferman all wrong. He's a child who thinks he's as clever as the grown-ups.
329marco/ts...Your first sentence is correct. Your second sentence is even a kind of compliment... it's better than being a 'Brat Adult' behaving like a 'Brat Child'!
We should be calling the AGW denialists what they really are - greenhouse effect denialists (GEDs).
331 silkworm,
Too simple, and it doesn't cover the field. The permutations are mind-boggling, especially when so many are contradictory. They have endless arguments, none of which make sense, and especially taking into account the contradictions with their other arguments.
They don't even realise this, of course.
phillip soffermann:
soffermann just doesn't get it. Climate is not events. It is statistics of events. Complaining that weather events aren't predicted is like complaining a dice roll isn't predicted even when we predict the average of dice rolls in the future.
phillip sofferman,
Instead of spamming this thread with poorly-supported opinion, why not try a different tact?
Why not vindicate Plimer, who has been exposed as a fraud by repeatedly failing to producing evidence to support his claims?
One starting approach would be to vindicate Plimer on one single issue; find the citation measuring the missing carbon that Plimer claims is not counted by the USGS. Specifically, were does he get his figure from that declined to cite in the debate with Monbiot?
BTW thanks for the spelling correction.
334jaker...the joker... Prove to me... that you, the USGS or even Plimer, knows how many submarine volcanoes/vents exist or how much CO2 gets vented to the atmosphere...like the one on TV News last Friday? But they do! Prove to me... that 'The Roman Warming' was caused by, higher-than-now, CO2 levels which facilitated their growing of grapes as far north as Hadrian's Wall! Prove to me...that the 'Little Ice Age' didn't produce very fine-grained(slow-growth) Mountain Spruces and Ashes to enable Antonio Stradivari to craft a great violin... because the CO2 levels suddenly dropped!? Prove to me...that the Roman Empire did not succeed and expand as a direct result of favourable climatic conditions i.e. higher temperatures and lower CO2 levels than now. Prove to me... that you fully understand the relationship of various Atmospheric CO2 concentrations and their ambiguities in relation to GLOBAL WARMING AND GLOBAL COOLING...BOTH! BTW: I'm off on a long sleigh right now... so I won't be replying anytime soon...stay cool!
USGG [cite thier evidence](http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/index.php), Plimer just runs away!
Quite a difference don't you think?
Thank Goddess for that.
You're [late](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/the_australians_war_on_science_…) to the [party](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/06/moncktons_vision_of_the_future…), aren't you?
To what end? It has already been pointed out to you [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) and [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) that volcanoes have nothing to do with the rise of atmospheric CO2.
If you have a case, make it using factual science.
Otherwise, accept the fact that you are a simply yabbering idiot.
I'll raise you.
Last night I had a Christmas dinner with my neighbours, a glaciologist and an atmospheric physicist. We started the evening in a very genteel manner - gins (Bombay Sapphire, of course) and tonic.
The ice in our Gs&T came from bergs in the Antartic, brought back on one of their annual trips to the southern polar bases. Riddled with parallel striations of gas, and thus strangely porous in a way that refridgerated ice can never be...
We spent hours discussing human-induced global warming (it's as obvious to them as a spring snow melt might be to a lay person living in less extreme latitudes), and the disconnect between the real science and the fevered ideology of those whose closest experience to polar and/or atmospheric research is puffing out clouds of condensation on a skating rink. What was really rammed home to me during our long conversation was just how ignorant you and your ilk are of the fundamentals of the actual science.
Forgive me if I dismiss you as a puerile armchair 'expert', but if you can't stump up some real substance to support your incessant babbling about the apparent absence of the elephant in the room that is about to plaster you against the floor underneath its bum, I don't see why anything you say shouldn't be dismissed quicker than Bradman in his last innings.
I'll [repeat again](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…), if you have anything that you consider to be a 'killer' piece of evidence that refutes AGW, then please present it.
Apparently this is an impossible task for you, because I am now losing count of the number of times that I've challenged you to do this. Perhaps this say more about your tenuous understanding of basic science, than it does about any weakness in climatological understanding...
Seems that the tree molester (and his sundry sock-puppets) crumbled in a pile of non-substance when pressed to justify his vacuous statements.
How strong his case, eh?
And what is with the homosexual fixation that all of these deniers have?! It seems that [Tom](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/new_zealand_climate_science_co…) is not alone in his suppressed anxiety over a person's orientation, no matter that it is irrelevant to the subject at hand.
I'm reminded of that painful animation Beevis and Butt-head, in which a scene progesses:
Speaking to treeMugger, to his aliases, and indeed to any of his Denialati mates, is about the same as trying to speak to Beevis and Butt-head...
Where is all the heat ? The heat is disappearing and cannot be assumed to be
simple climatic weather events as the cold is too widespread. Our esteemed scientists need to re-evaluate the synergy of all the factor's that are causing this, climate forcing does not cut it. CO2 will be vindicated of this ?
http://www.theage.com.au/world/recordbreaking-snowfalls-paralyse-us-cit…
Where is all the heat?
We just had the hottest November [on record](http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/17/nasa-november-hottest-on-record-h…)!
And that despite a long drawn solar minima! Why is so hot when the Sun in in a lull?
#315 - Although there might indeed be circumstances where some mussels might be able to adapt to some extent, the reality is that within a decade http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/10/ocean-acidification-e…, parts of the marine ecosystem could simply start to disappear.
My point was that for a BBC interviewer to ask such a stupid question in the first place really pointed up the lack of rigour regarding science in much of the mainstream media. Even a casual viewer of an Attenborough programme or two would know that adaption would be very difficult over such a small time scale.
Unfortunately, we see at the BBC a perfect example of the divide between specialists (Roger Harrabin, Tom Fielding, David Shukman, et al), who are all very good, and the generalists, like the 'Today' programme presenters (although John Humphries is actually excellent), and their editors/producers/bookers.
Presenters such as Webb and Naughtie would never have as their first question 'Did Shakespeare really write Hamlet, because someone thinks it was Bacon?' when any discussion of Shakespeare came up. Guests would simply think they were stupid or mad, and listeners would write in their thousands. Yet both those presenters have continually asked the question 'is climate change real?' of climate scientists. By the time they've answered the question (sadly, normally far less directly than the media savvy David King), half the interview has gone, and the seed has been planted in the mind of listeners that perhaps it isn't true, otherwise why ask the question.
If even the BBC, on its premier news programme (which can and does set the news agenda for the day), feels it has to question AGW out of some misguided sense of 'balance' or simply because the 'arts-graduate' (in Ben Goldacre's phrase) editors feel that they want heat rather than light, then the rest of the media is going to be no better and almost certainly worse.
Plimer had a hard time in that Australian interview because the interviewer had done his homework, and had enough nous to stay with the main points. Unfortunately, there are just too few of these in the media at the moment.
Jakerman has it cold - 'We are losing because the public still see the debate through the corporate media, leading to drip feed people like Tom and the Drudge swarm believing that those with most concentrated power are pushing the AGW agenda'.
And until the scientific community starts mixing it with the media, and pushing back (like Hansen and King), we are going to continue to lose. We are still in the 'Age of Stupid'.
It's been a week now since Plimer has been shown to be a fraud, and what have we seen? Some of the denialists may have dropped out: it's hard to tell. However, the remaining denialists are still in denial about climate change, even in denial that there own position has been proven fraudulent. I think this proves that the remaining denialists are clinically insane.
Tim, get your finger away from that moderation button !!!! please !
silkworm, both side's of the argument have their reason's for believing what they do.
I myself have a skin as thick as the skulls of the warmers and the insults have bounced off me,
due to this i have followed many of the links provided to me to try to understand the viewpoint
of the warmers and what really are their agendas, most on both sides of the fence are just sheep,
I'm a sheep from the denial camp but I am now up on the fence looking over and I probably
would climb over to your side except for the fact that I along with a large amount others
feel that climate science has made a pact with the devil, I know there has been a lot of
dis info from both sides but you can't deny that the carbon trade, the politicians and their
carbon tax schemes have had a lot to do with the mistrust that people like me now have
with the whole ongoing saga.
If your science is correct then do as jakerman said, take it to the next level,
that would be for the leaders of climate science to tell the pollies and the money
grabbing Gore's of the world that the carbon trade and tax will only steal money
off you and me and the CO2 emmision's will still rise, OH NO you say, they will
lose their funding and their jobs and they will just put some PR man in their job,
hmmm......what to do ? insults sure aint gunna fix it.
climate science has too many croc's in the water and proper solutions need to be
implemented if the science is correct.
Wise up, mate. You're embracing fraud.
saturniid moth you are flying aimlessly around the candle flame of global warming and will harden the resolve and increase the numbers of the deniers. If you recognize what is driving their opinions and focus more on the problems at the top of the climate food chain you may have success in swelling your numbers. Maybe some contemplation on the fraud aspect ?
tailwagga aka everyother ndp writes:
>*myself have a skin as thick as the skulls of the warmers and the insults have bounced off me*
My Orwell double-speak-ometer just went off the dial.
And tailwagga, just so you know, fraud requires more than assertions from a coordinated propaganda campaign, the fact that you and others bring no evidence of fraud, but shout it incessantly is quite telling. Time to look in the mirror tailwagga then reassess your information sources.
jakerman I'm always open to reassess
new info, so if you know of any sources of information that scientifically proves that Carbon emissions trading and the introduction of the CPRS is going to have any significant impact on CO2 emissions I'd like to read it, as far as I can see the impact would be negligible and I am keen to learn otherwise.
PS> Don't bother with any links to UNIPCC, too many fingers in the pie.
tailwagga,
I don't support the CPRS nor carbon trading, becasue of the complexity and potential for rorting (particular in our current environment of concentrated power and plutocracy). I support a [CAP and Dividend](http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2009/WaysAndMeans_20090225.pdf), were part of the externalised costs of carbon are internalised at first point of sale. Far simpler and transparent. And for those small government ideologues it is revenue neutral. Thougth I would support some revenue being directed to coordinated action.
As far as proof of the effects of a price on carbon. Its basic economics, so long as energy monopolies are kept from rigging the market wind and solar and other low carbon alternatives will become cheaper relative to the dirty coal. As will investment in conservation and efficiency.
And entrepreneurial people and companies will finally be able to benefit from genuine progress, better aligning our economic success with sustainability, rather then the current perverse situation where internalising the costs of carbon are penalised with higher relative costs.
tailwagga:
Science has nothing to do with it. If the law requires you to have a permit to emit CO2 then it's just the law. The government sells/gives away just enough permits to limit the CO2 emissions to what it wants to allow.
The potential shonkiness arises when private enterprises are allowed to "create" emission permits through schemes that supposedly reduce or absorb carbon emissions somewhere else in the world. I think privately created permits, if they are allowed, should be scrutinized very, very carefully.
Also, if generating permits through, say, reforestation takes immediate pressure off the need to reduce fossil fuel burning then that's not ultimately going to help minimize atmospheric CO2. That said, anything is better than nothing because at the moment the world is sailing along as if global warming is not happening.
jakerman:
Note: Hansen's name for his preference is Tax and Dividend, not CAP and Dividend. He writes the following statement on his title page:
âTax and Tradeâ is pseudonymously and sometimes disingenuously termed âCap & Tradeâ
Che=ris said:
This is the first time I've heard it called "tax and trade". The word cap refers to the upper limit on the commodity being regulated, surely.
jakerman, "basic economics", have a look at price rises in food, petrol/LPG and housing for the past 5 or 6 years, the price of these commodities has probably/maybe doubled and despite minimal wage rises most consumers haven't changed their eating habits , nor have they stopped driving,
you've probably also noticed that houses and land are still selling like hotcakes,
based on these 3 examples I can't imagine another price rise will have an impact on consumption unless it is big enough to cause recession, another tax certainly will not work in the medium to long term.
So have the maggots with the most to gain been corrupting the science and hyping the doom and gloom ? as I have said there would be more confidence in the science if practical not money grabbing solutions were being devised.
This is what Hansen calls it. Read what he says but he's saying that calling it "tax and trade" is more honest than calling it "cap and trade".
As I understand it, Hansen prefers the idea of a multi-lateral carbon tax plus landing tariff. I don't suppoise it's possible that his choice of nomenclature was intended to make it seem as if the cap and trade scheme proposed under Waxman-Markey was essentially a tax.
I note that here in Australia, the reactionary opponents of the CPRS like calling it the ETS a tax.
tailwagga:
Bullshit. Property is not a commodity and the others have not doubled in price.
A lot of them reduced driving when the price of petrol was high but it's not high anymore.
Property is bought mainly with borrowed money and interest rates are still low.
Come back when you've got your facts right before you want to argue basic economics.
>look at price rises in food, petrol/LPG and housing for the past 5 or 6 years, the price of these commodities has probably/maybe doubled and despite minimal wage rises most consumers haven't changed their eating habits , nor have they stopped driving [...]
Tell that to General Motors. Petrol is back down to where it was before the sharp spike, but people now recognise the risk of buying guzzling SUVs.
Time is an important part of the adjustment. We need to be sending signals now for entrepreneur to tool up. Were only know seeing the new efficient cars come to market some 2-3 years after the spike start.
And because it takes time to deliver alternatives to the carbon intensive infrastructure I support direct coordinated spending in mass transit, efficiency and and low carbon power generation. This is just skimming the surface as this list could go on and on.
Again you assert corruption in the science with no evidence. That is empty propaganda. The maggot with most to gain are [corrupting the science](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/russian_analysis_confirms_20th…). We've been calling them on it for years.
Chris an astute reader would have realized that I was generalizing the 3 together, if he also was able to expand on his limited knowledge he would see that housing and properties are indeed "articles of commerce", particularly if he had bought and sold a number of these at a profit, these also require
electricity, gas, water, now also pumps for harvested water to dunnies maybe even water circulation to solar hot water panels these use power also,
energy is also a commodity. Did you stop driving or going to work when the fuel prices were high ? I sure as hell didn't and don't know anyone who did.
Sorry my quote wasn't up to your pedantic standards.
jakerman that document was submitted to the Inquiry into the Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy, No. sub609 on this page http://www.aph.gov.au/SENATE/committee/climate_ctte/submissions/sublist…
I don't think it will see the light of day here, I agree and think it looks much better than the non carbon reducing theft that they want to burden us with.
fingerwagger:
Aka, proof the laws of economics are wrong because it didn't happen to everyone.
FerChrissake, folks, phillip sofferman is very clearly a deliberately time wasting, bile inducing troll, who is getting exactly the outraged responses what he wants.
You are playing right into his attention seeking hands. Just ignore the farker.
Shorter Lamark:
You're wrong! I'm right! Anyone who knows that I'm right will know that ... I'm right!
The fact that I can't even my climate science claims shows that Global Warmists are closed-minded! Look, it's clear that Plimer did substantiate the claims he made in his book! And the source for the claims in his book is ... his book!
Anyway, this shows that Global Warmists are closed-minded! Any attempt to portray this as an act of "projection" is itself an act of projection, which is, well, Leftist. You know, like, when Jonah Goldberg said "The White Man is the Jew of Liberal Fascism", which shows that anyone who protests against anti-Semitism is a Pinko Marxist Communist. Or something.
Lamark:
I've read some astonishing rubbish from some denialist characters on here over the last few weeks, but your post is startlingly deluded. Yout twisting of language is Orwellian.
"So it was Monbiot and Tony Jones, shown to be idiots on this matter and not Plimer. Anyone with any affinity for science would have understood that. What a Pavlov's dogs you all are. Responding to an obvious rigup like this. Watch the show again and this time for goodness sakes use your brain. Stop being mindless zombies for once."
Brilliant. Just had a moment's doubt....this is satire, isn't it? You can't actually be serious.
s/even my/even spell out the source of my/
Lamarck: we know how much fossil fuel we burn. We know that carbon combines with oxygen during combustion to form CO2. We know that CO2 concentrations are going up at roughly 50% the rate at which we add it to the atmosphere. Sinks, primarily the ocean, take up the other 50%.
If Plimer's right, that volcanos emit 130x as much CO2 as our burning of fossil fuels, then sinks are taking up 99.6% of the CO2 released to the atmosphere.
If this were true, oceans would be acidifying at a stunningly fast pace.
But ... it's not. We know this from observations.
So where is all that CO2 going?
Nothing about Plimer's claims makes any sense.
And, Lamarck, if you believe Plimer, then you must also believe that these undersea volcanos began spewing excess CO2 at exactly the same time as the start of the industrial revolution, when large-scale burning of coal began. And you must also believe that the increase in CO2 emissions by volcanos just happen to increase at exactly the same rate at which we increased combustion of fossil fuels.
Of course your handle screams "troll". Just in case you aren't, remember that while Lamarck correctly recognized the fact of evolution, his proposed mechanism was hooey.
Graeme Bird, well-known crank, posted almost exactly the same words as our "Lamarck" over at Deep Climate.
Mr. Bird has a wonderful post over at his blog, well worth reading (snicker):
We Have Got To Get Rid Of This Bogus Doctrine To Do With The Conservation Of Mass And Energy.
Not satisfied with overturning evolutionary biology, modern medicine, and climate science, the crazies have overturned physics, as well!
When are these morons going to realize that Monbiot is not the one making claims about climate science. Plimer has a whole book full of claims.
Pardon me for misunderstanding the exact crankdom put forth by Plimer. He only claims it's so large that human contributions are insignificant. Maybe he believes it's 1,000 times as much from volcanoes ...
Monbiot quoted the USGS, not Jones.
CO2 from undersea and terrestrial volcanoes: 200 million tons annually
Human contributions, as of 2003: 26.8 billion tons.
26.8 billion / 200 million = 134.
Monbiot's right.
I don't rely on Monbiot. I rely on the USGS, whose findings he accurately reported.
He claims to only accurately report the findings of climate science, not to be a climate scientist himself.
Nothing ludicrous. If you believe it is, take it up with the USGS. Dick-waving in the wind isn't going to convince anyone.
When a reporter says "According to the USGS, the proper figure is ..." he's *reporting*. That's what reporters do. It's not "collusion".
God, what planet do these crazies live on?
The only comments on that were from Bird himself. He describes the Plimer-Monbiot debate as "rigged". What a mental case.
Yes, apparently he deletes comments, then comments on them. Very bizarre.
It's the USGS, not Tony Jones, Graeme.
I could've sworn that Graeme Bird was banned from this site ... ???
Oh, more Graeme Bird weird physics - he apparently believes in the existence of something like the old ether, since he does not accept the existence of the photon and therefore believes light requires a medium for transmission.
And he also believes that Lamarck was somewhat right regarding the transmission of acquired characteristics to offspring.
All-around crackpot.
cyclone tracy:
Maybe deleting EVERY post except your own is getting just a bit too obvious, donchathink?
Let's see ... who do I believe ... the USGS or Graeme Bird.
That's such a tough question ...
Lamark:
So volcanoes originate from sedimentary rocks.
Riiiiight.
Looks like Tim will have to get out the troll disinfectant.
Graeme Bird, aka Lamark writes
>*Monbiot made an idiot of himself. It was Monbiot who refused to answer any questions on climate science. Whereas Plimer wrote a book on the matter and answered the questions in the book.*
Graeme, I think you should promote the video of the debate widely to help emphasise the point you are making.
People are not sufficiently aware of the cognitive dissonance that are employed by one side of this issue, nor the capacity for double speak to be employed in order to call black as white.
I think you expose this rather well, and would support your efforts to get out and expose these issues to the wider public.
I've zapped a pile of nonsense from [Graeme Bird](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/04/plonk.php).
Feel free to zap many of the responses, too ...
I', going to [watch the debate](http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2009/s2772906.htm) again to remind myself of though devious tactics used by Monbiot.
And Tony Jones shouldn't have let Monbiot ask Plimer to substantiate claims he made in his book. And the fact that Jones Asked Plimer about stuff he had written in his book was unprofessional. Did you notics that Jones had actually prepared for the debate by reading the book and checking out some of Plimers claims. This is not consistent with standard practice in journalism these days.
When will the ABC learn that when someone writes a book the contents are sacrosanct and beyond debate. The fact that Plimer avoided peer review makes no difference.
>*The idea that Plimer is lying does seem to hinge on the notion that we put out 130 times the amount of CO2 as the volcanoes.*
Oh Tommy, you're too generous. [Plimer is lying](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_plimer_lies_about_source_o…) about [a lot](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/aug/05/climate…) more [than just that](http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/plimer2a0.pdf)!
Tommy aka Jonty,
Thanks for your evidence in post @376, @377 and @378. I think this represents your case quite fittingly.
Re Gerlach, 1999, 1991 estimated figures put forward by the USGS as evidence for volcanic CO2 emissions quoted above.
Under the section âComparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activitiesâ the USGS quotes Gerlach, 1999, 1991:
âScientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1991). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts.â (Effects Tab)
80% of the worlds volcanoes are submarine, yet the âestimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts.â
People around here appear to be relying on erroneous figures that state that underwater volcanic CO2 release is equivalent to above ground CO2 release, this is clearly wrong.
Devils Advocate, better take that up with USGS. They obviously don't know what they're talking about.
@zoot and Devils Advocate:
Just a little hint: Gerlach et al do not assume that there are equal numbers of submarine and subaerial volcanoes.
Another starting point is here:
http://www.eos.ubc.ca/~mjelline/453website/eosc453/E_prints/2001RG00010…
Marco, you know that denialists like Devils Advocate don't need to read the paper. They *know* it's commie crap :)
Thanks for the link to Kerrickâs paper Marco, it confirms that the primary source for atmospheric carbon/CO2 is outgassing from the Earth's interior at midocean ridges, hotspot volcanoes, and subduction-related volcanic arcs. That was to be expected as 95% of atmospheric carbon comes from sources not related to anthropogenic activities.
Can someone please explain how it is possible that human activities emit 130 times as much CO2 as is outgassed from the Earth's interior through volcanic activity, considering that only 5%. of atmospheric carbon comes from anthropogenic activities?
Once again, years of research by qualified scientists debunked in a moment by a man in the street. Wondrous stuff DA.
Show me a billion year old SUV and you might be on to something.
>Can someone please explain how it is possible that human activities emit 130 times as much CO2 as is outgassed from the Earth's interior through volcanic activity, considering that only 5%. of atmospheric carbon comes from anthropogenic activities?
[Yes.](http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/carbon_cycle.php)
>Thanks for the link to Kerrickâs paper Marco, it confirms that the primary source for atmospheric carbon/CO2 is outgassing from the Earth's interior at midocean ridges...
Not so much, and more to the point:
>In quantifying the role of MOR systems in the global
carbon cycle, it is vital to consider that these systems are
not only a CO2 source (by magma degassing) but also a
sink for CO2. Hydrothermal activity at mid-ocean ridges
causes CO2 to be sequestered in carbonates [Staudigel et
al., 1989; Caldeira, 1995; Alt and Teagle, 1999; Kerrick
and Connolly, 2001b]. On the basis of the quantity of
carbonate the CO2 sequestration of the oceanic crust is
estimated at ~3.5·10^12 mol/yr [Alt and Teagle, 1999].
Because this consumption exceeds the estimated MOR
magmatic CO2 degassing ï¬ux (~2 ± 1·10^12 mol/yr),
MOR magmatism would not provide an uncompensated
source for CO2. __In fact, MOR systems may instead be a
net sink for CO2.__
Does anyone know who is funding the Plimer tours around UK, Europe, inland and rural Australia? Is there a PR firm coordinating Plimer's efforts with the other sham sceptics?
Don.
PS: The place looks much cleaner after removing the unintelligible pile (of posts) left by birdbrain - thanks Tim.
Thanks for your help Luminous Beauty, the link to the NASA Earth Observatory site eloquently outlines the Carbon Cycle. It also confirms that the primary source for atmospheric carbon/CO2 is outgassing from the Earth's interior not the small amount that humanity emits;
âThe carbon is then returned to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide during volcanic eruptions.â
Luminous Beauty, that is an interesting extract from Kerricks paper regarding the carbon cycle, it even gives rough estimates for some of the sequestration figures. The sequestration that Kerrick is referring to, is of carbon that has been emitted into the atmosphere, primarily from volcanoes. Sorry to be persistent here, but if as stated above a fraud has been committed, then it needs to be exposed. Your above links do not point to any âscientific papersâ that show âhuman activities emit 130 times as much CO2 as volcanoesâ, so as previously requested can you please help me find some.
Eli takes it that Devils Advocate is either a Dunning Kruger poster kid, or an outstanding example of Artificial Stupidity Systems (ASS).
Here on Earth, darling Devil, we distinguish between things that have added CO2 to the atmosphere over millions of years (volcanic activity) and things that have added CO2 to the atmosphere over a hundred years (human activity).
-Currently the rate at which humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere exceeds the rate for volcanoes by about 130 times.
-This was not true 4-500 years ago
-Humans have increased the rate at which their activity adds CO2 to the air a hundred fold in the last hundred years by burning fossil fuels
-We are talking about current rates and amounts.
-Somehow Eli suspects this will not get through to our ASS
387 Devil,
You are misrepresenting [that site](http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/carbon_cycle4.php).
Of course, nearly all of the CO2 in the Carbon Cycle is of natural origin, but the overwhelming majority of CO2 added to the atmosphere since 1850 has been the result of human activity, volcanic activity producing only minute quantities since then. This is about 38% of the current atmospheric total. This, in turn, is only about 1/2 of the CO2 we actually produce, the balance being absorbed by the oceans and the biosphere. If all of it stayed in the atmosphere, the figure would be much higher.
"The global hydrothermal CO, flux from subareal environments probably exceeds 1012 mol yr-1 and may be comparable to that contributed by volcanic vents (i.e., 2-4 X 1012 mol yr-1), as estimated by Le Cloarec and Marty and Gerlach. The total present-day earth degassing flux of CO, may balance the amount estimated to be consumed by chemical weathering." [scientific equivocation emphasised, just in case you thought you're the first to notice it]
SEWARD, T. M. & KERRICK, D. M. (1996) Hydrothermal CO2 emission from the Taupo Volcanic Zone, New Zealand. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 139, 1-2 105-113
There you are DA, a 'starter for ten'. If you look really hard you might be lucky enough to find that even good old Axel Morner reckons on global volcanic/lithospheric CO2 emissivity measures in the 1-2% range of anthro emissions.However...don't you go forgetting about those inconvenient isotope ratios now!
DA, let me repeat:
Show me a billion year old SUV and you might be on to something.
Perhaps this will seem a bit less obscure if you study Eli's and TrueSceptic's posts ... and then re-read the paper you point to with understanding.
DA,
>The sequestration that Kerrick is referring to, is of carbon that has been emitted into the atmosphere, primarily from volcanoes.
The part I was referring to was sequestration from carbon emitted into the ocean from Mid Oceanic Ridge (MOR) volcanic activity. Less than none is emitted into the atmosphere.
Anthropogenic CO2 as of 2006 is [~8230](http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2006.ems) million metric tonnes of carbon or [~30204](http://cdiac.ornl.gov/faq.html#Q9) million metric tonnes of CO2 per year and going up. At [~44g/mole,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co2) that works out to [A]~6.86 · 10^14 moles of CO2/yr.
From Kerrick, et al., average contemporary atmospheric flux from sub-aerial volcanoes is [B]~2.0 - 2.5 · 10^12 moles of CO2/yr.
Divide [A] by [B] and what number do you get? I think the 130X number may be a bit out of date.
If Plimer's right, that volcanos emit 130x as much CO2 as our burning of fossil fuels, then sinks are taking up 99.6% of the CO2 released to the atmosphere.
If this were true, oceans would be acidifying at a stunningly fast pace.
But ... it's not. We know this from observations.
So where is all that CO2 going?
Nothing about Plimer's claims makes any sense.
That's because no one here has read his damn book. This is what he says:
The CO2 from tens of thousands of submarine hot springs associated with these submarine basalt volcanoes dissolves in the high pressure deep ocean water and does not bubble to the surface. Water at the bottom of the oceans is undersaturated in dissolved CO2 , hence very large volumes of CO2 can dissolve. One hot spring can release far more CO2 than a 1000mW power station. page 208.
Plimer:
>*"Volcanoes produce more CO2 than the world's cars and industries combined."* ([Monbiot](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/aug/05/climate…) and [Enting citing](http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/plimer2a0.pdf) Heaven + Earth, p413)
janama, I have read Plimer's book. From [my review](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/the_science_is_missing_from_ia…):
>p382 "In fact, satellites and radiosondes show that there is no global warming.[1918]" Woohoo! at last a cite. Trouble is, it says exactly the opposite of what Plimer claims
>p391 claims Hadley Centre has shown that warming stopped in 1998. Hadley says:
>>Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand.
>p413 claims volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans. No cite! This one was in GGWS. Plimer's a geologist. You'd think he would at least know something about volcanoes.
Enting actually cites Tim Lambert and David K, in his critquie of Plimer on the quote I provided above.
And speacial thanks to Tim and others for their sacrifice which saved me the trouble of reading it!
Janama @393 gives a perfect rendition of 'skeptical credulity'.
Plimers illogical stance is that "very large volumes of CO2" from submarine vents are dissolved in the deep ocean waters. Yet this somehow results in a situation where "Water at the bottom of the oceans is undersaturated in dissolved CO2".
As far as I can work out, Plimer starts this nonsense with an observable fact - dissolved CO2 is higher in surface waters - but goes on to murder it in an ideological pique.
Our puny anthropogenic CO2 emissions have raised atmospheric levels. But with Plimers volcanoes pouring 130x greater CO2 out (much of it undersea from what he seems to imply), the ocean bottoms remain relatively "undersaturated". Maybe, if the CO2 is being incorporated into rocks, but Plimer explicitly argues that it is being dissolved in sea-water - his great mythical carbon sink.
A simple pH test might detect this, one would think?
I suppose it's beating a dead horse, but still...
Let's assume that volcanoes are generating 130x as much CO2 as humans. If the vast majority of that CO2 vanishes in the ocean depths, then the claim wouldn't be wrong... it would just be totally irrelevant.
To my unscientific mind, CO2 that dissolves at the bottom of the ocean does one thing and one thing only: it turns the herring red.
395 Tim,
Yet again I must repeat the fact that even Durkin removed the volcano claim from TGGWS when he realised it was unsupportable.
If Durkin did that, where does this leave Plimer?
(Why should it be necessary to explain the same simple logical errors and lies over and over to ASS idiots?)
397 Michael,
Plus:-
What does isotopic analysis tell us about the origin of the increased carbon in the oceans and the atmosphere;
What does it matter when the CO2 GHG theory is a hoax anyway? No amount of CO2 should matter, right?
Sorry to change the subject guys as we can argue about the broad merits of AGW forever. Can we stick specifically to the post topic about a fraud and Pilmers reaction to there being âscientific papersâ from the âUSGSâ stating that âhuman activities emit 130 times as much CO2 as volcanoesâ.(the papers do not specifically prove that)
It is the USGS that put out the figures that human activity emits 130 x volcanoes, so they have to prove it. Can someone show me where Pilmer stated that volcanoes emit 130 x human activity?
My understanding is Pilmer stated merely that volcanoes emit more than human activity (although not specifically quantified). There is plenty of evidence of that here;
Trueskeptic, @ 389
âOf course, NEARLY ALL of the CO2 in the Carbon Cycle is of natural origin, but the overwhelming majority of CO2 added to the atmosphere since 1850 has been the result of human activity, volcanic activity producing only minute quantities since then.â
It seems like we are arguing semantics here, but by ânatural originâ you mean primarily volcanic activity (as that is where nearly all carbon in the atmosphere originally comes from) i.e ânearly allâ of the 385ppm of carbon in the atmosphere comes primarily from volcanic activity; and by âaddingâ you mean ânearly allâ the 1.5ppm that is stored in the atmosphere annually comes from human activity.
.
388;
âHere on Earth, darling Devil, we distinguish between things that have added CO2 to the atmosphere over millions of years (volcanic activity) and things that have added CO2 to the atmosphere over a hundred years (human activity).â
Are we to ignore volcanic activity even though it has been happening for millions of years? If we ignore âthings that have added CO2 into the atmosphere for millions of years (volcanic activity)â, then prima facie anything else is gong to appear to add more. Labelling someone a fraudster because they point out a deficiency of millions of years of evidence, is a fraud in itself..
Dear Devil, you do have problems with speed. The amount emitted in this century per year by people burning fossil fuels exceeds that emitted in a year this century by volcanoes by a factor of ~130. Try and twist that ASS
DA,
Sorry I just repeated janama's mix up on volcanoes vs. humans CO2 emissions.
What Plimer has said is probably worse though. Not content to assert that volcanic emissions are greater than human, he also said that a single volcanic "cough" would emit more CO2 in one day than all the CO2 ever released by humans.
Evidence for this amazing assertion: - nil.
[Counter-evidence](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/do-you-believe-ian-plimer/): - previous super-volcano eruptions have had no measurable effect on atmospheric CO2 levels.
With due respect Mr Rabett, Someone is being accused of being a fraud because they pointed out THE FACT that volcanoes do indeed emit many times the amount of carbon that human activity emits. The statement that was put to Pilmer was "human activities emit 130 times as much CO2 as volcanoes". Not "human activities emit 130 times as much CO2" in a year (which they do not , but that an issue for another time)? So (in this instance) there appears to be strong evidence here of a collusive character assassination on Pilmer.
DA writes:
>*It is the USGS that put out the figures that human activity emits 130 x volcanoes, so they have to prove it.*
Answer has [been provided](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
Lets get back to issue of fruad; it is Plimer who states without citation that:
>*Volcanoes produce more CO2 than the world's cars and industries combined."*
[And](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/do-you-believe-ian-plimer/)
>*"Over the past 250 years, humans have added just one part of CO2 in 10,000 to the atmosphere. One volcanic cough can do this in a day."*
[And](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/plimer_calls_his_critics_rent-…)
>*"We cannot stop carbon emissions because most of them come from volcanoes."*
Now DA, according to your rules of advocacy Pmliar put out these claims *"so [he must] prove it*.
But on the contrary, theses statements have been demonstrated to be wrong. And what is [Pmlairs' response](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/plimer_calls_his_critics_rent-…)?
DA now you are saying it is a '*FACT*" volcanoes do indeed emit many times the amount of carbon that human activity emits?
In a discussion about climate change don't you think you would be misleading people if you left out the time comparision? I.e. The fact is in several hundred years volcano produce more CO2 than humans currently do in one year.
You're a bit of a joke otherwise.
"don't you think you would be misleading people if you left out the time comparision"
Yes I do, but I am not the one who did it on TV, Monibidiot did, aided by Jones and the fraud is being continued by owner of this blog.
Fraud?
The only fraud obvious so far is Plimers.
As he himself notes, CO2 release from volcanoes has been going on for millions of years, so it can be viewed as a constant in the carbon-cycle.
Anthropogenic contributions are the issue, being the new and additional variable in the carbon cycle, so Plimers attempt to muddy the waters by claiming volcanic emissions exceed human emissions is quite fraudulent.
His additional claim of a single "volcanic cough" exceeding the sum total of all historical human CO2 emissions is preposterous beyond belief.
Studies of the Pinatubo eruption showed that despite CO2 being emitted from volcanoes, there is a slight negative effect on atmosphereic C02 levels as a result of volcanic eruptions.
>"don't you think you would be misleading people if you left out the time comparision"
As in:
>*In a discussion about climate change don't you think you would be misleading people if you left out the time comparision? I.e. The fact is in several hundred years volcano produce more CO2 than humans currently do in one year.*
DA writes:
>*Yes I do, but I am not the one who did it on TV, Monibidiot did, aided by Jones and the fraud is being continued by owner of this blog.*
[You are](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) "*the one who did it*"!
How can you be in such blatant denial of what you have just written?
Humans currently emit more CO2 than volcanoes. Period.
The only wiggle room is if you say over eons when humans were emitting near zero carbon then volcanos emitted more. But Plimer didn't say that. He push lies [like these](In a discussion about climate change don't you think you would be misleading people if you left out the time comparision? I.e. The fact is in several hundred years volcano produce more CO2 than humans currently do in one year.).
You've now demonstrated you're a complete joke!
Ernst, I love your spline work!
How did you get all those millions of tonnes of CO2 to disappear over such short time periods?
Did it make you curios how poorly CO2 measured correlate with ice cores? Weird how those bazar fluctuation you report just disappeared when we started measuring CO2 accurately.
I love it when deniers bring out [Beck's CO2 chart](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/03/remember_eg_becks_dodgy.php). I think Beck's work is best supported [by inferno](http://denialdepot.blogspot.com/2009/04/co2-levels-may-have-been-over-2…)!
I've deleted a couple of posts from a troll pretending to be EG Beck and Jaworowski
Sorry to upset anybody here, I am not a great fan of Pilmers, but on this particular point, the raw question which was asked of Pilmer; what emits more volcanoes or human activity? the answer is clearly volcanoes. You guys did not bring flux or time frames into the question, so Pilmer gave the correct answer to the specific asked. Whether the question was framed by malice or incompetence I do not know? Not withstanding other issues Tim Lambert has with Pilmer, calling him a fraud on this particular point is wrong and Tim should withdraw the remark and apologise.
DA your not upsetting us, you're [a case study of denial](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…). I'll be referring others back to you as an example for weeks to come.
Plimar has been asked for months to back up the claims in his book. He just keeps pushing the same fraud instead of supporting his claims. Try and rephrase [these quotes]((http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) with your ample Orwellian Double speak.
The questions put to Plimer here have a clear answer [That humans produce more CO2 than volcanoes] or a wiggle answer [That volcanoes used to produce more CO2 until human ramped up their emission]. Plimer gives neither of these.
DA You've also exposed yourself as a fraud by repeating the same discredited claims.
My advice to you is the same I gave Graeme Bird, if you believe your own double speak, then promote this video widely to vindicate Plimar.
Monbiot:[Plimar] suggests that volcanoes produce more carbon dioxide than human beings. The US geological survey shows that human beings produce 130 times more carbon dioxide than volcanoes. And yet again and again, however many times it is pointed out to him, Ian keeps reporting this straightforward fraud, this fabrication that volcanoes produce more CO2.
TONY JONES: *Let's hear Ian Plimer respond to that. Do you stand by the claim in your book that volcanoes produce more CO2 than the world's cars and industries combined?*
IAN PLIMER: *Well I'm very heartened that a journalist is correcting me on my geology. Now Mr Monbiot wrote to me when I asked him some questions of science and said he was not qualified to answer these questions of science. So he's a journalist and he's asking me a scientific question. He has not read this book ... *
GEORGE MONBIOT: *Could you answer the question, please?*
IAN PLIMER: *He has not read this book.*
GEORGE MONBIOT: *Do you stand by your claim or not?*
IAN PLIMER: *He has not - it is the height of bad manners to interrupt.*
GEORGE MONBIOT: *Do you stand by your claim or not?*
IAN PLIMER: *It is the height of bad manners to interrupt.*
GEORGE MONBIOT: *Could you answer the question. Could you just answer the question.*
TONY JONES: *George Monbiot, just hang on. I will ask the same question of you if I can because I did raise that.*
IAN PLIMER: *And in this book I referred to a number of types of volcanoes. There are two types, and I know you haven't read the book. He certainly hasn't read the book ...*
TONY JONES: *It's not true that I haven't read your book, as I told you last time. I suspect that George Monbiot has also ...*
GEORGE MONBIOT: *And I have also read the book.*
TONY JONES: *But I have actually read your book.*
IAN PLIMER: *Well, let me make two points on this. On the chapter called Earth I talk about two volcanoes. One are the terrestrial volcanoes, which is the USGS reports on emissions of carbon dioxide, **but more than 85 per cent of the world's volcanoes we do not measure**, we do not see, these are submarine volcanoes that release carbon dioxide and we deduce from the chemistry of the rocks how much carbon dioxide is released.*
TONY JONES: *Can I ask you a question about that, if you don't mind? Because one British journalist whom you quoted those exact figures to went back to the US geological survey after you told him about this 85 per cent figure, and asked he them to confirm their claim that actually 130 times the amount of CO2 is produced by man than volcanoes. The volcanologist Dr Terrance Gerlach confirmed that figure and said furthermore that in their counting they count the undersea volcanoes. So your response to that.*
IAN PLIMER: *My response is that there are 220,000 undersea volcanoes that we know about. There's 64,000 kilometres of undersea volcanoes which we do ...*
GEORGE MONBIOT: *Which they have counted.*
IAN PLIMER: *It is the height of bad manners to interrupt. Please restrain yourself. And we have 64,000 kilometres of volcanoes in submarine environments with massive super volcanoes there. **We do not measure them**. And the figures that I have used are deduced from the chemistry of rocks which erupt on the sea floor.*
DA wrote:
It's the correct answer assuming what "specific" exactly?
401 Devil,
Either you cannot read or you are misrepresenting what I said. By "natural", I mean *not* released by human activity. That natural "base level" has been around 280 ppm for many centuries; all the additional 106 ppm that takes us up to the current 386 ppm is anthropogenic. (I made a mistake with the %age: 106 is 38% of the 280 "base-level", not of the current total of 386.)
We know this from the quantities of fossil fuels we burn and from isotopic analysis.
We also know that volcanoes emit insignificant amounts of CO2 because even large eruptions like Pinatubo do not show in CO2 records such as the Mauna Loa Keeling Curve, depite this being sensitive enough to show a seasonal cycle.
404 Devil,
You are being perverse. Of course we mean per year when we use the present tense, i.e., emit/emits.
Your claim
has been shown to be false many times over.
You, like Plimer, are a liar.
412 Devil,
Again, you use the present tense, "what emits".
That means now, ongoing, year on year.
If you had said "what has emitted" (over thousands of years), you would have a case, but that is not what you claim, nor what Plimer claims.
TS wrote:
...and even the eruption of super-volcanoes in the past hasn't led to a spike in atmospheric CO2.
Plimer is a fraud. He even f**** it up when talking about his own field.
418 Michael,
Quite so, but of course the denidiots will claim the figures are fixed, unreliable, whatever.
At the same time they will support E-G Beck's fantasy figures without a moment's hesitation.
>*Becks figures aren't fantasy figures. They are actual readings. They are the historical record. He didn't make them up.*
Stephen your so precious! Care to Answer [my question to Beck?](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…)
Good grief, Stephen Yuretich, please tell me you were being extremely sarcastic! If not, how on earth could anyone take mining geologist Ian Plimer as the relevant authority on submarine volcanoes and their emissions over volcanologist Terrance Gerlach? Or take retired school teacher Ernst-Georg Beck's summary of old measurements on poorly mixed groundlayers over a whole range of atmospheric chemists measuring CO2 levels on properly mixed air layers without local effects? (I find it ironic that you actually mention the UHI but not attack Beck, at least the former has been found by years of research to be very limited)
Seriously, I truly wonder what has happened to humanity. It's as if stupidity is the new norm, because you have to have an opinion on everything and accuracy and facts are irrelevant.
TS [@419](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…), Stephen just came in [@420](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) to prove you correct!
Stephen Yuretich are you really inferno?
Stephen Yuretich, have you ever heard of the concept of contamination? Look it up sometime. You may learn something.
Stephen writes:
>*The two studies that people are relying on are irrelevant, and do not provide evidence for their estimate.*
[Here is the study](http://www.eos.ubc.ca/~mjelline/453website/eosc453/E_prints/2001RG00010…) linked by Marco. As you can see it is "irrelevant" as it is focusing on the irrelevant topic of non-anthropogenic CO2 released from earth (including volcanoes). And as any reader will judge the author uses no evidence to support the calculations.
Stephen continues:
>*Why cite them at all if they are wrong? You want to at least cite studies that contain evidence, and that you don't already know are wrong. If you are not dishonest you want to cite good and reasonable studies based on actual evidence.*
Well Stephen knows they are wrong, and he doesn't need evidence to know that!
Stephen continues:
>*The above study is the relevant study. Since this one is based on actual evidence unlike the two everyone appears to be relying on.*
And you can judge that it "*is the relevant study*", by the way it provides no assessment of the CO2 released from volcanoes.
Stephen continues:
>*But the best thing to do would have been to ask Plimer. He's the expert on these matters. Not any of the people on this thread.*
Stephen, that is what Monbiot and Jones tried to do. Why did Plimer evade, dodge, delay, do everything but provide the evidence to support his misrepresentations? That's right, Plimer is trying to avoid clarity and trying to get away with misleading people to save face.
I didn't realize how many trees short of an orchard Stephen was when I wrote that.
Marco:
Even if you gave it a name like Urban CO2 Island, these delusionals still wouldn't realize their cognitive dissonance.
As to the iron core, well we expect to see iron cores whenever we have a magnetic field.
Oh boy, hold this year's Physics Nobel. Photons have iron cores!
Stephen writes:
>*That CO2 concentrations are higher in 1942 than today is a simple known fact. Taken straight from the historical record.*
A simple known fact for those who get their science from whack-job blog sites or pseudo science laundered by E&E.
In the world of credible fact checking than peer reivew, the [evidence shows](http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/tssts-2-1-1.html) something quite different to what Stephen claims.
I've seen a reference to
[http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL040613.shtml](http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL040613.shtml) and it seems to clash with the rest of information about athmospheric CO2, any pointer on the validity of this article?
Well, this is not a game you win with trickery. The spirit of the question and the intended interpretation of the answer do matter.
@Antoni Jaume:
Knorr's article does not really clash with much. The article merely concludes that the CO2 sinks are not (yet) overwhelmed. This does not mean that CO2 will not increase, but that it does not (yet) increase as much as some people had feared.
Stephen Yuretich is another of Graeme Bird's sock puppets. I have deleted his posts.
What I find at odds is "It is shown that with those uncertainties, the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, i.e. close to and not significantly different from zero.", as it seems to imply that athmospheric (airborne) CO2 has NOT rised. So there would not be a correlation of CO2 and temperature.
He Jaume, pay the money and READ the article. Even better, join AGU for $20 and get free access. The issue here is
Of every X tons of CO2 EMITTED, how much stays in the atmosphere.
The fraction of CO2 emitted that STAYS in the atmosphere is ~50%
So if you emit X tons X/2 tons stay in the atmosphere. The other X/2 tons is absorbed by the oceans and the biosphere
Of course if you emit 3X tons, then 1.5 X tons stays in the atmosphere and 1.5X ton mixes into the other places.
What the article is saying is that the 50% has been constant for a long time.
The reason people are concerned is that there has been some indication that the fraction mixing into the oceans and biosphere has decreased, which would make the CO2 increase in the atmosphere much faster.
Got that or are you going to dig in.
Thanks Eli Rabett. I had seen in a spanish daily comment that reference, and the commenter said "Una publicación cientÃfica (está en inglés, lo siento), que demuestra la falacia del consenso cientÃfico con respecto al cambio climático:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091230184221.htm
Yo soy escéptico porque me doy cuenta de que este tipo de información está vetada, oficialmente no existen argumentos cientÃficos en contra del cambio climático, lo cual es sencillamente una manipulación." effectively claiming this disproved AGW.
Antioni, through Yahoo Babelfish's rudimentary grasp of Spanish, I gather that the commenter who linked to that publication had already made up their mind about global warming. Hence they missed the point of the article and replaced its conclusions with what they wanted to believe.
Eli explained it well but as English doesn't appear to be your first language, I'll put figures in. Suppose that in 1950 human activities emitted 1 gigatonne of CO2*, only 0.5 gigatonnes stayed in the atmosphere, and the other 0.5 was aborbed, mostly by the oceans. This leaves an airborne fraction of 50%. In 2000 these figures were 20 gigatonnes added by humans, of which 10 gigatonnes remained airborne*, so the airborne fraction stayed the same but the yearly increase in CO2 concentration has been getting bigger.
*not actual figures, they're just to illustrate the point. I don't think they're too far from reality though.
Niel, are you Graeme Bird?
Regarding EG Beck's collated record, of which you say "Results of faulty outlier measurements will cancel. The results of the Beck amalgamation are the actual historical record. "
Do you consider that the samples could have been contaminated by local sources? These include industry, transport, forests, and the increased concentrations you get from people breathing in a closed room.
If there is a systematic bias towards higher concentrations due to contamination from the above sources*, then the claim that faulty outlier measurements will cancel is false. There was a systematic bias towards high measurements, mainly because the measurements were taking in the boundary layer of the atmosphere in heavily industrialised Europe.
*And no doubt there is contamination, since we don't see such wild swings in CO2 concentration in the free atmosphere away from local sources, which is what we're interested in!
Did someone leave his computer logged in over the holidays?
http://www.google.com/search?q="Neil+Travis"+"Graeme+Bird"
Jaume (and everyone else) seriously consider joining AGU. It is dead cheap, you get the newsletter, EOS, with feature articles on a lot of interesting things, and you get access to many journals! A really good self Christmas gift.
Condolences Tim, Graeme has escaped the Marohasy Bog and is lose upon the internet.
Graeme is, of course, part of the dual Artifical Stupidity Machine. We can expect Hissock at any time.
As to Beck's telephone book, the fact is that people could measure CO2 down to maybe 10 ppm by chemical titrations but
a) Accuracy and precision sucked and were very dependent upon the chemist
b) Since they did not understand the meteorology (as in the way the wind blows, the source of the CO2 and its dispersion, etc)
As Ralph Keeling pointed out if you believe Beck, you are in fairy tale territory, since it would require flows of CO2 in and out of the atmosphere which are not physically possible.
Almost all of these measurements are worthless. For details/w. links
Neil, Mauna Loa isn't the only measuring station. See http://co2now.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=47&Itemid=77
They all agree to a much greater tolerance than the chemical method measurements. Also, if the Mauna Loa record was contaminated by being on a volcano (though a fair way from any vents), wouldn't there be spikes in CO2 at times of eruptions, such as in 1984?
If you propose that they are both measuring the same processes but come up with dramatically different results (ie, there is no conflict between the earlier, noisy records and later, smooth records), then you have to explain the physical mechanism by which atmospheric CO2 has stopped shooting up and down all the time.
And, if you're joking about believing the falsehoods you spout, head over to denialdepot. They need you!
Graeme Bird aka Niel writes:
>*It is irrelevant. Its totally irrelevant. Did you not read it? It talks around the subject and does not come up with an estimated total based on surveys of actual output.*
Of course Bird must be critiquting [this paper](http://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/~tony/watts/downloads/HillierWatts2007GL02987…) the one he cited as "The above study is the relevant study". And as Bird knows the paper he cited did not even mention CO2.
Bird goes on:
>*So the pdf you linked is irrelevant and actually reading it, you get to see just how fraudulent Monbiot, Tony Jones and Lambert are being. Since the pdf gives us an immense range of CO2 sources.*
Monbiot Jones and and Lambert didn't cite the paper you (Bird) provided nor that which [Marco provided](http://www.eos.ubc.ca/~mjelline/453website/eosc453/E_prints/2001RG00010…). So we get to see just how fraudulent Bird is being. (As if we needed more examples).
But one gets the sense that Bird would have made the same bogus critique of what ever source Monbiot et all were citing.
So what does Birds say about [Gerlash 1991](http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/index.php). Bird says Gerlash is wrong. What is his evidence for that? Bird says "We have an estimate that there are 3 million of these "seamounts" over 100m high, and an estimate of 64, 000 kilometres of underwater rift zones." But doesn't show how this makes Gerlash wrong.
Bird, why does this estimate make Gerlash wrong? Oh and please make reference the [net sources](http://www.eos.ubc.ca/~mjelline/453website/eosc453/E_prints/2001RG00010…) figures.
453 Janet,
You are trying to reason with GMB. In case you don't already know it, [this](http://notahedgehog.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/the-christmas-spirit/) will give you insights into the hidden depths of his character and intellect.
Bird write:
>*Don't go being lead astray by these alarmist dummies.*
Perhaps I am, how would I decern if I was? I might I ask you a [legitimate question](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) about your bold assertions.
Your response of gave me further confirmation that you can't back your claims.
Just as your (in your Stephen sock puppet) avoidance of [my Beck questions](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) shows how your talk is cheap, and hence it's the evidence that sways me.
Sorry to cause trouble again, but as you guys are experts on AGW, can you please help me get to the bottom of this volcanoes business?
How many submarine volcanoes are included in Kerricks calculations? There seems to be conflicting views on the number, Plimer says none; can anybody find the exact number in Kerricks report?
I guess you must be new to this interweb thingy Devils Advocate, because you apparently are unaware of a wonderful tool called Google. And now Microsoft has a competing effort called Bing. Why don't you try doing some homework?
BGC pdf Volcanic contributions to the global carbon cycle
Thanks for that advice Zoot, it is amazing what you can find on that "interweb thingy"!
Gerlach (1991) estimates volcanic CO2 emissions total 55 MtCpa globally and evenly distributed between subaerial and submarine volcanism. Kerrick (2001) takes a grand total of 19 subaerial volcanoes, which on p. 568 is described as only 10% of "more than 100 subaerial volcanoes". It was interesting to observe that Kerrick (2001) leaves out some of the more notable volcanoes (eg. Laki, Tambora, Krakatoa, Mauna Loa, Pinatubo, El Chichon, Katmai, Vesuvius, Agung, Toba, etc.). Nevertheless, based on these assumptions Kerrick calculates 2.0-2.5 x 1012 mol of annual CO2 emissions from all subaerial volcanoes and understates the estimate on the assumption that the sample is from the most active demographic. This is in spite of the fact that eight of the world's ten most active volcanoes are omitted from Kerrick's study (Klyuchevskoy Karymsky, Shishaldin, Colima, Soufriere Hills, Pacaya, Santa Maria, Guagua Pichincha, & Mount Mayon). At 44.01g/mol, 2.0-2.5 x 1012 mol of CO2 amounts to a total of 24-30 MtCpa - less than 0.05% of total industrial emissions. My main criticism of Kerrick's guess is that it putatively covers only 10% of a highly variable phenomenon on land, and with the cursorary dismissal of mid oceanic ridge emissions, ignores all other forms of submarine volcanism altogether. If we take the Smithsonian list of 1500 active subaerial volcanoes worldwide, Kerrick's 10% is reduced to 1.3%.
The subsequent finding of Werner & Brantley (2003) is hardly surprising. The Yellowstone volcanic province produces 6-7 x 1012 mol of annual CO2 (72-84 MtCpa), which is about three times more CO2 than the total subaerial volcanic emission of Kerrick (2001) and Gerlach (1991). It just goes to show that consensus is political, not scientific. Need I point out that volcanic systems are diverse and unpredictable and cannot be statistically second-guessed for the same reason that lottery numbers cannot be statistically second-guessed - as the findings of Werner & Brantley so spectacularly demonstrate.
According to Batiza (1982), Pacific mid-plate seamounts number betwen 22,000 and 55,000 with 2,000 active. None of the more than 2,000 active submarine volcanoes have been discussed in Kerrick (2001). Furthermore, Kerrick (2001) justifies the omission of mid oceanic ridge emissions by claiming that mid oceanic ridges discharge less CO2 than is consumed by mid oceanic ridge hydrothermal carbonate systems. In point of an interesting of fact, CO2 escapes carbonate formation in these hydrothermal vent systems in such quantities that, under special conditions, it accumulates in submarine lakes of liquid CO2 (Sakai, 1990; Lupton et al., 2006; Inagaki et al., 2006). Although these lakes are prevented from escaping directly to the surface or into solution in the ocean, there is nothing to prevent superheated CO2 that fails to condense from dissolving into the seawater or otherwise making its way to the surface. It is a fact that a significant amount of mid oceanic ridge emissions are not sequestered by hydrothermal processes; a fact which is neglected by Kerrick (2001), who contends that mid oceanic ridges may be a net sink for CO2. This may well sound reasonable except for the rather small detail that seawater in the vicinity of hydrothermal vent systems is saturated with CO2 (Sakai, 1990) and as seawater elsewhere is not saturated with CO2, it stands to reason that this saturation is sourced to the hydrothermal vent system. If the vent system consumed more CO2 than it emitted, the seawater in the vicinity of hydrothermal vent systems would be CO2 depleted.
Morner & Etiope (2002) published a somewhat more representative estimate of subaerial volcanogenic CO2 output based on a more comprehensive selection and found as a bare minimum that subaerial volcanogenic CO2 emission is on the order of 163MtCpa. Morner & etiope (2002) also provide a much better explanation of how CO2 is cycled through the mantle and the lithosphere.
Devils Advocate is cutting and pasting from the Consulting Geologist website (if you hadn't guessed).
Devil quotes one line in all the papers he discussed:
>*Kerrick (2001) takes a grand total of 19 subaerial volcanoes, which on p. 568 is described as only 10% of "more than 100 subaerial volcanoes".*
Problem is, I can't find this quoted line using my search function. Devil did you misquote this line? If so did you misrepresent any of the other figures or description you provided?
Sim, it's from the Consulting Geologist website, which you can google for using "Geologist 1011"
P. Lewis thanks for that tip, I hadn't caught that trick. I guess if Devil (living up to first part of his name) is plagiarising then he will not be able to answer [my question](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
Devil, get a more reliable source to plagiarise next time.
Sim are you looking here?;
Kerrick, D. M., 2001, "Present and Past Nonanthropogenic CO2 Degassing From the Solid Earth", Reviews of Geophysics, Vol. 39, pp. 568
I would be sorry if you can't find it.
P. Lewis, thanks also for [your link](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) to the BGS summary. It helped sorting out more of the charf in the "Geologist 1011" peice.
Devil, yes I was looking their, and I even found what I reckon was the line that was misquoted by the dodgy author that you plagiarised.
Here's the passage that you (your source) miss quoted:
>*Because CO2 fluxes have been measured for only a fraction ( 10%) of the ** >100 active subaerial volcanos**, estimating the total CO2 discharge from volcanos worldwide requires considerable extrapolation.*
Tell your Counsulting Geologist that when using quote marks it is essential to indicate when you leave words out. And neither is it permissible to add words they did not use.
Devils [sic] Advocate has his knickers in a knot over Plimer's nonsense claim about volcanic CO2, and about what the USGS and the rest of science says in contrast.
The answer is very simple. Devils [sic] Advocate, if you believe Plimer to have a case, and the rest of science to be incorrect, you can simply demonstrate your point by providing the carbon cycle numbers (id est sources' and sinks' emission rates) that you have been able to locate, and thus show where Plimer's budget is correct and the rest of science's is not.
It's really easy. Two tables, each with two columns - CO2 in, CO2 out - and a line at the bottom of each table adding the totals. And an accounting hint: income and expenditure are not the same as underlying capital...
Simple. So hop to it.
@Devils advocate:
Please reconsider your sources. They are either willfully deceitful, or incapable of understanding plain scientific language.
This is the Werner&Bradley paper:
http://www.essc.psu.edu/~brantley/publications/CO2%20emissions%20from%2…
The number that your source claims is the annual emission from Yellowstone is actually the number Werner&Bradley cite as that of global volcanic emissions. The contribution of Yellowstone is estimated to be about 5% of that value.
Marco,
I've found your linking to primary sources and your cogent assessments of them very helpful, and not just today.
Thanks again.
@Sim:
You're welcome. I've learned quite rapidly that it is best to read the actual papers (as far as possible), rather than the interpretation of certain people. That also means you should not automatically take my word as truth...
Bernard J @ 456 said
âThe answer is very simple. Devils [sic] Advocate, if you believe Plimer to have a case, and the rest of science to be incorrect, you can simply demonstrate your point by providing the carbon cycle numbers (id est sources' and sinks' emission rates) that you have been ABLE TO LOCATE, and thus show where Plimer's budget is correct and the rest of science's is not.â
Bernard, here is one âsourceâ I have been "ABLE TO LOCATE",that your climate model missed. Now only another 68,000 kilometres of volcanic underwater rift zones left to search to find the other 79.9999% of UNSEEN and UNMONITERED UNDERWATER VOLCANOES not in your climate model.
It is strange you have the Co-Chief Scientist Bob Embley of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) saying;
âit will allow a unique opportunity to learn how the earth recycles material when one tectonic plate subsides under anotherâ¦.The discovery of the active deep sea volcano has been a long time coming. NOAA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have been searching for 25 years â¦â¦For the first time scientists witnessed molten lava flowing across the oceanâs bottom and discovered a new type of lavaâ â¦. ...With 80% of all volcanic activity occurring under the ocean scientists hope to learn a great deal from the discoveryâ
Well Bernard, when the scientists from NOAA and their mates at the USGS find their second underwater volcano, they can try another underwater first; measuring its emissions. Then they will have âlearn a great dealâ more about volcanic activity occurring under the ocean than they know now; which by Bob Embleyâs own words is NOTHING. When they do Bernard, get back to me with some real figures, not some bogus made up ones.
D A @445:
D A @448:
You see Devil (may I call you Devil?), all on your own you were able to establish that Plimer is a liar.
@DA, 460:
Dude. What do you think happens to CO2 emissions from undersea volcanoes? Where does it go? What detectable impact does it have on that? How might one go about monitoring and detecting CHANGES OVER TIME in the emissions of undersea volcanoes? And what in the F makes you think those data aren't available?
@zoot:
You may want to correct yourself. Submarine does not equal subaerial.
However, Plimer (also?) claimed Gerlich did not take submarine volcanoes into account. And that is manifestly false.
>_Well Bernard, when the scientists from NOAA and their mates at the USGS find their second underwater volcano, they can try another underwater first; measuring its emissions. Then they will have âlearn a great dealâ more about volcanic activity occurring under the ocean than they know now; which by Bob Embleyâs own words is NOTHING. When they do Bernard, get back to me with some real figures, not some bogus made up ones._
Well, DA, You can continue to demonstrate your Dunning-Kruger grasp of submarine volcanology derived from specious news reports, or you can look at the scientific literature.
NOTHING(?)
[NW Rota-1](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7092/full/nature04762.html)
[NW Eifuku](http://www.oar.noaa.gov/research/papers07/venting.html) and [also](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004AGUFM.V43F..08L)
[Fifty submarine volcanoes](http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008GC002141.shtml) of the Mariana Arc.
>Using the new Mariana data and recent data from the Tonga-Kermadec arc, we estimate that all intraoceanic arcs combined may contribute hydrothermal emissions [equal to ~10% of that from the global mid-ocean ridge.](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008JGRB..11308S09B)
From [1995](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V5Y-3XY2PDH-…)
[And so on.](http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/home.html)
Devils advocate - how do you account for the changes in oxygen isotope ratios due to the combustion of fossil fuels, which match near enough with that expected for the production of the CO2 we are emitting? Perhaps you can also explain how the underwater volcanos manage to control themselves so that their emissions match the cycle of the seasons?
@Marco: Oops, better make sure my brain is engaged before commenting in future. Thanks.
@Devils Advocate: My mistake, I'm wrong at 461. Please ignore it.
[Devils [sic] Advocate](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
So you found a reference to an undersea volcano. What makes you think that its emissions are not accounted for in the modellings of submarine volcanic emissions? Ans what makes you think that it is my climate model?!
I note that you have not actually provided the carbon budget that was [requested of you](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…), so I can only assume that even a simple task such as this was beyond your capabilities. This does not come as a surprise, as none of your statements on carbon emissions and AGW actually demonstrate any basic grasp of science.
I note too that your claim to be 'simply' a "devil's advocate" (note the apostrophe) reflects no grounding in demonstrable action: certainly so with respect to your last post. Rather, you are pushing the ideological barrow of the Denialati, and I'm sure that this comes as no surprise to those who have been reading your efforts here.
Thanks Luminous, from your link @ 464;
âMost observations and sampling of submarine eruptions have been indirect, made from surface vessels or made after the factâ
It has been clearly established that up until recently neither NOAA nor anybody else (USGS etc) has had the opportunity to count, see or monitor underwater volcanos up close (see link post 460). It is agreed there is now 1 which we have a video record of.
We know there is another 68,000 kilometres of unexplored volcanic underwater rift zones yet to be surveyed. Pilmers assessment that these unexplored zones could yield thousands of volcanoes is quite plausible, especially in the absence of scientific observations to disprove his assertion.
Re post@464;
"how do you account for the changes in oxygen isotope ratios due to the combustion of fossil fuels, which match near enough with that expected for the production of the CO2 we are emitting"
The changes in oxygen isotope ratios due to the combustion of fossil fuels, also match near enough with that expected for the production of the CO2 from in situ fossil fuels that are burnt in volcanic processes.
Re Bernard @ 467; When you have found someone who has gone out into the field and counted the actual number of submarine volcanoes and then actually measured their emissions get back to me. Then I will in a position to provide you with a âcarbon budgetâ that includes that data.
Bernard, what seems ideological, is asserting intimate knowledge of submarine volcanoes sight unseen, and then asserting that ideological knowledge as science.
Where does Plimer's "intimate knowledge of submarine volcanoes" come from?
This of course presupposes that you are here to argue Plimer is not a fraud.
Pilmer doesn't say he has any intimate knowledge of submarine volcanoes, its Monidiot that does;
"When confronted with the fact that the USGS says (backed with scientific papers)"
Zoot, 'that is' "backed with" ideological "scientific" toilet "paper" as the submarine volcanoes are site unseen.
DA,
Do you suppose that there's a greater number of undersea volcanoes in the Northern Hemisphere?
In addition to Paul H's observation, 1) does Devils [sic] Advocate believe that undersea volcanoes have chimneys that pipe their emissions to the surface layers, and 2) does he believe that they remove oxygen from the atmosphere in proportion to the increase in carbon in the atmosphere?
Oo, and 3) did these submarine volcanoes start emitting at the same time as the industrial revolution? And oo again, 4) where is the anthropogenically emitted CO2 actually going?
And oo again again, 5) has DevAd not heard of statistical extrapolation, and oo again again again, 6) if the USGS can't quantify undersea volcanoes, how is it that Plimer can be certain that there are 68 000 km of vlocanoes under the sea - whatever that might mean, rings of fire notwithstanding?
"has DevAd not heard of statistical extrapolation"
Is that making up figures when you do not believe the data or is it what you make hockey sticks out of?
Thats got to be the funniest reply yet - that the O2 isotope changes come from fossil fuels burnt by volcanos. Some actual evidence would be nice, or do you think that volcanos work from coal seems?
As for hockey sticks, you clearly don't know what you are talking about, since statistical extrapolation is not needed to produce a hockey stick. Just measurement and proxies for the last 600 or 1000 years.
D A it would be nice if you could get the good professor's name right.
Devils [sic] Advocate.
I note that you chose to reply (in an irrelevant and fact-free fashion) to the one rhetorical question in [my list](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) of questions, and that you left the others untouched.
What wrong - are you afraid to actually use some parsimonious science? Or is it that you simply do not know the real answers?
Or perhaps you actually do know the truth, but as it stubbornly refuses to gel with your ideology, you take the ostrich option and hope that no-one notices...
Whatever the reality, one thing is for sure - you are not a genuine seeker of objective scientific fact.
Yeah, volcanoes burning fossil fuels, that sure gave me a chuckle too. Amazing that DA is quick to propose something this ridiculous yet can't face up to the implications of Bernard's 1-6. So, DA, what observables would support your volcanoes/fossil fuel hypothesis? What theoretical constraints are there for this hypothesis? For instance, where is the oxygen going to come from to get efficient combustion of the fossil fuels inside volcanoes or in the deep ocean? How is that combustion going to occur in, umm, the ocean? Are you going to tell us that molecular oxygen is emitted in large quantities from volcanoes, or perhaps the syn gas and water shift gas reactions are happening in the deep ocean?
DA,
You quote from The nature paper on NW Rota-1:
>âMost observations and sampling of submarine eruptions have been indirect, made from surface vessels or made after the factâ
Neglecting the following passage:
>We describe here __direct observations__ and sampling of an eruption at a submarine arc volcano named NW Rota-1, located 60 km northwest of the island of Rota (Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands).
You also ignore the direct observations of arc volcanoes described in the other links.
Such a selective quotation in an academic setting is tantamount to scientific fraud, and would result in one losing one's job and possibly being subject to criminal prosecution.
Go away, liar.
DA,
Hit "send query" at the bottom of [this](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008JGRB..11308S09B) page for more research papers you can pretend don't exist. When you've finished with those, hit "next set of references" at the bottom of that page, and so on.
Get back to us when you're done.
DA's gotta be pulling a Poe on our collective ass ...
It would fit with the actions, certainly.
It clear that the "Plimer claims that the USGS doesn't count underwater volcanoes" is true, as no one knows how many underwater volcanoes there are, where they are and as such they have not even attempted to measure a single underwater volcanoâs emissions.
This brings us to the source of disinformation about underwater volcanoes Monidiot is spruiking; âstatistical extrapolationâ. Bernards question no 5.
"Statistical extrapolation" in the AGW sense;
in relation to global atmospheric temperature; 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the atmosphere is not actually measured so they have to use "statistically extrapolation" to 'make up' a figure;
in relation to emissions figures for underwater volcanoes. No one has actually measured the emissions from a underwater volcano, so 100% of the emissions figures for underwater volcanoes are "statisticallyâ extrapolated (made up), but the source for this fictitious extrapolation is from elsewhere, not from underwater volcanoes.
Definitely a Poe.
According to [Devils [sic] Advocate](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…):
Given that there are 'only' around [2.2 x 1044 atoms in the atmosphere](http://pages.prodigy.net/jhonig/bignum/qaair.html), and that we have "measured" (according to Devils [sic] Advocate) 1 x 10-79% (give or take a decimal place) of the atmosphere, humans apparently have achieved astonishing nanonanonano... et cetera)-scale manipulation in order to have "measured" a total of around 2.2 x 10-33% of one atom in total, in the atmosphere.
Devils [sic] Advocate is either a Poe, as Dhogaza and Joseph note, or is [hypocritically making up figures](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) in his clueless ambition to demonstrate himself to be a 99.999... (to 79 decimal places)% fact-free troll.
statistical extrapolation = made up
:head-desk:
To follow on from my previous post, I have a question for the Bedevilled Arrogant: what do you think a thermometer actually measures, and what do you think statistics actually have to do with it?
Think carefully, because if you arrive at a correct answer you may be invited to join Tim Curtin, Girma Orssengo, Andrew "cohenite" Cox, Harold Pierce Jnr, and sundry other esteemed scientific giants, on the academic staff of the Department of Climate Reality And Politics at the University of the Universe.
Devils Advocate:
"...in relation to emissions figures for underwater volcanoes. No one has actually measured the emissions from a underwater volcano, so 100% of the emissions figures for underwater volcanoes are "statisticallyâ extrapolated (made up),..."
So, are Plimer's assertions about the CO2 emitted by underwater volcanoes "made up"?
Uh, come to think of it - what figures (made up or otherwise) support Plimer's assertion about CO2 underwater volcanoes?
...because Plimer *does* base his assertions on actual data, right?
I also saw Ian Plimer on the lateline interview the other night.Unfortunately,there is no questioning the fact that he was a disaster.He came off looking evasive and untrustworthy.He would do us sceptics a favour if he stayed away from the media.
468 Devil,
I know this has been mentioned before but I really must repeat it, with emphasis.
Where did that come from? What do you think volcanoes are?
The silence is deafening in the "sceptic" echo chamber. Even they know this one went bad.
It seems that Bedevilled Arrogant has turned tail and fled - he has been conspicuously absent since being challenged [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…), [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…), [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…), and [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…).
"It seems that Bedevilled Arrogant has turned tail and fled"
No, Tim seems to be deleting my posts. It is understandable he doesn't like dissenting opinions to be aired, especially, as the flawed AGW science is loosing more & more traction in the debate, as this happens the only option is to shut down the debate.
Censoring the dissenters is prima facie evidence AGW theory is BS.
Bedevilled Arrogant, if you believe that Tim Lambert would censor your level of 'opinion' based upon its scientific threat to mainstream climatology, you're seriously deluded. Tim tolerates an extraordinary degree of 'dissent', even if it's completely barmy. Spend some serious time reading the archives here and you'll see just how much nonsense he puts up with.
If you're being deleted from posting it'll be due to the inanity or to the purility contained in your efforts.
And if you believe that AGW is BS, why don't you put your best explanations to refute [the empirical evidence of AGW](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/firedoglake_book_salon_on_jame…). [Paranoia](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) is hardly the prima facie evidence that refutes AGW.
Bernard and others, you can try to avoid the subject by calling me any names (i.e. shoot the messenger if you canât shoot the message), but these 2 facts remain;
(1) only a micro fraction of the actual atmosphere is measured for temperature and a fictitious extrapolation is then obtained to âguessâ the temperature for the rest and;
(2) no underwater volcano has âeverâ had its emissions recorded and therefore any extrapolation that purports to extrapolate emissions from underwater volcanoes is a fraud. (so Plimers emissions âguessâ is as good as anybody elseâs âguessâ and it is certainly better than that of a journalist)
The so called scientific papers linked to thus far are all heavily qualified to the point where no scientific certainty can be derived from them. (point me to one repeatable real world experiment that successfully predicts a future outcome contain within one.)
Great, I'll add that to the rest of the 'prima facie' evidence, which prior to your contribution had [included](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/jan/06/snow-ice-…):
Primo Getting angry at dissenters.
Secundo Using ad hominem-hominem-hominems against dissenters.
Tertio Saying bad things about the dissenters' spelling and grammar.
With all this prima facie evidence about, the science becomes almost irrelevent, doesn't it?
Oh, so THAT'S why an oral thermometer is useless for determining if one's core temperature is elevated or not ... medical science is a fraud!
As has been noted previously, you obviously have no understanding of the concept of representative statistical sampling. Nor do you appear to be aware of the significance of the variance around a mean of samples, and of what such variance indicates about the reliability/precision of the sampled parameter.
Your 'fact' is, in fact, crap.
Do you mean recorded on film, or recorded chemically...?
Erm, statistics and geology do more than "purport". You might want to spend some serious time devling into this.
Also, you might consider the points [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…) and [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/plimer_exposed_as_a_fraud.php#c…), and especially what they imply for the understanding of submarine emissions. I'll give you a hint - the scientific method that is used in such understanding is the same scientific method that split the atom, that put men on the moon, that sequenced the genomes of humans and of other species, and that can reliably inform mining companies where to find the chemical elements and compounds that they are so desperately seeking - and in what quantities they'll find said materials.
Your message has been shot to smithereens so many times already that the only thing left of any utility is to clobber the bloody fool who thinks that it's smart to push the shreds of this discredited message through the mail slot.
You have to be joking... Seriously - you have to be joking!
I'm so tempted to waste half an hour typing countless examples, but I am now convinced that I might just be falling victim to a pernicious variety of Poe...
And you wonder why you are called names!
Someone (who is [kill]-filed and appears to be incorentite) said that:
Oops! Someone's telling porky pies.
I wonder how many more I could find if I really put my mind to it? "Lies or gas samples", you say? I'll let others be the judge.
Oops again! That should have been "incoherentite"!
I have an odd minute while the tea bag is doing its stuff, so I just powered up the laptop, used Google and found another one. Zut alors! There's loads more of 'em.
OK folks, I won't link any more, just recommend [kill] file use for certain incoherent individuals.